Ep 48: Jesus in History with Helen Bond

00:00The author sort of keeps the beginning and the end of something and sort of loses the

00:06bit in the middle, and you can sort of see the way he works with his source material

00:11there.

00:12It reads the introduction and the conclusion and just ignores it.

00:16Exactly, you know.

00:17I can't be bothered with that bit in the middle.

00:18We don't do that with the books that guests on the show have sent us, just to be clear.

00:23Shush, shush, shush, shush, shush, shush, shush, shush, shush, shush, shush, shush,

00:35shush, shush, shush, shush, shush, shush, shush, shush, shush, shush, shush, shush,

00:36shush, shush, shush, shush, shush, shush, shush, shush.

00:37That has never, ever happened to read everything very thoroughly.

00:40Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

00:41And I'm Dan Beacher.

00:42And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast where we increase public access to

00:48the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about

00:52it.

00:53It gets springtime and then winter and then it doesn't know what it's doing and that's

00:56always fun.

00:57You never know what you're going to be going out into.

00:59It's very similar to where I grew up in Colorado where you have all four seasons in one day.

01:04Yes, indeed.

01:05And it is enraging.

01:06Yeah, exactly.

01:09But better yet, we have a guest that is going to answer some of the main questions that we

01:15get asked all the time or answers.

01:18She's going to address some of the main questions.

01:20Why don't you introduce our guest?

01:22Absolutely.

01:23Today, we're very happy to welcome to the show Professor Helen Bond, who is Professor

01:29of Christian Origins at Edinburgh University and also currently the President of the British

01:33New Testament Society, that August and venerable institution.

01:38And also one half of the biblical time machine podcast, Dave Roos is the other co-host.

01:47And they do things very similar to what we do here.

01:51So we're bringing in a little competition to size it up today.

01:56And Helen, you mentioned that you'll release your episodes every Monday, just like us,

02:01right?

02:02Yes, yes.

02:03I didn't realize you were Monday too.

02:04But yes, every Monday there's a new one on Apple or Spotify.

02:08And I think we do have similar content, but we're very much about the history.

02:13So very much kind of getting in our time machine and going back to the past and interviewing

02:19people about their work and smelling and feeling the first century and further back too.

02:28Well, when I first got the email from Dave, I remember seeing the cover image for your

02:37podcast.

02:38And I was like, hey, I see that all the time on Twitter.

02:40So I recognized that.

02:41And I was like, I don't know who Dave Roos is, but I'm most excellent person.

02:47I mean, he's just amazing.

02:48He's really, really clever.

02:49And he's got a background in religion and journalism and stuff.

02:54So yeah, I know he's the kind of the power engine of the whole thing.

03:00I'm just there for the ride.

03:02So you know, that was Dan's mistake.

03:04Dan should have gotten a clever course to do his job.

03:10Yeah.

03:11What I did was take the first one that came to you, yeah.

03:16But yeah.

03:17Next time, next time, yeah, when it's time to re up, but but Helen, you've done, you've

03:24done an awful lot of work with the historical Jesus, which I think is a term that probably

03:29not a lot of people are familiar with.

03:32We get Dan and I on the show and then I on my other social media channels get asked all

03:37the time about what we know about Jesus.

03:40But I don't think a lot of people know there's a whole field of research out there on this.

03:45Can you tell us a little bit about what historical Jesus means what this refers to?

03:49Yeah.

03:50No, no, that's a good point that scholars get so used to sort of talking about these things

03:54that they don't always think, you know, these are not sort of publicly accessible terms.

04:00So I suppose scholars make a distinction between the historical Jesus, who is, you know, the

04:05man who walked the Galilean Hills in the 30s CE and was executed on a Roman cross.

04:14And the Christ of faith, as he's known in the churches, as he already is in the gospels,

04:20really, you know, they're already interpretations through the lens of Easter and, you know, several

04:25decades of trying to work out what it means to be a Christ follower.

04:31So yeah, the historical Jesus just really means the Jesus who existed in history as

04:38as a real man in the 30s, so that the whole sort of field of historical Jesus research

04:43is really trying to get back to, you know, that historical man.

04:49You know, one of the things, oh, sorry, Dan, but I did want to say that, like, one of the

04:52things that we see in our comments sections on the we see, you know, in sort of the world

04:58of public debate about the Bible, there's some question as to whether there was a historical

05:07Jesus and in terms of what scholars believe, it's probably not an even matched, you know,

05:17there's half the scholars on one side believe one thing and half the scholars believe another

05:20thing.

05:21Can you give a sense of how much of the scholarly world questions the historicity of the person

05:29of Jesus?

05:30Very, very little, I mean, you're exactly right, and I think actually scholars tend to

05:37just dismiss the whole question about, you know, did Jesus exist?

05:41They just think it's silly, it's not a question, it's not worth engaging with, whereas, as

05:47you say, you know, loads of people on social media are questioning it.

05:51But I would say in terms of scholars, probably less than 5%, you know, 1%, 2%, something

05:58like that, they'd be considered very much a fringe view, because, you know, from scholars

06:04point of view, there's actually very good reasons to think that Jesus existed.

06:10So it's never really questioned.

06:12So what you're saying is that Richard Carrier makes up 1%, well, exactly, I'm thinking him

06:18and Thomas Brody, I mean, there's, you know, there's a handful of people.

06:24So I wouldn't say that, you know, there's no scholars that are, and I can sort of understand

06:30how people get to that stage where they start to think, you know, is what can we say about

06:36the historical Jesus?

06:37And there are probably people who feel like that, but just don't publish anything.

06:41So there are scholars, but it's very much the minority.

06:46Now, when I get asked about how we know what we think we know about the historical Jesus,

06:52I think a lot of people assume that there must be some kind of archaeological evidence

06:58of some kind, something direct.

