#135 [EN] Dale Martin - A historical look at the New Testament and early Christianity

Data: Thu, 15 Dec 2022 05:30:00 +0000  ·  Duração: 01:22:40

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Dale Martin 00:00:00.00Este episódio com o Dale Martin começa logo depois da próxima introdução em português. 00:00:30.00Este é um episódio que tem um ângulo especial e que, suspeito, vai interessar a muitos. 00:00:35.20O convidado, Dale Martin, é professor na Universidade de Yale, nos Estados Unidos, e tem uma especialidade académica tão incomum, tão pouco familiar nos nossos lados, que nem temos, que eu saiba, uma expressão corrente para ele em português. 00:00:47.56O convidado é aquilo que em inglês se designa por New Testament Scholar, ou seja, um investigador que se dedica ao estudo do Novo Testamento e das origens do Cristianismo sob um ponto de vista histórico. 00:00:57.22Dale Martin tem uma longa carreira de investigador nesta área, com vários livros publicados sobre diversos aspectos do Novo Testamento e do início do Cristianismo. 00:01:05.14E pode encontrar também online, no YouTube, os vídeos de uma cadeira que o convidado deu em Yale sobre, precisamente, a história do Novo Testamento e do Cristianismo. 00:01:13.20E é justamente nessa cadeira que tem origem a esta conversa. 00:01:16.10É que há uns anos eu encontrei essas aulas online e passei algumas semanas fascinado a devorar todos os 26 vídeos da cadeira como se fosse uma série da Netflix, o que gerou na minha mulher alguma perplexidade que, em retrospectiva, é mais ou menos compreensível. 00:01:30.32Ora bem, as ditas aulas e as leituras da Bíblia que eu próprio fui fazendo deixaram-me muitas dúvidas e não tinha, basicamente, com quem as esclarecer. 00:01:38.18E, por isso, decidi que estava na altura de usar o meio melhor que eu tenho para se desfazer estas dúvidas, que é o 45 graus. 00:01:43.82Ora, a única pessoa que eu conheço em Portugal que tem credenciais para uma discussão tão abrangente sobre estes temas é Frederico Lourenço, que tem levado a cabo, nos últimos anos, sozinho, a enorme empreitada traduzir a Bíblia do grego para o português. 00:01:56.88Só que o Frederico já foi convidado do 45 graus, precisamente sobre a tradução da Bíblia, logo ao episódio número 20. 00:02:02.80Aliás, outro ótimo episódio que recomendo que ouçam depois deste. 00:02:06.30Por isso, decidi que o melhor era ir mesmo à fonte e convidar Dale Martin para o 45 graus. 00:02:10.94Ele aceitou e foi, como vão ver, uma conversa fascinante, em que falámos da Bíblia, da figura de Jesus e do mundo antigo em que Jesus e os primeiros cristãos viveram e que é essencial para perceber o contexto da vida de Jesus e em que foi escrita a Bíblia. 00:02:24.10O convidado, além disso, tem uma característica peculiar, porque, embora seja um historiador a 100%, ou seja, que fala dos textos cristãos com uma frieza implacável quando usa esse chapéu, é também crente, ou seja, é também cristão. 00:02:35.04E isso é uma combinação interessante, mas, sobretudo, muito invulgar nestes meios de estudos bíblicos, onde normalmente, sobretudo nos Estados Unidos, há uma espécie de diálogo de surdos entre, de um lado, os teólogos e, do outro lado, os historiadores, que são tipicamente agnósticos. 00:02:49.10Para quem estiver menos familiarizado com a Bíblia, em particular o Novo Testamento, talvez valha a pena fazer uma revisão muito rápida da matéria só para não se perderem nesta conversa. 00:02:57.04O Novo Testamento é composto por 27 livros, que incluem os 4 Evangelhos, que narram a vida e dizeres de Jesus, Marcos, Mateus, Lucas e João. 00:03:05.72Inclui também o livro chamado Atos dos Apóstolos, que contam, basicamente, o início do movimento cristão depois da morte de Jesus, o Apocalipse e mais de duas dezenas de cartas, das quais as mais importantes são aquelas que são atribuídas ao apóstolo Paulo, ou, para o catolicismo, São Paulo. 00:03:20.84Ora, Paulo é, indiscutivelmente, a grande figura do início do cristianismo e, por isso, as suas cartas adquiriram para a Igreja um peso quase comparável ao dos Evangelhos. 00:03:29.26E as cartas de Paulo, aquelas consideradas autênticas, são também especialmente importantes para os historiadores, uma vez que são, além disso, os documentos cristãos mais antigos que existem, ou seja, que foram escritos há mais tempo, mais ainda do que os próprios Evangelhos, embora digam respeito a factos que aconteceram depois. 00:03:44.66Nesta nossa conversa, porque o tempo não chega para tudo, acabámos por abordar, sobretudo, a figura de Jesus, pelo que nos focámos mais nos 4 Evangelhos. 00:03:52.28Ou 5, aliás. 00:03:53.66Porque falámos também do Evangelho de Tomé, um dos vários Evangelhos apócrifos, ou seja, não incluídos no canón da Bíblia, e um a que os historiadores dão muita importância, quase igual a que dão aos 4 Evangelhos canónicos. 00:04:04.74A propósito, o Frederico Lourenço, de quem falava há pouco, como, aparentemente, a Bíblia não lhe chegava, decidiu fazer também a tradução dos vários Evangelhos apócrifos, incluindo o de Tomé, que saiu precisamente este ano. 00:04:15.68Recomendo. 00:04:16.64Voltando à conversa com o Dale Martin, comecei por pedir ao convidado que descrevesse o modo como um historiador aborda o estudo da Bíblia, que é necessariamente muito diferente da maneira como, por exemplo, um teólogo o faz. 00:04:27.54Isso levou-nos, naturalmente, aos Evangelhos e aos critérios que os historiadores usam para tentar separar, dentro de cada Evangelho, o que há neles de histórico daquilo que são, se quisermos, elementos religiosos ou até de uma certa criatividade literária. 00:04:39.90E os métodos que os historiadores usam são, como vão ver, muito interessantes. 00:04:43.62Falámos também, inevitavelmente, da figura de Jesus, do que podemos dizer sobre quem ele era, se sabia ler, por exemplo, quanto conhecimento tinha das escrituras judaicas, aquilo que pensava realmente e o que está por trás da sua ética, e o modo como a posição em que o cristianismo coloca Jesus foi subindo de graus ao longo dos primeiros séculos do cristianismo, começando, por exemplo, no Evangelho de Marcos, como o, e cito, filho da humanidade, e culminando, no concílio de Nicea, com a noção de Deus Filho e a Santíssima Trindade. 00:05:10.52No final da conversa, tivemos ainda tempo para falar um pouco do apóstolo Paulo, de Tiago, irmão de Jesus, que é pouco importante nos Evangelhos, mas que se tornou depois uma figura relevante no início do cristianismo, no tempo de Paulo, e, claro, também de Maria, mãe de Jesus, em quem este contraste entre o papel que tem no Novo Testamento e o peso enorme que vai assumir o cristianismo é ainda maior. 00:05:30.80Espero que gostem desta conversa com Dale Martin. 00:05:32.98Para mim foi muito interessante, é uma destas conversas que puxam pela cabeça e nos fazem aprender muito, embora deva dizer que saí, talvez, ainda com mais dúvidas sobre este tema do que tinha no início. 00:05:43.16Peço desculpa porque o som do meu lado não está perfeito. 00:05:45.50É um problema que, entretanto, consegui resolver para gravações futuras e que, penso, de qualquer forma, não impede de compreender a conversa. 00:05:51.92Deixo-vos, então, com Dale Martin e boas festas. 00:05:57.18Estou aqui com o professor Dale Martin. 00:05:59.20Dale, bem-vindo ao programa. 00:06:00.68Eu acho que, antes de começar a discutir os tópicos de nossa conversa, é interessante começar a começar com a meta-question para entender como a historiante approacha a study da Bíblia. 00:06:10.58Porque nós estamos, obviamente, falando sobre muito olde textos, sobre a diferente realidade, sobre textos que surgem atos after a long tempo e after sometimes having been through diferentes hands. 00:06:21.14Então, é um desafio e um approach que é necessariamente diferente do que a teóloga ou uma outra religiosa pessoa. 00:06:29.34Então, como é que funciona? 00:06:30.44Como é uma historiante approacha a study da Bíblia?
José Maria Pimentel 00:06:32.96Bom, nós temos que usar histórico-critical methods. 00:06:36.26Can você please explain them? 00:06:37.46Bom, eu acho que o que eu tendo a falar em popular audiences é o histórico-critical method. 00:06:44.70E por isso, eu mea que você está tentando de entender o que o texto era o que o texto meant para as pessoas que originalmente read o texto. 00:06:55.06Pode ser 200 anos atrás, pode ser 100 anos atrás, pode ser 50 anos atrás. 00:06:59.80Histórico-critical just means que você não está usando métodos como a medieval allegoria, where you take a text from the Bible and you interpret it in an allegorical fashion, or what people had called spiritual readings, where you read the text of the Bible for some kind of spiritual meaning. 00:07:21.80And you're just reading the text of the Bible for, let's just take Paul, the apostle, for example. 00:07:27.92I mean, he wrote about the year 50. 00:07:30.14So you're just trying to figure out, okay, what could Paul have meant in the year 50 on the basis of this text? 00:07:36.96Using the Greek, that's the other thing, we always insist on using the original languages. 00:07:42.98Of course. 00:07:43.62So whether it's Hebrew, Greek, or Latin, or Arabic, or whatever it is, Syriac, we try to use the original language. 00:07:51.24And we just try to say, what did the original author try to mean? 00:07:55.78So that's the historical-critical meaning of the text. 00:08:00.72And that's what people use when they're trying to read the Bible in a scholarly fashion. 00:08:07.90Not necessarily a spiritual or religious fashion. 00:08:12.06Because, I mean, I believe that there are perfectly legitimate ways to read the Bible spiritually or religiously. 00:08:20.40But that's not what historical critics do. 00:08:23.90We try to read the Bible for what it must have meant, or what it probably meant, because we can never be completely sure, in the first century.
Dale Martin 00:08:33.34And you use that approach also to try to assess what is in the Bible and most likely actually happen, right? 00:08:42.02So when you have discrepancies between the different Gospels, when you have things in each Gospel on which one is not completely sure if they were true, for instance, miracles, you use also historical techniques to try and rank them in terms of likelihood, right?
