We’re diving deep into New Testament history. I’m excited to have Dr. Trevan Hatch on the show. He’s a Jewish Studies scholar! Trevan works at the Harold B Lee Library and teaches New Testament classes at BYU. We’re going to cover historicity of the Gospels. What are common misconceptions of the Christmas story? Did Jesus ask Judas and Peter to betray and deny him? Are the Gospels historically reliable? I think Dr. Hatch’s answers will surprise you as we take a deep dive into the Gospels and the life of Jesus. Check out our conversation…
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Meet Dr. Trevan Hatch
Interview
GT 00:03 Welcome to Gospel Tangents. I’m excited to have an amazing Jewish scholar right here at BYU. Could you go ahead and tell us who you are?
Trevan 00:47 I’m Dr. Trevan Hatch. I’m not a Jewish scholar, [I’m a] Jewish Studies scholar. We know what you meant. But some people are like, “Oh, you’ve got a Jewish scholar at BYU?” Yeah, scholar of Jewish Studies, trained to read the New Testament by Jews. I studied at multiple Jewish universities, three Jewish institutions of higher learning, including in Israel. It’s fun to take what I learned from Jews, and then apply it to the scriptures.
GT 01:27 Well, I’m excited because you’ve got a really interesting academic background. Because you’ve got more education than anybody I know, I think. Right?
Trevan 01:36 It’s embarrassing. So, yeah, this the short of it is, after I left BYU, I went to a Jewish University in Baltimore.
GT 01:44 Okay, so you got your undergraduate at BYU.
Trevan 01:46 Yep. In Ancient Near Eastern Studies, and then I switched to history and pulled my ancient Near Eastern Studies courses over there. I minored in Hebrew and did all that. Then I went to Hebrew University, in Baltimore. It’s a fantastic small Jewish University, Jewish faculty, mostly Jewish students. I lived in the neighborhood of 20,000 Orthodox Jews, right there in North Baltimore. It was fantastic. Then I didn’t get into the Ph.D. programs I wanted, because this was right after the recession. So, I came back to UVU and taught in philosophy for two years, philosophy, ethics and values. I taught some courses in religion and Judaism. And then, I was frustrated because I couldn’t get into the Ph.D. programs I wanted to with funding. This is in ancient studies, the world of the Bible, and Jewish studies. So, I then searched nationwide for somebody who could help me continue to study Jews and religion from any aspect. It could be political science, whatever. And I found this guy at LSU in the bayou. As you probably can see behind you, LSU.
GT 02:30 Geaux Tigers! Right?
Trevan 02:53 The Tigers. He happened to be a Latter-day Saint. And he studied Jewish, Christian and Muslim family life. And it was in the School of Social Work. So, I thought, I don’t know how I’m going to make this transition to the social sciences, especially in the School of Social Work, where I’m not going to become licensed. And a lot of my professors, they’re not social workers, they’re sociologists, and economists and political scientists and education scholars. And so, it’s kind of an interdisciplinary background, where I wrote my dissertation on American Jews. And then, while I was doing that program, I started a second doctorate in Jewish Studies at the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies in Chicago. It’s a long time, it’s kind of like Brandeis…
GT 03:21 Now wait a minute. Are you going to LSU and Chicago at the same time?
Trevan 03:36 Yes, at the same time. It was crazy. It sounds nuts, but I had some funding. And I just considered both of those programs as a one doctoral training.
GT 03:47 Wow.
Trevan 03:48 So I’m a trained social scientist. I raise questions that social scientists tend to care about and apply it to the ancient world. [I raise] questions like the geopolitics and how the populace relates to the power structures, and in this case, the temple establishment of Jerusalem as a temple. So, it’s fun to go back and forth on those topics. So, yeah, I was running both Ph.D. programs at the same time, one in Jewish studies, one in social sciences. And then I came to BYU, and I got a job in the library. At first, I thought, “This is kind of hokey, like a library.” Like all the stereotypes of a librarian. I thought. even my sister said, “You went and got two doctoral degrees to be a librarian?”
Trevan 04:28 And yeah, I guess. It’s the best kept secret in academics. I have research time. I have faculty status. All day long if I’m dealing with students, or faculty, or collection development, it’s all in Biblical Studies, religion, Jewish Studies, and things I care about. So, after I came here, they wanted me to get a second master’s degree, because it was part of the job of Master of Library Science. They paid for it. So, I had to do that. Anyway, so eventually…
GT 04:58 So two Ph.D.’s wasn’t good enough. You had to go back and get a masters.
Trevan 05:00 Oh, it’s ridiculous. Yes, it’s embarrassing. That’s fine. Do you know why this is embarrassing? We can cut this off if it’s a tangent, but…
GT 05:07 We’re into tangents here. And by the way, my name twin, Dr. Richard Bennett, majored in library science. So, you’re in good company.
Trevan 05:13 Oh, yeah. Okay. The reason why I mentioned it’s kind of embarrassing, and it’s even something–it’s strange. The culture that we live in now, the LDS culture, there’s a strong, ultra-conservative segment of that. Right?
GT 05:30 You think? {sarcastically}
Trevan 05:30 Yeah. And in our culture, the discussion that swirling is, it’s anti-academia. It’s not necessarily anti-learning, you know, but it’s anti-academia.
GT 05:39 Anti-expert.
Trevan 05:46 Yeah. And I’ve had people tell me, like on social media and elsewhere, like, “Oh, you’re a social scientist? You got trained in social science and in Jewish studies of religion. All of that is ultra-liberal. You must be a Marxist because Marxism is the foundations of social science.” Whatever you have to say, they just dismiss it, assuming you’re this raging liberal, who has an agenda. And so, because we’re ‘learned we think we’re wise.’ So, there’s that. We tend to be the boogeyman sometimes.
Trevan 06:21 So, it’s not like, “Oh, there’s a scholar. They can tell [us.]” No, you have to make your argument very, very well. And even the stuff that we’re going to talk about today, if I don’t make it well enough, and if people don’t read the book, and I don’t articulate, this will be difficult. Because there’s so many details, we can’t possibly get into it. I can’t remember everything. If I’m sloppy with the argument, some people just dismiss it. They’ll just say, “That’s sloppy, because here’s this verse that counters Dr. Hatch.” So, it really is [difficult.] Sometimes we’re caught between a rock and a hard place of how we engage these topics at BYU. Because, if we’re too fluffy and simplistic in our writing or teaching, then the outside world, both more liberal Latter-day Saints, and ex-Mormons or outside the Mormon body, they’ll look at us and be like, those guys aren’t serious. But, then if we do real, serious scholarship and sink our teeth in, especially in Bible proper, well, then we run the risk of making all the ultra-conservative people who believe every aspect of the Bible is literal, we risk making them getting mad at us. So, it’s tough.
GT 07:27 Yeah, well, you know, we are definitely pro-expert here on Gospel Tangents. I love this.
Who was “Stranger in Jerusalem” Written for?
GT 07:40 So, the book we’re going to talk about is your book “A Stranger in Jerusalem.” I’ve never seen any Latter-day Saints, (I almost said Mormons. I almost sinned,) put the kind of amazing scholarship in this book as you have done, and I love that book. So, why don’t you show everybody the book here? You guys should all get it for Christmas. Plus, the New Testament, we’re studying Come Follow Me. So, we’re going to definitely talk about a lot of that fun stuff.
Trevan 08:12 Since I picked it up, the back story of this, this as a religious studies press. I didn’t write this to Latter-day Saints. It’s Wipf and Stock, the Christian religious studies press. They’ve got different imprints, some of them are academic, some are written for children, but this is the imprint that is for academic, but written to a large audience, a lay audience. And so, I what I did is, because we have thousands of books on historical Jesus. So when I wrote the proposal, I said, “I’m a Latter-day Saint who’s writing about Jesus from a Jewish Studies perspective. And we don’t have any Latter-day Saint scholars engaging the larger community with the Jesus traditions. There’s a lot of people here at BYU who do that, I said, “But we have Catholic scholars.” There’s Muslim scholars we have like Reza Aslan. We have lots of Jewish scholars, atheists, Catholic scholars who have books where we can see how they’re interpreting the Jesus traditions, but no Latter-day Saints, unless they come into Latter-day Saint presses and look at it. So, I said, “This gives people a chance outside of my community to see how Latter-day Saints, or at least me, engages with the historical Jesus research.” So, they took it and so it’s fun… And then in the back, I’ve got Peter Haas, Professor of Jewish Studies, emeritus at Case Western Reserve, Victor Mirelman, he’s at Hebrew University and a rabbi in Chicago. And Leonard Greenspoon, the Klutznick Chair of Jewish civilization at Creighton. So, I know all these people. I could have gotten a Latter-day Saint scholar, but I wanted–I don’t mention anything about, I don’t quote any restoration stuff in here, not that I’m ashamed of it. But that’s that was the backstory. That’s the goal of the book.
GT 08:12 Okay, and so you’re writing this to a general Christian audience and not just an LDS audience. Is that right?
Trevan 10:02 Christian/Jewish. Yeah, and what do I say in the intro? [I’m writing to] enthusiasts, non-specialists but a highly, highly interested [people,] high interest but non-specialist audience.
GT 10:16 Yeah. Because I noticed you quoted Josephus a ton.
Trevan 10:21 I wrote it with undergraduates and beginning graduate students in mind, like my students at LSU when I taught at LSU.
GT 10:28 Okay.
Trevan 10:28 Christians, some non-Christians. So, I pictured an eager group of upper level undergrads, or beginning grad students who need more about the culture and the Jewish culture and the background of the world that Jesus.