07:01But the reality is that we're taking, for the most part, we're taking these texts, the

07:06gospels, and a smattering of references from non-Christian literature that's coming, you

07:13know, in the 90s and the 110s CE, and basically trying to reconstruct what most, what circumstances

07:22most likely led to these beliefs being the way they are, what would you say we can reconstruct

07:31based on these texts that we have in the New Testament and a few other references about

07:37the historical Jesus?

07:38What do you think we can be confident about regarding the life of the historical Jesus?

07:43I think we can be confident that he existed, that he was some kind of prophetic figure

07:49in the early part of the first century in Judea.

07:55Paul's letters are very, very early, and I know Paul doesn't say a great deal about

08:02the historical Jesus, but he says a few things, and he clearly knew people connected with

08:08the movement.

08:09And I would imagine that although the gospels are heavily theological, they see things

08:16through sort of through the resurrection and their views about who Jesus was, but still

08:22I think there's a sort of a basis of historical fact there.

08:27I think they're all ancient biographies, and biographies tend to have, you know, a general

08:32sort of layer of fact, even if it's embellished in many ways.

08:37So I think he was a Jewish prophetic figure.

08:42I think he probably was an eschatological prophet, as people say, you know, a prophet

08:47announcing the end of the world.

08:49I think he thought God was going to intervene very, very soon and restore Israel in some

08:55way.

08:56And I think that's why he had 12 disciples, 12 male disciples, and they're representing

09:01the 12 tribes of Israel.

09:04Everything we know about his sort of journeys suggest he sort of re-walking the land as

09:09it was in the great days of David and Solomon.

09:14And I think he did expect some kind of intervention by God in the imminent future.

09:20But then he made his way to Jerusalem, maybe he'd been there many times before, and something

09:26about this particular visit meant that he ended up on a Roman cross.

09:32And that as far as the Romans were concerned was the end of him.

09:38So you know, I think we can we can piece together a reasonable amount about him.

09:42And also, of course, I mean, although historians can't really say anything about the resurrection

09:46as such, they can certainly see the effects of it and see that Jesus' followers certainly

09:52believed that he'd been raised from the dead by God.

09:57And this is, and this is one of the main things that we have referred to in other writers,

10:00for instance, Josephus, we have Swetonius and Tacitus and Pliny, the younger referring

10:08to this band of Christians that is making trouble in and around Judea and Rome.

10:17I'm curious.

10:18I get a lot of questions about Jesus, the letters that are in red in the Bible, things

10:25that Jesus has said.

10:28I've been asked, in fact, just yesterday someone reached out and asked me what relationship

10:33do we think they have to Jesus' actual words?

10:37And well, first of all, they're in Greek.

10:39So they would have been a translation there.

10:42So we can't really talk about a verbatim representation.

10:45But what would scholars say are things that we find in the gospels that have the best

10:50chance of going back to, if not, Jesus' own words, at least a memory about something

10:57that Jesus said, or is there anything in there that we think goes all the way back?

11:04Probably.

11:05But I mean, as you say, at the very basic level, it's been all changed out of Aramaic that

11:11Jesus would have spoken to Greek.

11:14And there's also, there's a literary dependency between the gospels.

11:18So Mark wrote first and then Matthew and Luke copied Mark and probably John copied Mark

11:23as well.

11:24You know, these are not for independent attestations of these words.

11:30They're all connected in some way.

11:33So it used to be really common in the '50s, '60s to try to get back to the actual words

11:39of Jesus.

11:40And I think Yeremias ended up with something like 21 bits and pieces.

11:46And people sometimes say things like these Aramaic phrases like "Abba" and some of the

11:53other bits and pieces in the gospels, particularly Mark's gospel.

11:57Yeah.

11:58Namasabachthani.

11:59Yeah.

12:00Exactly.

12:01They may go back to sort of real memories, but I mean, equally you could say, well, you

12:07know, the gospel writers, New Aramaic, and they just sort of gave it a little bit of

12:11local color.

12:13So I think, you know, people realized after a while, we're just going round and round

12:16in circles here.

12:18We actually have no way of knowing which of these Greek words Jesus spoke.

12:24You know, another approach was to try to say which of these doesn't fit well with the

12:28Jewish context, you know, and then we can be sure that it's coming from Jesus.

12:34But again, the big problem with that is that Jesus was a Jew and his followers were Jews

12:39for, you know, several decades, maybe even centuries, some of them.

12:43So again, where do we go with that?

12:45So I think, I mean, although, I mean, there are many, many different types of historical

12:49Jesus scholars, but I think the main sort of thrust nowadays is to look at the events

12:55and to get a general picture sort of the gist as Dale Allison called it, you know, these

13:00are memories.

13:01They've been worked over, but if you can just get the gist of what it was that Jesus said

13:07and his kind of message, then I think, you know, we're probably as solid as we can get.

13:14So so to some extent, this sort of counter cultural deny yourself, be like a servant,

13:20be like a slave, and put yourself last.

13:23That seems to be the kind of message that Jesus promoted.

13:28But in terms of the specifics, even the parables, you know, again, there's probably some layer

13:35there that that that goes back to Jesus.

13:39But they've probably been shaped and changed as they made their way out of a rural context

13:45to urban contexts and would change in degree and all of these things.

13:51So yeah, it's it's very I think when you ask about specifics, it becomes very difficult.

13:56Yeah, it does seem like the task that that that your field has put to itself is a really

14:04tricky one, because I mean, you've got a book that contradicts itself.

14:09You've got, you know, you've got Matthew and Luke telling very different birth stories

14:15and you've got so frankly, it does feel like if we're going to talk about history, a lay

14:26person like myself wonders how how how useful is the Bible itself at all?

14:32Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't throw the whole baby out just because of the birth stories.

14:37You know, you've picked up on on probably the most variable bit there and you know, probably

14:44neither Matthew nor Luke had very much idea at all about Jesus's birth and and the events

14:50around it.

14:52But what they both want to do is is to say, you know, it he had this amazing birth that

14:58echoed many of the things in the Hebrew Bible and that's sort of, you know, gave us to to

15:04see right from the start that he was going to be a great man later on.

