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1:18
This is Undaunted Life Man's Podcast.
1:22
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
1:23
Let's get into it.
1:24
All right, guys.
1:25
We've got a special guest on the podcast today.
1:27
His name is Trevor Thompson.
1:28
So he's the senior acquisitions editor and also directs the audiobook program at Erdman's Publishing Company.
1:34
And here's the thing.
1:35
You're going to figure out pretty quickly in this interview why he directs the audiobook program
1:39
because he sounds so good.
1:41
He's got a great voice.
1:42
And you know, I'm mega jealous of anyone that's got that deep, soul tree-like, beautiful voice
1:47
because of all the vocal chord problems I've had.
1:49
But I tried to get over my jealousy so that we could have a good interview today.
1:52
And I think we did an okay job of that.
1:54
But also he is taught at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
1:57
He taught on Greek and also at Abilene Christian University.
2:00
And now he also teaches at Calvin University.
2:02
But he is also the co-translator of gallons on the avoidance of grief and the author of over 70 encyclopedia articles.
2:09
And he's also the co-editor of two other volumes.
2:12
Ephesus as a religious center under the Principate in Christian body and also Christian self-concepts
2:17
of early Christian personhood.
2:19
Now today, the reason why we got this conversation going is because Erdman's, which is his publishing house,
2:25
they publish a couple of really great books.
2:27
One is Christobiography, which we talked about a little bit in the interview.
2:31
But mainly we focus on this one, which is Richard Bockham's book, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses,
2:36
the Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony.
2:38
Now, I tried to get an interview with Professor Bockham, but he basically doesn't do that anymore.
2:42
He's, you know, later on in his life, later on in his career, he doesn't really do that.
2:46
But Trevor is an expert at this book and all the other offerings that they add.
2:50
And so we didn't have a whole lot of time today, which we could have gone a lot more.
2:54
Perhaps we'll have another conversation down the road.
2:56
But we do talk about Trevor's background.
2:58
We talk about these two books, but specifically Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, because Jesus and the Eyewitnesses is a landmark book.
3:04
That if you're studying anything about the early Christian church, the first century church,
3:08
the reliability of the Gospels, you're not going to have to go far down the trail
3:12
before you're going to have somebody suggest this book and say that it's required reading.
3:16
And so we're going to talk in this podcast about Eyewitness Testimony, how a lot of people are very kind of wary of Eyewitness Testimony,
3:23
but how the difference between our current written tradition in history differs from back then,
3:28
which was oral tradition in history.
3:30
We also talk about the importance of the first century church and the martyrs
3:34
and how it relates to the early writings of non-Christian writers, like Josephus and Kelsus and Tacitus and others.
3:40
We also get into how someone can be a New Testament scholar and then not be a Christian,
3:45
because there are people that literally have the same academic bona fides as someone like Trevor Thompson,
3:52
but doesn't come to the conclusion that Jesus is Christ, that Jesus is the Lord and needs to be the Lord of their life,
3:58
and that He paid for their sins on the cross, how they kind of have this
4:02
disputacious attitude or this dissonance in their soul where they can't exactly come to that conclusion
4:08
from a soul level, not just an intellectual level, but then also we got into an interesting discussion about the doctrines of infallibility
4:14
and inerrancy and how that can kind of lead to some issues for some people.
4:18
And I push back a little bit on him to say that, hey, people that dig into these doctrines,
4:22
how that can actually hurt their faith and cause stumbling blocks and all of that.
4:26
I've talked about a lot of other stuff as well. I really, really enjoyed my time with them.
4:29
So I don't want to keep them from you any longer. So without further ado, let's get into it.
4:33
Trevor Thompson, welcome to Don't the Life of Man's podcast.
4:37
Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
4:39
Now, I noticed this before we started recording, but you have a lovely voice, sir.
4:44
It's got a good tone to it. It's very deep. It's very whatever.
4:48
And you also said after this interview, you got to go record an audiobook.
4:51
So what's it like walking around with a voice of God? That's got to be cool.
4:55
You're very kind.
4:59
You know, in life, you work for a lot of things and you struggle and you try to build things.
5:03
And for good or bad, right or wrong, my genetics and gave me the voice of my father with slight modifications.
5:11
So it is what it is. And yeah, it's fun and creates opportunity.
5:16
Well, if you can, if you could ball that up and start selling it, I've had two vocal cord surgeries this year
5:22
for a collapsed vocal cords. And it sounds like you have like four or five extra vocal folds.
5:26
So I hate you. I hate you right from the beginning. Just want you to know that.
5:30
We're frenemies as we begin. There we go.
5:33
That's right. That's right. This is very contentious and I can't wait to see where it goes.
5:37
But we need to talk a little bit to set up for our conversation today.
5:40
A little bit about your background and your education because we're going to be digging into some fairly
5:45
heady topics. It'll be decently academic, but also very palatable.
5:48
So don't anybody run away from the interview.
5:50
But what's your background and kind of how did you get into doing the work you're doing now?
5:54
And then tell us what that work is, obviously.
5:56
Sure. So I grew up in the Christian tradition.
6:01
I grew up actually in Western Oklahoma. I attended-
6:05
Where at? I'm from Oklahoma. I'm from Southwest Oklahoma.
6:08
Are you really? Yeah, I'm from Oklahoma.
6:11
Wow. I was born in Oklahoma City, but I grew up in the thriving metropolis of Clinton, Oklahoma.
6:18
The home of the red tornadoes.
6:21
That's right.
