Rabbi Tovia Singer and Dr. Dale Tuggy: A Conversation about Judaism and Christianity

[Music] Rabbi Tovia Singer is the founder and director of Outreach Judaism, an international organization dedicated to counter countering the efforts of fundamentalist Christian groups and cults who specifically target Jews for conversion. You can learn more about his or this organization and Rabbi Singer's books and lectures and debates at outreachjudaism.org. And before we get started, I'd also like to thank Tom and Daniel with apostolicintelligence for setting up this conversation. You can find them at apostolicinttelligence.org. And you can find both Rabbi Singer's uh videos and some of Apostolic Intelligence's videos all over YouTube. Uh especially Rabbi Singer. So, Rabbi Singer, thanks for joining me today.

>> Well, thank you, doctor. Thank you for joining me.

>> Did you have a good Shabbat with your family today?

>> Oh, yeah, of course. You know, Shabbat and not just Israel, but in Jerusalem is very, very special. Um, thousands of people gather at the Western Wall Friday night, people from all over the world and pray together and in a place that uh Jews and Christians regard as the holiest place where most of the Bible was preached. So you can practice um Shabbat or Judaism or or you can practice your faith anywhere in the world, but you can only live it here. So it's very very special.

>> Now you live in Jerusalem now. You were in I believe Indonesia for a while.

>> Yeah. Yeah. How

>> But you're a New Yorker originally. How did you end up in Indonesia and then how did you end up in Jerusalem from there? that you're a real globe trotder it seems like.

>> Right. So yeah, you it's hard to tell from my British accent, but that I'm originally from Brooklyn. Um um

>> never would have guessed.

>> No, it's very hard. Most people put me in Louisiana and I have to say, "No, you got it wrong." But um so right so there was a a very big issue for in Indonesia which is the fourth largest country in the world. Um there was a very small Jewish community in is in the largest Muslim country in the world. But there are also about oh I don't know 35 million Christians in in Indonesia that had engaged in evangelizing Jews since World War II since Indonesia's independence. So I was asked to come to Indonesia and really answer address questions pressing questions that Jewish people had about their faith. And I spent five years there exactly. And then I thought it would be a really good idea for me to be in the Holy Land. So I my plane landed on June 3rd, 2019. And um it's just really

Have you ever been here?

>> No, I haven't. I would love to someday visit Jerusalem.

>> Yes, definitely. I definitely recommend it.

>> Yeah. So it's very very special. I have a good friend, Bill Schlaggel, who used to um have students come over there from a college in California. He lived there in Israel for 30 years. And uh he's actually the author of a big uh Bible satellite Bible atlas that shows all of the sites uh that we that we can still identify. And uh he's he's told me all kinds of interesting things about it. So yeah, someday maybe I'll have that privilege. Uh, Rabbi Singer, what was it like growing up as an Orthodox Jew in Brooklyn?

Um, so Brooklyn in the 60s and 70s was, you know, very highly gentrified area. You had your Jewish neighborhood and then you had says Burough Park and then you had, you know, Irish Italian neighborhood and you didn't mix with people who weren't Jewish. Then you had the Latino area, Puerto Rican. They didn't like Jews. It was very striking. I was born 15 years after the Holocaust. My parents were born in the United States because my grandparents were came to America before the Holocaust. Not everybody, but almost every uh everyone in my grandfather's family uh was murdered by the Germans in 1944 when Hungarian jewelry was destroyed and my grandmother most of the so it was very that seeing people with numbers on their arm was ubiquous. um knowing that they hate you for a reason that just didn't make any sense at all was front and center. That was the most prominent memory of growing up is that that uh Christians for some reason hate me. And I and I was very aware that Jews only perished during World War II in Christian countries. And and there was with one exception, the cleaning lady, her name was Sally. She's a black woman. She was a lovely woman, but every non-Jew was a Christian and every and they all hated me and they let me know it. So, we always cross the street to other side.

>> And I didn't understand why. Like I I had never done anything to them. I didn't understand why they um said that I killed Jesus. I it just the whole thing just made no sense to me. But I knew that Christians really were to be avoided. And when I had So that was my world as a as a youngster in Brooklyn, it was us and them. and they and and then when I discovered that there was an effort to evangelize Jews, I thought that was the most outrageous thing in the world. Like you didn't do enough. So that blew my mind away and that um triggered my curiosity to read Christian literature and to be able to respond to the very serious charges that Christians were making like Jews for Jesus and so on and I you know went to rabbitical school but then I happened upon Christians who are not from New York and they were really nice people. So I started like speaking about it but I encountered evangelical Christians who were nothing like the Christians I grew up with who were had a great affinity for Jewish people and Israel and and they were just very nice people. And when that happened it just blew my mind away and I had to then rethink everything that I had thought. I had to then re-examine my whole view of Christians and how they felt about Jewish people. So that was the most um most germanine to our conversation, but that was the mo the memory that I grew up with that was ubiquitous all around me. But it was rediscovering uh Christians who were really nice people who I oh I guess there's something wrong with Brooklyn. It wasn't just Christians in general.

>> Yeah. Anti-semitism never made any sense to me. Uh the churches I was always a part of just kind of thought Jews were Jesus's tribe and like why would anybody not like them? Like you should like them more. Um but I remember interviewing an acquaintance of mine, Brian Lefto, who's now a well-known Christian philosopher at Oxford. He grew up Jewish in in New York City, and he told me about getting beat up after Easter mass. The kids come out like you kill Jesus. It this this is mindboggling to me. Uh, I'm glad you survived. I mean, isn't it human nature like when you think people hate you, you just kind of start reflecting it back? Well, I don't like you guys either.

>> But then I've heard you talk about this before and it seems like at a certain point you you turned a corner um and decided, "No, I love these people. I don't hate them."

>> Right. So, I thought they were insane. Frank, I didn't hate them. I just thought they were crazy. Uh-huh.

>> I I

>> cuz you had anything to them, so why

>> it just didn't make sense. It was just insane to say that I killed Jesus. I wasn't in the neighborhood at the time. It just It just It

>> It wasn't like they misapprehended or someone had a bad experience with their accountant and they're taking it out on me. It was just made no sense to me. However, I should say this. I I would be remiss if I didn't say this and that is all the church fathers hated Jews. It was not that I was, you know, growing up in some anomaly. When you go back to the Petristic period, none of them whether it was early church fathers like Ignatius or Erenus or Tertullian, Athanasius, that's already fourth century for they they all had the most horrible Chrysum was a crazy anti-semite and um the fathers of the reformation u Luther was a a verent anti-semite. Um, John Wickliffe was he had some very unflattering things to say about Jews, but it wasn't as outrageous as Luther. Calvin didn't care for Jews. So, it was it was I realized it was more complic there's something going on here that there because there there were no church fathers that had anything positive to say about Jews. So I had to figure out what is happening here, what's going on in the literature. It is it is it wasn't just a Brooklyn issue because as it turns out the view of the reformers were, you know, were all booster. They all were. It's not that they just didn't have a favorable view of Jews. It was something really outrageous and it was very very difficult for me to put that all together. But I realized that there was so many wonderful Christians that I had met that were just lovely people. I will say this to you that you're a Unitarian and my relationship with Unitarians and Criselfians who are Unitarians is very very different. The whole mood whenever I'm engaging with the Unitarian is is very very different. uh doesn't mean there are wonderful trinitarians out there don't get me wrong but with the unarian there's a lot of tension that's not there because in my you know in my in the view of the Jewish mind they get it yeah the there is an anti-semitism that's part of smallc Catholic tradition and we all reject it um I see it as going on kind of a sliding scale like when I read Justin Martyr I think he's rather hard on the Jews but I don't think he's a full-blown anti-semite but yeah by the time you get into the 300s It gets kind of ridiculous, especially by the end of the 300s. And I've seen quotes from Martin Luther that I dare I would not dare repeat on a podcast or on YouTube. He's just he's obscene. He's over the top about the Jews.

>> All right.

>> Yeah. So, we we reject it um like we reject other later developments. Um, we don't we don't see the New Testament as supporting any kind of, you know, permanent blame for the Jews, uh, for what one generation in Jerusalem did. Um, but yeah, what what I like about a lot of your, uh, arguments that you've had with Christians is there's this kind of uh, classically Jewish philanthropic angle to it. If I can if I can make a comparison, it reminds me a little bit of one of my, you know, half of the best comedians are Jews. They they dominate this category, way above their numbers. Uh Don Rickles the insult comic, right? I love I think he's hilarious. They they would cancel him in 10 seconds today. But, you know, you look at him in 1970s like you're ugly, you're stupid, you're fat, your wife's ugly. You know, he's ba bashing the Jews and the Catholics and the blacks and the whites and everybody. And by the time you get to the end, you realize he just loves everybody. So he's just kind of ragging on everybody. He's like an equal opportunity insulter. And like uh you you get hard on the Christians at a certain point in your dialogues with them, but I never get the you know, don't tell me how to understand my scripture, but um I never feel like you you hate them or or there's just there's an element of contempt that's just not there. And it's it's refreshing. I mean, because in any to me any rational argument is a friendly argument because if it's a rational argument where you're actually trying to convince the other person and not just like butttheads or talk louder or dominate the other person. If it's a rational argument the whole thing presupposes a mutual concern for the truth. And so it's just um in a sense, it's flattering if somebody's going to even try to convince you, you know, even of something that you that's dearly held that you that you really disagree strongly about. Um, and so I really like that. I' I've seen that in a lot of your uh debates that you've done. Um, I've also seen you talk about it was a particular friendship you had uh with an evangelical guy in the 90s that

>> Yeah.

>> really kind of um

>> touched your heart in a way.

