DEBATE: Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? | @BereanPerspectiveApologetics & Charles Vs ChristBeforeJesus

e e e e e good evening everybody and welcome to modern day debate. I'm your host Ryan, and tonight we are going to be debating: Did Jesus rise from the dead?

And to get us started out, we have Charles on the floor. So Charles, thank you so much for coming up back to modern day debate. We appreciate you being here. You have six minutes to present your case for the resurrection.

Awesome. Thank you so much. I'm just going to put my screen share here. All right, we see "Old Testament Predicts Jesus." And I will begin your timer right now.

All righty. So, Prophecies of Jesus. Luke 24: "And he said unto them, These are the words which I have spoke unto you, while I was with you, yet all the things must be fulfilled, which are written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms concerning me."

The most significant prophecy regarding Jesus' death and resurrection in the Bible is the Passover. In Exodus, he's freed from slavery. Jesus came to free the slaves. John 8: "So if the Son sets you free, you'll be free indeed." Death of the firstborn son is a payment for disobedience to God. Mark 10: "For even the Son of Man came to give his life as a ransom for many."

The Israelites were instructed to be ready, dressed, standing, and waiting on the Lord. Luke 12: "Let your loins be girded about, your lights be burning, and yourselves like unto the men that wait on the Lord." The sacrificial lamb to atone for sins, so that God's wrath would pass over his people. John 1: "Behold the Lamb of God, which takes away the sins of the world." Without spot or blemish, Jesus was the sinless, without spot or blemish. He was perfect. John 8: "Which of you can convict me of sin?"

The Passover Lamb's blood on the two sides of the doorpost and the upper doorpost, making the sign of the cross. And the Lamb's blood. Matthew 27: "And when they plaited a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head." Soldiers nailed Jesus to the cross. It's important to note that the Romans did not even begin crucifixion until 3 BC.

Matthew 26: "I sat with you daily teaching in the temple, and you laid no hold on me. But all this was done that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled." Meaning the Passover prophecies on the cross. Matthew 27: "Jesus cried with a loud voice, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" This is a quote from Psalms 22, which clearly describes the suffering that Jesus endured on the cross, as described in the Gospels, yet prophesied thousands of years prior.

Interestingly, the next lines to this verse are "Rao Yeshua." So far from saving me. The two words "Rao" meaning a far, a measure of distance or time. "Yeshua" meaning salvation, the name of Jesus. So another way to say the next line to this verse is "a distant 'far' from Jesus."

Psalms 22 and Isaiah 53 are famously the most prophetic prophecies in the Old Testament regarding Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. There's no one else in history that could fulfill these prophecies, yet is so easily associated with Jesus. Isaiah 53: "Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand."

Psalm 16: "For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption." Isaiah 25: "He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord will wipe away tears from off all faces." Hosea 13: "I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction."

The Bible is full of prophecies of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, thus showing he was the awaited Messiah. In the Gospels, Jesus becomes perplexed with the Jewish leaders' inability to comprehend these scriptures. They were awaiting a Christ that would liberate them in the flesh, but the Messiah came to liberate in the spirit. This all adds validity to the claims that he was the Messiah.

Character changes. Billions of people through history have claimed divine intervention that led them to their Christian faith, myself included. Though I've never personally seen the Risen Christ, I've seen amazing things happen in my own life. The deeper I dove into my faith, the more I seen the or the more I believe, the more I seen God act in my life. Most Christians have the same story. We couldn't count the amount of people that have found Jesus through divine interventions, whether it be jail, addictions, all walks of life. As they interact with Jesus, there's a divine power that changes the heart. This is a prophecy of the scriptures.

The most obvious example of this is Paul. Paul famously explains his selfish and heartless lifestyle prior to seeing the Risen Christ. His dramatic change was a great example to early converts. The brother of Jesus, James, did not accept that his brother was the Messiah, yet after the resurrected Jesus appeared to him, he became a foundational player in the early Christian ministry. The disciples fled and abandoned Jesus at his arrest. They had to hide for fear of persecution, yet when they saw the Risen Christ, they willingly walked into persecution to profess the truth. Peter saw Jesus as a death and quotes the Gospels, "Forgive them, Lord, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Thomas was in denial until he saw the Risen Christ. These are all staples of prophecy. John 10: "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me."

The resurrection of Jesus converted so many people in the first century. The Holy Spirit was converted so many sins. The Holy Spirit was sent by Jesus after the resurrection and ascension. 1 Corinthians: "If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and our faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ whom he had not raised up, if so be that the dead rise not."

The Gospel variances. The four Gospel variances at the tomb, specifically, are posed as a problem for Christians. However, these are extremely minor variances given the big, the complete context. If the Gospels were all copied from each other, as the mainstream narrative would lead us to believe, rather than independent eyewitnesses of the Risen Christ, we should expect identical stories. However, if they truly are independent eyewitness accounts, then we should expect to see these kinds of variances. In the later writing of these events, certainly this does not confirm they were all copying the literature from each other. It's exactly what we should expect to see, given the emotions, traumas, fears, and adrenaline that they were all overwhelmed with, internalizing differently, reflected in how they reoccurred the events to write down. This is exactly how eyewitness testimony is observed in psychology. And that's me. Thank you.

Oh, you can do it. Thank you. I'm on mute. That sucks. Okay, once again, don't you hate that when I, when I'm over here and I'm like, I don't, everybody hear me? Being timekeeper, and now they're all going to be all antsy in the live chat. Hit the like button, hit the subscribe button, all that fancy stuff. You only missed the housekeeping. What else is there to say? Let's hand it over to Kelly.

Thank you so much for being here at modern day debate. You have six minutes. Check, check. You can hear me okay? We sure can, and you can see my screen. All right, I will hit my timer. Thank you very much, guys. Thank you, Charles, for sharing as well, and to all the audience here, both Christians and non-Christians. And thank you for the opportunity to be here discussing this topic: Jesus' resurrection, true or false? What's the evidence?

I'd like to go through a few factors that I think are important: historical documents, New Testament documents, early church leader documents, Jewish opposition, Rome's opposition, counter-cultural opposition. And lastly, no evidence to refute the resurrection of Jesus.

An early historian and person in charge in Rome, known as Pliny the Younger, writing to the Emperor Trajan, roughly 110 AD. I'm going to kind of go down to the second paragraph here. It's talking about Christians who are being persecuted for the faith in the first century. "Meanwhile, in the case of those who were denounced to me as Christians, I have observed the following procedure: interrogated these as to whether they are Christians. Those who confess, I interrogate a second and third time, threatening them with punishment. Those who persisted, I ordered executed. But I had no doubt that whatever the nature of their creed, stubbornness, or inflexible obstinacy, surely deserved to be punished."

So, early on, Christians were punished and executed for the faith. But notice that word "creed." Was there a creed early on in the early Christian faith? It was known as the Didache. According to Bart Ehrman, many will know who he is. He quotes, "Few manuscript discoveries of the modern times have created the stir caused by the discovery and publication of the Didache in the late 19th century." He goes on to say here later, "The Didache was immediately seen to be the most important literary remains of early Christianity outside of the New Testament." So this was something discovered in the last, uh, little while, in the 19th century. He goes on to say, "Some scholars immediately recognized the antiquity of the account, dating it to the beginning of the 2nd century or end of the 1st." This would be roughly around 110 or so AD, before even some of the New Testament books were even written. So this would have been even before that time account as well. This is important because this gives establishment early on credibility of authors and the New Testament.

The Didache, according to Christian History Institute, "Didache contains instruction for Christian groups and statements that may be of the teachings of the Apostles, first written catechism." Notice the highlighted portion here, with quotations from several New Testament passages at the bottom here. The Didache references the Book of Matthew, Luke, Ephesians, Colossians, First Timothy, and 2 Thessalonians. This is important.

A couple of other leaders early on: Clement of Rome, who wrote to the Corinthian Church, wrote to the Corinthians, sorry, in 95 AD. In his account, he writes Matthew, Luke, Luke Acts, Romans, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, Titus, James, Hebrews, 1 Peter, 2 Peter. We see another account: Polycarp, he wrote to the Philippians around 110 AD. Again, a very important point. He wrote in reference to portions of that were referenced Matthew, Mark, Luke Acts, Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, and 1 John.

Why is that relevant? When we look at these, just these three accounts early on in the first century, we see 21 of the 27 books referenced right directly early on in the first century. This is very powerful to the testimony, early ship of the Apostles and who they were.

Now, there's Jewish opposition to Jesus. No doubt. A Jewish book source, Mishnah, Talmud. One of them, here's the Talmud, talks about Jesus. This is roughly 200 or so years, some say maybe even 400 years after the time of Jesus. Note this: "On the eve of Passover Eve, they hung the corpse of Jesus the Nazarene after they killed him by the way of stoning. Jesus the Nazarene is going out to be stoned because he practiced sorcery, enticed the people to idol worship, and led the Jewish people astray." This is the very thing which they wanted to kill him that we read in the New Testament Gospels. Says here that he was hung on Passover Eve. It's interesting also to note in that same type of source, Jewish writings, they didn't actually even oppose to the claims of the resurrection. They said that Jesus was raised. Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the grave through necromancy. Necromancy has the meaning of sorcery or idolatry. If there was any opposition, they never, never wrote to disclaim the Christian early church.

Roman opposition. Bart Ehrman talks about that Jesus was not killed for any minimal kind of reasons, but for the threat to the Roman government. He says here, towards the second paragraph here, "Jesus was killed on a political charge by calling himself King. In the Romans' eyes, whether this was what he personally meant or not, he was making a political claim. He's going to replace the Roman governments of Judea with a kingdom in which he himself would be king." This was considered rebellion.

Counter-cultural. We have Jewish opposition, Rome opposition. Another thing about the cross: it was shameful. And the resurrection was shameful. To be hung on a cross or the tree would be considered a curse or shame. Anyone who is willing to believe in Jesus would face persecution, shame, ridicule, and opposition, and death.

30 seconds to be a Christian. I had 30 seconds of mine. I'm sorry. How much time I left? You have 30 seconds, and I'll count back. Thank you. Sorry, when I just said it. Yeah, go ahead. My bad. To be a Christian meant your life would be in opposition to government, religious, family leaders, and things like that.

To wrap it up, the empty tomb. In my opinion, for 2,000 years, we have the eyewitness account of the early church, Jewish writings, historians that give us good reason and evidence to believe that Jesus was, in fact, resurrected. For 2,000 years, many people have debated this topic. There's been no physical evidence to ever refute the resurrection claims or the accounts of the early church. I counts testimony and witnesses. And with that, I'll end with there. Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you so much. That is time. So here, I'll just pop that. Oh, you're faster than I am at ending the screen share. Thank you so much for your introduction there, Kelly. Uh, so, yeah, I'll just remind everybody once again, uh, we are, uh, hanging out at modern day debate. If you haven't already, hit the subscribe button or the like button. Uh, we do appreciate it. Uh, then you can, uh, make sure that you don't miss out on these live debates. Also, uh, if you're watching right now or listening via podcast. Oh, another screen share is coming up here. Everybody's got their presentation ready. So if you are listening via podcast right now and you're thinking, hey, uh, where can I find these debates live so I don't miss out on engaging with our audience here at modern day debate and also our speakers? Make sure you do, once again, subscribe to modern day debate. We are going to do Q&A at the end. So, uh, yeah, if you have questions for any of the speakers that you hear on screen, you want to grill somebody, or you just want to tell somebody you think they did a great job, put it in a Q&A Super Chat, and we'll read it at the end. So with all that housekeeping out of the way, successfully this time, not on mute. Uh, I think we're hitting the floor. Uh, we got Matt and Jiren from Christ Before Jesus. So, uh, Jiren, I think, is taking the greater half of this introduction. So I'll put the 12-minute timer up and I'll let you know when you've got one minute left. So, uh, you are still on mute. So I'm just going to ask to unmute there.

Awesome. Thank you so much. Be good. You're ready to roll. All right. Well, uh, just as Ryan said, uh, my name is Jiren. This is Matthew. He is my co-author, and we are authors of the book, uh, Christ Before Jesus. Oh, yeah, a little bit of a shameless plug there, hence the name there, Christ Before Jesus. So, really quick, what we're going to talk about is evidence for and against the resurrection, obviously. Uh, we're not for it, per se, but we're just sharing some of the evidence that is usually presented and then explaining how, uh, that's just not evidence for it.

So, really quick, beginning. There are some standard historical claims that get made quite, quite often, and there's a reason for this. Some of these claims include: Alexander was king of Macedonia, Julius Caesar existed, George Washington was the first president of the United States. There's a myriad of reasons why these particular claims meet a burden of proof, or a particular standard that most people have, uh, mostly due to archaeological evidence. In case of George Washington, we have archaeological evidence, we have, uh, DNA evidence, we have something called stylometric analysis as well, uh, which is also how we figure out that Shakespeare is a real person, because of data science, specifically something called stylometric analysis, which we will kind of get into maybe later, depending on the questions. But then we have some typical mythical claims, claims that most people would deem as mythical, but some other people, uh, don't. Some people actually subscribe to these being a particular, uh, historical claims, and that's perfectly fine. But as far as the standard goes for most people, that's what we're sharing.

So, the typical mythical claims: Zeus, king of gods; Hercules, the Roman version of the Greek Heracles, the original, the OG. And then some mythical claims as far as resurrection goes as well. Christianity is not the only religion or belief that includes resurrection claims. There were resurrection claims before, there are going to be plenty after as well. That's not necessarily exclusive to Christianity. You have it within Mesoamerican and Egyptian mythology. But the question becomes, what evidence is actually needed to actually determine if something is true or false? In the case of the Christian resurrection, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, which I'm sure you've heard. But there is no reliable evidence for the resurrection at all. There's no physical evidence of it, no contemporary written evidence from anyone, uh, reliable later written evidence from opposing non-Christian sources. There is none. The only things that we have are the claims in the New Testament themselves, all written by people who were not eyewitnesses and wrote much later.

Here is, or here are some claims in specific that many people present for the resurrection, the death, and the resurrection. For instance, the Shroud of Turin, but we know this is a 1300s work of art, exposed by numerous studies from experts in different fields, uh, that at best, it's just a sheet that was put on Jesus. Even if it was dated to that time and and and put into that particular place based on any kind of plant fibers or anything like that. So even if it was legitimate, it would just be proof of the death, not proof of a resurrection.

The James Ossuary is another artifact as well. It's a funeral box that holds remains of people. It says the name James on the side, and then there's a carving that says "brother of Jesus." That in specific is the part that most people deem as fake. But nevertheless, it could all be fake. It doesn't really do anything as far as the resurrection goes. But the Israeli Antiquities Authority filed a complaint due to clear forgery. The owner was charged, the owner of the ossuary was charged with 44 counts of fraud, forgery, deception, and illegal trading in antiquities, and was found guilty of the latter in 2012.

There are references to Christ or Christians, but no resurrection. Pliny the Younger, mentioned earlier, he does write in 111 to Emperor Trajan, but he does not mention the name Jesus. He mentions that the Christians believe in Christ, only says they worship him as God. Doesn't mention the name Jesus, doesn't call this Christ a man, and makes no mention of any kind of Jewish connection. Tacitus, a few years later, he doesn't mention the resurrection or for the name Jesus. And originally, actually, in the earliest manuscript of Annals from Tacitus, calls the group Chrestians, not Christians. It's clearly edited and very likely interpolated. We've done some work on that, but we can get into that later. Suetonius, a few years later, does not mention Jesus or the resurrection, at least the name Jesus. Philo, in the 50s, and Philemon, both of them, no existing works survived. They're only paraphrased by Christians much later, and even the paraphrases don't mention anything except for an eclipse during Tiberius. We know when eclipses are, we know what type, we know when they are, where they are, and where the path of totality is. And there was an eclipse in November of 29. You can look it up pretty easily. But Jerusalem was not in the path of totality, not even really that close. Mara bar Serapion, that particular letter mentioning what that the Jews killed their wise king. It seems to imply that this king is dead, and this king is not resurrected or anything like that. And the letter itself dates anywhere from the 70s to the 300s, so definitely, definitely not something that would be of good evidence.

