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[MUSIC PLAYING]
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This is Undaunted Life of Man's podcast.
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I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
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Let's get into it.
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Our guy, Steve, got a special guest on the podcast.
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His name is Titus Kennedy.
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So he is a field archaeologist.
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And he has been involved in excavations and survey projects
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at several archaeological sites and biblical lands,
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including directing and supervising multiple projects
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spanning the Bronze Age through the Byzantine period.
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So his archaeological interests include biblical archaeology,
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the interplay between ancient documents
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and the archaeological record, experimental archaeology,
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ancient demography, and the similarities
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between cultures and antiquity.
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And he's done a whole lot in all these different areas.
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And we're not even going to be able to scratch the surface
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on all of it today.
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But he's also a research fellow at the Discovery Institute.
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And he teaches as an adjunct professor at Biola University
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and has been a consultant, writer, and guide
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for history and archaeology documentaries and curricula.
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And I think I said documentaries.
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I'm in documentaries, guys.
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It's just one of those things.
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Sometimes when you say things out loud, you sound stupid.
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But he's also the author of two different books.
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So there's Unearthing the Bible.
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So that's a book that he wrote in 2020.
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And then Excavating the Evidence for Jesus.
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This was a book that he wrote in 2022.
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And guys, we get into both of those things
1:24
here in this interview.
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But he's the first archaeologist I think I've ever
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talked to in my entire life.
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So we talked to him about that.
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What made him want to get into archaeology?
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Is it because of the Indiana Jones films and all that?
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Or what are the different misperceptions
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and common misperceptions inside of archaeology?
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We talk about the difficulty of archaeology.
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But then we dig into, how do you do an archaeological dig?
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How do you choose a location?
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Who's laws do you abide by?
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Who gets to keep the artifacts after you're done with it?
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The imprecision of archaeology.
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We also dig into some of the holy grails of Christian archaeology,
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the things we haven't found yet.
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How Christians should feel about archaeology overall.
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Some of the traditions that we believe
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that don't actually have a backing.
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But then whenever we really start digging into his latest book,
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Excavating the Evidence for Jesus,
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we dig broadly into the most important question
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in all of eternity, which is, did Jesus write?
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Was he resurrected from the dead?
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And then we look at how archaeology can kind of put together
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some of the pieces and go against some of the arguments
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that would convince people that no, that actually didn't happen.
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But then we also talk about something that I super
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wanted to talk to him about.
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But Jesus clearing the temple and the archaeological evidence
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and historical evidence that that didn't just happen once,
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guys, that happened twice.
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So when you talk about Jesus clearing the temple,
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we always talk about it in this singular fashion.
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But we have plenty of evidence to suggest
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that that happened at the beginning of Jesus' ministry,
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but also at the end.
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We talked about the date for Christmas.
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We do, what would you say to someone that said,
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we did a bunch of great stuff in this particular interview.
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And guys, this guy's an academic.
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This is somebody that has spent a lot of his time writing
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and researching and doing the really difficult work of archaeology.
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But I think we stayed, you know, at 30,000 foot view enough
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to where we could really, really dig in.
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Guys, if you want to get the books,
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they will be in the show notes.
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You can go in even further.
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But I really, really enjoyed my time with him today.
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So guys, without further ado, let's get into it.
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Titus Kennedy, welcome to Indaunted Life of Man's podcast.
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- Hey, thank you, Kyle.
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- So we need to start out from the very, very beginning
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because I think this is a record.
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This is like a brand new experience for me.
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You're an archaeologist.
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I've never talked to one of those things,
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but I just need to get something out of the way
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from the very, very beginning.
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I need you to admit this.
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You just wanted to become an archaeologist
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because of Indiana Jones.
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Just say it, just say it to everybody right now
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so that we can like have something to build upon
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for the rest of our time today.
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- I don't know if I should say I wish that were true,
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but Indiana Jones wasn't even my intro to archaeology.
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So, you know, he can't take credit for all that.
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- Okay, so I guess let's start there then.
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How does someone even become an archaeologist?
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And I guess for you specifically,
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why did you decide, yep, that's my path.
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I wanna do that.
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- Yeah, when I was in elementary school,
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I really liked history.
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That was maybe my favorite subject,
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definitely one of my favorites.
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But I had no idea that archaeology existed.
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Nobody taught me that.
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I didn't really read about it in any of my books,
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but then in fourth grade, my teacher gave me this book
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on the city of Troy and the excavation of Troy,
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which was one of the early major archaeological projects.
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And so I read that and that was my introduction to archaeology
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and I found out that, oh, this is one of the places
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where we get historical information from people
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actually going out, finding these locations,
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and then digging into the ground
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and exposing the buildings and recovering artifacts.
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It wasn't just a bunch of old records, written records
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that were handed down and re-copied.
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There's actually new information coming out from archaeology.
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So I thought that was really cool,
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very interested in history and ancient history
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and then biblical history too.
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And my dad gave me some books on archaeology
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connected to the Bible later on.
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And I started to understand that there is a ton
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from archaeology that connects to the Bible,
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that shows the historical reliability
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of different biblical books.
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And I got really interested in that in particular.
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And by the end of high school, I decided,
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maybe I want to try to study this and see where it goes.
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So I studied archaeology in college, in my undergrad,
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and along with other subjects.
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But, and that's when I first volunteered for a dig too.
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And I just kept doing that and decided,
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I want to keep trying to go forward with this master's degree,
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doctorate, doing lots of excavations,
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working in the field.
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So that's kind of how I got to where I am.
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- Well, I appreciate that detail.
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And we're certainly going to get way more into archaeology
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and the Bible and those different things.
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But I kind of set it up there with the Indiana Jones question.
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I'm sure there are a lot of misperceptions about archaeologists.
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I'm assuming you're not running around,
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saving the girl and shooting people
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and running away from big rocks and things like that
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and caves or all that.
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But I guess what are the most common misperceptions
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about what you do for work?
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- Well, if we're talking about how Indiana Jones portrayed
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archaeology, most of the time in those movies,
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he is running around to different locations
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and taking artifacts or like hunting them down
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that other people have acquired them.
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Almost none of the movies show any kind of actual excavation.
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There's an excavation in the first movie
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where he jumps in there.
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It's actually somebody else's excavation
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and they go and they explore this underground room
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and he grabs this artifact.
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But that's generally not what archaeology is like.
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So we're out there trying to find sites,
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doing systematic kind of grid-style surveys,
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using technology now, more technology, satellite imagery,
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drones, laser scanning, things like that.
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And then we're digging there in the dirt
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for long hours for many days and weeks.
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And you're not always finding something awesome.
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So it's not like constant excitement.
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But at the end of the day, when you do find something,
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that's the payoff.
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- So with that payoff, there are a lot of difficulties
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as you basically described there.
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It has to be incredibly difficult to do archaeological work
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in ancient cities 'cause these aren't always
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in the best countries that just love
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when Americans and other westerners come poking around
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in their sandbox.
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But I guess take us through the process
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of an archaeological dig or excavation.
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I mean, I have so many questions, like,
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how do you choose the location?
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Like, how big is the team?
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Like, how long do you plan to be there?
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Who's laws do you abide by?
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Who pays for it?
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Who gets to keep the artifacts that they're found?
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Take it wherever you wanna go.
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- Yeah, so the first thing is,
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how do you even begin an archaeological project?
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- Then, you know, that starts kind of in the research phase
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with, well, what maybe what site hasn't been excavated yet
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or hasn't been located, maybe you're interested
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in a particular region.
