Jesus of Nazareth walking this Earth is a fact conceded by nearly all reliable scholars. 'The Red-Haired Archeologist,' Amanda Hope Haley, discusses the life and times of the most notable man in history.
redhairdarcheologist.com
becomingoutlaws.com
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Gavin among the outlaws, he said.
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Come follow me. People from all walks alive
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since have been becoming outlaws.
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From my viewpoint and as I can, you'll let me know, but I think
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that the majority of scholars, whether of faith or not, believe
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there was a Jesus that lived during that time period.
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The question is of his claims or the church claims.
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So the notion of did do you believe in Jesus?
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I always didn't like that phrase because it goes right along with
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you believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
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Well, do you believe in Santa Claus?
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Well, there was a Saint Nicholas.
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You can take something to its root.
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Do you believe in Jesus 100% and most historians I think do so.
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How this conversation is kind of outside of the claims of
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Christianity and of himself. But yeah, how can you put into
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context for the layperson in this brief time we have of just
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how do we know that this person existed?
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For for the lay believer, I think we have to start.
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I mean we do start with faith, that is, that is there.
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If if you want to talk about what kind of material culture
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that we have as evidence of the life of Jesus, the short answer
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is we have zero of him personally when he walks on the
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earth. And that's not surprising
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because archaeology is a field we tend to focus on time in
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chunks of hundreds or even thousands of years.
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Jesus only. On the earth for 33 years.
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And when you look at what the Bible describes his life as,
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everything he did was action. He was moving during his
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ministry, You know, he was walking around.
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So he didn't leave behind a church for us to find or a
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synagogue for us to find or a house for us to find or anything
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like that. His, his miracles were things
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that would not have left evidence typically.
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So that is not something for us to be discouraged by that.
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That is just a fact. What we see in the scriptures
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though is a an accurate historical description of what
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life looks like during the 1st century.
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And we do have an absolute ton of archaeology from what would
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be called the Roman period. And so you can go and that there
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are mosaics, there are there's there's evidence that the world
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that is being described there, the world that Jesus lived in,
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existed in the way that it is described the struggles that the
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Jews were going. Going through at the time, the
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the difficulties they were having with the Romans as far as
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autonomy you could could, they rule themselves the wars that
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they would get into shortly after Jesus's life.
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All of that is is born out. In other historical records we
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have Josephus, of course, who is actually an unreliable narrator,
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but you still we can learn a ton from everything he left behind.
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So webby Josephus historian at the time.
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What was his role? He was not a believer and and
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then why do you say that his you know, Bay or may not be
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accurate? So he was a Jew and he was
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fighting against the Romans and he basically lost his battle.
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I'm I'm, I'm cutting through a lot of the history here.
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The listed version he lost, but then he basically ends up going
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and working for the Romans, and the Romans Commission him to
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write the history of the Jews. And So what he writes is
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essentially Roman propaganda. Right.
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There's a lot in there that is that is historically accurate,
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but we have to recognize that there's a slant and there's a
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bias in there. Also, we have realized because
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of archaeology that a lot of what he described actually was
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not accurate. Great example of that or a.
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Very sad example of that is the story of Masada.
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He describes Masada as having a palace up at the top, and it is
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from him that we get the story that there was a mass suicide of
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the Jews before the Romans invaded there.
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Well, what archaeologists have found is there are actually
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three palaces up there. And the way that Josephus
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described Masada only proves that he never actually saw it
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for himself. I don't know what source
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material he was drawing from, but he told a story.
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That ended up painting the Jews in a particular way that was
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beneficial to the Romans. Did A debate still rages as to
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whether or not the the great Suicide event happened.
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Most people say now, no, that's probably not what happened.
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What we find up there are pottery shirts that people's
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names written on them, and for a long time those were interpreted
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to go along with what Josephus said, because not a lot of
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archaeological work had been done at the time.
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And the idea was that those shirts would.
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Had been dropped into a bag, names would have been drawn.
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And as names were drawn, those people went and they killed
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groups of people until at the end there were only 10 men left
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and they drew names and until there was just one person left
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standing who was supposed to commit suicide.
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So there's the story that he tells.
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Shirts have been found. But the way shirts get dropped
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in, we see this throughout the Bible.
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We actually see it in the Old Testament.
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That is how governance happened among the Israelites and then
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later the Jews. We see this with the way Saul is
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chosen as king is shirt when it taught.
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When the Bible talks about casting lots, a lot of us tend
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to think that, you know, that's rolling dice.
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That's actually not what's being described.
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The lot would be the shirt that would actually be cast into a
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bag. And so what's actually a better,
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better. Translation there would be
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something more like drawing lots, so a lot would be drawn
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out well. So the finding these these
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shirts at Masada is not evidence that his story is accurate, it's
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evidence that some sort of governance was going on there
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somehow they were making decisions and ruling amongst
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themselves. But the main thing is we don't
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find the the kind of skeletal remains.
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That you would expect to find so right and that that's the
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primary thing right there is you there is there was number
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evidence of this mass suicide event up there actually so.