Later possible attestations to Jesus and or the resurrection would be Lucian of Samosata, but he's writing in the 160s, very clearly making fun of the Christians for their beliefs. Celsus, 170s or later. The Talmud, as previously brought up, it was, began being written in the 200s, was not completely finished until the 300s, as previously stated. Various Christian Christian writers from the 150s onwards mentioned the resurrection, but they are very clearly aware of Christian writings. They're not independent sources. They're just people who are very clearly aware of previous works. The Dead Sea Scrolls do not mention Jesus. They do not mention the New Testament whatsoever. Seneca, a first-century writer, who went around the entire Roman Empire with the same lifetime as Paul, but did not write about anything as far as the Christians go or Jesus, definitely not anything about the resurrection, despite the fact that he was going around mentioning as many religions, offshoots, cults as he could, because he wanted to make fun of them, and he didn't mention anything about Jesus. They were, the Christians were actually so upset that later on in the second and third century, I believe they ended up forging letters in the name of Seneca to try to make up for this mistake that he very clearly made. Philo doesn't mention him, nor does any other figure in the first or early second. The Pilot Cycle is an example of some forgeries, letters forged in Pilate's name regarding Jesus and the crucifixion and whatnot. Again, the correspondence between Paul and Seneca, as I mentioned earlier, and a letter from Jesus to King Abgar, definitely fake. The Narrative of Joseph as well. Artifacts, locations that don't prove the resurrection. We have the James Ossuary, like I mentioned, the Shroud of Turin, various relics.

I did want to point out really quick for the sake of time here, the fake claims of DNA and blood. Ron Wyatt was a very roundly debunked nurse anesthesiologist and not an archaeologist who went over to the Middle East and found a ton of different things or claimed he did, ranging from Noah's Ark to Sodom and Gomorrah to the Ark of the Covenant to the blood of Jesus. This is something that definitely doesn't make any sense. He said that he found blood, which wouldn't have actually been together after all that time, but he said he took it back to a lab, got it tested, and found some incredible things. But he never said what lab, and no lab has ever said that they are the ones that tested Jesus' blood, despite the fact that most labs would love the publicity. So, no, that did not happen.

Other things that don't prove the resurrection: an empty tomb does not prove a resurrection any more than an empty room does not prove a rapture. That's not how that works. We do not have the bodies of many people of antiquity. To assert supernatural claims for all of them would be asinine. Manuscript numbers do not prove a resurrection or textual reliability. No copies are the originals, and they're all dated well past the actual events. Faith is also, the faith of the followers does not get you anywhere. Faith is not a pathway to truth. It's fine if you have it, but it's not necessarily going to point you in the direction of the truth just because you have it. Same thing, prophecies are not pathways to historicity. They are usually illusion to cherry-picked verses in the Old Testament, and the Gospels and other New Testament contents simply used these, as well as other prior works, to craft the narrative of Jesus and the resurrection stories generations later.

There is an interpolated Josephus passage called the Testimonium Flavianum. It is a paragraph, and while most scholars will squabble back and forth about a particular line or two, the entire paragraph is actually fake. We know this from data science, specifically the stylometric analysis that we used earlier, that we mentioned earlier. And again, we can get into that later. But yeah, Josephus is interpolated. There are some claims found in the Bible, of course, in the Gospels, Paul's letters, Epistles, Revelation. But for the sake of time, we're going to go ahead and just kind of go through. I know that for the most part, you've heard people talk about the Epistles and the Gospels, as well as Revelation. Right here, really quick, that is just the formula EER Delta, which is what we use in our book, Christ Before Jesus, using stylometric analysis. We take a look at the Greek New Testament, as well as the works, like I said, of Josephus. So that's just the math behind it. These are some examples of some stylometric results for the sake of time. We can come back to that later, that's perfectly fine. But we're just going to keep going. But right here, we'll just kind of talk about some of the New Testament conclusions. The results largely match our results from the stylometric analysis. Largely match the claims of the Dutch Radical School of Biblical Studies, and they also validate a number of mainstream positions in biblical studies, such as many of Paul's letters being inauthentic. So it's not like we're just using this stylometric analysis, looking at things from a data science perspective, and just completely blowing everything up. That's, that's, that's not what we're doing. We're, we're matching things up with things that have already been said and finding a couple different novel discoveries as well along the way. Um, that being said, they, the results point to a different timeline for Christian origins, in which the religion develops out of Hellenistic mystery cults, some of which believed in things such as resurrection quite a bit. The overall conclusion is that there is no reliable evidence for the resurrection as a historical claim. The claims themselves come from either anonymous Christian sources or Christians lying about their identity in the second century. All of the letters of the New Testament would be in the second century, according to data science. This is just some suggested readings that we, of course, can get into later if, like. But that is it. I yield my time.

All right. And we'll hand it over to, uh, Matt to close out the introductory statement. So, Matt, thank you so much for being here, uh, representing, uh, Christ Before Jesus on our panel here. So, uh, thanks to also Jiren for your introductory statement. So, uh, yeah, I still have, uh, I'll give you a minute, and it says 42 on the timer, but you still have a minute left. So we'll say, all right. Yeah. So, uh, just going back really fast here, I think something we should cover ever is that all of the Gospels are anonymous. None of them actually mention the author in the text itself. It's all at the top of the text. If you open your Bible, that's how it was in the Greek manuscripts. Um, it's also important to state that most scholars place Paul's Epistles as about half inauthentic. Only half of them are authentic. We find that most likely none of them are authentic. This means that really, we're not looking at any potential evidence that lines up in the first century, just to find a, uh, solidify our position there. Um, we are saying most of these texts are so late that none of them are eyewitness accounts, and we're looking at a 100-year gap before we hear anything about a crucifixion or a resurrection, yeah, from the time supposed time of Jesus' death all the way to the first published Gospel, according to today's science, we're looking at 100 years, 111 to 114 years. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you, uh, to Christ Before Jesus, Matt and Jiren, for coming to Modern Day Debate and for your introductory statements. And also to Charles and Kelly. So, we are going to get into our open discussion. So I'm going to get a poll put in the chat right now so you all can let me know what you think. For the people that are hanging out right now, we're just under 300. So yes, if you want to hit the like button and boost us up in the algorithm, and that could really help us crack into some new numbers here and maybe we'll get some more, uh, diverse opinions. But let's, let's get that, uh, poll in the chat. And once again, uh, we're going to do our Super Chats at the end. So if you have questions for any of our speakers, uh, get them in now and they will be read with priority and nice and early. So, uh, I'm going to hand it over to, uh, well, Charles is muted right now. So Charles, take yourself off mute. And I'm going to hand it over to Kelly to start us out with the, uh, response there and open discussion. Good stuff. We're starting now.

All right, I got my timer going. Cool. Gentlemen, thank you for your answers. Um, a lot of information you guys covered actually. We didn't even present. So, but, uh, a lot of that stuff could be discussed. I want to kind of get to what you talked about, dates and all that. How do you respond to, uh, Polycarp, Clement, and the Didache being attested by all scholarship being around the first century?

So, originally, the Didache was placed in the second century when it was first discovered, and it was late second century at that. And like you said, it was, you know, now put into the, uh, early first or the late first, early second, right? Um, but you mentioned a number of texts that are quoted there. And for example, see, the Didache had First Timothy. So in First Timothy, we see in verse, or yeah, chapter 6, verse 20, uh, a reference to antithesis in the Greek, and it comes up in English as, uh, contradictions or squabblings or something like that. This is a reference to Marcion's Antithesis. So First Timothy, referencing Marcion's Antithesis. And throughout the text, text, it references Gnosticism in the same verse. Are you going to say all of them are wrong, though? That mentions Matthew, Luke, Thessalonians, all these are going to be before what you guys proposed in your opening. They're not, they're all after. They're all, all dated. If it's the latter part of first century, early second century, this is before all your opening. So, so what we're saying is that the Didache quoting these texts, if it truly is quoting these texts, and those are not interpolated verses, then these texts, what about Polycarp or Clement? Are those wrong too? So Polycarp also quotes a number of verses in the Pastoral Epistles. Went through all the references that I went through. They're accurate from the New Testament.

Just one second before you jump in there. Uh, uh, you're, you're more than welcome to take the floor if you want to make some more broad commentary there, Kelly. But if you are going to ask a question, if you can just give them a little time to get their thought out. It's okay. I understand that you're hearing things and it's, uh, and it instantly triggers a thought there. But we do, we do want to get Charles in here too, uh, and also give these guys a chance to, uh, get their thoughts out. Uh, so you put quite a bit out there. So I'm going to hand it back over to Christ Before Jesus and let's, uh, let Charles in here, uh, afterwards. So thank you so much, guys.

Cool. So basically, the case for the dating is, first, scholars don't always agree. Second, a scholarly consistent or, um, consensus doesn't necessarily mean truth. It just means that is where many of them end up at. So what we're saying is that any text that would quote something that is demonstrably later, so for example, First Timothy being quoted in both Polycarp and Didache, if that is in the 140s or after, it literally references Marcion. Who, Marcion's text, Antithesis, is published in 144. Then these texts would have to be after 144 as well for them to cite not only First Timothy, but then First Timothy being, uh, getting a reference to Marcion there. Uh, you mentioned First Clement, did not mention First Timothy, but it does mention Titus. If that is the case, then that would also, you know, those are written by the same group. That's the group of the Pastoral Epistles. It mentions Acts. Acts, we can demonstrate, comes after Marcion's text.

High interrupt. So it's in chapter 15 where it says, "Therefore, appoint for yourselves bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord, men meek, not lovers of money, truthful and proven." This is a direct quote from First Timothy 3:4. What reference are you quoting? Literally any of First Timothy. So any First Timothy. So you're saying that First Timothy chapter 6 was not in First Timothy originally? I'm looking at the Didache on my screen. I'm asking you, what chapter is that referenced? So what we're saying is, unless you say that 1 Timothy chapter 6 was not in First Timothy originally, but chapter 3 was, then for it to text quote part of the text, that text has to be in existence.

I want to jump into, uh, you are welcome to share your screen if you have something that you think is, uh, relevant to the discussion. But go ahead there, Kelly, and then I do want to get Charles in too. Yeah, I'm just saying I got it before me. I don't see a First Timothy 6 reference in the Didache. I do Timothy read reference, which again supports what I said, that this would still be early second century, roughly 110 AD. Even Bart Ehrman says this. So all that I'm asking you is, where, where is your evidence in 1 Timothy chapter 6 verse 20? Yeah, unless you want to split first. Is that in the Didache? It's not. That's not what we're saying. What we're saying is, is what I'm asking you, the Didache. We're saying that if, okay, just one second. First Timothy. Okay. If First Timothy is a whole text, then when they wrote chapter 3, the reference you're talking about, and they wrote chapter 6 at the same time, unless that's, they were written at different times, and the Bible is not a reliable source, then when it quotes from chapter 3, that author would have also had access to chapter 6, meaning it would all have to be after the writing of the text. Yeah. We're not claiming that chapter 6 is in the Didache. We're saying that First Timothy is in the Didache, and that would be problematic unless you want to split Timothy into two very different parts.

Charles, you're welcome to jump in, but, uh, if not, Kelly. No, no, I got, I'll jump in if you don't mind. Oh, go ahead. Yeah. So is, okay, yeah. So you mentioned that nobody in history mentions the crucifixion or the resurrection, rather. But when we see Tacitus and Pliny, um, when these guys are, well, Tacitus, for instance, he says he calls it a strange superstition. So he says, um, they are by implication inferring that these guys believe in something extraordinary, and there's no reason for them to actually care what they believe in. They're just kind of writing down to their leaders what this is all about. "Christus," from whom the name has its origin. So that's acknowledging that there is a Jewish Messiah, Christus. So we, um, anyways, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one, one of our proconsuls, Pontius Pilate, and a most mischievous superstition thus checked for the moment, and about, and again, broke out in Judea." So they're acknowledging that there was an extreme superstition that was caused by this Christus, this Christ. Um, so by implication, they're acknowledging something strange. And then when, if we look at the New Testament, we see that they're mocked. When he talks about the resurrection, specifically, they're mocked and they're laughing at. Right? So when Tacitus talks about the resurrection, no, no, in the New Testament, when Paul goes out and talks, that the apostles are mocked and laughed at. But in this case, Tacitus is referring to an extreme superstition. Well, so what is the extreme superstition that the anointed Christ? Is it resurrection? I thought the resurrection was what this had to be over. Yeah, the resurrection. So if, if he's not referring to an extreme superstition being a resurrection, what's the extreme superstition that he's referring to? Tacitus. Well, I mean, we don't have to interpolate our own thoughts into the text. It doesn't have the resurrection, so we can't guess whether it was or whether it wasn't. But they're, they're Romans, and they don't care. Even the Jews, why would they care about what these early Christians are believing in? The point is, is Pliny, even Pliny interrogates them, right? Says Pliny interrogates them, and some of them said, denounce Christ. Other ones wouldn't. And they went, mention the resurrection. But the point is, is they're interrogating these.

The topic is the resurrection. No. What Charles is trying to get to is, is you got to think about this. These different accounts, even stuff that you brought that we didn't even address. These guys are writing about Christians who are being killed for their faith. Why? Why are they being killed for the faith? Are they being killed for the faith because they just believe he was crucified? He was the Messiah. To believe that Jesus was the Christ, which he said earlier about the word Christ, there are many times just in the New Testament where just Christ is itself is mentioned without the word Jesus, and they clearly know who that's being talked about. So when we see different accounts say Christians, unless you can give me a different group of Christians who believed in a different Christ, known as Christians, then you got me on that one. But I think what Charles is trying to say is, look, these guys are being killed for their faith, going around testifying about the faith in Jesus. If it wasn't about the resurrection, what were they willing to die for? Would you be willing to accept Emperor Hadrian's letter to his friend in Asia Minor explaining that the Christians worship Sarapis as Christ in Asia Minor? And how would that relate to what the New Testament account gives you?

Just asked if there's Christians who follow a different Christ. Which Christ do they believe in? That's this Christus. Yeah. What year is that? This is in the 130s. Emperor Hadrian. Okay. And what did he, what did he claim? He claimed that Christians worship Sarapis-Christus. Okay. Who is this? Who is this guy? He claimed Emperor Hadrian. What, what did this Emperor Hadrian? What I'm asking, what did he claim about himself? About himself? Why were people following him? Emperor Hadrian. So Emperor Hadrian said that Sarapis-Christus was being worshiped. Sarapis was who? That Sarapis is a God, like a, it's not a man, it's not a person. Okay. And so why were they following Sarapis-Christus? Why does anybody follow anything? He's saying that they're following a particular God. Sarapis was just a, uh, Greco-Egyptian god that was worshiped in not only Asia Minor but Alexandria as well. We have this from multiple sources, including the Emperor Hadrian's letter. And so, and they were being killed for their faith. He said that they were really weird. I mean, were they, were they for their faith? Were they killed for their faith? I mean, Mormons were killed for their faith. That doesn't make that true. It doesn't really, no, that's not even close. They were martyred for different reasons. No. Well, on top of that, it doesn't say martyred because of their belief in Jesus. Mormon martyrdom is a very different scenario, my friend. Even the Pliny letter does not say that they were martyred because of their faith in Jesus. It specifically says that they're asked, says they were asked once, twice, third time, and then they were executed. No, no, asked what to do? Denounce their faith and you tell me and come back and worship the gods. Come back and worship. So they didn't denounce Christ and they didn't worship the gods, and they were killed. So, only does, where were these other Christians killed for their faith? What were, were they killed? These Sarapis people? Does it matter if these Christians? It does matter. Think about it because you actually are willing to die for something that you truly believe. That's the point. Is, is, isn't that a point of what we all believe in, willing to die for a purpose or reason? That would mean all the followers of Jim Jones down in Jonestown were right about their beliefs. Doesn't make them right. I'm saying, but they were willing to die for a reason. I'm saying you brought up these guys, these guys who call you say are other Christians. Were they willing to die for that? What they claimed? These guys, why are you bringing that up as if that's some kind of a gotcha?

The first century about this. First century. And then we'll, first century Jews. Okay. You're, you're the one that says you used to go to church a while back, respectfully, right? You used to be, quote unquote, a missionary. That's what you said. Okay. First century, early times with Jesus. He's crucified. He's killed. The claim is he's resurrected three days later. Now the disciples are going out telling other people about this Jesus. Number one, it would be considered a curse because anyone who's hung on a cross or a tree is considered to be a curse according to Deuteronomy chapter 21:21-23. Paul talks about that in Galatians 3:13. So to go out and actually openly try to encourage other people to believe in this curse about Jesus who's been crucified would be countercultural. It would be a shame. You could be possibly executed and killed for it. Why would the disciples go out and do that? So for starters, again, they weren't crucified or, or they weren't killed for believing in Jesus. Historically, Christians were killed all over the place, my friend. Not only is that a myth, on top of that, that's like saying today Christians aren't killed for the faith around in the world. They are. That's not like saying it because this was 2,000 years ago and we don't have any evidence for it. We have evidence of this today. We have historical data, people saying they were being killed for their faith. I've already shared with you one, one reference. Pliny says it, but he says he executed them. Do you even know why Pliny got onto them for in the first place? You're avoiding the question. The question is, why would these people? They got no money for it, no fame. It's not a great marketing scheme. They're going around telling family and friends about this dead Jesus who hasn't been resurrected, knowing that they could be killed, knowing that their family and friends could also be killed too. Why would they do that?

