Ep 140: Immaculate Apologetics?

00:00It suddenly occurred to me that when Jesus said let he who's without sin cast the first

00:06stone, good thing Mary wasn't there.

00:09Yeah, they could have tried it out as much as she could have chucked a rock and started

00:13that woman down a bad path.

00:16Jesus would have a mom, mom, stop it.

00:20You're embarrassing me.

00:22Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

00:30And I'm Dan Beacher and you're listening to the Data Overdogma podcast where we increase

00:35public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and we combat the spread

00:39of misinformation about the same.

00:41How are things today, Dan?

00:43Good.

00:44I came back from my travels with no cold and and I'm my voice is doing just fine.

00:50So I feel like I'm I'm I'm a couple up on you on yes in that front.

00:55Long time listeners will probably recognize I've got a little little scratchy, a little

01:00more baritone voice than normal.

01:04I'm in my yes, I I'm approaching my silver Fox era.

01:09So I got to have got to have the voice to match.

01:12Yeah, yeah, you're going to have to take up smoking.

01:14Yeah, then I can start doing voice work for like the who's the I wish I could remember

01:23the voice actor does all the all the characters from the Simpsons, usually the ones who smoke.

01:29Yeah.

01:30All right.

01:31Well, instead of that, we're going to do a show today and I think I think it's going

01:35to be a really fun one.

01:38We're going to give the people their money's worth for once.

01:40That's right.

01:42First off, we're look, there was a clip that went around or a series of clips that went

01:46around, got a little viral from Tucker Carlson show, which don't go looking for them.

01:53It's not give him any clicks, but we're going to talk about some claims made by a guy named

01:59Jeremiah Johnston and talk about the apologetic of of manuscripts.

02:07We're going to talk about some apologetics and that'll be a lot of fun.

02:13And then, and the second half of the show for our, what is that?

02:18We're going to discuss the much misunderstood concept of the immaculate conception, which

02:28I think is when I learned what was going on there, I, my mind was blue, blue my mind.

02:38Yeah, so that had no idea that Doug Flutie had any kind of involvement with the Catholic

02:44and that's, that's a sports reference for, for those of you who, who I, for the longest

02:49time when I heard immaculate conception, the, my cognitive repertoire immediately went

02:56to immaculate reception, which is Boston College Doug Flutie, a past that won the game for.

03:02Anyway.

03:03Doug Flutie, who some people know as a football player, but more people know as a, a breakfast

03:10cereal tycoon.

03:12So that's a, that's a, it's, it's a, it's a long and storied legacy.

03:18Anyway, let's move on with the show.

03:21Let's, let's do our, what is it?

03:25Taking issue.

03:26That's what it is.

03:28All right. And what we're taking issue with this week is some statements made by this Jeremiah

03:35Johnston guy, not to be confused with Jeremiah Johnson.

03:38Wasn't that the name of a, of a, an old Robert Redford movie way back that does?

03:43Sure was.

03:44Yeah.

03:45Okay.

03:46And if you've seen that, that GIF of the, the bearded gentleman by a stream who, who glances

03:50over and gives you a little nod, that's, that's Jeremiah Johnson.

03:53You know, this is Jeremiah J. Johnston, who is a scholar of New Testament, but he's, he's

03:59made a claim that is related to a distinct claim, but, but his claim is that the crucifixion

04:06of Jesus is the best attested fact from the ancient world bar none.

04:13And this is a big one.

04:14That is it.

04:15That's a big claim.

04:16Yeah.

04:17And he literally said, if I may quote him, he said, quote, quote, if we can't know that

04:22Jesus died by Roman crucifixion based on the historical record, we shouldn't believe anything

04:29in history at all.

04:32That's bold.

04:34I'm going to say, yeah.

04:38And it is closely related to another claim that the manuscript evidence for the New Testaments

04:47makes it the best attested document from the ancient world, basically that Jesus is the

04:53best attested figure from the ancient world, whether we're talking about his crucifixion

04:57at Roman hands, or we're talking about the historical witnesses to his life.

05:04The claim is, is repeated that Jesus is the best attested of all time.

05:12And this makes the goat, the goat of attestation, goat of attestation.

05:19And this makes people who study history for a living just guffa with, with reckless abandon

05:27because how dare you, sir, because it is.

05:31It could not be much further from the truth, talking about the crucifixion or the manuscript

05:39attestation. I actually want to start with the manuscript attestation and that's okay

05:43with you.

05:44Yeah.

05:45Yeah.

05:46I'm happy with it.

05:47And some people may have seen this claim going around.

05:48There'll be a list of ancient writers, Pliny, Plato, Demosthenes, Herodotus, Caesar, Tacitus,

05:55Aristotle, whatever.

05:56People will say, Oh, they have, you know, there are only 12 copies of their writings or there

06:02might be a hundred copies of their writings.

06:05And the approximate gap between the composition of their writings and the earliest manuscript

06:11is, you know, 500 years, a thousand years, 1300 years, something like that.

06:17And then they'll say, but the New Testament has 57 or 5800 ancient Greek manuscripts.

06:24And then if you take translations, it has over 24,000 ancient manuscripts and with the

06:32earliest coming less than a hundred years after original composition.

06:39And so what this is supposed to be is evidence that there is something unique, something almost

06:48supernatural or otherworldly about the preservation and the transmission of the text of the New

06:56Testament as historical witnesses to the life of Jesus Christ.