GT 10:44 Yeah, you know, it was funny because people who’ve listened to my podcast for a while, know that I love The Jesus Seminar. And it took you until the last chapter to quote John Dominic Crossan. Can you give me your opinion on The Jesus Seminar? Because they’re kind of defunct now, aren’t they? And they’re not really active.
Trevan 11:06 Yeah. So yeah, the Jesus Seminar, I think they started couple of decades ago.
GT 11:12 Yeah.
Trevan 11:13 Three decades AGO.
GT 11:13 I think they started in the 1980s, when I was on my mission.
Trevan 11:15 Three decades ago, and they did a lot of good. They have a bunch of books where basically what you have is, I don’t remember how many, but it was a lot. There was a lot of scholars would gather. And some of them were New Testament scholars, mostly Christian. And then they would have some random, like scientists or armchair type scholars. And that was one of the criticisms of some people about The Jesus Seminar, because they would engage all the Jesus traditions, the deeds and sayings and they would look at it from every angle. Every year, they would take a different topic or approach, and then they would vote on whether Jesus really did say this, or he did not say this. And they had a color system, like, whatever the blue bead, in this if you think this episode is historical. And someone like Bart Ehrman, who’s I don’t know, he’s agnostic, atheist. I don’t know what he calls himself nowadays, or something like that.
GT 12:06 Former Evangelical.
Trevan 12:07 Former Evangelical, he’ll say, in passing, “The Jesus Seminar designated maybe 30,” I don’t remember but something like “30% of Jesus’s deeds and sayings in the gospels, as historical. He says, “I think it was 30%. But they got the wrong 30%.” And then he’s got his whole method.
GT 12:26 Right.
Trevan 12:27 I liked…
GT 12:28 You didn’t quote Erhman, though I don’t remember him in there at all. I don’t think you did.
Trevan 12:33 Don’t I? Maybe not. What I do in there, I quote a lot of first century, second century primary sources, and some of my reviewers said, “You’ve quoted– don’t give me eight examples. Give me two examples, and then move on.” No. I want to just pour on. I want to give every possible example, so that people can see just how rich this is. I don’t want to give two examples of Jesus using the Hebrew Bible, for example, and his teachings or the Gospel of Matthew, the author of Matthew, I want to give like eight examples, so it’s not like 600 pages. It’s 250 if you don’t count the back stuff.
How Tall Were Goliath & Jesus?
GT 13:12 Right. Well, one of the coolest things is as we started the book, and of course, I’m going to let you guide the conversation, but one of the coolest things–and this doesn’t have–well, it has to do with Jesus. I was surprised you brought it up was Goliath.
Trevan 13:27 Right, right.
GT 13:28 How tall was Goliath, really? Because, we think of him as being nine feet tall. But, no, humans are nine feet tall. I guess there was one who was like 8 foot 11.
Trevan 13:36 I made my gospel doctrine teacher mad one year. She gave her whole spiel, and I raised my hand, I said, “This is great lesson. If I can add a few things.” And then I gave what we’re going to talk about in a minute, but I gave it.
Trevan 13:49 She’s like, “Don’t ruin the lesson.” Because her whole lesson was based on how big he was. And therefore, nothing’s too big for God to help us. There’s the traditional, “Here’s this huge guy who should have won the fight, and he didn’t.”
Trevan 14:03 So that whole discussion was, and even one of my reviewers said, “Why are you discussing this, Goliath?” And it was just something that I like, and so I crammed it in. So, the context was, we were looking at the social aspects of Jewish life. And so, we dealt with food and housing, and I did all that kind of stuff, the agrarian lifestyle. And, then I’ve got one section on what did an average Jewish man look like? I mean, obviously, there’s a range, it’s too hard to…
GT 14:36 Right.
Trevan 14:36 But are they tall? Are they big? Do they grow their facial hair? Do they shave it? There are all kinds of different depictions. So, I was going through and saying, “Here’s what we know from archaeology.” There’s lots of different tombs. They come across the tomb like in upper Galilee, at Myron, and there’s like 200 people buried in there from the family. So, they test them all. How many males? How many females? How old are they? Did they die of diseases? And then there’s other sites all around, dating to the first century, all the way back to the seventh century. And it’s not just in the Israel/Palestine area. It’s all over the Mediterranean world, that people have done these kinds of research. So, from Greece and Rome, we have a lot of data on how big the population was, what their diet was, what they died of. Anyway, so I was talking about all that, and we come to the conclusion that the average male through all of that was five and a half feet tall, 5’5″.
GT 14:37 That’s really short, now.
Trevan 15:22 And that was the average. And there’s some apocryphal things, the Acts of John or whatever, second century. I’m not a later, early Christian scholar. So, I’m not steeped in those texts. But I think it’s the Act of John that says he was small in stature. If it’s true, this is dated 150 CE or whatever, then he could have been 5’1″ or 5’2″. And, who knows? But it doesn’t appear that he’s taller, like, he’s [not] six feet and whatever.
GT 16:00 He’s not like Joseph Smith. Right? He was a tall guy.
Trevan 16:02 They didn’t have this. I mean, it’s not a lot of evidence. I just use one piece where the guards come to Gethsemane and they say…
GT 16:11 Which one is he?
Trevan 16:11 “Judas, you’re going to have to tell us which one he is,” because, if he was this really strong, like, military-esque person, they could just say, “It’s the big guy. It’s the one who’s–It’s the leader is their big guy.” Anyway, it’s not strong evidence, but it gives us something to think about with the world of Jesus. And [I discuss] what the rabbi’s, what they wore, the facial hair and anything like that. So, I did talk about Goliath, as a point of reference, because it’s a similar Mediterranean world. And yeah, in the early manuscripts, he’s four cubits and a span, which could range from, 6’4″ to 6′ 7″ it depends on– a cubit is…
GT 16:12 That’s me. I’m 6’4″. I’m Goliath.
Trevan 16:35 Me, too. I’m 6’4″. So, when I take people to Israel on tours, or whatever, we go down to the Valley of Elaw, I’ll stand on my toes. I’ll give them a sling with some marshmallows, and I’ll say, “Hey, I’m Goliath. On my toes, I’m 6’6″. So, just sling them at me.” So, it’s interesting, that whole story. Basically, what happened is that you look at the Septuagint, you look at the Qumran Bible, the copies of the early [texts], these predate Jesus, four cubits and a span. But once you get to the Masoretic text, later texts, he’s now six cubits and a span. He’s like, eight, nine feet tall. There’s some monkey business going on there. And it happens all the time within the text.
GT 16:37 It’s like a fish tale, basically.
Trevan 17:12 Yeah, that’s right. It’s a perfect example of how this happens, how things grow, and change get embellished.
GT 17:43 Yeah, it’s shocking to me, because to think that Jesus could have been 5’2″, to I’m just like, “Really? He was that short, a short guy?” Possibly.
Trevan 17:52 Yeah, and my mother-in-law she’s funny. Isaiah says, and I don’t use that as historical evidence, but Isaiah taught, he has this thing where the Messiah, or future figure, whoever he’s talking about is not going to be handsome. The word he uses is people will not desire him, which is referring to sexual desire. People won’t look at him in that way. Short, scrawny, whatever that means at the time, and my mother-in-law says, “No, I can’t deal with that. I’ve got to have a pretty Jesus. I can’t have this dirty, unkempt, ugly,” or whatever. She’s like, “I can’t do that I have to have a strong…
What Do We Get Wrong with Christmas Story?
GT 18:31 (Chuckling) Well, you know, with December coming up here and Christmas, you didn’t spend a lot of time on the Christmas story. But I was wondering if you could share anything from the Christmas story. Before we jump into the Gospels here. What do we get wrong with the Christmas story? And that sort of thing?
Trevan 18:51 Yeah, the Christmas story. Yeah, I don’t spend a lot of time, but I do have these discussions with people in Jerusalem, like, on Holy Land tours when we go there. We’ll go to Bethlehem. I don’t want to deconstruct everything because it’s a special, sacred story. But I just give them nuances and talk about the images that we have of Joseph and Mary coming, two people without a caravan, the route that they might have taken. There’s three different possible routes, but all of those are dangerous. They would have had a caravan, so we talk about all these issues of the of the Christmas story.
GT 19:02 You think Joseph came on a caravan?
Trevan 19:21 It would have to be yeah. There’s no way you would have a woman who’s eight months pregnant, whenever they went [without a caravan.] The depiction is that she’s nine months pregnant, ready to give birth. But, even if we eliminate those social reconstructions and movies and just take the text, it appears that they’re already there. It says, I think Luke, I don’t remember all the references. But I think in Luke he says, “and while they were there, it came time for her to give birth.” Right? So, they’d been there and then and you take different aspects of Mark–Matthew says there’s a house “oikos” house available. So, they would have known someone. They would have traveled in a caravan. They would have set down in their setting. They would have had a place, a house probably. And the word katalyma does not mean an inn, or like a hostel, because Luke does use a word like that, but it’s a different word, like the inn of the Good Samaritan.
GT 20:22 Right.
Trevan 20:22 It’s a different word. So katalyma is like the guest house, like an upper room or a guest room, not a guest house, but a guest room. And so, there’s no space in the katalyma, no space in the inn is what we translate, no space in the katalyma, which means that the house probably crowded. There’s no space in the room that they would have stayed in. So, they put them down on the bottom floor, probably back in a cave, because there’s a lot of Christian tradition of a lot of caves around Bethlehem. So, whoever they’re staying with, probably cleared out the bottom floor where the animals are kept in the back. That’s where you get the manger. It’s where you get the feeding like the stone manger. So that kind of setting, like I bring it up in Gospel Doctrine [class] every year, if I have a chance I talk about it, because it brings a different rhythm.