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And so you might go through what's published,
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you know, records that have been done and see,
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oh, you know, here's a site that somebody found before
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or someone noticed like some pottery on the ground
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in this area.
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And so you decide to take a team out there
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and you do a survey and you look to see
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if you can find any new sites in that area
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where there's some pottery on the ground,
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there's some artifacts, maybe there's some ruins
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that you can see parts of walls popping up over the ground
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and you decide, okay, maybe I wanna dig this.
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Now, in certain areas where we have a lot more historical
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texts, and for example, with the Bible,
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you have a lot of locations that are mentioned
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and oftentimes in relation to other cities, towns, villages,
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even geography, you know, rivers, mountains, lakes and so forth.
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So you can kind of figure out generally
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where some of these places are.
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Sometimes the ancient names are preserved
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into modern languages, like in the Middle East,
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oftentimes the ancient names have been preserved
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in some form in Arabic.
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So it might be a form of the name that was used
9:40
during Roman times, or it might even go
9:43
all the way back to like Canaanite times.
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So that can help too.
9:47
Well, once you kind of decide, all right,
9:51
I wanna dig here, then you need to go and get a permit.
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And that is done through the government
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of whatever country the site is in.
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So they have controlled archeological site
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and related to the question that you asked previously,
10:09
like who gets to keep the artifacts?
10:10
So now all the artifacts belong to the country
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in which they were excavated.
10:17
It doesn't matter who dug them up,
10:19
it doesn't matter who paid for it.
10:21
That's the antiquities law now.
10:23
And you know, it was changed some decades ago
10:26
before it was a little different,
10:28
but that's how it is now.
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- Gotcha. And so one thing that's part of this whole process,
11:03
and I've heard this kind of said about archeology
11:05
as opposed to some of the other sciences
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or the other disciplines,
11:09
is that archeology can be very imprecise
11:12
when people want precision.
11:14
So, you know, an archeologist might say,
11:16
"Yes, you know, this piece of pottery or this, whatever,"
11:18
can be dated to,
11:20
and then they give this huge date range
11:22
in terms of what we say today.
11:23
'Cause, you know, if you were to say,
11:25
you know, pick some big news topic and say,
11:27
"Hey, that happened on this date."
11:28
And we've got 10,000 tweets
11:30
and all these other different stories.
11:31
We know exactly when it happened,
11:33
exactly when that speech was given, all of that.
11:35
But obviously we didn't have the internet back then,
11:37
we didn't have television, we didn't have Twitter,
11:39
you know, two, three, 4,000 years ago, something like that.
11:41
But what would you say to people that are like,
11:42
"Hey, archeology's just, it's kind of a crapshoot."
11:45
They're just kind of throwing a dart up against the board.
11:47
- Yeah, I mean, that's valid in many cases.
11:51
So we can't, we shouldn't overemphasize
11:55
some of the evidence from archeology.
11:59
Like if you have one piece of pottery, as you said,
12:02
that can have a big date range.
12:04
Even if we can identify it as it's this specific type
12:08
of pottery that was made during this period,
12:10
it might be a 100 year period, right?
12:12
So we cannot say like, "Oh, this was from 323 BC."
12:17
You know, unless we have a lot of other information
12:20
that tells us that.
12:21
So coins are a lot more precise.
12:24
If we're looking at things from the time of the Romans,
12:27
or say Alexander the Great,
12:30
some of the early, some of the later Greeks,
12:34
then they often did put years on their coins,
12:38
years of a particular king or rulers reign.
12:42
And so with a constructed historical chronology,
12:46
you can kind of pinpoint like, "Here's a date."
12:50
But yeah, there is imprecision to it,
12:53
and there is interpretation.
12:54
I mean, we're excavating a small percentage
12:58
of what's actually there.
13:00
And then so much has been destroyed and lost over time too,
13:05
that we're looking at a fraction of the original.
13:09
So you try to reconstruct that.
13:11
It's kind of like a detective,
13:14
but we're looking at something in the very distant past.
13:18
And so we need to pull together a lot of different evidence
13:22
in order to come to a solid conclusion,
13:25
rather than just like one little piece,
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okay, this is exactly what happened.
13:29
- Yeah, I would agree with that
13:30
because obviously you have to cover a multitude
13:31
of different issues and ways of approaching something.
13:34
And that lends credence to the conclusions
13:37
that you might draw,
13:39
which really gets us into the whole world
13:41
of Christians and archeology.
13:44
Because I know some Christians that are very, very hesitant
13:47
to think of anything that is outside the Bible
13:50
as being something that should be a part of their faith.
13:52
So if it's not in the actual scriptural canon,
13:56
if it's not in the Bible that they have sitting
13:57
on their desk at home, they don't want to listen to it.
13:59
They don't want to listen to science.
14:00
They don't want to listen to history.
14:01
They don't want to listen to archeology.
14:03
But from your perspective,
14:05
how should Christians feel about and view archeology?
14:08
I mean, should they be scared of it?
14:09
Because should they be excited about it?
14:10
Because to be honest, for me,
14:13
like you would think if Christianity was all
14:15
just a bunch of fables and myths and things like that,
14:17
and these people didn't even exist,
14:18
and certainly not in that part of the world,
14:20
then you would think that every year
14:22
with new archeological discoveries,
14:24
the Bible would become less and less relevant,
14:26
less and less important and be deemed, less and less accurate.
14:29
And we see the exact opposite side.
14:31
I don't really understand why Christians
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are so potentially fearful of it.
14:35
- Yeah, you're absolutely right.
14:36
So I think some question the sciences
14:41
or archeology, which is sort of a historical science,
14:48
but they do so because of the interpretations
14:52
of the conclusions of some people,
14:54
and some certainly do use biology or physics
14:59
or paleontology archeology to say like the Bible isn't true,
15:05
this didn't happen, this is just all fairy tales.
15:09
But I think people need to understand
15:12
there's a difference between someone's conclusions
15:16
or interpretations and the actual data itself.
15:20
And this really is, it's a huge problem in archeology
15:24
and in hard sciences because people are often looking at,
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say like an article on newspaper
15:31
or even an archeological excavation report,
15:34
and they go and they read through some of it
15:37
and they get to the end and the author says,
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this is the conclusion of what happened
15:43
or what this means.
15:45
But that conclusion doesn't necessarily follow
15:49
from the data.
15:50
And this is why within archeology,
15:52
even archeology having nothing to do with the Bible,
15:56
different scholars are always in discussions,
15:59
disagreements, arguments,
16:01
because they might be interpreting the data differently.
16:05
So if you're saying, I don't wanna listen to archeology
16:10
because it's rejecting the Bible or something like that,
16:14
well, it depends on which archeologist you're talking to.
16:18
And again, this is an issue of what is the source of authority?
16:23
Is it one person's conclusions or is it the data
16:27
or if we're talking about in the case of Christianity?
16:30
Is it the Bible?
16:32
- Yeah, I think that that's very important.
16:34
And I always encourage Christians to look at things.
16:37
Well, I guess we'll talk about this then.
16:39
How should Christians approach specifically ancient writings
16:43
that are not part of the biblical canon?
16:45
But point to some of the truths that are described
16:48
in scripture, so I'm thinking specifically of Tacitus
16:50
or Josephus or any of these types of people.
16:52
These are not Christians.
16:54
None of these people came from a Christian worldview.
16:56
We don't know them to be Christians,
16:58
but they wrote things that really substantiate
17:01
some of the claims that are made in the Bible.
17:02
And it helps people to not be able to just wave
17:05
their hand and be like, oh, the Bible, it's all,
17:06
it's all whatever.