07:01Well, I mean, I, okay, I will say this, taking it on its face.

07:06If I am, if I believe, and I don't know whether I, whether I'm meant to believe this or not,

07:11but let's just say that there are 5800 manuscripts of the New Testament or, you know, or 20,000

07:20or whatever it is by their reckoning.

07:25That's impressive.

07:26That's a lot like, you know, and, and if you compare that to a few hundred of the other

07:32things, that, that sounds like a big deal.

07:36Yeah.

07:37Uh, but like number of copies doesn't sound like the same thing as like historical attestation

07:44for something.

07:45Yes.

07:46That's, that's the biggest problem with this argument is the number of copies has zero

07:52relevance to the historicity of the stories within the copies.

07:58Right.

07:59So there are literally hundreds of millions of copies of Harry Potter in circulation.

08:04Right.

08:05Right.

08:06That means nothing about the historicity of the stories within those copies of Harry Potter.

08:13Because we all know the Dumbledore existed, but Hagrid did not, Hagrid was, that was only

08:19made up.

08:20Yes, that's a late interpolation.

08:23So, um, and, and so the, and additionally, the, the length of time between the original

08:31composition and the earliest surviving manuscript also, it has something to do with our ability

08:37to reconstruct the transmission of the manuscript and its state at a period closer to its original

08:45composition. And so having 5,800 Greek New Testament manuscripts that range from, you

08:53know, the early second century CE all the way down to the invention of the printing press,

08:59it gives us a lot of data to be able to track the transmission and the growth and change

09:04of these manuscripts. And that's very, very helpful, but also has absolutely nothing whatsoever

09:10to do with the historicity of the narratives within those manuscripts.

09:16Yeah.

09:17Completely separate issue. And so the notion that this makes Jesus the best attested figure

09:23from ancient history is profoundly silly. And, um, and another thing to consider is that

09:31when we look at the 5,800 Greek New Testament manuscripts, the, the second century, people

09:37say, oh yeah, the, the earliest copy comes from less than a hundred years after its composition.

09:42And that would be a little piece of papyrus called p 52, papyrus 52. It's a, it's a fragment

09:47kind of triangular in shape about the size of a credit card. It's got about 36 ish words

09:53total on it written on the front and on the back. It comes and it rep preserves a piece

09:57of the gospel of John. It may dates to 125 ish CE and may date to 175 or even 200 CE.

10:06But most scholars would say it's probably in the second century CE. But if we look in

10:10the entire second century CE, you can count the total number of fragmentary manuscripts

10:16on one hand. Okay. Are four. Okay. It's the third century. You get like, uh, I think 50

10:2549 or 50 additional manuscripts. Again, mostly if not entirely fragmentary manuscripts. And

10:33then I, I think it's in the fourth century that we eclipse. I think we get another like

10:3848 or 49 manuscripts in the fourth century. And now we're getting our, our codices like

10:43Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, which contain the full Septuagint as it was understood by whoever

10:50was copying it. The big spike, when you look at a graph that shows the number of manuscripts,

10:57the spike starts in the 800s. Oh, and then in the 900s and then in the 1000s, it shoots

11:05way up. Okay. So the overwhelming majority of those 5,800 Greek New Testament manuscripts

11:14come from 800 years or more after the death of Jesus and the composition of these texts.

11:22So those inflated numbers are, are significantly less relevant when you actually look at when

11:30they come from all they're showing you is that these texts were copied a lot more hundreds

11:36of years later. Well, and that, that brings up an interest interesting point because as

11:42you've said number, a number of times on the show, uh, the more something is copied,

11:48the more chances there are for scribal errors and interpolations and stuff. So like it occurs

11:56to me that having a lot more manuscripts is actually a problem for attestation more than

12:03it is a confirmation. And for instance, if we go and look at, uh, the story of the woman

12:10taking an adultery, right? All but like maybe three or four of those manuscripts has actually

12:20no, that's not true for the, the story of the woman taking an adultery. There are a handful

12:24of passages that are omitted from, uh, from, uh, translations of the Bible these days.

12:30Story of the woman taking an adultery. It comes from, uh, it's absent from, from a number

12:35of manuscripts, but still if we go, what about the 5,800? Yeah. Well, over 5,000 of them,

12:41like 5,750 of them are going to have it. Right. Uh, but luckily we have some very early ones

12:49that show it's not there. That was, that was a later edition. Yeah. When you line them

12:55all up and you say, well, we got, we got the earliest one, two or three don't have this

13:02reading. And you know, this could be Matthew 17, 21, uh, it could be John, uh, five, four.

13:09It could be any one of a number of passages that we now omit from modern translations

13:12of the Bible. When you look at all the manuscripts out of the 5,800, like 5,799 of them have it.

13:23One doesn't. So like it's, if we didn't have that one, then yeah, that would be a liability.