GT 21:06 You’re braver than me, I can tell.
Trevan 21:07 It brings a different feel. Because in the standard story, it’s not that we care and want to be pedantic about all this, “Oh, it was a caravan, and she wasn’t 9 months pregnant.” But the point is that when they come into Bethlehem, there are the Jews there who won’t [accommodate her.] Clearly, she’s pregnant, and they’re not going to give her any space. They’re not going to make space for her. And so, there’s that. We just start with those anti-Semitic undertones that Jesus was born in the most humble of circumstances, very poor, in a shed somewhere. Actually, the Church’s video, just a year or two ago, everything I just said, they incorporate that into the video. They got the information from some of my colleagues here at BYU. But there’s some complications with him.
Trevan 22:03 Even if you really want to be provocative, there’s complications with him even being in Bethlehem. So, some of the scholarship is that he was never there. And if you take all the Gospels and look at it and find out where the incongruities are, they’re from Nazareth. Why are they in Bethlehem? Well, the standard answer is that there’s a census, in the days of Quirinius. There’s no census mentioned anywhere. You know, Josephus doesn’t mention it. There’s no census mentioned anywhere. That’s a big deal, because that would have been so big, where everyone was traveling throughout the Roman Empire, going back to their ancestral lands to pay taxes? I mean, a thousand years before?
GT 22:37 When they did censuses, did people have to travel for the census?
Trevan 22:39 Not like that, to have how many million? So, just 6 to 8 million Jews, like forget everybody else, just 6 to 8 million Jews traveling on all the highways, going back to wherever town.
GT 22:53 Is that how big Jerusalem was back then, or Israel, I guess I should say?
Trevan 22:57 I’m using data from scholars who do demographic studies and their estimate of 6 to 8 million Jews in the Roman Empire. So, it’s in the diaspora and it’s also in Galilee.
GT 23:06 So, that includes Italy, and…
Trevan 23:08 Yeah, everywhere. Can you imagine? So, just that point alone is not, it’s okay. I mean, there’s no evidence of there’s– maybe there could have been there for another reason. And that’s fine. And maybe they were in Bethlehem, but scholars say it’s a little bit suspicious, because they want to tie, especially Matthew, wants to tie Jesus to David. And David’s from there. And Micah mentions this prophecy.
GT 23:36 So, was the census made up then?
Trevan 23:37 I think so, in Luke. Yeah, I think it’s made up. Because Luke has to get, they have to have a reason for Jesus to be in Bethlehem. This is not so scandalous. I’ve heard our colleague, Jeff Chadwick, who is an archaeologist, and he does some Jewish Studies. He studied at Hebrew University. He’s one of our senior archaeologists here. And he wrote a self-published a book called The Stone Manger. And he’s very orthodox, and he’s teaches in religion. Even he says in his book, there’s no census. It’s impossible. It can’t happen. So, we don’t have to throw out the story that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but there is some scholarship. There are some complications for why they would be there.
GT 23:37 Well, it seems like most people who date the birth of Jesus, ignore the census because it doesn’t make sense. There’s no evidence of it. And so most people tie his birth to the death of Herod, right?
Trevan 24:33 Yeah, 4 BCE. So, Jesus would have had to have been born 4-6 BC, somewhere in that range.
GT 24:42 So that seems like a more reliable position. I mean, I’ve had some other people say, James Talmage said it was April, 1 BC.
Trevan 24:52 Yeah, April 6th in 1 BC. Yeah, it’s, yep. Well, in the story there is I think–somebody can correct me in the comments or whoever, but I think it was Dennis the Monk, Dionysius, the Monk, right? I don’t know the story or the history very well. But I do know that he’s asked to change the Gregorian calendar to go, to date back and start the year Jesus was born, so that we can then count from there.
GT 25:20 Forward.
Trevan 25:21 So they…
GT 25:22 And this is in the 1500s or something?
Trevan 25:24 Yeah, it’s way late. I don’t even remember, seventh, eighth ninth century, I don’t think it’s as late as the 1500s. But yeah, they mess it up. And they have either 1 BC or 1 AD. And so now, when I go to my class at BYU, I say, “Okay, when was Jesus born, what year?” And they’re confused, like, 1? Year 1 or 0? How does that work?
GT 25:46 There is no 0.
Trevan 25:47 Right. So, we just go through it, just so they–this just adds a little bit of– I do these kinds of things, not that it’s a big deal. And, again, we’re not trying to be pedantic, but I want to slowly get them to think a little bit deeper, and use benign, like the Goliath thing, use benign issues. What year was Jesus born? [I do this] just to get them to think about sources, about complexity and appreciate the time period and the data that we have?
GT 26:19 Well, I do have a very few evangelical listeners. And this is a perfect example. They like to say the Bible is inerrant. It’s like, how can you [believe that]? We don’t even know when Jesus was born. Was it? Because if there was a census, I think it was like 4 AD?
Trevan 26:38 Yeah, 4 to 6 there’s some census.
GT 26:41 So, we’re off by 10 years somewhere, because the census clearly doesn’t match Herod’s death, right?
Trevan 26:46 Yeah, it doesn’t match his death. Yeah. So, with that census, when was it? What did it consist of?
GT 26:51 We have a problem.
Trevan 26:52 Yeah, we have a problem. Yeah. So, what else? There are all kinds of stuff with the story. I discussed it in my book, where you’ve got an idea of what is the star. Is this a star they follow. And there’s a case, and even during that time period, in the Dead Sea Scrolls and elsewhere, some believe that the star was an angel, a heavenly being that’s going to come with the Messiah. Josephus mentions, even later in the 60s during the war, he says that there was a star that appeared over Jerusalem. And it was a really bright star. And he says it got all the Zealots riled up, who were waiting for Messiah, because there was a star there. He said it messed everything [up,] like it got them killed. But he said that star is based on an obscure prophecy. He doesn’t say which prophecy, but it’s the Balaam, Numbers 22 prophecy, where he comes and he’s going to, this is the guy on the donkey, right, Numbers 22.
GT 27:52 I was going to say, well most of us say [Bay-lam], you say [Bah-lah-ahm.]
Trevan 27:56 Balaam, yeah, the double A in Hebrew. Balaam, where he’s looking over the valley when the Israelites are coming in, and he’s supposed to curse them. But he can’t. He can only bless them. And he says, “A star will come out of Judah.” So, that later gets interpreted to be a Messianic Davidic King, right? So, there’s some passages that believe that it’s an actual, it could be a star associated Messiah, or that it’s even in Dead Sea Scrolls like angelic, and even the Messiah, himself, will come as a star. So, yeah, I’m putting all these pieces together. And it could be that they believed, the star was put in there by Matthew or they–it could be either one.
GT 28:38 Well, because it seems like, it’s interesting that you say that some of the Zealots saw the star. Because, most often, the story is the wise men come to Herod and Herod didn’t see the star. Herod didn’t know about the star. “Oh, tell me about this star.” And so it seems like most people, unless you’re looking for the star, you don’t see the star. But there were other people that saw the star?
Trevan 29:01 [Yes,] at the time of Josephus, but we have no record that they saw the star in 4-6 BC.
GT 29:06 Oh, and Josephus is some 60 years later, then, right?
Trevan 29:10 Yeah, yeah.
GT 29:11 Okay.
Trevan 29:12 But what we have with Josephus is, and who else? I think there’s three people, there may be five of them, but there’s two or three first century authors [who] mention the star, not Jesus’ star, but that idea. [The two who mention it] is Josephus and then Matthew. And then I think there’s, I think there’s a Dead Sea text that references in Numbers 22, a star that’s going to come. And so, there’s a third reference. So, yeah, that idea is there, and people are using it. And it just depends on–you know, Mark doesn’t use it. Like it’s not in Mark. So, he’s not pulling in his traditions. It’s not in Luke, Luke has angels. But there’s a big, bright, and so that’s where it could be an angel, it could be a star, in terms of, in Luke’s mind, like the Dead Sea scrolls, the Dead Sea sects.
GT 30:05 Yeah, because I don’t, I’m trying to remember, I don’t think the star is in Matthew, either, is it?
Trevan 30:10 I think it is in Matthew. I mean, somebody can correct me, but I think Matthew has the star, because of the Davidic Messiah, messianic reference. And there’s other interesting things. We can talk a little bit more about it. And this gets into if the Gospels are historically reliable. But, in the book, if I can remember the references, there are, what Matthew wants to do is to show, and he does this over and over and over again, that Jesus is a Davidic king. And he ties him to David, all of the time. And, in fact, if we get to it, I can open up my book and go through and show numerous parallels. I can remember a lot of them off the top of my head, but he does this all the time. And so that’s his focus. He’s the son of David, or he’s like David, and so he starts in the genealogy, and everything is about David, the names in there, I discussed this in the book. And then when they move to the birth scene, it’s in Bethlehem of David. But the wise men, the magi, they come with gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And here’s a Gentile. Here’s Gentiles who worship a son of David. All that’s all throughout the Psalms. Psalms 9–I can’t remember all of them, Psalm 72, maybe. I can look them up. But there’s about five different places where it says that “In that day, the Gentile nations would come from the Queen from the nation of Shiva [chev-a], or Shiva [she-vah], or however you want to say in English, and bring gold and frankincense. And in another place, it says myrrh, and to ‘worship Solomon.’ They’re bringing it to Solomon. So, you have foreign nations coming to worship and bow down and give gifts to Israel’s King, the son of David. In this case it was Solomon, in some of the Psalms.