>> Yeah. He was a writer for the New York Times and he his name was Nathaniel Nash. He was killed in a plane crash over Kosovo I believe something. Um and he was an evangelical Christian. He wrote for the uh financial section, so he didn't have any influence over New York Times' coverage in the Middle East, but he was really such a beautiful person and that he he single-handedly changed my view of Christians and I realized Yeah. You see there is a difference I think because the the Jews for Jesus type what they engage in is not simply saying that the Jews are wrong but they're saying that we we as a people deliberately altered our text or we're not being straightforward about what it says in the Hebrew Bible which is shocking to us because you know orthodox Jews I mean Most synagogues in Israel, there's no English in our um in our prayer books or in our uh Bibles that we read in the synagogue. There are some because there are many Anglo. One out of seven Israelis are Anglo, but it's people just read in the original Hebrew. That's how you know when you're six, seven years old as an Orthodox Jew. You know, you can read the Hebrew Bible in its original language like a newspaper. It's very, very easy to do. So,

>> so the charge of just being mistaken is not what's being leveled against us. The missionaries going to Papua and telling the natives that they just don't know about Jesus, you know, and let me tell you about him. So, that's one thing. But for the Jew is that you deliberately you're you deliberately uh don't believe in you you're you're willfully blind. Your rabbis have altered the obvious transparent meaning and Christians are they're not bad people. I realize that they're taught this. I mean many are taught this. I I wish I knew Christians like you when I was a kid. Would I don't know what would have happened but I would have been a very different person. And so I'm very grateful for your thoughtful comments. I just to comment also on the period you know the second century like Tertulling was born in the second century and converted in the very end of second century. Ignatius um Mito. So these were all of them had horrible things to say about Jews. It wasn't Justin also but not as bad. But in the second century and 3rd century, anti-semitism had no effect on Jews because during the second century and 3rd century, Christianity was an illicit religion. Conversely, Judaism was a completely legal religion under the Roman Empire. So whatever Ignatius, who is the bishop of Antioc, said about Jews, and he said plenty about us, although I'm not convinced that his the letters uh ascribed to him are authentic,

>> uh but we'll just assume that they are. Anything he said was completely just rhetoric. It didn't mean anything to the Jew. Conversely, once Constantine converts in the end of 312, you have uh the church becomes a licit religion in 313 um and becomes eventually become in the third fourth century a preferred religion by the end the official religion. So then anti-semitism of the church fathers of that period of the period of the council na and further. That changes everything for the Jews cuz then uh if a Christian would say something about the Jews, so now it meant something because the empire now is Christian.

>> So the the consequence was staggering for us.

>> Yes. I mean early on Judaism was the bigger and older and more prestigious religion. And part of their fury would be uh Christians might show up at the synagogue so they could hear a learned rabbi talk about the Jewish scriptures and they did not appreciate the competition.

>> Later on they kind of eliminated the competition right

>> even among even the different kinds of Christians.

>> So, Rabbi Singer, as a Unitarian Christian, it seems to me like the Trinity, the deity of Christ, second person of the Trinity, this is all just a big distraction. Um, because the New Testament doesn't really teach these things. So to me, the core disagreement between us would be the same claim that's the main thesis of all four gospels, which is that Jesus is God's Messiah. And I I assume that's how you look at it. A lot of your debates have kind of focused on uh whether that is is true, right?

>> That's that's right. I mean, so there's we would completely agree that the doctrine of the trinity was a much later invention of the church and even develops much far beyond Tertullian who coins the term and it's uh a self-inflicted wound of the church from which it never recovered. In fact, I could say this that if a Christian I said this and I never no Christian ever disagreed with me. If you if a Christian says to his pastor, I'm not sure if I believe in God, his pastor will really be very helpful in saying, well, let's talk. But if you say, I believe in Jesus, but I don't believe in the Trinity, that will get you excommunicated. That will get you thrown out. Yeah, that's part of Catholic tradition to say that person is just, you know, a cancer that has to be cut out before they infect the rest of the body. You don't even argue with them,

>> which is kind of crazy if you think about it because, you know, how many decades have they spent arguing about precisely all of those things,

>> right?

>> Um before before I mean at certain point the right to argue was taken away. It was it was seized by the bishops and the emperor. But before that, you know, say in origins time, like Christians simply did argue about all of these things.

>> Sure.

>> Um,

>> even some of your uh more learned Christian opponents uh sometime if they believe in the deity of Christ and the Trinity, sometimes they're just like, "Okay, I'm just going to stick to is Jesus the Messiah?" Because that's like the really foundational issue.

>> Even Justin does this in his dialogue with Trifo. He says, uh, even if I can't prove this guy pre-existed, it is another god, another Lord, and so on. Well, at least, you know,

>> the main claim is that he's Messiah.

>> Um, so they kind of

>> I mean, Justin has his own kind of big convoluted theory on top of that, but he's willing to kind of fall back on that as well.

>> Um, it seems like another uh core disagreement I I'm sure you would agree, is about the resurrection claim. Uh, and this brings me to a topic of of your Christian opponents. Um, I I appreciate what you do. I you're you're very eloquent and um you're a very good speaker and you point out a lot of hard problems for Christians to deal with uh of various sorts. Uh but your your Christian opponents almost always drive me crazy when I'm listening to them. So sometimes they just have no idea how you're going to go about arguing this in a non-questa begging way. So they're just like, well, I don't know. I think these things, right? Which are things that you would never grant. And you know, I'm a professional philosopher. I'm like, what kind of argument is that? You know, just I think this. I know you won't grant any of it. Like what? I was at your Nashville debate and uh I did not think the Christian debater did well. He just assumed the resurrection, for instance. And you can't you can't assume that when you're debating Toby Singer. Like it's not going to just grant that.

>> Um

>> right.

>> But um I mean speaking of that, like do you have a preferred explanation for what what actually happened surrounding these resurrection claims or do you just kind of make your stand on I don't think there's enough evidence uh to believe what the Christians think.

>> Right. So as the spokesman for the Jewish people, I'm kidding, but I I so Jewish people when they at some point, you know, like if you live in the United States, you United States is a Christian country. I mean Christmas is a national holiday. Um when we discover that Christians believe at some point we find out like mommy, what do they believe? They believe that the Messiah died and rose. So the reaction of every Jew is but that has nothing to do with what the Messiah is supposed to do. That's really what's going on. So anyone regardless of whether someone agrees with us or not. Jewish children grow up, Orthodox Jewish children grow up steeped in scripture. I mean that's we're we're spending all day studying. It's very very intensive. So you're reading all these messianic prophecies that are very very clear, very transparent what is going to happen to the world. And one of the striking things is that while there are hundreds of u messianic prophecies, only maybe a dozen of them describe the Messiah himself. Very few. And he's described as someone who's a teacher who gives rebuke and judges among the nations. no miracles. There's not a a whiff of him doing King David wasn't a miracle man. Um Isaiah himself was not running around performing miracles. Neither was Jeremiah. There were some, but so there's there's

>> Moses, Elijah. Yeah. Other

>> Elijah, Alicia, yes, there were. And it's an intriguing discussion of why Alicia and Elijah in particular are performing a lot of miracles and few others are. But setting that aside, the Messiah, there's nothing about this. So that when we hear Christians say that Jesus died and rose and therefore he's a Messiah, we're going, what are you talking about? Like what's the therefore? So that somebody that in that other religions believe fantastic things is something ubiquitous. We all encounter religions around us who we we don't believe. We do not believe um that on September 21st, 1823 that Joseph Smith encountered the angel Moroni in upstate New York. I don't think either of us believe that he thought he did. That means he had some nonveritical experience that he sincerely believed. So we're there are that's in the

>> sure about that. He's

>> a well-known cat and liar and adult.

>> Right. Right. Therefore, we don't believe that he simply had an experience that he misapprehended. That means I don't think you or I believe. I definitely don't. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't believe that he really thought he encountered an angel, but he was really a con man. And therefore, we're not impressed. I don't care how many uh witnesses putly uh saw the golden plates. I don't believe any of it. It just so and the reason we reject it entirely is because it's just what they teach is so completely incompatible with what we believe in. It's just so different. You know, at least the Church of Jesus Christ, Latter Day Saints, had the they didn't call the New New Testament. They at least called the Book of Mormon. Um, so that's how we view it. So, we we look at the claim that that the Christian Messiah died and rose and we're going, well, that's not at all. So, no one's even thinking for a moment that, well, what's their evidence? Are there eyewitness? Oh, it's like that's not supposed to happen at all. It's not in the Hebrew Bible. So that's how Jews are always coming at it. And I know to Christians is very frustrating, but because we are initially only exposed to the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, and the Christian Bible claims to be a fulfillment of the Jewish scriptures, unless you you're a Marcianite, but they're not here anymore. Uh um so Christians I can see are bewildered by the Jewish unbelief but to the Jew it's like what are you talking about evidence or he's not supposed to do that there's nothing in that's like would be fantastic.

>> We're bewildered but we're not that bewildered because it seems like in the gospels Jesus has some different ideas about the Messiah job description even than his disciples had. M

>> and so I mean this comes back to my theme of it's incredibly hard to argue about this without begging the question because uh one of my Jewish I met a Jewish New Testament scholar and she told me the standard joke you know two Jews three opinions. Uh so different Jews have had different ideas now and then about about what the Messiah is supposed to be. Some just deny the whole tradition. Um but I mean clearly uh Jesus thinks that the Messiah job description is different than even his disciples are thinking at the time. So we're arguing about is this guy the M messiah? Like what do we even mean by that? It's uh

>> it's tricky. Um

>> it it is. And you know, you're talking about Matthew 16 comes to mind where you know, you know, Jesus asks his disciples, "Who do you think I am?" And he's been hanging around with them for his entire ministry. That's at the really the end of his life toward very close to the passion narrative. And and they they have they have no clue except Peter who says, "You're the Christ, the son of the living God." And and Jesus says that um flesh and blood didn't reveal this to you. Means no one could have told you that. Which means that in the view of the gospels, uh, Jesus wasn't walking around saying, "I am the Messiah." And then when he says,

>> "I quite like that." That's right. Yeah.

>> Yeah. It means they're they're they have no idea who the and he actually says in the same chapter that this is a secret. And it seems in Mark, the first half of Mark, it's a somewhat of a secret. And then when he says that I'm going to have to suffer and die and and um Peter is flabbergasted and says, "Lord, far be that from you." And Jesus says, "You get behind me." Now, if Tanakh taught that the Messiah is supposed to suffer, die, and rise, why why would Peter go, "That shouldn't happen to you. She of course you're going to have to do it." And so it it seems that that was so revolutionary. And it seems to me, I don't know if you'll agree with me, but it seems to me that when Paul speaks about a grand mystery that only he has access to, and uh the grand Ephesians 3 notably, um where, you know, Paul's saying, I have this information, and if the generation that killed Christ would have known this revelation, they would have never killed the Lord of glory. So Paul seems to be stating that he has well he definitely stating he has completely unique revelation that he can get from Jerusalem. He can get from anywhere but it seems to me that's what he's conveying that Christ crucified is his unique revelation and he's not um he's he's appealing to his revelation.

>> He is he most definitely is. Um, I mean, he talks about elsewhere that he uh consulted with the apostles like James and John and Peter, but um I mean he's he's claiming to uh he's claiming to have been called as a messenger by the risen Jesus himself. Um which is it's quite a radical claim, isn't it? Um,

>> it is,

>> but it begs the question. So that's the opening of Galatians. But it begs the question, if the Hebrew Bible clearly, transparently foretold that the Messiah was supposed to suffer, die, and rise as we're told in 1 Corinthians 15 and in Luke 24.

>> So why does he what what special revelation is he talking about? I mean, if it's as clear as the church claims to have been, then why do you need because in in those passages in in Galatians 1 and 2, he says he didn't get this from Jerusalem and he actually didn't go to Jerusalem, he went to Arabia. He was very clear, I didn't need these so-called pillars of the church.

>> Paul was very emphatic about that.

>> Yeah.