13:30We would be misled by the 5,799 manuscripts. And it seems obvious that that, what that

13:38means is that there are passages in all of our manuscripts that were interpolations later

13:47editions that just we don't have a manuscript early enough to catch it. Almost. I, I think

13:54it is beyond doubt that there are readings in the New Testament that we, we do not have

13:59any manuscripts that lacks them, but these readings have been altered or added at some

14:06point between the composition of the text and our earliest surviving manuscript witness

14:12to that passage. And, and that gap is different depending on the text because if we're talking

14:17about P 52 for those 36 words, that gap may be as small as 25 or 50 years. But for the

14:26rest of the gospel of John, the other 99.99% of the gospel of John, that gap is going to

14:33be, you know, add another 100 years on to it for some of those passages. Like the, the

14:38gap is, is, can be fairly large for a number of passages from the New Testament. And that's

14:45a black hole. We don't know what's going on in there. There could be lots of things added.

14:49And we just do not have the evidence. Right. If we did not have one of these early witnesses

14:55to, you know, the, the absence of this statement about this kind doesn't come out except through

15:02much fasting and prayer in Matthew 17 21. If we didn't have an early manuscript that

15:09omits that, we might think it was there all along. And that one manuscript changes the

15:15whole story. And, and who knows how many readings were not there in the original text that were

15:20added somewhere in that gap that we don't have witness to. So there are scholars out

15:26there who say, no, we can assume that based on all of the manuscripts that we have available

15:32to us now, we can reconstruct every word of the New Testament exactly as it fell from

15:36the pens of their, of the authors. I think that assumption is profoundly misguided.

15:42Yeah, it seems, it seems, if nothing else, you know, impossible to verify and just unlikely,

15:49just like knowing what we know about how. And I think we, when we bring a modern sensibility

15:56to this question, we, it's easy for my brain at least to mess up and think, well, and you

16:03know, I, I'm coming from at this from a perspective of someone who has lived not only in the world

16:09of printed books, you know, the printing press and movable type, but but computers and like

16:15the transmission of data is, is, is pure. You know what I mean? Like if I send you a manuscript

16:22over email, you get it exactly. And if you forwarded on to someone else and they forwarded

16:28on to someone else, it just transmits perfectly. But when someone has to hand write it out,

16:34every single word gets hand written by, you know, by a person and then, and you know,

16:40that scribe, that person may or may not have an agenda when they're writing it out. It's

16:46just, it's a very different means of transmission. Yeah. And, and the fact that these texts

16:54are spread all around the world is a kind of fail safe against that. Right. Because it

17:01then becomes impossible to introduce a change that can, you know, go out and cover up all

17:09of the manuscripts, already in circulation that don't have that change. But that brings

17:15us back to that black hole of the earliest years when change is more likely to happen.

17:22So, and there are scholars who think that what conjectural inundations. So if we don't

17:28have evidence for a change, but we're like, this seems really squirrely. It seems like

17:33at some point this was added to the text. There are some scholars who will be like,

17:37you know what, my critical addition, I'm going to take that out because I don't think it

17:40was there originally, or I think it read a different way. That's called a conjectural

17:44inundation. And there are some scholars who think we ought to be engaging in that in the

17:50practice of using conjectural inundations. There are others who say that's anathema. No,

17:55we should never use conjectural inundations. But long story short, the manuscript, the number

18:02of manuscripts of the Greek New Testament that we have and their proximity to the composition

18:07of those texts has absolutely zero bearing whatsoever on the historicity of the stories

18:13about Jesus and the history, much less the historicity of the supernatural claims about

18:20Jesus, which brings us to Dr, Dr. Jeremiah J. Johnston, who made the claim on on Tucker

18:28Carlson that is the best attested fact from ancient history. I don't know if you picked

18:33up on this. This is something that irks me only because I have a graduate degree from

18:38the University of Oxford. Yes. But Dr. Johnston likes to bring up Oxford an awful lot. Okay.

18:45Did you notice this in any of the stuff you looked up? I didn't catch it. Okay. So you

18:51will see him spoken of as I did catch him saying that he was a scholar and using the phrase

18:57critical scholars. But like, I like to do what critical scholars do, which I thought

19:02was kind of funny. He didn't say I'm a critical scholar. Right. I like to simulate what a critical

19:11scholar does. He he has his PhD from a university called Middlesex University in England. And

19:20part of that included residency. It was called the Oxford Center for Mission Studies, okay,

19:27which is not an arm of the University of Oxford, but it is located in the city of Oxford. And

19:32it has relationships with the Bodleian library. And there are some scholars that will offer

19:39to tutor and give help to students there. They're basically there to train non Western

19:49students to go out and be pastors and preachers and stuff like that. But when when Dr. Johnston

19:59talks about his education, he will frequently talk about when he was at Oxford. No, no,

20:07no, no, no. He in Oxford, when I talk about being in Oxford, not at Oxford, very carefully

20:13skirting around an explicit claim to have been enrolled at the University of Oxford,

20:19but loves to make a big deal out of I do have a have a that level of Oxfordian education.

20:27I toured the campus. I went to put several places within Oxford. It's a lovely place.

20:34But the only reason I bring this up is because it is so on the nose, yeah, that like even

20:40his his doctoral dissertation was then published as a book. And in the acknowledgments, he never

20:47makes it clear that he was not enrolled at the University of Oxford. So it's always it's

20:52always like, were you enrolled there or not? And the other no, he was not enrolled there.