José Maria Pimentel 00:08:56.46Yes. 00:08:56.92Let's just take, as an example, the birth of Jesus. 00:09:00.72In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is born in Bethlehem, but his family doesn't come to Bethlehem for him to be born there. 00:09:09.92They simply are there. 00:09:11.48And you get the idea from the Gospel of Matthew that Jesus' family just lives in Bethlehem. 00:09:17.08But then you go over to the Gospel of Luke, and it's very, very different. 00:09:21.04Jesus' family lives in Nazareth, and that's not unbelievable because Jesus was called Jesus of Nazareth. 00:09:30.38And Mary, his mother, was said to be from Nazareth. 00:09:34.38But they take a trip to Jerusalem, to Bethlehem, actually, in order to offer sacrifices. 00:09:42.64And so Jesus is born in the Gospel of Luke in a stable in Bethlehem because that's when his mother comes to term and she has to give birth. 00:09:56.28And then you have the, in Luke, you have the shepherds all coming down from the hills and, you know, praising Jesus and worshiping him. 00:10:04.18You don't have any of that in Matthew. 00:10:06.36In Matthew, he is born in Bethlehem because that's where his family lives. 00:10:11.50And you have three kings. 00:10:14.00Well, you have kings. 00:10:15.88It doesn't say three, actually.
Dale Martin 00:10:17.80Oh, it doesn't say three. 00:10:18.84That's interesting. 00:10:19.14No, we say three because there are three gifts mentioned. 00:10:22.84Ah, so we infer that there were three kings.
José Maria Pimentel 00:10:25.26Yes, but the text doesn't say three kings. 00:10:28.38It just says kings. 00:10:29.90And they come from the east, from Persia, and they bring him gifts. 00:10:34.96Frankincense and myrrh and gold. 00:10:37.72Gold, frankincense, and myrrh is why we say there were three kings. 00:10:42.24So, you know, all you have to do is take the gospel of Matthew and take the gospel of Luke and set them side by side. 00:10:50.88And they don't match. 00:10:53.00They can't match. 00:10:54.42But there are lots of other things. 00:10:56.06There's the trial of Jesus at the end of the gospels. 00:10:59.42And the four gospels have four different, very different trials. 00:11:04.60Incompatible. 00:11:05.20The gospel of John has Jesus and Pontius Pilate talking with each other about philosophy for pages. 00:11:13.22And there's nothing like that in Mark. 00:11:15.46Mark just says, you know, they condemned him to death and took him out and hung him up to die.
Dale Martin 00:11:20.36And even the style, right? 00:11:21.30So in John, if I'm not mistaken, Jesus doesn't speak in parables, right? 00:11:25.64So he speaks in a very different way from the synoptic gospels, right?
José Maria Pimentel 00:11:29.02That's right. 00:11:29.60In the gospel of John, Jesus doesn't tell what the other gospels call parables. 00:11:36.16The gospel of Mark is the earliest gospel. 00:11:38.56It was probably written around the year 70. 00:11:40.80Mark and Matthew used the gospel of John and they quoted from it a lot. 00:11:45.98From Mark, you mean, right? 00:11:46.82I mean, from Mark, yes. 00:11:48.30So Matthew, Mark, and Luke are very similar. 00:11:51.28That's why we call them the synoptic gospels. 00:11:54.68Synoptic just means you see things from the same point of view. 00:11:58.48But John is completely different. 00:12:01.52And Jesus doesn't speak in just a few parables here and there. 00:12:06.36He gives these long sermons that are theologically and philosophically loaded. 00:12:12.34And so it's a lot of fun to teach this because, you know, kids come into the classroom and all they've heard, if they've heard anything about this, they just heard it in Sunday school and in church. 00:12:25.80And then you start pointing out that there are these huge, huge differences and it blows their brains, which is, that's the way education is supposed to happen.
Dale Martin 00:12:37.72Exactly. 00:12:38.26Yeah.
José Maria Pimentel 00:12:38.48But yeah, all you have to do is take the four gospels and line them up side by side. 00:12:43.76And then we haven't even mentioned the gospel of Thomas.
Dale Martin 00:12:46.70Oh yeah. 00:12:47.20Which scholars love.
José Maria Pimentel 00:12:48.70And it's very, very different. 00:12:50.50It doesn't have any narrative.
Dale Martin 00:12:52.16It doesn't have... 00:12:52.98It's just sayings, right? 00:12:54.02Sayings of Jesus. 00:12:54.96Just sayings of Jesus is like him standing
José Maria Pimentel 00:12:58.16before his disciples and saying things. 00:13:01.80And some of the sayings are almost exactly like you would have them in the gospels. 00:13:07.08Like, there's a parable of the sower. 00:13:10.08You know, the sower goes out to sow and he casts his seed. 00:13:13.72And then there are different parables. 00:13:15.70But even the parables end up meaning something different in the gospel of Thomas than they do in the other gospels. 00:13:23.80They're just very different. 00:13:26.04Now, I think the gospel of Thomas was probably written in the first part of the second century. 00:13:33.44So that means from about the year 100 to around the year 150. 00:13:38.78But we don't know that. 00:13:39.92We have no idea, really, to tell you the truth. 00:13:42.18We're just guessing. 00:13:43.36That's when I would place it and I've taught it that way.
Dale Martin 00:13:46.68When you say you're guessing, you're probably guesstimating, right? 00:13:50.14So it's not a pure guess. 00:13:51.04So what tools do you use to be able to date them? 00:13:54.06And in the case of Thomas, what tools do you use to try and be somewhat certain? 00:13:59.52Not certain, but you know what I mean. 00:14:01.30To have some idea that it might...
José Maria Pimentel 00:14:03.22The first issue is language. 00:14:05.64You take the Greek. 00:14:07.02Thomas and all the other gospels were written originally in Greek. 00:14:11.14Some traditions said that Matthew was written in Hebrew and translated into Greek. 00:14:16.70But no reputable scholar believes that anymore because it just doesn't look like a translation. 00:14:23.08It looks like it was written in Greek. 00:14:24.98So we just are content to say that all the five gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Thomas, were written in Greek and they were all written sometime between 50 and 150. 00:14:39.20So you date that by the Greek and then you can also date it by the theology. 00:14:46.48None of these five gospels has what I would call an elevated theology of the Trinity. 00:14:53.92That is that the Trinity is three persons in one person, all existing, all together, all the time. 00:15:02.94Now, that's the doctrine of the Trinity as it was finally, you know, kind of certified and 325 at the Council of Nicaea and then after that at the definition of Chalcedon in the middle of the fourth century. 00:15:17.60See, you're talking about the difference between what may have been possible around the year 50 or 70 and what was possible around the year 350 or 400. 00:15:29.56And you can just, if you just use, you know, common sense, you can see that, okay, let me put it this way. 00:15:38.18We scholars sometimes use a very bad term. 00:15:42.14We call something primitive and by primitive we mean it's early. 00:15:46.92It doesn't have all the complications that come from serious theological speculation and vetting. 00:15:56.20When you get to the fourth century, let's say 350, you have serious, serious philosophically educated Christian scholars. 00:16:05.36You didn't have that in the year 50. 00:16:07.66There were no such things. 00:16:09.70And so, my belief is that when you have more elaborated theology, you can put that at a later date. 00:16:19.00Now, that's very controversial because some scholars don't like that. 00:16:23.06They believe I'm just playing games. 00:16:25.32But it makes sense. 00:16:26.22I believe that makes sense.
Dale Martin 00:16:28.22That can also help you when looking at the Gospels, so the four canonicals plus Thomas and judging what was there in the beginning when they were first written or even before because they existed in oral form before that and what might have been added on at later stages, right?
José Maria Pimentel 00:16:44.72Oh, absolutely. 00:16:45.58In fact, the whole 20th century was built on trying to pick apart the Bible and decide what was written when and how did it come about and what was used when. 00:16:58.42So, for example, for the Gospels, most of us believed there was this document that we call Q, which comes from simply the German word, Quevel, which just means source. 00:17:10.46So, this was a German invention in the early 20th century. 00:17:15.00So, you have the Gospel of Mark and then you have the Gospels of Matthew and Luke and you can tell that Matthew and Luke are copying portions of Mark verbatim. 00:17:26.14They're just lifting it up. 00:17:28.90They're just plagiarizing Mark. 00:17:31.06But then there are places where Matthew and Luke seem to say the exact same thing when it's not in Mark. 00:17:39.90And so, scholars said, well, there was another source, there was another written source that had sayings of Jesus and they just called it in German Quevel, the source. 00:17:52.92And so, we call that Q. 00:17:54.30and this is, it's hypothetical. 00:17:57.84That's one thing that pisses off so many people. 00:18:01.30They say, there's no evidence that this document ever existed. 00:18:05.78We don't have any copies of it. 00:18:07.70But it's, it makes the most sense. 00:18:11.06How did Matthew and Luke quote the exact same sayings of Jesus if they didn't have a shared written source? 00:18:20.64They didn't know one another. 00:18:22.56There are scholars who would try to show that Matthew knew Luke or Luke knew Matthew. 00:18:28.24I don't believe them because it just doesn't look like that to me. 00:18:32.88You know, if Matthew knew Luke, why didn't he include a bunch of these stories in Luke that are such wonderful stories? 00:18:39.74I mean, Luke's gospel is one of the most beautiful gospels. 00:18:43.14And then people say, well, if Luke knew Matthew, and I say, why didn't Luke quote like the wise men coming to see Jesus at his birth?
Dale Martin 00:18:53.18Yes. 00:18:54.22It's in the very beginning, right? 00:18:55.36So it's a good opportunity.
José Maria Pimentel 00:18:57.90Luke doesn't include, he doesn't include entire parables from Matthew. 00:19:03.40Well, if he had Matthew sitting right there in front of him, why wouldn't he just copy off everything that he saw? 00:19:10.30But he doesn't. 00:19:11.44That's why most scholars believe that Matthew didn't know Luke and Luke didn't know Matthew. 00:19:17.24But that means you have to have a theory for why they both have some sayings that are exactly verbatim the same. 00:19:25.84And so scholars invented this hypothesis called Covell Q.
Dale Martin 00:19:31.52One can ever be sure, but of course it's the best way to reconcile that fact, right? 00:19:35.60That you have them quoting the same thing, which is not in Mark. 00:19:38.50So the idea is, to sum up, is that you have basically two original sources. 00:19:43.04One of them is Mark and the other is Q, which we never found out. 00:19:47.08And in the case of John, what's your guess? 00:19:49.22So do you think John I think John also Do you think he know any of the two original?
José Maria Pimentel 00:19:53.78No, I don't think John knew. 00:19:55.62John may have known Mark because if you look at his chronological, where Jesus went when in Galilee, John kind of follows Mark. 00:20:07.06And so I used to believe that John didn't know any Mark, Matthew or Luke at all. 00:20:13.36But I would be willing to say now that John may have known Mark, but he didn't quote him. 00:20:19.86That's the thing. 00:20:21.02He doesn't quote him verbatim.
Dale Martin 00:20:22.78Yeah, I'm not a specialist, of course, but on thinking of this, the most likely explanation, I guess, is that he might have not known Mark in a written form, but he likely knew the stories that were hanging around for decades that ended up influencing Mark, right? 00:20:37.76because we were talking about the Gospels, right? 00:20:39.72But before the Gospels were oral traditions, right? 00:20:42.66Oral accounts.