17:07
We can't even trust that we don't even have the originals.
17:09
We can't even trust that these stories actually happen.
17:11
But when people that didn't have a dog in the fight
17:13
that were not Christians to begin with, right?
17:15
Some of the things that coincide directly
17:17
with what we see in scripture, that's a good thing, right?
17:20
- Yeah, I think it is.
17:21
I think those texts aren't helpful.
17:24
I think that when reading those people just need
17:27
to understand the different perspectives
17:30
of different authors.
17:32
So we talk about Kelsus, for example.
17:35
Well, what is he doing?
17:37
His main objective is actually to attack Christianity
17:41
and make fun of it or say that its claims are illegitimate.
17:46
But what is he also doing?
17:49
He's also acknowledging certain things.
17:51
Like he's acknowledging the existence of Jesus.
17:54
He's acknowledging that Jesus was born in a village of Judea.
17:58
He's acknowledging that Jesus' earthly father
18:01
was a carpenter and that there is some weird thing going on
18:05
with the pregnancy.
18:06
He knows about the story of the virgin birth.
18:08
He just doesn't agree with it.
18:09
He knows Jesus went to Egypt as a child,
18:12
but he thinks Jesus got his miraculous powers
18:15
by going to Egypt.
18:17
And then he knows that he went back
18:18
and performed miracles and proclaimed himself God.
18:21
He just doesn't believe that Jesus is the one God.
18:25
So you have to understand where he's coming from
18:30
and then kind of like separate the,
18:32
what are the facts that he knows about
18:35
from what is his view of Jesus
18:38
sort of in a theological sense?
18:41
- And I think a lot of people, again,
18:42
if you can describe it even without the theology,
18:44
that's still important to describe things
18:46
that are happening at that time.
18:47
And I wanna hear from the people that know the story,
18:50
they know the story to be true,
18:51
but they just, I guess they don't believe
18:53
in some of the parts of it
18:54
or they can't get themselves to that next level
18:56
of resurrection or something like that.
18:58
Now, one thing I was, as I was preparing this interview,
19:00
I'm like, okay, this might be one of my favorite questions
19:02
because I don't really know what I would say,
19:04
but without being trying to be punny,
19:07
what are the holy grails of Christian archeology
19:09
that we haven't found yet?
19:11
Like, what are the biggest mysteries still unsolved?
19:14
What are the biggest people groups or the things
19:16
that we're pretty sure are somewhere on this planet?
19:19
We just haven't found it yet.
19:21
Are there parts of the, you know,
19:22
do you think the Sahara Desert has a whole bunch of secrets
19:25
because, you know, climate change is, you know,
19:27
move the sand around and now we don't know where all these
19:29
people are like, what are the holy grails
19:31
for Christian archeology specifically?
19:34
- I would say in at least the popular kind of mainstream,
19:39
we would have a few objects or things
19:42
like the Ark of the Covenant, okay?
19:45
That would be something huge of immense interest
19:49
that everybody's always wondering,
19:51
where could that be?
19:52
Or, you know, this person claimed they found it,
19:54
but we haven't seen it, I think it's gonna be found.
19:57
Another it could be Noah's Ark.
19:59
Again, that is one where people are always looking for,
20:02
there's always something coming up where a person claimed,
20:06
oh yeah, we found it and then, you know,
20:09
it comes out later that that's not what it was,
20:11
but there's all sorts of things like that.
20:13
So, you know, those two would be really big,
20:16
but there's ones that aren't maybe talked about as much
20:21
that would also be really historically important,
20:23
like some inscription from the life of Jesus
20:29
that mentions him while he was still alive on earth,
20:34
or say something like Joseph, okay?
20:41
Some kind of Egyptian text or inscription
20:44
that talks about Joseph and specifies him by name
20:48
and some of the things that he did, or even Moses, okay?
20:53
So, the farther we go back in history,
20:55
the less records, the less material generally,
20:59
we have, and it's hard to, or unlikely to find things
21:03
for people like that.
21:05
It's more likely to find things belonging to kings, you know,
21:08
like King Solomon, okay?
21:10
We actually right now don't have an inscription
21:14
mentioning King Solomon from his time.
21:18
We do have a couple that refer to David
21:21
from the ninth century BC,
21:22
but we haven't yet found one about Solomon.
21:25
I think that's something that definitely will be found
21:27
in the future, and it would be big,
21:30
but, you know, these other ones are more often talked about.
21:33
(beep)
21:34
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21:36
out for selling the car.
21:37
I'm gonna give it a try, wish me luck.
21:40
Me again, I put in the license plate,
21:42
it gave me an offer, unbelievable.
21:45
Okay, I accepted the offer,
21:46
they're picking it up Tuesday from the driveway,
21:48
I haven't even left my chair.
21:51
It's done, the car is gone, I'm holding a check.
21:53
Anyway, carvana, give it a whirl, love ya.
21:56
So good, you'll wanna leave a voicemail about it.
21:59
Sell your car today on carvana.
22:02
Pick up these may I fly?
22:03
- Yeah, there's certainly more talked about it,
22:04
and I mean, any of those would be really, really important,
22:06
and I think that would be great for Christians
22:08
to know those things and understand those things
22:10
that are happening, but what are some, I guess,
22:12
common traditions or norms that Christians believe in
22:17
that aren't actually true,
22:18
according to the archeological evidence?
22:20
And I was trying to think of an example before this,
22:22
but I know you kind of have some,
22:23
but there are things that we as Christians,
22:25
it was kinda like when you hear a Christian quote a scripture,
22:28
but they do it incompletely or poorly,
22:31
or they provide no context, and it's like, okay,
22:33
that's just a scripture for a coffee mug,
22:35
that's not actually what you're trying to say,
22:37
but are there some things that most Christians
22:39
believe to be true, but that archeologically are,
22:41
there's no evidence for it?
22:43
- I would say one that comes up a lot is people's idea
22:47
of the manger in the nativity story,
22:50
usually thought of as this wooden object,
22:54
but in reality, the way that they made mangers
22:57
during that time was by carving them out of limestone.
23:00
- Right, stone.
23:01
- They have a lot of those, so that's kind of one thing.
23:05
I don't know if it's a major thing,
23:07
but it is sort of out there in popular culture.
23:10
- Well, Titus, it's because stones are really heavy
23:12
to carry to our front yards, like for Christmas time,
23:15
like we can set up the nativity wooden box a little easier.
23:19
- Oh yeah, that's true, may have been a factor.
23:23
- Yeah, so are there others aside from maybe the nativity
23:26
that are kind of common?
23:27
- Well, there's a lot of stuff that swirls around
23:32
the internet, I think, about what's been found,
23:35
supposedly, that connects to the Bible.
23:38
And I would say those are some common misperceptions.
23:42
One of the big ones we already talked about,
23:44
like Noah's ark, okay?
23:46
There constantly are these claims that Noah's ark
23:49
has been found, and yet it still has not.
23:52
I don't know if it ever will be,
23:54
it's made of wood and landed on a mountain
23:57
a long, long time ago, so.
23:59
But another one is like the chariot wheels
24:04
of Pharaoh's army in somewhere in the Red Sea, right?
24:07
You know, that one swirls around a lot, too,
24:09
but those have never been found either.
24:13
Other misperceptions, not a big deal,
24:20
but I think that when people read the Bible,
24:24
especially the Old Testament,
24:25
and they read about some of these cities,
24:27
and they think that they're huge, right?
24:31
Because they're looking at it from a 21st century perspective,
24:36
but these places were actually really small
24:38
in terms of surface area and population
24:41
compared to the cities today.
