Episode 101: The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife

How did a fragment of a text dubbed "the Gospel of Jesus Wife" make it past peer review and into the public conversation as possibly debunking the myth that Jesus was single? We discuss this, philosophies of history, and much more on this podcast.

Timestamps:

8:48- Postmodernism

23:58- Capitalist Interests

30:05- Can You Get Away with Bad Scholarship?

53:33- Power and Society

Episode Transcription

Charles Kim 0:00

Hello and welcome to a history of Christian theology. My name is Chad Kim. With me this week will be Tom Velasco and Trevor Adams just like the old days. In this episode, we are going to discuss the story behind a document that was released several years ago called The Gospel of Jesus wife. And this scholar purported that it gave evidence to the question of Jesus's marital status. Turned out it was a massive forgery. And there's some question as to whether or not Karen King, this Harvard professor actually knew that it was a forgery or you know how she was duped why she was duped. But there was a book also that was recently written about it called very toss. A Harvard professor, a con man in the Gospel of Jesus wife by a journalist called Arielle sabar. So anyway, basically, in this podcast, we discuss how Karen King, how Karen King came to believe that this document actually showed something historical about Jesus's marital status. And we go through some of the ins and outs in that. But we also talk broadly about views of history, and how that shapes our historical research and what effect that might have on our faith. And if you know if more discoveries are made like this, and that sort of thing. So I hope that you enjoy it. At the end of the podcast that about, after about an hour, Trevor asks us an interesting question. So if you're really interested in the part about our views on how Karen King came to believe in this forgery, that's that's really it actually, towards the end. But most of the stuff in the middle is very interesting conversation about history. So I hope you enjoy this. And please do rate us and review us on iTunes. And leave us a note on Facebook or Twitter. We have a few podcasts coming up with Dr. Matthew Wilcoxon. And with Dr. Matthew Emerson, and so be looking out for those. Thanks for listening. Yeah, so this morning on a history of Christian theology. Tom, Trevor and I are back we've had a few episodes of me interviewing various scholars, I hope you all are enjoying those. But we also have, you know, other stuff that we're interested in as the three of us and so we hope to get back at some point to doing more regular, like covering of texts and things, but there was a big news item A and really the reason this has become a news item is because a book was published by Arielle sabar, who called very toss and it's, it's the story that in the book The novels pretty long, but it are it's not a novel. It's, I mean, like a non sorry, it's a nonfiction kind of investigation of the of this story. So the story is in an outline, a Harvard scholar Karen king, was given a fragment of a papyrus that talks about it that included the words that included the words, and my wife said, are no eight, sorry, well, what are the exact

Trevor Adams 3:12

phrase? Jesus said, I think my wife,

Charles Kim 3:15

yeah, Jesus said, and then my wife. And so there's a few other parts of the, like 10 or 12 line fragment, but it included this phrase. So Karen King comes upon this papyrus fragment decides that it is evidence, if not that Jesus had a wife that people thought that Jesus had a wife, she is clear in other places that she never intended to say that it meant that Jesus definitely had a wife. But she said it was suggestive that Jesus might have had a wife, and that people believed that he had a wife. And so it will, but it turns out the, you know, the papyrus is Coptic, which is, so what Karen king then had to assume was that it was a second century trans, or it was a translation of a second century document that that was in Greek that said, Jesus had a wife. So she has to make the leap from the fact that it's written in Coptic, a language that comes to prominence in the third and fourth century. But she says that it's a copy of something that had to have been earlier. And so that's why she thinks that goes back closer to the first century. But she's always clear that she doesn't actually think that it means necessarily that Jesus had a wife but it but it brings up all these other things. Well, turns out it's a forgery. So she didn't investigate the provenance. She didn't ask who was about anything about the guy who sold it to her. And the story just goes, I mean, it gets you know, Dan Brown level proportions, where the turns out the guy who forged the document is also a pornographer. For, hates the church, but had a smattering of Coptic to make the forgery himself. And King never asks any questions from the guy who sold it to her. And the guy who sells it to her in tells the writer of this book, he says I knew that she was a good candidate to be duped, because she was so interested in women in the life of Jesus. And so Karen King has always sort of been looking for evidence that Jesus was more favorably disposed towards marriage that he might have been married, always looking for, like the fact that there were women leaders in the church, like her whole scholarly obsession had been that well had been twofold, one to try to find evidence of more engagement with women of various sorts, either priests, or that Jesus had love interests. And she, she holds to a very well, can we say problematic view of history, that history is what we make it to be sort of, or there is this sort of like, this revisionist kind of historical approach, I had once detailed to me by a professor, that history is what historians will let you get away with saying. So, so she kind of has this sort of Outlook, ideological outlook on what history is. And so this guy sells her this document, she gets duped. And, you know, they've and basically, it was a bar was the guy who I think originally uncovered it anyway, that it was a forgery. And all he did was some Google searching on the guy who sold the papyrus to Karen King and finds out all this other stuff. But uh, you know, just takes these crazy twists and turns Harvard theological review, publishes it under the name The Gospel of Jesus, his wife, which, you know, there's no reason to call it a gospel except for that it mentions Jesus's name. There's no indication that it you know, it's actually written by her, right, usually the gospel of Jesus, his wife, usually that is the gospel from the person who wrote it. She didn't the woman didn't even write anything. And so I mean, there's just another absurdities abound. There were reviewers that questioned whether or not it should have been published. There, the one reviewer gave it a favorable review was a friend of hers. You know, I mean, it just it goes on and on. And it just makes I mean, just make a mockery of we could say sort of more liberal leaning higher ed.

Trevor Adams 7:43

Yeah. And apparently, according to savara, at least, like it was right, like she at first didn't want the fragment from this dude in Florida, then changes her mind, complete 180. And according to him, it's like, right around the same time Harvard's President questions, whether their divinity schools pulling its weight at the university, and then all of a sudden she changes her mind. And then then the President announces divinity school would be spared. On the very same day King lands on the front page in New York Times. Wow. So it's like, I mean, I don't know if that's accurate. Again, this is just according to servers, like research, but seems like he's done this thing pretty well. I mean, come on. This is the most blatant. The system was a blatant attempt to just, you know, fake polishing something in order to like, preserve your preserve your college, Evian. Yeah.