José Maria Pimentel 00:20:43.68That was what I used to believe. 00:20:45.48I used to believe that John just knew oral traditions that informed Mark, Matthew, and Luke and that came to inform his gospel. 00:20:55.64The more I've taught this over the years, the more I've thought, well, why would he put the Capernaum incident here and then have this incident right after and why would he put this incident here? 00:21:09.00I'm not sure oral tradition has that much specificity about it as far as order of events. 00:21:16.76It's not just that the stories are the same, the order of events are the same.
Dale Martin 00:21:22.78Okay, so your point is that it's too exact, it's too accurate?
José Maria Pimentel 00:21:26.02That's what I've come to believe, but I could be wrong. 00:21:29.68I've been wrong before.
Dale Martin 00:21:31.14We'll never know, actually. 00:21:33.10So there's no way to know it. 00:21:35.28So we've been going backwards towards the beginning, right? 00:21:37.86So we start with the Gospels as they are, try to understand what were the original Gospels, and then how do you move from the original Gospels to the original events? 00:21:48.30So to try and assess what, for instance, in Mark coincides with what was actually Jesus' life, and what was, I don't know, put there afterwards as creative writing.
José Maria Pimentel 00:21:59.78That's very complicated, and I used to teach courses on the historic of Jesus, and I used to teach rules that people could go by, and these are not infallible, they can be wrong, but they're the best we have, I think. 00:22:18.18So one of the rules would be multiple attestation. 00:22:22.62If you have something that's in several different sources, meaning Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Thomas, and Paul, those are the earliest sources. 00:22:33.54If you have something that's in several different sources, okay, well, you put a check by that. 00:22:39.76It doesn't mean it's historical. 00:22:41.60It just means that, okay, we're going to give that a little bit of leeway. 00:22:46.06So, for example, the establishment of the Last Supper, where Jesus says, this is my body, this is my blood, do this in memory of me. 00:22:55.00Well, that's in all four Gospels, and it's in Paul. 00:22:58.34So you kind of say, well, that may be historical, maybe Jesus actually did that.
Dale Martin 00:23:04.06They didn't all make it up.
José Maria Pimentel 00:23:05.64Yeah, they didn't all make it up. 00:23:07.24So that's just one example. 00:23:09.04So multiple attestation is one of the tests. 00:23:13.14The test of the terms have been really problematic, but let's just say the test of embarrassment.
Dale Martin 00:23:20.80Yes, I like that one.
José Maria Pimentel 00:23:22.10Or the criterion of dissimilarity. 00:23:25.28What do you think early Christians would not have invented? 00:23:29.28So there's a saying of Jesus in the Gospels where he says, why do you call me good? 00:23:35.94I'm not good. 00:23:37.42Only God is good. 00:23:39.16What? 00:23:40.54Jesus is saying he's not God? 00:23:43.92Did any Christian invent this? 00:23:46.62And so you say, well, sure, it could have come from the first 10 years, but it didn't come from the year 150. 00:23:53.92Exactly. 00:23:54.72Because God, Jesus would not have called himself not God. 00:23:58.70So that's the criterion of dissimilarity or the criterion of embarrassment.
Dale Martin 00:24:04.46It goes also for the story of John the Baptist, right? 00:24:08.14So his prominence, right?
José Maria Pimentel 00:24:09.56Yes. 00:24:10.28You know, Jesus, I think you can have, you can say absolutely with certainty that Jesus was a disciple of John the Baptist and he was baptized by him. 00:24:20.16And why do you say that? 00:24:21.38Because no disciples of Jesus would have invented it. 00:24:24.94They just wouldn't invent it. 00:24:26.54They said from the very beginning that Jesus was superior to John the Baptist. 00:24:31.16In fact, in the Gospels, you know, Jesus goes to John the Baptist and says, baptize me. 00:24:36.40And John the Baptist says, I'm not worthy. 00:24:39.20Well, that's what later Christians would have invented.
Dale Martin 00:24:43.26Exactly. 00:24:44.04Try and polish up the story, right? 00:24:45.70Yep. 00:24:46.42So multiple attestation, dissimilarity.
José Maria Pimentel 00:24:48.98What's left? 00:24:50.02There's a couple more. 00:24:51.38Well, it doesn't really matter because basically the idea is that all of this is just kind of common sense.
Dale Martin 00:24:59.06Yes, it is.
José Maria Pimentel 00:24:59.80It's just what would somebody invent and what would they not invent?
Dale Martin 00:25:05.48And on the multiple attestation, by the way, I think it covers one of my favorite sayings of Jesus because it's so unpredictable given the religious accounts, which is when he complains. 00:25:16.84I think it's written in different ways in different Gospels, but when he complains something along the lines of a prophet is never well treated when he's at his own home in his own village with his family, which is a very funny account because he's complaining. 00:25:32.16It's funny because he's complaining. 00:25:33.48He's complaining about his hometown and he's also complaining about his family, right? 00:25:36.82Because at least in one of the Gospels, this happens when his mother and brothers, I think, are calling for him or something like that and he's complaining about them. 00:25:45.28So it's a very human thing to say and it's interesting because if I'm not wrong, it's in all the Gospels, including John, right?
José Maria Pimentel 00:25:52.10Yes. 00:25:52.42Now, I would have a bit more skepticism about that saying just because any sayings in the Gospel that look like they're things that you would find throughout the ancient Mediterranean, you could have Mohammed say that.
Dale Martin 00:26:08.06Okay. 00:26:08.90But the thing is, well, maybe I'm reading this with the eyes of a 21st century person, but when I read this, imagine I didn't know this was Jesus. 00:26:15.88What I would think is, okay, this guy fooled the other people, but he doesn't fool his family. 00:26:20.08You see my point?
José Maria Pimentel 00:26:21.20Yes. 00:26:22.04If the saying is historical, it would demonstrate that. 00:26:26.44But what we're trying to figure out is, is it historical?
Dale Martin 00:26:29.54No, but what I'm saying is that they wouldn't put it there because it doesn't favor the idea of Jesus as God. 00:26:35.50It's the opposite of that because it paints him in such a human picture that first, he's complaining, and second, it doesn't look very godly to me. 00:26:43.82I know, but
José Maria Pimentel 00:26:44.76it's something that you could expect a prophet to say. 00:26:48.84That's the thing. 00:26:49.96that one of the things I use to teach about the historical Jesus is what is the unexpected, not what is the expected.
Dale Martin 00:26:58.98Yeah, but for me, this was unexpected, but your point is that if you know the history of the ancient world, this is actually expected from a prophet. 00:27:06.44Yes, exactly. 00:27:07.94But not from a god, right? 00:27:09.72Not from the Son of God.
José Maria Pimentel 00:27:12.02No, but see, I don't think that historical Jesus thought he was God.
Dale Martin 00:27:16.70Sure, I agree with that, yeah.
José Maria Pimentel 00:27:19.04In his lifetime. 00:27:20.18He became God later. 00:27:21.80Yeah.
Dale Martin 00:27:22.28Now, it's funny, actually, you mentioned the Council of Nicaea, and the way the figure of Jesus evolves, or the way it is treated by the believers, is amazing, because in the Gospel of Mark, he's sort of...
José Maria Pimentel 00:27:32.20In the Gospel of Mark, he's just the Son of Man.
Dale Martin 00:27:34.98But he sort of becomes the Son of God at some point, right? 00:27:37.80He's kind of adopted, right?
José Maria Pimentel 00:27:39.82Yes, yes, but there are only two references in Mark to him being called the Son of God, and they're both problematic. 00:27:49.32Ah, okay. 00:27:50.36One is the first verse, where some Bibles, but not all Bibles, said, this is the euangelion, the good news of Jesus, Son of God, but that's not in all the Bibles. 00:28:04.22And then it's only at the cross, where the Roman soldiers says, yes, this is a Son of God, but he doesn't say this is the Son of God. 00:28:14.38And some people doubt whether that was originally in the Bible, in the Gospel of Mark also. 00:28:19.98So those are the only two places in the Gospel of Mark where Jesus is called the Son of God. 00:28:25.76Now notice, that doesn't mean he's called God.
Dale Martin 00:28:28.82Of course. 00:28:29.30No, no, that's the point I was going to make. 00:28:31.06So he started as someone who becomes the Son of God, and even that, as you were saying, even that is not certain.
José Maria Pimentel 00:28:36.42A Son of God.
Dale Martin 00:28:37.92A Son of God, sorry.
José Maria Pimentel 00:28:40.24There were thousands of Sons of God in the
Dale Martin 00:28:44.54ancient world. 00:28:45.44Yes, and we have to get to that, to understand how the ancients looked at this. 00:28:49.66But to go back to my point, so that in John is already born as a divine entity, but it's still not the Trinity. 00:28:55.98So the Trinity only comes up three centuries and a half later. 00:29:00.48in John, you
José Maria Pimentel 00:29:03.14have a big jump, because John wants to make Jesus out to be equal with God the Father, and that's a big jump. 00:29:13.04But yeah, you still don't have the Trinity.
Dale Martin 00:29:14.80You still don't have a Trinity, yeah. 00:29:16.38So you have at least two jumps to get to the Trinity, which is, I mean, it's quite interesting. 00:29:22.66And by the way, speaking of knowing what's true or not in Gospels, there are some bits which I find especially interesting, which are the, how can I put this, the unexpected, which don't serve, they neither serve nor serve against any religious purposes. 00:29:36.92For instance, in Mark, you have this passage, which sounds kind of irrelevant. 00:29:40.62It's Mark 1451, it says, a young man wearing nothing but linen garment was following Jesus. 00:29:46.32When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind. 00:29:50.24This is doing nothing there. 00:29:51.72It's very funny, because it seems to be neutral. 00:29:55.24you understand what I mean?
José Maria Pimentel 00:29:56.34That's been a puzzle to scholars for 2,000 years. 00:30:00.76I mean, you had people like Martin Smith, who was a gay New Testament scholar and ancient historian at Columbia University. 00:30:10.32He's dead now, but he basically said this was an account of a homosexual session of Jesus. 00:30:19.34Jesus was training this guy for his baptism. 00:30:23.12It was a catechumen, and the boy was a catechumen, and Jesus was meeting with him at night to train him for his baptism, and
Dale Martin 00:30:32.88they did so nude. 00:30:34.22So that's why the garment is mentioned there. 00:30:35.92That's why the garment is
José Maria Pimentel 00:30:36.98mentioned. 00:30:37.62Now, most people haven't accepted Martin's
Dale Martin 00:30:40.06interpretation.
José Maria Pimentel 00:30:42.88But to tell you the truth, I have no idea what it's supposed to mean. 00:30:48.08it's admittedly very strange. 00:30:50.74Why was the guy naked except for a linen cloth? 00:30:54.84It acts like he didn't even have a loincloth on. 00:30:57.74He didn't even have anything covering his genitals. 00:31:00.42I mean, I'm a gay man, so I love to reflect on these things and let it go wild. 00:31:06.30But I don't believe in making any kind of historical arguments about it. 00:31:11.08I just don't know what it's supposed to mean. 00:31:13.58I think that if I had the most passive meaning, I would just say that it's meant to show that the arrest of Jesus was a surprise and that, well, that's all I can say, really.