Trevan 31:55 And so, Matthew knows this. And so, he’s pulling all that in, and that’s where we get gold, frankincense, myrrh, and we have Gentile royalty people, diplomats, royalty, whatever, coming to Bethlehem, and then praising Jesus. He’s a son of David. So that’s why those elements make sense. It doesn’t cast the whole story and make it false, but that’s nowhere in any of the other gospels. We know Matthew’s, focus is on David. We know Matthew is pulling in from the Hebrew Bible hundreds of times. And so, it just makes you wonder, how do we fit this, in terms of scholarship in terms of how we do the history? Historians raise that question.
Is Judas Death Reliable?
GT 32:32 Yeah. And so that’s what I loved about your book was because you would pull in–I mean, there were so many references, where, especially Matthew, was trying to pull in the old scriptures and tie Jesus to those scriptures. Do you have any more examples like that?
Trevan 32:48 He does it all throughout the passion narratives. There are times where there’s places, like in Ezekiel and Zechariah that Matthew pulls in. There are places where he’s on the cross, and He says, “Father forgive them, they know not what they’re doing,” or “Why have you forsaken me?” A lot of that’s from Psalm 2, and Matthew is pulling it in, sometimes even quoting it. But, like when he goes to the Mount of Olives, for example, Matthew is pulling in, like, you’ll notice he’ll say something like–and some of the other gospels do this too. It’s not just Matthew. They’ll say, “Jesus came to the Mount of Olives. When he entered Jerusalem, he got two donkeys.” Okay, that’s in Genesis. That’s in Zechariah. He comes down the Mount of Olives, and they hold a parade for him. They’re yelling, “Hail the King, Messiah.” That’s in 2nd Samuel, with Solomon, having his coronation riding a donkey down. It’s everywhere. It’s everywhere.
Trevan 33:49 Judas, we can talk about this later, if we ever get to Judas. It’s only in Matthew where Judas kills himself. And then there’s another place in Acts, so this is not the author of Matthew. This is the author of Luke, in Acts where he kills himself, but he slips and falls and his bowels to spill out on the ground, right. So, there’s these two instances. Both of those, especially the one in Matthew, is in 2nd Samuel. Those are stories that he’s pulling in from 2nd Samuel. I don’t know if you remember from the book, but the short of it is, Absalom came. David’s son came into Jerusalem. There’s a conspiracy. He takes over the throne. David flees. His general, Ahithophel, fell joins the conspiracy. David overcomes that conspiracy. Absalom was killed. When David comes back into Jerusalem, the conspiracy fails. Ahithophel, who conspired against the Davidic King, kills himself, hangs himself. It’s the same words as Judah. It says, “He went away and hung himself,” the exact same words. Okay, everything that Matthew is pulling in is from David. It’s unbelievable. When you go through and say, “Okay, he’s pulling from the Psalms, which is attributed to David or at least about David. He’s pulling from 2nd Samuel. The other one, this will just get us into another rabbit trail of Judas. But we don’t necessarily have to go there yet.
Trevan 35:13 But the other one in Acts, it says he fell on the ground and his bowels spilled out on the ground. Well, that is another one of David’s generals, Amasa. He also joined in the conspiracy. So, he conspired against David, it failed. And then another of his generals Yoav took revenge. He approaches Amasa. He grabbed his face, calls him, my brother, just like Judas says, my master, kisses him on the cheek, just like Judas kisses Jesus on the cheek. And he says that he Yoav was wearing a soldier’s garment, because the soldiers are in Gethsemane. And then he stabbed Amasa with a dagger. And it says his bowels spilled out on the ground. So, it’s not an exact parallel, because that doesn’t happen to Judas or to Jesus in Gethsemane. But all the elements are there, related to Judas. So, Matthew, and then sometimes some of the other writers are pulling in the Hebrew Bible, all the time, everywhere.
GT 36:10 Because I’ve heard some, especially like seminary teachers that talk about the death of Judas, and they were like, “Well, maybe he hung himself on a tree on a cliff, and then the branch broke and he spilled his guts out on the ground or whatever.
Trevan 36:25 Yeah, they’ve created a new episode. You don’t see that episode. There are two different episodes. So, we’ve created a third episode…
GT 36:33 To reconcile.
Trevan 36:34 … to reconcile it. And it’s fine in terms of the history of interpretation. People need that to be historical. But that’s…
GT 36:42 So, you’re saying that those two ways of death are not really compatible, and they’re relying on two different Old Testament stories?
Trevan 36:52 Yeah.The Judas– man, this is–I don’t know, if you want to talk about it now, we can. But the Judas episode is very–this is Exhibit A, for how things get really messy. And so, we can talk about it.
GT 37:08 Let’s go there, then.
Trevan 37:11 There’s 10 pages with tons of notes. So, I won’t remember everything. But it’s a fun discussion.
Did Jesus Ask Judas to Betray Him?
GT 37:17 I’ve heard, and I don’t know. Maybe I’m making this up, but I’ve heard speculation. We get into Judas. Judas is kind of the definition of anti-Semitism. Right? He betrayed Jesus and he was a horrible person. But I heard somewhere that Jesus said, “One of you will betray me.” And it was almost as if Jesus was saying, “I’m going to pick one of you to betray me, and you need to do that.” In the gospels it says that the devil was in Judas’ heart, and he was worried about money and that sort of thing. Is that a reasonable explanation? Because the story that I heard was, Judas leaves the room. Nobody tackles him.
Trevan 38:08 Right.
GT 38:09 “Hey, I’ve got to stop that guy.” Is that a reasonable interpretation? Did Jesus ask Judas to betray him?
Trevan 38:17 That’s one of the theories. And so, when we go through, there’s different [possibilities.] Let’s walk through it. There’s three or four different topics or aspects of this Judas material. And then we can say, Okay, if we’re thinking like a scholar, how do we understand these three or four topics? The first one is, what Judas’ motive was. What’s his motive? We don’t have a clear answer. There’s no unified understanding in early Christian communities of what his motives are.
Trevan 38:55 But essentially these arguments or theories, and different Christians have different theories. #1, we have to take the text at face-value. Judas was controlled or overtaken by Satan or a demon. In Matthew, it says he was greedy. Because of his greed, he was opened up to the influence of Satan. It was because of money.
Trevan 39:22 Other commentators will say it was his destiny to do it, his fate. Jesus said, “You will do this.” Even in John, my students don’t like this. They read John, once they are specifically at it. Because John says, and Christian theologians pick up on this. John says that Jesus chose Judas because he knew that he would betray him. “You are my apostles. One of you is a devil.” This is early in his ministry.
Trevan 39:52 The reason why my students don’t like that, and one of my students raised her hand. She said, “I don’t like that because it implies that Jesus is just stringing him along. What’s the word for it? Entrapment or something, it’s entrapment. ‘I’m going to string you along, and put you in situations where you have to me.’ That sounds odd to me. I don’t like that.” It could be that Jesus did, but the implications of him just stringing Judas along because he knew he was the devil. There’s all those different facets.
GT 40:25 It turns Jesus into a manipulator, basically. Right?
Trevan 40:27 Yeah, yeah. Like, if he’s going to have somebody do something that has to be done to fulfill some goal, it’s kind of like Abraham. Abraham was asked to do this horrible thing, and he didn’t end up doing it, but it exalted him. So, he’s going to ask Judas to do this, and then Judas is going to do it, it’s going to lead to his depression and death and his legacy disgraced. So, those are all the different things we wrestle with. So, his motives, we don’t have an answer of why.
Trevan 40:58 What happens to him after, we don’t have a clear answer of what really happened, because in Matthew, like Ahithophel, he went and hung himself. In Acts, he fell, and his bowels gushed out on the ground. In Papias, a second century theologian said that Judas was hit and killed by a chariot. It was his divine punishment. I might be wrong, but I think it was Papias who said that he was so bloated because of his wickedness, his body started growing and growing and growing and growing. It was so big that a chariot couldn’t get by and hit him and killed him. Ok, so that’s not the other stories. It’s a new story that a chariot [killed him.] Even if you take it realistically, a chariot hit him.
Trevan 41:43 In the Gospel of Judas, the apostles excommunicated him and stoned him to death if I remember correctly. So, basically what we have in the first 100-200 years after Jesus’s death, we don’t have a unified understanding in Christian communities on why he did it, on what happened to him and the aftermath. Even Paul doesn’t mention anything like this. In fact Paul says after Jesus was killed, he met with the Twelve. Shouldn’t he have said he met with 11, minus Judas? It was understood. There was no hint. That doesn’t mean he didn’t know about it. He might have just not mentioned it. There’s no hint.
GT 42:25 Maybe Matthias had already replaced Judas? Probably not.
Trevan 42:11 I don’t know. Not right when he showed up in the 40 days when he was with them. So, I raise all those questions, and then my argument is, (it takes 10 pages to get through the argument.) My argument is that if Judas was like many of the other Jews at the time, including Jesus’s own followers, where Peter, in many instances, sees Jesus as the Messiah. He says in Caesarea Philippi, “You’re not going to be killed. What do you mean you’re going to be killed? Basically, you’re a Messiah. That’s not going to happen.” In Paul, I think, in First Corinthians, he says that Jesus’s death was a “scandalon,” a stumbling block for Jews. It’s a scandal for Jews. This is why I’m [Paul] having a hard time talking with Jews. So, he goes out and starts bringing in Gentiles, which we’ll talk about later. But he knows that this is a problem for Jews that a Messiah would die.
