we have a great interview on The Young Turks here for you guys now is to
address our last line he is
professor in a scholar obviously the Middle East and religion
his last book no god but God their origins evolution future islam was only
considered
what are the most important 100 most important books for the last decade
%uh and so of course when he went on Fox's to talk about
his new book zealot the life and times of Jesus nazar if the
they trying to disqualify him because he happens to be most
so that was an awesome moment a AGR as a great to have you here with us on the
Young Turks II 7 other parks and stuff
I don't spend too much time on an actual come back to it for
variation over that I have it then up but I really really want to talk to you
about your book
um because I'm triana always been curious
about the actual historical life love Jesus
and whether it even existed now I've seen some things where they made in
interesting argument let's put it that way that he was actually a combination
of different mythical characters
and they there could be a case that he never even existed so
can you put that aside for me is definitively not true
I think that most scholars would agree that there was a man named Jesus who
existed in the first third the 1st century
a Adee we have outside at the New Testament very little information about
him but we do have just kinda throwaway mention
love him are written by a Jewish historian name Flavius Josephus around
ninety four CE which is remarkable
that anyone would have written about this marginal Jewish peasant so
I think most scholars would say yes this man named Jesus Nazarene existed but
what he said and what he meant
that's all up for debate when I first found out that the park %uh that the
gospels were not written by the apostles I almost couldn't believe it
and I i bet you that a great majority of Christians don't even know that
at Nass it's not the 12 dudes who are hanging out with them
but guys who wrote forty two hundred and twenty years later right then that makes
me going back to thinking nah
even if he existed who cares they made up all the stuff
well made up is the wrong way to think about it I mean
look what you when I call history the accumulation
love stocks and dates that are empirically verifiable
is holy a product the modern
age I mean that definition of history is like three hundred years old
at most the ancient mine would have no idea what you mean
when you talk that way they were not interested in revealing facts they were
interested in revealing truths
so you don't want to think about the Gospels as
false that's the wrong way to think about it because they wouldn't even
understand what you mean
let me give you perfect metaphor to understand how to read the Gospels and
how they were actually written
so again this is not about revealing facts about revealing truths what you
want to do is say something
true about a person by putting it in the guise of the story
that's what the gospels are that's how the ancient mine understood
these kinds of kinda quote-unquote historical
writing so if I wanted to say something about some guy named Joe that that is a
I want to say that he's a really giving it and compassionate person this is what
I would say one day
Joe walked outside it was freezing cold he saw a homeless man on the street
without a shirt on
so he took off his own shirt and gave it to the homeless man and walked on
now did Joe actually do that
maybe he did maybe he didn't but the question is irrelevant
to the ancient mind because you miss the entire point of the story
the point in the story is that Joe is the kinda guy who would take his shirt
off
up his own back in give it to you that's how the gospels were written
you begin with a fundamental truth about Jesus that He is the in nineteen won the
Messiah later on that He is God incarnate
and then you write stories whose underlying truth
is to prove that that notion but whose fax
are just sort of secondary not not relevant now
as a historian we can go in and we can try to their little tricks that we can
play to figure out
what's more likely historically accurate and what's less likely historically
accurate
but all in all your you're dealing with something called sacred history which
I've said this four times I'm gonna say that this time because it's such a hard
thing for people to get their minds around
which is based on revealing truths not facts