>> So, you know, to me, even after having been exposed to Christian literature,

>> I I So, that's the answer. The answer is that I am because your question is why don't I believe it? It's like why would you what would be even the basis for believing?

>> I yeah I understand why from a Jewish perspective it seems like Paul's hutzbah is off the charts.

>> Um

>> but you know I've I found a way uh Rabbi Singer there is a way to get around the problem of um begging the question.

>> And I stumbled into this because of the arguments that I usually have, right? So, the Unitarians, we have our favorite text, you know, Jesus calling the father the only true God in John 17:3, Paul calling him the one God in 1 Corinthians 8 and so on. We we we've got the ones that we love, and the trinitarians have the ones that they love, and no matter how good a Unitarian text it is, they're always going to just look at it and insist on reading it as consistent with the Trinity. And so I realized that just proof proof text wars are just kind of a total stalemate. Like they just don't go anywhere. Like it kind of rallies your troops like, "Well, here's my text. Take that." You know, and then the other guy's like, "Here's my text. Take that." You know, and he's on the majority side because he's a trinitarian. Uh so his boys are like, "Yay." You know.

>> Um but the way around it is um is by inference to the best explanation.

>> Um, so this is, you know, here's here are the facts that we're trying to explain. You know, uh, here's this explanation, here's that explanation. What would we expect to find if this one was true or if that one was true? And then, weirdly, we can a lot of times we can kind of agree on what we would expect to find.

>> Um, not always, but um, notice that that that way I put it, it explicitly says, well, let's see. If you're right, then you'd expect to see this, and if I'm right, you'd expect to see that. And so then there is no question begging.

>> Um, some of your debates I've listened to when it gets down to like the resurrection, um, it reminds me of a common thing I see. I I I like to watch those murder shows like some kind of soccer mom in America, you know, like Dine and stuff like that. I I find them interesting because of just uh, you know, humans are crazy. And uh I kind of like the detective aspect of it and a lot of it's inference to the best explanation and there's a very common scenario that I run into with these murder investigations. So um it's in cases where there's no smoking gun. Okay? So they don't they didn't catch the guy with blood in his hands. There's no knife. There's no gun. All of a sudden his ex turns up dead. And the lawyer uh for the defense always makes the same moves. He says there is no evidence that my client did this, right? Nobody saw him do it. There's no fingerprints. There's no knife. You know, there's no evidence, right? What he means is like compelling direct evidence like if you had it, it would be kind of a slam dunk impossible to refute thing.

>> But the interesting thing is um very often the guy goes down in flames and he gets convicted by by a jury of his peers. And uh the reason is sometimes even though there isn't that direct evidence when you put all the facts together it's like this is the only reasonable explanation. It just seems obviously better than any of the other explanations. You know sometimes it's just this guy had the opportunity and the motive um and his alibi is a little fishy and he told these other people these things. So um I have seen Christians and atheists uh who are philosophers argue about the resurrection in this fashion.

>> So, they I off the top of my head I couldn't tell you all the explanations. I think there's five or six of them. And then they um they they argue that well, you know, given the facts that we need to explain like this one seems more uh more reasonable. Philosophers of science um have given us criteria by which to evaluate um uh clashing explanations, competing explanations such as simplicity, fit with other things we know, um ability to explain a wider array of facts and things like that. And I've never seen your debates get down to that. Like to me, that's where I think the argument would need to go. Uh, you're pointing out stuff like who who are these eyewitnesses, you know?

>> Uh well, I mean, I would cite Paul as one of them, but um yeah, do we have, you know, it'd be nice if we knew for sure that the gospels were written by the people they said and that they were eyewitnesses. So, you're you're chipping away at the quality of the direct evidence.

>> Because eyewitness testimony is a kind of direct evidence. It's like finding a it's like finding the smoking gun or whatever, finding the killer's DNA on the body.

>> And these are these are reasonable points and and they're real.

>> You know, I would like it better if there was more direct evidence, but

>> um, if we have to render a judgment, it seems like we're thrown back on just inference to the best explanation. Does that make sense?

>> It does. But there is an elephant in the room and that is the Messiah very clearly we are told is to do things. I mean, we're not told that he's also die and rise on the third day as Luke 24:44-46 tells us, but he is supposed to rebuke the nations. Isaiah 2, the result will be very striking. Nations will put aside their implements of war. I live I am sitting 62 miles northeast of the Gaza Strip. I can assure you that war has not come to an end. Ukraine, Russia, there are some 27 other wars raging in the world that are none of those as well known. All that will come to the to a complete end. The the entire world will know about the true God of Israel. That means there'll be only one faith in the world and the in gathering of the exile. Granted, about half of all the world's Jews now live in Israel, but the other half doesn't. uh the temple will be built in Jerusalem. So those are very clear uh unamb prophecies of what the messiah is supposed to do. So if you want to form a picture I think what we always do is say what are the clear prophecies in the Hebrew scriptures that are uncontested. That means I don't even have to ask you. I know that you believe that Isaiah 2:11 are messianic. I'm sure you believe that as you do Ezekiel 37. These are clear messianic prophecies of a world that is dramatically changed. And so it's not that I don't believe Jesus the Messiah or you don't believe that Muhammad really was illiterate. It's not the negatives for the Jew. I assure you that we're going, well, here's Tanakh, which any five-year-old can read these passages. They don't need the degrees that I have or that you possess. Anyone could read Isaiah 11 and look around and realize that the Messiah is not yet here. So, that's the foundation. It's not that about a courtroom did Jesus really rise from the dead. I agree with you and I'm I'm it's so I was thinking about this today that it is true that we have so Paul an eyewitness so Paul wasn't a Christian at the time of that first Easter so none of the gospels authors claimed to be eyewitnesses Christians later came to believe that they were written by eyewitnesses but to the Jew that's like it's not even relevant where is the worldwide peace universal knowledge of God, the in gathering of the exiles. That's what he's supposed to do. That means we don't have to form a picture. If you ask the religious Jew or if I asked you, why do you believe in one God in one person and there's nothing besides one God, you just quote Deuteronomy 6:4 without blinking. You go, it's right there. You go to chapter 9:6, you alone, oh Lord. Isaiah 46:9, there is nothing besides me. You and I would rejoice together in the oneness of the Lord that we both worship.

>> Um, why?

>> Because these fa passages, we don't have to talk about smoking guns. They're just so transparent. And but you and I both would concede that there are nebulous verses in the Hebrew Bible and in the Christian Bible.

>> Yeah.

>> Which can be infer that Jesus was part of a godhead. We and we're both familiar with them, right? So why are we both unitarian lowercase uh

>> because the passages about the nature of God that he's one and one alone are so enormous so clear and the these other passages so ambiguous that we always in the course of hermeneutics we always use the clear texts to understand the ambiguous text never the other way around or else you get yourself you'll be in a Roman Catholic church, you know, praying to Mary. I mean,

>> but we're but we're back on the dueling uh job descriptions of Messiah problem now, right? Because we think Jesus was right about that and you're like, "No, come on. There's no good basis for that in scripture."

>> Uh yeah, it's hard. Everywhere we turn, we bump into a question begging point, you know, like um I mean, would you agree? Would you go this far? Like if if if it was reasonable to think or if it was the best explanation that God raised Jesus from the dead, would that move the needle uh to to maybe um giving more preference to like what he seemed to say the Messiah would do?

>> No, I mean, it's very unpersuasive any more than if you know if you were to find out that Muhammad was really illiterate and I I don't I don't think he'd be moving towards

>> he was really illiterate. That's why he spoke out and he had secretaries write it all down.

>> He only he only talked to people,

>> right? Whatever. I mean, that means you wouldn't be moved by these things because it doesn't comport. you just this just this just this just can't be because it's just something so alien to the Hebrew Bible.

>> And that's what the Messiah is. And I think what happens is that Christians are raised that Jesus loves you and he died for you and and grandpa's in heaven with Jesus. And when you grow up that way, you then have to go back to the Hebrew Bible and say, "All right, I don't have a I would like to have John 3:16 somewhere something like that in Tanakh. It's not there, but maybe we can assemble a picture so that I could hang on to that." That's what it that's the ear of the Jew. That's what it sounds like. Like, what if Hanuman really was a monkey god? with that. Well, it's just it's so incompatible with the Hebrew Bible that you know and then what could then be dismissed like what you know the Roman Catholic Church which I detest I mean I love many many Roman Catholics and I'm a deeply indebted to Raymond Brown who is I think one of the greatest New Testament scholars of the 20th second half of the 20th century but they're not you know their claims of transsubstantiation There are passages in in John 6 that I can think of that they could point to and

>> and and their veneration of Mary. It's not in the New Testament, but in Luke's infancy narrative, Mary is presented in a highly esteemed way.

>> Their idea, the papacy is outrageous, but it's not completely outrage. They at least have a verse to hang on in Matthew 16. both none of us take it seriously, but at least it's something's there. They're they're not insane.

>> Yeah.

>> So, we're not persuaded by this big picture. The Roman Catholic Yeah. And Roman Catholics have good arguments too about apostolic authority on the canonization, you know, which I think Protestants would have a very hard time explaining why these 27 books.

>> But still, you're going there's no way Leo the 14th is the vicer of Christ. I I don't have to ask you that. So it there's no forget.

>> Yeah.

>> I mean, this style of arguing, you know, that we we don't expect to see what we would see if you guys were right and we do expect what we would see if we were right is really a deadly weapon both against the Trinity and a bunch of other later Catholic developments. And there's another way to look at it too which is what I call a historical defeater. So uh take take the papacy. Okay, they think this is in Matthew. Uh look uh that wasn't a current idea at the time, right? First there had to evolve the one bishop system which is still establishing itself in the 200s. It's starting maybe in the 100s.

>> And then you have a long series of the Roman bishop making more and more extreme claims about how much authority they have.

>> Uh and it sort of reaches a peak uh I don't know when exactly the high middle ages really. I mean, they they're making stronger and stronger claims all along until that point.

>> Uh so I mean, the papacy just isn't like an idea that's on the table in the first century. So, it's just wrong to read that as what's what what's going on there.

>> Um, the idea of a triune God doesn't really come. They the word trinity comes in, okay, but it doesn't mean in Teroleian's time a triune God. It means God and these two other beings.

>> Um, the triune God idea you don't see till after the year 350. So that's just, you know, whenever the gospels were written, they could only be understood in terms of what had gone before, not ideas that lay in the future that nobody thought of.

>> So anybody that rolls up and says that this is an obvious implication of the text, it obviously implies the trinity.

>> Um, no, it doesn't obviously do that because otherwise people in Justin's time and Origins time would have thought those same things and we know that they didn't.

>> Um, I wonder I mean this I wonder how this um interacts with Jewish interpretation.