GT 43:21 Because the Messiah was supposed to become king and rescue Jews from Rome.
Trevan 43:24 Yeah, he would do all these things. And so, I’m looking at the story. This doesn’t make sense. I tried to take every theory, whether it’s from Matthew or John or whether it’s a Christian theologian. Okay, he’s a money grubber. He’s greedy. Okay, so what would that look like? Well, he sold Jesus off for 30 pieces of silver, or whatever it was, 30 pieces. And then we can look and see what’s that’s worth. That’s the equivalent of $13,000 a year, if you’re making $40,000. An average laborer, $40,000 a year, the equivalent would be okay, this guy made around $10,000 to $13,000 by selling his brother, so to speak, his master, his teacher off for the price of a slave. Even the bottle of ointment used in an earlier story to anoint Jesus’s feet up on the Mount of Olives, where the woman anointed his feet, that bottle of ointment is worth more than double that of the price of a slave.
Trevan 43:24 It doesn’t make sense to me that Judas would just sell off [Jesus.] He would have to be mentally crazy to sell off your mentor and your teacher for such a low price. So, that didn’t make sense to me. These are the gospel writers trying to explain. These people weren’t around Judas. Matthew, Mark, Luke, these guys were writing 30-40 years later, and they’re trying to fill in the story of trying to understand and they don’t know why this guy betrayed Jesus. And so they’re putting motives into Judas. So, that doesn’t make sense. Him being controlled by a devil, that doesn’t make sense either. What makes sense to me is that he thought Jesus was the Messiah, like everyone else, and that he would be victorious. And so he wanted to arrange this meeting between Jesus and the chief priests, because he thought Jesus is going to win. It makes sense in a messianic context. And even Matthew says that.
GT 45:26 So, basically, Jesus was just going to kill all the soldiers, basically?
Trevan 45:30 Yeah. This is his time. Finally, the gladiatorial [fight.] Like this is it. Jesus is going to do this. I mean, we don’t have strong evidence, obviously, that Judas thought that. But all these other theories that are not congruent in the text, just simply don’t make sense, unless he was literally crazy. Because then he goes, he sells Jesus. And then it’s not till Jesus died, where he realizes, “Oh, no!” In Matthew it says, he went to the temple establishment. He says, “I sinned against my master. I sinned against this man.”
Trevan 46:07 The word is not sin as in “I did wrong.” The word is “I misunderstood.” It’s a misunderstanding. I detail in the book exactly the words. So, there is this context. “I didn’t realize it was going to happen. I made a mistake.” He immediately had remorse. Clearly it wasn’t like he slowly realized over time, “Maybe I did something wrong.” It was immediate. “Oh shoot! Jesus is taken into Sanhedrin. Pilate is going to get ahold of him. He dies. Now what? I didn’t mean for that to happen.” So, he goes and kills himself. So, I detail in the book, in 10 pages. Hopefully that makes sense, the gist of it.
GT 46:45 Yeah. I mean, that makes sense. Because I can see Judas thinking, “Oh, this didn’t turn out the way I expected at all. Jesus was supposed to conquer, not be conquered, and now he’s dead. I feel terrible.” I mean, do you think Judas would feel so bad that he would kill himself? Or is that just the gospel writers saying, “Well, we need to pull in an Old Testament parallel. So, we’re going to [kill Judas with Old Testament parallel.]
Trevan 47:10 Yeah, it could be. That’s the thing. We don’t even know. Paul doesn’t talk about it. And those who do talk about it all have different fates of Judas. So, it could be in the Last Supper setting where Jesus says, “One of you is going to [betray me.]” And by the way, we can’t forget to talk about the word “betray.” It doesn’t mean betray. We’re using that here. But when Jesus says, “One of you is going to turn me over.” It’s [paradósei.] (I think that’s the word.) “One of you is going to turn me over.” And then it says that all the apostles were wondering, “Who is it going to be?”
GT 47:11 So it almost sounds as if Jesus is requesting them to do it?
Trevan 47:40 Yeah. That’s right. And then he says, “Judas, you’re going to do it. So do it quickly.” And so, then Judas leaves and then it says all the apostles thought he was just going to go get food, or something. It says, he was going to go get food or give some money to poor, do some arms or something, give some alms or something like a ritual during Passover. Clearly, he has somewhere to go. And it’s not a problem. There was no hostility between Jesus and Judas or between Judas and the other apostles. So, even in these individual settings, it’s hard for me to imagine that here’s this guy who all of a sudden is going to turn on Jesus. And the fact that Matthew is pulling in from Ahithophel from 2nd Samuel and from these other stories, and he’s quoting Jeremiah: 30 pieces, and the potter’s field. All of that is from Jeremiah and Zechariah. All of those elements are Old Testament. And then it leads to this guy’s death, according to Matthew. But the word all throughout–you can take the Hebrew Bible, like the Septuagint, the Greek, you can take all of Josephus, all the classical literature, of the word he used for betray, and it doesn’t mean betray. It means to deliver. It just simply means to deliver. In fact…
Trevan 47:50 Yes, pull it out. So, essentially, Jesus is saying to Judas, “I need you to turn me over to the police, and I’ll take care of the rest.” And Judas is like, “Oh, okay. Well, I trust you, master.”
Trevan 48:50 Right. Yeah, that’s it. That’s–so here, let me just always just read this little excerpt. Mark does not refer to Judas as a betrayer. Judas looks pretty good in Mark, the earliest gospel. Many English translations of the Bible use the word betray in reference to Judas, but the Greek [it’s paredōken]. [Paredōken] in its various forms means to hand over, to deliver, and not to betray. William Clawson, a scholar at Cambridge explained, “No one ancient classical Greek text has surfaced in which this verb means betray or has a connotation of treachery. Josephus, the most prolific historian of the first century, uses this word 293 times, but not once, can one legitimately translate it, employing the word betray. There is no linguistic basis in the Greek translation, the Hebrew Bible, in Josephus, or patristic sources for a translation of betray to describe what Judas did.”
Trevan 50:06 So, right from the get-go, there are other words where it would mean that someone turned on someone and sell him off. I mean the other angle is that the gospel writers want to compare Jesus to Joseph of Egypt. It’s more than this, but it’s four main characters that Jesus is often compared to. It’s David and Moses mostly. It’s the prophet Elisha, and Joseph of Egypt. So, if you think of Joseph, he also was sold by his brothers. Who was one of his brothers it says was willing to sell him for profit. It uses that word. Do you remember which brother?
GT 50:48 Judah.
Trevan 50:49 Judah! That’s Judah. Judas is the Greek form of Judah. So there is two Judah’s who were both willing to sell their brother or their master for roughly the price of a slave to foreigners. So, there is some textual liberties and license going on, because we have to get this right. These are missionary tracts throughout the Roman empire. When people are reading this, they have to think Joseph, or David, or Moses, or the prophet Elisha. Not one piece of evidence is strong. We can’t say they’re both Judah, so the whole thing is just a made-up story. But if you take all of those datapoints, and then you bring in the Messianic element and what happened to Judas, and what the word actually means, the only thing that we can say is what I say in the book in terms of a historian is that there is some guy name Jew/Judah, named Jew whether that is a coincidence, who is willing to deliver his friend. And that‘s it. We don’t know why. We don’t know what happened to him after, because all of the texts are different.
GT 52:05 So you think that Judas could have been there when Jesus appeared 40 days later on the road to a Emmaus?
Trevan 52:15 In terms of scholarship, if there was a Judas, if he was an apostle, if he delivered him, or whatever happened, yeah. I think he would have been there, unless something happened to him. Because clearly something happened to him. And so, then people are trying to explain, like, “Whatever happened to Judas?”
GT 52:33 He was hit by a chariot. Oh, he hung himself. Oh, he jumped off a cliff.
Trevan 52:37 Something, yeah. He could have. Who knows what happened to him? But in terms of his motives, it’s not a strong, strong theory, but I think it makes the most sense, if he thought that Jesus was a legitimate messianic candidate. And then he just went and handed him over. And then when it went south, he freaked out.
Why did Peter Deny Jesus?
GT 53:03 There are two ways I want to go here. To me, there’s a parallel with Peter, where Jesus says, “the cock is going to crow three times.” And you’re going to have to deny me three times before the cock crows. That’s what it is. So, the question is, was Peter weak or was this another request of Jesus? “Hey, I need you to lead my church after I’m gone. You have to deny me so that you’re going to still be around.” Is that Is that a reasonable interpretation?
Trevan 53:36 Yeah, I mean, it’s reasonable. It’s perfectly fine. Another interpretation is that Jesus didn’t ask him to do it or didn’t know that he was going to do it, like, Jesus prophesied, “You’re going to do this.” It’s possible that this is a later explanation.
GT 54:00 Because I think you said that Matthew was very anti-Peter. Right?
Trevan 54:06 Yes, this would get into a huge conversation/discussion, but yes. Basically, what we have in the gospels, and I detail it, every time Matthew mentions Peter, he slams him or does little jabs, or full-on, like “You’re Satan. And you’re going to be cast off to hell.”
GT 54:24 Right.
Trevan 54:24 Over and over, it’s in Matthew. So yeah, when that happens, Jesus is saying, “Get behind me, Satan.” And he’s very zealous and he wants to jump out and walk [on water,] but then he’s loses faith and he sinks.
GT 54:35 Or he chops off the soldier’s ear.