All right, we're going to give them some space to respond here before we throw some new ideas in there. I just started the poll so our audience can chime in. But, uh, yeah, go ahead and and respond. We'll try to give some space before we throw some more stuff out there. But don't worry, I'm not trying to pick on you there, Kelly. It's, uh, it's, it's, it's well appreciated. So go ahead there, Jiren. I expect the heat. It's no worries, man. No worries.

There is no evidence that the people that Pliny was talking about even knew who Jesus was. There is no, there is not a single line from any of what Pliny finds that comes from the New Testament. There, there's nothing. He doesn't mention Jews, he doesn't mention Judea, Jerusalem, Nazareth, virgin birth, the disciples, Paul. What was their creed? Yeah, and what did they, what was the Christian creed that you mentioned? Let's let them respond. But hold on to those thoughts. Like, if you need to make a little list, let's just give them a little space. If I need to start a minute timer, I will, uh, but let's, let's try to just, uh, get to a flow here. So I'm going to give the floor back to Matt and Jiren. Go ahead there.

Follows, can I ask one question before they answer? Just to clarify. My a question. It says a creed here and it says Christians. This is again Bart Ehrman. I'm going off. But.

He's a good scholar, and certain things he says. Second, early 2nd century, late 1st century. So, this is around 10 AD, what Christ would have been during this time frame for the Jews that these Christians would have been dying for. And what was their creed that they were going to? Why do you keep asserting that there's a connection with Judaism? There's no connection. That Pliny mentions about Judaism, and he doesn't say the name Jesus. You keep asserting this into the passage when this isn't in there. Then who is the Christ that Tacitus calls Christ? We have already answered this. Later, you just could else that's later. It, yeah, no, it literally could have been any. The numbers, what we're saying is there's no reference in the first century to Jesus. All the New Testament texts were written afterwards. So, when Pliny, you have no evidence for that. We do. We can bring up our. Okay, that's a good time to bring up our, uh, slideshow again. Okay, well, all right, just before you run that up, uh, Charles, did you have any thoughts on what? Here, go ahead. So, I just want, I just want to jump back in and say, um, that these people were dying, and and Pliny, that you're right, they don't exactly say that he's worshiping Jesus per se, but they have no reason to. But at the same time, I could throw that back and say, Pliny doesn't say, hey man, these guys have no idea what they believe and they just don't know, they're just dying for fun. That's not there either, right? The fact is, is Pliny is saying, and Tacitus, you, you the extreme superstition. This is what he calls this. Like, I understand you're, you're kind of dodging the idea, but the point is, what if, if you're going to say that they didn't mention anything about a resurrection or some miraculous event from this Christos, um, then what is this extreme superstition? And why isn't Pliny saying these guys are ridiculous? They don't even know what they believe. And as far as, just one more point, as far as, um, the whole Christ idea, the early Christians were using the first two letters of Christ to identify their locations, right? So, it would make sense that all these early, uh, Roman figures, uh, would be calling at Christ, and then that would make sense why they would be confusing it. But that doesn't mean that they were worshiping this other God. It means that they were, they were, they didn't know what, what they were doing, what they were believing. It, so again, I just want to ask, like, just to point it out, why didn't Pliny say these guys don't know what they believe? Why didn't he mention that they're worshiping an old God? And why does Tacitus call it an extreme superstition? What did he mean by that?

Let me get it. Yeah, go. Yeah. So, Romans called most new religions, um, um, superstitions. That's basically what they called them. New religions were religions that couldn't trace their ancestry or lineage back in via text normally to a much earlier period, normally at or before the time that Rome was founded. It's pretty clear in the text from Pliny that they have a creed of not doing crimes and having a meal together, and they worship Christ as a God. That's all it says. Now, like Jiren was saying, there are references around that time where other gods with some, um, name crisis or something like that were worshiped that weren't just Jesus. The fact that this doesn't mention any Jesus is important. And on top of that, it doesn't mention resurrection. We're looking at actual evidence. Inserting our thoughts, whether it's yours or ours, into the text doesn't change the fact that it is not evidence. There is no evidence. Good. Say so, this meal that you mentioned, this meal, this is a foundational staple of Christianity. This meal, it's, it's about his resurrection. And even the Jews today, they still practice it. Well, if, if you look at what they practice today, right? The aacom, they take, take this piece of striped, pierced bread, they hide it, wrap it, hide it. It's brought back at the end of the dinner. They break it in three, they take the middle, they take it apart, they pass it around, right? This is like, this is a representation of Jesus. It's foundational. So, Jesus fulfilled that prophecy. And then Paul talks about he's going to come and show them how to do the dinner. So, you mention this meal that's so foundational in Christianity. So, so Pliny does. I just don't understand why you think that these Romans would, it would benefit them at all. They didn't care about what they believed in. They wanted them to stop. That was the point. Let's let Kelly have a quick add on to that thought, and, uh, we'll try to continue on. If you guys, you said you have a screen share that could maybe get us into some new territory, but go ahead, Kelly, if you want to add on right quick to Charles's thoughts, and, uh, we'll try to keep the conversation moving.

Well, I appreciate the conversation. I mean, we're definitely coming from different perspectives, and what we believe is our evidence or not our evidence. So, I do want to respect the gentlemen here. I really think, though, a big premise of this debate has already been lost on their side because of how they've already portrayed different books being dated so much later, which I've given just three sources: Clement and Polycarp, who are recognized roughly 95 to 100 or so AD, and they write in their letters. This, I only reference just the letter to the Philippians. I don't know why you're smiling. This is historical fact because Polycarp is in 100. All right, last 10 seconds. Polycarp. Hold on, hold on. Polycarp is roughly 110. So, I said 100. So, 10 years difference. That's still way earlier than what you claimed a little while ago. And in just his letter, just to the Philippians, I've went through it. He references different citations from the Book of Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts, Romans 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, 1 and 2 Timothy, First Thessalonians, Second Thessalonians, 1 and Second Peter, and 1 John. Are you going to tell me that was written 110 AD by just one letter to the Philippians by Polycarp? That that is not sufficient evidence historically to demonstrate your later dates that you believe? All right, thank you so much. We'll give them some space here. So, uh, either one of you fellas, matter, Jiren, if you want to respond, or if you are, you doing your screen share now? Yeah, well, I, I'll be responding. Jiren's going to get that set up. Okay. Okay. You look like you're looking at the monitor. I'm just, I'm in case I don't want to delay. Poor to Charles's point, as far as the meal goes, Justin Martyr very clearly stated that the Lord's Supper was actually done prior to the birth of Jesus. So, yeah, there you go. Um, but anyways, going to get the screen share. The Passover supper. Exactly. That's the point, man. It's a prediction. But it was before Jesus was even done. He said it was done by mystery cults, and that's exactly what we say Christianity was. It's called the Jewish religion. It was practiced for thousands of years, man. Absolutely not. He says it was for mystery cults. So, anyways, we're going to, we're going to get back to the other point. So, what we were saying about the audience understands where you guys stand. Sorry, I just was jumping in there. I think the audience gets a feel for where all of our gents stand on this. So, yeah, once again, hit the like button if you haven't already. We're going to do super chats at the end. So, if you have questions for any of our speakers, get them in now. But, uh, yeah, let's carry into, uh, what, what you have on screen here and see if this launches us into some uncharted territory.

All right, cool. So, on Polycarp's letter, what we're saying is that all those citations, or at least most of those citations, are written later. Therefore, for them to be cited, the text, Polycarp's letter, would have to be later. Now, Polycarp's letter internally is inconsistent. If you read, I think chapters 13 and 14, they are, one of them references Ignatius as if he's alive, and the other one mentions he seems to be dead already. Um, also, Polycarp lived to 155 or 165, depending on which record you look at. Up on the screen is our stylometric analysis. Here is Eder's Delta. It's basically a distance formula. So, oops, we clicked over there. No, so, um, here's an example of a sample Greek results. Now, we actually run over 100 texts when we do our actual, uh, test. This is a sample to fit it on the screen. You can see that all of the authors line up in a group, and we even do it on the chapter level of the New Testament. Here's Ignatius. Ignatius is another person in the first or second century Christian, um, that references a number of texts in the New Testament. Anyways, moving forward, this is the really part of the crux of our argument. Normally, people will say Luke wrote Luke and Acts. The truth is that actually, Luke's bulk of its text is from Marcion, the, we got to pass, okay, the heretic. And you can see it at the bottom of the screen there is the bulk of Luke, and the top is the later part of Luke. And if you look in Luke 4, we can get to that verse in a minute, it's actually out of order, showing that this text is written in the 140s, later.

All right, you can leave the screen share up while we respond to, uh, some of that. It might be, uh, useful. So, uh, Charles, if you want to jump in here, and then we'll, uh, get Kelly in as well. Sure. Yeah, I mean, when we're dealing with these texts through history, I understand what you guys are doing with the stylo, and we've went and we've looked up the sites for the stylo metrics, and it says right at it that this is, like, there are discrepancies with this thing. It's not a solid science. But get all that aside, uh, we know through all the manuscripts, we don't know exactly when and who and where, but we know that these things were copied. They were taken from people and they were put in their own handwriting, their own kind of style, if you will. And that's actually how they date some of the manuscripts is based on style. So, when you're looking at the fact that, yes, we, this is just telling us that, yes, through history, church fathers and other people copied these, these, uh, things in their own writing, in their own styles. We know that that's not a mystery. Everyone's aware of that. There's like, what, 5,000, over 5,000 manuscripts of the New Testament that were copied all the way from supposed first century down to, you know, the end of time. So, I, I don't understand, like, I understand where you guys are going with this, but I think that doing this to the Bible is very, very intellectually dishonest because we know that people copied it and passed it down. It's not a mystery. Let's hand the ball over to you, Kelly, and then we'll carry on with the screen share.

Can I actually screen share? Is that okay? Uh, if we can respond to some, we have, it's directly related to this. It's actually on stylo. Yeah, just a second. Well, stop. Uh, yeah, let's, all right, we can pass the ball right quick. We can, we can go back and forth. That's all right. So, go ahead, Kelly, and then we'll, uh, hand it back over to you, fellas. This isn't my first rodeo, you know, what the cowboy said, his second rodeo, saying my first rodeo. Anyways, let's carry on. Okay, so I want to scroll real fastly to the top. So, this is done by Fraser University, University of Kentucky here, and this is talking about, uh, using the stylometric technique to evaluate New Testament authorship. I want to scroll down, obviously, I can't read the whole thing. I want to get down to the gist of the analysis of what these guys say over here. So, um, I can do that there. I can see that better. Results and discussion. You can see right here, okay, look at this right here. I'm just going to highlight this for a second. Results of this study. This is just talking about Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, and Revelation. That's all this part. That right here is referenced. Results of this study yield a number of interesting findings. See fig table. First, the six narrative books, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, and Revelation, are clustered relatively close together. Most Bible scholars are in agreement that Luke, and the very least, the same author, Luke, or also wrote Acts. So, there's some stylometric evidence in support of this. Although Matthew, Mark, and Luke are believed to have been penned by different authors, these books are no doubt closely related to their similar accounts of the life of Jesus Christ. That's why they're called the synoptic Gospels. Many Bible scholars believe the Book of John was written approximately 20 years after the other Gospels. This is correct, which could also speak to some of the noticeable differences between this text and the other Gospels. Although there appears to be a number of stylometric similarities between the Book of John and Revelation, both written by someone named John, Book of John is generally believed to be, yeah, by Apostle John. Revelation by someone, John of Patmos, I believe. Same. Look, look at this last statement. Empirical stylometric evidence, however, might suggest the same author wrote both texts. I encourage everyone, go do some evidence and examination on this. No worries. I ended the screen share. So, if you want to bring yours up and continue going through what you want to present there, that's fine. We can go back and forth.

All right, no worries. Can I ask one question? These gentlemen, with your evidence that you guys have done here, have you checked it out with any universities, any professors, anyone of this field? Yeah, we've given presentations at universities with this data. Exactly. Have you had any critique or criticism? Uh, yeah, you can actually, there are journal articles and book reviews on our book regarding the data. Um, the reason why I said that because when I looked this up, it seemed to share information different to what you guys have shared. It does not. So, first off, it does. It does. Right. I think the audience understands where you guys differ on this. Once again, so, well, we're going to explain it if we can. Yeah, let's, let's carry into the next part of what you have here and then definitely we'll get Charles and Kelly to wait. Cool. So, um, first off, I couldn't see fast enough, but I noticed it mentioned in the King James version. We do this in the Greek. We don't use any translations. Second, they ran whole texts as you could see. And again, this is specifically, uh, what we're presenting here is at a chapter level. We're able to do this at a chapter level, which is how we're able to tell what part of the author of, or what part of Acts and Luke was written by the author of Acts, and what part of Luke was not written by that same author. And as you can see, chapters 1 through 4 are actually added by the author of Acts. And in the text itself, first off, you can see in Luke 1 where he says, um, that I'm compiling this from other sources, and or more or less, he says he's making an orderly account of other people's eyewitnesses because he's not an eyewitness. In Luke 4, verse, what is it? Jar 23, verse 23, Jesus mentions, uh, something like, I think you will say to me, do what you did in Capernaum. Jesus, in the story, has not been to Capernaum and he has not done any signs or miracles yet in the story. The reason it says that there because he goes to Capernaum in verse 31. The reason it says that there is because the author of Acts, when he edited Luke, he reversed the order from Marcion's gospel, which we have multiple sources of attestation to that his version started with Jesus descending into Capernaum. Yeah, so our, our data actually matches early patristic, um, sources here. The reason why that particular study that you just pulled up is not as accurate as this particular study that we have done is, A, we do it in the Greek, not the King James version. That would be ludicrous for us to run in English. B, we actually do it at the chapter level. Uh, so the scholar behind the software that is used, it's not our software. They said that the chapter, the amount of data that you need for an accurate run is the average chapter length in the New Testament. So, we're able to do it at a chapter level. We got to hand it on over. Kelly was shaking, uh, his head. So, go ahead and let us know what you're thinking there.

Sure. Well, to say that matches to patristic is completely false. Um, I've already demonstrated that's false. Secondly, I'm looking at the top of this paper. It says the data has been taken from the original Greek text. Look in New Testament books, each Greek word, New Testament. Well, I don't know what you, how you even came that was from the King James. He's scrolling fast. That's my pad. Sorry. It's fine. It's fine. The point here is this is another, uh, this is actually from a university, someone who is actually, I would say, accredited, has a published paper. It's done in their magazine. I'm not trying to discredit you guys. I don't know if you guys have any PhDs or masters or any type of degrees in any of this field at all. I'm just saying this is out there from a university examining this, and they actually give positive feedback saying that majority of the New Testament can be accredited to the actual authors that are accredited from there. And then secondly, also to back to the point, there is the Didache. I'm going to hammer this till this debate's over. The Didache, Polycarp, and these guys, they reference majority of the New Testament. And this is before what you guys have claimed in your book or whatever else in your presentation. But that goes against history. It goes against the early writings. If they reference all these things at that time, it has to give credibility. These things were already in circulation prior to these things. Correct? Yeah. If First Timothy was in circulation prior to the Didache, we agree with that. First Timothy, second century. We agree. I'm glad that we agree. So, other than your, your stylometric conclusions, who other, what other scholars would say that they agree with what you guys have shared? Here's a list. May they may not agree on the entirety, and this isn't the full list. It's what we could fit on. Agree with you. With you guys. Specific. We've talked to some of these. Yes. We've actually had multiple conversations with some of these. In specific, most notably, Nina Lief. Keep going. Nina Lief. There, her book on Paul in specific, and how Paul is just a pseudonym for the Maranite church. Thomas L. Brodie would be another one. Jason Bedun is a big name as well, specifically working on reconstructions of Marcion's, uh, New Testament, his canon. And, yeah, I mean, again, these are these are scholars who are saying this is this is the case. Mark Bilby as well. I don't think Mark Bilby's on here. Jack Boo is another one. These people in specific have degrees in digital humanities, specifically over stylometry, which again, we run at the chapter level. We also run against other texts as well. So, it's not the same as if you run a full text as one. If you, let me explain really quick. If you run Luke as one file, you're not going to be able to see that it's multiple authors. You only have to chop it in. You only, in order to do that, you have to chop it into chapters or chop it into pieces in order to see if it's different authors. The, what you're talking about is correct in the sense that if you look at Luke as one text and you assume it's one author, and then you look at Acts, yeah, it's going to have some connections because the author of Acts absolutely wrote parts of Luke, but not all of Luke is what we're saying. That's, that's what we're saying. No offense to you. I'm just saying we have early church writings that go contrary to what you've shared. So, what you're sharing is what you've gotten from what you believe from your research and your opinions, and we all have, we all have opinions. So, even though we're can be a little bit, you know, um, on different sides here and arguing, don't get me wrong. I'm, I'm trying to be respectful. All I'm saying is people like Dr. Daniel Wallace, he is a complete New Testament scholar. People like Bruce Metzger, people like even Bart Ehrman. I'm sharing recognized people who are out there that everyone would know who these people are. The evidence is conclusive that these things were early on by the actual authors. Now, even Bart Ehrman doesn't even agree with a lot of things about Christianity, but he'll at least be open and honest saying, yes, these things were in circulation early on.