24:43
So there's stuff like that, you know,
24:45
there's living conditions,
24:47
there's literacy rates.
24:51
I would say most of the time it's smaller details like that.
24:56
- Okay, now about something that is obviously
25:00
a major, major detail, but there is a segment,
25:03
I mean, early on in this podcast I talked about,
25:05
this is one of like the first episode,
25:06
I think it was one of our single digit episodes
25:07
back in like 2016 to 2017, something like that,
25:10
was that there are honestly a group of people
25:13
in modernity that think Jesus of Nazareth never existed,
25:17
not that he wasn't the son of God,
25:19
not that he didn't heal people, not that, you know,
25:21
he didn't actually write, rise from the dead
25:22
or any of those things, that he never existed,
25:25
that he's completely a figment of historical myth,
25:29
that there's no evidence to suggest
25:30
that the man actually existed.
25:32
So for you specifically, obviously you've spent a lot of time
25:35
really going into this, and we'll get into the new book
25:37
here in a second, which details it even further,
25:39
but what do you have to say to people
25:41
who fervently and honestly believe that,
25:43
because I mean, sometimes like I've never ran into someone
25:45
like that in person, but seeing these people online,
25:48
I would just be like, if they were in front of me,
25:50
I'd be like, do you think that Julius Caesar existed?
25:53
Do you think that he crossed the Rubicon
25:54
because there's way more evidence to suggest
25:56
that Jesus existed and rose from the dead
25:57
than that Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon,
25:59
so help me understand, so you give me some help here.
26:03
- Yeah, I would probably say two things.
26:06
The first is that they should read some of the first
26:11
and second century writings, non-Christian writings,
26:15
writings outside of the Bible that talk about Jesus
26:19
that mention him in specific events in his life,
26:23
and then secondarily that there really aren't any scholars
26:28
in the field of ancient history and archeology
26:32
that deal with the Middle East or biblical studies,
26:35
New Testament time period and so forth,
26:37
that would say there's no evidence that Jesus existed,
26:40
that's just not a thing in academia.
26:43
Now, they have different views about exactly what Jesus
26:48
was like and what he said and what he did and so forth,
26:52
because many scholars don't take the gospels
26:55
as reliable historical accounts,
26:58
but they're not actually saying Jesus didn't exist
27:01
because we have so much evidence really that he did exist,
27:05
even not counting the New Testament.
27:09
- Yeah, it's just one of those things where it's like,
27:11
it almost doesn't dignify a response,
27:12
but you should just ask questions and be like,
27:14
okay, how did you get to whatever age that you are right now?
27:17
And you believe silly things like that,
27:18
but again, that could be an opportunity for you
27:21
to educate that person a little bit.
27:22
But we do need to get to the new book.
27:24
This is a book that you wrote this year.
27:25
It's called Excavating the Evidence for Jesus.
27:27
So we're so thankful that you sent this over to our team.
27:30
Guys, it is in the show notes also with this first book,
27:32
unearthing the Bible, but this is a broad question
27:35
and I realized that from the very beginning here,
27:38
but this is potentially the most important question
27:39
that I could ask you today.
27:41
And it's how does archeology help prove the resurrection?
27:46
Because Titus, some of the common objections we get
27:49
is that the disciples stole the body.
27:51
Jesus didn't actually die, he swooned as it were.
27:54
His disciples all hallucinated somehow at the same time,
27:58
the only time in recorded history, that's ever happened.
28:01
But how does archeology specifically prove the resurrection,
28:05
which is the key point of the entire Christian faith?
28:08
I think archeology can give us insight
28:12
into whether the resurrection happens.
28:16
I don't think it can prove it.
28:17
I don't think that anything can definitively 100% prove it,
28:22
but archeology can provide a couple of things here.
28:27
If we look at archeology in terms of excavating
28:31
different sites, recovering ancient inscriptions,
28:35
translating those, recovering ancient manuscripts,
28:39
artifacts, things like that,
28:40
then we've got a few different sources.
28:42
So first of all, we were talking about different writers
28:47
from antiquity that mentioned Jesus.
28:50
We do have mention outside of the Bible
28:53
and Josephus is the clearest passage on this one,
28:57
where it is reported that Jesus' disciples saw him alive
29:02
three days after the crucifixion.
29:04
That's what Josephus says.
29:06
He doesn't say that he necessarily believes
29:09
that the resurrection happened,
29:11
but he's aware of the reports of it and he says that.
29:15
So people know about it in the first century.
29:18
It's spread widely.
29:21
And that's an important thing to keep in the back of our mind
29:24
that it's knowledge that's already out there.
29:26
So second thing is that the Romans issued this edict
29:34
it seems to be from Emperor Claudius who began his reign
29:38
in 41 AD.
29:40
He sent this edict and what we have of that edict
29:44
is because it was inscribed on stone
29:47
and seems to have been set up in the middle
29:50
of a town square so everybody could read it.
29:52
This is called the Nazareth inscription
29:54
because it was found in Nazareth
29:57
or at least it was acquired on the antiquities market there,
30:01
but probably came from there or nearby.
30:05
And it basically says that there's this new law,
30:09
a new death penalty actually for anyone who violates
30:13
this very specific thing and it's pretty strange.
30:17
And the thing that they have to do is
30:21
break into a stone sealed tomb and then steal the body
30:26
with some wicked intent behind it.
30:29
It's not about stealing grave goods,
30:32
items that actually have value
30:34
and it's not about desecrating a cremation
30:38
or even desecrating a body.
30:42
It's a very specific type of tomb,
30:44
the same type of tomb that Jesus was buried
30:46
and now other people in that region and period
30:49
were buried in these types of tombs,
30:50
but it really goes and targets in particular
30:55
that the body then is taken out of the tomb
30:58
and there is some ulterior motive behind this.
31:02
And if we look at Matthew 28, 11 through 15,
31:05
we see that this is what the Roman soldiers were told to say
31:10
and to spread that the disciples stole the body of Jesus
31:14
and then they made up the story, okay?
31:17
So that tells us the Romans
31:19
that seem to be aware of this story also.
31:23
And they would have been looking to disprove that
31:28
and shut it down and they weren't able to
31:31
by that point when this edict was issued.
31:34
So instead, there's a really harsh penalty
31:37
that is given to stop people from doing anything
31:41
like that again or discourage spreading in this story.
31:46
The other thing archeology can do
31:48
is it can show us that there was, in fact, a tomb.
31:53
And so we know where the tomb was
31:56
and people knew where it was since the time of Jesus
32:00
and that we know it was empty.
32:03
It was empty, they were able to investigate that tomb.
32:06
And so you gotta ask, okay, well, where'd the body go?
32:10
The Romans are saying the disciples stole it,
32:12
but they never found it
32:14
and the disciples continued to advocate
32:18
the truth of the resurrection, many, many to their death.
32:22
We don't know the faith for sure of all of them.
32:25
But so archeology can provide some evidence towards that.
32:30
It just, it can't prove it.
32:33
We can use other methods, other fields
32:37
to build the case, to make it a really plausible,
32:41
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33:17
- Well, I appreciate all that detail.
33:18
One thing that I try to do, Titus,
33:20
is I try to steal man the other side
33:22
anytime I'm looking at doing a debate
33:23
or looking at some sort of a contentious issue.
33:26
Strong manning isn't helpful.
33:27
Steel manning is where you take the best argument
33:30
that the other side could produce
33:31
and then try to knock that down
33:32
as opposed to a strong man argument.