>> But this this is another point on the theme of it's very hard to argue this because we're always sliding into begging the question. So when a Christian and Jew sit down and think about having an argument about the Messiah, I mean Christians come in sort of naive, you know, like, oh, you know, they that's the Old Testament. That's just what the Jews believe, right? They don't know about the Talmud and the Mishna.

>> Like they they we share twothirds of the Bible. Like how hard can this be?

>> So, but you know, the Jewish Bible is an incredibly contested book. And it strikes me that for any famous passage in the Jewish Bible. There's at least four interpretations floating around out there or sometimes maybe a lot more than four. So, there's whatever the New Testament says about that text. That's one thing. There's what Catholic small se Catholic tradition says about it, right? Lady wisdom in Proverbs 8. That's really the prehuman Jesus. It's not in the New Testament, but that's what you know, Athanasius thinks.

>> Uh Psalm 44:2, "My heart has uttered a good word." That's totally about eternal generation. No, but that's that's what they think in the 3 and 400s, right?

>> So, the New Testament interpretation, Catholic interpretation, uh, and then you've got the original meaning, which is what historical critical scholarship is trying to get to, whether it's Jewish or Christian, like that's kind of what it's always aiming for, modern interpretation, uh, what what did it mean to the authors and the recipients. And then you've got Talmudic interpretation which oh man I've tried to read little bits of the Talmud and it's it's it's hard hard reading you know it's like it's like uh jumping into an internet chat room with really smart people going at it hammering tongs and you don't fully understand the context half the time.

>> I I As a Christian I don't really understand how you get an authoritative interpretation out of that massive mass of of commentary. I guess is it like Islam where there you know there's a body of jurist prudence and you there has to be a legal scholar to kind of issue a ruling based on their understanding of it and then that's how you get the the authoritative um reading.

>> So, uh,

>> anyway, so there's four, but if there's more than one talmudic one,

>> maybe there's five of them in there or two of them in there, you know, and that's

>> So, how on earth Yeah. With uh how how do you supposed to proceed given given all of that? I think you have to probably go back to the historical facts and put the text off to one side for a moment.

>> So the reason why the Talmud is difficult is for the same reason why like you can go on YouTube and watch MIT classes in nuclear chemistry. You can free you don't have to pay any tuition. These classes in computer science at Harvard are available graduate level, right? And what happens is we watch it because we're watching a classroom full of some of the brightest men and

Women in the world listening to a professor who's got to be a genius to teach at an Ivy League school. And within one sentence, we have no idea what we're watching. You know, they're they're teaching some astro some physics of and just we're totally why are we lost? The classroom seems to be on board. Well, that's what the Talmud is.

The reason why, and I'm just going to presume that you're not an expert. You're a mathematician of some sort. So the reason why if you're a philosopher but you know you're not a so the reason we're lost is that if you get into MIT and you're at a graduate level course on physics, it just presupposes that you know all this stuff and therefore the professor doesn't have to explain these things and just start talking about things and then we're all I'm completely lost. Almost everyone is lost. I have no idea cuz the professor has there's an unwritten contract with the classroom and that is we all know this stuff. We're not teaching arithmetic here. That's what's happening with the Talmud. The Talmud has missing thoughts because it's from a sage to his disciple. They know it so they don't have to say these things. So if you read the Talmud, just transliterated, let alone the Talmud is in Aramaic that doesn't make it easy. There are no commas. So it's the largest uh work.

>> Reading bits of this.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. It's all missing thoughts and so there's just they preach there's no grammar, there's no period, no question mark, there's nothing. It just you that's why a person is lost because the order of the Talmud, I mean, the writers of the Mishna, they were on such a level that they just of course, you know, the unsaid words. That's why you need so many commentaries for ordinary people. But I I want to just get back to this the question for you because you're a scholar. If you were born to and your family wasn't Christian and all you had was the Hebrew Bible, the Jewish scriptures, would you believe? Would you go, "Where's the dying, rising Messiah?" Would you be a Christian? Would you if you read the Hebrew Bible and just had no, you were never exposed to anything Christian at all, would would you be looking for a a Messiah that died and rose for your sins?

Uh, I mean, if I was stuck on a desert island, uh, with a copy of the Tanakh, I don't think I would. Yeah.

>> Just like Jesus's disciples, I'd be in the same boat with them.

>> Um, but what would I think? It would probably depend. I mean, I wouldn't be on a desert island probably. It would it would probably depend on my interactions with Christians, whether I thought, you know, God was at work among them, uh, or whether this was just a terrible mistake. And uh no no good can really come of this. It probably depend on kind of other extra-scriptural experiences and and convictions.

>> Right. So, right. So, the the I I believe that in a person who all he can do is read biblical and understand biblical Hebrew fluently was given a Tanakh. I don't think that anyone would uh think Christianity. When I use the word Christianity, I just mean it. I don't mean it just I don't no one would be looking for a Messiah who would die and rise. The the passages of what the Messiah is supposed to do are so clear and so enormous that claims like the Messiah was to rise from the dead. That's a fantastic claim. That's not an an ordinary claim. The the amount of evidence required for that claim would be you'd have to have things like uh John 3:16. You would have to have those kinds of passages, uh, John 17:3. Use that passage to demonstrate that the author of the Fourth Gospel was a monotheist. Um, but that passage is saying, you know, that Jesus is the the Christ the Messiah of the only true God. So you you would just I don't think anybody reading the Hebrew Bible without any exposure to Christianity would ever even think that that's there. It would.

>> Yeah. I mean, it would I mean, if I was raised Jewish, honestly, it would depend probably also what I thought when I read the New Testament. You know, is am I impressed with this Jesus or do I think he's kind of full of it? Um, you know, do I think he's uh deluded? Do I think he's a bad guy? Um, when I when I think about arguing with religions, I really think there's kind of a cult leader disqualifier. So, um, there's a standard cult leader playbook, right? It's always about power, sex, and money, uh, in in some order. And so, to me, uh, Muhammad is is the most successful one of those guys ever, right? Because he got he got more power, more sex, and more money than everybody else. The system was designed for him. The theocracy was designed for him. Joseph Smith, shining example, right? So, if I if I came to find that out about Paul or Jesus or John, I'd be out. I'd probably be Jewish, not Christian. Um, okay. But I don't find those disqualifiers. Um, I don't see, you know, Jesus getting rich off of this or just kind of getting his way or getting all the good-looking girls. Um, it's not just uh Abrahamic religions, you know, you you could use the same criteria for uh Buddhist cults and religions and so on. They're notorious for these kind of guys. Um, so it passes it passes that test, but um, yeah, it would depend it would depend on what I thought of Jesus and what I made of the whole resurrection thing. Um, and again, if there was overwhelming evidence, that would be one thing because then you'd just be a pigheaded whatever for not believing it, but I don't think it's that overwhelming. So again, we're thrown back on inference to the best explanation. But that doesn't mean it's unanswerable. You know, we put people to death on the basis of inference to the best explanation. At least we do in Texas where I'm from. uh maybe not in New York State, but um, so sometimes we're very very convinced even though, you know, we kind of wish we had like uh super direct evidence, but we just don't. But we still look at the whole constellation of available facts and we're like, "Oh, that guy did it." You know? Um, you're right. It's uh it's an unusual claim. It's an extreme claim. I mean, people don't just rise from the dead all the time. uh we have in the Jewish Bible uh prophet raising someone from the dead, but um, so we know it can happen if we just believe in God. Um, that has to be part of the background, too. I think if you believe in God, you're going to look at the probabilities differently than if you're an agnostic or an atheist.

>> But uh which you know, I never.

>> If I was raised Jewish, would I be agnostic or atheist? There's actually a very good chance, right?

>> I was a professor in uh one of the Sunni colleges in New York State for 18 years and my two best friends were two New York area Jews but both atheists. Um, but we got along very well. Our our interests in philosophy were weirdly kind of somewhat compatible even though I totally believe in God and they don't. But um, uh that's partly why I'm the I've never been an anti-Semite. That's probably why I'm the opposite of an anti-Semite, whatever that is called. Uh, because I love those guys so much. Um, and uh anyway, but I digress.

>> Um.

>> Yeah, so.

>> I um.

>> So here here here's another here's another complication. Okay.

>> Since I'm just muddying the waters and making everything hard. Um, so take one of the one of the most disputed texts which you have very strong objections to the Christian uh reading of Isaiah 53. So your average Christian's like, "Oh, that's just obviously about Jesus. It couldn't possibly be about anybody else." Um, and so you say, "Look, our scholars say, your scholars say, your modern scholars say, you like in your study Bible and RSV or whatever, um, that this is about the righteous remnant of the Jewish nation." Um, and then your average Christian is like, "Uh, you think this is about Jesus?" And then that now we're kind of at a stalemate, right? Because, you know, well, it's obviously not about Jesus, you say, and they say, "Well, that's what we think it obviously is." And um I mean, I think these Christians are making a mistake and the mistake is thinking that it can only have one meaning. So when you look u New Testament scholars call this the New Testament use of the Old Testament topic. And uh just look at some of the obvious examples the second you start reading the New Testament, right? Out of Egypt I've called my son. That was originally about the Jews.

>> Yeah, about Israel.

>> This this baby called Emmanuel. Like that's a baby in the time of Isaiah, right? It's just obviously is you could just go read it.

>> Um, so what on earth is going on? Um, and and this is why this is what bugs me the most about your most of your Christian uh opponents. They failed to bring out how a bunch of Jews could have come up with this by a bunch of second temple era Jews who believe in Tanakh and probably are most influenced by the uh by the Pharisees, kind of the precursors of the rabbis. Um, like how on earth could they come up with this because it was all Jews at the beginning, right? Um, and so it seems like they obviously had thought that because it's inspired by God, you know, kind of meticulously inspired every jot and tittle, well, God very well could know a meaning um and a future, a second fulfillment, a second meaning that wasn't known to the prophet at the time. So that seems to be what's going on, right? And then okay, but now we're back to a stalemate. Um, because you're probably not going to grant that it has a second meaning. I don't know. Do you allow in general that a a prophetic text could have more than one meaning and more than one fulfillment?

>> Yeah. But then you get into more trouble. Um, like for instance Isaiah 7:14 if it was fulfilled multiple times as an example, behold a virgin um shall conceive and bear a son and she will call his name Emmanuel. So that means that there was a virgin born in the time of Isaiah 2700 years ago in the heart of the Assyrian Empire. And there's another virgin who conceives 2,000 years ago. But it it but then there's a problem and that is it's the Assyrian war. We're told very clearly. And therefore we're told in verse 15, 16 that butter and honey will a child eat before he knows to reject the evil and choose good. For before the child knows the difference between good and evil, these two kings that you despise will be obliterated, will be destroyed. So the problem, you know, is always the problem as Mark Twain said, you know, the problem is when you lie, you can't keep track of all of it. I I don't mean that, God forbid, disparagingly. The moment you um introduce any device to solve a massive problem, if you're not correct, everything else completely collapses. Um, so what happens is if of course there could be a double meaning, of course, but that's more problematic because who is the virgin in the time of Isaiah? Is there another virgin? Of course, I believe if God wanted a virgin young woman. Yeah.