Trevan 54:36 He’s erratic. He doesn’t come out looking good in Matthew. And if you just isolate [Matthew], take the other gospels away. Then just take Matthew and show everything he’s saying about Peter. There’s one instance where a little kid is brought to Jesus, in Matthew 18, I think. [The kid is] brought to Jesus and then the apostles and Peter’s there and they say, “Get this kid out of here,” like, don’t bother Jesus.
Trevan 55:09 Then Jesus said, “Anyone who puts a barrier between me and the children is a scandalon.” There’s that word again. Scandalon is a stumbling block, and should be, “Put a millstone around their neck and should be cast out.” They should die. Don’t mess with the children. So, what happens? The very next chapter in Matthew 19, another child is brought, and Peter does the same thing. The apostles and Peter do the same thing. Well, let me back up. There’s a parable that Jesus gives probably 10 chapters before that. And that is the seed that he planted. It falls in the rocks, and it springs up. The rocky ground, all of those words, rocky ground, Cephas, which means rock or stone, and Peter…
GT 56:00 Right.
Trevan 56:01 You have the word scandalon, a stumbling block, in that parable, also. And so, some things, Mark Goodacre, and others think that that parable in Matthew is about Peter. Because he does this. It says those who are zealots, they spring up and then they lose faith. That’s exactly what Peter’s doing all the time. He gets really zealous. He’s like, “Oh, I will never betray you.”
Trevan 56:20 Then Jesus says, “Yeah, you will.” Jesus tells the apostles to stay awake when he goes into Gethsemane. He comes out, and they’re all asleep, but he doesn’t address all of them. He turns to Peter, he says, “Have ye no faith?” And Peter does it three different times. Every single time, Matthew just blasts him. And then there’s the denial, three times. In Matthew, the author of Matthew says that Jesus, in that Gospel says, “Do not swear an oath.” Do not oath take, especially not with people you shouldn’t be dealing with. And so, in that very setting, when Jesus is inside, refusing to take an oath, with Caiaphas, that same time, Peter is outside. And he says he takes an oath, and he denies Jesus. And then in other places, it says that those who take an oath will be cast off to hell. There’s all this language that if you know, if you look at what’s happening in Peter, and the language, and what Jesus says, and then you trace all those same words, and those same settings, all the way throughout the gospel, every single place that Jesus is mentioning, those who do certain things are going to be cast off to hell, and there’s going to be weeping and wailing. That’s always Peter. Right? So, I get into my book, there’s a reason why, and we can talk a little bit later in a segment, but why Matthew does not like, Peter.
Trevan 57:43 Because then what I do is I bring in Luke. I say, “Okay, what is Luke?” We’re assuming that Luke is written after Matthew. This is a debate, a huge debate in Biblical Studies, of which one came first. Mark Goodacre at Duke, who’s a Synoptic Problem scholar, he’s arguing, I think, in a recent book that is coming out, that Luke came after Matthew, because what you can see is where every time where Matthew criticizes Peter, or makes him look bad, Luke comes along and touches it up. He either removes Peter, or he doesn’t call him Satan. Every single time, he’s trying to soften that view of Peter. So yeah, they’re fun topics.
Trevan 58:22 Some of my reviewers are like, “Man, that’s [tough.] How do we [soften that?] I don’t like that. Why should we revere Peter, then?” It’s like, “You’re destroying the entire foundation of the Christian Church?” =
Trevan 58:32 I’m not really saying that. I’m just saying that that’s what Matthew is saying. I’m not saying Jesus actually called him Satan and said that he’s going to be in hell. That’s what Matthew is saying that Jesus said, the author of Matthew. Right?
Was James (not Peter) 1st Christian Leader?
GT 58:42 Well, because there’s another story about that I’ve heard that Jesus’s brother James was the leader of the early Christian movement.
Trevan 58:55 Yeah.
GT 58:56 And the implication is, I’m trying to remember. I get my stories mixed up. I believe it’s the story where Paul and Peter are having an argument about circumcision. And they go to James to solve the argument, I believe. And so that makes it sound like James is in charge of the church.
Trevan 59:18 Yeah, his very brother.
GT 59:22 So and you know, when you think about it, his brother would make a lot of sense. Right? Because he’s the brother of Jesus, why wouldn’t he be in charge? Why would Peter be in charge? So, was James the original leader and not Peter?
Trevan 59:35 I mean, certainly looks that way in an Acts 15. Do you want to do that? Do you want to talk about the Jerusalem Council and that whole issue?
GT 59:47 Yeah, let’s do it.
Trevan 59:48 Because this is why this is important. This is depth. This is one chapter that I’m going to write an academic book. In terms of for scholars, I deal with it in one chapter of this book. I’m going to expand it to entire book and go deep and cover overturn every stone to argue this but my argument is, and it takes me entire class period with my students to show them what happened. Starting in the 50s to the 70s, it was continuing in the 70s. This generation is when the gospels were written. What was going on during that generation?
GT 1:00:19 You’re saying it was earlier. Because most people say it’s more like 90s to 110. Right?
Trevan 1:00:24 That’s pretty late, but the 60s, 70s, and 80s. And even if it’s in the 90s, and 110s, I mean, 110 is that’s pretty late. That’s when the Gospels actually start showing up in early Christian literature in the 110s to 120s. So there’s got to be more time for them to circulate.
GT 1:00:42 Was this more of an oral tradition in the 60s, then do you think? Or was it written down that early?
Trevan 1:00:47 I think it’s possible that it was, at least Mark was put down in the 60s when the war was going on, because there’s all kinds of evidence that the temple’s destruction, and he’s referring to the desolation, sacrilege, you know. So most people want to date it to the 60s, but even if it was in the 70s, or 80s, that’s the generation in which the gospels are written. So, my question in the book is what was going on in that generation that influenced the writing of the text? And it’s exactly what you’re talking about this debate? In fact, I think I’ve got, you might have a read.
GT 1:01:25 Yeah, go ahead. Absolutely.
Trevan 1:01:27 Because this is a quote from one of my friends, Gary Rensburg, who actually wrote a chapter in that other book that I mentioned. Where is it? Okay, this is Gary Rensburg. He’s a Jewish scholar at Rutgers. And I just threw this on some notes, because I think this is what I read to my students. He’s talking about the Book of Genesis. But it’s an analogy that applies perfectly to the gospels. And he’s arguing that Genesis was written much later than even the time of David. But here’s how he explained it. And we can just substitute the gospels in that.
GT 1:02:06 Genesis was written after King David?
Trevan 1:02:08 Way after, yeah. We’re talking about six hundreds, even five hundreds. And there’s lots of crumbs left in the text, different words that are contemporary to that time period, different references that would have been placed earlier. Anyway, there’s lots of different ways scholars dated it, at least Genesis final form.
GT 1:02:26 That’s after Lehi, right?
Trevan 1:02:28 Yeah, really earlier. Even Isaiah, even First Isaiah references Sodom and Gomorrah, or Abraham. So, these traditions, they probably know about these. But in its final form, final redacted form. We’re talking exilic period after, right? And that’s the argument that he makes, and I’ve got whole lectures on that too. It’s fun. It’s pretty compelling. But here’s what he here’s how he explains it. He says “Scribes wrote,” so you could substitute that with the authors of the gospels, “Scribes wrote a national epic, incorporating all of the earlier traditions back to Abraham, and embedded into those narrative anticipations of the present.” So, he says, “That is to say, there’s a social, religious and indeed political message in the Book of Genesis.”
Trevan 1:03:18 He says, “Or in other words, the scribes tell the story about the past, but reflect upon the present. This was a major accomplishment of the anonymous authors in Jerusalem who created the Book of Genesis,” or, in this case, gospel writers who, who wrote the gospels. “This technique is well known in world literature. Take, for example, from film, the movie MASH.” There is the TV show, but there’s also a movie, written in 1969. “It tells the story of American troops during the Korean War. But as all who see that film know, in essence, it is about another land war in Asia, the one still raging at that time in 1969, which was Vietnam. The anti-war pro-peace stance of the lead character, Benjamin Franklin ‘Hawkeye’ Pierce, reflects the present which is the late 60s, but is anachronistic for the early 50s.”
Trevan 1:04:08 See, so if that’s the case, I just want to read I share that all the time, because it’s when someone says, are the Gospels historical, or historically reliable? I say yes, really reliable in the time period in which they were written, for that time period, the 60s, 70s, 80s. And so the argument goes, and I can give you, I’ll just get this. There are a few references I want to mention. But, basically, here’s the argument. When Jesus died in the late 20s, sometime, all the way until the 50s, what was happening to the movement? Well, James is in Jerusalem. This is a Jewish group. And then sometime in that time period, Paul joined. who’s a Pharisee, joins the group, joins the movement. And then he goes out and he takes the gospel to every nation, this is Jesus’ charge. He goes out. The problem is that it takes 20 years for this debate, that you mentioned, and we’ll bring up again, to occur. This debate comes up because he’s converting Gentiles in Corinth, and in other places in Greece and Rome. He’s converting them, but they’re not moving to Jerusalem. They’re staying there.