15:08So I mean, this is just like a lot of other biographies, you know, stories about Augustus

15:13himself tell tell sort of wild and wonderful legends about his mother being in the temple

15:19of Apollo and stuff like that.

15:21So you know, that's just that just comes with the biographical territory.

15:24I think once you move into the rest of Jesus's life, I mean, even comparing, say, Mark with

15:32John, which is really quite different, we we still got that sense of somebody who's originally

15:38from Nazareth, you know, a Galilean ministry, spending time in Jerusalem, ending up dying

15:44in Jerusalem.

15:45And of course, all the miracle stories and the healings, you know, whatever you make

15:50of those, even hostile sources, you know, the Mishnah and possibly the reconstructed bit

15:58about Jesus in Josephus, again, they talk about him doing these amazing things and whether

16:04it's magic, sorcery, whatever it is, you know, you can you can sort of piece together

16:10some kind of picture that that's actually quite coherent with the prophets in the Hebrew

16:17tradition. So it's that kind of that kind of person that that Jesus probably was.

16:24So does it make sense to you that Jesus would have had some kind of training, some kind

16:29of schooling in the in the Jewish literary tradition? Or is he coming at it from more

16:38of the apocalyptic kind of social side of things?

16:42Yeah, I don't think he would have had much training. I mean, you know, there weren't schools

16:47or anything like that. At the time, he would have heard the stories of Israel in the synagogue.

16:53And you know, maybe he came from a pious family that sort of talked about them, thought

16:58about them very deeply. And he spent time with John the Baptist too. So that might be,

17:03you know, maybe he was already that way inclined. But you know, John the Baptist definitely

17:07seems to be in that apocalyptic tradition of sort of, you know, get yourself ready. The

17:12ends are coming just over the corner, just around the corner. So, you know, that that's

17:19sort of the tradition that Jesus seems to be in. So I think that's probably where he

17:24honed some of his skills, maybe where he picked up some of his abilities to preach because

17:29he must have been a really engaging and charismatic preacher. You know, and we know of lots of

17:35other characters like Jesus in the first century too. So, you know, nobody is saying he's unique

17:40here. He's a bit like John the Baptist. He's a bit like these other prophetic characters

17:46that come along in the Roman period. And most of them do get executed. That seems to be

17:54their lot. I mean, it does seem like it does seem like you can claim a bit of uniqueness

17:59considering the longevity of of his particular strain of of prophecy.

18:06Yeah, I think that's right. With the benefit of hindsight, you can see that. And I mean,

18:11followers of John the Baptist also carried on for a long time after him. And in the early

18:16days, you know, I think there was a point at which Christianity had to sort of say not

18:21John the Baptist. He's not the Messiah. It's our guy who's the Messiah. So, you know,

18:26there's a bit of sort of competition there.

18:29And then you had to write in that John was OK with this the whole time. The gospel where

18:34John says I must decrease and he must agree. So exactly. Yes, that's exactly it. The way

18:41that John is John the Baptist is remembered in these gospels is pointing to Jesus and

18:47saying, you know, he is going to be the the major one. You know, we don't know whether

18:51he actually said that or not. I mean, quite possibly not. But he's probably been rolling

18:57in his grave for a very long time.

19:05Now you mentioned earlier, one of the one of the things that that seems to go back to

19:10a historical Jesus is perhaps this kind of deny yourself approach a more ascetic approach

19:16to Judaism. Now there is a there is a philosophical dimension of asceticism that we see very early

19:22in Christianity. And we see it in Paul and something that comes up a lot in the social

19:30relevance of a lot of these stories is the sexual ethic of the Bible. And Paul is very

19:35famously a celibate. And we have in Matthew 19 this the story from Jesus where just kind

19:42of out of nowhere, we suddenly get this little, hey, by the way, you get the the unique statements.

19:49Some are born Unix, some are are made Unix, some make themselves Unix for the sake of

19:54the kingdom of heaven. Does that kind of sexual asceticism does? Do you think that is a part

20:00of what Jesus may have preached? Or do you think that is something that kind of resonates

20:05with that deny yourself attitude, but might be a later kind of philosophical intrusion?

20:13I think it probably does go back to Jesus. But I don't think I don't think he was

20:19obsessed by it. I don't think he was going around saying, you know, make sure you're

20:22single, don't touch a woman. And the same with Paul actually, I think what's that the

20:27big deal to both of them is that the end of the world is coming really soon, you know,

20:33repent, get yourself ready. It's it's coming. It's coming. And in that situation, you're

20:38not going to marry, settle down, have kids, you know, you're not thinking about the next

20:44generation, because there's not going to be a next generation. And I think that's the

20:48context that you have to read these things in. You know, same with Paul. I don't actually

20:53think Paul's got a problem with, you know, sex and, and, you know, having a partner and

20:59things like that. I mean, it's just that it's irrelevant because the end of the world's

21:04coming. And I think that's that's the thing with Jesus, too. You know, make yourself a

21:07eunuch, just, you know, stay off the opposite sex because, you know, other things are happening.

21:14I mean, years later, of course, when the end of the world doesn't come and the second coming

21:19hasn't come, people are reading Jesus's words about self denial and make yourself eunuch

21:24and, and, and they're interpreting them in, in more ascetic ways. But I don't think very

21:30much about Jesus really was ascetic. You know, he talks about denying yourself, but it's,

21:35it's all in this sort of whole thing about power and glory. And, and he's saying, don't,

21:41you know, don't try to push yourself up and be arrogant. And, you know, the Roman male,

21:46the alpha male, don't be like that. You know, just be, you know, self-effacing, compassionate,

21:53look after other people, put other people first, and feel like you've just contradicted an

21:57entire side of social, of Christian social media right now. Like alpha male is, like, is,

22:05is what much of the social media is demanding is what Jesus wanted everyone to be. Like,

22:10that is not in the diversions I'm reading. I don't think, I mean, well, why, why would

22:16an alpha male say, you know, deny yourself, be a servant, make yourself last? I mean,