Can I, can I ask a question? Did you guys, you guys ran Josephus's writings, right? Yes. Yes. Did it pull the Jesus of the Messiah piece out as phony, as fake, as doctored? The, uh, the Testimonium Flavianum, where he says Jesus is the Messiah? Yes, it did pull it out. Yes. It puts it to Yus. He's Yus is the first person to actually cite it too, despite the fact that multiple Christian authors and multiple Christian fathers quote from Josephus. No one quotes from that. Even pieces. What about the chapter about John the Baptist and James, who is called the Lord's brother? John the Baptist seems to be in an authentic place there. Nothing seemed to come up as weird. Well, James, as well. James, James is just a little line that's just simply a scribal error. There's multiple reasons as to why that's in there, but that would be too small for stylometric analysis to run. So, James, we could say is it's authentic, then at least there's nothing against it. I would, I would not. I don't know any historian says it's not authentic. All right, literally jump in. Yeah, Josephus. Josephus in the, in the verse of James, he calls Jesus the Christ in the first century, right? Yeah. Jesus, son of Damasus. Yes. Yes. So, Josephus is a Jew. It's important. Jesus's name is important to the Jews because he was very important. He became a high priest. Yes. Charles, finish. Brother of James. Jesus, brother of James, who they, they call the Christ. Yeah. James, James, the brother of Jesus, son of Damasus, was un, yes, or sorry, you're throwing son of Damasus in it. It says the, that's what it says in the passage. It says Jesus, doesn't say that. It says James. It says James. And then later on in the paragraph, it specifies that this is Jesus, son of Damasus, because they make him high priest. That's literally part of the passage. Have you read the passage? I haven't read it lately. Will you want to quote it? Anybody is welcome to bring it up if they want to. If they want, we'll have it up in just a minute. Yeah, pulled up, but we'll read off of it. When it says, um, John the Baptist and James, the brother of Jesus, anybody who knows a little bit of biblical knowledge knows us talking about the Bible. That's not the same. And yeah, so John the Baptist being authentic wouldn't prove that Jesus was resurrected. I know, again, I'm just talking about just history. All I'm talking about history, right? And then the Jesus passage specifically, if you can get it, say, and I'm not contesting for that one, that I, that one I know there's speculation on both sides, so I'm not even bringing that one up. Cool. Yeah, just, you want to pull it up? You want to read it? Yeah, no, no. I mean, if we wanted to pull, if we can do a screen share, if we can, that would be useful. I think for our audience. We've got a couple people in our live chat saying, pull it up. Yeah, we were on the wrong computer. We've got a side one for like, research really fast. So, we're pulling it up right now. Sure. Um, I'd like to see what it says. I mean, it's a massive. It is really big. So, let us highlight the son of Damasus part so we just, we're not making it totally up. Uh, yeah, well, okay, well, from James to, yeah, we can probably read from James to Yus there. Okay. Um, we're going to do a quick screen share. Yeah, if you can do that, I think that would be useful for our discussion. Yeah, that one. So, here we go, right here. Um, you can see where it says, um, brought before them the brother Jesus, who was called the Christ, whose name was James, and some others. And we can read the whole thing if we want, but the point is that down here was talking about the same Jesus, and when he had ruled but three months, and made Jesus, the son of Damasus, high priest, because up here, um, James is killed. And Christians will say that that is related to, um, James's martyrdom in Jerusalem. And which Jesus that supposed to be, who was called the, who was called Christ, line in specific. Is it not just our take in specific? It's other scholars as well believe that that is just a scribal, a scribal insertion, simply because of the fact that if James was alive, and James was a Christian, why the Jewish elite would stand up for him and want the high priest to be removed, and why the Romans would actually listen to them and replace them for the unal liement over kill, killing of a Christian is beyond us. But the entire passage in specific, the point is that James gets killed. So, his brother replaces the high priest, Ananias, son of Ananias. And that's the point at the very bottom of it. You get the twist, the ironic twist. Twist here is, is that this Jesus is being made high priest. That's not Jesus Christ who was crucified. Most popular name, correct? Very popular name. Even Jesus Barabbas, who was being released, according to the New Testament. So, this is not talking about Jesus down there being the son of Jesus. That's a different, different Jesus. So, what I've shared still stands. It says right up there, brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and others. That's clearly what I was just talking about a minute ago. That not only did I just state that the Jews in specific would not have a problem with a Christian being killed and want to demand that the high priest be replaced because of it, and not only would the Roman not obligate them in order to replace a high priest because a Christian was killed, if that, if the Christian tradition is correct, but on top of this, the, the actual death of James, the first time that it's referred to, alluded to within Christian history, in the late second, by the way, and they don't mention it at all in the first, the first century or the early second, but in the late second, they don't even have the story of the James's death. James's death actually lined up. The first person to mention it says that he's pushed. Deflecting. You're deflecting, my friend. What I'm saying is that this is not, we can't both talk at the same time. So, Kelly, I'll give you 10 seconds to clarify, and then we'll give it to Christ. So, Kelly, I'm giving you 10 seconds. All right, I'm just saying, you're, you're going to a completely different topic. All that I'm saying that was brought up here is that we got people who are known as John the Baptist, James, who is called the brother of Jesus, who is also called Christ. Here, clearly context down the bottom there, James or Jesus, the son of, that's a different person. That's not the same Jesus. There's nothing in there that says that's the same person. Yeah, so again, there is no reason whatsoever to think that this wouldn't simply be a, some kind of a scribal addition later on because of the fact that it doesn't make any logical sense for this to be a Christian. And the first time that James is mentioned by Christians as being killed, he's pushed off of a building, and then the next time he's pushed off a building, doesn't die, so they hit him with a stick. So, it's again, it, it doesn't even line up with this James. It's not until somebody actually starts saying, hey, this is from Josephus, that we actually get the story lining up with this. That's, that's the point. The first couple times that we have the death of James, it's not even this. So, that's not James, what we're saying. That's not Christ. People weren't there to observe James. Read what it clearly says. So, well, one second there, Jaren, and we're going to let in here. So, so that's, that's go. That's why it's a mystery. Like, with, with all the apostles, we know that they were martyred for, for what they did, and this goes out through history. But, well, through history, they're told to be martyred, and they just kind of disappear. So, it's assumed, I could say. But as far as, like, um, the death of these people, like, like if he was, uh, killed by the council of high priests, the same people that were at Jesus' trial, Ananias, right? And, and he was killed by these people, then, uh, that doesn't mean that other people were there to see it. They knew that he, that he was, he was dead. That verse doesn't say that Jesus is the Christ. What you're doing is you're saying, oh, I don't like the word Christ because that associates Jesus with Christ. He's named him. So, when the Romans call him Christ, like, what do the Romans care? It's the Jewish religion. Um, but that doesn't say that that's the same Jesus. Jesus was the sixth most popular name in the first century, so there was a ton of them. So, there could be five Jesus in there. That's not important. What's important is brother of James, like the Gospels, and the Christ. That's what matters. So, what you're saying is you're speculating that the Christ wasn't there. Well, that's convenient, right? Somebody just threw Christ in there. Well, why would somebody throw Christ in? Has a brother named Jesus? Why not take out Jesus at the end then? Why throw Christ in and then leave Jesus at the bottom?

All right, let's let them elaborate on your question, and then we'll let Kelly jump in, uh, to give his thoughts as well. Yeah, yeah. So, a lot of the Christian scribes were very sloppy, and things like this, like we were talking about in the Luke era. Um, so, we already know that the other passage about, um, Jesus in Josephus is interpolated. It's not a stretch to say that this was two. And Josephus, obviously, clarifies that which Jesus he's talking about later on. But, like, I think we should move on. We should agree. People can read this text for themselves. It is very clear that this is not a Christian. But you all disagree on that. I think this is a minor point. It doesn't have anything to do with the resurrection. It's more about the historicity of Jesus. It's true. All right, maybe, maybe it would be a good time to move on, then. Uh, but, yeah, if you want to give your final thought there, Matt, and then I'll head it over to Kelly. He was just saying that he wanted to move on. Yeah, yeah. That was more or less. I think we're kind of at a stand. Give me one, one thought there. I thought Ryan. No, yeah, yeah, for sure. Uh, I want to give Kelly thought here, and if you want to launch us into, uh, discussion. Yeah, I'll move us on. Yeah, I don't think this need to be, um, beaten anymore. I think it's already been shared. I, I guess the point of what it is, again, is, is Josephus an early Jewish writer, um, not Christian, mind you, as others would be back in those days, of course, they're not going to be writing anything pro-Jesus resurrection because they're not Christians. That's why the apostles and early Christians wrote what they wrote because they are the ones who are the actual Christians. My point, so, is that that's an early document talking about Jesus, who is called the Christ, John the Baptist, and James, the brother. Which would give validity to early account books and sources before that. That was my point. But if we're going to move on, um, I have a question that I think would be interesting just to ask, if we can maybe take a little bit of a step back, a lighter side, if that's okay. Yeah, yeah. The, the Canadians always love the lighter side of the, uh, fun. Well, don't ever insult me like that again. I am not Canadian. Please. Okay. No, no, I just say, we just, just, we as Canadians appreciate it. Just to tone it down, just for one second, that'd be great. I'm joking, I'm joking, I'm joking. I do live in Canada. My wife's Canadian. So, no offense to the Canadians. Yes. Tone it down. You're right, you're right, you're right, you're right. It's, and it's good to have a smile. I, I think these kind of debates should also be done respectfully. So, I appreciate it. Um, one of the things that, you know, I've been a Christian for 46 years. I'm 53. I've been involved in ministry apologetics since the early 1990s. So, I don't know everything. I'm always still learning things. Even some of the things were shared today, I want to go do some research, check some things out for myself. That's why I think that's always healthy. One of the things that I've learned though, over the years, is pertaining to Jesus. Um, Jesus, like, when you look through history, you got people who are like Gandhi, Buddha, you know, belief in Buddha, whatever, many different type of religious figures. But Jesus seems to be this one that seems to be kind of one that really differentiates from anyone else. Even the one that you talked about earlier, Christus, or whatever. Um, nobody goes around talking about that person or whatever, this and that. But, but we talk about Jesus all the time, right? So, over the last, how many of thousand, maybe 1500 or more years, whatever, science, hospitals, you know, schooling, education, women's rights, children's rights, human rights have all been influenced from Christianity to some degree or form. Places like Harvard, Yale, you look at many charity foundations around the world, these things all began through Christian influence. Hypothetically, hypothetically, let's say Jesus was never resurrected, because if he was a dead Messiah, we wouldn't be talking today, right? I don't think so. There would be no point to. So, if this person who has changed the world so much, but if he wasn't actually resurrected, as you guys believe, or even existed, I think it'd go a step farther. But if he wasn't resurrected, for those people who don't believe in the resurrection, how would have that changed the world? If you can look back and think about it, hospitals, education, rights, science, many things have been influenced by Christians over the years, not saying everything great or bad, just saying, have, have it influenced. Let's put a bow on question. Be changed. Um, so, I think something, and I'm not trying to be indirect here, so I kind of get into that, but, uh, something that we say on our TikTok lives a lot is that we're not saying that you can't still have some kind of faith about a spiritual resurrection, or we're trying to just destroy all credibility of the things that Christians do or things like that. We're saying, as a historical fact, this is a made-up event. That doesn't mean that, you know, the influence that it's had, the influence isn't real, or that, um, people aren't moved by things that don't happen or have been elaborated, or things like that. Had to be written at some point, right? Yeah. So, I, I mean, I don't think it would have changed any of those things. I mean, there are many institutions that are based out of other religions that have done good things and bad things, and I mean, that goes just back to that faith question. That people were willing to do a lot of good and bad things for their beliefs. That that doesn't prove their beliefs true, right? Yeah, we get a lot of, uh, our arithmetic and whatnot, and even our numerals in specific from, uh, the Arab population in, I mean, that doesn't, okay, I mean, just because certain things within our culture that we use today, and we, we, we revere today, and we appreciate today, comes from a particular, uh, set of people who are victors of a particular part of the world, doesn't really make that particular religion true. Um, the, the other option to Jesus not resurrecting is not that, like, if Jesus doesn't resurrect, that doesn't automatically mean that he's just a dead Messiah or a savior. That, that doesn't, it could just simply mean that that's just part of a story. That doesn't mean that the option is that he's a real person.

Can I ask my question? I don't think you guys got my the gist of what I'm trying to ask. The gist of what I'm trying to ask is, is that we have around the world recognized schools like Harvard and Yale, very popular, many other schools, hospitals that have been for 1500 plus, even longer years, um, human rights, children's children's rights, women's rights, back 2,000 years or even longer than that, even in some countries, even today, still, um, those rights are very much crushed upon. But because of the influence of what Jesus taught and how he influenced people, has transformed many people over the years to do certain things. So, my question, I'm going to try to ask it again, is imagine if he wasn't resurrected. How would have that changed the world? If we didn't have Jesus resurrected today, as I believe firmly is true, how would that have changed? How would the world be different now? We would have got here faster. You're being serious? I'm actually asking a serious question. Charles is shaking. You're shaking your head. You look like you just had a bad shot of, uh, that Canadian-made vodka. I tell you, it's nasty. We're, we're going to make all the Canadian jokes now, just that because you had that moment of animosity. It was fake animosity, we know, but we're just going to have to roll. But I'm actually asking these guys seriously. I, I think that was kind of an insult. I don't think you meant to be rude, but that's kind of an insult. Are you really saying that because of Christianity, things have been slowed down? What I'm saying is that you can't necessarily say that Christianity is the reason for these particular things. These are Christianity and the belief that Jesus in specific, uh, uh, was resurrected has been used for both sides of the coin for a whole bunch of different things that we now consider bad. All right, I meant what I said. Charles, I want to hand the floor over to you. You made a face, and I figured you were having some, some strong feelings about what you're hearing there, so I want to see the floor to you. So, go ahead. You want some vodka? No, I mean, I mean, you look at the history of the world. I mean, atheism brings mass murder in every single case. Uh, you got Islam, it brings oppression. And, you know, you got all these different religions throughout the world. It's ridiculous to say that Christianity isn't what brought forth this free society. The fact that we can sit there here and have this conversation is something unique to Christianity. You can't do this in atheism societies. You can't do this in Muslim societies. You can't do this in anything except the free world that Jesus created. But, but I wanted to touch, you guys mentioned the Shroud of Turin, and you just kind of brushed it off like it's, I think the Shroud of Turin is the best evidence. Um, and you mentioned that somebody was was charged for building the the box of James because it was such a fraudulent case. So, what about the people that have, because the Shroud has never been recreated. I'm, I, I love to see that because it has not been recreated ever. Um, the way that there's so much evidence supporting the Shroud, the only thing that people can hang out because if it's been recreated, then all the atheists would be screaming. It's the only thing we have is the carbon date. But everything aside from the carbon date points to the first century. Everything. We can't replicate this thing. We don't know how they made it in their mid, medieval era, anyways, but it all dates back to the first century. And then you see like Luigi Garelli faked the Shroud, came out, said it was done. They went and inspected it, realized that it was nothing like the real shroud. He wasn't charged. Why wasn't he charged? There seems to be this bias towards Christianity that we kind of just brush this to the side. Let's let Jaren jump in in a second here. Jump in. Or me get it. What does this have to do with the resurrection? Because the Shroud, the Shroud is the wounds of Christ. It's in the first century. It's in the era. Jesus is the light of the world. He's a spiritual being. He resurrected from the dead. We have an imprinted image on this cloth. We have another head cloth. These are both mentioned in the Gospel, by the way. So, we have another headcloth that forensically has 150 matchup points to the Shroud, found in a different place of the world, dated 700 years prior. Um, we have like, there's so many, so many different things that connect this to the first century. Um, we have, uh, yeah, let me see. How would the Shroud not have the top of his head? Because it's on his body. It would have over. He's first of all, he's got a 3D image, right? And then with the head cloth, the way that they wrapped the Jews, they covered up the head really, really thick with binding. That's what the head cloth was. It was to keep it still, right? Same thing. They put things on their eyes to keep it closed. They had these traditions that they did. So, the fact that the top of his head was completely covered by a whole bunch of fabric, um, as well as they pull this image in a computer, and it becomes a 3D model. It's a negative image. So, whoever, whoever made this thing in the first, in the 14th century, or whatever, they really did it. They could have did it better, because the image that we have of the Shroud is nothing like the Shroud, how it looks. It's a negative image, and that was discovered in the 1900s, early 1900s, when a photographer took a picture of it, and then we seen the visible Christ just boom at us. Everything about this piece of work, right, dates to the first century. The only thing that atheists can say, quick, isn't isn't there also new evidence on the T T as well? Just done x-ray. They just did, uh, wide angle x-rays that date the fabric through deterioration, the same way radio, or all the radiometric dating, deterioration, right? So, we love that. Dated it to the first century with the fabrics to 55 AD. But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Yeah, well, so, um, I'll let people in the chat and watching decide what they think about the Shroud of Turin and the evidence for and against it. But regardless, I think even if it were authentic, it wouldn't prove anything past a, it wouldn't prove a resurrection. But how did it get made? That's the, this is what it proves. What does that have to do with the resurrection? Even if it's like, it's really cool because the guy sweat a lot, that doesn't mean that he came back to life. I don't know how it got made, but that doesn't mean it resurrected. This is just, just as a point going forward, it's always best to, uh, go with your response first, and then ask the question. If you ask the question first, then I'm, I'm more inclined to just pass the ball. So, yeah, it's best just to do your response and then hand it over. So, go, go ahead there, Charles. I know some people, it's just part of the way they debate, but, okay, it always gets me going. So, go ahead, Charles. Okay, so the resurrection is a supernatural event. If a supernatural event occurred, we should find a supernatural relic. Okay? So, the fact that we find this supernatural relic that we can't explain, it's dated to the first century, has all the wounds of Jesus, everything about it points to Jesus, and we have no clue how it was made. We can't repeat it today because it would burn up the cloth if we use the radiation. Um, we haven't been able to repeat.