20:57But what we're saying is that he's a very reliable guy. You can you can you can trust

21:02what he has to say. You can yeah, you can you can take his statements to the bank. He's

21:07a big defender of the Shroud of Turin. Right. And that's what he was talking about mainly

21:11on this episode of Tucker Carlson. Yeah, now there's other stuff that he brings up. But

21:17but the Shroud of Turin is is his golden goose. This is what he thinks seals the deal on the

21:23on the historicity of Jesus's crucifixion at the hands of the Romans. But just to kind

21:31of address the claim, it is not the best attested event in the ancient world. Not not by a long

21:42shot. Like we have, we can go and find the archaeological remains of battles that are

21:50discussed in texts written by Julius Caesar or written by people who accompanied Alexander

21:57the Great and stuff like that. We have, we have far better attested events from the ancient

22:03world. And so the notion that the crucifixion is the best attested event is just laughable

22:10on the very face of it. Yeah. And even, and I would say even if the Shroud of Turin were

22:17somehow authentic, which it is not. We've talked about this. We talked about the Shroud

22:22of Turin. Okay. So we don't have to get into all of that stuff again. But but I do want

22:29to bring up the fact that I find it hilarious that the first time the Shroud of Turin explicitly

22:34shows up in any historical documentation is from the Bishop who says some people conjured

22:44up this fake Shroud and tried to pass it off as authentic. But we caught the guy. Right.

22:50So like that, I just find that so hilarious. People are like, no, no, no. It's authentic.

22:56It's totally authentic. It's amazing. That, that kind of stuff is crazy. But he wasn't

23:05just claiming that the Shroud was his only evidence that Jesus had actually done it. He

23:10he kept talking about all of these sources that were that were almost contemporary talking

23:16about it, Tacitus and Swatonius and Lucian. And these guys now surely he must not be lying.

23:27Like surely those guys historically did must have must have had some sort of good evidence

23:37for the resurrection, the crucifixion of resurrection of Jesus.

23:42So the crucifixion, at least, yeah, we have we have better data for that than the resurrection

23:48where we have zero data. But yeah, we have we have folks like Josephus folks like Tacitus

23:55and Satonius and others who are non Christian authors who Josephus is the earliest writing

24:02in the mid 90s CE. We have two references in in his works and they're one of them is longer

24:10than the other. The longer one is known as the Testimonium Flavianum, the which is where

24:16Josephus is like, Oh, he was more than a man. And and it's very clearly it has been doctored

24:22by by Christian writers probably in the fourth or late third centuries CE. Some people think

24:29you see this who talks about Josephus's text might have been the one to doctor it. I think

24:36the majority of scholars still would suggest that there was a historical core to that that

24:44was actually in Josephus's writings, but that they just expanded on it. Some people argue

24:49that it was entirely made up, that there was no reference to Jesus whatsoever. There's

24:53another reference to James being put to death. And it refers to James as the brother of Jesus

25:00who was called Christ. Right. That one's a lot more secure, but there are there are some

25:06folks who who still try to argue that that is an interpolation also. And then we get to

25:11attack it. I don't I don't want to I want to jump on. I want to stay with Josephus just

25:16long enough to mention that in that interview, Johnson did say that Josephus was so close

25:23to it that he would have he quote. This is a quote Joseph. He said he would have had friends

25:31who were at the trial of Jesus. And he writes about that. Now when he says he writes about

25:39that and also he he seems to be claiming and I don't know where this comes from. Maybe

25:44you can enlighten me. He seems to be claiming that there's some really exciting stuff happening

25:49with Josephus right now, which how would that work? How would there be new exciting stuff

25:56happening with Josephus? There there's a scholar named Schmidt. And I think I think the T C Schmidt

26:07is a scholar's name just published a book called Josephus and Jesus new evidence for

26:13the one called Christ where he makes the claim that the testimony in Flavianum is entirely

26:22authentic. Now, he does a little he does a little how's your father with the text to

26:30try to soften how much of a testimony of Jesus it is. But I think he might be talking about

26:40that that book, which just came out a two or three months ago, I think. Okay, and it's

26:45just making the case. Hey, what if this is all authentic and it has not convinced the

26:51majority of scholars and it's not going to convince the majority of scholars. And there's

26:55a there's a wonderful group out of University of Iowa run by my friend Bob Cargill called

27:02Bible and archaeology. And they Jordan Jones is a recent PhD from that program who is running

27:12that program, but they I think they just interviewed Schmidt on there and talked about what his

27:18argument is. So that that's probably what's going on there. But no, Josephus was wasn't

27:27born until well after Jesus was dead. So no, he wouldn't have had and he's from the area.

27:33He's from Galilee area and right he was he was a involved in the the Jewish revolts that

27:43took place in the sixties. But no, the notion that he had friends that would have been at

27:50the trial is pretty silly. And then to say that he wrote he writes about that. It seems

27:59like I mean, I've read the clip, you know, the little the what three sent two sentences

28:06or whatever it is that Josephus writes in the test in in the in the Flavianum, whatever,

28:13the testimonium Flavianum. Yeah. And it's not much. And it's definitely not like, Hey,

28:18my buddy Sam is there and here's how the trial looked or whatever it's just like a quick

28:25tossed off thing. Yeah. And it just says, yeah, there was this dude and like if there

28:31is an original core, it probably would have said just that there was this guy Jesus, some

28:36called in the Christ and pilot crucified him. And I think it ends by saying and their their

28:44tribe or their group has not ceased to exist down to today or something like that. So it's

28:49the kind of report that you would expect from somebody who lived toward the end of the first

28:54century CE and just knew about this group of this movement that that sprung up after some

29:01guy got crucified. And Josephus talks about multiple different wannabe messiahs who got

29:09cut down by Rome. So it's not unusual at all. But yeah, the notion that Josephus went and

29:15and had his buddies fill him in on trial went is not supported by anything and anything

29:22that Josephus ever wrote. Yeah. So yeah, I find that kind of silly as well. But the other

29:28Roman authors, they're they're basically saying, Hey, they're these weirdos all over the place.