22:22that's not, I mean, I think there are elements in Jesus, of course, that could be an alpha

22:27male. He's a son of God. After all, you know, it's pretty alpha, but it's because he's,

22:34you know, the ultimate alpha that he can say, don't be like that and the alpha and omega

22:40male. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, we have, and that's something that I talk about all the

22:46time is that when we look back at Jesus, we're looking through 2000 years of tradition and

22:52renegotiation of that tradition. A lot of times we're looking at it through history, a lot

22:56of Christian nationalists will prop up the Byzantine Empire will prop up the crusades,

23:02will, will prop up these things that they attribute with the creation of what we call

23:07the Western world. But none of that has anything to do with, with the actual texts that are

23:13talking about Jesus. That is how Christianity has appropriated the power structures that

23:19have developed. But I think it's, it's important to, one of the things that the historical

23:26Jesus approach tries to do is kind of divest ourselves of these interpretive lenses and

23:34see what's left when we, when we get down to the bottom of that. And it's so, so much

23:41contradiction as well, because the same Christian nationalists who, who are more concerned with

23:47the way Christianity was later appropriated are also like, but Paul says women have to

23:52dress modestly. And so they're, they will pick and choose what, what texts take priority

23:57over, over history and Christians have always done that. I mean, I guess everybody does

24:02that with, with their, their sacred texts, whatever, whatever texts they are.

24:09I have, I have a question. We talked, well, Dan briefly mentioned the, the nativity stories.

24:15And I've been fascinated for a while now by the theory that's, I think more likely Luke,

24:21but perhaps maybe even Matthew, that these stories were not originally a part of the,

24:27the gospels. What do you think the odds are? That these chapters are later.

24:32It's really funny that you should say that because I, I, I've been thinking about that

24:37a lot lately too. So, um, so I do think that Matthews is an original to Matthew. I think

24:44Matthew wrote that, um, on, you know, he, he was using Mark to and, and, and he adds this,

24:50this birth story to his, his account. But I think that Luke wrote, um, I think he starts

24:56in chapter three, where he has the, the genealogy and that complicated dating. Yeah. Yeah.

25:02During the reign of so and so in the, yeah, all of these things that, that, that doesn't

25:07help at all because we still can't date. But, um, you know, they all have their obscure,

25:12you know, in, in the, in this console and that high priest and whatever. Um, so I think

25:17he started there, but quite soon after, I think he got a look at Matthew and thought,

25:23Oh, I like what he's doing there. Um, but I'm not very sure. I, I, so I think he liked

25:28the idea of having birth stories, but I also think that he didn't like Matthews birth stories.

25:35So I think he rewrote Matthews birth stories. You know, people always say, Oh, he, he gives,

25:40um, the female version because it's kind of with Mary in, in the center. But I think,

25:46I think Matt, Matthew is a bit vague actually on whether, whether Mary really is a virgin.

25:53It's the whole thing is a little bit uncertain, but I think, um, Luke really kind of nails

25:59it. You know, he has Gabriel appearing to Mary and, you know, oh, how can this be since

26:04I don't know a man? And, um, and, and, you know, it's very, very clear from, from Luke.

26:10So I think he makes certain things more explicit. And, and that's part of the reason why I think

26:15that Luke, um, came second. Yeah. It's definitely a more developed one. You've got the magnificat.

26:22We've got a lot more of this praise and development. And that's interesting. I've, um, so the,

26:30you think it's, it's not it's Lee, it's not outside the realm of possibility that when

26:35Matthew quotes the Septuagint translation of Isaiah seven, that the idea is not necessarily

26:41an actual biological virgin, but maybe he's just quoting the text and saying she's a young

26:47woman who has, uh, conceived and, um, but it's Luke who really, uh, nails it down that

26:54she has not had sex yet. Yeah. I think so. I think that in my reading a bit, I mean, because

26:59I do think there's an ambiguity there because, you know, you'd know better than me, the,

27:03the Hebrew Bible stuff there in Isaiah seven, it doesn't necessarily mean, um, uh, a virgin.

27:10I mean, it could just be in a young woman, probably a young woman at court who's maybe

27:15already pregnant by the time she has a baby, you know, or maybe it's an early, maybe it's

27:20a recent, um, wife of the king, you know, before she has a baby and stuff, this, this

27:25threat will have gone. So, so it's not very clear. I mean, in Matthew, you know, she's

27:31found to be of, to be, um, with child of the Holy Spirit. Well, you know, that, I mean,

27:38children are always of the Holy Spirit in the Hebrew Bible, even when it's a barren woman.

27:43And you know, that it doesn't mean that there's been no male involved. So I think Matthew

27:50is, he's, he's ambiguous, but Luke is absolutely clear. There's, there's no doubt that for Luke.

27:56And, and Luke then does this sort of comparing thing in Luke one and two between, you know,

28:01something happens in the life of John the Baptist and whoo, isn't that amazing? His,

28:05his parents, you know, were barren. Oh, great stuff. But then something happens in the life

28:10of Jesus and whoa, you know, it's amazing. Um, you know, his mother is, is a virgin.

28:16So, so he's got this sort of comparison going on between the two as well, which, which again,

28:21maybe as we were saying earlier that, you know, John the Baptist and his following was

28:26still a bit of a big deal in, in John's day. And he has to kind of, you know, well, yeah,

28:31you know, give John his due, but he's not, he's not a man. He's nothing like as special

28:36as Jesus. Yeah. He's the forerunner, the preparer

28:40of the way. Exactly. Um, I, I have heard, I haven't read anything on this, any action

28:47of the scholarship yet. I've, I've got stuff set up that I'm, that I hope to get too soon.

28:52But I'm hearing more and more people talk about second century date for Luke. Hmm. Do

28:58you, do you buy this at all? Do you, um, have you read this? Um, what are your, what are

29:02your thoughts on this? Yeah. Yeah. I, I, it's, it's strange, isn't it? I think there's

29:07this sort of urge amongst New Testament scholars to sort of to put it all into the first century.