6:22
So I grew up in Oklahoma and I attended Oklahoma Christian
6:27
and began as a biochemistry major there.
6:31
I had a love for language and history.
6:34
And so actually transitioned to doing biblical studies.
6:37
I went from there to Harding Graduate School of Religion in Memphis, Tennessee.
6:43
Masters degrees there. And then went from there to the University of Chicago for doctoral studies
6:48
and then ended up actually teaching in the Divinity School as an adjunct instructor of Greek.
6:55
And then I took a position at Abilene Christian University, where I talked for a number of years
7:01
before coming now to working at William B. Erdman's publishing company,
7:07
which is a longstanding Christian publisher.
7:11
And I also continue to adjunct in the classroom for Calvin here on the corner.
7:18
So that's my trajectory.
7:21
Okay, so quick question on that. I don't want to go too far off into this
7:24
because we have some like real subjects to cover.
7:26
But something that is talked about a lot in the circles that I kind of run in
7:30
is the liberalization of a lot of our Christian places of learning Bible colleges
7:38
and theological schools. And you can't really liberalize without kind of changing the meaning.
7:44
So you'll hear people talk about things, you know, scriptures concerning homosexuality
7:48
or divorce or whatever. And they purport to have new, I guess,
7:53
Gnostic knowledge of what these words actually mean and what Jesus actually meant
7:58
and what Moses would say if he were alive today.
8:01
And that's concerning to me as, you know, a non-professional Christian,
8:06
just like a Christian that can read and discern, do you share some of that same concern?
8:11
Is that concern maybe a little bit too blown up by, you know, prominent conservative Christians?
8:16
What's your read on that?
8:18
Yeah, I mean, knowledge doesn't ever scare me and arguments don't really scare me.
8:26
I, you know, people of all different theological stripes and political persuasions
8:31
come up with new and different ideas, whether it's assessing a current situation
8:36
or the way they're reading an ancient text, whether that's the Constitution or the Bible
8:40
or the Quran. And so, yeah, I guess for me, I see kind of a constant push and pull, you know,
8:48
all the way up and down all of our institutions.
8:52
And I'm more interested in the substance of someone's position,
8:57
how they're actually making the claims that they're making and trying to not necessarily
9:02
label someone one way or the other.
9:05
And I say that as someone who, across my educational trajectory,
9:10
I've been variously labeled on both sides of the spectrum.
9:16
And so I just encourage people, you know, listen to me and hear what I have to say
9:22
and I'll listen to you and hear what you have to say.
9:25
And so I don't know if that's exactly the answer, you know, maybe I went a little off topic
9:29
of what you were hoping, but that's, you know, people make arguments
9:33
and the substance is in the argument. And, you know, whether it's good or bad
9:37
or it's conservative or it's liberal or it's left or it's right or whatever it is,
9:41
they have to be assessed. And so my own experience, you know,
9:45
rising through the ranks of academia is that at all the various institutions
9:50
and geographical locations that I went, I engaged with and experienced
9:55
people who were on both sides of me.
9:59
And they struggled to understand me at times and I struggled to understand them,
10:03
but we talked. And really, I think that's the only way forward is to talk.
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10:36
Well, and you have to be intellectually honest. So if you're reckoning
10:40
with someone's viewpoint, you have to check yourself and, you know,
10:43
regardless of your disposition, your personality, you constantly need to check
10:46
yourself in your own motivations to be like, did I ask them that follow-up question
10:50
because I tried to hit them with a zinger, or because I honestly want to
10:53
understand their position because you can have a conversation with someone
10:57
that's not a postmodernist. So if someone's like, yes, truth is real,
11:01
truth is not relative, like there is, you know, this either happened
11:05
or it didn't happen. That's a person that you can reckon with. Now,
11:08
there are other people that's just pearls before swine. If people think, you know,
11:11
a certain thing is it's like, look, one of my favorite questions to ask
11:14
people, Trevor, and then we'll get back into what I actually want to talk about,
11:17
is if I feel a debate coming or an argument coming, some sort of
11:20
disputacious environment, I will ask a person, hey, if you were wrong
11:24
about what you just said, would you want to know? Would you want me to tell you?
11:27
And their reaction will give me the information I need because if they're like,
11:30
well, I'm not wrong. And why would you even suggest that? It's like, okay, just
11:33
talk about football because at this point, you know, they're not really going to work
11:36
it. But if they were like, well, yeah, if I believe something that is factually
11:40
inaccurate, I would want to know if that's a person that's fertile ground for a
11:43
great conversation. Speaking of things that are great, I got a couple of books
11:47
here that could also work as home defense weapons because they're so
11:50
toneless. Look at these things. But we got Jesus and the eyewitnesses by Richard
11:54
Bacham, which this is just like an absolute masterclass. This is on our 100 books,
11:59
every modern Christian man should read lists. And then we have Christobiography,
12:03
which is by Craig Keener. And both of these books work as kind of a deep
12:09
somewhat academic Christian apologetic as to why we can look at the resurrection
12:15
of Jesus, not just as a fanciful mythological story, but as something that
12:20
can actually be trusted. Now that is about as 30,000 foot of an overview as
12:25
you can get up to deep deep books. But I just want generically for you to talk to
12:30
me about these two titles, which is put out by your publisher in terms of how they
12:35
can be used and why they are important to just the everyday regular old Christian
12:39
man. Right. So when one begins to think about the canonical Gospels, the four
12:47
Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, you can approach them in different ways.