29:33And they're their movements started after this guy got executed. Like it's it's a little

29:41more than that. So as as historical attestation, I mean, certainly it suggests that these writers

29:49had access to some kind of reporting that was probably independence of what the gospel

29:56authors relied on. It was probably something that was that was in circulation in the non

30:03Jesus follower literary circles and historical circles. So there is evidentiary value as attestation

30:13of the historical event of Jesus's crucifixion. But to the degree that is it becomes the best

30:21attested event in ancient history. That's again, nonsensical. That's just laughable.

30:26Yeah, I mean, you know, when we talk about things like, you know, how something is attested.

30:34Yeah, there are thousands of manuscripts that mentioned Jesus being crucified. They're all,

30:42you know, largely they're all produced by the group that wants you to believe it. You know

30:48what I mean by a group that has an agenda. And then there's like you said, nothing archaeological

30:56that we've ever found, you know, with with with Caesars or with, you know, with with,

31:01like you said, Caesar or Alexander the Great. We've got coins with their face on them. We've

31:05got other people talking about the wars that they went to. We've got statues. We've got,

31:12you know, there's just their own writings and other people's writings and, you know,

31:16all this all this stuff. It's it's just that's how you look at history. Yeah. And and I don't

31:24want anybody to mistake me or us for suggesting that that there is good reason to doubt the

31:31existence of a historical Jesus because no, they're not saying that because like when

31:35it comes to archaeological data, there was no direct archaeological attestation of Pontius

31:43Pilate discovered until 1967, I believe, wow, when an inscription was uncovered, a fragmentary

31:51inscription that mentions Pilate. Prior to that, we had some mentions in Philo and some

31:57mentions in Josephus because those are the only two people who were writing about this

32:02part of the world in the middle of the first century CE and they did not write about everybody.

32:09And so for 99.999% of the people who lived in Judea or the Galilee in the first century

32:17CE, absolutely nothing survives about them. Even wealthy people, even powerful people,

32:23even important people. Right. And most likely the historical Jesus lived and died without

32:29having become phenomenally popular. And the stories that are recorded in the gospels

32:35are probably traditions that grew and developed after his death. Well, his ministry was only

32:42a few years long. Probably one year long. It's not enough time to get popular. It's enough

32:48time to say a bunch of stuff. And then, and then if you have devoted followers, that then

32:57they can start transmitting things. Yeah. So people say, well, why we don't have anything

33:02from a contemporary? Yeah, we don't have anything from pretty much any contemporary of anybody

33:07who lived back then. That's not surprising. Well, what about all the stuff you did? Most

33:12of the stuff that we think about is is probably later posthumous traditions that were based

33:18on stories that were being passed around. The historical Jesus probably never did anything

33:23that noteworthy apart from causing a riot in the temple around Passover. And that's probably

33:31what caused the Romans to execute him. So even in the New Testament, you know, his following

33:36ebbs and flows, like he gains some and he loses a bunch and a lot of people abandoned

33:40him even even in the New Testament's telling of his life. It says he did all these miracles,

33:46but that's not supported by by anything. And so we should not expect there to be a ton

33:53of material evidence for his life and for his exploits. I think we have precisely what

34:02we would expect to have a few scattered references to this thing that happened many years ago.

34:09And then the traditions that get accumulated in the gospels and in other texts that were

34:15written that didn't end up in the New Testament. But I think that like, just sort of as a sort

34:23of closing thought about this, again, what we encounter when we encounter apologetics

34:29is people who run up against something that challenges their or that scares them theologically

34:40or scares them in a way that they, you know, if they have to believe that everything is

34:46literally true in the Bible, then they bend over backwards to sort of bend history to

34:56their will rather than just acknowledging what the data show. Yeah. And it's just so much

35:01easier if you just encounter the Bible itself and the history on its own terms. And just

35:10acknowledge that like, you know, it's, it's messy. It's not perfect. And that's okay.

35:16That doesn't have to shake. That doesn't have to, you know, bring the temple down. Well,

35:22I think if the if the temple is constructed on as rickety and as fragile a foundation

35:28as something like inerrancy and inspiration and univocality and all that, if the foundation

35:34is that rickety, then then I think it frequently does need to be reduced to that zero sum game.

35:40It's a hundred percent or it's zero percent. And I think that's why we see people retreating

35:45to these ridiculous claims that he's the best attested figure in ancient history and his

35:50crucifixion is the best attested event in ancient history. And we have so many more

35:55thousands of copies of these texts than than any other ancient text. And it has nothing

36:00to do with the fact that the movement that circulated those texts took over the Roman

36:04Empire and then didn't really care about those other texts. So like there, there are a bunch

36:11of details of this that that explain why the data are the way they are. But yeah, you kind

36:18of have to loosen your grip on things like inerrancy and, and inspiration and univocality.