Tom Velasco 8:48

Chad, you made the comment that it was kind of revealed that Karen King ascribed or not revealed, but the Karen King is known to ascribe to certain kinds of ideological and contentious ideas of history. Yeah, the stuff I've read, which was very little, admittedly, by the way, identified her as kind of ascribing to, you know, kind of more postmodern conceptions of historical interpretation. And this idea that, of course, you know, history is mostly about identifying and deconstructing power, you know, power structures. Right. Right. Is that really contentious? I mean, don't kind of a good chunk of historians kind of follow that path. I mean, isn't that kind of the I, I'm not an academia, that's this could totally be propaganda in terms of the way people talk, but I always hear that, that that mode now controls history departments across kind of across the country.

Charles Kim 9:49

Well, yes, that's true. It does. Yeah, that that is the predominant kind of theory and methodology. That's you goosed, that's not to say that there aren't people who don't ascribe to it, but it is in the water. Like I said, I mean, when I was being trained in sort of more historical methodologies that was was presented to me just as the way that it is. And I remember there being so one of my favorite stories from grad schools, I'm in this class on the history of ancient medicine, Hippocrates, Galen, these kinds of things. And we have a guy who was just finishing his PhD in philosophy, but who wanted to take this course. And I gave that theory before historian history is what historians can get away with saying or what other historians will let them say, and this philosopher just can't stay like he just can't stand it. Like he's like, we real really gonna let this pass as what we think undergirds history, and he has it out with a professor. And, you know, he's like, you're saying there's nothing that's supposed to in any way, control it beyond what someone says or doesn't say, and, and basically, the professor just says, Yes, this is just it. This is what all historians say history is. Now I know that in the philosophy department, you might want to have other theories of knowledge and sorts of things, but that doesn't matter. You are giving sort of old fashioned history, and this is not what we do anymore.

Tom Velasco 11:26

Yeah. How did Foucault and Derrida when, I mean, when I was a kid, when I was in college, two things, one, none of my professors taught this stuff. I remember being told that there was a new professor we'd hired on who had taught this nonsense, and that's the way I mean, I guess I'm showing my hand. But I remember that's what my professors referred to it as was nonsense. And I was like, Okay, well, make sure not to take that class or, you know, that professors, classes, nor to recommend them. And what's more, is I remember talking to my probably my favorite philosophy professor or one of them, and saying, Hey, I'm curious, what philosopher Should I read, who, you know, fall into kind of the postmodern, you know, side of things. And he goes, none read none of them because they're not useful. And, and I was like, okay, but I'm just kind of want to get a sense of what they believe. And because, again, wasn't taught in our department at all, not even referenced. And this was just as we were walking to class. He said, Well, you could read Derrida or he said, You could read Foucault, he's like, okay, and maybe Derrida, but just read them to get a sense of what these guys believe, because it's all not good. Things have changed a lot since 2000. But I was

Trevor Adams 12:57

in that same, you know, as at the same university as you for my philosophy undergrad, and yeah, I mean, there was like, a professor that everyone knew that if you want to go read that stuff, you read it. But we didn't. We weren't even told there was a difference. Or put it this way. We weren't told there was a different philosophy, other than analytic, like contemporary philosophy, until my senior year, they were because someone brought it up, like randomly in a class. And I was like, Wait, there's a another philosophy? And he's like, Yeah, it's like that. He's like, he started to name names. And I'm like, Oh, I thought that was like, not philosophy, but people just thought it was in. Yeah,

Tom Velasco 13:46

never. That is the correct assessment. Philosophy, but people thought it was That's exactly right. I mean, how did it win? That's what I want to know. Why did they why did it win? Because it one there was.

Trevor Adams 14:01

It's got to be ethical, right? Like, that's what it seems now, because it's tied to, like social progress. And social justice. Yeah, but it really funny.

Tom Velasco 14:13

It defined social, though. The reason that's why I'm saying it one, the way we talk about social progress and social justice came from that. Right?

Trevor Adams 14:24

Yeah, I mean, that's the funny, I guess. It's like when I think when I hear social justice now that I've read like, a bunch of John Rawls, I now just think John Rawls, right. But like I realized that's not what most people probably are thinking about, like, I think about liberal egalitarianism. But yeah, they it's almost like they've taken the word that the liberal egalitarian is used, but now they have like, shoved it back in to the sort of postmodern slot, you might say, in their own philosophy. Yeah, it's really weird.

Charles Kim 15:02

Well, and I mean, I shouldn't you know, I don't know that we want to go down the whole trail of critical race theory and all that kind of stuff. But, I mean, the term postmodern isn't really used as much, but yes, it's it's all the I mean, but the people that you're citing Foucault, Derrida, I mean, that's, that's who we're talking about. I mean that

Trevor Adams 15:20

you might, you might even ask, like, how to critical theory in general when, because that it's true that like, as a philosophy that seems to somehow captivate the minds of some social sciences, for sure. And definitely the English departments. I mean, they're fully gone. I've heard I've heard an English major, like someone with a PhD in English, say recently that like rationality will, like, lead us to like, slavery, IQ and, and all sorts of stuff like that. Like they kept talking about societies built on rationality, were the ones that were like, the worst off, like, including our own right now and all this stuff. I was just like, What are you serious? Like? Well, like all the progress we've made by like, rational inquiry, like you don't?

Tom Velasco 16:15

Well, thank you guys. I think we talked about it did you guys, I mean, there was the whole month of, I believe, August, all my Twitter followers, for the most part, were embroiled in the contentious discussion of whether or not two plus two has to equal five. And the insistence, by one side of the bracket, including, again, in Kareem hunt, who's a Harvard mathematician, was absolutely two plus two can equal five, and not only can two plus two equal five, but to assist to insist otherwise, is, I mean, it was bad. Like, just basically, I mean, like to insist otherwise, is basically to buy into white supremacy, and

Trevor Adams 17:03

you're like a math fascist,

Tom Velasco 17:08

fascist, I mean, that's, it's, and also, it arose out of the Enlightenment, which is colonialist, and white supremacist, and all of those kinds of things.