>> Well, let's just I I want to steal man this. So let's just of course God can as a believer that would be a minor miracle for a virgin to conceive. We we've never witnessed it among humans, but we've see parthenogenesis occurring in the animal world. That that that'll be nothing. Sarah, an old woman, uh, post-menopausal. Her conceiving and having a child is far more miraculous from a biologic, from a medical standpoint. That's much more difficult. Of course, God created the earth from nothing. But that's not the issue. The issue is, is Christianity the truth? Christianity is making the claim that I can prove to you, I can demonstrate to you that Jesus is the Messiah based on hundreds of prophecies in the Hebrew Bible. If that's not someone's claim, but someone's claim rather is kind of the kind of claim that perhaps Hillary Clinton would make. She's a a liberal Christian. She's a Methodist, but very quite liberal. So, she would probably say, "I don't really believe it's there. I just on faith spiritually." So you want to just say I think I believe Jesus talks to me. So but the argument of the church has always been and Paul makes this claim that it is all based on the scripture of the Hebrew Bible, clear Second Timothy 3:16. It's only scripture that so that the the standard is very very high and then these, you know, dual fulfillments and so on, it becomes it doesn't work and it becomes very elastic and then what happened to the clear passages that means we have maybe seven very clear things the Messiah is supposed to do, very clear, and no one would disagree with that, and somehow those are all relegated to a second coming.

>> And everything that Jesus did, I mean, being conceived supernaturally, uh, born in the city of Bethlehem, uh, dying and rising the dead. All of those claims that he has supposedly has already fulfilled. None of those are verifiable. But if he had brought world peace and built the temple, we would know it. So people are looking going, but he didn't do the things that are very clear and everything he putatively has done, born in Bethlehem. All right, that's the reading of Micah 5 based on Matthew 2:6. But how would I know if he was born in Bethlehem? There's no way to know that. But if he had changed the world and there was world peace, we'd sure know about it today. In the first century, there was no peace. The temple was destroyed. That's.

>> I I don't know if I can persuade you, but I I want to give you at least the view of how the Jew views the scripture. Let's get the the clear stuff down.

>> And then if you want a secondary and third reading, you're entire to a homily. But you can't one cannot dismiss the plain meaning of a text. And I think that's why you're a Unitarian.

>> It's not that Trinitarians have nothing.

>> You know, they have the Great Commission. And that's how Matthew ends. But it doesn't say there that all three are God and one and distinct. It doesn't say all of that stuff. The only passage that you can find that does clearly convey the doctrine of the Trinity is a scam. And that's a passage that was interpolated into the First Epistle of John, Chapter 5. And we all know that was inserted later. Now, why did they insert that spurious passage? We all know the answer. The answer is because they somebody snuck it in a Latin translation.

>> Much earlier on.

>> Yeah. But why I mean, someone invented a passage that's that is not authentic to the First Epistle of John. But why did they put it in there? The answer is we know the answer. The answer is because there is no passage that encapsulates the Trinity in the New Testament and they needed one. And so they shoved it in there.

>> Mhm.

>> That's the point. The story, as you said, with Erasmus in the early 16th century, man, was a genius and an honest man. He would have certainly been a Protestant if he didn't need the Pope. Um, he was an he was an honest guy, but his arm was twisted and he was accused of all sorts of horrible things when he left it out. As the So, the key is why do they have to put it in there? They had to put it in there because it's it's a scam and they had to put it in there to find support for it. So, we don't look for these sort of things that infer. Let's get the clear passages down and then if you want to have a second third meaning, as long as it doesn't contradict the plain meaning, we're good with that.

>> Here's a here's a comparison for you. Um, you know, my uh my Jewish colleagues, I had debates with them uh for formal philosophical debates. And my one friend, uh, I debated the existence of God with. And I mean, imagine that you're you're debating the existence of God with him. He's an atheist and a naturalist or he thinks the natural world is all there is. I mean, there isn't anything you can point at to him that's like empirically verifiable exactly like that can be currently observed. Uh, he's not going to grant you that scripture is inspired. He's not going to even grant you that miracles happen. Uh, any kind of spiritual experience you have, he's just going to think that's just kind of your brain got overheated or then something weird happened. You you had too many.

>> You ate too much before you went to bed and you had a weird dream or something.

>> Um, I mean, what you're going to do is you're going to fall back on inference to the best explanation, uh, history of the Jews, the scriptures, maybe uh creation and just observing like apparent design and creation. And uh, I think it's I think it's kind of similar in that, um, it's so hard to find common ground that we're kind of we're kind of back to that. Um, it's interesting that you would grant that there could be multiple uh meanings and fulfillments. I mean, that's I think you should that's reasonable because why couldn't the Almighty do that if he wanted to?

>> Um, but not in apologetics. That means if you want to give a sermon in church or synagogue Saturday or Sunday, do what you want. We do it. Everyone does it. But in the area of apologetics, that is completely illicit. Apologetics means that we have a common belief, right? And then we have a different view of how to interpret it and we have to only use the plain meaning of text in apologetics. The standard, the bar is completely different. So of course you and.

>> Because you have to go off common ground otherwise you can't move them unless you meet them on common ground and then move them.

>> I it would be like me convincing you to be a Jew because of the Talmud, but you don't believe in the Talmud. So it doesn't make so I think you would agree with me that in the area of apologetics where we're trying to uh persuade each other based on evidence, we have common ground and with an atheist, you're right, it becomes difficult. But with you and I, especially you, because truthfully, I hide my admiration for you. You didn't have to go down this road. You could have been a Trinitarian and just behaved like a good boy and and, you know, but you didn't and you risked a lot and possibly lost a lot socially, academically, I don't know. Um, I didn't have to make any of those sacrifices to be a Jew. So, I admire you and other Unitarians deeply for having the courage.

>> So, in.

>> I was not cool. I was not cool enough to run with the cool kids. But yeah, I.

>> I definitely lost out on some social um opportunities. Yeah. And probably job opportunities.

>> In in the area of apologetics in the the bar is very high. And and the only passages that could be appealed to are those that are clear and that we agree on. And in that world, that there's a secondary meaning, a third meaning, then what really could if it's that elastic, then what religion could be dismissed and you know what reform people who believe who are Calvinists, they have pastors. I think Calvinism is insane, but there are verses in the Christian Bible that they can appeal to in Romans and in John. It's just they're they're so wrong, but there are passages, you know, but it's just the passages that push against that are push against limited atonement, which is the most fragile part of of Calvinism. Um, so overwhelming that whatever you're going to bring from Romans is just not relevant. It doesn't approach in my view. So in apologetics, the standard is very rigorous. It does not allow for secondary thinking. It's okay in if you want to give a homily, but it's not okay in apologetics.

>> Well, uh, I mean, Rabbi Singer, in your view, the famous scene in Daniel 7, the way you understand that is that a I understand the meaning of it in the context where the one like the Son of Man is the the righteous remnant. It says that later in the chapter.

>> No, I think it's the Messiah. I don't believe it's.

>> You think it's the Messiah?

>> Oh, of course it's the Messiah. It's clearly the Messiah.

>> Who one like a Son of Man comes with the clouds of heaven.

>> Um, to the Ancient of Days and that's God.

>> Do you see that as a secondary meaning? You see that as a as the only meaning?

>> That's of course it's the only meaning. And people who don't uh for for the viewers, not for you, for the viewers, Daniel 1-6 is very easy. It reads like Genesis. Anyone can read it and immediately get it. Daniel 7 through 12 is not easy. It's not incredibly difficult. But so Daniel 7 is very clearly five kingdoms come into view. The first four we know. And then it's the kingdom of the Messiah who's one in a vision like a Son of Man with clouds of heaven because the festival of Tabernacles is in view. People who trust in the clouds rather than people who trust in the roof, the Gog and uh and Yahweh makes him king and to him all nations will serve. That's clearly the.

>> Messiah. Yeah. I mean, that seems to be what um some of the characters in the New Testament think. That some of the Jewish people in the New Testament seem to have this as a common uh assumption. Uh, I mean, it seems like it's relevant to some of the the things that you debate. I mean, it says that uh all peoples and nations of every language must serve him.

>> Yes.

>> I mean, that kind of sounds like religious worship, although it already has told you the Ancient of Days is this other guy and that he's, you know, awarded all of this these uh high status by by the Ancient of Days, right? The Christian the Christian view is that this is you see this in the vision in Revelation 5. So, um, if Jesus or like Paul says in Philippians 2, if Jesus is worshiped to the glory of God the Father, they're like, "What's what's the problem? That's not worshiping a rival God or something like that?"

>> So, the term there is to serve. And it's unfortunate that some transliteration means to serve. And it's Aramaic. Daniel 7 is in Aramaic like from chapter 24 to the end of seven. So the word there means serve. And and in fact, um, this is all over Tanakh when talking about the Messiah that all nations will adhere to him. He will give to the nations. Isaiah 2, which means rebuke. He will judge among the peoples and they all going to follow everything he says. They'll take the swords and spears and turn into plowshares and pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation. Neither will they learn of war anymore. Out of Zion will go forth the Torah and the word of God from Jerusalem. So Daniel 7:13 and 14. So the words it just means serve. Like in a marriage contract, it's called a Kethubah. It's not biblical, but it's as if it's a marriage contract that a a groom gives to his bride. He promises to serve her. That's a promise he makes underneath the wedding canopy. That document is written in Aramaic. So that's a.

>> You don't think it has a kind of meaning of uh religious worship or something similar to the worship that's given to God.

>> No. If you look in the Targums as an example, uh, you find that when Jacob served Laban, it's the same exact word. He didn't worship Laban. Laban, I don't know how they say it, anglicized. No, it means serve. And now you and I, we're English speakers, so we can, you know, our waiter can serve us or or we could say that the Secretary of State, Rubio, serves the President.

>> Um.

>> It's very context dependent. Yeah.

>> Of course. Totally. Now, it is true. I granted that if we I did this once. I went online and I looked up Presbyterian Church Hymnal out of nowhere, a PDF.

>> And and I and of course, it's available free because Presbyterians have all these hymn books. And then I did a control F, which is a search um device, and I looked up the word serve. The English word serve, and as it turns out, in every single case where the word serve appears in a Presbyterian church handbook, it is referring to serving God or Jesus. Right? But that does not mean that the English word serve means or conveys in any way or can be used to say therefore it means worship in any way. Um, so no, so the word simply, it's true, it's a the it's a religious book. It's a holy book. So even in English, I'm sure if I looked up the word serve, the vast majority of times, uh, that in let's say King James, whatever, that word would mean serving God. But it's because it's a religious book. It's not because the word the English word serve, that's an etymological fallacy, means or conveys worship.