29:14And that also makes things neat. If we can say, you know, everything in the, in the New

29:18Testament, everything that's canonical comes from the first century and then the other

29:23stuff is second century. You know, so I understand, you can kind of compartmentalize it. Exactly.

29:28It's there because it's early, anything else is after. Exactly. And once you start saying

29:32things are maybe second century, then, then you have some awkward things about, you know,

29:36what about non-canonical stuff that may well be earlier? Why is that not in the canon and,

29:41you know, things get messy? But, um, I, yeah, I mean, I, I mean, you know, how do we know,

29:48given that these, these texts are not dated, how do we choose between 95 and 105 CE, but

29:55I, I do think Luke shows quite a lot of development. Um, and, and, and, and say his attitude to

30:04women, the fact that, I mean, he's very keen on women sort of early on, but he does tend

30:08to limit their role in acts. And that does make me think a little bit about the pastoral

30:14epistles, which again may well be early second century. Um, I also think that, um, Luke may

30:21well know Josephus as antiquities. Um, uh, Steve Mason and his work has sort of persuaded

30:28me on that. So, so he talks about Luke's knowledge of, of just, yeah, yeah. So if the antiquities

30:34comes from around about 95 or so, again, um, you know, maybe they're both writing in Rome.

30:39Again, we don't know where Luke is, is writing, but that might, um, tip things over into early

30:45second century, but, um, I mean, you know, how do we know? But I think, I think it seems

30:51reasonable enough.

30:53Now, one of the, um, one of the texts that, that comes up a lot in, on social media, there's

30:59an awful, I think there are a lot of people who would have loved for Gnosticism to have

31:03won out, um, in early Christianity. Um, but, uh, the gospel of Thomas comes up and off

31:10a lot. And, and my, my understanding of this, uh, is that, well, one, this is a saying's

31:17gospel. It's just a collection of, of logia of sayings, utterances. Uh, and so there's

31:23no narrative framework that can help us kind of gain any purchase on, on much of a dating.

31:29What's, um, do you think that there are sayings in the gospel of Thomas that could predate

31:37and be independent of the canonical gospels? Or do you think this is mostly coming from

31:43later and is mostly copying what the, the sayings of Jesus from the gospels?

31:49I think it's, I think it's mainly later. And I mean, where, where we can compare things

31:55in, in the gospel of Thomas with the, the canonical gospels. Um, I mean, Mark Goodaker

32:01has pointed out this strange thing that, that Thomas does that they, he, the author sort

32:06of keeps the, the beginning and the end of something and sort of loses the bit in the

32:10middle. And you can sort of see the way he works with his source material there. And

32:16just, it reads the introduction and the conclusion and just ignore, you know, I can't be bothered

32:21with that bit in the middle.

32:22We don't do that with the books that, that, uh, yes on the show have sent us just, just

32:26to be clear.

32:27I know. I never, ever happened to read everything very thoroughly.

32:32It's that kind of thing, isn't it? It's like almost, yeah, you know the middle bit, but

32:37so I'll just pick it up in the end. Um, so, and, and I do think that, that Thomas knows

32:43probably all of the canonical gospels. So, you know, if he's working like that with the

32:48stuff there, what's he doing with the extra stuff? Where is it coming from? I mean, it's

32:53not impossible that some, that there's something there that, that, that does go back to something

32:58at some point said by Jesus. And then, you know, trans transmitted, um, down the decades,

33:05but, um, I, I wouldn't want to put money on it and I wouldn't want to put money on which

33:10bits. Um, so, you know, I mean, I just think you have to be a bit realistic about these

33:15things and I'm not going to, I'm not going to spend decades of my life trying to work

33:19out which bits could possibly have an earlier version to them. I mean, I wouldn't exclude

33:25it, but I think by and large it's coming from the second century.

33:30And what do you think about, um, the sources that were available to the gospel authors?

33:34We know Mark is working from, um, different sources and Mark is one of the sources that

33:40Matthew and Luke and probably John are using, but we've got to reconstruct anything that's

33:46coming before that's what are, where are scholars on, on what kind of, um, sources are being

33:54used by the gospel authors? Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, Mark is

33:58fascinating from that point of view, I think, because people always talk with great confidence.

34:02So Mark had all these sources, you know, oral sources, especially. And, you know, that,

34:08this whole sort of form critical idea that there were little bits of tradition floating

34:13around that people knew and that somehow sort of Mark is capturing them and writing them

34:19down. And, um, you know, I mean, everything that's been done by scholars in the last few

34:24decades has underlined just how carefully crafted and presented Mark's gospel is, you

34:31know, narrative critics have shown that all these themes and irony and, you know, it's

34:37a really clever piece of, of work. So there is no chance that he's just grabbing bits of

34:43oral tradition. Um, and, and I think, you know, I'm sure there are, you know, I'm sure he

34:49does have sources. I'm sure he has written sources. I'm sure he has oral sources. I'm

34:54sure he tried to find out stuff and, and he's probably got conflicting stories. He's probably

34:59got, you know, six different stories about the death of Jesus. And he's choosing which

35:05one to use. But, but in all of this, I think the main thing is Mark's creative shaping.

35:12So, you know, he's got stories behind him, but he's, he's working it all out in the way

35:16he wants it worked out. So all of those little paragraphs that Mark's gospel is made up

35:22of, it's Mark who puts his material into those little paragraphs. And that was a normal thing

35:28at the time. They're called Crayah, you know, they're, they're just little, the, the, the

35:34grammar books of the time tell people to write in these little sort of self contained anecdotes.

35:41So, so yeah, I think no doubt there is stuff behind there, but all, all we can really do

35:47is get back as far as Mark.

35:50Mm hmm. And so papius was probably underestimating Mark a little bit.

35:56Completely. Yeah. Well, if he was referring to what we have as the gospel of Mark at all.