12:52
And so one way that often happens in churches and in apologetic circles is
12:58
a very kind of top down approach. And so you construct a doctrine of
13:04
inspiration or an erancy and then you kind of map that onto the text. And that
13:12
serves its purposes and it does what it does. In the academy writ large, in the
13:19
academy that studies and among learned circles that study the Bible, you really
13:24
have to argue and think in different ways. You can't assume as a matter of
13:30
public dialogue that everyone's going to hold the same view about God's role in
13:35
inspiring the text or creating the text. And so what both of these books really
13:40
do is kind of come from the bottom. And that is rather than say these books were
13:47
written by God, therefore these books are true, they try to do the real down
13:54
in the weeds, hard work of doing history without assumption. And to see where
14:01
that leads. Starting with Professor Bacham's book, there's been a long and
14:11
contentious debate that has spanned continents. More than a hundred years
14:17
it's been ongoing about the quest for the historical Jesus. And what that really
14:23
is is an attempt to get at the relationship between the real Jesus, the actual man
14:30
who moved around in Galilee and in Jerusalem and other locations. And the
14:36
version of the man that you get in the gospels. And historians have tried to use
14:44
the sources in various ways to reconstruct what they call the historical Jesus.
14:48
And among many, the assumption has long been that the stories about Jesus,
14:56
the traditions about Jesus, sort of grew. They grew over time. And they
15:05
developed in a variety of ways and that they are completely disconnected from
15:09
the events that actually happened. Stories do change. Right? I mean,
15:15
stories evolve in my own life. I mean, I tell stories in different ways and
15:21
depending upon my audience, I may or may not include certain elements or other
15:25
elements. So for example, if I'm telling my brother a story, you and I have a
15:29
certain rapport. We grew up together. I mean, we're both ex jocks, both
15:35
relatively smart people. And we have a kind of a banter that comes from having
15:39
a brother who's 19 months separation and age. And there's sometimes a bit of
15:44
color in terms of the stories that my brother and I tell each other. But
15:49
this is a weird analogy. But whenever I tell that same story to my mother who's
15:54
in her 70s, the story may have a little different flavor to it in terms of her
16:00
expectations. And so, I mean, that's just kind of a macro illustration of
16:05
people are telling the stories about Jesus and scholars recognize this of all
16:09
bits. Right? And they're choosing to tell certain elements of the story in one
16:14
context or another element in another. And inevitably, things happen to the
16:18
stories and they get connected to other stories, et cetera. The real question has
16:23
been, did those stories so evolve as to be removed from any kind of reality? And
16:31
what Professor Bacham tried to do is he tried to make a case and in what is a
16:39
landmark book. And so, pretty much everyone who does studies in early
16:44
Christianity and the Gospels, regardless of one's political religious
16:48
orientation, you need to know and understand Professor Bacham's book. In
16:53
other words, it's not, it's a book written for anyone who's serious about
16:58
studying the Bible and Christian origins, not just someone who's a Christian, if
17:03
that makes sense. Right. And so, what he tried to really argue is that, and it's a
17:11
genre question, you know, which, whenever I teach my students, I tell them the most
17:17
important question that you will ever, ever encounter as you read the Bible is
17:23
what are you reading? What is, what is the genre? And if you, if you, if you make a
17:31
mistake in that initial moment, right, then you're going to have problems because
17:37
you're going to assume certain things. And so, the example that I, that I give to
17:41
students is the famous proverb, you know, if you, if you raise up a child in the
17:46
way the child should go and they grow old, they basically won't depart from it,
17:49
right? And that's my summary of, of the proverb. And for, for a season, I was in
17:54
pastoral ministry and I can't tell you how many parents would come to me and they
17:58
would have a child that for various reasons they didn't think was doing what
18:01
they thought they should be doing and they thought they had failed as a parent.
18:05
But what I explain to them is that you're confusing a promise with a proverb. A
18:12
proverb is a general statement that a, a promise, you know, it says this is going
18:16
to happen if you do this and these are proverbs, not promises. And so when you,
18:20
when you come to the Gospels, what genre are they? What, what exactly is it that,
18:27
that, that we're reading? And so scholars use all kinds of terms at the most basic
18:32
level. They are Gospels. But gospel is actually a category of something you, you
18:40
you, you preach. So Paul, Paul preaches the gospel. He says, that doesn't mean he's
18:46
preaching Mark, obviously, because of the updating. But what exactly is a gospel?
18:54
Is it, is it myth? Is it memory? Is it history? Is it biography? What is it? And so
19:03
what, what Professor Bacham tries to do and what he argues and what is a tome?
19:08
You're right. I mean, it can hold the door open. Is he, is he tries to argue that
19:13
the Gospels are a form of testimony and, and far removed from the idea that this
19:21
was a testimony about the life of Jesus without connections to the events. He
19:26
tries to argue and, and does throughout the pages in a variety of different ways
19:31
that the story of Jesus as, as it evolves and as it is interpreted in, in the
19:39
immediate years and then decades and then subsequently, at least in that initial
19:44
period, that there are eyewitnesses, people who were actually there, people who saw
19:50
events, people who heard things that they acted for Professor Bacham as a kind of
19:56
role over, over, over what was going on now. And, and stop me if you want to push
20:03
back at some point or you just want me to kind of keep, keep rolling along.