Dale Martin 00:31:29.62And part of the reason might be precisely because it's kind of neutral. 00:31:33.32So it doesn't benefit, but it doesn't hurt either. 00:31:35.70It's kind of a leftover.
José Maria Pimentel 00:31:36.56Yeah, you can't really make something of it with no more information than we have.
Dale Martin 00:31:41.66No, but my point is that there was no incentive for the scribes to remove it because it was not hurting the account. 00:31:47.74So it's religiously...
José Maria Pimentel 00:31:49.12Well, you say that.
Dale Martin 00:31:50.98Well, maybe it is.
José Maria Pimentel 00:31:52.02You notice Matthew and Luke don't include it. 00:31:54.14They're copying Mark and they leave that out.
Dale Martin 00:31:57.58That's true. 00:31:58.36That's true.
José Maria Pimentel 00:31:59.00Why did they leave it out? 00:32:01.00Was it a little too sexual for them?
Dale Martin 00:32:03.06Yeah, it might be because they found it irrelevant or because they found it dangerous. 00:32:07.50Yes, that's interesting. 00:32:09.60But it's a lovely bit, for me at least, because of being so unexpected. 00:32:13.26turning to the figure of Jesus, to the historical Jesus that we can infer from the Bible, one thing that seems, I think, relatively clear is that he knew the scriptures, and by scriptures I mean the Old Testament quite well. 00:32:26.32He quotes them many times, too many times for it not to have happened in actuality.
José Maria Pimentel 00:32:32.96I think he had a lot of it memorized. 00:32:35.00Yeah.
Dale Martin 00:32:35.86Okay, so because that's the question I would ask you, because it seems that he was a carpenter or something of that sort, like his father, right? 00:32:42.54And if he was a carpenter, he was a peasant, right? 00:32:44.38So he lived in Nazareth. 00:32:46.00How did he know the scriptures so well? 00:32:47.96So an uneducated person, how did he know them so well? 00:32:51.00Or was it actually normal back then to know, for a Jewish person to know the scriptures, when I'm just a 21st century guy who doesn't know anything about the ancient world?
José Maria Pimentel 00:33:01.04I don't think you can read a lot of ancient Jewish literature without believing that normal, I'm going to use the term middle class, but that's anachronistic because there was no such thing as the middle class in the ancient world, but even normal laboring class, men, not women necessarily, but men, would have memorized a lot of the Bible. 00:33:24.68They went to Hebrew school. 00:33:26.38I don't think most of the women did, which is why we have so fewer women who seem very well educated than we do men, but literacy was simply not unknown in the ancient world.
Dale Martin 00:33:43.06So you certainly knew the scriptures, you think he might have known how to read? 00:33:46.26Yes. 00:33:46.96Okay.
José Maria Pimentel 00:33:47.52I think he knew how to read, but that could be fairly elementary. 00:33:52.00You know, you put a stick on the page and the stick goes across from right to left, and all you have to do is sound out the consonants. 00:34:02.90There's no vowels. 00:34:04.92So if you see resh, khe, khe, then you say ruach, and that means spirit, or life, or breath, or, you know, different translations.
Dale Martin 00:34:15.98Yes, it could have been basically literate, but not necessarily scholarly.
José Maria Pimentel 00:34:21.12That's right. 00:34:22.10I do think, though, that Jesus had exposure to Jewish scholarship, but only in a verbal way. 00:34:32.48I don't believe he read books of scholarship. 00:34:36.32I just don't see the evidence for that.
Dale Martin 00:34:38.54So you mean that you witnessed sort of scholarly discussion? 00:34:41.98Yeah. 00:34:42.68Yeah. 00:34:42.88But orally? 00:34:43.50Okay. 00:34:43.96And you took part of it? 00:34:44.72In synagogues and the temple and that sort of thing. 00:34:47.60But isn't that strange for a peasant, or am I, is this ignorance on my part, or wouldn't it be, well, actually, archaeology has shown it's not so small as we used to think, but it was kind of a small town, Nazareth, so it's not a big city. 00:34:59.36Right. 00:35:00.02It's not a big city. 00:35:00.80So it's kind of unexpected, right, that he took part in that. 00:35:03.86In other words, what I'm trying to understand is, was that sort of a chance event, or was he just like any other peasant back then?
José Maria Pimentel 00:35:10.28No, I would say, I'm just fish-polling here. 00:35:14.82I think that it would have been some particular aspects of his background. 00:35:19.40Maybe he had some rabbi here or there who kind of took him under his wing. 00:35:24.92I don't think it would have been normal for a regular Jewish peasant in Galilee to have that kind of knowledge.
Dale Martin 00:35:34.04Okay. 00:35:34.74That's interesting.
José Maria Pimentel 00:35:35.52But it would not be unheard of. 00:35:37.10Okay.
Dale Martin 00:35:37.40Yeah. 00:35:37.90It's possible. 00:35:38.74Okay. 00:35:39.50It's within the realm of possibility, right? 00:35:41.54Yes. 00:35:42.12It wouldn't be the normal thing to occur, but it's within the realm of possibility. 00:35:45.54Okay. 00:35:45.72That makes sense. 00:35:46.84And do you think he spoke Greek, by the way? 00:35:48.64No. 00:35:49.26I don't think he knew any Greek. 00:35:50.26Because I've heard the argument that he lived very close to a Greek city. 00:35:54.54Greek in the sense that they spoke Greek.
José Maria Pimentel 00:35:56.56Yes. 00:35:57.46Yes. 00:35:58.12Capernaum.
Dale Martin 00:35:58.94Yeah. 00:35:59.50But of course that doesn't mean anything because living close back then didn't mean the same thing as living close means today, right?
José Maria Pimentel 00:36:05.60I think the only way to try to figure out whether Jesus spoke Greek is just to look at the Gospels. 00:36:11.16Every once in a while you have a Greek word in the Gospels, but it's almost immediately interpreted to tell you what it means. 00:36:20.74And I take that as the author who obviously speaks Greek and writes in Greek, but he knows that not everybody in his society speaks Greek. 00:36:30.42and so he feels like, okay, if I'm going to use a Greek word, I need to explain what it means.
Dale Martin 00:36:36.80So going back to Jesus, it seems clear, although it's not in John, it seems clear that he spoke in parables, right? 00:36:43.16Yes. 00:36:43.40I think we can safely say that. 00:36:45.00Yes, that's for sure. 00:36:46.26What's your take on why that was the case? 00:36:48.16Do you think it was idiosyncratic? 00:36:49.62It was just his way of being? 00:36:51.36Was it a normal thing back then?
José Maria Pimentel 00:36:53.08It was a normal thing. 00:36:54.26I think we have to see Jesus, the historical Jesus, not as a philosopher or a theologian, but as something like a folk preacher. 00:37:02.70And this is what folk preachers did. 00:37:05.32I mean, it's all over the ancient world.
Dale Martin 00:37:07.38That's one of the interesting things of approaching the Bible from a historical standpoint is that you really need to know how the ancient world was to understand how things were and how unlikely or likely each of the accounts were.
José Maria Pimentel 00:37:20.04Thank you very much. 00:37:22.04I've been trying to convince students of that for 50 years. 00:37:29.02You have to know a lot about the ancient world to understand how this works.
Dale Martin 00:37:33.30And it's working clearly, at least with someone. 00:37:36.52There are some aspects for which I think this is crucial because, for instance, take the case of miracles which are plentiful in the Gospels or of the Resurrection. 00:37:45.18When a 21st century person reads them, they look miraculous, right? 00:37:49.52So they look at something very odd. 00:37:51.68But my guess is that they were, probably quite commonplace in the accounts of, in the imagination and in the writings of the ancient world. 00:38:00.92Writings are not necessarily writings. 00:38:02.74In the stories that were circulating around, right? 00:38:05.02That they mentioned quite a lot the case of miracles and even resurrection was not such a strange thing. 00:38:10.24Or was it?
José Maria Pimentel 00:38:11.02No, no. 00:38:12.00Yeah, read anything in the ancient world.
Dale Martin 00:38:14.74Sorry, my point to make it more clear is that if you're writing something about the life and sayings of someone which you think is a prophet or even godly, it would be natural for you to sort of season it with accounts of miracles and even the case of the resurrection wouldn't be unheard of, right?
José Maria Pimentel 00:38:33.74No, no, it would not be unheard of. 00:38:35.80I mean, have you ever read the Koran?
Dale Martin 00:38:38.02No, actually, I never read it.
José Maria Pimentel 00:38:39.86Okay, read Muhammad. 00:38:42.18It's not that different. 00:38:43.76You know, he wrote, what, 700 something?
Dale Martin 00:38:46.72Yeah, he knew about the life of, he knew about the New Testament, right? 00:38:50.34Oh, yeah,
José Maria Pimentel 00:38:50.86yeah, but, you know, he wrote within an Arabic situation that was not really that different from the first century. 00:38:59.82People believed that God was a guy who stood on the corner. 00:39:03.88He was right there and so it wasn't surprising to see God acting in your world. 00:39:11.22This is one of the hardest things about teaching the ancient world to modern students is that they don't understand how normal all this was. 00:39:21.44Christianity was not unusual. 00:39:23.36They come into your class thinking Christianity is true because it's unique and you spend an entire semester trying to show them that no, it's not unique, it's just the way things were. 00:39:36.80In fact, I think it's the way things are. 00:39:39.50We academics don't see it all the time but I see it all the time whenever I look around. 00:39:45.40I mean, there are people all around me in Galveston who believe that God talks to them all the time.
Dale Martin 00:39:51.80Yes, that's a good point. 00:39:53.36Yeah, we are wired to believe in miracles, yeah, that's true.
José Maria Pimentel 00:39:56.56Yeah, it's really a challenge to get people out of their heads.
Dale Martin 00:40:01.28But so, a religious person, I think, could argue against that under the following line. 00:40:06.40So, he could say, okay, you say you follow these historical techniques to try and assess what's true and what's not in the Gospels and the miracles that are so, so common in the Gospels, how can you say that they didn't occur? 00:40:19.14Because if you acknowledge that they might have occurred, you have to acknowledge that Jesus was at least a son of God, right?
José Maria Pimentel 00:40:25.46No, all you have to do is say that weird things happened. 00:40:29.36People got off of deathbeds and walked around.
Dale Martin 00:40:32.18But the thing is that I'm playing devil's advocate here, of course, but the thing that there are so many, I don't know, there are dozens of miracles described in the Gospels, right?
José Maria Pimentel 00:40:41.94Yeah, and there are miracles that happen around us all the time here, too.
Dale Martin 00:40:46.36Okay, I agree with that. 00:40:48.26I'm playing devil's advocate, as I said.