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We can learn a lot, but we need to take Josephus, and really any
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writer, myself included, you want to take everybody with a
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grain of salt. It's so important to know where
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writers come from, what their biases are, what their blind
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spots are, what they know. And and that's also why writers,
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over time, you know our thoughts and everything it it should
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change. We should all change and grow as
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we learn more and as we internalize all of that.
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So Josephus, wonderful source, but remember.
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In propaganda. Yeah, yeah.
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And I want to focus on the archaeology.
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But I do want to point out, isn't that one of the arguments
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of the accuracy of the New Testament writers in that?
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Or the probability of what they said could be true in that if Go
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Cephas is writing in a favorable light, the Rome, these writers
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wrote in an unfavorable light for themselves over and over
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again, which doesn't fit that. The anonym history writing
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absolutely. So their writing lines up with
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history and they did the not typical so it all of their
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errors faults. What archaeology and comparative
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literature really shows us is that what we have in the Gospels
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is. Completely plausible.
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There's no reason for us to doubt it on for historical
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reasons. There's nothing really
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surprising in there. Even the discussions of when you
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look at Judas and Zealot, and it's debated exactly which form
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of zealotry was being followed at the time.
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There were multiple factions at the time, but those little words
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that are just slipped in there, there's so much history behind
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them. And those are words that you
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know, 30 years later and and longer would result in in the
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Jewish wars and. These revolts.
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And so all of that was known to the writers of the Bible and
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they'll make references to things that were happening for
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them contemporary that we don't understand because they don't
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take the time to explain. Now what I mean by Zealot is,
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you know, this is what's happening with us historically
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because these writers knew, knew what was going on.
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They knew their readers would know what was going on.
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So they didn't waste time on that.
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What they told us about was Jesus.
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That that was the point there And so even the absence of some
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of those historical. Details is absolutely expected
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to. Be an assumption?
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If it was overly explained, then you'd wonder why.
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Yeah, right. But in talking in actual
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archaeology, things have been dug up as far as maybe not Jesus
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himself, but some of the other people, right?
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Some of the other characters, if you will, in the stories like Ki
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FS. So the Ki FS.
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Costly, wary. Did I pronounce that right?
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Yeah, what about that? Does that legit?
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And who is he? Yeah, I think so.
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Caiaphas was one of the rulers at the time.
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He was, would have been head priest at the time.
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That particular artifact, it's it doesn't smack a fakery to me.
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But anytime anything isn't found in situ, and that is what often
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happens with a lot of osuaries, especially when you look at the
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James Osuary, then there's. Always.
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Oh, I'm sorry, Institute. Institute means failed in place,
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right? So failed archaeological
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excavations are. More and more scientific as the
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years go by. At this point, anytime anything
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is found in the ground, we're not just photographing it and
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making drawings the way that we were when I first started in
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2004, but things actually get tapped and tagged and located by
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GPS there. It's actually located in 4
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dimensions. We know the exact time and the
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exact location when everything is coming up out of the ground,
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and so that is very important for comparing artifacts as they
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come out and helping us understand.
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Stand the timeline of the history what what is up close to
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the top is going to be newer. What is down toward the bottom
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is going to be older. And so you want to find
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something in situ because the artifact itself while.
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An osciuary is a really cool find, especially if it's intact,
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if it has writing on it, you can learn something from the
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artifact itself, but you can learn even more from what was
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around it. And so you want to know, well,
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OK, it's the the, the osciuary says Caiaphas.
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It doesn't say high Priest, which is a little bit curious.
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You would maybe expect that to be found there.
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Well, so if we know that around him were people who were members
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of his family. Specifically men who were in his
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family then that lean that helps us to better understand it.
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This is just any old cyphus or if this is the one that we're
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thinking of, who was high priest?
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And then you know, also you can see what happened around it.
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How was it buried, you know, what kinds of tools were used?
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Were there any sort of. This is less so with New
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Testament stuff, but when you go to the Old Testament time period
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where they're grave goods in there and you can learn not just
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about the people in death, but you can learn a lot about what
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they were like in life too. So any time an artifact comes to
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market and isn't found in the ground first, then it's going to
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throw up question marks. And you're never, no matter how
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many scientific tests are run, no matter how many people come
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out in support of it, you're never going to 100% know for
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sure. That it's not a fakery, not a
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fake. Because fakers are really,
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really, really good at what they do.
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Because when they do a good job, they know that they can make 10s
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and even hundreds of millions of dollars on an artifact.
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So their their, their science is just as advanced as the
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archaeologists are. And sadly maybe more so
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sometimes and. Then Oshiwari is, so if I've got
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this right. Someone would pass away.
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You do lay them in a tomb until all of their flesh is rotted
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away, and then you gather up the bones and you put them in a bone
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box, which is the osuary, yes. And then you assume that they're
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writing description of who this person is, or maybe what family
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they come from, Hopefully. Yes, and is that.
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Common Or is that for a wealthier class?
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Or is that kind of? How often was that?
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That's really common the how ornate the boxes are in the 1st
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century tends to and how how precious maybe the stone is if
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it was an easily available stone or you know if it was something
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that got shipped in from somewhere.