Charles Kim 17:19

Well, and so I mean, to be to give a little bit of the other side here. I mean, I think that part of what part of the reason this some of this stuff has currency has purchase, but for a lot of people is I think there can be helpful ways in which, you know, we sort of deconstruct the way history is told to recognize other people who had more influence than we otherwise would pay attention to, or to recognize that, I mean, it is really hard to figure out what you should say, as an historian, about certain things where you don't have a lot of evidence or the preponderance of the evidence is written by certain people or, you know, I mean, there are these other things that are worth considering, like, I mean, when I think about certain certain things from Foucault and Derrida, I like to say that, like, a lot of the deconstruction can be helpful. And think like, insofar as it helps us frame, like what's going on, or like it can help us sort of see blind spots from our sort of overconfidence, in, like, one particular story, or that has, that has been so prevalent. But But to me, it never, it can only end there, it can only be helpful to help us see certain things. But it really can't do much else. Because it's not usually a positive philosophy or theology, it's not usually like, okay, but this is what it means to build a better society, or this is what it means to do good history, or this is what you know, and theological circles, like, you know, this is what the good life actually is. It is helpful and, you know, keeping us aware of our biases, or of our overlooking of other figures, because they weren't predominant in the standard narratives that we'd received. So I think that there can be a kind of usefulness that we shouldn't, you know, shouldn't just denounce it out of hand, because it comes from a certain camp, my problem has always been, is what Okay, so once we've identified this thing, what next? Once we've identified once we've identified once we've identified a certain problem with once we've identified a certain problem with like, you know, privileging, you know, sort of patriarchal narratives or whatever the thing you want to say once we've identified some of those, like, okay, well what if it produced some good and can we say that it's good just be just because it's, you know, patriarchy ergo, it can still be good. But how do we adjudicate? Good, is it you know, and that's, that's really what we need to know. Because it's just because it's a man that says it doesn't make it evil. But you know that that would be like, there are ways that we can like I would say use this stuff to benefit not only, you know, society writ large, but history and other things, but I only think it's like part of the picture, and maybe even a really small part of the picture but a part?

Trevor Adams 20:27

Well, that's the thing.

Tom Velasco 20:29

If it's a part of the conversation, that's fine. I mean, I may not be I don't know how, I mean, I can certainly say that some of the deconstruction I've come across that seem that I've found some of it useful in terms of revealing things I hadn't thought of before. So having it be a part of the conversation is great. I don't know how much I like, or how much I think most of it is rational or reasonable. But at the same time, or, you know, I think it's fine being there. And I actually interested to read up on some of those, some of these ideas, but the thing is, is it's become dogma. That's why it's dogma. And has it's dominating the academy. I hope it's not dominating philosophy yet. I don't think it is. But it certainly is dominating history. And English for sure.

Trevor Adams 21:26

So I don't know, I'm noticing that so on, like, the analytic philosophy side of things, I'm noticing that what people want is they want the object devising features of this deconstruction, right? What they want is, let's recognize how, for example, science, was sexist, in order to further make our inquiry more objective, because there is a way the world really is and we want to figure that out. And in those ways, I think that's like the quality that at least the analytic philosophers, that's the thing they like. And so in some disciplines, races, philosophy, race is probably filled most with this, obviously. It depends, it's on the spectrum, but of what people do, but if like, you're gonna interact, for example, like gender and philosophy, that's, that's an easier one. If you're going to do like the philosophy of gender. And you want to do it from an analytic perspective, you still got to interact with the only people who had been doing that type of philosophy for a while. And so you got to interact with a lot of like, critical theory and postmodern philosophers, but they often what they what they want to bring out is arguments that maybe are still kind of motivated that vindicate what some of these people say if they're a fan of them. But the good the good philosophy, I think that's being done is still trying to just bring out the ways in which recognizing, for example, biases can make us actually more objective, rather than using it as like a club, I guess, against views you don't like and sort of just now just turning the values around. So like, basically just returning easy examples, like returning sexism with sexism. So it's just like, so now we'll just flip it like, Okay, we need to find out the women's sources, because they were probably the only ones even telling the truth, for example, so on and so forth. As you can imagine,

Charles Kim 23:46

well, let's so let's return a little bit to Karen keen here. Yeah.

Tom Velasco 23:51

We're turning to what Karen king?

Charles Kim 23:53

Oh, oh,

Tom Velasco 23:55

is that what this is about, is talking about?

Charles Kim 23:58

And, and I mean, so, you know, it's sort of an interesting, talk a little bit about these critical theory, parts of this, like, I still think, you know, if, if most of history was looking to, or if like, most of the time what theologians were doing was looking to the first and second century, just to I mean, I don't know what the critical, you know, it's overlooking the women's role. And it was just as a way to reinstate g8 The power of men, you know, that's problematic. And so there can be helpful ways in which we could say, you know, what, what were women doing, then what was the power of the verb, like the virgin or the, the widow like, so it does appear that in early Christian communities, there was a special status and a certain sort of almost not really veneration, but like, authority that was given among women, for virgins and for widows. And you know, we can talk about why that is over and against married women, but it was and and so that was like, that was kind of Favorite thing, but like asking those kinds of questions will just illuminate our understanding of the period. But when it goes so far, but here's the thing, that the thing that frustrates me about the gospel of Jesus, his wife is, for one, the title in and of itself was just meant to infuriate. And it was just meant to, you know, cause a stir for the sake of causing a stir. And it wasn't in service of saying, one of the things might we learn about women whose stories are not often told, it was, you know, wasn't trying to be the sort of more charitable reading, it was like, Hey, how do we make as many people angry as we can, with our discovery, that doesn't turn out to be a discovery? That was really like my kind of, like, you know, frustration with it was it just, it didn't even didn't even try to be anything other than let's just see if we can stick a fork in someone's eye.