José Maria Pimentel 00:40:50.16I'm not trying to explain them, I'm not trying to say they're true, I'm just saying this stuff happens, and if you want to deny that these kinds of things happen, the onus of proof is on you, because there are just way too many people who believe it happens. 00:41:09.08In fact, I find it harder to believe now that I live in Galveston than I did when I lived in Guatemala.
Dale Martin 00:41:17.60Yeah, no, it's true. 00:41:19.06So I understand your point there, and I think it carries a lot of weight. 00:41:22.70And also the miracles kind of work as seasoning for the narrative, as I was saying, but the resurrection itself is a completely different matter, right? 00:41:31.58Because the resurrection seems to be where Christianity started. 00:41:34.96So the belief in resurrection seems to be what gave way to a religion about Jesus, and not the religion of Jesus, which, as I mentioned, it was a Jewish person, right? 00:41:44.04But Christianity, so the belief that Jesus was at least the son of God, very likely God, started right there with the belief in resurrection. 00:41:51.60That was not put there to make the account look more lively. 00:41:53.86It was put there because they actually believed his followers, or at least a good number of them, believed that he got up from the grave and ascended to heaven. 00:42:01.54How do you think that came to be? 00:42:03.26Or what can we say historically about that?
José Maria Pimentel 00:42:06.46I don't think we can say anything historically about what happened. 00:42:09.48I think all we can say is what people believed happened. 00:42:14.36So resurrection was not in the ancient world such an unusual thing. 00:42:19.76That's one of the problems that Christians have, is they think this was uniquely Christ. 00:42:25.42No. 00:42:27.54Asclepius was raised from the dead. 00:42:29.74You know, we can cite numerous people in the ancient world from Greek mythology and that sort of thing, that people claimed to be raised from the dead. 00:42:39.58Now, do I believe historically and scientifically in the resurrection? 00:42:45.08No. 00:42:46.06But this is one of the things that makes people pull their hair out about me. 00:42:52.44I have different parts of my brain, and so I have the historical and the critical and scientific side of my brain. 00:43:00.84But I also reserve a part of my brain for the mythological. 00:43:04.46And I believe that there are myths that are not true scientifically or historical, but they're true as myths. 00:43:13.46So, for example, I believe that God created the earth. 00:43:16.86Do I believe in the story of Genesis exactly as it said? 00:43:21.40I believe it as a myth. 00:43:23.20I don't believe it as science.
Dale Martin 00:43:25.06What do you mean by believing it as a myth?
José Maria Pimentel 00:43:27.14I believe that it's a narrative that says something true about reality. 00:43:32.82Every word in that sentence is important and it's been carefully constructed over a lifetime.
Dale Martin 00:43:38.68It says about reality or about the human nature?
José Maria Pimentel 00:43:41.68Well, human nature
Dale Martin 00:43:42.54is part of reality, isn't it? 00:43:44.16Sure, sure. 00:43:44.56No, but I'm trying to understand if you think it's a true myth in the sense that it unites people or whether you think it has a kernel of truth on the physical world, non-human.
José Maria Pimentel 00:43:55.56Well, you just introduced a word physical that fucked up the whole thought process. 00:44:02.84I'm sorry. 00:44:04.10Why did you use the word physical? 00:44:07.62Is my question.
Dale Martin 00:44:08.84It's probably because philosophically I tend to believe that everything is ultimately physical.
José Maria Pimentel 00:44:14.68Well, that's fine. 00:44:15.80And I don't have any problem with that. 00:44:18.14but I think that the very term physical cages things up and it makes your brain do certain things. 00:44:26.90So I prefer not to cage my brain up.
Dale Martin 00:44:31.56I understand what you mean.
José Maria Pimentel 00:44:32.94So when I say myth, I mean a story that is not true from a scientific or historical point of view. 00:44:43.32Now you notice I didn't say the word physical because science is a discipline and I can follow that. 00:44:49.14History is a discipline and I'm very well trained as a historian. 00:44:53.58So I can follow that. 00:44:54.98Physics. 00:44:56.92Physics is very squirrely. 00:44:58.94It can mean whatever somebody decides to say it means. 00:45:02.78So what I call a myth is something that I believe is true in an ultimate sense but is not true historically or scientifically. 00:45:13.98So I don't believe you could ever demonstrate that God created the earth. 00:45:18.18I believe that it's perfectly fine to read Genesis and accept it as a form of truth. 00:45:25.32And what I would do is say okay that means for example that the earth is meaningful. 00:45:32.06Okay I'm sitting in my study right now and I'm looking out my back window and I see this huge palm tree. 00:45:39.20Can you see it?
Dale Martin 00:45:40.38Yes I can see it now. 00:45:41.66Wow you have great windows almost up to the ceiling.
José Maria Pimentel 00:45:45.68I see that palm tree as an expression of God. 00:45:50.02I don't expect anybody else to see that. 00:45:52.50I don't care if they see that. 00:45:53.92I'm not trying to convert them to see that. 00:45:56.02I don't want them to see that.
Dale Martin 00:45:57.58Sure it's your subjective experience.
José Maria Pimentel 00:45:59.74It's my experience and that's the way I view myth. 00:46:03.58Myth is the expression of God in the world.
Dale Martin 00:46:07.12And do you see the resurrection myth under that lens too?
José Maria Pimentel 00:46:11.12Well as a Christian what I do is I just say I accept it. 00:46:15.00I just confess it and I accept it. 00:46:17.16I don't have any explanation for it. 00:46:19.08I don't try to prove it historically or scientifically. 00:46:22.94I just see it as it's what early Christians believed happened to Jesus after he died. 00:46:29.38It's the only proof we have that Jesus is divine.
Dale Martin 00:46:33.18Exactly. 00:46:33.94Yeah that's where the whole religion hinges on right? 00:46:37.06Yes. 00:46:38.06And that's what's interesting because you said I think already a couple of times that students tend to students and we can say this about just about every Christian person tends to think that Christianity is unique. 00:46:49.28Yeah. 00:46:49.76In some sense and you have already explained that it's not unique in many of the senses we think it is but it seems to be unique at least in one sense for it to have been so successful. 00:46:58.90Of course we can argue that it was just chance.
José Maria Pimentel 00:47:00.48No no no no no no no no no.
Dale Martin 00:47:02.46We can argue it was just chance that's my point.
José Maria Pimentel 00:47:05.06Islam is successful. 00:47:07.00Buddhism is successful. 00:47:08.78I'm not trying to argue that Christianity is special.
Dale Martin 00:47:12.00So you don't think it is special in any way? 00:47:13.60No. 00:47:14.12Okay in the like the market of religions if you will. 00:47:17.20No. 00:47:17.92Not even the resurrection? 00:47:19.22Not even the belief? 00:47:20.90No.
José Maria Pimentel 00:47:21.88The resurrection happens in a lot of different religions. 00:47:24.98It's all over the place in the ancient world. 00:47:27.14Resurrected bodies are all over the place.
Dale Martin 00:47:29.82So what do you credit Christianity's success for? 00:47:33.42So do you think it was just chance? 00:47:34.52Do you think it was Paul?
José Maria Pimentel 00:47:35.54No no no no no. 00:47:36.68It was 19th century English missionaries.
Dale Martin 00:47:39.20Come on but that was very late so it was.
José Maria Pimentel 00:47:41.58Well but that's what it was.
Dale Martin 00:47:43.30No but what is that you had spread throughout Europe?
José Maria Pimentel 00:47:45.62Look through history. 00:47:46.98What was Christianity up until 1900? 00:47:50.48It was European. 00:47:51.56It was only in Europe.
Dale Martin 00:47:52.60Sure but even in Europe you had hundreds of religions that could have taken Christianity's place.
José Maria Pimentel 00:47:57.60Well that's true. 00:47:58.66In fact I think that one of the most interesting things is the question is why did Jesus beat Asclepius. 00:48:05.38They were two gods. 00:48:07.00They were two healing gods of the second century and they were about equally popular. 00:48:12.00So yeah I mean it's an interesting historical question but it's not like a holy mystery or any fucking thing like that.
Dale Martin 00:48:18.96Sure sure. 00:48:19.60No I understand.
José Maria Pimentel 00:48:21.12You know Asclepius died out because Jesus won.
Dale Martin 00:48:24.90It might have been chance. 00:48:26.02So one of them had to win right? 00:48:27.48Not necessarily. 00:48:28.96Yeah sure. 00:48:29.54Not necessarily the two. 00:48:30.82At least in that region. 00:48:31.82I mean not spread out over Europe. 00:48:33.28Then you have different effects and obviously you have constant times conversion and all of that.
José Maria Pimentel 00:48:38.78Well you just hit on it. 00:48:41.36If I had to say what event caused Christianity to become as popular as it was throughout Europe I would say the conversion of Constantine.
Dale Martin 00:48:51.80312. 00:48:53.06Yeah it makes sense. 00:48:54.10And you're not the first Bible scholar. 00:48:57.30I have on the podcast and the one I had before which is a Portuguese academic which translated the Bible. 00:49:02.34I asked him the same question and I gave him the same answer. 00:49:04.42So it's probably right. 00:49:08.28But anyway so we've gone too far from where we were like 10 minutes ago which was discussing Jesus the figure of Jesus.
José Maria Pimentel 00:49:13.56I was going to say what was the subject? 00:49:15.72Yes.
Dale Martin 00:49:17.30I'm keeping track of it because I have to do it otherwise if this were a normal conversation I would be completely lost. 00:49:22.78But anyway so let's go back to Jesus and one of the most fascinating things for me is what to think about what Jesus actually believed in because he was not a Christian of course. 00:49:32.10His religion was not the same religion as Christians have. 00:49:35.80I think the consensus among scholars is that he was an apocalyptic prophet. 00:49:41.02So he believed his message was repent and believe right. 00:49:43.60So he believed that the end of the world was around the corner and we need to believe it and repent. 00:49:48.38But this might come up as strange to some people because what what many people religious or otherwise tend to focus about Jesus is ethics and his ethics seem to be kind of universalistic and ethics of love. 00:50:02.16But I know that many scholars believe that he didn't think that because he thought it was just right, stand-alone. 00:50:09.36He thought that because that's the way he interpreted the scriptures given that he believed that the end of the world was near, right? 00:50:15.92So that's what he believed was the next world, the world of God would be, right? 00:50:20.34You will explain this better than me, but I find that quite interesting to understand why exactly Jesus preached what he preached.
José Maria Pimentel 00:50:28.56Well, yeah, I'm just completely in harmony with most other scholars that you mentioned. 00:50:34.50I believe Jesus of Nazareth thought of himself as a Jewish prophet along the lines of Isaiah and Jeremiah. 00:50:45.46and he was simply, I think that he started out as a disciple of John the Baptist. 00:50:51.42I think he was baptized by John the Baptist in the River Jordan. 00:50:55.52And I think that means that he was convinced at that time in his life of the message of John the Baptist, which was not a new religion. 00:51:05.88It was not Christianity. 00:51:08.64John the Baptist, I believe, was trying to convince Jews and only Jews. 00:51:13.66I don't think he had any kind of universal mission in mind. 00:51:17.40To repent of their sins and turn to God for forgiveness. 00:51:22.10And baptism was a sign of that turn.