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They're going to be grades with anything.
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I mean honestly if you go to a cemetery today and look at the
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differences in tombstones that you see there, it's it's going
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to vary based on preference and and maybe that the finances of
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the person who is buried there in the family.
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But the practice itself is ancient and you get the stone
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ossuaries by the by the time of the Roman era of the 1st
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century. But prior to that with more Old
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Testament time going all the way back to David.
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If you, if you look in, if you look in Samuel, whenever a good
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king would die, it would give the record of his life and it
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would you know, it would say, you know King David ruled for 40
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years before he was buried, before he was gathered to his
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father's. And that is a euphemism for.
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Death. But that is also literally what
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happened. And so we find in older time
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period these caves where yes a body would be laid out in the
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center, there would be sometimes niches in the wall and as as the
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bones were loosened, the bones would be gathered together.
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Sometimes they would just be placed in the niches.
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But more often what you would see is them going into what we
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call infra, really large jars. And so when you say.
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Actuary, I think most of us tend to think of the stone ones that
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come from the 1st century, but there are tons of actuaries from
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hundreds and even 1000 years prior to that.
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So that is a very long standing tradition of burial among the
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Israelites and then later the Jews.
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I'm burying off of the Jesus topic, but you made me, so it's
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your fault. David related to Jesus.
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It's, yeah, it's yeah, it enhanced stuff there.
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So David's Doom, I've been to that.
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But that's it, right? Have they ever found what they
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believe is the bold of David or is that it?
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Yeah, I didn't. Think so, David and Solomon, if
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when I was an undergrad. I was taught that the scholarly
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community at that time basically didn't even believe they existed
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because up until 1994 there was 0 what we call extra biblical
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evidence of Solomon or David. That changed in 1994 with the
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discovery, the discovery of what's called the Tell Dan Stela
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and it mentions on there it has the words House of David.
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That's the first time David was ever found.
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Any artifact is going to be argued about by lots and lots of
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professors, but because we went so long without having this
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extra biblical material evidence of them.
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Something developed called the low chronology, and there is a
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group of scholars out there, although this thankfully is
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falling out of favor as more is being found.
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But the Low Chronology basically takes David and Solomon out of
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the historical record, slams historical record together and
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gives all of the building accomplishments of Solomon to
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Ahab, and then it takes David and.
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People who follow that, they may say, yeah, maybe he was an
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historical character, but they want to make him instead into a
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tribal leader or something like that.
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And so they don't give him any credit for the city of David or
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anything like that. And so no, there's there's very
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little physical evidence of David or Solomon.
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Thankful David specifically Solomon we have more I I do not
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follow the low chronology. I believe they were historical
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figures and I see in artifacts that there's plenty of evidence
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especially of Solomon and that being really in the cities that
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he built the cities of Megiddo Gezzar and Hots or are
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impressive and they were sort of new in the way that they were
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created at the time with these they they were they were they
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were military outposts they housed hundreds of horses large
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cavalries all of this they. Had gates that weren't just 4
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chambers like you were seeing in cities prior to those.
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They were six chambered gates. They were really very
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impressive. And there is theme during the
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time of Solomon that to me matches up not just among the
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cities that he's building but also with the historical account
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of all of this money flooding into Israel while he is a king.
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Because the Kingdom is united under him, because of all of the
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trade that is happening with all of the different cultures that
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you you see described in the Bible and then also there.
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Is evidence from other cultures of their interactions with
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Israel too. As I was saying earlier, it's
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hard to pin it down to just maybe the reign of Solomon, but
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you see a lot from that Iron Age period that is being described
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in the Bible. So to me there's there's plenty
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of evidence of both of them, though not their owns.
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Right, right. So around Jesus, what are the
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most convincing or maybe eye opening discoveries that if.
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Come out of the dirt around the Life and Times, or even the
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stories, out of the Gospels. For me it's It's really the most
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recent one and that's Magdala. Because with Magdala, Magdala
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was only uncovered about 10 years ago the the city of Migdal
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and it's it's a modern very very small blink and you miss it city
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right along the Sea of Galilee. The people who lived there
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wanted to build a new structure and so they sent in the heavy
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equipment as you do to start excavating things in a
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construction kind of way not in an archaeology way and they they
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just started scratching in about 6 inches below the surface they.
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Found these amazing mosaics and the Catholic Church came in for
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I believe it's a Franciscan order came in took charge and
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they are doing a lot of archaeological work there And
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what they have found is an actual synagogue from the time
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that that Jesus was speaking in the area that that has come out
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of the ground and that was untouched with.
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Most of our Christian artifacts, if you in artifacts isn't really
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a word relic, maybe a better word.
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When you go to the holy lands and you go to see the Christian
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places, what you typically see are churches built on top of
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places someone said something great happened in.
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You don't get a lot of physical remains coming out that we know
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were from that time because layers of building happened on
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top of it. What's coming out of Magdala was
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actually there and the Bible doesn't tell us that Jesus went
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to Magdalen. Spoke.
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But it does talk about all of the places around the Sea of
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Galilee and in in Galilee where he went and spoke.