Trevan 1:05:18 So, there’s not this interaction between Jews and Gentiles until later. Okay, so what happens is, there’s this time period, there’s this event, around 50, in Antioch, up in Syria. Paul happens to be there. And then Peter and Barnabas are there. This is in Galatians. And they’re going to have a meal, and Peter and Barnabas sit with Jews, the Jewish followers of Jesus. And Paul is sitting with the Gentile, the non-Jewish followers of Jesus, and he’s furious. Because they won’t eat together, they separate. And Peter is eating with those people. He calls Peter and Barnabas hypocrites. Okay, so what does this sound like? You’ve got a meal. You have two groups, not wanting to sit together because of purity reasons. You have one person calling another person a hypocrite, like what Pharisees were called. And it’s a mealtime setting. That sounds like the gospels, all those settings where Jesus is eating with Pharisees, and they’re having this discussion on whether outsiders should come in and be welcomed into the group. So, you have that setting. And that raises the question, like everything hits the fan. It comes to a head. We need to go to Jerusalem and discuss this. This is really the first time where this blew up. So, they go to Jerusalem. And in Acts 15, the question is, should people who are non-Jewish, be required to become Jews, convert to Judaism in order to be a member of the Jesus movement? That’s the question. Paul stands up, and he says, “These Gentiles only have to be immersed. That’s the only part of the Jewish system [that they have to do,] to be immersed. That’s it.
Trevan 1:07:05 James stands up and says, “Well, yeah, they don’t have to be circumcised. They have to be immersed. But they also,” and he quotes Leviticus 17 and 18. He says, “They also have to follow some other laws, like important Jewish laws: no eating the meat from an animal that was sacrificed to an idol. No drinking any blood of an animal. You can’t eat from an animal that was strangled.” These are embedded right in Leviticus, and then also sexually pure. You can’t engage in fornication. So, they had to be immersed, and they do have to follow these key aspects of Jewish law. The analogies today are the Word of Wisdom. We do the same thing. We say that members have to come in and have no alcohol, no tobacco, no coffee, no tea. That’s not the Word of Wisdom. Those are just the things that we’ve pulled out of the Word of Wisdom and are the most important to us. They’re boundary markers for being a Latter-day Saint. For James, that’s those aspects. So, then do you know? If you ask Latter-day Saints, I’ll even ask you,. Who’s the third person or the third party that stood up and gave their position? They’ve got the floor. They’ve got the microphone, and they’ve got to give their position. Do you know? Do you remember?
GT 1:08:22 You’re talking about this Jerusalem council?
Trevan 1:08:24 The Jerusalem council, after Paul after James, somebody else stood up and got…
GT 1:08:30 After James?
Trevan 1:08:31 Yeah.
GT 1:08:31 Was it Peter?
Trevan 1:08:33 No, Peter is probably with James, like, the way it appears.
GT 1:08:37 Because what I remember is, yeah, it’s the showdown between Paul and Peter. I thought they went to James and said, “What do you decide?” And James agreed with Paul.
Trevan 1:08:48 In Acts 15, the Pharisee followers of Jesus stand up, and they give their position. And so, we’ll talk about the Pharisees in a minute. But this is one piece of evidence that, I think, the Pharisees and Jesus were very close, very cordial, not all Pharisees but the Pharisaic system and the Jesus movement came out of the Pharisaic system, or they were Pharisaic-type Jews. They follow the Pharisaic rulings. This is one piece of evidence. The reason why I think the Pharisees had a seat at the table and were given the microphone, so to speak is because they had a sizable following of Jewish-exclusive Pharisee followers of Jesus. So what do they say? They say, “No, they have to be circumcised. They have to be immersed, and they have to follow the entire law. The whole law.” And the Greek word used for that council is stasis. It translated dissension, or, basically that word means riot. There’s a riot. Because when they side with Paul, and they say, “Yeah, you’re right. They don’t have to become Jews. They just have to be immersed.” This even alienates Peter, and James, who were the Jerusalem Jewish faction of the Jesus movement. And it alienates the Pharisaic aspect, the Pharisaic sector, group.
GT 1:10:20 Because they wanted them to be circumcised.
Trevan 1:10:21 Because they were Jews and they’re saying this is a Jewish movement. And let me just give you some references, because I put them down here. I didn’t want to forget. So, in Leviticus 10, it says, “You are to distinguish between the holy and the common and between the unclean and the clean.” Pharisees are followers of Jewish law.
Trevan 1:10:40 Okay, so they’re thinking, “We can’t just have Gentiles come in and bring all of their pagan impurities and their culture of idol worship. And they’re not they’re not following Jewish law. So, they’re going to contaminate and impurity–when we sit down and eat or when we’re in our meetings, in our houses,” like in the mealtime symposia, the mealtime setting. We’ve talked about that, but they’re going to contaminate everything.
Trevan 1:11:11 In Genesis, I just pulled some text from this. So, this is Genesis 17, “God commanded all of Israel to be circumcised. He also commanded all male foreigners, who wish to enter the covenant, to be circumcised,” as foreigners, “Otherwise, they shall be cut off from this people.” The Pharisees also know that. In Exodus 12, it says that any foreigner residing among covenant Israel, who desires to participate in Passover, and eat with Israelites, must be circumcised. This is the entire Pharisaic and Jewish way of life. Ever since the days of Jesus, like 20 years ago, we were Jewish group. We followed Jewish law. Even after Jesus died, you have all of the Apostles in Acts going to the festivals, celebrating on the Jewish Sabbath. Paul, in Acts 21, goes in sacrifices on the Day of Atonement. This is after Jesus died. They’re still living Jewish law. The Pharisees are living Jewish law. This is a Jewish group. And the minute they decided to side with Paul, now, this is like a strange conglomeration of…
GT 1:12:11 When you say they, you’re saying that James and Peter sided with Paul, and said they don’t need to be circumcised.
Trevan 1:12:18 Yeah. They, eventually, sided with, they leaned towards Paul’s side for Gentiles, not for other Jews.
Trevan 1:12:26 And so, it infuriates the Pharisees. The reason why I bring all that up is because then if you go look in the letters of Paul, that postdate this council, in 50 CE, he’s furious. Because in Galatians and other places, he says, “These people from Jerusalem, the circumcised people,” he’s talking about Jesus’ believers. “They keep beating me here, and they keep coming here and telling you to be circumcised.” He says, and in one place in Galatians, I think it’s Galatians, he says, “I hope they slip at the knife and accidentally castrate themselves.” He’s furious. He calls the Jerusalem apostles. He calls them false apostles. He doesn’t say James and Peter. He says, “The leaders in Jerusalem are false. They’re so-called apostles.” Then there are some other places where in Corinthians and some other places, where Paul is speaking to a crowd. He says, “Look, you guys are following after Peter. And you guys are following after me. And he says…
GT 1:13:30 “Some of Apollos.”
Trevan 1:13:30 Yeah, he’s saying that there are factions. We know that there are factions. We know he’s furious. And then in some of his letters, it’s strange, because he says, “Guys, I didn’t go to Jerusalem. I’ve never been there. I did go to Jerusalem for one time. And when I was there, I only stayed for 15 days, and I never met with the apostles.” That’s strange. Why is he saying that unless a big rift happened between the Gentile-inclusive faction of the Jesus movement, who were fighting against the Jewish-exclusive faction of the Jesus movement. And when Paul is now traveling around, after that decision was made, and Pharisees and/or Peter and James and others, it’s probably the Pharisees who are mad about this, as well. They’re also going out around and they’re telling people that you have to be circumcised. And Paul’s like, “No, they keep coming from Jerusalem and telling you this. You don’t have to be circumcised. And they’re so-called apostles and I didn’t go. I haven’t talked to them. I didn’t get my gospel from them,” he says. “I didn’t get my gospel from them.”
Trevan 1:14:34 And my question in the book is, why is he saying that? Why is he trying to reassure his Gentile audience, that he didn’t get his gospel from them [from the Jerusalem apostles?] He hasn’t associated with them. He never goes to Jerusalem. And when he went to Jerusalem, the one time, he only stayed for 15 days, and he didn’t meet with the apostles. It’s because he knows that there’s this rift that has become so bad that his Gentile followers of Jesus don’t like the original apostles. That’s become so contentious. And so, the discussion we had earlier about why Matthew criticizes Peter over and over and over again in his gospel, that’s because Matthew was written after the Jerusalem Council, when all of this is raging. The two main people that he criticizes, [that] Matthew [criticizes] are the Pharisees and Peter. Why would he do that? Because he’s a Pauline Christian. He’s siding with the Pauline. Like, yes, he’s writing to Jews. And yes, he’s pulling in David, and Moses, and everything. But all throughout the Gospel of Matthew, he’s showing the Gentiles have it. The Magi come. They’re Gentiles. There’s one place where Jesus meets a centurion, and he says, “You are as faithful as I’ve ever seen. No one in Israel has your faith.” And it’s just over and over. There’s a Gentile woman that shows up and Jesus says, “You have great faith.” And Pilate looks amazing in the Gospel of Matthew.
GT 1:15:57 “I wash my hands. It’s you guys that wanted to kill Jesus.”
Trevan 1:16:01 Yeah, we’ll talk about Pilate. But why is it that the gospel that is Pauline, in my argument, that’s pro-Gentile, because he’s a Gentile-inclusive faction who’s giving a nod, a hat-tip to all of the Gentiles. They have all this faith. And it’s Jews and Pharisees, who are just rotten. They’re going to be in hell. That’s because it’s written after the Jerusalem Council, in the 60s, 70s, 80s, whenever it’s written, when this debate is raging between Pharisees, and the other Jewish-exclusive faction and a Gentile-inclusive faction.
Why Jews Wouldn’t Eat with Gentiles
Interview
GT 1:16:39 Well, can you explain to me, because this just seems so foreign for Christians, I guess. Why is it that Jews would not eat with Gentiles? Because I’ve eaten dinner with Jews before, and maybe they were bad Jews. I don’t know. But it seems very discriminatory or something in our modern lens. But, in the days of Jesus, it was a more of a purity thing. Is that why?