Trevor Adams 26:05

Yeah, and the fact that it came from Harvard, on top of that, like, let's just choose this really provocative title, and then Harvard does it. And I almost wonder if they thought, like, we can get away with it, because we're Harvard. But they had to know that people would love the chance to like, just take down so I don't know. Seems obvious to me, at least now. And in retrospect, but Well,

Tom Velasco 26:37

I mean, it also, it also obviously plays its I don't know, for lack of a better term, and also kind of ironically, given that we've just been talking about critical theory, it plays its capitalist function, right? I mean, these are fields of study that do not sell books, right? So if you sell if you publish a book, that's called the gospel of Jesus's wife, that's a provocative title that will get people to pay I mean, and potentially will get people to pay from all sorts of the sides of different aisles, right. I mean, on the one hand, you've got maybe provocative, not provocative tours, well, yeah, provocative tours, but also, like, you know, people who want to take down the Christian faith, here's an opportunity. And then you've got the Christian apologists who want to defend, they gotta read it. So they know what's being said, so that they can then go and do their seminars. And if they go into their seminars, then that's just more promotion for the book itself, right? I mean, I remember when Dan Brown's book, The Davinci Code came out, which of course, that's another kind of business tie here, right? I mean, the publication of this book can tie right into the Vinci code. Churches were up in arms about it. And you know, at our church, we put on a big event, we had a guy who, supposedly he actually did a terrible job, supposedly was an expert on Dan Brown, and this book, we had him come in, and he gave a talk. And there I mean, there must have been 1500 people who showed up at my church to hear his talk. Not really occurring to me at the time that this can't help but be good. Press Right? In for Dan Brown, right, and for his book. So it's like there's so many levels here where this ends up being something that could make money could bring relevance to the department could make a name, obviously, for the professor. And Chad, kind of, to one of the points you brought up. I found that really interesting when you said that there was talk of them shutting that department down. Right. Yeah. And so it's like all of this makes so much sense of that in light of that, I think, yeah,

Trevor Adams 28:57

it wasn't it wasn't like quite, the language wasn't quite as strong as shutting it down. But apparently, the the president of Harvard was, whose name is Drew, Drew Faust. Yeah. At least that's what it looks like, said something like, has somehow intimated that the divinity school wasn't pulling its weight at the university, whatever that means. This is at least according to subpar. And then when they reached out to the heart, he sabar reached out to the Harvard president, about the overlap and the timing between like the announcement and then deciding, you know, the divinity school would be fine or whatever. Apparently, she's responded with Dr. Faust believes that others are in a better position to explain that to you. So didn't deny anything, but just left it a complete mystery?

Charles Kim 30:05

Well, so here's a here's my sort of provocative question. Does the sidebar book does that prove that you actually can't get away with this bad kind of scholarship? Like is, you know, like even so another scholar Candida Moss, she wrote a response to the subpar book and to King's article, and she said, kings, a friend of mine, but what she did was hasty. And this is, you know, bad for all of us that this happened, because this makes us all look bad. But but you know, so she has a kind of begrudging, or she has a respect for Karen King, as a scholar outside of this one, what she felt like was kind of one moment of poor judgment. But you know, but does, but maybe maybe all of this, this whole media circus around this shows, you can try to get away with something. But if there are facts about it, you won't be able to, like so does this actually show? Not that scholars want to try to pull something over on you, but that even if they want to, if they get you know, that they will be called on it? Like, is this the system working?

Tom Velasco 31:19

Well, I think this is an example of the system working. I don't know that it shows that the system works, right. I mean, you guys remember a few years ago, there were three academics. One of them was named James Lindsay. The other one was Helen, oh, goodness, I can't remember last name Primrose, I think, I can't remember the last name. But they went through and they wrote up 18? No, they wrote 20 art that they submitted for peer review. And of those 20, I think 15 were accepted. And of the 15 that were accepted. One actually won a, an award for scholarship. And the one that won the award for scholarship, had something to do with gender studies of like, basically, dog owners and of the dogs. And I was going to interview with James Lindsay. And he said that on the opening in the opening paragraph, he states, and I don't remember the exact number, but the amount of time that they spent in the calendar year in dog parks. And he said it was an impossible number. And so that got not only through the peer review process, but it actually won an award. And he said, and they didn't even bother to check whether or not the number that I gave, in terms of visiting dog barks was possible. Right. So I do think the system works at times. I mean, I'm not like, I mean, I'm an advocate for peer review. You know, I'm, I'm not, I mean, it drives me nuts. I'm an elder at my church, I have to deal with people who are constantly reading, quote, articles and quote that they find on Google that have all sorts of information. I mean, you know, no, you know, these basically these websites that have never been vetted by anything. So I'm a advocate for peer review. And yes, I think this is an instance of the peer review process working, although it should have worked sooner, I think it took too long. But the process has severe flaws. I think right now. And I think that's what Lindsay's experiment, kind of and that was obviously the point of the experiment is those scholars, their point was to show that there's some real problems with the current peer review process, at least as it stands in certain fields of study, obviously, it's going to vary from certain from one discipline to another, I would hope, for instance, that a peer reviewed article in a physics journal would be a much stronger, right, would then would be in say, an article that relates to gender studies, let's say which is, for instance, what that article that Lindsay wrote, was kind of subject to

Charles Kim 34:13

Yeah, so So Tom, yeah, you're pointing out that, that sometimes the sort of peer review process works. So Trevor, do you have any thoughts on this, like I, I was sort of, you know, laying out that that in some ways subpar book sidebars book proves that you can't get away with saying anything you can't get away with this kind of idea that you know, you we can just make up history as we want. So I mean, it

Trevor Adams 34:40

certainly shows that so there's this like, common conservative thing I hear which is the like the you know, all these liberal academics are like, in this range is it depends on how like, your how like crazy you want to take it, some are like, they're in a full blown conspiracy theory to show that our whole worldview is wrong or something like that, such that, you know, all the fossils are fake, like, you can go that route or, you know, whatever. And they and it depends on the level, but basically an X, like everyone's together on this in some sort of way. But like when you, especially if you've ever actually been in an academic department, you realize, like, there's so little organization that anyone could actually get together to pull off like, some huge grand conspiracy to like, only pass through peer review the things that like, D legitimize the thoughts of, you know, whatever, you particular conservative thing. I find it hilarious because yeah, I mean, this just goes to show that like, it doesn't matter, because this would be like a total, like, if they had evidence of such a thing. This is like, you know, liberals would just be like, super happy about this, supposedly, you know that at least that's the idea. This, and this is certainly something that like atheist biblical scholars, they just find this completely tantalizing. They would love to say it, but no, yeah, if it's fake, it's fake. Like, and there's. And I also think that the peer review process isn't what's the best way to put it? It's not like, it's a process where? Well, I guess it depends on Yeah, the social, like, social sciences have got to be slightly, slightly different. But it's, it's kind of a process where that you're trying to obviously get these like objective and good results. And the whole idea is that it's, in a way legitimizing the thing, once it's finally published, assuming it was peer reviewed. That's the idea. But the the corruption that's involved is more about. It's more about status, like academic stent, like that's the stuff that happens way more often, at least, that's the stuff I hear about, like, even in philosophy, I hear about this all the time, like, people reviewing a paper, and it's in like a same topic that they're about to get published in. And so they're the referee for it. But they're about to get poet total conflict of interest, they'll like send the say, No, put comments on it, revise and resubmit, just so that their article has enough time to get published, stuff like that. And like, I would think that if anything, and it kind of points out here, like, if someone fakes something at like, a prestigious institution, like Harvard, I was kind of alluding to this earlier, like, people are gonna love to jump on this and show that it's a forgery, in part, because I think it's a story people like, but also if you're from like, some lesser department, you know, not Harvard, basically, like, this is your time to just be like, Look at pile on. Yeah, pile on, like, just destroy there. So, yeah. Anyway, well,