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And for me going there and seeing all that, that was the
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closest. I kind of felt because they
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pulled an entire synagogue out, that the stones around it are
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still there. The lectern is still there.
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The the mosaic floors are amazing because around 100 there
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was a an earthquake that went through there and when the
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earthquake happened it rolled the floor.
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Floors, as earthquakes do. And then once the earthquake was
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over, it froze in time. You still have the roles there.
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From where the earthquake went through.
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It has been untouched by archaeologists, by grave
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robbers, by absolutely anybody else.
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And so you can see then. It tells us a lot, I guess more
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about Mary, Mary of Magdala, because they talk about her
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somehow being wealthy. The details are scant, but you
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look at Magdale, it was an incredibly wealthy city.
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You can tell by the sizes of the houses that were there.
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You can tell by the fish markets, the multiple fish
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markets that they had at the place.
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And then their focus on on their religion, on Judaism at the
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time, was very, very important because you you have this
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massive synagogue, but then you also have these things.
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Called Mikva Mikva, the Plurals, Mick Vote.
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They're these bads that have to have running waters in them and
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so the people who created these. Well, over 2000 years ago they
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went and they dug down until they found running groundwater
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and they built these. The water still runs in them
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today. If you go and visit, they
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actually have pumps down into these things trying to pump the
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water out of them so that they can preserve them for people to
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be able to come see them because so much money and effort and
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ingenuity went into that and so seeing that city.
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You see how what Jewish life was like at the time.
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And to me, that helps me understand where Jesus came
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from, who he was talking to and what his world really looks
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like. So that's to me, I would much
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rather see that than, you know, see another church or something
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like that built over an area. That's that's the stuff that
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just really gets me excited. What is the?
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Pilot Stone. So of course, pilot being
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Pontius pilot, a Roman governor or prefect at the time who's
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famous for questioning Jesus, claiming he was innocent and
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sending him to his crucifixion. Yeah, what is the pilot Stone?
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It it is a stone that has Thor pilot on it.
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Archaeologists, we are not super creative with what we call
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things. Look stone with pilot on it.
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Let's call it pilot stone. It all goes.
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It probably would have been the cornerstone of a building that
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he would have built. You know how that works.
00:22:06
You you've set a cornerstone to something and you put a date on
00:22:09
it or you you say who was in charge of doing that sort of
00:22:11
thing. We can't be sure because
00:22:13
technically it was not found in situ.
00:22:16
It was found in what we call a secondary context.
00:22:19
Actually the same thing with the tell Dan Stela that I mentioned
00:22:22
before that had House of David written on it that was actually
00:22:26
found. Secondary context as well the
00:22:29
the, the pilot stone was taken and it was used in the
00:22:33
production of a later building at a later time.
00:22:35
So what probably happened is whatever building it was that
00:22:39
originally that stone was put into would have been destroyed
00:22:42
probably around 70 when when Rome came in and destroyed
00:22:45
Jerusalem. Well, stones, I mean unless that
00:22:48
particular stone was cracked, they tend to kind of.
00:22:51
Stick around. And so then they get reused.
00:22:53
And that's something we see a lot in archaeology.
00:22:56
Even with a building of walls, people would start building the
00:23:00
foundation of a wall, digging down for it, and they'd run
00:23:03
across stones that were used by previous occupants of that city.
00:23:07
Instead of going and finding more stones, they just pull
00:23:09
those old ones up and stick them in their new wall.
00:23:12
And that's what happened with the Toldan Steeler.
00:23:16
Is there a ring they think might have been pilots?
00:23:19
I don't know. I don't know it's possible.
00:23:22
Caught you on that one, so I won't.
00:23:23
I'll let it out once I catch you on.
00:23:25
But since we stopped there, I just realized I didn't plug in
00:23:28
my laptop. So this is a good place to
00:23:29
pause. Hold on.
00:23:30
I'd rather take a break than you go.
00:23:34
Hold on. Hell yeah.
00:23:54
Oops. Yep, he's still there.
00:23:59
You're frozen. Oh oh, it's it's working its way
00:24:01
back. It's pixelating and it's
00:24:03
figuring it out. Sorry about that.
00:24:06
Yeah, it looked at him like, why is my battery though?
00:24:07
I shouldn't be on battery. Today's the day where I had am
00:24:12
I? I do have a full time job.
00:24:15
I'm a marketing director and oh. So I had another meeting with
00:24:19
another laptop and I had swapped it out and I forgot to plug this
00:24:21
one back in. I understand.
00:24:24
All right. I do not have another job.
00:24:26
This is, yeah, I make aggressively negative incomes.
00:24:34
Yeah. But it's my passion.
00:24:36
Yeah. All right.
00:24:39
So if they don't have the printer, I don't have all those
00:24:41
little notes of things. We'll just, am I still
00:24:44
recording, Okay? So I, as you know, I'm a fan of
00:24:49
your podcast now and I haven't listened to all of them, but I
00:24:52
am going to. Some are better than others.
00:24:55
There's a learning curve with podcasting.