Dale Martin 00:51:25.70That commitment, yeah. 00:51:27.08Yeah.
José Maria Pimentel 00:51:27.66Conversion is a loaded term, but basically it just means a turn. 00:51:31.96And that's what John the Baptist was trying to do, was get Judeans to repent and turn. 00:51:38.66because he believed that the repentance of Jews would hasten the coming of the kingdom of God. 00:51:48.00And that's what he was for. 00:51:49.72And Jesus was baptized by him and followed him. 00:51:55.50I think that Jesus and John the Baptist do a part from one another because of differences of views. 00:52:03.90I think John the Baptist was a very strict ascetic Jew who taught that people should not associate with sinners and prostitutes and not eat with them. 00:52:15.96And I think Jesus rejected that message. 00:52:20.32And Jesus came to believe that he would be the friend of Protestants, of prostitutes. 00:52:29.32Protestants. 00:52:31.18Not yet. 00:52:32.30That's a break part. 00:52:36.82Jesus would be a friend of prostitutes and sinners. 00:52:41.72And he would welcome everybody, regardless of their sin, regardless of their repentance. 00:52:46.74They didn't even have to repent. 00:52:48.50He just wanted them to come and expect the kingdom of God.
Dale Martin 00:52:53.00But why do you think he believed that? 00:52:54.58Because it seemed to be the way at least it's presented in the Gospels is that he's presenting that as an interpretation of the scriptures. 00:53:02.28Not even that. 00:53:02.88He's presenting that as something that stems directly from the scriptures, right?
José Maria Pimentel 00:53:06.62Yes. 00:53:07.00But if you read the book of Isaiah, read the first 12 chapters of Isaiah and you'll see Jesus all over the place.
Dale Martin 00:53:16.04So your point is that it was sort of cherry-picking or focusing, let's be more generous, it was focusing on a specific part of the scriptures of the Old Testament?
José Maria Pimentel 00:53:24.84So your point is that
Dale Martin 00:53:35.16his message was not unheard of in the Jewish world?
José Maria Pimentel 00:53:38.44No, no, this was not unheard of at all.
Dale Martin 00:53:44.24Contribua para a continuidade e crescimento deste projeto no site 45oraospodcast.com. 00:53:49.68seleciona a opção apoiar para ver como contribuir, diretamente ou através do Patreon, bem como os benefícios associados a cada modalidade. 00:54:18.08So he said, this is a very well-known passage, of course, he's talking about the commandments, about murder, adultery, love your enemies, everyone knows about this. 00:54:28.20But the way it goes is, I find it a bit puzzling because basically in the beginning of the sermon or in the beginning of this passage, he's basically taking the commandments to an extreme. 00:54:39.68So you heard that it was said for people long ago, you shall not murder. 00:54:43.44So this is the commandment, he said. 00:54:44.92But I say to you that even if you're angry with your brother or sister, that's already bad, right? 00:54:50.30You're already subject to judgment. 00:54:51.90So he says, not only shouldn't you murder, you shouldn't even be angry about anyone. 00:54:56.20And he says the same thing about adultery, that not only shouldn't you commit adultery, but also I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 00:55:06.76So he basically said, even having lust thoughts is already bad to begin with. 00:55:10.96Then he says the same thing about divorce and the same thing about oath. 00:55:14.58So he's basically taking to an extreme. 00:55:16.20It's like God said, be good. 00:55:17.72And he's saying you should be very good is intensifying the message. 00:55:21.54But then it turns to the famous eye for an eye. 00:55:24.26And here he seems to me, at least, he seems to do something different because he's not intensifying God's command. 00:55:29.56He's kind of inverting it because he said, I'm quoting now, this is 38. 00:55:33.72So you've heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth. 00:55:37.56But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. 00:55:40.06If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn on the other cheek. 00:55:42.40So everyone knows this quote. 00:55:43.94But here he seems to be doing something different, right? 00:55:45.92Because he's not intensifying, he's kind of turning it around. 00:55:48.72And the love your enemies is the same thing. 00:55:50.18He says, you've heard that it was said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy. 00:55:53.40But I tell you, love your enemies. 00:55:55.44He's not intensifying God's command, he's changing it, right? 00:55:58.98This, I find it, I find it puzzling because this might have been some trick, some kind of Sufism, for lack of a better word. 00:56:06.12But I find it puzzling. 00:56:08.10I don't, and I don't think I have ever seen this being discussed. 00:56:11.18So I'm very curious to know your opinion on this.
José Maria Pimentel 00:56:14.16Well, I think it's crystal clear. 00:56:16.56The driving force of all of his teaching is his belief. 00:56:22.88And I'm not saying this is the historical Jesus. 00:56:25.96I can't, I can't confidently say that. 00:56:29.12This may be Matthew, it may be Luke, it may be Q, but I tend to think that this goes back to this historical Jesus. 00:56:37.60The central thing is, his point is, the meaning of the law is love. 00:56:42.52That's it. 00:56:43.76So, if that means don't hurt your neighbor, don't have sex with your neighbor's wife, well, the reason is because you're supposed to love your neighbor.
Dale Martin 00:56:55.36Sure. 00:56:56.14No, but that one I understand. 00:56:57.60But so you can, you say, okay, the basis of you shall not commit adultery is love. 00:57:02.78So I'm highlighting that and say that it's love to such an extent that you shouldn't even look.
José Maria Pimentel 00:57:07.82It's the other things that you were talking about later too. 00:57:10.62Yeah.
Dale Martin 00:57:11.02But how come, how can he claim or how could Matthew claim that the basis of an eye for an eye or love your neighbor, hate your enemy, are love? 00:57:19.66You cannot claim that.
José Maria Pimentel 00:57:20.90Yes, you can. 00:57:21.70You just say, legally, you have a right to kill your neighbor. 00:57:26.24You have a right to pluck out your neighbor's eyeball, but you shouldn't do it. 00:57:31.66Just don't do it. 00:57:33.76Yes, you have the legal right in Jewish law.
Dale Martin 00:57:37.72But is it a right or a commandment?
José Maria Pimentel 00:57:39.58Well, a commandment is a granting of a right. 00:57:42.34Yeah. 00:57:42.76I don't know that that's a real difference. 00:57:44.82I don't think you're commanded.
Dale Martin 00:57:46.60A commandment is a duty, right? 00:57:48.32Am I misinterpreting this?
José Maria Pimentel 00:57:50.18No, that's the revolution that Jesus is trying to bring, is saying, yes, you had a commandment to do this. 00:57:57.80I'm telling you, don't use the commandment, because you have a more triumphant obligation to love. 00:58:08.58Yes, there's a commandment that you can kill people all over the place. 00:58:13.56That's what our whole legal system is based on, is killing. 00:58:16.78And Jesus says, I don't want to base our society on killing. 00:58:22.58It is a revolution, but it's a revolution that makes logical sense.
Dale Martin 00:58:27.00And that was already in Isaiah? 00:58:28.98Yes. 00:58:29.30Right, as you mentioned before.
José Maria Pimentel 00:58:30.56If you believe that the basic meaning of the Mosaic law is love, and then you could say love and justice, but then people want to take justice and triumph over love. 00:58:42.74And Jesus' point is, hey, love can never be triumphed over by justice. 00:58:47.72I think that's very consistent.
Dale Martin 00:58:49.56Okay. 00:58:50.16Yeah. 00:58:50.54I mean, it makes sense. 00:58:51.92I understand your point, I think. 00:58:53.46And it makes sense when looking at it.
José Maria Pimentel 00:58:55.44I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't make sense historically. 00:58:58.62Let's admit that. 00:58:59.78Could you ever base a society on the principle of love? 00:59:04.92Completely unjustified, unself-centered love? 00:59:09.72Well, no, you probably couldn't ever base a society on that. 00:59:13.52Of course. 00:59:14.28We have to have justice. 00:59:15.12But that's why the message of Jesus is not employable as a societal rule.
Dale Martin 00:59:25.18And that's why Christianity, while having it as at his basis as to be, I mean, it's kind of an understatement, but has complemented it with different beliefs. 00:59:35.72Some of them are not very far, others very different from the source.
José Maria Pimentel 00:59:39.96Yeah, nobody's ever built a Christian society.
Dale Martin 00:59:43.64It's like you've never been in a communist country, right? 00:59:45.96It would be impossible. 00:59:47.98Yeah. 00:59:49.06This also raises another interesting question, which is how non-believers tend to look at Jesus. 00:59:54.38You certainly know about this saying, this quote from C.S. 00:59:57.24Lewis. 00:59:57.84And it's fun because I had a very similar thought when reading the Bible, and only after did I come across his saying. 01:00:03.62And he says basically that it's almost impossible, so his point is that it's almost impossible for me to admire Jesus and at the same time not believe he's God, not believe he's the Lord. 01:00:14.72Because if you don't believe he's the Lord, you have to think that he was either a liar or a lunatic, as he's saying. 01:00:20.00So he was either kind of crazy or he was deliberately lying. 01:00:23.68Because otherwise you have to believe he was the Son, not necessarily God, but at least the Son of God.
José Maria Pimentel 01:00:27.96Liar, lunatic, or Lord.
Dale Martin 01:00:30.06Exactly. 01:00:30.70Exactly. 01:00:30.96That's what C.S. 01:00:31.68Lewis said. 01:00:32.32Yeah. 01:00:32.60What do you make of it? 01:00:33.58Because I think his point is that his ethics and his beliefs are intertwined. 01:00:38.64Like you cannot separate them.
José Maria Pimentel 01:00:40.26So I love C.S. 01:00:41.70Lewis for his fiction, for the Chronicles of Narnia, and his other fictitious book. 01:00:47.72But when it comes to his theology and philosophy, he was just too much of a positivist. 01:00:53.66He felt like everything had to be either or. 01:00:56.58In fact, isn't that what titles of one of his books or something?
Dale Martin 01:01:00.52No, either or is, I think, is by Kierkegaard, I think. 01:01:03.40I'm not sure.
José Maria Pimentel 01:01:04.02Yeah. 01:01:04.46Kierkegaard did write either or, but I was thinking that C.S. 01:01:07.74Lewis had something like that also. 01:01:09.54Anyway, I read everything C.S. 01:01:12.04Lewis ever wrote. 01:01:13.42And I came to believe that his fiction was wonderful, but his philosophy was severely flawed. 01:01:23.86And it's because his brain worked in an either or fashion. 01:01:28.94And my brain can't work that way. 01:01:31.80I believe there's lots of gray area between one thing you can say that you are sure is true and another thing you can say that you're sure is true. 01:01:43.92And they don't seem to fit together. 01:01:46.86That's because there's all this gray area between. 01:01:50.44So we were just talking about theology. 01:01:52.44Was Jesus a man or was he a God? 01:01:55.28People who believe that you can make that an either or choice, they don't fit inside my head. 01:02:01.28I believe Jesus was both. 01:02:03.28I can't explain that. 01:02:05.26In fact, it's the mystery of it that encapsulates it, captures me.