It with any of the tools from the middle e. Any of the eras, really, because the pigments don't go through the cloth. The blood is AB, which is native to the Middle East. The fabrics are all in line with Jewish tradition. Um, there's pollens on it. The date to first-century Israel. Everything about this shroud, except for that carbon date, which is 700 years away from the head cloth, which has 150 forensic points matching, which would convict somebody to prison in any other case. But we don't do it. We don't do it when we look at the cloth.

So the point is, is the Shroud of Turin? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And the fact that we have this thing that we can't explain, we have to just leave. We have to just leave it at, "Oh, they did it somehow." Well, you know, as Christians, that's not good enough for us, right? This is the burial cloth of Christ, and it's a miraculous image. He is the light of the world. Let's hand it on over there. Thanks, Charles. So I'll do a little bit, and then Jaren looks like he wants to say. I'd just say, like, even if, even if, um, you know, somehow it were dated back that far, which I think we very much disagree on what the evidence points to on that, we're not going to get into that because that's not the topic. Uh, first off, that doesn't prove he resurrected. And second, it doesn't even prove it was the right figure. If it's all dated to that period, there's, I mean, we know that other people, literally in the story, two people were crucified next to Jesus. It doesn't mean it would have been Jesus himself. Jaren, if you want to say anything. Their legs were broken. Jesus' legs weren't broken. And Jesus was, was beaten viciously, right? This man died of. Go ahead. I mean, again, there's a myriad of reasons you can just, the chat can look them up, as to why this has been debunked and the Catholic Church has changed its position on it. But again, it doesn't prove resurrection. All right, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Yes, I know. But even if you want to say that this is extraordinary evidence of Jesus's death, okay. But that's not extraordinary evidence of the extraordinary claim of the resurrection. So a dead man radiated a beam of light so intense that it printed his image on a cloth in a negative image that we wouldn't be able to discover until 2,000 years later, and then it would baffle us in every aspect of science. And that's not extraordinary evidence that he, something happened in that cloth that is a miracle. I don't know who it's baffling, but most people have decided that it's fake. So no, this is ridiculous. All right, this actually, it's never been rep. Can you tell me who's repeated it? So tell me who are. Get. Yes, I'm getting you in here. I've asked a few times. So yeah, I want to get Kelly in. Uh, you know, we want to either shift gears or get your thoughts so we can progress this along. So go ahead. Well, I was just saying, get me in. Ryan, get me in. Get, get your mean face on. Oh, you mean I thought you said get me in. I was going to say I'm going to try to get you. Oh, man. Oh, gee. No, you don't want to see that. That's that's not good. You know, that's a very interesting topic. I think what I'll just make one quick note. It doesn't necessarily prove per se the evidence of the resurrection, but it gives support to the validity of the Gospel, his history, the account of the first century. It is a supernatural miracle. And there are very good scholar sources out today who are scholars who have stuff to look at that I have. One more question. Looks like our time is almost up. If, um, if I'm able to ask one more question, these nice gentlemen. Well, we can continue going as long as you guys want to keep going. I usually just put the timer up just so that the audience has a feel for, uh, when we're going to move into new segments. But if we want to go for another round of open discussion, if you're, I'm, I'm kind of on a time limit here. I'm so sorry. Oh, okay. Okay, then, uh, yeah, then let's carry on. Sorry. Okay. Yeah, my thought. Um, but what, what you guys, again, nice conversation, guys. Maybe do a round two down the road. Who knows, right? Um, you guys are great. I appreciate it. Um, on the topic of the resurrection, like a lot of what we talked about tonight, you know, people are going to, you know, have their mind set up as, you know, certain. It's, it's how we all are, right? We're, we're all going to be somewhat biased, right? So, I, I get that. I guess at the end of the day, for me, like, you know, especially like, uh, I, I'll say, uh, if I remember correctly, Matt, you have not been a Christian before or had any religious faith. But Jaren, Jaren, Jaren, get that right. J. It was right. Jaren, Jaren, Jaren. I did it. I actually did it. Live. Shoot. Darn it. All Jaren, you have some kind of faith background. What, what would you say that makes in this world today? Like I talked about it before, I'll say it again, why is the conversation, and, and I'm asking honestly, not, I'm actually not trying to ask for silly answers. I'm actually honestly, why do you think this conversation about Jesus is so important? Even how many of thousand years later from then until now, why is it that most of us can talk about something about faith or God? But once we start talking about this guy, Jesus Christ, some 2,000 years ago, so many different views. Why do you guys think that is? So really quick to clarify, I'd never stated my position on any type of faith issue. Or Jaren and I actually grew up in the same church. I normally leave that out of the, uh, discussion for things that aren't specifically on that. But just, just to clarify on that point. Um, I mean, it's just an interesting topic. So, and I hope this is answering your question. I'm honestly trying to, um, it's an interesting topic to look into because, like you said, it has been really influential. And the, um, results, one way or another, I think you would agree, like whether it's true or not, does matter. Um, so, and it's an important question to us and society. And on the stylometric stuff we do, we're interested in other interesting questions like Plato and Shakespeare. Um, I think I just have a general curiosity. Uh, I think a lot of people have it, especially if they're here, they want to see multiple opinions and perspectives on things. Um, so I think it does matter. Um, even if it didn't happen. Hopefully that answers what you were asking. Sure. Yeah, I, I would say that it's just something in specific that we kind of picked as far as a particular topic. I mean, our first project is Christ before Jesus, you know, regarding the New Testament and the dating of the, the text. And our next project is over the Old Testament, the Quran, and the Book of Mormon. Uh, which that'll be funny. Anyways, my question, I don't, maybe, maybe I didn't word it correctly. I'm so sorry. I'm talking about just like, what makes Jesus in our conversation today? Most people can talk about God, but why is it that Jesus seems to cause problems? Like there's something about Jesus, the name Jesus, not David, Bill, fart, boohoo, whatever, right? But Jesus has always caused division, controversy. The last two. Why do you think that is? If, if that, if it wasn't so significant 2,000 years ago, could you give an example of what you're talking about exactly? Just to narrow down. Relatives, Thanksgiving, or Christmas, you bring over, you start talking about Jesus, everyone freaks out. So why is it so controversial? This is that the question? Like, why, why do you think Jesus is so relevant 2,000 years later? We're talking about him today. If, if, if what is said about him in the gospel accounts is not true, and, and, and he really wasn't raised, whatever, like, why do you think this guy makes such a big difference around the world? Like, what makes Jesus different? I think it's, um, historical, um, coincidence, more or less, in the sense that what caught on ended up becoming very influential elsewhere. So it caught on in the Roman Empire before it became the official religion, and after it became the official religion, and the empire split up, multiple countries had it as their official religion. And then by the time the Americas were colonized, the colonizers had it as their official religion, and it became the official religion, the, uh, of the Western world. Yeah. So if it had been somebody like, um, Esus, Esus, then we might be talking about Esus. Uh, it's hard to say. It's one of those, you know, we can't go back and change that in history to say if that's what would have happened or not. But I think that would be our answer to that. Jesus, he's a central figure in four different books, um, and has, I assume, the most speaking lines, maybe Moses has more, uh, you know, as far as characters in the Bible. So of course, he's going to be a fan favorite. I mean, he's, he's the main topic of the New Testament and a central character in four of the books. So, I mean, yeah, it's definitely the most popular character of Christianity, and Christianity, like I said, is the victor of the Western world. It, he's going to be popular. It's gonna be controversial too, because because people can, it's fairly, he's fairly pliable to some extent, or at least people want him to be, and people treat him as that, whereas they say, oh, you know, maybe he's got this particular political leaning versus this one, or something. Well, I, I was going to say, I, I appreciate you guys's answers. I think you might be still missing the thrust in my question. Let me ask, can I ask the same question to my, my partner, Charles? Why do you think Jesus makes such a difference after all 2,000 years compared to other people? Because he is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Um, Jesus changed. No, you know what, though? It's, it's so evident in our society, um, that without Jesus. Jesus says, this gospel of the kingdom will be preached all across the world. Right? Jesus knew that this was coming to the whole world. Jesus knew that right from the beginning. Whether you want to argue that the sloppy Christian scribes that wrote the most prophetic, brilliant book in history, wrote this story. Jesus makes these predictions of the future. And the words of Jesus are what has allowed our society to get to a point where we have objective morality. We have the laws written on our heart, predicted in the Bible. Um, our society is because of Jesus, because of the words of Jesus. Granted, it was a long run, there was a lot of chaos. But once people got their actual words of Jesus, we watched our, our world change in a couple hundred years. It just flipped. And it's all Jesus. Everything is Jesus. Without Jesus, we wouldn't be having this conversation. You guys wouldn't be allowed to fly. He would be torturing you right now, going, uh, these guys don't know what the heck they believe in. Or I guess he wouldn't, because he didn't say that. But, but he would be torturing you as atheists and telling you to worship His God. If, if you were an atheist country, you'd be mass murdered. Like they always, they never get to progress in society because they just mass murder everybody. If you were an Islam, you'd be oppressed. All these things. Jesus changed the world, and he predicted that he would. And that's such a beautiful prophetic. Like, they, those scrappy scribes were good. We will, we will do some closing statements before the end of the discussion. I will thank the panel. Uh, thank you to Matt and Jaren and Charles and also to Kelly. Uh, we will, uh, yeah, definitely look at getting you guys back to have more discussions. It's been a joy to have you guys out to get some ideas out on the table. I'm sure you've got all kinds of other thoughts in the chamber. Um, but I will say, Kelly, yeah, when me and my family get together, if it's Christmas, uh, usually the only talk of, uh, of Jesus is when I plug in my new fuzz pedal and we, uh, run through "Spirit in the Sky." Right. I, I, I got to see how it sounds. I got to see how it sounds, right? It's a good song, by the way. I like that song. It's a good song. Fantastic fuzz tone. Absolutely. I am, uh, are we allowed to have a little bit of a break? I just need to use the restroom. Sure thing. Yeah, let's, uh, let's do that. I will, uh, do some housekeeping right quick. Uh, Charles, Kelly, Matt, Jaren, if you guys need to step out, go for it. Now was a great time. Thank you. Hey, uh, you guys, before I go, um, you guys love Christmas songs? Okay. Like the Jesus songs? Oh, yeah, yeah. My favorite Christmas album's probably, uh, ironically, Family Force 5. Jaren hates that. I grew up listening to them. It's still, very least, Christianity brought some awesome music. Yeah, I'll be right back. All right. Did you guys need to step out for a second? That's totally fine. I'm okay. All right. Well, we'll do just a little bit of housekeeping. So we are going to move into Q&A. I got 30 minutes set on the clock there that we are going to hopefully get lots of questions from the audience. We've only got a couple right now. Uh, one that's not entirely on topic, but we can have some fun with it, and another one from Binge Thinker. So thank you, Otto, and Binge Thinker so far for the super chats. At some point, maybe I will also step out and use a restroom. You know, I, I'm human too, believe it or not. Anyway, well, thank you guys for coming out. I, I don't know if, uh, this is your first time here on Modern Day Debate. I, I seem to remember getting a message from one of you guys. I don't know if it was from one of, was from you, Jaren? Okay. Yes, saying that you guys had written a book together and, uh, you were looking to, uh, do some debates. And I, I was a total cad and totally forgot to get back to you on Discord. I think. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, I, I, I rarely check Discord anyways. But, but yeah, uh, our, our, our book came back out, came out back in, uh, March. And, um, we've just kind of, we mostly do TikTok. Mostly do TikTok stuff. But, you know, we've, we've done some interviews, and this, I guess, would be our first, you know, sanctioned debate. But, like Matthew said, we've, you know, also, uh, done guest lectures in some public universities as well. Um, so, yeah, it's, it's been a lot of fun since, you know, coming out, uh, with this. And his background is in, uh, philosophy and religion. Uh, and my educational background is in, um, data science, so economics and statistics. So awesome. It's just right up our alley, I guess, this particular thing. Well, that's great. Well, I, I, I am honored to, uh, host you for your first time here, uh, on the debate scene, uh, as your general delinquent, rock star. And, uh, yeah, I, I often say that, uh, my main job is just screaming at people for money, and not in a debate sphere. Uh, it is, it is euphoric though. It's very strange to be playing live music and rock and, and scream at people, and then them say, yes, do that again. Very few places will you find yourself just, ah, at people, and they'll say, can you, can you continue with that? Uh, so, yeah, no, this is, uh, it's definitely been, uh, great to be on Modern Day Debate and, uh, be able to host people such as yourself, Kelly. Uh, you know, you've got quite a background as well. So if you want to tell our audience a little bit about yourself, uh, your background, where you came from, while we wait for Charles to get back, and then we'll get into that Q&A. Awesome. Well, hey, man, again, appreciate, uh, Matt and, uh, uh, Jaren, no, Jiren, Jiren, yes, there we go. Jiren, there we go. And also you, Ryan, as well. And shout out to James, who originally reached out to me as well. Yeah, my channel, Ban Perspective Apologetics. Uh, yeah, I've been a Christian for like, I mentioned, 46 years. Became a Christian in 1977. And, um, I was raised, you know, my, my, my both my parents actually were not Christians when I was born. My dad was actually an atheist, classified actually what you call a god-hater. And when he actually became a Christian, quote unquote, um, you know, sometimes you can't prove a miracle, you see a miracle. And his life went from a lot of anger and a lot of other things that where it just flipped. And you could see it in his life. And so I know a positive influence that kind of stuff. Um, I'll be very quick. Charles is back. But, um, I had a kind of a question of my own faith just after high school. Just graduated 1990. And this is the joke, so you guys are a little bit younger, so hopefully you get the joke. Um, I was roughly around 20, um, 1991. Had a friend of mine who was an atheist who apparently became a Christian, kind of started going me getting me going back to church because I wasn't going to church at the time. He ended up meeting a Mormon girl, converted to Mormonism in a very short time. And so I didn't know much about other religions. I knew about Jesus and things like that, the Bible. Well, I wanted to know more about Jesus. And I lived in Las Vegas, so it's a plethora of all kinds of stuff. So I wanted to know more about this guy, Jesus. So we didn't have internet, didn't have Google. So I went to a place called a library. This is old school. And that kind of started my journey looking at old books, history, archaeology. Library? No, yeah, that's right. Most people, what does that mean? Like, I look at a computer, that's my library. Hey, hey, that is, as an interest to yourself, that is where I met my wife in secret because she's a, yes, because she's a Jehovah's Witness, or was a Jehovah's Witness. That's a whole history. Um, but that's where, that's where I met her because, uh, yeah, of course, she would be at the library meeting with somebody she's not supposed to when we were very young. All right, go ahead. Funny. Yeah. Anyway, and I'll wrap it up. Yeah, no, that's, that's interesting that, like, to hear that story another time. Um, but yeah, so I, that started my journey. And then, uh, I started looking into other religions and things like that. And so I, I had an honest quest. You know, I was raised Christian, believed a lot of things, but then I started examining things myself, looking at the actual history of Jesus, was he real? These kind of things. And then started looking at other religions, Islam, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, you know, many other groups that are out there, a lot of lists. And so I, by far, don't know all the answers, but I can tell you that what I've learned over the years is that my faith is even stronger now over all these years of the evidence that's out there. And so that's what my channel is about. And, uh, I think I'm, I'm glad to have an opportunity here to have a different kind of conversation with these gentlemen here. And I appreciate being here. Absolutely. And, and for sure, yeah, we can definitely, uh, chitchat sometime about, uh, some of my stories of the library. Oh, man, there's not just that. Charles, Charles just has a smirk over there because he's heard all kinds of, uh, fun stories. I was trapped once. Uh, anyway, anyway, don't worry about it. I told that story to my kid. I'm sorry, man. But that, that is like, oh, wow. Yeah, yeah, we won't talk about it on air. Yes, but yeah, never, never get trapped in your in-laws' home before they know you're dating their daughter when you're 18 years old. Anyways, uh, oh, wait, wait, my kid's a grown man. I just, I should probably throw that in there. That you want, you want your son to also have heart problems. When that sounds weird. I'm, I'm, I'm the really old fart here, aren't I? Funny, man. Awesome. All right, well, we're going to get into that super chat. Thanks so much, Charles. We can't get too much into it. It's too silly. Uh, and, and the audience will lose it on me. Uh, all right, so a question for my personal statistics. This is from Otto. So he's got a question for his personal statistics. And I don't know, um, what the parameter of his statistics are. So maybe some of them are just saying, hey, Otto, you can fly off a tree. I don't know. Uh, he didn't give us much here, but he said, do you support Ukraine in its defense against Russian invasion? Uh, so this is completely off the wall. Uh, but you guys can abstain from answering. I'm sure that's a part of your statistic as well. Otto, as a moderator, I'm going to abstain. So go ahead. I'm going to plead the fifth on this one. You plead the fifth. So you're going to abstain from answering. Go ahead. Christ before Jesus, Matt. Do you want to answer? I'm going to, I'm going to quote Obi-Wan and say, I'm not brave enough for politics. Uh, I, I don't even know what to say, really. I have. All right, we got it. Guys, these aren't the droids you're looking for. You guys made your answer clear. You don't want to sell me death sticks. Yes, you do. Anyway, I would say though, like, it is a controversial thing, but no matter what country, whoever you are, whether it's Ukraine or any country that someone's coming and trying to take you out, I think anyone has the right to defend themselves. All right. Yeah, I was going to say, I'm sure people can, uh, dig back through some YouTube history and maybe find what I thought about all those things. But, oh, there's the Canadian. There