20:06
Well, I want to ask specifically about that, but I want to, I want to highlight a
20:10
couple of things that you said real quick, Trevor, the genre question is so
20:14
important because, excuse me, because so many people, I, I find them to be
20:19
literalists about things that are not supposed to be literal. And so just this
20:23
was reading Matthew 19 where it talks about the rich young ruler and how Jesus
20:27
says it'll be harder for, you know, camel to go through the eye of the needle and
20:30
all that. And then I, I want to like grab literalists and make them read that
20:34
sentence and be like, do you think Jesus was talking about a literal camel and a
20:38
literal eye of a needle? Is that what you think he was trying to say? Same thing
20:42
like when Jesus says, I am a vine. He's not, he doesn't mean that he's an actual
20:45
vine when he's talking about how he is a door that doesn't mean you should knock
20:48
on him and turn his handle. Like that's the thing like genre is so important when
20:52
you're reading the Bible. And then obviously you can talk about context and
20:54
other things thereafter. But the importance of these books that we're going to
20:57
discuss in the eyewitness thing, is it kind of blows right past the, this
21:01
growing trend of people that think Jesus never existed, that there was not a
21:05
historical Jesus that it wasn't an actual person that lived, even though that is
21:10
the most attested to fact in all of antiquity. It's like, if you don't believe
21:14
that Jesus existed, but you believe that Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon,
21:17
then I don't know, I don't know how to help you square that circle. But let's
21:21
dive a little bit deeper into the eyewitness thing because right from the
21:24
beginning, someone's going to read the title in the book and say Jesus and the
21:27
eyewitnesses, they're going to remember the last time they watched the Joe
21:30
Rogan experience and where Joe Rogan was saying, well, hey, everybody knows that
21:33
eyewitness testimony. It's not even inmissible in a lot of court cases because
21:37
people forget and they don't really understand and maybe, maybe they were all
21:41
on mushrooms and maybe they all had the same vision at the same time. And then,
21:45
you know, people have died for wrong beliefs all the time. So the fact that
21:49
their eyewitnesses doesn't mean anything, but start to break down even more
21:53
further why it's so important that it was eyewitnesses and what eyewitness
21:59
testimony of these actual events, those attestations, why that is particularly
22:05
important to how we understand the resurrection.
22:08
Right. I mean, there's a couple of things there that I want to touch on.
22:14
Whenever you understand that the Jesus tradition is in conversation with
22:20
people who are there, that does act as a kind of control over just completely
22:28
recreating events, right? Now, with that, let me say this, we all understand
22:35
that memory can be faulty. Yes. I mean, that's, you know, I mean, we've all
22:40
been in a relationship with a significant other and we've all recalled
22:44
an event where we were both there and we both experienced very, very different
22:49
things in terms of what happens. But I think for Bacham, what he's really
22:55
pushing against is the idea that basically the people who were there
22:59
just kind of disappeared after the, after the events of Jesus' death
23:04
burial and then the resurrection and as then the movement that became
23:08
Christianity spread. And what he's pushing back against in saying is, look,
23:13
I'm not saying that all eyewitnesses are perfect, but the idea that all of
23:18
these people who were actually there, right, who, I mean, as Jesus is traveling
23:23
around in his itinerant journeys and places, people who went to sleep and
23:28
Jesus was within speaking distance of them. They woke up and he was within
23:33
distance of them that people who heard him say things in different ways and
23:39
in different contexts that they were there. Does that mean necessarily that
23:47
everything they remembered was completely perfect and exactly how it
23:51
happened? Well, no, I mean, it doesn't mean that. But what it does mean is
23:55
that you're at least as close to the sources as you're going to get as a
23:59
kind of controlling mechanism. Now, you know, so the question of in that,
24:06
and let me say this too, the question of memory is an exploding field in
24:13
general. Memory in the courtroom can be a problem as it can be in
24:20
relationships. But part of what Richard Bacham's book, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses
24:25
has done, is really encouraged in the study of early Christianity, the study
24:31
of memory itself. And what's important to note here is that different cultures
24:38
have different capacities for memory and retelling of stories and different
24:45
expectations of those stories. And that's another kind of interesting
24:50
point that, and that's one of the things that Bacham's work has done. And
24:55
at the publisher that I work at, we published a book by a brilliant German
25:02
scholar named Sundar Hübenthal, who's actually doing work on memory work in
25:07
the ancient world. And so for the listeners, it's important to understand
25:13
that what we mean by memory in America and our own training and ability to
25:19
understand information may be disconnected from another culture today
25:24
around the globe. And certainly across time. Well, let me go ahead.
25:32
Well, I was just saying, let me ask you about that even a little bit further
25:35
because in modernity, we think we're smart, but we're really, really dumb
25:39
because we have, you know, CS Lewis has this quote about chronological
25:43
snobbery. We think because we have access to all the knowledge that's ever been
25:48
universal in this smart, you know, computer or supercomputer center pocket.
25:52
But I can't do basic math anymore. Why? Because I just asked Siri to do it.
25:56
I can't, you know, I can't remember what it was like to really dig for
26:00
information because I could just go to Google and I can find the answer in
26:03
14 seconds. But this makes it very important to have a discussion about the
26:08
difference between oral tradition in history and written tradition in history.
26:13
Because when you hear stories about people thousands of years ago,
26:17
that memorized the entire Pentateuch or memorized an entire gospel or
26:23
memorized an entire letter from the Apostle Paul in modernity that
26:27
that seems beyond possible. It doesn't even seem plausible because we can
26:32
barely remember the words to our favorite song, much less a very
26:36
detailed thing that needs to be, you know, displayed properly and I guess
26:41
it's not just a word that's being perpetrated properly. So give the listener
26:47
a better idea of how the eyewitness testimony kind of weaves into what was
26:52
going on in the first century because it was an oral tradition, not necessarily
26:57
a written one. Right. I mean, you know, literacy levels were very different.