Tom Velasco 38:14

I was gonna say, kind of one more thing to kind of add on to that. And it, it does kind of carry on from the last thing I said about depending on what department you're in, in terms of peer review. You know, it's like philosophy, right? I mean, you know, I have a philosophy degree, Trevor's studying, he's working on his PhD in philosophy, like peer review and philosophy. And I've never had it. So it's not like I've observed it. I just, I know, in principle, it can't be what it is in physics, right. Like, in like, I mean, in general, a philosopher can write whatever he wants. I mean, like, it doesn't, there's, there's not You're not dealing with hard facts the way you are in the hard sciences. And that's actually something that is really difficult, I think, for people to wrap their heads around, especially in today's day and age, where everybody wants to accuse people on different sides of the spectrum of being for science or against science, or things like that, right? It's people are grouping all kinds of academic disciplines into one, slapping the label science on it and acting the acting as if they all deal with facts in the same way. And that's not the case, right? sociological theories aren't the same kinds of theories as physics theories, they're just not. And when and what that means is, is that you have you're a sociologist, or a gender theorist, or a philosopher or whatever, the things that you're essentially arguing and your the claims you're making and If the things you're contributing are things that are highly dubious, just by nature of this, of the discipline itself. I mean, these are, these are theories in the strictest sense theories that are really hard to measure, right, really hard to come up with concrete proofs to them, so to speak. And that's something I think a lot of people, it's lost on a lot of people, a lot of people, they see the letters PhD, and they just think, well, that's a scientist, and that scientists as equal say, with everybody else, but when you're dealing with the hard sciences, and this is such an important distinction, math, physics, chemistry, you don't have the luxury of that kind of stuff, you have to bump your head up against the hard, cold facts of the world in a way that perhaps some of the others don't. Right. And I think a lot of that is because these other areas I mentioned are philosophical meaning what they're dealing in his argument more than anything else. And it all has to do with how strong is your argument? Not not a proof?

Trevor Adams 41:08

Right? Yeah. Historians? Yeah, they, they completely admit that, like, you need to give an argument. I mean, that's, that's sort of what they teach, at least I've seen, like, Yeah, I've been in a history department seem posters on the wall. And it'll, it'll be a poster, like how to write a paper. And it'll be like, give your argument, you know, find your evidence, cite your, the, the ideas, you you have some you do have some like physical evidence somewhere. But then the idea is you're giving like, what we call in logic and abductive argument you're giving a it's, which is really just another type of inductive argument, except it's not forward looking, basically. And it's that you're just trying to reason from effects to causes, which is really hard. But you can sort of offer, you know, inference to the best explanation for what, what explains what, what we have.

Charles Kim 42:05

Yeah, I'm gonna take a quick break from our podcast to tell you a little bit about our sponsor the upper room. There are some daily comforts that just make you grateful and feel more grounded in life, petting the dog, hitting that snooze button, and of course, that first cup of coffee. These are things that you count on every day to help you get where you want to go. Things like the Upper Room, daily devotional guide, you can count on the upper room for daily inspiration, daily community and daily prayer. It is the only daily devotional magazine written by readers, ordinary people, people who have encountered God and daily situations. The upper room is here for you every day through your email, a custom app or a printed magazine, enjoy a free 30 day trial of our email or app service by visiting upper the upper room.org/welcome that is, u p, p e r R O M dot O R G slash, w e l c o m e, upper room.org/welcome To get your first 30 days free. It is interdenominational and written by readers. And it has 80 years of history and 5 million readers around the world. So this is a well established organization. So I encourage you to go check them out and get their emails and devotional guides from their website. Well, I wanted to kind of, and I'll tread lightly here. But I wanted to bring up another thing that sort of I see around me, and I think this might be a kind of evidence for it. But is there's a certain feeling among conservatives, that liberals have all the power. And then oftentimes there are liberals who feel like the conservatives have all the power. So now this would be a case of a more liberal leaning person, let's say. I think it's probably fair about Karen King, who, who is has a certain kind of, quote, unquote, power. So she makes this makes this state case about this gospel of Jesus, his wife, and it feels it feels like the academy is against conservative Christians. And it feels like it feels like that's, you know, and this is proof, and this is evidence. But my the thing that's the hardest about the last four years under Donald Trump, is that, in fact, Republican conservatives in and I know that the two are not overlapping with theological and Christian conservatives. But the fact of the matter is that there is some overlap, and it's that Republicans are actually in power as far as the government's concerned. But the Liberals maybe have more of a power in the let's say, media and Academy. And I don't know, I guess it depends on which Corporation you're talking about, but, but it's sort of funny, everybody gets To be persecuted right now. Everybody can look at someone and say your group has all the power, but mine doesn't. And it's just it's one, it's kind of, I can laugh about it, as I explain it. But it also is infuriating. Because it really everyone wants to say, Oh, we're just fighting the man. Well, which man? In what sense?