>> Mhm.

>> And if someone were to say this is about Jesus, Daniel 7:14, then you are only hiking up the problem because as it turns out, the majority of the world doesn't believe that Jesus uh doesn't worship him or serve him or any of those things, and the church is widely hated in the world.

>> Not yet.

>> Right? That means a person would have to do the not yet. Right? But the claim of the church is that yet. The claim in the church is that there's evidence and it's not ambiguous, but there's clear uh evidence. So that kind of claim is ex is exposing itself to ridicule. So if someone says Daniel 7:14 is about Jesus, so now you've only added to the problem rather than diminished from it because that hasn't that hasn't occurred. Um, but we do believe it's talking about the Messiah. And of course, those are the four kingdoms that had sovereignty over the Jewish people prior to it. And we look forward to uh the Messianic age.

>> Well, um, Unitarian Christians like me are always pointing out that in the Judaism of Jesus's time and more generally in Second Temple Judaism, the one true God is a single someone variously called the Lord, Adonai, King of the Universe, Father. But in an apologetics context nowadays, some push back and say, no, no, no, the Jews in this time believed God. Well, maybe not tripersonal, but how about at least multipersonal? Because you have the Memra and the Targums, the Angel of the Lord, and "Let us make man in our image." What's your view of this scholarship? There actually are a few Jewish scholars pushing this nowadays.

>> You know, calling them Jewish scholars like calling Karl Marx, you know, a Jewish uh thinker and economist. They people who happen to be Jew of Jewish have Jewish relatives, but it's these are not Jewish ideas. Where it really comes. First of all, it comes from a very legitimate problem in that in the Hebrew Bible, those who represent God, namely prophets and angels, are called God. This is extremely inconvenient. But when Genesis tells us that um Jacob wrestled with what seems to be God, if you're just reading the Bible, but it's really an angel, and that's clarified in Hosea 12. So, this is very inconvenient. We you and I are both very aware that judges are called God in Exodus 21:20. So you have to be aware of that and therefore you have to have that context that Moses is called a god in front of Pharaoh. Um, and this is not the way we speak in the 20 uh, 21st century. So now, so that's one problem and this is real serious matter and this is a good reason why Trinitarians feel that aha, but you have to look at the context. An angel really is an angel. There's a second issue that most people I think miss and that is in the secular academic world that has a deep antipathy for uh Judaism or uh Abrahamic religions. They really they have it in for us. So they have a problem and the problem is that monotheism in the ancient world didn't make any sense. In the late in the Bronze Age, it made no sense that there was one God and no other because they knew nothing about science and and microbiology and DNA. They didn't know what an earthquake was. They didn't. So if the Jews always believed in one God. So our view, your your view and my view is that originally the progenitors of the Jewish people believed in only one God and then there was a um and then it was a mutation where people started to mess up and attribute to the sun and to other things that God created divinity. That's what we never had this convers I presume. I'm sure we agree on that. Do you do you take the line like some scholars do that that uh monotheism is like an inappropriate term for ancient uh ancient Jews and Christians?

>> No, I think it's the perfect term because it's only.

>> Because I disagree with it. It's I'll tell you why in a second, but yeah, keep going.

>> It's I love it. It's it is only because mono means doesn't mean one. It means only. It conveys alone, like you were quoting John 17:3.

>> It means one and only one.

>> Only. Right. Not at least one. Yeah.

>> So the academic world can't stand this. I mean, the academic world and I'm interviewed very frequently on atheist shows. Quite they don't like this idea. So therefore they engage in the idea that the original Jews really were polytheists and believed in Canaanite gods and at some stage there was a mutation away where some group started to believe in one God alone.

>> And that it's sort of like like evolution and that survived and all the other ones fell away and there was always other groups that would this idea would just come back and the Jews would just keep pushing away, but that's the view view at Yale Divinity School, you know, which is a putatively a Christian school. That's the view at Harvard Divinity School, which is putatively a Christian school, but they're quite liberal. So that what these people do in the academic world is they have to go back to these ambiguous texts and use them to overthrow the clear texts, engaging in that kind of sophistry uh in order to advance what they already believe. And that's and then of course Trinitarians are very delighted to find people with fancy titles who've written these books who've done all the hard work and say, ah, the Jews, the original Jews believed in many gods and the angel was the Lord.

>> Or they're henotheists or something like half pathway to monotheism.

>> That's what's really going on here. So that's why you have this here you have Trinitarian Christians, Southern Baptists, devout. I have tremendous respect for them and devout Roman Catholics, but they're they know they're in a little bit of trouble and they will very happily appeal to secular academics who believe a documentary hypothesis. They believe Isaiah is written by three authors. They they believe that Daniel is a complete forgery. I mean, all that stuff. All these guys, they would laugh at you if you quoted Daniel 7. They would tell you Daniel 7, Daniel 7 was written as a forgery. It was written during the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, during time of Hanukkah. It's so what they do is they they're playing a game and that is they're appealing to academic scholarship which fiercely opposes what you and I believe. And may I one other thing just say to you and I want to not, you know, this the viewers don't the academic world rewards anything that's new and innovative, which is a problem.

>> Yeah.

>> I mean, how do you write a thesis kind of bad about this?

>> Right? Yeah.

>> But that's a problem because what you and I believe in is the old, it's the old original. You can't write a dissertation on that. The old idea was really the right idea. You'll get thrown out on your head. That what's so therefore the academic world is married to something that would nourish people looking for something odd on the outskirts to say, ah, that's the original. And that's why there's so much friction, I believe.

>> Yeah, no, this monotheism issue is interesting and I've actually published a paper on this that I think is my best thing that I've published.

>> It's called On Counting Gods. And I claim this is all just confusion on stilts. Uh, so they say things like monotheism was coined in the, you know, 1700s, early 1700s, late 1600s.

>> This is besides the point. The point is what about the concept, right? You know, concept can be there if you don't have an abstract term to express that concept. Still the idea can be there. My main claim is that the term uh God, if you say there's one God, is is ambiguous. So there's a looser concept which I claim is in all the cultures of the world where a deity, I call it the concept of a deity, uh, is basically just a super powerful self. It's a someone much more powerful than any ordinary human. Maybe they used to be a human. Maybe they earned their way up. They worked their way up somehow. Maybe they were born a god. Whatever. There's all kinds of different these are the gods of the mythologies of the world. Uh, but then there's the monotheistic concept of a God, which is a deity which is ultimate. So does not come from anywhere. There's nothing farther back. There's no higher explanation for everything. If you ask why does the world exist, you end up with this. And if you ask why God exists, just because God can't not exist. Um, so when you say there's only one God, if you mean is there only one deity? Well, Jews and Christians have almost never said there's only one deity because the angels are going to count and demons are going to count as as Elohim or Theoi.

>> Uh, what's confusing is as time went on, you see this in the Jewish Bible, more and more they reserve the word God for the one true God, but there's still an older usage. Um, and in the New Testament, they almost always use the word theos for the one true God, although weirdly Satan gets to gets to have it once. Uh, so yeah, the idea that there's no ancient monotheism, I think, is just wrong because, uh, they were monotheists because they believed there was a deity that was necessarily unique. That's the ultimate reality. That's the ultimate source of everything else. That's the creator. That precisely is monotheism. It doesn't matter how many unseen powerful beings are running around uh, in addition to to that God. So I distinguish the concept of a de a mere deity from a God, and a God has to be ultimate, basically. So, right.

>> Yeah, then you can have Hindu monotheism. You can have monotheism and traditional African and Australian religions. Um, what's odd is um, in Judaism and in Christianity, the one God is rather accessible at least through through the through the covenant uh in Judaism and through the new covenant in Christianity. And so we pray to God. You know, in some of these other monotheistic religions, they have some backstory about how for some reason you can't access God and you have to deal with these lower down functionaries. Um, you're stuck with them. At least most of the time, like maybe in an emergency you can invoke God, but um, I mean, I think they're making an analogy with human kingdoms. Like if I just want to go see the emperor or the president or the king, I'm just out of luck. I'm just a schmo. Uh, if I'm lucky, I know someone that knows someone that knows someone that knows him. Uh, so I'm stuck with dealing with the, you know, the mayor of my town or whatever. So they're thinking like that. Whereas in Judaism and Christianity, God is rather available uh, even to the ordinary person with with some mediation in a sense, you know, the priests and the uh, the covenant uh, and and the mediation of Christ for Christians. So, yeah, I disagree with that there was no uh ancient that monotheism word is a word that doesn't apply to the ancient world. There were no monotheists back then. I just think that's nonsense. It's a confusion based on the ambiguity of the term God in our language, but also in the other languages, you know.

>> Right, but in Christianity, um, the role of of Jesus as a mediator and that you can't come to God except through Jesus, which is in the Gospels. So that's very, very pronounced. And then again, the Jews are going, what do you mean I can't talk to God, ask him to forgive me, confess my sins, and he would um have mercy and forgive my sins. It's quite explicit. So there.

>> This is a tricky issue for Christians. Um, and I think they go off half-cocked on this sometimes. So I mean, think about Jesus as uh, one of the Gospels, he tells this story about um, you know, contrasting a Pharisee with some sinner, and the Pharisee, you know, thanks God, I'm not a sinner, and the sinner.

>> You know, goes goes to worship God and, you know, have mercy on me, I'm a sinner, and Jesus says that he.

>> Goes home justified, essentially.

>> So, um, I think what what requires the mediation of Jesus is supposed to be the new covenant, but there are people in the world that don't have access to the new covenant, like people that lived 5,000 years ago or people that never heard of this for some reason. So, I think Christians should think that God can interact with people according to whatever information they have access to. Uh, maybe they can't have the the new covenant, which is a special thing, but they could still be reconciled to God.

>> Right? But the new covenant is in Jeremiah 31 is not referring to a new dispensation or a way that God forgives mankind or it rather is talking about that the of the return of the Jews.

>> So I I could say that Jewish people look at Hebrews 8 where the new we're really the book of Hebrews from the get-go is just aiming for that ending of chapter 8. Um, and Jews are going, "What are you talking about about a new covenant?" The new covenant of Jeremiah 31 is that when the Jews return to the land of Israel, they'll not be destroyed. Look at the sun. Look at the moon and the stars. If the very foundations of the earth can be measured, so to cast off the seed of Israel. So I I say this that even the author of the book of Hebrews, whoever he was, he begins saying his opening statement in his very long sermon is saying, in the old times, you used the prophets to discern what the truth is, but now we have Jesus Christ. So he kind of concedes that this is a whole new ball game. And Jews going, no, there's absolutely nothing new, and we can go directly to God, and the new covenant is not referring to a salvific dispensation um that had changed at Calvary. It um and Hebrews is misquoting Jeremiah 31. So I I pro Jews are like very shocked by all of this. And whoever wrote Hebrews, it's a very well-written book. It's very well-organized. It's very different than Paul's writings in that it's very systematic. It's very clear where he's going. But where he's going is in an argument against Judaism. And it was probably written um before the war, maybe written in the early 60s. And Judaism was really competition. And he's setting forth.