33:34
I try to steal man the explanation,
33:38
the plausible explanations against the resurrection
33:41
because it does seem plausible that the Roman soldiers,
33:45
even though it was their job to,
33:48
at the threat of death,
33:49
that consequence of death to guard the front of the tomb,
33:53
it's possible they fell asleep.
33:54
It's possible that the disciples got enough people
33:57
to move the stone away to be able to get the body,
33:59
to be able to steal it.
34:00
That's possible.
34:01
But then it's like, okay,
34:04
so let's say the disciples did do that
34:06
because this was part of the grand scheme
34:08
to create, maybe they could create this new world order
34:12
where they get a bunch of money and women
34:13
and all these different things.
34:14
It's like, okay, well,
34:15
there's still the body out there somewhere,
34:16
but it's plausible the body could have been hidden so well
34:18
that no one ever found it, right?
34:20
That's plausible.
34:21
But then I can't, like, what's the plausibility
34:23
of hundreds of people saying they saw Jesus resurrected?
34:28
Not spiritually, but bodily, a few days later.
34:31
What is the plausible explanation for how Christianity
34:34
even survived the first century?
34:36
What's the plausible explanation for none of the apostles
34:40
or none of the disciples recanting their faith
34:43
in what they saw in Jesus before they died,
34:44
even though that would have made headlines,
34:47
certainly with with a Josephus or anybody else?
34:50
Like, help me, help me steal man it
34:52
because it's like, I wanna give the other side there do.
34:54
I get it that some people just don't believe in that,
34:56
but it's like, what else do you need to see?
34:59
Like, what is a good plausible explanation
35:01
for the resurrection not having happened?
35:04
- Right, and all that stuff you said
35:06
builds the argument of it.
35:09
And we can say that certain things are possible
35:12
even though they're so incredibly unlikely,
35:16
such as the Roman soldiers falling asleep
35:19
and not waking up when somebody goes there.
35:23
- Yeah, are you gonna move a stone that big quietly?
35:26
- They would have just rubbed them, right?
35:29
Okay, so it's this extremely elaborate conspiracy,
35:33
which they're all willing to go to their deaths for.
35:37
And it involves hundreds of people,
35:39
but nobody ever changes the story
35:42
and no one bails on it and yeah, that's just,
35:46
it doesn't make sense.
35:47
So there's other explanations that people have offered
35:52
course like one that he wasn't actually dead,
35:56
but that's not, it's not plausible
35:58
because of the process of crucifixion
36:01
and the things that Roman soldiers always did
36:04
to make sure the person was dead.
36:07
I've even read one where there was this,
36:11
a resuscitation theory, like we can't explain it,
36:15
but he just resuscitated on his own, right?
36:18
So that's like a medical anomaly, okay?
36:22
That's basically saying that he resurrected
36:27
but it's trying to remove anything having to do
36:30
with the supernatural or miraculous from it
36:33
even though the effect is the same essentially.
36:35
So I think the main issue really is that
36:41
there is an assumption that the supernatural
36:46
doesn't exist that miracles don't happen, can't happen.
36:50
So people coming from a viewpoint
36:53
of scientific materialism, naturalism,
36:57
they're not going to be able to accept
37:00
as possible a supernatural or miraculous event.
37:04
And so then you just, you come to an impasse there
37:07
because you can show that the resurrection is the most likely
37:12
explanation with all these different things
37:14
that we've talked about and more,
37:15
but if someone is completely set
37:20
that it's impossible for a miracle to happen
37:23
that the supernatural does not exist,
37:27
then they have to come up with another explanation
37:29
even if it's a medical anomaly, he just resuscitated,
37:33
somehow hung out in the tomb for a couple of days
37:37
and then somebody moved it and he got out and disappeared
37:42
and they said that he was resurrected.
37:44
- Again, I want to see the other side here
37:49
because it's the most important question
37:51
that a human being can reckon with, right?
37:53
'Cause I talked to atheists and agnostics all the time.
37:55
It's like, well, if you're right and I'm wrong,
37:57
well, we're both worm food at the end of the day.
37:59
Like I would have just like ended up wasting a lot of time
38:02
and money on this whole Christian thing the entire time,
38:03
but if you're wrong and you never like really tangle
38:06
with this question, like it's your entire eternity,
38:09
but like, and again, this is gonna seem like weak tea,
38:12
but is it possible, Titus, that they thought Jesus was dead?
38:17
There was a medical anomaly, he's placing the tomb,
38:20
but then he does live, he survives crucifixion,
38:24
which would make him one of very few people
38:26
to ever survive crucifixion
38:27
because the whole point of crucifixion was to kill you
38:29
and the Romans just happened to be amazing at it.
38:32
Is it plausible that he was all beat up and torn up
38:35
and scarred up and all that?
38:37
And just nobody wrote about it?
38:38
So they saw him three days later or something like that
38:41
and nobody, they all failed to mention
38:43
that his body was completely torn and tattered,
38:46
but again, even as I'm saying it out loud,
38:48
it sounds so stupid because they didn't talk about it
38:51
as if Jesus survived.
38:52
They talk about it as if he resurrected.
38:54
Like those are two completely separate things.
38:56
- Right, well, I mean, even the Roman records
38:59
that talk about the crucifixion of Jesus,
39:03
that he was crucified and he died,
39:05
none of them say anything about how he survived
39:09
or he might have survived.
39:10
There was no dispute in antiquity about that part of it.
39:14
So it was just the other side would say
39:18
that he didn't resurrect, it was a made up story.
39:22
So again, in today's world, we've got more viewpoints,
39:27
maybe more explanations, alternative explanations,
39:31
but for an issue like this, it really comes down
39:34
to worldview and whether or not you accept
39:39
that the supernatural exists or doesn't,
39:44
because if it doesn't, then that stuff can't happen, right?
39:48
You can't, there's not an allowance for that to happen.
39:51
If you do accept that the supernatural exists,
39:55
then miracles can happen, they don't have to,
39:58
they don't have to all the time, but it's possible.
40:01
And that is just something that you can't prove
40:06
with archeological material or even historical arguments,
40:11
really, I mean, you can again, you can look through
40:16
what seems the most rational, the most plausible,
40:19
the most likely and so forth,
40:21
but at the end of the day,
40:23
some of these things are just gonna come down to
40:26
what people's worldview is, what they accept as reality.
40:32
- And these people at some point,
40:36
they want their worldview to be validated,
40:38
they want their deeply held beliefs
40:41
to be found plausible, if not completely true.
40:44
And again, this goes against everything,
40:46
because again, if you believe in the resurrection,
40:48
if you believe that a Middle Eastern Jew,
40:50
was killed by the Romans at the behest
40:52
of the Jewish Sanhedrin, that's gonna require
40:55
some changes of you, right?
40:56
So you're not gonna be able to continue doing the things
40:58
that you're doing and the way that you're doing them.
40:59
It's gonna require a lot of you.
41:01
So I'm glad you spent basically an entire book,
41:03
excavating the evidence for Jesus
41:05
and digging into the archeology and the history
41:07
around literally the most important thing.
41:09
And the entire book's not about the resurrection,
41:11
you talk about a lot of other things, guys,
41:13
we can possibly get into all the detail here
41:14
in this podcast, but the evidence is there.
41:18
So when people are unsure about the resurrection,
41:20
typically the people that are unsure about it
41:22
have not spent a whole lot of time looking into it.
41:24
And there are plenty of books, there's your book,
41:26
there's evidence that demands a verdict,
41:28
there's there are other books that have gone
41:29
into a great amount of detail
41:32
as to everything that's gone around here.
41:33
And they come at it from the perspective
41:35
of we're on a truth quest here.