Dale Martin 01:02:10.44Yeah, but that's exactly how Christianity has led with it throughout centuries, right? 01:02:14.62To emphasize that mystery and that you can actually believe the two things at the same time.
José Maria Pimentel 01:02:18.62Yes, we can all chew gum and walk at the same time. 01:02:24.18That's what being a Christian is, is being able to chew gum and walk.
Dale Martin 01:02:27.48Yeah, but I think Lewis's point was about the non-Christians, right? 01:02:31.28So I think, I hope I'm not misrepresenting it, but I think he was talking about non-religious people that admire Jesus. 01:02:38.38And so he was saying that. 01:02:38.98I know, I know, but that. 01:02:40.44Because the thing is that if you admire him for his love ethics, you would also have to follow him in his other beliefs, right? 01:02:47.10No. 01:02:47.84Because he stemmed from his other beliefs, right? 01:02:49.70No. 01:02:50.30He stemmed from Isaiah, right? 01:02:51.30As you said before. 01:02:52.10So it was not something that he woke up one day and believed, right? 01:02:56.16It was a religious belief, not an ethics, not an ethical belief.
José Maria Pimentel 01:02:59.82I'm not a foundationalist. 01:03:01.76Have you talked about this before? 01:03:03.56I don't think so. 01:03:05.22Fundamentalism is the idea that like everything that the Bible says is true scientifically, historically, everywhere. 01:03:15.24Foundationalism is not that because it won't accept that the Bible is completely true historically or scientifically, but foundationalists. 01:03:25.56And here I'm thinking about my former friend and colleague, Richard Hayes, you know, whose books are what I would call basic to foundationalist belief. 01:03:38.22It's the idea that the truths of Christianity are true on their foundation. 01:03:43.82And you can interpret them in different ways as you go above them. 01:03:48.70But if you get right down to the foundation of the claims of Christianity, they're true in an absolute sense. 01:03:58.14Well, I don't believe that. 01:03:59.72I believe that truth is something that you interpret. 01:04:03.36And so even if Isaiah is true and one of my favorite prophets, I wouldn't take him as, you know, the truth. 01:04:13.14I would feel like I have to interpret him. 01:04:16.02And my interpretation leads me in lots of different directions. 01:04:21.10So for me, there is no foundation. 01:04:24.90Okay, so Søren Kierkegaard put it this way. 01:04:28.26Faith is like floating on 70,000 fathoms of water. 01:04:34.60And that's all it is, floating. 01:04:36.60You can't put your foot down and touch the ground. 01:04:39.76You can't be eternally sure that you're not going to drown. 01:04:43.66You might drown.
Dale Martin 01:04:45.24But that's what faith is like. 01:04:46.18That's an interesting metaphor.
José Maria Pimentel 01:04:47.60Faith is like floating on 70,000 fathoms of water. 01:04:51.64And I've always believed that. 01:04:53.22But that means you have to be comfortable with floating. 01:04:56.38And not a lot of people are comfortable with floating. 01:04:59.90Especially a lot of Christians are not comfortable with floating.
Dale Martin 01:05:04.82It cuts both ways in a sense. 01:05:07.86That's an interesting metaphor, actually. 01:05:09.46I didn't know it.
José Maria Pimentel 01:05:10.40Kierkegaard is one of my favorite philosophers and theologians. 01:05:13.64He's just brilliant.
Dale Martin 01:05:15.88Okay, it's interesting. 01:05:16.90I mentioned him by chance because we were talking about that book. 01:05:20.16So it's interesting that he ended up supplying this metaphor. 01:05:23.54Well, we still haven't talked about Paul, but I'm mindful of your time. 01:05:26.84So I think we shall do it, but quickly, because I don't want to fill up your whole day with this. 01:05:32.38I have a few questions about Paul because he's obviously a quite crucial figure. 01:05:36.68I mean, he was crucial in forming Christianity as a religion. 01:05:41.04He's also historically quite interesting because the oldest writings in the New Testament are actually his letters, not the Gospels, right? 01:05:46.88And by the way, do you think he knew... 01:05:48.32That's already a good question to start. 01:05:49.54Do you think he knew some version of the Gospels?
José Maria Pimentel 01:05:52.68No, they weren't written by that time.
Dale Martin 01:05:54.46I know, I know. 01:05:55.10I know that they were not written, but do you think he knew any oral version of it, obviously?
José Maria Pimentel 01:05:59.80Yes, yeah. 01:06:00.92He obviously knew some oral traditions. 01:06:03.42He quotes them. 01:06:04.48He quotes some songs, right? 01:06:06.14Well, Jesus' establishment of the Last Supper. 01:06:08.66He quotes that in 1 Corinthians. 01:06:11.12And there are several sayings, like, you know, sayings about love. 01:06:14.84Love is the fulfillment of the law, which I assume he got from Jesus. 01:06:19.14So, yeah, there are clear indications that he had heard traditions. 01:06:24.40I mean, he knew Peter. 01:06:26.16He knew James and John. 01:06:27.36He knew James, yes. 01:06:28.58He visited with them. 01:06:29.84And I assume that when he was with them, he got all kinds of sort of what we would call gospel materials for them from them.
Dale Martin 01:06:39.12My question is, can you in some way pinpoint those sayings and relate them to any of the Gospels, for instance, to either Mark or Q, or is that almost impossible to do because they are so few or so different?
José Maria Pimentel 01:06:49.82Well, I would just say that it's impossible to do because Paul's writing around the year 50, and those documents weren't created until after that time.
Dale Martin 01:06:59.08No, I know. 01:06:59.68I mean, I know that, but they were based on oral traditions that... 01:07:03.34Oh, yes, yes.
José Maria Pimentel 01:07:04.20That's the thing, yeah. 01:07:05.32Paul definitely knew oral traditions, but you were asking about, can you connect them to different parts of the Gospels?
Dale Martin 01:07:12.72Or can we know whether he knew what would eventually become Q, assuming it existed in Denmark?
José Maria Pimentel 01:07:17.84Okay, look. 01:07:19.60All you can say is that he knew oral traditions about Jesus. 01:07:25.80Okay. 01:07:26.72But you cannot link them to any explicit written documents because they were all written after he was writing.
Dale Martin 01:07:33.24Sure, sure, sure. 01:07:34.40Okay. 01:07:35.32And he met, as you were saying, he met Peter, he met James. 01:07:39.18He's an interesting character, right? 01:07:40.36Because he was a late convert, right? 01:07:42.10James. 01:07:42.72Jesus, his brother.
José Maria Pimentel 01:07:43.82I take it that James was converted
Dale Martin 01:07:47.06by the resurrection stories. 01:07:48.92Exactly. 01:07:49.90So it's very early. 01:07:51.54No, no. 01:07:52.00When I say late, I mean, Jesus was already there. 01:07:55.50So late in that sense. 01:07:57.94Jesus was dead. 01:07:59.40Yeah. 01:07:59.74So post-Gospels, post his life. 01:08:01.68Which is interesting. 01:08:02.58Like, what do you make of it? 01:08:03.76That he... 01:08:05.38I mean, he was his brother, so he lived with him. 01:08:07.70He lived while he was preaching, but then he only converted when he resurrected, which is to say, when he believed that he had been resurrected.
José Maria Pimentel 01:08:15.94That's the way I think about it. 01:08:17.34But I mean, you have the same question about Mary, the mother of Jesus. 01:08:21.30She seemed to have followed him somewhat during his lifetime. 01:08:26.36But we only see her being amid the apostles, like the disciples, the twelve. 01:08:33.68We only see her doing that after his death.
Dale Martin 01:08:36.64Exactly. 01:08:37.48Yeah. 01:08:37.66And even that passage I quoted earlier about Jesus complaining that a prophet was never well-treated in his own home or village, that was about his mother and brothers, right? 01:08:49.78Not necessarily. 01:08:51.80When they were outside, at least in one account, because it's in the four Gospels, so I don't remember in which one of them that's the case, but it's like they are outside the synagogue or something like that. 01:09:02.30They want to get in the house. 01:09:04.84They're outside the house where he's preaching, yes. 01:09:07.32So my point is, they seem to be far from being in the inner circle because they want to get in and he's not very happy to let them in.
José Maria Pimentel 01:09:13.08I don't think any of Jesus' family were in the inner circles during his lifetime. 01:09:19.30Yeah, yeah. 01:09:20.26Which is, I mean, and then you see them coming in later, and so it's just guesswork. 01:09:26.60You just have to say what happened. 01:09:28.98And it seems to me that the resurrection stories were probably impetus
Dale Martin 01:09:34.78because they were the ones that knew him better, right? 01:09:39.80They knew him from his infancy, whereas his followers knew him. 01:09:44.26We don't know his age, right? 01:09:45.58But when he was already a preacher, and like everyone knows, like I and you know, and everyone was listening to us, people who know us from when we are born and when we are very young, when we are kids, sometimes know us the best, right? 01:09:59.16Because they know a very unpolished version of us. 01:10:02.70So that's why I find them interesting. 01:10:04.72But anyway, let's not dwell on that too much. 01:10:08.00I wanted to ask you about Mary, actually, because so much of Christianity is about Virgin Mary. 01:10:14.18I mean, I was born in a Catholic country, so you know that Catholics are specially, or love specially, Virgin Mary. 01:10:20.22So there's this big cult about Virgin Mary. 01:10:22.88But Mary, she shows up, but as you were saying, she was a kind of a minor character in the Gospels. 01:10:27.38she's quoted, I think, in Acts in the very beginning, and then she doesn't seem to have been a major figure in early Christianity, right? 01:10:34.48So how come she came to have this, such a prominent status in Christianity later on?
José Maria Pimentel 01:10:39.96Well, I do think that she became prominent in early Christianity at a fairly early date. 01:10:47.60I don't think you would have her playing as prominent a role in Acts as she did. 01:10:53.54I mean, even in the 2nd century have, you know, Gospels written in her name, the Gospel of Mary. 01:10:59.52So she was definitely around, but I don't think it's very surprising that we wouldn't have a lot of material on her. 01:11:07.70I mean, she was probably an illiterate village girl, and so why should she be prominent?
Dale Martin 01:11:14.38My point is that the mother of, so Mary is the mother of God, as the mother of Jesus.
José Maria Pimentel 01:11:18.80But she's not, she's not the mother of God at that point.
Dale Martin 01:11:21.82Of course, but my question is, how did she become the mother of God?
José Maria Pimentel 01:11:24.54Well, 3rd and 4th century.
Dale Martin 01:11:26.54But how? 01:11:27.26Or why? 01:11:27.92It was because there was a lack of a female figure in Christianity? 01:11:31.60I mean, obviously you have the story in Matthew.