Tom Velasco 45:27

That might be Jad? The best statement I've heard on this particular subject. It's so unbelievable listening to people who have significant amounts of power, on all ends of the spectrum, talk about how they don't have power. And, you know, on the one hand, I would say, in the kind of system that the American fathers set up, there will always be, too, with power right. Now, it is funny talking about conservatives and liberals, because of how widely divergent all of our views actually are. Like if you take a centrist Liberal Democrat and compare him to a radical left wing progressive, they're radically I mean, like, why those two get grouped together? I'll never understand like their worldviews are diametrically opposed. And same on the right, obviously, right, you take a take a libertarian, like a really strong, small government's, you know, hands off major capitalist, throw him in with a protectionist Trumpist. Why are they on the same side? I don't know. I don't, I mean, it has to do with our system, which ultimately requires that we all coalesce into two groups, right? And so evangelicals tend to side with Trump, who's not an evangelical and isn't, you know, doesn't hold the same values in any way. Because they don't want to be with the other side, right, and what the other side represents. And basically, these two groups have to find a way to adhere. Now, Trump is I think, exceptional. I think, if there's one thing he's good at, it's identifying who's loyal to him, and finding a way to make all of those who are loyal to him, feel part of the team, like making sure that he fights for their interests, right. In that sense. That's, I mean, he's probably better at that, than any president I've seen. Like, I think about Obama, for instance, when Obama ran on a prior to his first term, one of his major, one of his major policy points was that he was going to get us out of Iraq, which he eventually did. But he didn't do it in his first term, as elected official, and a lot of liberals and progressives, people who were really against the Iraq war, were disappointed and upset with him for it. Now, I've never talked to the man, I don't know why it played out that way. But my suspicion is, he became president and said to himself, oh, this is harder than I thought it was gonna be. Like, there's actually a lot of stuff that has to happen. And so he sat there and figured, okay, well, I'm going to try to do this as best I can, as fairly as I can. And as wisely as I can. Trump strikes me as a kind of guy who you voted for him, he ran on this policy point, and he's going to do absolutely everything in his power to get you the thing you want. I think part of its out of his strong sense of loyalty for those who support him, I also think part of it is utilitarian because it helps him keep power.

But he, you know, so it doesn't matter if like, for instance, shutting down the government to get a wall might be detrimental to the rest of the country, right? It's like, that's what I promised. So I'm going to make sure that I do everything in my power to, if not get it to at least make it look like I'm doing everything in my power to get that thing. And so, so what anyway, all this to say I think Trump is particularly good at forming a coalition saying here are the points, I'm going to get all these guys on my side, in spite of the fact that a Rand Paul, Republican libertarian is literally the opposite of a Trumpist protectionist, and I don't know why Trump, why either of those are necessarily associated with conservative evangelical Christianity, but somehow that so all that to say, that leads to two groups. And what people don't understand is both groups have claims of power in terms of power, because you're talking about roughly 50% of the country on each side, roughly. Right. And they're, they're joining their powers because they have to, or else they won't actually have they actually won't have power. Right. So but I think you identified kind of the main areas like I mean, there are other areas of power but Yeah, the government right now is really under the power of the Republicans and of the conservatives. And the media and academia is under the control or the power of the liberal side. I think one of the things that's unfortunate about that, for Republicans anyway, is, the government is much more volatile in terms of who controls it. Like, there's a really good chance, all three, I mean, the executive and both houses of the legislature are gonna be under democratic control in January, right, really good chance that that's going to be the case. But the media and the jacket and the Academy are going to still be under liberal control. Right. That's not to say that the Conservatives won't have power, they there are there, they will have their halls of power, and eventually, they will get back control at some point of Congress and of the presidency and of the Senate. But, you know, at the same time, that's like, this is the this is the way it is the conservatives, by the way, one if they lose the presidency and, and the legislative, they're going to feel like they're very persecuted. Yep.

Charles Kim 51:14

Well, the Oh, Trevor, did you want to respond to that?

Trevor Adams 51:21

No, I was gonna say something about the king thing again, I was gonna bring it back to that. So go on, oh,

Charles Kim 51:28

well, this could relate to King I guess. But one, one criticism that I always have of Foucault. And Derrida, again, isn't that we shouldn't look for certain kinds of social power, and the way that it can be wielded, but it also creates this problem where it's a really helpful, it can or not maybe really helpful, it has its uses in a certain kind of environment. But when it becomes the predominant force, it doesn't know what to do, because it can't deconstruct its own power. And so there's, there's a kind of limited space for that sort of deconstruction. And the reason that's the case, in my mind, because I'm not, I'm not fully like, embracing of all the that, that like that kind of ideology. And I will stand and I can do no other that is true ideology. There's, and it drives me a little nuts, when people overlap, philosophy, theology and ideology, as if all of those things are equivalent, or, and, or ways of talking about sort of abstract reasoning or something. Like, cannot make like Marx wins, if everyone is ideological, you know, Marx, and Foucault when, if this is all ideology, but so, but the other thing that frustrates me is I, I recognize that there are good forms of power, like power in and of itself, having power isn't necessarily wrong. The constraint and the the thing that holds you back from being evil isn't because someone tells you, or you know, like, it will, is because you do something that's good or true. So if you're in power and you do something good, then that's good, then that kind of power is good, but on the view that any kind of power is evil, then there's nothing I mean, you know, then once you have the power, then you become the evil.

Trevor Adams 53:33

And this is, this is kind of why like anarchism is often thought to be sort of self defeating, yeah, self defeating, because the idea is, you want to coerce no one. And yet, we've got to coerce people into coming up with this society, that course is no. And also, it's just, it's literally impossible. I mean, at the very least, you'll coerce people before they're adults, or people that don't, you know, aren't fully functioning in terms of their mental capacities, you would at least coerce them. And furthermore, yeah, you'll just you'll want to coerce people who are dangerous. And that's that's kind of why we've gotten where we've gotten. And furthermore, it's the same, it's the exact same with power, because power really is just at least in like law, Social Sciences, they define it as sort of like a capacity to influence the behavior of others. Something like minimal like that. It's like a minimal conception of power. Well, then, is Yeah, as soon as you do your deconstructed project, you by definition, now have power, because now you have, by definition allowed yourself to influence the behavior of others. And that's, that's the, that's the point. So you, what you want is you just want the power to be You want to be grounded in the things? You might say, Yeah, I guess I'll use the word grounded. You want to be grounded based habits basis in whatever phrase you want to insert there. And something that everyone can agree upon. Like, here's, here's a real obvious example. We want people to arrest people for murder. Right? We all want that. Okay, good kind of power of great power and what so what's the like, officer's power based on basically the consent of the governed all of society? Yeah. And the govern, for that matter in, in the particular context? It's so it's like, yeah, why we all have this one value. We don't really like when people just kill innocent people, or wrongfully kill people just to make it very explicit. So yeah, so we want the power to apprehend such people and then like, dictate what happens to them like, it's, yeah. And so there's, there's just obvious ways in which people aren't thinking through. I mean, that we've talked with, we talked about this probably more than anything, but just people aren't thinking through the ideology to which they're ascribing to when they start ascribing to it.