36:25If you want to be able to engage with that, but because so much of this discourse doesn't

36:31go on at the level of critical interrogation and reasoning because so much of it is really

36:39about vibes and is really about just cheerleading and fake promotion. Yeah, rather than, rather

36:48than actual inquiry, like in that interview with between Tucker and Jeremiah, like Jeremiah

36:57speaks with a lot of conviction and a lot of authority. Oh, yeah. Even though the Oxford

37:05part of that authority is illegitimate, he speaks with a lot of authority. And for folks

37:09out there who don't have the time, the expertise, the resources or the interest to actually go

37:16and drill down to the bedrock of the argument, that's good enough. Yeah. And so that's really

37:22all that matters. And even though Tucker was like, really? Even even Tucker was a little,

37:28a little skeptical. Like, what does that mean? What? But you know, that interview gets the

37:33job done for so many people. And so if you're an apologist, time to clock out, we did our

37:40job. Yeah, that's, that's your job. Whether, whether it actually does any justice to the

37:47data or whether it actually engages with it at all, your job is to make people feel better

37:52about believing. And you know, if, if that works, then that works, even if I don't want

37:59to spend more time on this, but it does seem like it does a disservice because it's just

38:03like, you know, what, what it means is that people are hanging their hats on, like you

38:08say, very rickety information. And that means that their faith will be all that much more

38:14easy to rock when they encounter the truth. 100%. That's tricky.

38:20But at SBL, one of, one of the things, one of the panels that I participated in was for

38:26this book published by the Bible for normal people called God's Stories for God's Children,

38:32which is a children's storybook Bible. Right. And I was responsible for writing a segment

38:39that dealt with First Kings 11 and 12, which, but one of the points that I made in there

38:44was that I wanted to engage the story in all its details, whether you know, no matter how

38:50boring, no matter how controversial, because I wanted anyone who read that story and actually

38:59internalize the story and understood it. The last thing I wanted is for them to grow up

39:03and actually go, you know, maybe they study it at school or maybe they just find out on

39:07the internet. Oh, I was lied to. Right. And you know, you can talk about milk before

39:13meat and you can talk about, oh, but you know, this isn't as useful for children and stuff

39:17like that. That's not going to change the fact that somebody in their late teens, early

39:22twenties, thirties, forties, whatever, if they are suddenly like, wait a minute, that's

39:26not what I was taught. I was very clearly taught this other thing. They're going to feel lied

39:30to. Yeah. And I think we owe it to people to give them the truth to the degree that we

39:37have access to it. And which is one of the reasons I think these claims, whether it's

39:41about the manuscripts numbers or the shroud or the claims about the crucifixion, they have

39:49to be called out because that is they're putting dogma over data. Yep. And that is the opposite

39:54of the title of our show. So we are not allowed to do that. We must object. All right. Well,

40:01let's move on to what's that? And this week's what's that is really cool. I think it is,

40:12it's, I don't know if you know this, Dan, I once wrote a play, you know, you mentioned

40:20the Immaculate Reception. Uh huh. I once wrote a play called the Immaculate Abortion, which

40:25I think is not going to surprise some of our viewers, but it was a it was a it was a comedy.

40:33I think I think it was actually pretty funny. Maybe, you know, let's make it a Patreon goal.

40:38If we get enough patrons at some point, we'll, we'll produce that play and see if it's any

40:44good. Anyway, but no, what we're talking about is the Immaculate Conception and for the longest,

40:55for the most of my life, no, I didn't, I wasn't raised Catholic. My understanding is this is

40:58a primarily Catholic belief. Yes. But I wasn't raised Catholic. I had heard of it and just

41:06us. And I knew that it was to do with Jesus. Uh huh. And I just assumed as so many people

41:12do that them, that the conception in question was of him. But it isn't. It isn't. Don't

41:22don't. Yes. The Immaculate Conception is not about the conception of Jesus. It is about

41:27the conception of Mary. So that is nuts. Go on. Talk to us. What do we got? People, people

41:36will say they'll be like, Oh, well, we're, what are we doing on Christmas? We're celebrating

41:39the Immaculate Conception. No, you're not. No, you're not. It's, it's a, it's a very widespread

41:45misunderstanding. And some of it has to do with the fact that yes, it is a uniquely Catholic

41:49doctrine. Some of it has to do with the fact that people just don't pay an awful lot of

41:54attention to the details of, of doctrines like this. But the doctrine of the Immaculate

41:59Conception is the notion that at the instant of Mary's conception, there was a special exemption

42:10that made her conceived without the stain of original sin. So original sin is supposed

42:18to be something that is passed on from parents to child. Unavoidable. I think it's a thing.

42:24That's, that's a segment we need to do. Original sin. We need to do original sin and, and dive

42:29in on that. So yeah, look for that in the future, you guys. Yeah. If you want to know

42:34a deep dive on that. But yes, okay. Original sin, ever since Adam, it's you, you're born,

42:43you're born tainted in some way. Yes. Yeah. And it's a way to kind of say that the, that

42:52Jesus' atonement is necessary for all humans who are ever born because we are all born

42:57with this original sin. In, in the early periods of the church, there were some authors who

43:03suggested that children were born innocent and pure. Right. And they had no sin, but you

43:09also was the lot of you. Yes. There were some, some passages that suggested that, no, they're

43:19children are also born sinful. And just, I want to pause and say that there are some

43:23apologists out there who will say things like, none of us deserve anything but hell. Right.