27:03
Exactly. Yeah. It was basically not existent. I mean, and so, you know, people
27:08
are looking at what levels and but certainly what we consider the norms of
27:13
literacy in the western world would not have been the norms in first century
27:18
Palestine, that area, the Galilee, et cetera. And so people told stories, they
27:23
communicated a lot of things. Again, that doesn't mean that it always gets
27:27
transmitted perfectly. But if there is a sense in which what is exactly is said
27:32
and you can't just immediately go and consult it, there is a sense in which
27:37
you maybe try to hold on to the material a little better and retain it. But
27:41
let me also say that even even in our cultural context, so I was raised in
27:45
a Christian religious tradition and every Christian religious tradition is different.
27:49
But in the one in which I was raised, we were required in early grade school
27:54
to memorize large portions of scripture is I remember in third grade
28:00
reciting the sermon on the Mount. Oh, wow. From start to finish. And that
28:06
particular tradition that I was a part of really prized the retention and
28:11
knowledge of scripture. So we were asked to memorize a lot of it. There are
28:14
religious traditions today, even in grand rapids, non-Christian religious
28:20
traditions that ask young people to memorize huge portions of sacred
28:26
text, sometimes in their original languages. And I like I can't I can't
28:31
imagine going to a mega church in the city where I live in grand rapids
28:36
and saying, okay, for the sixth grade curriculum, you know, everyone is going
28:41
to memorize Galatians in Greek. I mean, that's just not that's just not
28:46
going to happen. That's never but and so based, you know, recognizing
28:50
these different capacities and these different abilities. I mean, it is
28:55
it is important. And so, yes, memory is a problem and because we're human,
29:00
right. And so the idea that you put a memory in a lock box and you, you
29:05
know, shut it and then you open it and it's exactly the same. I mean, all
29:08
the memory theory stuff has said that's a problem. There's a sense in which
29:12
every time you recall something, you know, it's it's it gets recreated in a
29:18
sense. But it's connection with the original can vary depending upon the
29:23
person and depending upon the cultural context, et cetera. And so, I mean, I
29:27
think at the strength of what of what Bacham wants to argue into this in
29:31
the eyewitnesses is that one, the testimony of the Gospels is connected to
29:39
actual eyewitnesses. Those eyewitnesses operated in a different kind of oral
29:45
memory culture than the modern Western world. As such, excuse me, as such,
29:53
there there's not just freedom to just completely create whole cloth without
30:01
some connection with those traditions. Now, the genre question itself becomes
30:06
crucial here. And let me and let me kind of zero in on on an example of that.
30:13
If you mentioned, you know, the camel and literal reading and let me let me
30:18
let me hone in on the Gospel of Matthew and the genealogy there. If Matthew
30:26
breaks the genealogy of Jesus down into three groups of 14 generations.
30:32
Now, even the most basic study of the Hebrew Bible or what Christians often
30:42
call the Old Testament, if you go through and track all of those people,
30:47
you're it becomes very apparent that there are people missing from those lists.
30:54
Correct. Yeah. Right. And so the list have been structured in a certain way. And
30:59
so what scholars believe is that in this, you know, this is kind of beneath the
31:06
surface. And this is not the kind of ancestry. If you're doing ancestry.com,
31:09
you're going to build, right? But that David, Dalit Vav Dalit, the name
31:15
of David, equals 14 is comprised of three letters. This is not kind of crazy
31:20
stuff, but this is kind of standard scholarship. Right. And that rather than
31:24
construct a literal genealogy of Jesus, that what Matthew has done is created a
31:30
symbolic genealogy using numerology and what the ancients called Gomatria. It's
31:37
a form of connecting letters and numbers to reality to basically say the exact
31:44
lineage is not really important. What is important is that he is of David. And
31:50
that is just fundamentally different. But if, if you approach the Gospels and
31:55
you assume genealogy has to be done according to the canons of modern history
32:00
and the rules of ancestry.com or, you know, whatever, you're going to completely
32:04
misunderstand. And so, and Professor Bakam is aware of all of that. In other
32:11
words, that I mean, he understands that even as there's eyewitnesses and even as
32:15
they're working with their own testimony and their conversation with each other,
32:18
they're doing it in ancient for century ways. If that makes sense.
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32:54
And I think that's an important thing to bring up because even just going from
32:58
the writings of Matthew to the writings of Luke, it's not going to feel the same.
33:02
All the Gospels kind of have a different feel to them. And there's obviously
33:06
a reason behind the curtain that we may never know as to why that is.
33:09
Certain things appeal to people in a certain way, obviously. But what this does
33:14
kind of lead to Trevor, this discussion about eyewitnesses and transmission
33:19
of the gospel over time or any of the biblical texts is people can make.
33:25
All right, let me back up just a little bit. People, I try to put myself in the
33:29
mindset of an atheist constantly to where I'm trying to read something not as
33:33
someone who already believes this because then I feel like I start proof
33:36
texting. I try to read it as a skeptic. Someone that's not cynical, that can't
33:40
be swayed, but a skeptic that's like, no, you really got to show me. And when you
33:43
talk about inerrancy and infallibility, the easiest things for one of those
33:48
people to point to is, well, this gospel says this and then this gospel
33:52
literally says something different, which one's correct? Because when you start
33:55
arguing for one over the other, you're arguing against inerrancy and
33:58
infallibility, right? And so talk to me a little bit about that.