you see, Charles. That's what it is. It's the aboot. It's not about the a. A lot of people ask about, oh, you say sorry a lot, but it's, it's this backhanded thing. It's more like, I'm sorry you don't understand anything. Like, we're really rude, honestly. It's, it's a strange tell that you were Canadian. Very, very quickly. I mean, no dude to aboot. It absolutely aboot. You can't. Oh, you were, you were here during the, uh, Leo debate when I actually had the aboot cup and I said, I want, I bet you're wondering what this is. All a boot. And I hold, I held it up and it's about this big. So it takes like an obscene amount of beer to fill it up. Anyways, Binge Thinker asks, for both sides, what did the Shroud of Turin show up? When did the Shroud of Turin show up in historical records? Bet it popped up out of nowhere hundreds of years after his quote-unquote death. Yeah, so the Shroud of Turin, yeah. So the Shroud of Turin did appear, um, somewhere in the Middle Ages. But that, that doesn't change the fact that it, it was somebody had a hold of it, as well as the health cloth appeared in a different part of the world, yet it matched that thing. So when did that happen? Um, and then there's also images of the Shroud. Um, I forget what it's called, but I don't, there's another image that was found dated earlier of a pictorial of this thing. So the fact that people have preserved these things, that's like you're saying the same thing with the Gospels. Well, why did we find manuscripts that are dated to the 14th? Like, it doesn't matter. The age is irrelevant. It's what the actual evidence shows about the piece that dates it. We find things all the time that show up later in history. Does that the dinosaurs? Why did we find the dinosaurs in our era? What's that about? Like, it means nothing. Yeah. Just so the answer for our side, when it showed up, I think it's the 1300s. We checked and it says 1389 is the first description of it, and it was first shown in 1355. So 1300s. I mean, supposing these dates are right, is when it would show up. Any thoughts on your side there, Kelly? Yeah, I don't got much else to add on that one. That one's not my, that one's not my forte. Not your wheelhouse. All right, Charles, did you have any closing thoughts? No, that's it. I mean, just because something appears at a certain time doesn't mean anything. Somebody had it, somebody kept it. It was documented prior to it. Has another piece that's across the world. I mean, there's all these things add up together, tells us that it's a lot earlier than it was found. But even if none of that other stuff was there, and it was found in the Middle Ages, that doesn't mean that it dates to the Middle Ages. We'd have to apply that to everything in history, which is ludicrous. Okay, let's carry on. And thank you so much, uh, Charles, for, uh, answering and expounding on that one for Binge Thinker and also the other side too. So, uh, we will get into the next super chat as I scroll around. And once again, if you have a question, we are actively taking them. We still have 27 minutes on the timer. So, only a few questions left to go, uh, depending on how much the panel gets into it. So if you have a question and you want to put it into a super chat, uh, we will ask that with priority. Uh, you can also tag me in the Modern Day Debate chat. I will, uh, put myself in there just in a second. So Joshua Jamie says, we can't replicate the Shroud of Turin in the same way. We can't sequence the DNA of the kunga, except we found dozens of skeletons of the kunga in Syria in the early 2000s and have since sequenced the DNA. Charles, you're holding your, your mouth there. What's going on? You're, this guy is so mad about the kunga. This is from another debate. This is from another debate. Um, so can you, sorry, the, the kunga thing, he's really obsessed. But what was the reference to the Shroud there? The reference to the Shroud? Oh, okay. Right quick, because Max is, Max is really trying to get at me right quick. He said, can you tell the folks from Christ before Jesus that I emailed them? I have done that. All right, so, uh, somebody's emailed you. Have a little look and see. One of our mods, so they said, we can't replicate the Shroud of Turin in the same way. We can't sequence the DNA of the kunga, except we found dozens of skeletons of the kunga in Syria in the early 2000s and have since sequenced the DNA. Okay, so, so we found the creature that is depicted on the Mesopotamian wall. Okay. So that has nothing to do with the Shroud of Turin. I, I, the, the question is baffling me because he's going into the kunga. The point is, is the Shroud can't be explained. That's what's important there. You said it, we know it, we don't know how it was done. And that's the whole argument with the Shroud is we can't explain it. It's a mystery of science. It's a mystery of the world. And it just so happens to have, uh, Jesus Christ crucified body inside of it, dated to the first century. The kunga thing, I, I don't know what to say. I'm done. Yeah, I don't, I don't know how that has anything to do with whatever. That I have never heard that creature in my life. So call MBE or something. It's a Mesopotamian creature that was on the wall. It was a Noah's Ark debate. Okay. Yes, it's carried over. He's really obsessed. He's still lingering on the other one, huh? Yeah, he wants, yeah, he loves the kunga. So if, if the Shroud is found on the ark, does that somehow just absolutely blow his mind? Is that the point? Yeah, the Shroud, maybe saying that maybe the, the, the Shroud, the kunga created the Shroud. Blow my mind. The Shroud of Kunga. Yes. The Shroud of Kunga. Are you just having fun saying things that sounds like a good. That's that's a good song name. Uh, the Shroud of Kunga. Right? Yeah, yeah. That would be it. That would be the climax of the song. Um, you know, I, I, I was, there's going to be a new movement called the Shroud of Kunga. You watch. Yeah. I, I was listening to a great song on the way home. Popped on. I haven't listened to it in probably like four or five years. It's a Rainbow tune and it's called Gates of Babylon. Oh, it's creepy and it's kind of fun. Uh, I, you might know it, Charles. But, uh, once again, we'll, we'll, we'll chitchat the after show. So we have one more, uh, Q&A. So far. So once again, I'm going to remind our audience, if you have questions, get them in now, or else we'll close it out, uh, a little earlier than expected. Uh, so Even Lord asks, does general society need religion to function? I'll hand it over to you, Kelly. Oh, interesting. Does say it one more time. Does general society need religion to function? I don't know if it, if you would say the word, I guess it would depend on what the word religion means in the context of what the person's asking. I think if we're talking about say morals or morality or things of that accord, like, you know, knowing right from wrong, knowing that, you know, they, you know, rape is wrong, or, um, you know, going out and, you know, chopping people's heads off or whatever. I mean, you could go down and list a stuff, right? So, religious of itself, or religion, I think, uh, can be good. The Bible talks about it very positively in certain things and aspects as well. Um, it also can be very bad. You know, there's lots of bad movements, like earlier mentioned, Jim Jones, there's, uh, David Koresh, you've got a lot of groups out there, guys doing different things that were very bad, misleading. You've got different religious groups out there that are very, um, controlling and, and very, um, um, just control your whole lives and things like that. You can't even think for yourself. So religion itself doesn't answer it. But it depends if you're talking about the general concept. I mean, you look at North America right now, especially the United States, we would classify ourselves still, "In God We Trust," even though that's going down the tubes rapidly lately. Um, but yet we look at the, the teachings, The Ten Commandments, we look at many things that give us a good governing of how to let the society be governed. I think the principles are definitely good for sure. All right, we'll hand it over to, uh, Christ before Jesus side, uh, to respond. Well, something goes down a tube. I'm going to just step out for one second there, guys. All right, we'll try to keep it going. Okay, um, so does, I think the question was, does society require religion to function? And I'll answer, and then Jaren, if you have anything to throw in, um, I'm going to say it's not a requirement. I visited a number of countries. I lived in China for over a year, nearly two years. And whether you agree or disagree with their politics and things going on, it is a functional society. I mean, it is, you know, still running and it exists. Um, so I think you might, you were saying it depends on what you mean by religion. I guess I'd say what it means by function. I mean, a lot of countries function with very different views and some not religious. Yeah, Jaren, if you wanted to pop in. I would say I would focus more on the word need. Um, and I would say not necessarily. Uh, I believe that religion in specific was at one time necessary for human advancement. I, I would say that because at one point in time, as, as, uh, to kind of paraphrase Patton Oswalt, at one point in time, if one person could just pick up a rock and hit the head of somebody else and take his crap, then that's, that's just how society functioned. But eventually, someone said, oh, whoa, hold up. If you don't hit me over the head, then after you die, which everyone that you know has ever died, then you will get rewarded. And all of a sudden, the society can advance at that particular point, and you can move forward because the brute strength doesn't just immediately win every argument. Um, but at a certain point, we move past that as a society. I would say that we just kind of are slowly starting to reach the point where most societies, most countries, I don't think need it per se, but it was useful at one point in time to establish a lot of certain ideas, I guess. All right. I just have to step back in. Charles, Kelly, did you have any other thoughts before we move on to some of the questions I have from the, uh, the live chat? Sure. I'll just add one little quick nugget. Um, sure thing. I don't say disagree with both the other gentlemen. I think it's interesting though, is like, if you remove, say, the principles, say the good, you know, I guess we define what is good, but the principles that, like what you just said, um, Jaren, is that, um, you know, we don't go around throwing rocks at people or shooting. I mean, people do still shoot people, that's against the law. But if there isn't laws or things in place for that, then society will just go crazy, or you'll have a dictatorship. Like what Matt just said, though, about China, yeah, they can function, but it's a communist country. I mean, they're forced to do certain things, and if they go against their government, there are severe consequences. And so at some point, we have to, you know, at what point, where is this give and take? But I think to the original question of, you know, is religion needed? I think the word religion is not needed, but I think the principles of which we learn for how society be run together in a good way, not a destroying way, I think it's, it's needed. All right, so, uh, question, so, uh, one person in our live chat had tagged Ryan and asked a question. I'm sorry, it, it scrolled on and I forgot to actually copy and paste it. Uh, oh, there's another one, actually. So, yeah, whoever just tagged Ryan, not Stephen Johnson, I got your question. You can ask again. But super chats, once again, will be read with with the priority. So, Even Lord, who is a member for a month, says, a question for both debaters, what religion or philosophy, if believed, would have brought about faster technical and social development? So, I, I think, uh, we understand probably what, uh, philosophy or religion. Charles and Kelly, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm going to give you this one, since you guys have gotten the majority of the first of the question, uh, over to Matt and Jaren. So, uh, yeah, what philosophy or religion do you think would have brought about faster technical and social development? Even Lord also said, I hope you're doing well, Ryan. Well, thank you, Even Lord. I hope you're doing well too. Uh, yeah, so I'll answer while Jaren formulates his answer. It looks like, um, and I do have a question for you about closing statements, or if, you know, Kelly's pressed for time, if we don't have time for that, we can talk about that. But I'll go ahead and answer the question really fast. Um, so I would say that it's more the material conditions that drive forward things than ideology. I think normally ideology follows material changes in society. It's not to say that ideology doesn't speed up or slow down, um, changes, but that it's hard to just kind of pick something up ideologically and expect it alone to drive forward things without some kind of material or physical driving force behind that, whether it's a change of government or development in technology itself, which then leads to changes in ideology. Jaren, if you wanted to. Yeah, I would say that it's not necessarily religion per se that would maybe speed things up, but, um, if I had to pick a particular religion, I guess is that the question? Like, which religion? Like what do you, or philosophy? What do you? Philosophy, yeah. I don't know. Just aiming to progress and aiming to care about what your fellow man in specific, what understanding that it's more to life than just what you reach out in front of your hand, in front of your face with, you know, with your hands and what you can touch. And understanding that another person is going to go through, uh, things that are similar to you, but you'll never know exactly what they're going through per se. Uh, so understanding, you know, their take is just as valid as yours in many cases. Okay, I think, uh, I think they're probably looking for, uh, kind of like a label. So would you, a label, kind of consider yourself more of like a secularist, a secular humanist, or humanist? Like, are you in that camp, or just are you just more like, I'm skeptical about these claims and just, you know, working your way through it, and you're not really into the label thing? Because they are saying, like, philosophy or religion, like, is there something out there that you can kind of like, stamp your name on and say, that's that's for me? I'm not brave enough for politics. Yeah, I wouldn't, I don't, I don't have a, I don't have a particular title or or name for it or anything like that. I, I feel like I would, but it sounds like we would need to be back invited back for a political discussion. Well, you said you weren't brave enough for that. But I, I think, let me take that back. He's not brave enough to get into it. He is absolutely brave enough for politics. He just not brave enough to get into it. Now. Well, we'll see. We'll see how it goes. Yes, we'll have to pry a little bit. But, um, yeah, well, let's hand it over to you, Kelly. Uh, so is there a religion or philosophy that you, you know, would ascribe to to say that this would have gotten us a quicker social development? Anything like, uh, you know, that could kind of expound, I think, upon what you maybe said tonight, or, you know, if there's something that we haven't touched on, like, forgive me, yeah, I, well, and respectfully to Jaren here, earlier he said that if, you know, if it wasn't for Christian things would have developed even sooner, quicker. And I found his answer just a minute ago to be quite lacking because if there would have been something that could have helped produce things to be quicker and more efficient or better, he should have had a good answer there. So it's kind of interesting, just, just a little nugget there. Um, and it's not a jab, it's just like, I was, I was waiting to hear his answer because he early made that jab about Jesus. So I don't really know which we would say, like, that's why I brought up earlier when you look at Christian history, you look at a lot of scientists, a lot of doctors, mathematicians, these are people who were Christians. And you look at back, you know, science in development, science started back, I think around the 11th century, started from Christians. You look at a lot of charities, or hospitals, or schools, education, these were started primarily through Christian influence. So you look at the society, good and bad, around the world, for sure. But a lot of the good that we see came through a lot of influences from Christians who based their principles, their morals, based on what Jesus taught. All right, and Charles, did you have any commentary on this question about social development? Which is why we are talking about more social political labels. So, sorry about that, Matt and Jaren, if I'm trying to, I'm just, just doing what I can to mimic you guys into the discussion here of for politics. But go ahead there, Charles. Yeah, I think I think Christianity, um, specifically the the doctrine of Jesus, is the only thing that will lead to human progression. I think sex, money, and power is the fall of humanity. It's the destruction of everything. It's the cause of all crimes. And Christianity controls this. Jesus, those who love Jesus and follow Jesus will struggle at times, but the goal is to, uh, follow Jesus. Sex, money, and power are deterred. And the more we push Jesus out of society, the more we see people leaning towards these, um, unfortunate things, and it's becoming more normal in our society. And eventually, something like an STD is just going to wipe humanity out. So I think Jesus is, is the most component, important. Tell us how you really feel, Charles. There. Well, is just going to wipe out humanity? Uh, is that going to be the big takeaway for you? Yeah, that on Trump. Make sure you blame it on Trump. There's our clip for the night. Yes. Thank you so much, Charles. Yes, an STD is going to wipe out all humanity. Holy lightning. You just, you just watch yourselves. All right, wrap it before you. Anyway, Joshua Jamie, Charles, what have you done to me now? Just a series of bad dad jokes just occurred to me. Joshua Jamie says, Charles continues to lie about kunga. I think that's our fun way of saying that. I'm not sure what this is all about, but you said, why didn't P just say they were worshiping a different God right after saying he didn't have to say he was referring to Jesus? Special pleading. They say they are coming right at you. Thank you, Joshua Jamie. So what's going on with this? Can we get some insight there? Charles, you're on mute. Can you read it again? Charles continues to lie about kunga. You said, why didn't P just say they were worshiping a different God right after saying he didn't have to say he was referring to Jesus? Special pleading. I said, yeah, so I wasn't special pleading that the fact that Romans didn't care about the name of who they were worshiping. But the, the argument here is that the Jesus didn't even exist, right? It was this Christ figure that existed. He didn't rise. None of that is real. So I'm saying that you would think that if these people didn't know what this extreme superstition that they believed in was, that would be a focus of the text rather than saying, I'm, they're denouncing it and they're going to worship my gods, or they're going to die, right? Or all these vicious tortures that they do. That is mentioned throughout the, the New Testament. Um, there's all kinds of references. I think it was Herodotus says that they, they forced the Christians to wear animal skins and use them as lanterns at night. And then you see these things, uh, through the New Testament. Paul says, they put goat and sheep skins on us to humiliate us. I think it's Peter says, uh, this fiery trial we're due. Like, there's all these things that point to these Christians in the New Testament that they have experienced. I think it's irrational to say that these people didn't know what they believed. And and that P and the other, um, people just were okay with that. All right, any response on the other side? And the kunga, you win, buddy. Okay, whatever you think about the kunga, I denounce the kunga for you, man. Go on with life, please. All right, any thoughts on the other side, Jaren or Matt? We have, we have no comments on the kunga. We're going to stay out of that one. But, um, okay, uh, but as for the P thing, uh, Jaren's got it pulled up. I think the, the point is the text is pretty clear about what their beliefs are. And we're saying that there isn't, when you look at this type of textual evidence, where, you know, any kind of historical claim for this era, you're really strapped for evidence a lot of times. And so for it not to specify some very important details to establish certain facts, like, you know, the existence of a person, or in this case, since we're discussing the resurrection, you know, if it's not in the text, you can't just, you know, add it in the text. Jaren, if you want to. Yeah, I mean, the, the point that Joshua was making here, of course.