Tom Velasco 56:17

One thing about power, reflecting back on what you said earlier, chat about power being used well, and I want to be careful not to touch my words, I think power can be used. Well, I think power has been used. Well, I think most people who have had different degrees of power, have used it as kind of a mixed bag, some, some of us well, some of it is used poorly. And I guess what makes a good leader is hopefully somebody who maximizes the good and minimizes the bad. I do, however, think that power has a kind of intrinsically corrupting force, so to speak. I think that it's I mean, this is, for me, one of the one of the things about the book, The Lord of the Rings, has always been so magical, is the way it metaphor, it basically allegorize his power in the ring, and shows What power does, I think Tolkien is onto something. And the way he portrays that ring, like Frodo is the best of us. And even Frodo can't help it. Like even Frodo, and I think about this all the time conversations I have constantly with people, you know, I'm a teacher, so we have to have these conversations about whether or not atomic force was justified in against her or, you know, against Japan. And you know, what I mean, and, and it's like, you talked about those kinds of things. And it's, it amazes me how quickly people will turn to Yes, dropping bombs on women and children is fine, in certain circumstances, as long as x, y and z, you know, are met. And for me, it's not so much that it that there isn't an argument to be made there. For me, it's how quickly people go there. And I think about how much more quickly people will be inclined to go there, if they actually have the power to do so. Right? I mean, and it's like, anyway, all this to say, one of the things that I feel isn't stated very clearly which Karl Marx did state very clearly. But it's not stated clearly in kind of amongst today's Neo Marxists, or against those who embrace critical theory, or those types, is they do actually assume that they're that power can be wielded well, but it can only be wielded well, by the oppressed people group. That's the thing. Once the oppressed group has power, then it will be right now Marx himself is, and maybe I this is the, maybe this is all rooted in the fact that I need to read more Marx, I feel like I'm pretty competent on Marx. But Marx himself, he divides all of history up into these modes of production. And, and the modes of production change, as the class struggle leads to an evolution. So it's like in the Middle Ages, you have lords and serfs. And eventually there's a revolution, the serfs gain power, the serfs become the bourgeoisie. And then a new oppressed class comes to power, which are the proletariat the workers, the urban workers. The con the socialist revolution is going to be when the urban workers overthrow the bourgeoisie and take control. Now, here's where Marx doesn't make sense to me.

In all of his assessments of these previous groups, the overthrow of the upper group is good, and the oppressed group is bad and And in all of these evolutions that take place, the new oppressor group, which was once the oppressed group becomes bad, and the oppressed group is good, that all and as far as I can tell, inexplicably stops when we reach the social mode of production, and when are the socialist mode of production. And when the socialist mode of production finally is realized, that is when the urban workers the proletariat, overthrows the bourgeoisie, that is the capitalist, big business owners, when they're overthrown by violent revolution. And the socialist mode takes place. That's when you have what Marx calls the dictatorship of the proletariat, when the urban workers become the dictators. This is the one time when the oppressor is good, yeah. And the oppressor for the well being of all, oppressed is fiercely, so that they can bring about finally, the communist mode, which is a classless society, which is fundamentally anarchical, because there will be no need for compulsion of any kind. And what I never understood is why Marx, why at that point, why in that one mode of production, is the oppressed group, not now good. And the oppressor group is now bad. And that seems to be without people stating it, where contemporary Marxist theory is going, right? It's like we identify groups with power, we want to we want to subvert that power and bring it down. And, and by the way, I again, kind of like in line with some of the things you guys have said, I don't want to say there's no value in this, right? I mean, I think we can learn a lot and, and maybe deconstructing some of this power will help us to challenge some of it and hopefully make for a more just society. I'm not like trying to poopoo it altogether. But why is it that the fundamental assumption is shift power to the oppressed group? And now, it will be good, yeah, because that's not going to be the case, right? It's just not going to be the case, whoever gets the power is corrupted by it. Right. And I don't want to be so pessimistic as to say you can't have leaders who are just and good, because I think you can, for the most part, but inevitably, and invariably, power will corrupt. Now, and one of the things I think about our particular political experiment in America is our founding fathers. They, I think, believe this about power, which is why so much of our system is rooted in the idea of basically disseminating power amongst different political structures. Right. You know, that's why you have the competing executive against the legislative, against the judiciary, against the competing states versus federal, I think these competitions were built into the system, because the founding fathers knew that power corrupted, and that if you gave it to any one group, even the masses, democratically that, that a majority is going to also oppress a majority also, is going to have power and use it poorly. So I think they did the best they could to try to prevent any one thing or group or whatever, from gaining all the power. That's what it seems to me whether they was successful or not, I don't know. But that was, I think what they were attempting.

Trevor Adams 1:03:37

Yeah, I mean, that's that's another strange fact about I might just say contemporary leftists just to make it more of a broad brush to include some people, but like I, they want to, they'll often say they support socialism. But then they'll also say they support Marxism, or something like that, or at least they'll like, post a meme and call people comrade, which seems to be all it takes today to be a NEO Marxist. And then, and then they just, and then like, just crap on capitalism, like just basically make jokes about how bad capitalism so this is all it takes nowadays. And yet they're, yeah, they're, they're not considering obviously, the nuances. But furthermore, it's like, what what are you what do you actually want here? Because like, if you want what Marx want it, you really want that. Yeah, you gotta answer like this tough question that you've kind of brought up. But also like, you want the stateless classless society, is that really what you're aiming for? Because I don't know if I don't know about the stateless part because they often always want to give the state more power. But furthermore, if you really want like, the social justice Um, I actually understand the, like the OG I'm saying original. But you know, I don't want not trying to No True Scotsman anyone here but like, but like if you really want to talk about like the original socialist idea of just giving power to the workers, if you're giving them the power by letting them own the means of production, like that's, that's the idea. And then they got it but then they get to like, now it's a balancing act with the state. So since it now they have bargaining power against the state, you and that's a place that I would think hopefully people would be comfortable stopping, but instead it's like this. It's almost like a it's almost like speaking Christianese like when you're in a new evangelical circle, I don't think they've thought, I don't really know if they believe any of these sorts of things. I think they're really just like, they know the words. And they're just throwing the words out there like, Oh, I'll say this word. Now. Who Marx's say that? I, I just highly doubt any of them have thought this through, especially because I've subjected some people to like, Socratic questioning on like, what they really want society to be like. And I've gotten people to basically, I've gotten conservatives to admit they wouldn't mind workers owning businesses, which I'm like, okay, so you kind of want so. And I've gotten people on the left to admit that they basically want like, a really free market, because they want the government less involved, and the workers don't have more power. And like, I don't know if you realize the implications of your view. But that's the point is I don't, I think they just have been given a vocabulary that is unfortunately rooted in something that they probably don't even realize I disagree with. Well,