36:02Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, he says he's, he's got no, no structure, but, and the problem

36:08is we just have papius out of context because we only have papius as he's mentioned by, by

36:16Eusebius. Yeah. So if we had the wider context of what he was talking about, maybe he was

36:21comparing Mark with John. And then the obvious question is, why does Mark have Galilee journey

36:28to Jerusalem, Jerusalem? And John has Galilee, Jerusalem, Galilee, Jerusalem. You know, so

36:33maybe he don't, maybe that's what he was talking about when he said Mark didn't have, have

36:38any structure. You know, we just don't know what it was that papius was talking about.

36:45And also, you know, these these very highly educated elites of sort of second, third century,

36:51they were a little bit dismissive of the abilities of the gospel writers. But that doesn't, you

36:58know, Mark is a perfectly good biographer. He's kind of middlebrow. He's not, he's not,

37:05you know, a tacitist or a plutarch or anything like that. But he's, he's good, you know,

37:11and his works have survived the test of time 2000s, years later, we're still investigating

37:17them. So, you know, I think he's a pretty good author. But some of these elites of the second

37:23third, third century, just, you know, they were a little bit snooty.

37:27We don't know anything about that. Thank goodness there's no more snootiness in scholarship.

37:36It's been banned.

37:42Now, you, you brought up Luke as the gospel that's kind of centers women more frequently

37:52than the other gospel. And, and I think this is one of the apologetic ways to try to harmonize

37:58the, the genealogies of, of Matthew and Lucas to treat one of them as, as coming through

38:05Mary and one of them as, as coming through Joseph seems to me that both the genealogies

38:12are literary creations. Yeah, yeah, don't go back to anything that, that probably has

38:18any historical value. But we get a lot of listeners and a lot of our audience on, on

38:24social media is very interested to hear more about women in early Christian role, because

38:31we have, for instance, one that comes up an awful lot. We have, you know, mentioned in,

38:38in Romans 16 seven, we have Phoebe, we have, we have others, we have Mary Magdalene. And

38:44we spoke with Elizabeth Schrader Poulter about, about Mary Magdalene and the idea that

38:50this is, this is not where she's from. This is a, an honorific title that, that is being

38:55given to her. And, and you just published, I believe a book with Joe Taylor, right? Yeah.

39:01Yes. Yes. Women remember Jesus's female disciples. Just that one. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I think

39:08I saw that on the, on the shelf at SBL in San Antonio. That was just within the last year

39:14or two that it came. No, it wouldn't be at SBL because it's, it's published by Hodor or

39:18Chet. And I don't think they have a place that did I see it somewhere? It must have been an

39:26ad for it because it has kind of like shards of things on the cover. Yes. Yes. It's a really

39:31nice coverage. Maybe it was just an ad I saw for it. Yeah. I, I, that's why I went and looked

39:35because it, it struck me how nice the company is. Can you talk about Jesus's women disciples?

39:43What do people need to know about this that has been, you know, maybe obscured a little bit

39:47over the, um, over the centuries in the millennia? Yeah, definitely obscured. Um, well, I mean,

39:53it's very clear even from the gospels, you know, the, the gospels, of course, are

39:58androcentric texts. They're shining the light on the men and what the men are getting up to,

40:03but even looking in, you know, peering for the little clues in the gospels, it's clear that women

40:09were a much bigger part of Jesus's movement. So for example, Mark waits until the very end,

40:16chapter 15, Jesus is on the cross. And suddenly he says, Oh, you know, and there are a few women

40:22there. They'd, they'd followed him from Galilee. You think, what now you're telling us, you know,

40:28all of this time I've been thinking Jesus and the 12 men. And suddenly you find that there were

40:34women there all the time. So, you know, that mental picture has to change and women plural.

40:40And we're given the names of a few of them, Mary Magdalene and others. Um, so, you know, even,

40:46I mean, even something like the chosen, I don't know if you've seen the chosen, but, you know,

40:50they have Jesus and the 12, um, disciples and one woman. So Mary Magdalene is in there,

40:56but it's clear that it wasn't just one woman. There were a group of women and, um, and they

41:01follow Jesus. And of course, that would make a lot of sense because, um, when Jesus is sending

41:07these disciples out to, to preach and to heal and, um, you know, do basically the work that he's doing,

41:13of course, you need women because in that sort of gendered society of the first century, you're

41:19going to need women to, to take the message to other women, to go into homes and, and to sit with

41:25the women to go down to the river while they're washing their clothes, you know, just to that way

41:31in to the women is a lot easier if you're female yourself than if you're a big brash guy like Peter.

41:38I mean, nobody's got no females are going to invite Peter into their homes. Um, you know,

41:44you've got to, you've got to have women to do that. So, so I think women were an integral part of

41:50Jesus's message from the very start. In fact, I mean, I go even further and say that, you know,

41:57a lot of Jesus's message who have been talking about that message about, you know, don't be the

42:02big alpha male, deny yourself, be like a servant, um, you know, put yourself last. A lot of that,

42:09that, you know, the Greek word for that, diakonero to minister is also, um, the word that's used

42:15of, um, you know, cooking and putting food on the table. And, um, and so it's, it's a word

42:23associated with women. It's a kind of a, it's the word that's associated with women's work. So,

42:29I think Jesus is kind of almost saying, you know, don't be like the alpha men, be like the women.

42:33And so, you know, he's sort of putting them in their experience right at the center of, um,

42:39this gospel. Why do you think then that, uh, that women didn't make it into the stories the way that

42:46it seems like they should have? If this were, if this were, you know, if this, if the picture that

42:52you're painting is right, which makes total sense that it would be, why do you think that they were

42:58excluded from, from the narrative? Well, they're not, they're not entirely excluded from the

43:03narrative. So I mean, you know, one really good test case is, um, Roman 16, where Paul writes to

43:09the church at Rome and he has a whole list of women that he's saying, not win. Sorry, he's,

43:15he writes the church and he's got a whole list of people that he says that he sends greetings to.