>> Uh, a foundation that there's a new covenant and it's not like the old one of the Jews. It's not an anti-Semitic book, but it's certainly an argument against Judaism.

>> Yeah. Well, I mean, with a new covenant, we're back to one of those stalemate issues, you know, because Paul has all these radical ideas about a new covenant. And they used to think Hebrews was written by Paul. A lot of readers did because, you know, it seems he seems to have some similar ideas. I think nowadays scholars just say, "We don't know who wrote it. It wasn't Paul. But um, yeah. Yeah. That's I mean, he's what he's what he's claiming is so radical that um, you know, the other uh Jewish the other Jewish Christians weren't sure what to make of it half the time. Uh, and probably didn't accept it right away. Right? So he he doesn't think that uh he thinks people can be reconciled to God without a full conversion to Judaism and keeping keeping the law of Moses. And uh well, that's exactly what some of the other ones were keeping at that same time. Uh, so it's, yeah, it's bold. Paul's making bold claims for sure. And that's really I think a nub of a disagreement between Jews and Christians is you're, you know, you guys are like, come on, this is just too much, Paul. Uh, plus he says some very radical sounding things in Galatians and various places.

>> Um.

>> Right.

>> Yeah, big big topics there.

>> Incidentally, um, Hebrews begins by saying that Jesus is not an angel. I I don't know why that's his first that's his first pushback. He's not. Where does it say that.

>> That an angel sat at the right hand side of God? I mean, that's his first it's a series of arguments that he's superior to, you know, Moses, so on. Jesus, our Sabbath, Hebrews 4. But in any point, the author of the book of Hebrews is not aware of all this kind of these kind of things. But.

>> This is this is a point of connection between us that gets lost I think by Trinitarian traditions. So, um, the concept of the Messiah in the New Testament is kind of like a super prophet, you know, like a super prophet, even greater than Moses. Um, again, a radical claim. Uh, you know, he's literally called a prophet and end of Luke. Um, the the term kind of drops out of Christian tradition because Messiah is automatically like a great and Son of God. They're like higher and mightier sounding titles. So, it kind of drops out kind of fast. But, I mean, it literally says he's a prophet.

>> Sure. Prophet is not without honor except from his own country.

>> Yeah. I'm about to have a debate on John 1 with James White. And I've been thinking about that recently. You know, why on earth if if the writer said that Jesus was God right in verse one? Like why is he wasting his time saying that um this guy is greater than John the Baptist, who was regarded as a mighty prophet by many, many people in that time, many Jews in that time. Uh, why does he bother to say that Jesus is greater than him or at the end of the passage that, you know, that Jesus kind of brought even greater revelation than Moses did, as great as that was? Well, it's because because they think he's a man, that's why. He's just a man in whom God's eternal word, you know, quote, became flesh. Right? So, the question then is, and that I always ask Unitarians, is that you've used the Hebrew Bible as a measurement as a measuring tool to dismiss the doctrine of the Trinity as a later accretion. So I have.

>> The New Testament more honestly. But yeah, we do. We do.

>> I always find that Unitarians and Christophelians are much more aware of the Hebrew Bible than Trinitarians are.

>> On average, they're much more learned. I don't mean liberal Unitarians. I'm talking about the serious Unitarians.

>> Mhm.

>> You you look back hundreds of years and you see Unitarians that were deeply aware of the Hebrew Bible and u were very connected to it. And it was on that basis I believe that they utterly rejected the doctrine of the Trinity and very frequently paid for the rejection of the Trinity with their lives. As was Michael Servetus, uh, was murdered by Calvin for being a Unitarian, um, a brilliant physician, and Calvin had turned Geneva into a police state. And so people gave their lives for this, and these people were very connected to the Hebrew Bible. So I I it's to the Unitarian that I ask the question, why not apply that same rigorous methodology to the notion that Jesus is the Messiah? Why not have the Hebrew Bible and look for, you know, use the same methodology to determine whether he is the Messiah or not? I mean, we do believe that there's been further revelation. Um, because we're committed to Jesus as a mighty prophet bringing further revelation. And then we believe that Paul, even he kind of.

Set the scene for what Paul was going to do, which was to have a covenant that would be accessible to all the nations, to all the peoples. Uh, so we do view it as revelation, but not, not as the most recent kind of most complete revelation.

Um, you just like a Jew looks at, I mean, I know the first five books are foundational, but you might also think that some things in the later prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, you know, might sort of clarify some issues. Um, >> there's no new commandments in Isaiah or Jeremiah or EC, you know, there's nothing like you, you have >> but like, you know, prioritizing the ethical over the ritual. >> Yes, because the problem, right? So the, there's a reason why everywhere we walk, we see signs about smoking is bad for you, right? Well, why? Because it's a pervasive problem. Of some 25% of Americans smoke. It's a nightmare, right? So of course, you know, we, a thousand years from now, people will look back and say, wow, that is a lot of talk about not smoking and doing drugs. Well, that's be not because, you know, other things aren't important, just that was a prevailing problem, as was, um, the literature of the 60s was against racism and against Jim Crow, because that was a problem. So that, what the problem of the day was that Jews thought that they can keep ritual law and not care about the widow, the orphan, the, the, the weakest members of society. So we can, you and I can easily say during the days of Isaiah, Jews kept Shabbat and kept kosher. There's not a word of criticism about this, but they really didn't care about the problem was that there were many, too many that didn't care about social justice. So that was the issue, and that's why Isaiah never addresses it. People kept Sabbath. It just didn't occur to them. But they thought that if I keep Sabbath, and I don't have to care about orphans. So it doesn't, but there's nothing new. Whereas the Christian Bible is introducing something really new, and that is, you can't go to God and say, I can sin. I regret what I did, and I, I won't do that again. God can't just forgive you. He, you need Jesus. That's that's a, that's a massive claim, and that really is different. There's nothing like that in the Nevi'im, the prophetic part of the writing part of the Hebrew Bible that is conflicts with the Torah.

So, um, that's what, you know, >> I don't know why I thought about this, but there, to me, when I look at the history of Christianity, there's a humbling effect it has on me. So, uh, if you're a Trinitarian, you might just think, "Oh, this is all wonderful. What's wrong with those Jews? How come they can't get with the program? You know, we, and look at, look at us. We rule the world. We've gone from triumph to triumph." I mean, that's not really true, but anyway, they might think that, um, uh, because becoming this, you know, they, they were a dominant force in society, like in the Middle Ages and so on. So, we've got all this great, great tradition, and those Jews, what's their deal? You know, and furthermore, you know, in the Jewish Bible, there's just, you know, there's a running battle about obedience. You know, the Jews are falling into idolatry, following other gods, like you said, just keeping the ritual but not keeping the heart of the matter. Uh, caring about the more important things, you know, and the prophets are always rebuking them and so on. But when I, when I look at the history of, uh, Christian theology, uh, you know, in a sense, when I'm looking at Origen or Justin, like he's kind of on my team, but he's also kind of really embarrassing. And it's like, we, we, if the Jews screwed up, we screwed up at least as bad, and probably a lot worse. Like the whole anti-semitism thing, like that's just off the charts. Like, how, what the hell? Like, how did that even go down, you know? >> You know, that's >> but the doctrinal stuff, like, it's it's embarrassing. Um, and >> that's the part of you, incidentally, that surprises me. Nothing you've said to me today surprises me. And what I'm so impressed with is that you can't see the anti-semitism of the New Testament, and for which I am forced to believe that you are a remarkable man. And I'm not saying this because you're going to give me a tip at the end of this interview. >> I don't quite, I don't quite grant that there's anti-semitism in the New Testament. Um, I think >> so that's marvelous that I think that I, I am so flabbergasted >> that you have such a love for Jewish people, with such a kinship with Jewish people. You remind me of Dr. King, who was like that in his speeches, where he quoted texts in the New Testament, which most people, most Jews view it as anti-Jewish, and he had just, he didn't see it at all, because he had such a favorable view of Jewish people, that to him, the, the story of the Good Samaritan, there's nothing wrong with the Jews. The, in his last speech, he said that it was the Jews who passed by the Samaritan, the, the fellow on the road to from Jericho to Jerusalem. They just probably thought that, uh, there, there was a guy who was faking sickness, and then if he, they helped him, he, they would have been, uh, jumped on. So, I, I am very delighted that people like you exist. I'm, it's, and I'm in awe of you, because I, the Gospels are very well written. The stories are very well shaped. The protagonists, the villains are very clear, and that people like you exist still to this day blow my mind away, and it's a deep admiration for you that I say that, wow, that's amazing.

>> I think if, I mean, it's a common view that some scholars think that the New, some certain New Testament texts are anti-semitic. I think if the authors of John and Matthew knew what was going to be done with these texts someday, they would have put some barrier in there. But I mean, in their day, particularly the Synoptics, I mean, all, all the Jesus followers were Jews. So like, anti-semitism isn't a thing. It's nonsense. Like they would have to hate themselves. So they, they did think that the Jews were wrong in that time and place to reject Jesus. But then nothing follows from that about the rest of the Jews. Like, how, how could it? Um, so they use unguarded language, you know, about the Jews or the Judeans in John, but the context changes everything. You know, when Christians become the big bully on the block, >> that was so far in the future, like that, that didn't really occur to them. Like, if it had, they would have said, they would, they would have put some guardrails in it. I think >> I am so invested. I'm so incentivized not to talk you out of this. I, I really am very happy that you feel that way. I, I, when I look at Matthew 27, the passion narrative, where the Jews are on one side, and Pontius Pilate and his lovely wife are on the other side, pleading with the crazy hordes of Jews that the man is innocent, and the Jews are saying, "Crucify him, and we take his death upon ourselves and our children." It, uh, the, when in John's, uh, Jesus is having a conversation, lucid conversation with Pontius Pilate in John 19, and he assures Pontius Pilate that he, he's not the one to blame here. It's those who gave me over to you is their sin. I, I'm very grateful that there are people like you who see it that way. Um, I'm the, as it turns out, all the Church Fathers and Reformers saw it the way I do, and that is a complete indictment of the Jew. But there are people like you who have such a, a favorable view of the Jewish people, it's just not possible, um, that this could be anti-Jewish, because you revere the New Testament as a sacred work. And I'm very grateful that you don't see it, none of that.