Is that that if if Charles is saying, "Oh, well, he doesn't have, he doesn't have to say that it's Jesus in order for it to be Jesus." And we say, "Oh, it could have been anyone." And you're like, "Well, why wouldn't he say that?" Well, because again, it doesn't have, he doesn't have to say it, apparently, if it is Jesus. But again, an understanding of Pliny and the letters that come before and after letter 96 is, is very important because the only reason why Pliny is cracking down initially on the Christians is because of the fact that they are assembling without a permit. Uh, at least here in America, I'm not familiar with like any particular constitution or or overall federal laws for Canada. But, um, at least here in America, the Amendment number one says that we have the right to assemble. And that's something that a lot of people just kind of gloss over. But that's not something that they had back then. Uh, Pliny was a governor in the outskirts of the Roman Empire. And in previous, in a previous letter there, in the same book, uh, well, collection of letters to Trajan, he has to, Pliny has to break up a fire department, a volunteer fire department, because they just don't have a permit. So that's the reason why he's getting onto Christians initially. Uh, but again, he gets into more stuff later on. But that's why he even finds out about them is because they're breaking the permit law. He, he, he states that it's a secret brotherhood. And that's why, any thoughts, Kelly, before we move on to, uh, the poll and our last question?

Yeah, it's interesting. The third paragraph, it says, "Those who denied that they were or had been Christians, when they invoked the gods (plural gods), so it could be anything, in words dictated by me, offered prayer with incense and wine to your image, which I ordered to be brought for this purpose, together with the statues of the gods. More of a cursed Christ, none of which those who really were Christians, it is said, can be forced to do. These, I thought, should be discharged. Others named by informers declared that they were Christians, but then denied it, asserting that they had been, but had ceased some there, some three years before, others many years, some as many as 20 years, 25 years, sorry. They all worshiped your image and the statues of the gods and cursed Christ." At the bottom, when it talks about, uh, Trajan to Pliny, he says here, "You observe proper procedure, my dear Pliny, in sifting the cases of those who had been denounced to you as Christians. For it is possible to lay down any general rule to serve as a kind of fixed standard. They are not to be sought off. If they are denounced and proved guilty, they are to be punished. With this revelation that whoever denies that he is a Christian and really proves that, is by worshiping our gods, even though he was under suspicion in the past, shall obtain a pardon through repentance." My point here is, would ask, there is no, there is no doubt this is talking about Christians following Christ Jesus back in the day. All right, well, thank you so much there, Kelly, for, uh, giving your final thoughts there on that question. And thank you so much, Even Lord, uh, and all of the super chatters, uh, for checking in on our, our speakers and checking in on me as well. I, you know, appreciate that. Uh, Even Lord, that's very sweet of you to, uh, say that. So, uh, let's, uh, check in on the poll. So, did Jesus rise from the dead? All right, so, I, before I read this out, uh, I'm going to put up a poll that will really, really get our speakers sweating. Um, Jaren, uh, I spell your name, J-R-A-N. How do you spell? J-A-A-R-O-N. J-A-A-R-O-N. R-O, just like Aaron with a J. Jen, love it. All right, awesome. Thank you so much for that. So, I will read our, uh, chat. And then this will really get you guys where all that. So, did Jesus rise from the dead? 45% said yes. 32% said no. 11% said Jesus existed but did not rise. And then 10% said, "I don't believe Jesus existed." So, um, interesting. Yeah, I think I thought it was interesting. But at the end of the day, I guess, you know, you can read that one more time, Ryan. Just read one more time. Yeah, sure. I mean, you can kind of skew the results, I guess, because you can kind of add the, the, uh, the 21% of that 41, uh, the, uh, the 32%. But, um, ultimately, it's, did Jesus rise from the dead? 45% said yes, Jesus rose from the dead. 32% said no. Then Jesus existed but did not rise, said, uh, that was 11% of our audience. So, existed but did not rise from the dead. And then straight up, don't believe Jesus existed, was 10%. So, uh, if we, if we add the, uh, the 21 to the 32, then it would be, you know, uh, what, 53 to 45 for did not rise from the dead. Because those people don't believe that Jesus existed, and they also don't believe that he rose from the dead. So, we can kind of square that out, uh, and say that the no would have won. But that's just due to my poor pollmanship. So, for the fun of it, we're going to do, who was the most compelling speaker tonight? Matt, Jaren, Charles, or Kelly? That is in our live chat. So, you can let us know who your favorite speaker was tonight, who you found the most compelling. I should say, you know, your favorite speaker might be something else, but who really, uh, who really got your goat and said, "Oh, man, yeah, I align with what they got, what they have to say." Stephen Johnson says, "Ryan, they mod. Why does the panel think of the parallels between Christianity and earlier religions? The suffering savior, resurrection, holidays, rituals, myth, etc." So, uh, yeah, I, uh, I'll start. Um, yeah, it's kind of difficult because, I mean, there could be a lot of thoughts around the panel on this one. Um, yeah, Kelly, I'll get, I'll get you to start us on this one, if you don't mind. So, what are your thoughts on other, uh, religions that might have parallels to Christianity? I'm sure you've heard some, uh, objections from, uh, those pesky atheists online. So, you let me know what you, uh, to say. Did you read it one more time? You read it one more time, clearing. Yeah, no worries. What does the panel think of the parallels between Christianity and earlier religions? Right? Yeah. Well, that's, to me, that's not a surprise. Uh, the reason why is, now, of course, I'm going to be speaking as a Christian now, more of a just a Christian-based, Bible-based, that. So, it's going to be just speaking from that point of view. So, some people completely disregard what I'm about to say. But it's no surprise to me if the Old Testament is true and if the New Testament is true. That being said, that the God does exist, that there is an actual enemy, there is an actual devil. And I know this is all supernatural, some people I know. But, um, just saying, if this is true, which I believe to be true, it doesn't surprise me because the Old Testament, even with Moses and Pharaoh, Pharaoh had sorcerers, he had magicians that were trying to copycat the miracles that God was doing through Moses with during the, that time in that book of Exodus that we see, right? So, it's no surprise. We see throughout the Old Testament times, false prophets speaking in the name of God. We see them being called out in, and even, and being shown to be that. So, if the Bible is true in the sense that there was this coming one known as the Messiah, meaning that this, this anointed one who was going to be crucified, according to the teaches, sorry, I'm sorry, let me finish my statement here. And according to what the New Testament teaches, that both these working together, it's not a surprise to me that there would be counterfeits prior, trying to confuse people and lead people astray to make people think that Christianity isn't really that relevant when there's other religions trying to do this prior and even after. It doesn't surprise me at all.

All right, thank you so much, Kelly. Sorry to cut you off there. This is kind of a question for everybody. So, let's hand it over to you, Jaren. Uh, what do you think of the parallels between Christianity and earlier religions? Uh, you know, there's a bit of a loaded part of the question here. But they also say the suffering savior, savior, resurrection, holidays, rituals, myth, etc. So, parallels, go ahead there, Jaren. So, there was a film that came out, uh, earlier years ago, um, when I was in high school, I believe, middle school, high school, called Zeitgeist. And, um, it pointed out a whole bunch of different connections with Jesus and stuff like that with like Osiris and Horus and all these different things. And a lot of it doesn't really line up. A lot of it isn't really from, it's not really real things, uh, that were said to be, uh, from Osiris or Horus and stuff like that. And it mentions things like December 25th is the birth date for Jesus, when that's not a biblical concept in the first place. So, it just kind of silly to make a ton of these connections unless we know for certain that the prior religions had them. But we have, uh, the Lord's Supper, that was, uh, by Justin Martyr. He would mention that that's something that was already around. Uh, the stories of Jesus have him walking on water. Orion did that. Uh, even the healing of a lame man at the pool of Bethesda. In specific, the pool of Bethesda was actually found, and it's part of an inscription, which is a temple to Ephesus. So, very clearly, like the cult of Ephesus being around for hundreds of years prior to Christianity. Uh, very clearly, there's going to be a lot of connections because it's like a, it's like a superhero trope. If I asked you to come up with a superhero, you would probably come up with some things that your superhero is able to do that would be similar to some other superheroes. It's just certain tropes for a savior or a demigod kind of mythological figure. I don't know. I feel super all on my own here. No, just, you ever seen that movie, The Blanket Man, or The Blank Man, who had no superpowers? Well, I will ask and, uh, hand it over to you, Charles, before I hand it to you, Matt, with the same question. Was it not the, is it the Kelts or the Druids that had put, uh, the lights in the trees and did the whole, uh, St. Nicholas ceremony? I can't remember. Somebody really like went hardcore on it last year, and it's, it's, it's in my ADHD year and not the other, I swear. So, Charles, if you, if you know anything about that, I mean, sure, I'll make some commentary, but you can also let us know. Um, you were also shaking your head about the, uh, the date there for Christmas. But, uh, yeah, so your thoughts about parallels between Christianity and, uh, possible earlier religions, let's hear what you have to say there, Charles.

Yeah, so, uh, no, I appreciate what everybody said, and I agree. It's, it's not nearly as many as, uh, as proposed. Um, they're, they're not like, they say there's a whole list of them, and there's only like two or three that even correlate. Um, but I think defeating death is something that's common with humanity. I mean, it's obvious we all die, we all move on. It's something that is not odd for the other religions to want. I think what really it comes down to is when the Bible dictates Jesus' resurrection, and it all makes sense, it all correlates with the Old Testament, which in itself is evidence. Um, and I think that the evidence does point to the resurrection, and that's what's important. Lots of people can make a claim, but who can back up the claim? I think that's what, what matters. Um, and like, uh, Jaren said, um, there were other healings. I mean, when Jesus healed, he said, uh, he said, "Go, give a testimony of your healing as dictated law to Moses." So, we know people were healed. Um, healings were a thing that wasn't specific to Jesus. Um, but I think that the biblical prophecies and the evidence that point to the resurrected Jesus is what makes Jesus separate from these other, uh, supposed people. That's my opinion. All right, I'll have to look this up on my own time. I don't know. I don't know about the whole Christmas question you guys brought up, but I'll hand it over to you, Matt, uh, if you have any thoughts on my question, uh, 'cause I was just kind of pondering here, and, uh, and maybe also, uh, of course, the more importantly, uh, our super chatter's question about the parallels of religion and Christianity. Yeah, I don't remember exactly, but I do think it was a Druidic practice that the concept of like a Christmas tree, where you decorate the tree, comes from. But I don't remember exactly. I know what you're talking about, but it's one of those I'd have to look up too. Um, so, yeah, on the broad us, on all of it, I'm just so sad. She's gonna, she's gonna kick my butt. I'm going to show her this segment in the morning. She's going to be like, "You all suck." Anyway, go ahead. But, um, on the super chat question, uh, Jaren mentioned Justin Martyr points out that, um, rituals like, uh, the communal meal, Lord's Supper, Justin Martyr says, um, that Satan influenced earlier religions to have this. And it's kind of like what Kelly was saying about Moses. Um, Moses' story there. I think we all agree that a lot of the dates were added later, um, and adopted from other religions when the Catholic Church was kind of establishing its holidays and things like that. I saw everybody nodding on that. Um, but there are a lot of other religions that we can look at. The Hepsterian, for example, are actually mentioned in Acts 16, more or less indirectly. Their God is, um, and the Hepsterian were an offshoot, kind of a Jewish mystery cult. They had a lot of similar practices. And exactly when they were around, it's debated when they start, but they were around in, you know, times of early Christianity. Um, even in the book of Acts. But, yeah, um, more or less, what everybody else, or at least some of them, are saying is that, you know, resurrection and all these other things are common themes. Doesn't necessarily mean it's a direct, uh, steal from it, but a lot of the principles and concepts did exist ahead of time.

All right, well, thank you so much to all of our panel and Matt for closing out that question there. That was the final question that we have. Actually, we have one last question that I pulled out of the chat. But I will say, you guys don't have to feel too bad. You know, Jehovah's Witnesses don't generally come into these spaces. So, of course, they are armed with all the information as to why not to celebrate Christmas and why it is a bad, evil thing. So, you know, she had a lot of that intel. I don't think there's many holidays beyond anniversaries that, uh, they tend to celebrate. So, actually, they don't celebrate any holidays at all. I thought they did wedding anniversaries. Well, that's not technically a holiday holiday. That's, that's more of a family thing. So, they'll, they'll celebrate that. But no, no holidays, Thanksgiving, Valentine's, no birthday. But when the first, no birthday. But when the first baby was born, I thought the angels wept. What was, what's going on with that? I thought a glorious thing. It was a glorious thing. I thought it was supposed to be. Yeah, I thought it was supposed to be a great thing. Right? No, I, I have a lot. You'd be actually surprised. You mentioned quickly, um, on my channel, I've had, uh, I probably, I do live debates on my channel too, and do open mic as well on my channel. Mhm. So, I've had probably over the last couple of years, probably 10 different Jehovah's Witnesses actually come on my channel, surprisingly, which they normally won't. Uh, a couple of them would probably be classified as active. May, most easier to see. Most of them are inactive. So, if you know what I'm talking about by inactive, they can kind of slightly get away with it. But, uh, the fact that they'd be willing to come on publicly is pretty impressive. So, hey, you never know, you might get one that might want to come on here one day, who knows? That would be fantastic, honestly. Uh, what you need to get is an Amish person on here. I'll lose that one, man. I'm not even going to try to debate that guy. They're too nice. Okay. Oh, man. I want to make so many jokes. Stop, Jaren. You're just a. There's so many jokes. I people like to be polite. Oh, my. Now, all right. Luana L says, "Modern day debate question for the atheists. Most scholars today believe Jesus' disciples saw and conversated with something they believe was Jesus. What do you believe they saw and talked with? And don't say it was a burning bush. That was, that was, oh, that's taken. Okay. That was already. That's been used." Hunga, there we go. You can blame me for that one. There you go. Oh, man. All right. Go ahead. Will never die. I'll go quick. Going to let Jaren answer. But I don't think those people existed. So, I think this whole story was made up. So, it's just, you know, characters in a story. It's Harry Potter talking to Ron Weasley. So, Jen, I would say that there are, um, reasons why certain names are used in the Gospels, certain ones, most notably the, the inner circle, there with Jesus, that they were probably the names of people who were influential at some point in the evolution of Christianity, uh, during the early second century. But other than that, again, the, the stories themselves are just historical fiction at best. So, yeah, I, I would, I would say that for the most part, Matthew, I agree with him there, that these people did not converse with, with Jesus or anything like that. It's just part of the, part of the particular story.