Trevan 1:17:14 Yeah, it is. And this is an important, what you’re asking me now is an important key, an important point for my argument that I can make later on. What happened that the Pharisees and the Jesus movement, were very cordial. And we don’t see that rift until after. Like, you have the parting of the ways between the Pharisee followers of Jesus, and then the Pharisees in general, and the Jesus movement. So, one of the key aspects of that relationship, if we go back into the days of Jesus, in the late 20s, is this mealtime symposia. Like, what is this? There’s the Greco-Roman, the philosophers did this. They would eat together and they would have a symposium where they would debate the philosophy. They would have philosophical debates, but they’re not meeting with their opponents. This is an in-house, this is a community friendship, where the philosophers debate.
GT 1:18:13 It seems like there’s a an old Jewish saying that says, “If you have two Jews meet together, you’ll get three arguments.”
Trevan 1:18:21 Yeah, three opinions, three arguments. That is the story of early Judaism and the entire rabbinic corpus of rabbinic literature, the Talmud, the Mishnah, all this is one long debate. So, this guy debates this these two debates this and the rabbis finally had to come to this decision. It’s all over the place. So, the Jews adopted this practice where you have this, and especially the Pharisees, we have this mealtime symposia. Ben Sira and other Jewish texts talk about this. And so we can add the gospels. We can add these other Jewish texts. The Mishnah, the earliest rabbinic text postdates Jesus by maybe 100, 150 years. It talks in detail about these settings. What happens is you would get these people together. They’re from the same community, like-minded, and they would have guests of honor. And they would bring a guest of honor and they would sit at a table, and this is in the Last Supper. This is in the New Testament, as well. But the guest of honor would sit and then you’d go in descending order. Your best students would be closest to you, if you’re the host. And then it would go in descending order. This is why Jesus says, “If you go to the mealtime, you don’t sit up at the top. Because then you might, you don’t sit by the host, because then you’ll look foolish if he tells you to move down. Sit at the lowest and then he can tell you to move up.” The last shall be first–those kinds of things. He that is humble shall be exalted.
Trevan 1:19:44 So the symposium was you would eat and before you would eat you would have some sort of purity. You would either dip in the Mikvah ote, one of the one of the Mikvah ote, the mikvah or the host might wash their feet and their hands. He might anoint their head with oil. It’s just whatever the host wants. And there’s practices of this. So, Jesus does this all throughout, not all throughout, but some places in the gospels, especially the Last Supper, he does this. He washes their feet, and he talks about being cleansed and being washed. That’s a pre-meal ritual. Then you would eat with friends, and then after you would debate the law. If you understand that, you can see how when Pharisees, like four or five times in Luke are inviting Jesus as an honored guest, to their mealtime. What do they do? They eat and then they debate. And what do they usually debate? What do we do with people who’ve removed themselves from outside the house of Israel? Tax collectors, prostitutes, like all these people, like non-Jews, and then Jews who have removed themselves out, who are not living the law. They’ve removed themselves from the covenant of the house of Israel. What do we do with those people, Jesus? That debate comes up all the time. There’s five or six different times where the debate comes up in that, in the mealtime setting. And then, also, in other settings, it’s the same debate all the time. So, if Jesus did have debates with Pharisees, that was the debate. And Pharisees are saying– in fact, let me just show you. I’ll just, just so everybody has the references. So, the Pharisees asked Jesus, this is in Luke 7 and Matthew 11. They asked Jesus, “You’re bringing these people in? Are you a friend of these people?”
GT 1:21:27 These sinners.
Trevan 1:21:28 Sometimes we use the word sinners. Other times it’s, yes, other times it’s like these other, like, prostitutes. There are different words, but usually it’s sinners. “Are you friends with them?” This is in line with what we learned from the Mishnah and from other texts, that this is a friendship group. This is not a hostile–the Pharisees didn’t invite Jesus to dinner so they can entrap him and, like, try to kill him. They invited him over and over and over, because they see him as an ally. But they’re confused by Jesus bringing in these people from outside the house of Israel, Gentiles, or even if they’re Jews and are, like, tax collectors, which means they’re like gangsters. They extort money, they engage in tax farming, they’re handling money, which is impure, there’s images imprinted on the money. So, there’s idol worship. This is why tax collectors are so–they’re rejected. So, that’s the debate over and over and over.
Trevan 1:21:28 And there is, let me just show you. Okay, here’s the wisdom of Ben Sira. I pulled this, just so your listeners could hear it. This is the second century BCE text. “Let your conversation be with men of understanding and let all of your discussion be about the law of the Most High. Let righteous men be your dinner companions, and let your glorying be in the fear of the Lord. Do not reprove your neighbor at the banquet of wine, and do not despise him in his merrymaking. Speak no word of reproach to him, and do not afflict him by making demands of him.” Some scholars think that the wisdom of Ben Sira is written by a Pharisee. It’s very pharisaic. I don’t know if we can say that for sure. But it’s a Jewish text predating Jesus that talks about this issue, talks about this setting. And it even says, “Let your dinner companions be righteous men.” That is the most common word used in Josephus, about Pharisees. Righteous, tokaios and usabia, righteousness toward God, righteousness toward their fellow man. This defines Pharisa-ism. So I just bring that up, because, if Jesus is eating with Pharisees over and over, and they’re having these discussions with them, they’re expected to debate. This is not the same kind of relationship that Jesus has with the temple establishment. Latter-day Saints and Christians in general, just lump all of–they assume that everything’s negative, every question, unless a Pharisee says, “Master,” and then Jesus answers and then the Pharisee says, “Okay, you’re great. You’re a holy man.” Outside of those, every single episode is assumed to be negative. And we just lump Sadducees, priest establishment, Pharisees, in one basket of people, who want to trap Jesus and get him killed. That’s not the case.
Trevan 1:24:06 So anyway, we will talk about the Pharisees and this might come up again. But let me ask you. When we’re talking about the Jerusalem Council and parting of the ways and the nuances about how all of that played out, and then all of the gospels were written, with that in mind, the Gospels are written with these mealtime symposia, where Jesus is with Pharisees debating the very thing that they were debating in the Jerusalem Council and in in Antioch, when Paul and Peter were eating separately. Does that make sense to you that the Gospels are written with that rift? Because all throughout the Gospels, they’re eating together and the same thing comes up. A Gentile woman approaches Jesus in a mealtime setting. And he says, “I’ve not come to Gentiles. I’ve only come to Jews, so I can’t deal with you.” And so, then she falls on her knees and she’s like, “Please.” And then she says, “Okay, okay, great.”
GT 1:25:02 Even the dogs sup from the table, right?
Trevan 1:25:04 Yeah. Is that in Matthew? I think that’s in Matthew. Again, here’s the writer of that gospel, trying to make a political point against Pharisees and putting it back on Jesus saying, “Jesus welcomed Gentiles, even when he said he was coming to teach Jews,” when it mattered, especially in relation to the Pharisees. He’s saying to invite them in.
GT 1:25:32 So, it’s funny because I’ve always heard that scholars say that this Jerusalem Council is a big deal. But you don’t get that at church,.It’s just, Jesus was born. The gospels, they all agree, and then they have this council and it [the Gospel] goes to the Gentiles. And that’s why everybody can be a Christian now.
Trevan 1:25:58 That’s right.
GT 1:25:59 So to answer your question, no, I’ve always wondered why this Jerusalem council was such a big deal to scholars, because normally, we don’t talk about this rift. I don’t even think we recognize it as a rift of the Jewish Jesus followers versus the Gentile Jesus followers. Especially in the LDS culture we’re very correlated. “Well, of course, this is just the way things happened. And those people were wrong, and who cares about what they think?” So, we don’t see that as kind of a civil war. I mean, would you say that’s almost a civil war in Christianity?
Trevan 1:26:44 If you put all the pieces together, and you see how mad Paul is, you see the word use stasis as a riot that broke out in the Jerusalem Council. You see how the Gospels are, they turn on Pharisees, which we’ll talk about in a minute. They, like everything…
GT 1:27:02 So, we should make that more central. The problem is, we like to follow a nice timeline and God’s in charge. And the star came and the wise men came, and Jesus was born. And then he was 12, and preached and then, of course, the Pharisees were wrong. And so, the Gospel goes to everybody. I mean, that’s the typical story. And I don’t think that’s just LDS. I think that’s all of Christianity.
Trevan 1:27:31 That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, it’s not even just a major thing for scholars. Like when I put this research together, I was doing something else. I wrote my master’s thesis on the Pharisees. So, I was already thinking about these issues. And this will, I guess, will transition us to the issue about the Pharisees. But if something didn’t make sense to me, and I was trying to figure out whatever happened. Why did Matthew, especially Matthew, just demonize Pharisees so hard. He’s coming so strong. Something happened. Because the way I’m seeing Pharisees in Josephus and everywhere else is not even in the Gospels. It’s not warranted. So, I started looking into why this is the case. And I was digging up all the research and some scholars would dabble in the Jerusalem Council. You look at the commentaries, and it’s just skimpy. It is talking about who the different positions are. And the question is whether Gentiles should be converted. That’s all there, and scholars know that. But I couldn’t find any Christian scholars, very few. There was one scholar who has a very small book, where he was talking about this rift and why Peter was a failed apostle or something like that. Few people are talking about it. But I didn’t find anyone who was making a robust argument, that the gospels were written in a context after the Jerusalem Council during that civil war between the Jewish-exclusive followers of Jesus and the Gentile-inclusive followers of Jesus. So even Christian scholars, that doesn’t work for many of them because they don’t want later writers to make political points and sticking it back on the 20s when Jesus is alive.
{End of Part 1}
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