00:24:59
Yeah, yeah, for sure. How you listen to audio book
00:25:02
fill up and I'm driving you're in you and fro and yeah I really
00:25:07
like your podcast. Thanks.
00:25:08
You don't go too much information but it's so much
00:25:12
they're like podcasts you have to go back and listen to again
00:25:15
to just the. But yeah, I like the historical
00:25:18
context. All the information you give and
00:25:21
in a non, I don't want to say nerdy way, but I guess I don't
00:25:26
know how else to say it if that's.
00:25:28
Okay. You know what?
00:25:30
I'm saying I appreciate that I got to go to school and study
00:25:37
all of this stuff and. There's so much that gets
00:25:41
trapped up in the Academy that doesn't make it out to the
00:25:44
general public. That doesn't make it out and do
00:25:46
our churches. And this is the stuff that I
00:25:49
love because this is what brings the Bible alive to me.
00:25:52
The the physical stuff and it's it encourages me to interact
00:25:55
with the text even more And that's that's how God and I
00:26:00
talk. And I I want, I want to be able
00:26:03
to share that with people I. There's a member of my family
00:26:07
who said to me before something along the lines of, well, I'm
00:26:10
just not smart enough to understand what you're talking
00:26:12
about. And 1st off, she is.
00:26:15
She absolutely is. For some reason she thinks that
00:26:19
and I don't want anyone to ever feel like they're not smart
00:26:23
enough to understand the Bible. That's not it.
00:26:26
And also I I don't want people to think it's just boring
00:26:29
because it's not. I mean, it's it's.
00:26:31
It's history. I I love general history,
00:26:34
period. But it's it's people's lives and
00:26:37
stories. But I mean it's also, it's also
00:26:40
scripture, it's holy scripture. So it's something we should fall
00:26:44
in love with. And if material culture can help
00:26:46
us to do that, then I want to share that with people.
00:26:49
I want people to know what things mean, what strange words
00:26:52
mean, what these customs were, what was going on in history.
00:26:55
Because all of that is the context against which, you know,
00:26:59
we've been given scripture. Yeah.
00:27:01
Yeah, I mean the Bible can be looked at as some big Rama's
00:27:05
book that flex dust somewhere, you know, and it's just some old
00:27:08
thing of rules for old people. But if it is what it says it is,
00:27:12
it's written by through centuries, through people, by
00:27:17
one source, higher. Some kind of, I hate to use the
00:27:22
word alien, but by some kind of upspeared being right that spoke
00:27:26
through people. Yeah, inspiration.
00:27:29
Inspiration that is divine. People always asking like, I do
00:27:35
this, I don't understand God, or I'm searching for God or this or
00:27:37
that. And it's like he wrote a book.
00:27:40
He wrote it through human history.
00:27:42
When he wrote it through people's lives.
00:27:44
That all weaves together. And it's not a big boring book.
00:27:48
It's 66 individual books written throughout time by different
00:27:53
people in different places that all work together and you don't
00:27:57
understand the world you're living in.
00:27:59
If you don't understand what's in there, because all
00:28:03
civilizations have been built on some kind of belief system, and
00:28:10
those belief systems in general are referenced in scripture, at
00:28:14
least you can get a general concept of what everyone
00:28:17
believes and why, and then there's a counter belief and it
00:28:21
tells you to go that way. But yeah, I don't think you're
00:28:25
an educated person no matter your degrees, if you don't at
00:28:28
least know what's. What's in scripture?
00:28:31
And like you're saying, not a criticism to the church or say,
00:28:35
but it gets capsulized down at these messages that you don't
00:28:40
get the context of what what you're doing or some of the
00:28:43
things I like to talk about on the program are only because you
00:28:46
don't really find them in the church.
00:28:49
People's stories, their experiences, their where you're
00:28:52
allowed to ask questions and be real.
00:28:57
Questioning is so important, and there are parts of Scripture
00:29:01
that we don't understand on the surface.
00:29:04
Some of that, I think is because our culture is so completely
00:29:08
different from from the cultures in which those different books
00:29:12
were written. But also some of what is
00:29:15
described is just all, all of the the wars and the genocide,
00:29:18
especially that happens in the Old Testament.
00:29:21
That's just not palatable. That's not comfortable to us.
00:29:24
We don't like it. Well, God knows that we don't
00:29:27
like it, but it's in there. And I ask, all right, I try to
00:29:32
encourage people that when you find places in Scripture that
00:29:34
you don't understand or that you don't like, instead of running
00:29:38
away from it, try to press into it.
00:29:40
And you know, try to learn more about what may be the context,
00:29:45
be it literary or historical, and and you're going to discover
00:29:49
something. About God.
00:29:51
As a result of doing that extra little bit of work to really dig
00:29:55
into the word I, I do think that Scripture is intentionally
00:30:00
mysterious there. There are still words in there,
00:30:03
especially in the Hebrew I I worked on a Bible translation
00:30:06
for seven years, and there are words in the Old Testament that
00:30:10
do not occur anywhere else. We can't be 100% sure of what
00:30:13
they mean. People debate these things, but.