All right, you got it. No more corny jokes out of me. Let's get right into those outro statements. I really appreciate the panel. Yeah, do we get the, sorry, do we get to respond to that or no? Uh, well, I mean, if you guys want to keep it going, honestly, I just want to make a comment on what he just said because I think it's this kind of defines this debate. Just, just briefly. I'll be very quick. Yeah, I actually, I was, I was pushing things for you. Nobody else has said that they have a time restriction, so you take all the time you want. Kelly. Yeah, no, well, yeah, I was just trying to go with the perimeters of what we said earlier. No worries. Um, respect for these nice guys. I mean, what they both have just basically said, they don't believe that these disciples really existed, these characters in the Bible really existed. Yet, what we see early on are people like Polycarp, people like Ignatius, people like Clement, people like Papias, who actually, Papias and Polycarp and Ignatius actually claim in their writings to have seen John and Matthew. They're disciples of these guys. So, then you have to say that these guys are all lying. Then you have to say this, this whole ripple effect. And so, I think most people have more common sense than that, that think that these are actually fictional people. You can disbelieve the claims of Christianity, you can disbelieve the crucifixion, disbelieve even the resurrection. But to go so far as to actually think that these guys didn't even exist, much less Jesus, I think this debate right there just shows the difference of the two sides right there.

All right, any thoughts, Charles, before I go to those outros? Yeah, so I just want to say, I mean, in the first century, we see, you know, the Jews, uh, and the Romans alike, they, they were trying to get rid of these people. They had so many motives to discredit, um, this story. There should have been countless people coming out through the ages screaming from the rooftops that this is fake, this is all false, these people weren't real. They had all the motives in the world, but that's not the case. That's not what happened. And what these, uh, kind gentlemen are doing is basically just trying to take Jesus out of the picture to say that he wasn't really there. But the history is kind of against them on that side because we would have more writing saying this is a bunch of lies, um, than than anything you would think, right? If this was all just a big hoax made up. So. All right, let's close out our speakers so that they can get mosy and back into their own spaces and enjoy their own vices. So, uh, let's, uh, let's hand it over to, I do this in the reverse order. So, I'm going to give it over to you, Matt. I'm going to put you on the spot, but it's been an honor. Thank you so much for letting me host you for your debate debut, from the sounds of things, here in the, the, the wide, the open-wide world net, if you will. Honestly, it's been a pleasure. Really, it has. So, uh, thank you guys for your amicability. And, uh, Matt, I'll give you a minute to give your closing thoughts. Yeah, cool. Six minutes. Sorry, didn't we have six minutes to close? You want? Well, talk fast, Matt. You want six minutes? Yeah, yeah, you, you get. Wasn't that agreed upon? Yeah, I got the email here. You got, you had six minutes closing person. Let's do that then. That's okay. Could we clarify really fast? So, we had had Jaren do the intro, and then I was going to do the closing. Six minutes is that okay? Or do we want to give Jaren? We can, you know, no, that's fine. I, I'm just doing my regular format, but, uh, yeah, uh, this is because I asked you guys earlier about the, about tomorrow's format, which is going to be a little bit more restrictive. So, uh, yeah, definitely, if you haven't hit the notification bell, no, no, no, don't worry. We got, we'll do three minutes each. That's what we have in our email. I just, I was confused. Don't worry about me. Oh, that's six seconds. That is not gonna do. You want six seconds? There you go. Six seconds. You just get to just make a noise and hopefully people can slow it down. All right, six minutes on the floor, Matt. It's yours.

All right, cool. Well, thank you to everybody here. I had a lot of fun. Um, looking forward to doing something again together, hopefully. Uh, really fast, we're just going to go over it. There's no reliable evidence. We have, uh, pretty high standards of what counts for historical claims. We went over that in the beginning. Uh, the claims themselves either come from anonymous Christian sources. All of the Gospels are anonymous. And really, in short, the question is, did Jesus rise from the dead? Is kind of like, does the Tooth Fairy have wings, or does Santa Claus have a flying sleigh? You have to grant these stories themselves as information. The claims have, as themselves, have to become evidence for you to consider it. And then you, you don't do that in historical situations. So, the reliability of the New Testament, P52, our oldest fragment, is now being dated by the John Rylands Library, which holds it, around the, uh, 200s now. So, there are no Christian references, non-Christian references outside of, you know, the New Testament about Christian scripture until 165 in Lucian with Lucian of Samosata, who claims it was edited and written during his lifetime by a charlatan. Um, there's no Christian references to Peter, Paul, uh, other people until Clement, Ignatius, or maybe Marcion. We can go into the datings on that. Um, and the internal evidence points towards Marcion publishing the first New Testament. So, we, I mentioned earlier, Luke is out of order. The reason Luke is out of order is because Luke itself is taken from the Gospel that Marcion published. And you can see here on the screen, in Luke 4:23, uh, Jesus quotes the crowd more or less, saying, "Do here in your hometown what you, we heard you did in Capernaum." But in this story, if you read all of Luke up to that point, he's never been to Capernaum, nor has he done any signs or miracles. In verse 31, he goes down there, and we see him, you know, in Capernaum doing these things. And in Marcion's Gospel, which Tertullian attests to, he gives us a verse-by-verse breakdown. Jesus descends into, uh, Capernaum first from the sky, and then afterward starts doing signs, and then goes to his hometown, and then they say that line. We see in Luke 1:1-4 that this is more or less what we're being told told by the editor himself, that these were handed down. I'm not an eyewitness. I'm using it from other people. I'm making an orderly account. And most excellent Theophilus is the, uh, person who's receiving this text. So, the only known Christian Theophilus, any time up through the 300s, is the office of Antioch, Bishop of, uh, Antioch, obviously from 169 to 183. If Marcion's Gospel had come out in the 140s, like we know from the Christians themselves, and Luke is actually an edit of it, it would make sense that it was obviously then edited after 140 to be sent to the office of Antioch, who was a convert from Christianity. So, or to Christian, or to, yeah, to Christianity. Yeah, right. Um, so here we see again, the stylometric analysis on the side there. We can see that the author of Acts wrote 1-4. And remember, Marcion's Gospel starts at around chapter 4:31. Um, and then the end is a little edited. There's new resurrection appearances, things like that. It explains why Luke is out of order. Um, you can see over here that more or less, it's those chapters that show up with Acts, and the rest show up as a different author. We see the same thing. You know, Paul and Peter's letters aren't all by the same authors. You would think that's pretty well accepted. I, I think Kelly had mentioned Bart Ehrman. Bart Ehrman is very strong in his statements that first and second Peter one are not by the same author. Two, not by Peter, because Peter is in Acts claimed to be illiterate. Um, and it's not a matter of scribes. Um, so, in short, the New Testament is a second-century product. And, and that means if it's a second-century product, we have no evidence even written for those events during the time they happened, much less the resurrection, which is again, like a miraculous one. Uh, going into actual claims of eyewitnesses. Paul was never an eyewitness to the physical appearances unless you consider his vision a physical appearance. He seemed to consider it that way. He puts the others on par, like James and Peter, who are said to have seen Jesus. Paul puts them on par with his vision way after Jesus has left the Earth, according to the story. We don't even get names for the Gospels until the 180s, unless you include, uh, Papias. But then Papias has all kinds of problems because Papias says that the Gospel of Matthew is originally written in Hebrew, but it's very clear that it was originally written in Greek. Um, there's no reliable evidence for the resurrection to be found in the New Testament, again, not only for these reasons, but because that's more or less citing the claim itself as evidence. So, here's our proposed timeline. It does include, you can see the second bullet point, the encounter of Pliny meeting the Christians for the first time. Why is this the first time we get a Roman historian mentioning, or a Roman person mentioning this in Roman documents? It's because it's a late development. It's much like the Hepsterian cult that was around at the same time. We get our first quotes of the Gospels, more or less, from Justin Martyr, and he, he actually says something along the lines of "Gospel." And then we get our first full inscription, name of Jesus, the first time Jesus' name is actually spelled out, and it's not using abbreviations or nomina sacra, is the D'Ali inscription, which is again in Syria. It's in 318. It actually gives the date itself, so we don't have to rely on, you know, carbon dating and things like that. There are other, um, inscriptions that have what are called nomina sacra, the abbreviations, more or less. And again, here is our suggested reading list. We don't claim that these people agree exactly with us, but all pretty much all of these, as far as I'm aware, date the New Testament to the second century. And again, if the New Testament is in the second century, that moves the whole timeline around. And I mean, it's just really problematic. You see verses like 1 Timothy 6:20, uh, 2 Timothy 4:10, 9-10, the Luke section we mentioned, there's a verse in Matthew that's directly taken from Marcion's Gospel. All of this shows, uh, much more shows that the second century, and that these are added to after Marcion, meaning everything comes a hundred years after Jesus would have resurrected. All claims for Jesus' resurrection come at least a hundred years afterwards, and they're from clearly edited and undatable sources. Thank you.

All right, well, thank you so much, Matt. And from Christ before Jesus, as they let you know, they have written a book. And if you guys want to send us a link to, uh, where you're selling that book, uh, we will put that in the live description. Uh, there's no problem with that. Uh, if anybody else has anything else they want, uh, us to put in our description as well, that's no problem. So, Kelly, I'm going to hand you the three minutes on the floor first for your side. So, uh, uh, three minutes, your thoughts on the discussion and night, and where everybody can find you. Oh, we have another. Can I share there real quick? You sure can. Uh, let me just get the timer up here. So, uh, when you're ready, I'll get it started. Thank you so much, Kelly, for being here. Appreciate it. So, I like to remind the audience, and kindly, what Matt has just shared has been debunked in this debate. As I said earlier, Bart Ehrman is not a Christian. He openly acknowledges what's known as the Didache. That this was something early on, latter first century or early second century, roughly around 110 or so AD. Talks about the Creed that Pliny references earlier, clearly something that would have been in circulation. As I demonstrated earlier, I demonstrated from different writers. I went through, you can go through the list of early church leaders, and then I just gave just two. And we look at the list here of all the people that are, that all the references that are here, multiple references, not just one, multiple references. This proves and demonstrates what I've been sharing the whole time, that there were true people, Matthew, Mark, Peter, Paul, living, real people, historically. There were real accounts in circulation prior to the Didache, prior to what we see. What these guys have been claiming, respectfully, their book is going to give you wrong information. So, what we can see here, we see 21 of the 27 books listed. Only what I referenced, only what I referenced. It's amazing. This, this demonstrates. You can look at this. You can look this up yourself. It doesn't take a lot. You can just do a search. Um, the, the letter of Polycarp to the Philippians, or, uh, Clement to the Corinthians, or Didache. Look it up. Go check it out yourself. It's not that hard. So, what I've shared tonight, which I believe is evidence pointing to the resurrection. Right? We can't prove, right, that, uh, creation happened in six days because we can't go back in time. I can't prove creation. If we were doing a debate on creation, that's not my forte. But I can't also demonstrate physical, tangible evidence of Jesus, why? Because he was resurrected and taken away. If there was any evidence against the Christian faith, you have to think logically, friends. Don't you think the Jewish people would have found something? The Romans? But would have found something? Something would have been written somewhere against this, demonstrating that this was a fraud. Not only that, as I said earlier, this is the worst marketing scheme ever from Christians to go around saying that Jesus was crucified and resurrected. It was something of shame. It was something that would challenge you with your family, your friends, your work, etc. So, there's a lot of evidence. These people went and died for their faith. Who would go? Would you willingly go and give a glass of poison to your friend, brand saying, "This is orange juice. It's going to make your life better"? No, you would never do that. Nobody in the right mind would go around saying these things. These things are true and real. So, I say, as my seconds are wrapping up here, I appreciate it. Be honest. Be open. Be sincere. At least look at the facts. That is time. Check it out for yourself. See what it says.

All right, well, thank you so much, Matt, Jaren, and Kelly, for your closing statements. Uh, we're going to kick it over to Charles, who's been here at Modern Day Debate many times. We appreciate your loyalty to Modern Day Debate and coming back here and, uh, also allowing me to host you. You know, I enjoy your company. And after a show chat, which, uh, honestly, if we monetized, you know, I think these people would dig at that. We'll, we'll just go over to your channel there, Charles, when you make one and have some discussion. All right, uh, so I'm going to ask you to unmute yourself. And I will also say, just before you do your closing statement right now, our "Who was the most compelling speaker?" poll, we have 17% for Matt, 33% for Jaren, 12% for Charles, and in the lead, we have 38% for Kelly. So, Kelly. So, this is once again, just for fun. But yes, I, you, I'm, I'm just joking. I'm just, it's, you could take a slight bow. Yes. I, to be honest with you, I am actually shocked. To be shocked. I'm shocked. Well, this is representative of who, uh, tuned in tonight. So, you know, definitely check into, uh, the comments afterwards, and I'm sure there'll be all kinds of people that'll be challenging you. I get that at my channel all the time. So, yeah, I'm used to that. No worries. Uh, that's what Modern Day Debate is all about. So, I should say, a boot. It comes, it comes out of me every once in a while. But a boot comes out of you. It's painful. Oh, man. You wouldn't believe. Pure, pure leather, too. Anyways, they give me a lot for it. At the, you, the Bible says humor is good for the bone. So, there you go. There you go. So, oh, man, I was gonna make an even worse joke from there, but I just, I just don't think it's gonna work. It's just gonna fly worse for the bone, anyway. Anyways, Charles, go ahead. You got the last. Jaren, you make that face. Yeah, maybe I was talking about that joke was going. Anyways, go ahead there, Charles. You got three minutes coming out. Yeah, that's for sure. Yeah, it's coming out. Yeah. All right, all right. I just want to say thank you to the gentlemen. Thank you to Kelly. Modern Day Debate. I had a lot of fun. Um, I mean, there was a lot of stuff said in that closing statement, obviously. I don't agree with it. Um, there's a lot to go into. Um, and I think I think a lot of it is speculation. Like, for instance, in 37 AD, Josephus mentions in 370, Theophilus, the brother of Jonathan, took over the high priesthood when Tiberius died. Is it more likely that this era may be the Theophilus they're referring to, or a guy came 200 years later? I think a lot of their case is speculation. Um, when there's much better answers for what we have. Um, but I think the Gospel time frames always add up, and I think it's because it's truth. And I think that the evidence for the, the resurrection is overwhelming. And again, thank you, everybody. I had a lot of fun. I really appreciate it.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Charles. I appreciate hanging out with you, my Canadian brother. Yeah, you know, you're special to me because of all the great chats we've had afterwards. But I look forward to always making relationships with all of our speakers. Sometimes people just jet right after, and that's totally fine. You know, we can, we can talk after, you know, but that's, you know, sometimes we get into some long format chat. I don't want to tell you about some other, uh, speakers that I've held hostage long term. But I'm not going to hold our, uh, our audience hostage long term. I will let you know, uh, for the fun of it, that when I add up the votes, between Kelly and Charles and Jaren and Matt, we got 50% pretty much on both sides. So, spit. But as for the majority, you did still have that majority poll there for you, Kelly. So, a lot of people like electoral votes for like the United States presidency. You got the popular vote, and then you get the electoral votes. Well, that's crazy. Well, run for president after this. Well, I was going to say, yeah, a lot of people that were tuning in tonight, you know, who align with your side, obviously felt very strongly with, and resonated with what you were putting down there. So, yeah, definitely, like I say, you can, uh, you can take that home with you. But we are going to close it out, everybody. And, uh, thank you, everybody, for your kind super chats. Not to out of the whack tonight. That's great. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We've seen some things. Congo all the way. Congo all the way. Get through. All right, well, thank you, fellas. And, uh, yeah, uh, once again, if you haven't already, hit the notification bell. We do have an imperson event event that did happen. So, if you haven't seen that, go back and check that out. It was a lot of fun. And we are going to be back tomorrow night. I know there's not an event up, but just get yourselves ready. It's gonna happen any second now. I'll have to text James. I'll text James and say, "Hey, do you have that thumbnail ready?" And I don't know if it's ready, but we'll, we'll find out. We'll get it up for you. Live chat, stay tuned, and we'll see you all next time. Take care. Thanks, panel.