43:30Which is just so stupid. I've seen that a lot. It's just an abominable notion that even

43:36a one day old baby deserves eternal conscious torment. Right. Because of their depraved

43:44nature. They had absolutely zero choice in. Like I just find that the most abominable and

43:50stupid attempt to just kind of Jerry rig the need for, for Jesus' atonement. Anyway, there's

43:59a passage in the Psalm Psalm 51 five that says I was. Do do do do. I was brought forth

44:11in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. Oh, yeah. So, and so people suggest that

44:21means, oh, there's, there's sin involved in, in that whole process. And then you also

44:27have Romans five, Paul says, just a sin entered the world through one man and death through

44:32sin. And this way death came to all people because all sinned. And there, this is the,

44:38these are the Lego bricks that are used to construct the doctrine of original sin, which

44:45then leads to, well, wait a minute, how did Jesus avoid getting it? Well, and, and, and

44:51this is, this is the question I always had. If we can just arbitrarily exempt somebody

44:56from it, why didn't we just arbitrarily exempt Jesus from it? Why did it have to be all the

45:02way back at Mary's conception? Well, you said it yourself. The Psalm said that it was the

45:07mother in. So like you got, you got to, you got to clean out the mother. Yeah. And then,

45:13and then you got a, a pure vessel. Yes. And that's actually, that's actually a big part

45:18of the rationale. They, there were theologians who were like, look, can we really imagine

45:25that the one sinless, pure, a savior gestated inside of a sinful environment, even if, even

45:36if there was this moment of exemption from, from the transmission or the, the imputation

45:42of original sin. Can we imagine that, that Jesus was swimming around in, in ambiotic fluid

45:48of sin. So there was a desire to kind of push it back a ways. And it's really in the medieval

45:58period that we have folks kind of pushing in this direction. And there was one dude I'd

46:04never heard of, John Duns Scottish, who lived in a late 13th century CE. In fact, I think

46:12died around like 1305 or something like that 1308 CE. And he's the one who like is thought

46:22to have first coherently explained how the idea of an immaculate conception is coherent

46:30within, you know, the grand network of doctrines of, of the, I'm just going to stop you right

46:38there and clarify something. What you just said is that this is a, like a medieval or,

46:44or sort of middle ages idea. We're so this is, that's pretty far from being a concept

46:51that was actually laid out in that's not even the half of it. That's not even the half.

46:56It was not formally articulated until 1854. What? Yes. No. Are you serious? I am dead

47:06serious. So like, like, like in terms of it, it being a canonized sort of blessed by the

47:13church doctrine. Yep. 1800s. 1854. Yeah. Holy crap. I did not see that coming. Yes.

47:22See, they, there was all, there was this notion that there, we got to figure this out. There's

47:26something going on here. And we're not sure exactly how to articulate this. And, and some

47:32people thought, eh, you don't really need this. Um, because, uh, you know, if, if Mary

47:39was sinless, was born sinless, never sinned throughout her life, then she had no need of

47:43Jesus's redemption. Okay. That's an interesting problem. Yeah. That's what Thomas Aquinas said.

47:50Others raised other issues with, with why we, why we need to come up with, um, an idea

47:56that Mary was conceived free from original sin. And if we're doing that, how are we doing

48:01that? And then, you know, you have this guy, um, uh, and every time I see his name, I want

48:06to say scotus, because he's a member of the Supreme Court of the United States. The first

48:13time I read an article with that in it, I was like, was this written by AI? This is

48:19really, this is just a hallucination, isn't it? Um, but yeah, it, it becomes gradually

48:26more and more accepted between the 14th and 18th centuries. And then it's, uh, 1854,

48:31the, uh, in a, and I'm going to pronounce this wrong. Cause my Latin's terrible in a

48:37fabulous day use, um, was the 1854, uh, pronunciation that declared the, the universal veneration

48:45of Mary's purity and all this. And this is what established the Catholic belief that

48:52life begins a conception because Mary was sinless from conception. Oh, and so it, it's

49:01they, two birds with one stone with that, uh, with that doctrine. So the immaculate conception

49:07is entangled with the doctrine of, uh, personhood at conception, don't get an abortion. Hey,

49:16well, yeah, that's, that's the implication of, of that particular doctrine. Right. Uh,

49:20yeah. That's, uh, that's where how we get from folks like Augustine and others talking

49:26about, well, Mary was, she was just cool. That's all. And, or, you know, she had some kind

49:32of special, uh, exemption and, uh, all the way to, and, and I'm sure, you know, if we

49:38had Michael Pepper back on here, he'd be rolling his eyes. He'd be like, you don't know what

49:44she's talking about as a Catholic. Yeah. As, as an expert, as a, as someone who is a scholar

49:50and, uh, and knows the language, knows the history, knows the, um, the traditions a lot

49:57better than, uh, than the two of us put together. Uh, but those, but those are in rough outline.