00:30:18
We need to keep trying to figure that out.
00:30:21
There's there's nothing wrong with saying we aren't 100% sure
00:30:25
with the translation of this should be I I think that mystery
00:30:28
is there. If we knew absolutely everything
00:30:31
about God, well then would he still be God?
00:30:36
That that mystery is is part of who he is so.
00:30:41
This Jesus of Nazareth was He lived.
00:30:47
He was executed by the Romans and he was buried.
00:30:52
I believe those are historical facts.
00:30:54
And where was he buried? We don't know, Okay.
00:31:00
People will tell you that they know, but we don't know.
00:31:03
And. Honestly, I've been to two of
00:31:06
them and I didn't know about the 3rd until I listened to your
00:31:08
podcast. OK, so there are three kind of
00:31:12
declared sites of Jesus's burial.
00:31:15
The most famous is in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
00:31:19
And that is it's controlled by different factions of the
00:31:23
church. But the way that came to be
00:31:26
there is when Helen and and let me let me start by saying I am
00:31:31
not Catholic. And so for me to talk about the
00:31:34
Saints and to talk about holy relics and that sort of thing
00:31:38
they they don't really have a lot of.
00:31:41
Spiritual meaning for me because I'm I'm not of that tradition.
00:31:44
I I came from a Protestant tradition but historically St.
00:31:48
Helena went and talked to people in the area and people would
00:31:53
tell her, you know, hey this happened here this happened
00:31:55
there and so anytime someone would tell her of an act of
00:31:59
Jesus that. Helena being Helena wife.
00:32:03
The Mother of Constantine. Mother of.
00:32:05
Yes, mother of So she she goes over there and she.
00:32:12
People start telling her these are the places that things
00:32:14
happen as she starts commissioning churches to go up
00:32:17
in those places. Overtime, with all the wars in
00:32:20
the area, a lot of those original churches end up getting
00:32:23
destroyed or at least needs to be remodeled or something like
00:32:26
that. But these these traditions, a
00:32:28
lot of them continue. As I say to me, it's her
00:32:31
tradition. So that's where we get the
00:32:33
church. The Holy Sepulchre is from her.
00:32:36
The second place that you can visit is maybe, if you want to
00:32:40
think of it as like the Protestant response to Saint
00:32:44
Rona. That is the garden tomb, which
00:32:48
is, I mean, you can walk there. It's not very far away.
00:32:51
It's next to a bus station. It I encourage everyone to go.
00:32:55
It is a. Yeah.
00:32:56
In my office, right over here on a piano, I have one of the
00:32:59
little. Communion cups they give you
00:33:01
from there. It's it's beautiful.
00:33:03
It's it's an Oasis in the middle of a hot Stony city.
00:33:07
I should also say I've only ever been to Israel in June, July and
00:33:10
August because that's when archaeological excavations
00:33:12
happen. So I think of it as a beautiful,
00:33:15
cool place. But it's possible if you go
00:33:17
another year or other times of the year, you might have a
00:33:20
different experience. I'm not sure, but it's.
00:33:23
It's a nice cool area and you you'll get taken on a little
00:33:27
tour there with tour guides who will point out they'll point out
00:33:33
basically rock formations and try to argue that this
00:33:37
particular tomb that is cut there would have actually been
00:33:41
where Jesus was late instead. Archaeologically it doesn't work
00:33:46
everything that has. And dug out from there, we can
00:33:49
tell is actually from much, much later than than when Jesus died
00:33:53
and resurrected. So it it doesn't fit from an
00:33:56
archaeological perspective. And then the third site is
00:34:00
actually in East Jerusalem and it's a place called E Halpyat.
00:34:05
It is a little community. So people about 20 or 30 years
00:34:10
ago now I'm not sure what time flies the community was going to
00:34:14
build some apartments build some high rises and.
00:34:17
As happens all the time in Israel, once you start digging
00:34:20
you find artifacts because they're just everywhere.
00:34:22
And what they found were were tombs, basically like we were
00:34:28
talking about earlier with the osuaries they found these, the
00:34:32
the caves that had niches carved out that had osuaries inside of
00:34:37
them, and the names on those osuaries match the names of.
00:34:42
People in Jesus's family, and there is one with Jesus's name
00:34:47
on it. And so if you don't have to look
00:34:50
very hard, if you search for this, you'll find documentaries
00:34:52
out there about how this is the tomb of Jesus.
00:34:56
I I don't interpret it that way. This is from about the right
00:35:00
time period. My interpretation of this is
00:35:04
that this was probably a very early Christian family.
00:35:07
The names that are there, there's multiple Marys, Joseph,
00:35:12
all of the names that are there were very common in the 1st
00:35:14
century. And so most, most, most Jewish
00:35:19
families had women named Mary in them because Mary was their
00:35:23
version of Miriam. These were women who were being
00:35:26
named after Moses sister. So it's it.
00:35:30
You know, it's people looking at the tomb and saying 1 + 1 = 3.
00:35:35
I try not to do that to me. I I I think it does show though
00:35:40
the the prevalence of early Christianity at the time, how
00:35:43
important it was. These people could have been
00:35:45
named after members of Jesus's family after apostles.