41:36
We're not trying to steal man our side of the argument.
41:39
So I really appreciate you going into all that detail
41:41
in your book.
41:42
Another thing that you talked about in the book,
41:44
and this is a major thing for me,
41:46
'cause I remember hearing this maybe about a year ago
41:49
or so is one of my favorite story
41:52
in all of the Gospels is Jesus clearing the temple.
41:55
'Cause on this podcast, we don't just talk about the lion
41:57
and the lame of God, we talk about the lion of Judah.
42:00
That's why we have this whole concept of like,
42:02
this was righteous premeditated violent aggression
42:04
perpetrated by our savior, which is to say
42:07
that that is going to be appropriate for us as followers
42:10
at different points to be able to act in that way.
42:12
It's just a different view of Jesus
42:14
than what you would normally see
42:16
in how most people depict him.
42:18
But most people think that he just did that once.
42:21
That he cleared the temple and they talk about that
42:23
as a singular event.
42:24
And I remember about a year ago,
42:26
I saw a single post where someone's like,
42:28
no, this actually happened twice.
42:29
And they kind of provided an explanation,
42:31
but it wasn't really a big time website.
42:33
And I wasn't really sure if this was just somebody
42:35
spouting off on a blog.
42:36
And then the second time I heard an argument for that
42:38
was in your book that no, like Jesus didn't just clear
42:41
the temple once.
42:42
There seems to be a considerable amount of evidence
42:44
that he cleared it at the beginning of his ministry.
42:47
And at the end, so this wasn't a one time whoopsie daisy.
42:50
I got mad and made a whip and scared some people
42:53
that this was something that he did on purpose
42:55
and did it twice.
42:56
Would you mind kind of giving us a 30,000 foot overview
42:58
as to why you and other people believe this happened
43:01
more than once?
43:02
- Yeah, sure.
43:03
So in the synoptic gospels, which are Matthew, Mark, and Luke,
43:08
you have the clearing of the temple episode
43:12
during the final week of Jesus' life.
43:15
So that's the one that most people are thinking about.
43:19
But in John, we have a totally different account of it.
43:24
So it actually occurs near the beginning
43:27
of the book of John.
43:28
And John doesn't have it later on during the Passion Week.
43:33
So some people have said, oh, John,
43:37
it doesn't have anything in chronological order.
43:40
He just throws this stuff around thematically and so forth,
43:44
which I don't think that reading through John's gospel,
43:48
that's all correct.
43:49
He starts out with the incarnation.
43:53
He starts out with Jesus in ministry.
43:55
He goes through those different miracles.
43:58
He gets in trouble with the religious leaders
44:02
and that results in them trying to arrest him.
44:05
And then we go through the whole trial and everything.
44:08
So, but there's more that we could talk about
44:12
because in John chapter two, where this appears,
44:17
there are some interesting chronological markers
44:20
where the Pharisees are talking to Jesus
44:23
around the time of this first cleansing of the temple.
44:27
And also, the baptism of Jesus is close
44:31
in context to this too, so beginning of his ministry.
44:34
But they talk about how the temple has been
44:38
under construction or was constructed
44:43
during this period of 46 years.
44:46
So that gives us an actual date AD to look at
44:51
and it puts this event somewhere in like 27, 28 AD,
44:59
probably because we know when the construction
45:04
on Herod's temple started.
45:08
Now, that's quite a bit earlier
45:10
than anyone would put the crucifixion of Jesus, right?
45:14
So 33 AD is pretty standard date now for the crucifixion,
45:18
but there's still some people who would prefer like a 30 AD.
45:22
But if we're looking at like 27 or 28 AD,
45:26
well, then this is much earlier than that.
45:29
And this is near the beginning of his ministry.
45:32
It's near his baptism.
45:33
And so that stuff tells us this is a separate event.
45:37
I mean, there's some other details in there
45:39
where you can notice a little bit of differences
45:42
between the two.
45:44
Of course, it's very similar, but yeah,
45:47
one's at the beginning, one's at the end.
45:50
John obviously has a lot of different content
45:52
than the other three gospels.
45:54
And this is one of those things
45:56
that he puts in as a supplementary material.
46:00
- I certainly appreciate getting into that detail
46:02
because that, again, that changes a lot for people
46:04
to understand that this was a very, very important part
46:07
of his ministry.
46:08
And it was something that they didn't keep
46:09
out of the gospel accounts of his life.
46:12
Another thing that I want to talk about
46:13
that you get into in the book, and again, guys,
46:15
there's just not, it's not even possible
46:16
to scratch the surface on everything on the book.
46:18
You're gonna have to go get it in the show notes
46:19
and check it out for yourself.
46:20
But we're in the Christmas season right now.
46:22
And so I feel like I need to ask you
46:23
about the date of Christmas,
46:24
because a lot of people that are not Christians
46:27
or they just love being contrarians,
46:28
they love to point out that there's nothing significant
46:31
about December the 25th.
46:32
And this actually aligns with the pagan holiday
46:35
and Christmas trees in and of themselves.
46:36
Those are like Satan's fingernails.
46:38
Like, you know, they've got all kinds of crazy things
46:40
they want to say about Christmas in the whole time period.
46:42
But let's just talk about Christmas
46:44
and the date of Christmas.
46:45
Why do we celebrate Christmas on December the 25th?
46:48
And is it just a holiday that has to do
46:51
with like the winter solstice?
46:52
And somehow we sprinkled some Jesus over the top of it.
46:55
And then later on, we got a fat guy
46:57
with a white beard and a red suit.
46:58
How did we get to this?
47:00
We celebrated on December 25th
47:03
because that's where the earliest Christians,
47:06
the earliest accounts placed the birth approximately.
47:09
You know, it's not a Christianized pagan holiday.
47:14
It's actually the opposite case.
47:17
So the Christians were placing the birth of Jesus
47:21
in late December about December 25th.
47:24
But then later on, some Roman polytheist pagans,
47:29
they decided to put a new celebration,
47:32
a new pagan celebration there.
47:34
Now, we can go back to the second century, really.
47:37
And then the third century also.
47:38
So all this is before Christianity was legalized.
47:42
And we see in writings of the church fathers,
47:44
things like not only was the date thought to be December 25th,
47:49
but they even talk about the conception of Jesus March 25th.
47:55
So jumping ahead nine months there.
47:58
So you can see it from both of those angles there.
48:02
And if we read these texts, we also,
48:05
we don't get the impression that there's this big celebration
48:08
or big party.
48:08
It's just something that is mentioned in passing
48:11
in terms of this is what the information we have
48:15
about when Jesus was conceived and when Jesus was born.
48:18
And some even try to connect that
48:22
with the celebration of Passover,
48:24
like his birth or around Passover somewhere in there.
48:29
So there's some theological underpinnings,
48:33
at least in some of the writings,
48:34
but there's definitely early attestation
48:37
of this December 25th date.
48:40
But if you fast forward then to after Christianity
48:44
is legalized in the Roman Empire,
48:46
and so it becomes more open and public, right?
48:49
And there's some Christian emperors in this early phase,
48:53
but there's also some pagan ones.
48:55
So there's some pushback from these pagan ones.
48:58
And one of the things that happens is that Aurelian,
49:03
Emperor Aurelian, he decides to institute
49:07
this new celebration in the winter solstice,
49:12
like you mentioned, for soul and victus, okay?
49:15
So this doesn't happen though,
49:18
until a couple of hundred years after our earliest source
49:23
for December 25th being the birth of Jesus.