43:20And, um, that's just a snapshot of people that Paul knows in the Roman church and a third of

43:27them are women. And, um, they're given titles like deacons and apostles and leaders of house

43:33churches. So, and, and it's also fairly clear that Paul is sending this letter, the most important

43:39letter he's ever going to write by the hand of a woman, Phoebe. And she's the one who's taken the

43:45letter there. Probably she's going to read it out. Probably she's going to explain it to people who

43:50don't understand it. And there's probably a lot of people who don't understand it. So, you know,

43:54Paul is, um, really putting a lot of trust in this woman. So, so these references are there. But I

44:01think there's a double problem here. One is that, um, these texts are written in a patriarchal society.

44:09And, you know, the authors probably mail themselves just, um, tend to focus on what the men were doing.

44:16So, you know, particularly once you get to Acts, it's the movement of the church to, to Rome,

44:21and you're focusing on Peter and then Paul. And these texts are not written to be a social history

44:28of Christianity. You know, they're written about, you know, that they're, they're written to persuade

44:33people to become Christians or to strengthen their Christian faith. So, I think it's inevitable

44:39that women drop out a bit. But then I think you get the double problem that, um, you know, by the

44:45late first century, early second century, the, the second coming hasn't come. And, and this is what

44:52sort of gave women this sort of liberation, the fact that, you know, they were thinking that the

44:57end of the world was coming and that social orders as they were known didn't matter that much. But

45:03once you start to realize that there's going to be a church for a long time, um, the church has to

45:09start sort of adapting to society and, you know, just embracing those Roman norms because otherwise

45:17people are going to, um, think badly of it, maybe even persecute it. So, um, so I think by the time

45:24you get to Acts and by the time you get to the pastoral epistles, you get this sort of pushing

45:29down of women and make sure that women conform, make sure that women are silent and passive and

45:37don't wear sort of flamboyant and clothes and, you know, make sure you've got respectable women

45:43because this was, this was a big Roman thing that, you know, women out of control is a bad thing.

45:50Any kind of cult or, or philosophy that encouraged women in leadership roles or women not to know

45:58their place in society was frowned on. So, so I think you've got that, you know, on one hand,

46:04that the fact that the, the, the, the gospels were written by men who weren't thinking about the

46:08women, but on the other hand, this sort of, you know, real need actually to, as in the later texts

46:16to, you know, downgrade the women. And that all conspires to, to meaning that in the end, we don't

46:22get many women mentioned in the New Testament. I think we, there's, um, we spoke a bit about, uh,

46:29this with Candida Moss. Uh, recently we have an episode upcoming, uh, regarding her new book.

46:34Oh, yes. Yes. And there's a podcast to you. Oh, is she? Okay. Excellent. Yeah.

46:41We talked a bit about, and for those who have had the video, you can see, uh, the cover of her book,

46:48um, we talked about the characterization of Christianity as, as a, um, a movement of slaves and women,

46:55which would fit into that idea that this is probably mainly made up of folks who are excited about

47:02the fact that the, the standard social roles are kind of being broken down, at least to the degree

47:10that they can without undermining their, their safety and their, uh, and their integrity within

47:15the broader Roman society. So Paul says there's no, um, uh, no, uh, Greek or Jew. There's no male

47:23or female. It's no more, um, slave or free, but all are one. And Jesus obviously is, is an attractive

47:30thing, but when the first person says it's kind of seems like Jesus isn't coming, uh, right away,

47:37they have to start making plans for, well, I should have kept my bank account. Um, we should have,

47:44we should have sold the, the farm and all that kind of stuff. And it seems like then you get the

47:49apologists saying, well, let's, let's turn this gospel into something that's palatable for the

47:53Greco-Roman intelligentsia, something that we can, um, we can make fit into society. Well, we do have,

48:03we also have, uh, and, and I can't remember if Canada has written about this, but there are, um,

48:07there was an article a bit ago about, uh, I believe either some inscriptions or mosaics that were

48:14discovered in the last decade or so that indicate there were women holding titles, um, uh, indicating

48:21some kind of ecclesiastical authority or role within early Christianity later than we suspected,

48:27maybe into the fourth or even the fifth centuries CE. Um, uh, what do we have from early Christianity

48:33that, that indicates women were, um, held important roles within, uh, the ecclesiastical structure,

48:41or is it, are we limited to, um, just a few, uh, mosaics or, or titles, uh, scribbled in the

48:48ground here and there? Yeah, I mean, there are bits and pieces from all over. So there's, there's

48:53some really beautiful pictures in the catacombs in, uh, Naples, um, that have, I mean, in fact, two

49:00women and one of them, Chirula, her name is, um, she has certain kind of iconography that, that

49:05suggests that she is a bishop. And this is the sixth century in Naples, you know, not that far from

49:11Rome where, you know, um, they're, they're, they're not, um, envisaging, having women bishops by any

49:17means. So I think one of the things is that, you know, it took a very long time for Christianity

49:24to be homogenized and people are doing their own thing in different places and probably, you know,

49:31and the, the, the will be women in, um, leadership roles all over the place and, and particularly

49:37within sort of slightly deviant groups, you know, we know about Montanists who had, um, women within

49:43their, their leadership structure. Um, just for this, the benefit of our listeners who may not know

49:49about this, could you just give a one or two sentence explanation of who the Montanists were?

49:54Well, they're a second century phenomenon and they're, um, they're very sort of charismatic.

50:00And again, that's possibly one of the reasons why they're more open to, to women's leadership, but,

50:07and, uh, people like Perpetua, the famous martyr, she may well have been a Montanist. So, um, and,

50:15and, and, you know, we have people like, um, Perpetua, who was, who were early martyrs. So we do have

50:20these, these women, um, who are quite prominent in certain groups. Um, and the thing is, like I

50:28say, we probably that there's no, um, there's no homogeneity to this at all. There's, there's

50:34just different groups, different ways of being a follower of Christ in this early period.

50:39And in some of them, it probably happened quite quickly that, that the men sort of asserted

50:44their, their leadership roles in others. You know, there were maybe more charismatic ones.