50:05That's, that's how we get to the doctrine of, uh, the immaculate conception. So are there

50:10other than the, I mean, you listed what two scriptures, you listed a Psalm and something

50:16else as, as sort of the basis for this is, is that really it? Is it like, oh, yeah, cause

50:23this doesn't feel like it needs to happen. No, it doesn't, it doesn't need to happen

50:28until you've figured out a whole series of other things that need to happen because of

50:35what you decided the scriptures say need to happen. This is, this is building on an edifice

50:42that was constructed over almost 2000 years of, of philosophical, um, reasoning about

50:50how, how to make sense of all of this. And, and it's all presupposing univocality and

50:55all that kind of stuff. Again, it's all presupposing, um, it's all presupposing inspiration, not

51:00inerrancy as we understand it today. Cause that's another thing that has really only

51:04come up in the last couple hundred years, but as a formal doctrine, but, but yeah, this

51:10is, this is, uh, just chasing down the implications of chasing down the implications of chasing

51:17down the implications of, and you know, it's implications all the way down to, until you

51:22get to the Bible. Uh, and so yeah, it, it is not something that you, you don't read the

51:27Bible and be like, well, we have to have the immaculate conception. You've got to go through

51:32a number of other things that you establish as a theological, a philosophical, a dogmatic

51:40foundation and you're, and you're just accumulating all of this stuff and it becomes necessary

51:47only at the end of all of that accumulation.

51:50It also seems to me, uh, that it would, that one of the things that would have had an influence

51:55on the development of this idea is just, and I only know this from sort of the, the artistic,

52:03uh, world, but it's very clear that, uh, at some point, Mary becomes almost as venerated

52:12if not more at some points than Jesus himself. Like Mary is, uh, it is the beloved figure

52:20of at very least the art world, which I have to under, I have to believe is, it has to

52:26be a reflection of, of, of the sort of theological reality of those times.

52:31Yeah. And there were, there were a lot of different streams of tradition that are coming

52:36together for that. The notion that Mary was the, the mother of God, um, Theotuchos is,

52:42um, is the Greek word. And I can't remember the last time I saw the accent on that word.

52:47I probably accentuated it incorrectly. But yeah, um, from the, the 5th century CE on,

52:55she was understood to be holy and you get to the 11 and 1200s. And now you start to

53:01see, um, a lot of, um, veneration of Mary through, uh, architecture and churches and

53:12because like relics became a big deal. Mm hmm. Um, and, uh, Mary becomes a part of that

53:19and, and Mary becomes somebody who's, who's venerated and somebody who starts appearing

53:24to people, um, all over the place as, as this virgin, as the mother of God, as the supremely

53:31holy figure who in some way, shape or form seems to have been, uh, without sin. Uh, yeah.

53:39And in a tradition where you have a bunch of intermediaries between you and God and between

53:47you and Jesus, Mary is one of the main ones. And so, uh, there's veneration of Mary. And

53:55you know, we'll have to get some, uh, another Catholic scholar on to talk about the difference

53:59between veneration and worship. And, uh, and you know, I don't, I don't know if you've

54:03seen on, on Twitter, but my algorithm is shot, shot to crap because of Twitter. I'm not

54:12actually anymore. I left, uh, I still call it Twitter. That's, that's how much of a get

54:18off my lawn. Uh, old man, I am, but the, the Protestant hate aimed at, at Catholics for

54:26Mary as well as for just images and things like that, uh, is, is just, it's a sight to

54:33behold. Anyway, it's crazy. It's crazy to me. Uh, I think Mary is an interesting figure.

54:40I, you know, we mentioned the, uh, we mentioned the, the woman taken an adultery and, and John

54:47earlier in the show, it suddenly occurred to me that, uh, when Jesus said let he who's

54:52without sin cast the first stone, good thing. Mary wasn't there. Yeah. They could have tried

54:57it out as mom, because she could have chucked a rock and started that woman, uh, down a

55:01bad path. Jesus would have the mom, mom, stop it. You're embarrassing me. Yeah. Okay.

55:12So, uh, in terms of the gospels, in terms of the Bible itself, there is no, is, is there

55:18anything about Mary being without sin or being, or being, or being like, is, is there anything

55:26like that? No, the closest we get is, uh, and, and this is something a lot of Catholic

55:31apologists will appeal to is that the enunciation, the angel says, hail Mary full of grace. Yeah.

55:37And so that word that is full of grace, some folks will insist that this can only mean

55:44someone who is absolutely without anything other than grace or, you know, free from sin.

55:50And, and there's just no case to make for that. Um, so yeah, that's the closest they

55:55come. They are full of crap. Then she's full of grace and they're full of crap. What's

56:01the, what's? Oh gosh. Um, I just keep thinking of coach Hines from mad TV, hail Mary full

56:09of bullets. Um, which that, that's Keegan Michael Key's character. He's, he's mouthing

56:15off to a nun at a basketball game. Um, oh gosh. They don't make, they don't, they don't

56:22make sketch comedy like that anymore. Um, I don't think they make sketch comedy anymore.

56:27Not really. All righty. Well, uh, I guess we'll leave it at that. That I'm, it's a fascinating

56:35thing. I, your 1854 has just blown my noodle. So I'm glad that we had one of those moments

56:44in, in the episode. If you have had your noodle blown, I don't, that's not even a saying,

56:50but if you have felt, uh, like you have gotten something out of this show or any of our episodes,

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57:44to respond in any other venue. Anyway, uh, thanks so much for all of you for showing up here.

57:50And, uh, we'll talk to you again next week. Bye everybody.

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