49:27
And this is actually a Roman pattern,
49:30
typical Roman pagan pattern,
49:32
where they try to supplant Christianity
49:35
with something pagan,
49:38
where they either try to syncretize it
49:40
or put something pagan over it.
49:42
If you go to Jerusalem, for example, or Bethlehem also,
49:46
you can see that Emperor Hadrian had
49:50
pagan shrines and temples built over locations
49:54
that were key historic spots in the life of Jesus,
49:57
like over the cave of the Nativity
50:00
or over the pool of Siloam and the pool of Bethesda
50:03
and over the tomb of Jesus.
50:06
So all this was an attempt to suppress
50:10
or get rid of Christianity or just kind of merge it
50:14
into Roman paganism.
50:17
And that's the same kind of thing that we have
50:19
with the whole Christmas idea.
50:20
So it was the Christians who put that date forward first.
50:25
It wasn't a huge deal.
50:28
And then later on, after Christianity was more legalized
50:32
and publicly known, that one of the pagan emperors
50:36
tried to cover that up.
50:38
- There you go, guys.
50:40
So if you get into that fight with that same cousin
50:42
or the same person at the water cooler
50:44
that tries to tell you that this is a pagan holiday,
50:46
you just say all that, that he just said,
50:48
throw in some glasses and a nice jacket and say that to them.
50:51
But again, like I said, it's a fantastic book.
50:54
I did wanna read the final quote of the book
50:55
because I do think it really summarized a lot of your work
50:58
that you put into it.
50:59
And again, there's so many citations and all that.
51:00
It's really, really a dense work.
51:02
Rather than a mythical character,
51:03
Jesus of Nazareth is actually one of the most widely
51:06
attested personalities in antiquity.
51:08
And the narratives in the Gospels have been confirmed
51:10
as historically reliable accounts
51:12
by ever increasing archeological discoveries.
51:14
Although Jesus only walked those paths until AD 33
51:18
and was unjustly executed in a tiny province
51:21
on the fringes of the empire,
51:22
knowledge of his life and teaching rapidly spread
51:24
across the vast Roman world and beyond.
51:27
Centuries later, the ancient ruins,
51:29
artifacts and manuscripts continue
51:30
to tell the incredible story.
51:32
And again, I really think that that's the point, Titus,
51:34
is that if the history were wrong,
51:37
history and archeology worked together.
51:40
Obviously, they're fairly simpatico.
51:41
You've established that from the very beginning here.
51:43
But with every year that passed by,
51:45
with every era of archeology,
51:47
because archeology is still relatively a new discipline,
51:50
we would see things disproven about the Bible
51:52
and we only see the opposite.
51:55
Because we've thought at different points,
51:57
we don't have to get into any examples,
51:58
that there were these archeological discoveries
52:00
that are like, you see,
52:01
that disproves this part of the Old Testament.
52:03
So the entire book can't be seen as infallible.
52:06
Only to discover five years later, 20 years later,
52:10
another discovery actually goes back
52:12
and usurps that one and says,
52:14
"Actually, this was legit and this was good to go."
52:17
I guess before we leave to the last segment of the show,
52:20
how could Christians that are maybe interested in archeology
52:23
but don't have time to really go to school
52:26
and study it and be a part of that?
52:27
How can we stay up to date
52:29
on the archeological evidence that we've seen?
52:31
Because it wasn't until a lot of people in my audience,
52:34
they didn't even know about this stuff
52:35
until I had Eric Metaxus on the show last year
52:38
for his book, "Is Atheism Dead?"
52:39
And like a third of that book is just about archeology.
52:42
So how can we stay up on it?
52:44
'Cause I don't know, is there like archeology in the Bible.com
52:47
or like, how can we stay on?
52:49
- Yeah, there are some organizations and websites out there
52:55
that are continuously publishing material,
52:59
they're doing projects and of course,
53:00
there's books that are written.
53:02
So yeah, I would say, do some research online
53:07
to find some good organizations
53:11
that are really looking at the Bible
53:13
from historical archeological perspective, search,
53:18
for books on some of this stuff.
53:20
Look into who the authors are
53:22
to see what their worldview is,
53:25
their preconceived notions, their experience and so forth
53:30
because some are gonna be good
53:32
and some are not going to be.
53:35
And I would also just say exercise discernment
53:39
because sometimes pretty grandiose or confident claims
53:44
are made about certain things one way or the other,
53:48
whether it's, hey, we just discovered Noah's Ark
53:51
or hey, this discovery proves the Bible never happened
53:56
or something.
53:57
So look into those things, use critical thinking
54:03
and yeah, maybe you're not gonna be an expert in the field
54:07
but everybody's able to at least exercise
54:11
some critical thinking and basic research
54:13
and figure out the general story and the main points.
54:18
- With that, I think it's important to kind of get into,
54:23
okay, what does the future look like?
54:25
Not just for you, but well, I guess we'll make it with you.
54:29
What are the future digs that you're gonna be a part of?
54:31
What are the future projects that you have coming up
54:34
that could potentially be of interest to us?
54:36
- So in the past, I've excavated and done survey projects
54:42
at several different sites
54:44
and I've kind of focused on both the period of Jesus
54:49
but also on kind of like Exodus conquest,
54:56
Joshua judges period too.
54:59
I'm interested in maybe going into a different period
55:04
and kind of expanding my firsthand experience
55:10
with some of those.
55:10
So I'm looking at maybe going to do a site in Jordan
55:15
possibly and looking in the earlier periods.
55:18
So kind of more like one of the patriarchs live.
55:21
I've also done some excavation in Armenia recently
55:27
and I'm interested in exploring some of that
55:30
with going back to really, really early times
55:33
like the dawn of civilization type of thing
55:36
and maybe fill in some blanks
55:38
where the Bible really doesn't talk much
55:41
about that time between Noah and Abraham, right?
55:45
So what is there to find in there?
55:47
And then in the future, I still have a lot of interest
55:52
in sites that connect to things like Book of Joshua
55:57
or Exodus even because there's a lot of debate
56:02
in those areas.
56:02
And so I think that archeology can not only help us
56:07
understand the context of what we're reading
56:10
but it can help to solve some of those disputes.
56:14
And yeah, we'll see.
56:16
Maybe something with connected to the Book of Acts
56:19
and it just holds at some point in the future.
56:21
I'm interested in a lot of stuff.
56:22
It's just sort of what projects are available and viable
56:27
because it's not just as easy as,
56:31
oh, I want to dig at this site.
56:32
Let's go do that.
56:34
- All right, that sounds good.
56:35
Well, as long as you keep doing those cool projects
56:37
and writing books, we'll keep having you on to talk about it.
56:39
But before we let you go today,
56:40
I want to do a segment with you that we do
56:42
with some people in our show.
56:42
It's called what would you say to someone that said?
56:45
So what I'm going to do Titus is I'm going to say,
56:47
what would you say to someone that said?
56:49
And then I'm going to fill in the blank
56:50
with some random statement.
56:52
But here's the thing, it is lightning round.
56:53
You only get 30 seconds maximum to give me your response.
56:56
So it sometimes makes some people uncomfortable
56:59
because I'm kind of putting you in a box here.
57:00
But no matter what I say,
57:02
you got to give me a 30 second response
57:04
to all these different things.
57:04
So you up for it?
57:06
- Yeah, yeah, let's do it.
57:07
- Okay, first one here, let's see how you do.
57:09
What would you say to someone that said,
57:10
I want to become an archeologist?
57:12
- I would say read some books first of all on archeology
57:17
to see if it really interests you that much,
57:21
and then go and volunteer on an archeological excavation
57:25
to see if you enjoy doing that.