34:02
Because it's a concern for a lot of people, even well-meaning Christians,
34:06
they'll get to a point all the way up to a crisis of faith because they're
34:10
like, I've been told my whole life that this is infallible and inerrant, but
34:14
there are certain Bibles that exclude particular verses because they're not
34:18
in all the transcripts. So which transcript is right? Which is the infallible
34:22
text? Is the ESV infallible? Well, because we don't know if it has all the
34:27
right translations from the German, which came from the Hebrew and the Greek
34:31
and blah, blah, blah. So you know what I'm saying? Just kind of give me your
34:35
line on thinking on that. Right. This goes back to the beginning of our
34:40
conversation. I think it's important for anyone to be honest and to be
34:45
transparent. I was raised as an infallible list and an inerrantist.
34:51
And in the course of learning languages and study, I was a person
34:58
who encountered the reality and the problem of
35:02
those doctrines. The real issue that I'll get at with them
35:06
is that it's not always clear what exactly they're
35:10
talking about because it's one thing to say
35:14
the Bible is inerrant, that is without error.
35:18
Right? My immediate response to that always is which one?
35:22
And they say, well, the original. And then
35:26
as the historian, I say, I would love, I would love for you to take me
35:30
and show me where they are. And so the doctrine
35:34
itself is a doctrine
35:38
about a set of texts that don't actually exist.
35:42
And to me, where I sit and
35:46
as I work with students, I think the doctrines themselves are more of a stumbling
35:50
block than they are at help. And I've tried to actually move away from them
35:54
because they can force you into intellectually dishonest
35:58
positions. And so
36:02
what I like to think, when I think about the text and I think about
36:06
inspiration, I like to think about the world.
36:10
And in the sense that as a believer
36:14
I believe that in a meaningful way God
36:18
created the world and that God continues to sustain and
36:22
provide and be active in the world. But the world itself
36:26
is a crazy place at times. And so
36:30
for me, there's a larger theological question of not just what is God doing with
36:34
this book, but what is God doing kind of writ large in the world?
36:38
And I like the freedom as I sit now
36:42
to recognize that God may allow and do things
36:46
that I wouldn't allow or do. The other problem
36:50
which I think is significant about inerrancy
36:54
and infallibility is that the Christian confession is that God revealed himself perfectly once.
36:58
And that was in the human being
37:02
that we know is Jesus. Although
37:06
as your listeners may know, his name was actually Joshua.
37:10
But people don't realize that. It's just a quick aside. But
37:14
Jesus is the transliteration of Yeshua, which is Joshua.
37:20
And so he's as Jewish as it gets with this great name.
37:24
But you're right in that when you create these doctrines
37:28
of inerrancy and infallibility,
37:30
Christians can be forced to kind of play funny games with evidence.
37:34
Right? And so
37:38
for example, one thing that is happening in Bibles right now,
37:42
your listeners may or may not be aware of this, but scholars have long been
37:46
aware that, and we're going off topic of the Gospels
37:50
here, but that Goliath got progressively
37:54
bigger over time. And so
37:58
I watch the veggie tales
38:02
version of Goliath growing up and all of that. And
38:06
remember the huge posters from Vacation Bible School.
38:10
And so scholars now understand that Goliath
38:14
was actually much shorter.
38:18
Still a very large human being, but much shorter. But
38:22
it actually changes the story in an important way, and please just stay with me for one second
38:26
because the way I learned that story was
38:30
there's this huge person which is even
38:34
bigger than King Saul, and of course bigger than little David, but this is the
38:38
might and the power of God. Well when Goliath gets brought
38:42
down to size, right, the size that the earliest evidence
38:46
leads us to, what you discover is that the text describes Saul as
38:50
being head and shoulders taller than the average Israelite. And so Saul
38:54
and Goliath are actually kind of equals in the arena
38:58
that's about to happen. And so this text really becomes an issue about Saul
39:02
and that the guy who should be fighting Goliath is afraid
39:06
that David steps up, but the text changed. But if you're so
39:10
bent on saying the Bible is completely perfect, it doesn't
39:14
allow scholarship to advance and go, you know what? For some reason
39:18
God allowed the height of Goliath to kind of grow over time
39:22
and that's actually changed the meaning of the story.
39:26
And so by returning to the original form of the story we can actually
39:30
recover something in terms of intent and understanding, particularly the David
39:34
and Saul dynamic. And so
39:38
for me, I struggle with inerrancy
39:42
and infallibility because one, they were such a stumbling
39:46
block to me. And I now understand God
39:50
to have the kind of freedom that I actually see
39:54
in the copying transmission and translation of the Bible.
39:58
I appreciate you giving us that perspective. I don't want to go too much farther down that
40:02
hole because I have a few other important topics I want to hit before we got to get you out of there.
40:06
Here's my personal struggle with inerrancy and infallibility.