José Maria Pimentel 01:11:33.88I don't think it was sought out because of a lack of a female figure. 01:11:37.02You could always invent female gods and things. 01:11:40.44I just think it, obviously, the more the piety surrounding Jesus grew, then the piety surrounding his mother would grow. 01:11:50.06It's just kind of natural. 01:11:52.44So I don't think there's anything surprising, especially when you look at it, that it took, you know, two or three hundred years to do.
Dale Martin 01:12:00.02So you don't think you could have Jesus without the mother?
José Maria Pimentel 01:12:02.44And the thing is, you've got so many other female gods of the time. 01:12:08.20Artemis is huge at the time. 01:12:11.38Apollo is the male god and Artemis is the female god of healing. 01:12:16.78And both of them could have beaten Jesus. 01:12:20.20And we could all be followers of Apollo and Artemis right now if Jesus hadn't just happened to one. 01:12:27.08Who knows the way history works? 01:12:30.02I think the centrality of Mary is because in the ancient world you have the centrality of female gods all over the place. 01:12:40.42So why not in Christianity?
Dale Martin 01:12:42.68And going back to Paul, so Paul believed very much in Jesus' apocalyptic message, right? 01:12:48.50So he also thought that the end was near. 01:12:50.82That took a big chunk of his letters. 01:12:53.18So he was discussing that topic a lot with his followers, of course, because it was essential in the message that the end of the world was about to come. 01:13:00.64Some of you will see it in your own lives as Jesus had himself said. 01:13:04.88Even that problem of dealing with people's relatives that were dying along the way and you were saying that, assuring them that they would resurrect as well so that they would be saved still like the people on whom the end of the world, like the world of God would come in their lifetime. 01:13:18.28But then the message changed, of course, because Jesus, the second coming never came. 01:13:23.24Sorry for the redundancy. 01:13:25.54Well, not yet. 01:13:26.56Or not yet, yes, sure. 01:13:27.82But for people who were living back then and throughout the centuries, it's clearly taking longer than at least to be generous was suggested in the Gospels. 01:13:38.44I still expect it. 01:13:41.08No, no, and that's legitimate, but it's 2,000 years afterwards. 01:13:45.62So the church had to change the message and the message we all grew up with was that we would die and if we behaved well, that would be an afterlife. 01:13:54.36It's a different message from the message that Paul was passing around. 01:13:57.66Of course, Paul's message still exists today in some denominations, of course, but like the mainstream message is not about this impending end of the world. 01:14:05.80It's like, you will live your whole life and then if you behave well, you will go to paradise, right? 01:14:10.18But this is different, right? 01:14:11.38This is...
José Maria Pimentel 01:14:11.92You die like Martha and you go all over. 01:14:15.46Like, dear Aunt Martha, she's dead and she's in the arms of Jesus in heaven. 01:14:22.16and that's what all of us can look forward to. 01:14:24.84Yeah.
Dale Martin 01:14:25.68But didn't this require some flexibility on the part of the church to change this message? 01:14:31.80Because if people were going to read the Gospels, they see something which is not exactly what they see preached in church.
José Maria Pimentel 01:14:37.30Yeah, it took several hundred years.
Dale Martin 01:14:38.88What I'm trying to ask is, was this a heavy debate in the church, like between the bishops and the priests, or was it like a natural thing?
José Maria Pimentel 01:14:47.04No, no, no. 01:14:47.66There was a lot of debate about it. 01:14:49.54I mean, the church father, Tertullian, is very important for this. 01:14:55.00He wrote a lot of stuff about. 01:14:56.94He wrote a book on the resurrection, but he also wrote a lot on the immortality of the soul, whether that was true or not. 01:15:05.22So what actually came about in Christianity was that people gave up on all the eschatological end-of-the-world talk, and they started adopting language about the immortality of the soul. 01:15:18.10Exactly. 01:15:18.88So when you die, your body dies and is buried in the ground, but your soul lives, and it goes to heaven or goes to paradise or something like that. 01:15:30.24And the idea was eventually, although originally it was that the only eschatological salvation was going to be the resurrection of the flesh. 01:15:41.60But then people started giving up that idea. 01:15:46.36In fact, I have a book that I've written on the flesh, and I'm waiting for a friend of mine, Stephen Moore, to write some responses to it. 01:15:58.04And then I think we're going to publish that book with Oxford Press on the resurrection of the flesh. 01:16:04.30It was announced here first. 01:16:06.20Yeah. 01:16:07.58You know, that really kind of eventually went away as most of us growing up just were taught that, well, when you die, your body is dead and it's put in the ground and it's buried or it's burned or whatever. 01:16:23.02and your soul goes to heaven or paradise or something like that and it's going to be there forever. 01:16:30.64Well, that's not the way Paul thought or Jesus thought or any of the earliest Christians thought. 01:16:36.48They all believed in the resurrection of the body. 01:16:39.86and so it took hundreds of years for Christians to move away from the idea of the resurrection of the flesh and to move into the idea of the immortality of the soul or the spirit. 01:16:55.06And they had to make
Dale Martin 01:16:56.08that change without any backup from the scriptures, right? 01:16:59.18Because what?
José Maria Pimentel 01:16:59.90Well, no. 01:17:00.96Ah, okay. 01:17:01.70You can find a few places in the scriptures, especially in the Old Testament
Dale Martin 01:17:06.36that sound as if
José Maria Pimentel 01:17:08.08the soul is an eternal thing. 01:17:11.22I mean, you can find, look, you can find anything in the Bible that you want to find.
Dale Martin 01:17:16.96Sure, that's true. 01:17:18.30When I said scriptures, I was thinking about the New Testament.
José Maria Pimentel 01:17:21.74Yeah, you're right. 01:17:23.16The New Testament is pretty consistent and it's insistence that the afterlife is going to be the resurrection of the body. 01:17:31.20Now, sometimes they'll say the body, sometimes they'll say the flesh, and those aren't necessarily the same things, but that's the New Testament. 01:17:39.58But you can find, I mean, all over the Old Testament. 01:17:43.08I mean, remember, Christians don't accept only the New Testament as their Bible. 01:17:47.90They have to accept the whole Bible. 01:17:50.12Of course. 01:17:50.94Which means that the Old Testament is just as authoritative as the New Testament. 01:17:56.94So, if you have a teaching about, that looks like it's talking about the immortality of the soul in the Old Testament, then that's still scripture for you.
Dale Martin 01:18:08.52Unless Jesus would say otherwise, right? 01:18:11.28Or not? 01:18:12.16No, no, no, no. 01:18:13.46You can always interpret Jesus. 01:18:15.56But, okay, I see your point. 01:18:17.68I think, yes, that's true.
José Maria Pimentel 01:18:19.18Jesus said all sorts of things that modern Christians don't accept.
Dale Martin 01:18:22.78of course. 01:18:23.48Of course. 01:18:25.18That's correct. 01:18:26.70We all know about that. 01:18:28.28And it's interesting. 01:18:29.70I mean, it was so difficult as you pointed out that it took a lot of centuries for it to be brought about. 01:18:34.48So, that's interesting.
José Maria Pimentel 01:18:35.82Yeah, it's just that, you know, Christianity came out of a Semitic world that is the ancient Near East. 01:18:43.94And that's where the doctrine of resurrection of the flesh came about. 01:18:48.00But Christianity very soon, at least by the second century, started adopting views from Platonism and Stoicism, the Greek philosophies. 01:18:58.50They didn't want to have anything to do with the resurrection of the flesh. 01:19:01.26They thought that was a disgusting idea. 01:19:02.90Of course, of course. 01:19:04.28And so, they taught, you know, either the immortality of the soul or they just taught that, I think Stoicism mainly taught that, you know, when you're dead, you're dead like Rover and you're just dead all over. 01:19:16.22so there's just nothing there. 01:19:19.02But in Platonism and Neoplatonism, there was a very distinct teaching of the immortality of the soul.
Dale Martin 01:19:25.92That's quite interesting. 01:19:27.78Well, Dale, I think I took too much of your time already, so I'm very thankful for you sharing with us your knowledge and wisdom. 01:19:36.18I told you in a previous email, I don't know if you remember this, that I usually end these conversations with the guest recommending a book, which can be actually something else.
José Maria Pimentel 01:19:42.68Do you remember that? 01:19:43.30You probably were expecting me to recommend a book like New Testament Studies or Theology or Philosophy or something.
Dale Martin 01:19:51.68Not necessarily, or not the first one for it. 01:19:54.64I've worked from the topic.
José Maria Pimentel 01:19:56.04So I've been reading, just started reading a book. 01:19:59.12Do you know who Barbara Kingsolver is?
Dale Martin 01:20:01.98No, never heard of her.
José Maria Pimentel 01:20:03.16She's a novelist. 01:20:04.36She was famous, I think in the 70s, for a book called The Poisonwood Bible and absolutely brilliant. 01:20:10.80It's a novel, but it's fiction. 01:20:13.02She's published like 27 different books and I haven't read anything except The Poisonwood Bible, but she just came out with a new novel and it is fucking brilliant. 01:20:24.04Here it is. 01:20:25.12It's called Demon Copperhead and Demon is a form of the word Damon, who's the main character. 01:20:37.20But everybody calls him Demon and Copperhead's because he has red hair. 01:20:41.84But it was an Oprah's book club book recently, which is how I heard about it. 01:20:48.26She is an absolutely brilliant writer and it's all based in the South. 01:20:53.66So if you're not from the South, you might not understand how the language works because it's very Southern.
Dale Martin 01:20:58.96Well, I'm definitely not from the South of the United States. 01:21:02.82But as I said, you're not the first one to make a recommendation which is not strictly related to the topic and that's great actually because...
José Maria Pimentel 01:21:09.06The thing is that though it's very theological. 01:21:11.54It's like loaded with the Bible because it's like it's just soaked in the Bible soaked South. 01:21:20.40Yes. 01:21:21.56And she's a brilliant novelist and I would recommend anything she's written. 01:21:26.86The Poisonwood Bible I thought I think that's the first one that made her really super famous. 01:21:33.94It's based in Africa from...
Dale Martin 01:21:37.04From 1998 according to Google.
José Maria Pimentel 01:21:38.84Oh, 1998. 01:21:40.08Okay. 01:21:40.42I thought it was much older than that. 01:21:42.10Anyway, it's kind of it places this missionary a Protestant missionary in Africa and I think Barbara Kingsolver maybe have grown up as a child of missionaries. 01:21:55.28but anyway this new book of hers just came out a few weeks ago a couple weeks ago and it's brilliant.
Dale Martin 01:22:03.00Well, I just googled it and it has a great review so I can at least that part I can confirm so it's a great recommendation. 01:22:10.84Thank you. 01:22:11.44It was a great conversation. 01:22:13.30Thank you. 01:22:13.80This episode was edited by Hugo Oliveira. 01:22:22.48Contribua para a continuidade and crescimento deste project no site 45coraospodcast.com Selecione a opção Apoiar para ver como contribuir directamente ou através do Patreon bem como os benefícios associados a cada modalidade. 01:22:34.80Apoiar