57:28
'Cause a lot of people hate that.
57:30
And I would also suggest maybe going to visit museums
57:33
and even trying to do some volunteering or internship there.
57:36
You've got to experience the field
57:38
to see if you actually like it.
57:41
- Absolutely, all right, next one here.
57:42
What would you say to someone that said,
57:44
the Indiana Jones movies are awful.
57:47
(laughs)
57:48
I think it's movies that they're actually great entertainment,
57:52
but as a film that depicts archeology,
57:57
they're highly inaccurate.
57:58
So it depends on how you're evaluating and judging them.
58:02
- That's one of my more unpopular opinions
58:04
is I think those movies are atrocious.
58:06
It's probably because I didn't watch them
58:07
when they came out because I was a little bit too young.
58:09
So when you go back and watch them as an adult,
58:11
you're like, these are just absolute garbage,
58:12
but we'll move off of that.
58:13
Next one here.
58:14
What would you say to someone that said,
58:16
historical accounts are filled with lies?
58:19
- Think it depends on what historical accounts
58:23
we're talking about.
58:25
We could look at a lot of historical accounts
58:27
in the ancient world and we could pick out points
58:31
in those where there is propaganda
58:33
or they've inserted their worldview
58:36
that maybe is not justified or supportive,
58:39
but we can't broad stroke that.
58:43
I would say that generally historical accounts from antiquity
58:47
do contain a lot of actual true historical information.
58:51
And there may be errors or intentional errors in there,
58:55
but they've got to be evaluated individually.
58:59
- All right, next one here.
58:59
What would you say to someone that said
59:01
archeology is not a serious academic discipline?
59:05
- That would be news to me.
59:08
Well, we've got two aspects of archeology.
59:11
We have the labor aspect of it,
59:14
but then we do have what takes up most of the time,
59:17
and that is the academic discipline.
59:19
It's researching in the library.
59:21
It's doing work in the laboratory.
59:23
It's writing and publishing and constructing arguments
59:27
and teaching and preparing museum displays.
59:32
So there's a lot of academic type of work that goes into that.
59:36
There's also science aspect to it.
59:39
And of course, there's humanities aspect to it also.
59:42
- Not all the sexy stuff
59:43
that made it into all the Indiana Jones films.
59:45
All right, next one here.
59:46
What would you say to someone that said,
59:48
we don't need archeology to believe in the Bible.
59:50
We just need more faith.
59:52
- Well, if you want to have a faith that is based on something
59:59
based on evidence and reason,
1:00:01
like Peter says in first Peter 3.15,
1:00:04
we should have reasons for what we believe.
1:00:07
Now those reasons can be theological
1:00:10
and they can come from the Bible,
1:00:12
but they can also be reasons from evidence
1:00:16
and evidence that comes external from the scriptures.
1:00:20
So I think that we should have legitimate reasons
1:00:23
for what we believe, not just like somebody told me this.
1:00:26
I read it here, I have a feeling.
1:00:29
There's gotta be more than that
1:00:30
because we do live in reality
1:00:32
and God has constructed reality that makes sense
1:00:35
and it's organized and we do have the evidence
1:00:39
that shows the truth of that.
1:00:40
So I don't think we should just discard all of these things.
1:00:44
- All right, just a few more rapid fire questions here.
1:00:46
What would you say to someone that said,
1:00:48
Jesus never existed?
1:00:49
- I would say go and look at several writings
1:00:54
from the first and second century by non-Christians.
1:00:58
Actually, many people are hostile to Christianity
1:01:01
and see how they mentioned that Jesus
1:01:04
was a historical character and that some of the things
1:01:06
that happened during his life
1:01:08
that are also recorded in the gospels.
1:01:10
And that will tell us that, well,
1:01:11
in the first and second century,
1:01:13
people knew about Jesus and they understood
1:01:17
and said he was a historical person.
1:01:20
- Well, would you say to someone that said,
1:01:21
the Bible can't be trusted
1:01:23
because we don't have the original manuscripts?
1:01:25
- I would say that we don't have the original manuscripts
1:01:30
for anything really, not even something as recent
1:01:33
as Shakespeare, but what we do have is demonstration
1:01:38
that the biblical texts were copied
1:01:41
with extreme precision so that they do preserve
1:01:45
the original words down to the letters.
1:01:49
And we have evidence of this from things
1:01:51
like the Dead Sea Scrolls comparing the later texts
1:01:54
or all the hundreds, even thousands of texts
1:01:57
and fragments of the Greek New Testament
1:02:00
where it shows how great this copying tradition was.
1:02:03
So we have accurate copies, okay?
1:02:05
We don't have the originals.
1:02:06
We have accurate copies that reflect
1:02:08
what the originals were.
1:02:09
- All right, Titus, last question of the day.
1:02:11
What would you say to someone that said,
1:02:13
I believe the archeological evidence about Jesus,
1:02:16
but I still don't think he's the Son of God.
1:02:18
- I don't think that's one that we can answer
1:02:21
from archeology.
1:02:22
I think that you've got to look at the Bible
1:02:26
and Christianity as a whole
1:02:28
and you've got to see how the Bible has been shown
1:02:31
to be a reliable book from many different perspectives.
1:02:34
One of those is the fulfillment of prophecy,
1:02:37
which I think that is a marker of divine inspiration
1:02:41
and gives us evidence of the theological claims
1:02:46
in the Bible being true.
1:02:48
But ultimately, it's gonna be up to a person's
1:02:52
individual decision on whether or not
1:02:54
they're going to accept Jesus as God.
1:02:57
- Man, I appreciate all the different things
1:03:01
that we've been able to talk about today.
1:03:02
We've gone over a lot and we didn't even,
1:03:04
like I said, scratch the surface
1:03:05
on most of the work that you've done academically.
1:03:07
But that's all for me.
1:03:08
Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?
1:03:10
- I would just say encourage people to dig in
1:03:14
to some of the evidence and know some of it.
1:03:18
It can help in your understanding of just reading and study,
1:03:21
but also when you do encounter questions
1:03:25
or statements by people that Jesus never existed,
1:03:28
the Bible has been disproven, things like this.
1:03:31
I have a few reasons.
1:03:32
Understand that it's helpful to have in discussions
1:03:35
and helpful so you aren't always like questioning
1:03:37
in your mind.
1:03:38
Am I crazy?
1:03:39
Is there really nothing out there?
1:03:41
- I would certainly co-sign that.
1:03:42
Titus Kennedy, thank you for coming
1:03:44
on Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
1:03:46
- Hey, thank you for having me.
1:03:48
- There you go, guys.
1:03:48
Hope you enjoyed my interview with Titus Kennedy.
1:03:50
But before I let you go,
1:03:51
we are gonna do a quick resilience boost.
1:03:52
Add Undaunted Life, our mission is equipping men
1:03:54
to push back darkness with content that forges spiritual,
1:03:56
mental and physical resilience.
1:03:57
I've got a link to both of his books that we talked about today,
1:03:59
excavating the evidence for Jesus
1:04:01
and the other one I mentioned in the intro,
1:04:03
which is unearthing the Bible.
1:04:04
All right, guys, thanks so much for listening to the show.
1:04:06
We do appreciate it wherever you're listening to this.
1:04:08
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1:04:15
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1:04:17
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1:04:19
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And as always, we want to thank the band,
1:04:27
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1:04:29
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1:04:36
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
1:04:38
Remember, keep pushing back darkness,
1:04:40
keep forging spiritual, mental and physical resilience,
1:04:44
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1:04:46
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