40:10
And again, I try to be as honest as possible on my show with my foibles and with the things I struggle
40:14
with because I know I'm not the only one. So I remember years into my show
40:18
I did an entire episode on why most men hate contemporary
40:22
Christian music and it's because it sucks and it's effeminate. And just by me saying it,
40:26
most guys were like, I felt this way my whole life and I thought I was broken. So I'm
40:30
okay with admitting some stuff. Here's my problem. I think most
40:34
slippery slope arguments are not based in truth or intellectual
40:38
honesty. But I think this one could be and what I mean by that is
40:42
is if you take a position that is skeptical of an
40:46
errancy or infallibility that it opens up the door
40:50
you know, you could say to Satan just blatantly or just to
40:54
any cultural or secular influence that begins to unravel
40:58
your faith and then you become one of these people that is quote unquote
41:02
deconstructing to where you're like, I'm going back to the originals and this doesn't
41:06
mean what I was taught and then you get to this jaded position
41:10
of I can't trust any of this so I'm just going to go do me
41:14
I'm going to go be spiritual as opposed to religious. And so
41:18
that's where I look at doctrines almost like a glue as long as the
41:22
doctrines are based in something that is of God that is of biblical heft
41:26
if that makes sense. So I guess what do you have to say to that to somebody
41:30
that is maybe they might be better off just
41:34
believing the doctrine because it's going to keep them from getting distracted
41:38
by all the other shiny arguments over here that ultimately take them away from
41:42
Christ. Does that make sense? No, no, it absolutely does
41:46
and it's a tough road. I mean, I think that
41:50
different people that wear the name Christian
41:54
and claim Christian faith, different people
41:58
are capable and this is going to sound a little strange
42:02
and I don't mean this to sound elitist at all but different people are equipped
42:06
to handle certain things than others and not everybody
42:10
not everybody is capable of understanding
42:14
certain things. What I can say from my own biography
42:18
that in the end those doctrines
42:22
because of my access to knowledge
42:26
and access to original manuscripts and ability to read them
42:30
that it became a real problem for me because I saw
42:34
the problems. Now, you're also correct that for someone
42:38
who doesn't have the time, the energy or, frankly, the desire
42:42
to spend the years to learn all of that and to learn all the nuance
42:46
that having some kind of doctrine like that
42:50
can serve a purpose. I would not
42:54
deny that. As long as there's an
42:58
understanding that it can be a true stumbling block for some.
43:02
Yeah, it certainly could be a stumbling block and again I was reading again in Matthew 19 today
43:06
about how the disciples are trying to get the kids away from God or, you know, from Jesus
43:10
the God man and he's like, no, they bring them towards me, let me
43:14
bless them and it's the faith like a child that
43:18
is better perhaps than the person that has all the intellectual horsepower
43:22
to, you know, power an entire city if they needed to. But then that creates more
43:26
problems than it does streamlining their ideas and their processes.
43:30
But this kind of leads to another thing that I wanted to talk about.
43:34
One of the most interesting things in the world to me in the world of Christianity
43:38
is New Testament scholars, New Testament experts
43:42
that are atheists. So these are people that know
43:46
this gets into the Calvinist argument like have they been given faith yet and you know, all that kind of stuff.
43:50
It opens up a whole bunch of doors. But it's someone like you
43:54
that has the understanding of the Greek. They're a professor.
43:58
They've written books. They've edited books. They've done all these different things.
44:02
And yet they come to the exact opposite conclusion of someone like you
44:06
that, yeah, Jesus isn't the son of God. But yeah, I believe
44:10
and I've checked all the historical data to say that these documents are true.
44:14
That's the thing that's just so crazy to me. Like how can somebody, and you know
44:18
these people personally, how can these people come to that realization
44:22
is it as simple as the fact that God has not yet
44:26
or potentially would never reveal himself to them individually?
44:30
Wow, there's a lot there.
44:34
In terms of different options there, I believe human beings
44:38
make choices and the choices that
44:42
we make sometimes don't make sense to us in the moment.
44:46
I mean, I certainly have made choices in my life and I look back
44:50
on it and think, wow, I really wish I made a different choice and that can be
44:54
about something really small or it can be about something really big.
44:58
I think it's important to recognize
45:02
that people can look at all the evidence
45:06
and for whatever reason in their life,
45:10
the way their brain works, their history, whatever
45:14
they make a different choice.
45:18
And I think that's okay because that's what humans do.
45:22
And I would never be one to say
45:26
that, because I don't think you intellectually can be honest and say
45:30
if you don't accept Christianity you're a fool or something like that.
45:34
Because that's just not my experience of life. But for reasons that I don't fully
45:38
understand people choose different faith paths or non-faith paths
45:42
than I do. And so I guess to answer your question
45:46
I don't fully understand all the choices I make and I don't understand
45:50
all the choices that other people make. I respect them,
45:54
friends, colleagues who disagree with me on any number
45:58
of points. And you're right. I mean,
46:02
there are brilliant, brilliant people with incredible linguistic
46:06
and historical skills who do not
46:10
choose or who are Christian and become non or
46:14
different ways. It's a mystery to me. The mystery of human choice.
46:18
But it's also a mystery to me sometimes as I look at trials
46:22
and I look at the evidence that's presented for or against a person in a case
46:26
and one person, right?
46:30
That's just the, you're all sitting there. You're all
46:34
looking at the same stuff and someone says guilty or not guilty
46:38
and everyone else says the opposite and the rest of the world looks on and goes,
46:42
when is it presuppositions that that person had walking in?
46:46
Is it this person that finally for the first time in their life they have power
46:50
because they can uphold an entire process where somebody's life potentially
46:54
hangs in the balance and they just love that power. It's like back during COVID.
46:58
People that never had power all of a sudden could tell you put that mask on or you can't eat here
47:02
and it's like, okay, like some people just love that power. It just kind of goes to their head
47:06
but it reminds me also Trevor is just about God hardening people's hearts
47:10
and I remember not really understanding what that meant when it said, you know, God hardened
47:14
Pharaoh's heart and in my mind I was like, oh God made
47:18
Pharaoh, you know, do that and believe that way but like no, no, no.