00:35:48
There are early Christian symbols that are found down in
00:35:51
there. So that's a third place.
00:35:52
People who don't believe he was resurrected will say that they
00:35:55
have found actually his osciuary there.
00:35:58
Another potentially. Interesting thing about this
00:36:01
find. You may have heard of the James
00:36:03
Osuary. Sure, that came to light.
00:36:06
I was in college, so it was in 2002 I believe, when it hit the
00:36:11
market and it was an osuary that.
00:36:16
A very well known antiquities dealer in Jerusalem got a hold
00:36:20
of actually in the 70s and he just held on to it until he
00:36:24
decided to put it to market and it's it, says James.
00:36:29
Brother, brother, no, wait. James James, brother of Jesus.
00:36:35
Yes, that's what I said. And So what is debated about it?
00:36:38
First off, it was not found in situ.
00:36:40
It sat in the back of the guy's closet for 30 years or so before
00:36:43
he brought it to market. And there is there.
00:36:48
Continues to be debate about whether or not it is real and
00:36:51
whether or not the inscription on there is real.
00:36:55
What is neat to me though is this other tomb that was found
00:36:57
in East Talpiat. There is basically 1 hole where
00:37:02
an osuary is missing and you could tell it had been pulled
00:37:04
out. And So what some people have
00:37:07
theorized is that actually that James Osuary probably came from
00:37:11
that E Talpiot tomb because there wasn't another James among
00:37:14
there. So the one thing we may have
00:37:16
actually failed with this tomb. Is where the James Austribury
00:37:19
came from. But again, it's all gonna be
00:37:21
theory because unless stuff is failed in situ, then there's too
00:37:26
many opportunities for people to get in there and and make
00:37:28
forgeries. And that's just a that's just a
00:37:31
shame. Yeah, I remember being I haven't
00:37:36
been. It was a long time since I've
00:37:37
been in Israel. But was it Peter's home that
00:37:40
they have? How do, how would they know?
00:37:43
That's Peter's home in Coperno. So similar to the Saint Helena's
00:37:48
stuff, but not as new there. What has come out of the ground,
00:37:55
so when they started excavating it.
00:37:57
They could tell that it was being used as a church and as
00:38:01
they started peeling off the layers of, if if you want to
00:38:04
think about, you know, a building that has lots of
00:38:05
wallpaper on it, as it started peeling off the first central
00:38:08
equivalent of the wallpaper, they could tell that walls had
00:38:12
been moved and the building had been changed over time and that
00:38:15
prior to it being a church, it was actually a home.
00:38:18
And so there by the 2nd century, when it was being used as a
00:38:23
church, there was already the tradition that that was Peter's
00:38:26
home. So it's it's yeah, it's the same
00:38:30
thing as how Helena picked her spots.
00:38:32
But it's a lot closer in history.
00:38:35
So I I have less trouble believing that that actually may
00:38:39
have been Peterson then I do, you know, trusting some of the
00:38:44
other Catholic sites. Tradition or oral tradition is
00:38:49
not 100%, but it's way more reliable than we would think of
00:38:52
it as today, right? Because they weren't.
00:38:54
Most people didn't. Read They passed on even God's
00:38:58
laws and scripture by oral tradition that this was
00:39:02
something they lived by faith. And so it wasn't just like I
00:39:08
have a terrible memory and you know, I'm trying to relay a
00:39:10
story. You play, play the phone.
00:39:12
What is it? Operator or whatever, where you,
00:39:14
you know, you go around and it changes that this was something
00:39:17
they were good at. Yes, yeah, definitely.
00:39:20
And for. For Peter's house, you don't
00:39:24
really see a reason why they would have lied about that
00:39:27
necessarily. Like it seems like a very
00:39:30
natural progression of the building there.
00:39:33
It fits with with time. We know Peter was historical
00:39:36
character. There's not a lot of question
00:39:38
there. With St.
00:39:39
Helena, you have to consider we're talking 300 years later,
00:39:44
so a lot more lost or changed in 300 years than say 100 years.
00:39:48
And you also have the mother of the emperor who's coming through
00:39:53
here with the stated goal of trying to find holy relics and
00:39:57
holy locations. And she's going into these
00:39:59
communities asking this question.
00:40:01
And so, I mean, there's going to be, I think, a little bit of
00:40:03
peer pressure to be like, Oh yeah, look at the little thing
00:40:06
over there. This is such happened over there
00:40:08
to keep her happy. There's there's lots of it.
00:40:12
These weren't. Necessarily organic traditions
00:40:16
that were just passed down there very quickly was a state-run
00:40:20
element that that got mixed up in all of that money to she's
00:40:24
going to be building a church here.
00:40:25
Oh well you know we're we're into construction we can make
00:40:28
some money off of this. Let's tell her yeah, yeah, we
00:40:30
need to build church over here. So there's just lots of room for
00:40:33
manipulation and all that to happen there.
00:40:36
Plus I I kind of like to tell the story in in my family.