50:50Um, women were enables to, to be leaders much longer.

50:54So it sounds like it took some time for the imposition of unity, um, upon the church to kind of,

51:02cascade out and, and reach everybody. I didn't know, you know, maybe in, in, uh, urban places,

51:08it happened in, again, it depends on, you know, exactly who you're living with. And if there's more

51:13of an expectation in an urban setting, perhaps that you conform to Roman norms, then maybe that's

51:20what you do in a, in a smaller place, um, little town, maybe, you know, maybe, maybe women were

51:26deacons and, and all of these things much longer. Um, it's difficult to say. And, and even something

51:33like the pastoral epistles, you know, Timothy and Titus and, um, you know, they're, they're very

51:38much kind of trying to curtail the activities of women. We just don't know about their setting.

51:44It may be that they had particularly sort of, um, uh, you know, women there who are really asserting

51:52themselves and, and, and his author doesn't like that. And this author writes to try and sort of

51:57push them down. But you know, the very fact that he's saying that suggests that there are women in

52:02leadership roles. Women are teaching women are not being passive. Women are wearing, um, you know,

52:09ostentatious clothing. Women are doing things. Um, we just don't. Quick question.

52:14Talking about Timothy and Titus, uh, first Corinthians 11, 34 through 36. Do you think

52:20that's a later interpolation? 11. And the bit about the, um, the way wearing a veil.

52:26Well, we're talking about, or excuse me, yeah, 14, 34. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's a later

52:32interpolation. I mean, if, if it's not, then, then Paul really doesn't make any sense in what

52:38Corinthians, you know, in, in chapter 11, he said, because of 11. Yeah. Yeah. It's because of 11,

52:44because in 11, he says it's fine for women to, um, to prophesy in the church. Just do it with your

52:50head covered. I mean, that's, that's fair enough. But then suddenly in 14, I don't permit women to

52:56say anything in the churches. I mean, what's going on here? It's much more likely, I think,

53:01that somebody just wrote that in the margin and that it got, um, incorporated. And, um, I mean,

53:08there have been several studies of that looking at the ancient manuscripts and found, um, you

53:13know, marks in the manuscripts that shows that, that the people copying them didn't find these

53:19verses in all of their, um, in all of their texts. So, you know, we know that that that's a piece of

53:25tradition that's moving about, which is always a sign that it's a later thing. And you can imagine

53:31some, you know, some grumpy church leader saying, you know, I do not permit women to speak.

53:36And then it gets added to the text and, and poor old, uh, Paul actually ends up with this

53:45very negative, um, reputation that, that perhaps he doesn't really deserve.

53:50Yeah. I, you, you spoke about being a little further away from the centers of, of power and,

53:56and, um, it, which reminds me of the, uh, the monasteries and the fight that they had. And,

54:02and I shake my fist sometimes at Athanasius for, um, uh, everything that he did 20th and the 4th

54:08century to get revelation into the canon and, uh, to clamp down on the monasteries. Sometimes I,

54:15I, um, sometimes I wish that, uh, I could see what Christianity would have become, uh, if Athanasius

54:25had not been out there, um, berating the, the, uh, the Arians as quite as much as, um, as he was.

54:33But it's such a fascinating history to, um, to go back and see what kinds of, what individuals,

54:41what events, what texts, what, what things, um, contributed to, uh, the way Christianity has become,

54:48the way it is. And, and certainly, uh, women have played, uh, overwhelmingly silent, but still

54:56formative role in the way Christianity has, has developed from all the way back in, um, in Mark and,

55:03and the early gospels, uh, all the way to today. And, um, yeah, I'm looking forward to, um, to

55:09reading your book, uh, about that. And, and hopefully at some point in the future, we can have you

55:13back to, to talk a little bit more about that. Although I know you have some other, um, projects

55:19that, uh, that are taking up most of your, uh, attention these days.

55:24Yeah, I'm lucky I'm on study leave at the moment actually. So that's really nice. Just having the

55:28space to open books and, and, and yeah, read what I want to read. So that's really good.

55:34Very nice. Um, Dan, anything? Well, I, I just, nothing more than just to thank you so much, Helen,

55:43for joining us. Uh, and, uh, let, let's remind people where they can find you and your, your work. Uh,

55:51the, the, the podcast is called the biblical time machine, biblical time machine. That's the

55:57one. Yes. A bit of a nineties vibe in the, uh, the cover, uh, the cover art. I know that probably

56:04just reflects, uh, Dave and I, and our ages and inches. Yeah. But everything nineties is hip right

56:12now. Yeah. Totally on board. You're talking about my daughter. She just, she says, oh, you know,

56:17they don't make music like they used to in the nineties. Oh my gosh. See, the oldies, you know,

56:23yeah, in the nineties, we were talking about the seventies and the sixties this way. And now, um,

56:29people who experienced the nineties are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I know it's bizarre.

56:34You don't get to talk about Nirvana as oldies. Okay. That's just not acceptable.

56:38I heard, I heard R E M on an oldies station a little bit ago and almost crashed my car. I was,

56:46I was not happy about that. By the way, Michael Stipe follows me on Instagram. Oh,

56:51well, you are, you are a fancy one, which, so if, if that's oldies, um, yeah, I need to, I think I

56:59probably have a, uh, AARP, uh, card that I need to, uh, I feel like Michael Stipe just unfollowed

57:06you after you told me he's watching this. Yeah, exactly. Uh, well, hell and bond. Thank you so

57:13much for joining us. We really appreciate you being here. And you're going to join us for the,

57:18for the patrons only segment. So that's wonderful. If you friends would like more hell and bond,

57:25sign up over at patreon.com/dataoverdogma. You can, uh, you can, you know, if you sign up at

57:32the $10 a month level, you'll get, uh, the bonus content every week. Uh, and Helen will be there,

57:38uh, with us for this week's version. Otherwise, if you'd like to contact us,

57:43you can reach us at contact@dataoverdogmapod.com and we'll see you again next week.

57:49Bye everybody.