>> You make an important point, which is that the bad guys in the narrative are sometimes, you know, the Jews. Um, but it, it hits the Jews. >> Yeah, it hits different in a context when all the good guys are Jews, too. >> Right. There is a >> in a later context. It seems like an appalling thing. Um, context is kind of everything, you know. So in, I'm so in racism, there can be a certain inner group, even though I don't like the blacks, but Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, they're different, and I admire them. >> They're the good ones. Yeah. >> Yeah. So you can have in many texts where the text is unfavorable, but there are unique characters, and they're somehow a different kind of >> you know, Mel Gib, Mel Gibson, you know, when he said he has Jewish friends, and they'll stand vouch for him, even though he was a raving lunatic anti-Semite, a set of a contest, you know, there always are people. I mean, Hitler thought that his mother's doctor's name is Block was a noble Jew. So that's in the New Testament. Jesus and his disciples were the noble Jews. But when they were in trouble in John 20, on the first Easter Sunday, and Jesus was encountering them, they were hiding in a room for fear of the Jews. Um, that was it, plain. I, I understand your take on it. At that time, you wish it could have been written a little differently. Okay, I love hearing it, and I, I want your view to be pervasive, but they're not crazy for looking at this and going, "Wow, those Jews are really demonic."

>> Yeah. Thank God. Uh, I'm sure you'll agree with this. Thank God that, um, in the early modern era, Protestants and a lot of them Unitarians rediscovered religious freedom. You know, that people should be free in society to worship God according to their conscience. I mean, this undid the 1500 years of persecution, or maybe not quite that many, from from the 380s up until like the time of John Locke, and even a little bit after. By Locke's time, they weren't burning and killing people anymore. But, um, yeah, we just take this for granted in today's world, and like, shouldn't like, how could anybody think differently? But for a long time, the Christian mainstream, and again, this this is profoundly embarrassing to me, uh, just outlawed everybody that didn't think exactly whatever the Nicene Creed said, and, uh, relegated the Jews to second-class citizens. You know, you see that even in the fourth, uh, uh, Fourth Lateran Council, they have to wear special marks and so on. >> That's that's egregious. Um, but anyway, thank God we have, uh, so much freedom in so many countries now that we don't have to worry about people killing us for our convictions. >> Right? >> And lately, the Roman Catholics, when they came to America, they decided religious freedom was the greatest thing they ever heard of. >> So most of them believe in religious freedom. You know, when they needed it, all of a sudden they were like, "Yeah, of course, religious freedom." I'm like, this is what we've always been for, right? Um, you know, God bless them. I'm glad that they're free >> uh, to worship. I want them to be, because I think people should have to follow their conscience, you know, their own convictions. >> Right? Well, at least the Catholic Church had a Second Vatican Council, a minor reformation, but >> nevertheless, it was for the better. >> Yeah. Followed by some apologies. Um, yeah. >> Relating to anti-semitism. Yeah. >> Yeah. So, >> they're still the, they're kind of the masters of changing their tune and then telling you this is what they thought all along. >> Um, but I guess these are exceptions, because they, they do own that, you know, bad mistakes were made, and >> things happened that shouldn't have happened. So, you got, you got to give them some credit. Well, it's not really what happened was is that Hitler's Pope, who presided, uh, for 19 years, Pius the 12th, who collaborated with the Nazis, forged a, a diplomatic agreement with the Third Reich. So when Pius the 12th died, he died on October 9th, 1958. So the church had a big problem on its hand, because it was, he was scandalous. So they did bring in as the next Pope, Pope John the 23rd, who was really a philo-Semite. >> And that's what the church does. It, you know, if they have a problem of pedophilia in the church, they just bring in a guy from Argentina to take over, and it's put a nice face on it. So John the 23rd really had, um, saved Jews during the Holocaust. He genuinely had a very favorable view of Jewish people. >> So, okay, we have a new Pope in. And it's interesting that Pius the 12th is the last Pope to have made an infallible statement, ex cathedra, in 1950, on the Assumption of Mary. That's the last time the Catholic Church, a Pope had done that. >> So by attacking Pius the 12th, you're actually attacking the last ex cathedra infallible statement, because there hasn't been one since then. >> And that's why you don't mess with Pius. That's why there's such a push among many to elevate Pius the 12th and others who are very embarrassed by him. But what do you do with it? Because subsequent Popes, like the Second Vatican Council is not ex cathedra, I mean, but that is >> but it's an ecumenical council of the >> church. Absolutely right. It's, it's very, very important, right? >> But there are, you know, these tons and tons of people, many of them, we know who are self-accountants, who reject every Pope sentenced by the 12th because of that document called, "In Our Time," Nostra Aetate. >> Um, no, it wasn't pro-Jewish, but favorable towards Jews, and said that the Jews of our time are not culpable for Jesus's death, and removing anti-Semitic liturgy from the Good Friday, um, services. When I was a kid, Good Friday, Jews did not go on the streets in Brooklyn. That was the bad, really bad day for us. That's what my friend Brian Leftoff out told me. He literally got beat up on Good Friday, on at least one occasion, maybe more than one occasion. >> Yeah, that's that's insane. That's, I don't even, that boggles my mind. >> Yeah. Uh, it doesn't see for me, I'm going, I don't know how Jews ever survived in Christian Europe because they were. But I'm happy it boggles your mind. I'm, thank God, there may there be many more that boggles their mind. >> But it's, uh, >> Yeah, because they all were, gosh, all the Church Fathers, they all held these views about the Jews, and they were very confident that the Christian Bible expresses these views about Jews. They all did. They >> It's pretty grim. Yeah. By at least by the time you get into the 300s, it's, it's very grim indeed. It's, it's ugly. You have, uh, people ginning up the crowd to go burn down the synagogue and things like this. >> Yeah. >> Right. You couldn't, Christians could not burn down synagogues in the second century. They were lucky to >> just to be alive and be able to practice quietly in somebody's home and have a, a church service. They weren't in any position to burn down synagogues, which have been a crime against the empire. But by the fourth century, you're quite right. They were burning down synagogues with impunity. >> Yeah. You had this kind of ruling class of bishops too, that had a lot of power and money, >> and, uh, could get away with some of these things. And, uh, I mean, honestly, I, I've been doing a lot of research in the whole Nicene era. I just gave a giant lecture in London on basically why Protestants should reject the Nicene Creed and the whole ecumenical council idea essentially. But one, one of the things you learn when you study that era is that, you know, bishops of these big cities were kind of like mob bosses. They had thug monk crowds. They could sick on you to beat you up or intimidate you. They're grafting money off of grain donated by the emperor to the poor and doing all kinds of just, they have spies. They're, they're ridiculous. Um, from a Christian perspective, they're ridiculous. It's like, this is not like shepherd, elder, pastor kind of role to play. It's really very much like a mob boss in places like Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople in those centuries, >> Right? >> So yeah, like why, who are we sure, like these are like the ruling class, right? The Pope is one of those guys. The Orthodox think the, the Patriarchs, the Archbishops are all kind of, they're all kind of on the Pope level, and the Catholics think, "No, no, our guy's the top guy because Peter and Paul died in our city for some reason. This makes him the top guy." >> Um, but I think Protestants should just get off the boat entirely and just, we don't, we shouldn't believe in bishops. Um, >> Right, right, right. That's why I think I agree with you, and that's why I think this will sound crazy, but that's why I think that the Reformation would have never occurred if there was no Black Plague, because when the Black Plague occurs, right in the middle of the 14th century, not only eviscerates more than half the population of Europe, but some 90% of the clergy in the Roman Catholic Church are wiped out, >> and, and that besides the obvious of what it does to Europe, was a, a catastrophe of something that's unprecedented, but it weakened the Roman Catholic Church. Had an enormous impact on the way people viewed the Roman Catholic Church and the kind of powers they wielded, as you described. And I believe that that made it possible, the, that the Roman Catholic was so shattered by the Black Plague and the aftermath, that it made it possible for John Wycliffe, who was a, a priest, a Roman Catholic priest, a great thinker, to publish the first translation of the Bible into English, Middle English. He was translating the Vulgate, but he was really the, the person who starts the flame of the Reformation. His views were not identical to Luther, but he's really the reformer.

>> Yeah. And when you, I mean, even when you set aside all the appalling anti-semitism, the blood libel, and all the nonsense in the Middle Ages, like, just the basic Christian scene in the Middle Ages is incredibly depressing to a Protestant when you really, like, understand how it works, >> Right? Because your local priest might be illiterate. So, he's just going to get up there and babble something in Latin. He doesn't even know what it means. And Christians aren't reading the Bible. Um, and then they have basically a pantheon of saints that they appeal to, and magical practices, >> Right? >> And, uh, it's not like a New Testament faith, um, that, that you see later, like after the Reformation. It's, it's really kind of a grim, uh, quasi-Christian paganism. Uh, never mind. You do have learned people that do know about the Bible and so on, but, um, yeah, just the, the average picture in the village is like super grim. And from our perspective, that's why Christianity didn't really have the effect that it was supposed to have on the world in those years, >> Right? >> But it started earlier, right? On once, once it's all holy mysteries, and you, the lay person, aren't really allowed to think about it or understand it for yourself. You just have to trust your betters to tell you what words to say. >> We've already gone down a bad path right there, you know. >> But where would you, I mean, just think about this for a moment. I'm saying this more for the viewers who know this, that in the 14th century, where would you even get your hands on a Bible? Let's say you were literate, right? How did you get a Bible? I mean, we don't have a Gutenberg, we don't have a printing. I, Luther benefited, and I think that contributes widely to the success of the Reformation. But where do you, where did you get a handwritten Bible from? Like, where you have a book of Hours with some Psalms and maybe a few >> Gospel passages in it. Yeah. >> To have Codex Sinaiticus. I mean, how in the world are you going to have a, a handwritten? Who could own something like that? So even we live in a time where everything is accessible. In this period before the printing press, they, people couldn't get their hands on a Bible. It was just >> inconceivable. So we're living in a remarkable time.

>> The early Christians were text-obsessed, not unlike rabbinic or, uh, Jews. You know, they were all reading the New Testament out loud in these house churches. That's kind of what those writings were designed for, is to be read out loud and understood by a 10-year-old. Um, that's why they're written the way they are. And, uh, yeah, but that was gone once the powers that be sort of seized the power of interpreting and understanding and even just working with, uh, scripture in a Christian context. That, that all went away. And now you have a bunch of people that are just attending services by this ignorant, illiterate priest, uh, who might not be a very good guy either, you know, but he's all they got. So they, they, uh, they believe that God's grace can only come through the Catholic Church. So they're kind of stuck with him, >> Right? >> But big topic, medieval Catholicism. Uh, I didn't know we were going to go there today. Rabbi Singer, I really appreciate your time. It's been a very interesting discussion, and again, I appreciate your work, and I look forward to seeing more of it in the future. >> Likewise. It's an honor to join you, and, uh, let's stay in touch, and I look forward to the time where we meet in Jerusalem, and I'll give you a personal tour of the, of this holy city. So, thank you so much for having me on. >> I would love that. Thank you. [Music]