47:22
God took what Pharaoh was already doing. The hard heart that he was
47:26
already in possession of and the decisions he was making and he
47:30
was like, okay man, if you want it, I'm going to give it to you good and
47:34
hard and here you go. I'm going to make sure that your heart is hardened on that and again
47:38
in Matthew 19 we see about the hardening of people's hearts as it pertains to divorce
47:42
and you know, just the overall marital relationship and those types of
47:46
things as well. I do want to want to back up a little bit
47:50
before we get you out of here and this is again a wide question but you know
47:54
we're just scratching the surface today because we want the people to go dig into these books.
47:58
The overall importance Trevor of the first century church because the
48:02
first century church, the Echlesias that were in this area of the world
48:06
those were, you know, gatherings of eyewitnesses
48:10
and then also we get into the importance of the first century martyrs
48:14
really the first second and third century martyrs whenever you realize what
48:18
people did, you know, gladly, like people walked to their
48:22
desk, they walked to arenas where they were basically fed to wild animals.
48:26
They were burned alive, they were put in oil, they were drowned alive, they were pulled apart by horses
48:30
and we don't see any attestations from historical writers
48:34
that any of them were denouncing their faith as they were being nailed
48:38
to crosses or as they were being torn apart by bears but you also
48:42
have Jesus in Christianity described in non-Christian writings
48:46
the writings of Josephus and Kelsus and Pliny the Younger and Tacitus and Lucian
48:50
and all these other people. Talk to me about the importance
48:54
and I know that's a million different subjects all at once and I'm just kind of combining
48:58
so I apologize but why that's so important to us
49:02
2000 years after the first century Echlesias, the first century church
49:06
to be able to look back on the writings of these people and look back
49:10
at the descriptions and what happened to these martyrs and how that could steal
49:14
S-T-E-E-L our faith and help us understand that no we're
49:18
believing in something that actually went down. Right.
49:22
I mean yeah there's a lot of different points there that
49:26
let me just say in general that what became
49:30
Christianity emerges in the crucible
49:34
of a form of Judaism. Right. I mean that's kind of
49:38
initially where it kind of emerges from and
49:42
there were as the earliest sources we have a test
49:46
people that found the idea and the message
49:50
I'm ridiculous and I mean that's just there
49:54
from the bottom layer and whenever people ask
49:58
me well how could someone think that it's so evidently true you know
50:02
there are any number of new ideas new religions that appear today and I'm not necessarily
50:06
saying they're right I'm just saying imagine your initial response
50:10
right when you hear XYZ about this faith or
50:14
you know this celebrity religion or whatever and you're skeptical
50:18
you wonder what the motives are etc and so like the cards are kind
50:22
of stacked against it. Jerusalem
50:26
and the origins of the Christian movement were not the epicenter
50:30
of the Roman Empire. They were far removed
50:34
from the core centers of power. Now eventually they moved
50:38
right they moved west and they eventually found Rome and
50:42
beyond but I think for many people who encountered the earliest message
50:46
was kind of depraved superstition from some
50:50
backwater province over in the east and you know strange
50:54
people anyway I mean just you know kind of all of those right kind of prejudices
50:58
but it it was important and
51:02
and continues to be important to the Christian faith
51:06
that there is a thread there's a there's a connection in terms of
51:10
texts and in terms of institutions and in terms of traditions
51:14
that that tie beliefs and practices today
51:18
to beliefs and practices in the in the first century world
51:22
and and as such I think that's why Professor Bockham's
51:26
book made such an impact
51:30
because he looked at the beginning of those stages
51:34
and he said that rather than being a chaotic
51:38
disorganized, unformed, wildly theoretical
51:42
moment in the immediate
51:46
decades after the events of Jesus' death
51:50
and the events that followed that there were actual people who were there
51:54
not that they were the final say not that their memory was
51:58
always 100% perfect but that there was a kind of buffer
52:02
if you will that allowed a
52:06
kind of authenticity about the stories that we have and that's
52:10
again what we have are gospels they are in no
52:14
sense modern biographies and there's so many things that
52:18
from a modern historians perspective that we would like to know
52:22
but to say that eyewitnesses and people who knew eyewitnesses
52:26
weren't involved in those initial stages is
52:30
on the strength of Bockham's claims inaccurate
52:34
they were in the mix
52:38
well I think that that is a fantastic commercial for Jesus and the eye witnesses guys
52:42
there's a reason why it's on the 100 books every modern Christian man should read list and I mean
52:46
I am stingy I'm stingy with that book list now like when I take a book off
52:50
and put a new book on my goodness it better be an Earth Shatter or so
52:54
I really really appreciate your time today talking about all this I have way more questions for you
52:58
but perhaps we can set that up for another interview down the line.
53:02
Is there anything else you want to get off your chest? I'm good thank you for having me on Kyle it's been a pleasure
53:06
Trevor Thompson thank you for coming on adult to life a man's podcast
53:10
there you go guys hope you enjoyed my time with Trevor Thompson but before we let you go we are going to do a quick
53:14
resilience boost add on to life our mission is equipping men to push back darkness with content that
53:18
forges spiritual mental and physical resilience so I've only got two links for you today I want you
53:22
guys to check out these books it's Jesus and the eye witnesses and Christ oh biography
53:26
you guys can check those out there and make sure you add them to your library
53:30
you guys so much for listening to this episode wherever you're listening to this please subscribe rate
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54:06
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the lion of Judah
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(air whooshing)