00:40:41
I have one branch of my family who is related to President
00:40:43
James. Madison and so much so that my
00:40:46
grandmother, her name was Ann Madison.
00:40:49
Madison has been a woman's name in my family for many years,
00:40:52
long before it was popular. And we have this video from when
00:40:57
was Maddie born? Like 1990 when my my cousin was
00:41:01
born. It was her first.
00:41:02
Actually, it was her first birthday.
00:41:03
And my grandmother is sitting there talking to Maddie's other
00:41:07
grandmother and explaining to her why her name is Maddie and
00:41:11
this, you know, great, wonderful tradition of history.
00:41:14
And our family, we are directly descended from Dolly Madison.
00:41:19
And we failed this video after my grandmother passed away going
00:41:22
through her things. And I'm sitting here with a few
00:41:24
members of my family and we're watching it and we're all like,
00:41:27
wait, what? That's insane.
00:41:29
First off, why would you say Dolly Madison instead of James
00:41:32
Madison? I think most people would would
00:41:35
reference the president instead of Dolly.
00:41:36
But bigger than that, Dolly and James Madison never had
00:41:39
children. We are not directly descended
00:41:41
from James Madison. No one is.
00:41:44
We're actually related to his brother, but that's, you know,
00:41:47
roughly about 200 years of tradition that got passed down
00:41:51
through time. And my grandmother, she was
00:41:54
saying it in full belief. She thought that was absolutely
00:41:57
accurate. We just happened to know her
00:41:59
history maybe a little bit better than granny did.
00:42:01
And then, you know, there's been subsequent work on her genealogy
00:42:04
and all that. But that just kind of shows how
00:42:07
what is. What was true had a kernel of
00:42:10
truth, even just in 200 years, even among family it can kind of
00:42:14
grow and change. So oral oral tradition is not
00:42:19
infallible, but and it certainly was very, very important in the
00:42:24
ancient world. OK, I have to ask this your
00:42:28
brief opinion on the infamous drought of tourist.
00:42:33
OK, I don't. I think it's fake.
00:42:37
I don't think it's real. This the shroud has gone through
00:42:41
carbon dating testing and carbon dating is not perfect, but it
00:42:48
really is very, very good. It is not going to tell you the
00:42:52
the day that a frog kicked the bucket, but it's gonna get you
00:42:55
within 100 years of it. Typically.
00:42:58
And so the carbon that take, the carbon dating that was done on
00:43:02
the material, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say it's been almost 50
00:43:05
years now since the new sort of testing had been done.
00:43:08
It said that the material was dated to, I believe around the
00:43:12
12th century, something like that.
00:43:13
Carbon dating has improved since then.
00:43:18
We have like turn microscopes. We have so much more science and
00:43:20
technology now. It would be really great to go
00:43:23
back and retest the Shroud of Turin now, but we can't because
00:43:28
the Catholic Church doesn't allow that to happen.
00:43:31
And I think that's sort of the big question in the
00:43:34
archaeological community is if you really do believe this is
00:43:37
authentic, why not let us try, why not let us see if if
00:43:42
actually the carbon dating? Would agree.
00:43:45
Now after it's improved after all this time let us take a look
00:43:48
at that blood. The the big debate over the
00:43:51
years has been is it blood or is it paint with pigments And
00:43:55
that's something we could certainly suss out now the but
00:44:00
the the way it's held in secrecy is really the reason because we
00:44:05
don't have scientific as many scientific answers as we would
00:44:08
like. That's really the reason I look
00:44:10
at it as a piece of art. As much as we know now, I think
00:44:14
it probably was medieval and it it holds a lot of value.
00:44:19
I'm not one to throw out traditions and art with the
00:44:23
bathwater just because it didn't come out of the ground.
00:44:25
Just because it's not archaeological doesn't mean that
00:44:28
it doesn't have value. I see the shroud of turn is
00:44:30
teaching us a lot about our Christian ancestors.
00:44:34
That was really important to someone that assuming it is
00:44:38
created, that was really important enough to someone that
00:44:41
they wanted, you know? To make this and that so it it
00:44:46
doesn't have to be without value, but it also it is not
00:44:51
proof of Jesus and we also as Christians we don't need that.
00:44:58
I I talk sometimes about the Bible's big three, the big three
00:45:01
missing artifacts that I think we all would love to find.
00:45:04
Noah's Ark, the Ark of the Covenant and.
00:45:08
The cup. The the, the Holy Grail.
00:45:10
We all love to find those. If those were actually found, I
00:45:13
will admit it. I would be the first person in
00:45:15
line to go to that museum and check it out.
00:45:18
I would want to see it. But actually finding any of
00:45:21
those artifacts shouldn't impact our faith in any way.
00:45:25
We should already have that faith.
00:45:28
So yeah, they they would be really, really awesome to find.
00:45:32
But not, not necessary, not necessary for us as believers.
00:45:38
Well, I want to wrap this up before you tell me there's no
00:45:40
Santa Claus and. I would never do that.
00:45:45
Gavin among the outlaws, he said.
00:45:47
Come follow me. People from all walks alive
00:45:50
since have been becoming outlaws.