Tom Velasco 1:06:54

and it's played out, Trevor, like, like, I mean, I, look, I'm not, I'm not one of those guys, who wants to automatically say, oh, all you leftist, you're all just Stalin. I don't believe that at all. In fact, much of the left is rooted in classical liberalism, which has, literally, which is literally the opposite of Stalin. But what I but it's, it's important understand that Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, all those guys, they were Marxists, people keep acting like they weren't. And they say, well, they fundamentally disagreed with Marx's philosophy in certain areas. This is true, each one of them had their own take on Marxism. But it's never what people think it is, because Marx envisioned that the socialist mode of production would be a dictatorship of the proletariat. And that dictatorship would be the workers controlling the government, and, and the means of production and all and you know, all that. And they would be doing one of two things with everyone who is still in opposition, they would either be re educating them, which all of those countries made liberal use of reeducation camps, all rooted in Marxist ideals, or they would kill them. Marx was 100%, for the elimination of anyone who couldn't get along, because the only hope for a classless Utopia as he envisioned it is to have nobody opposed. And so it's like, that's where this has gone. That should give some people a pause. It's not as if one guy tried Marxism. And it ended up going this route, like all of the distinct Marxist states ended up going this route at some point or another. And that's because Marx really did advocate for that. And by the way, I am making a distinction between Marxism and socialism, per se. Because the idea of government control of business and things of that nature transcends Marx, there were socialists long before there were ever Marx and you certainly can have a kind of socialism that has nothing to do with Marx. But I'm talking about this Marxist ideology that, you know, ties into this notion of class struggle and warfare. Right? Yeah. Cuz

Trevor Adams 1:09:19

mark, because Marx thought like, yeah, as you've already basically stated that socialism, would eventually lead to his own view, but shouldn't be our stopping point. But But here's forget something you just said made me think of something else I find funny. I'm not going to remember it. Nevermind. I don't want to take up too much time trying to remember.

Charles Kim 1:09:43

Well, I probably need to be running here pretty soon. What about Karen Kane?

Tom Velasco 1:09:47

We never talked about caring here's,

Trevor Adams 1:09:48

oh, this is the one last thing I wanted to at least ask about caring thing. Do you think she knew it was a fake?

Tom Velasco 1:09:55

Oh, good question.

Charles Kim 1:09:57

That is a good question. Do I think she knew it was

Trevor Adams 1:10:00

Fake because I looked at the evidence that's been like, that's out there that people publish. And some of the things I noticed were like, here's one of here's one of the ones who saw handwriting style has no known precedent in the ancient world. Coptic grammatical errors that are so colossal, no one who would know Coptic at all would like everyone, like everyone would be able to see this basically. Literally, the Coptic phrase for my wife has like no known precedent or like, it's it's like, it seems like it's stuff that basically if you're a trained historian, it's the kind of thing you would, you would notice. Well, so but like, even removing the radiocarbon dating, for example, is what I'm trying to point out like, so just like sushi and get your take away the radiocarbon dating evidence, she should just do textual evidence alone. It seems like maybe you've known

Charles Kim 1:11:04

I mean, I, I how do we ascribe like I will say, I don't want you know, one of the criticisms of the book itself very toss the guy who wrote the investigation. One of the criticisms is he spends a lot of time trying to assume her ideology drove her who she was, and her interests and all these things. I will say, it's not up to me to decide exactly what she knew or what she didn't know. And if I tried to assume that I knew what what motivated her, you know, I'm just as bad as someone who assumes they know what motivates me.

Trevor Adams 1:11:41

No, you don't need to guess motive. What I want to know is like, we're like we're watching about to watch a boxing match or predicting who's gonna win. I want that kind of same level of guests here. It's admittingly for fun. Oh, it's like giving Scott your scholarly chops? Well,

Charles Kim 1:11:59

I mean, I will say she had people who confirmed like she had people who were her friends who said go with it. Um, so you know, if I came like so, I mean, I guess we could, we could use my we could use the example I began with the closest thing that I have to anything that's not been discussed frequently is this question about Agustin sister. And this use of this word, President ERISA that may have been on her gravestone may have been on someone else's at the very least, it's suggestive. So you know, if I had some, you know, if I had friends who said, go with it, run with it, publish it, say Augustine. St. Augustine sister was ordained? I probably would. And I would say, I had my questions. I saw this thing. I wasn't sure. It has no precedent. Yeah, I'd probably go with it. If I had people, if I had people who I trusted, say to go with it, I would. Because you're always gonna have people who are in opposition to you. In academia, you're always going to have doubters, you're always going to have someone who says I disagree, I detract, whatever. So if I'm charitable in that respect,

Trevor Adams 1:13:15

but if I knew it was a fake, you could just as easily actually get those, you could come up to those people and go, Hey, just act like you gave me the green light on this. And you're my friend. And that's why I go to you in particular. So it explain also why you'd go to people close to you. Well,

Charles Kim 1:13:32

also, I mean, I will say, I think Karen King, and I might fundamentally have different predispositions, which is mine is to say that if I come up with something novel, I actually assume that there's a reason that it's novel. That it well, it's probably not true, it's probably unlikely. It's probably not, you know, like,

Tom Velasco 1:13:55

I wish more people had that particular predisposition.

Charles Kim 1:14:00

Yeah, well, so I mean, I don't know. That's how I have I'm like, I doubt this is really worth saying, I'm sure someone else has said it. Or if they haven't, that it's probably the wrong interpretation. But

Tom Velasco 1:14:14

if I'm being charitable to Karen King, what I kind of think of it so one thing I've noticed watching preachers over my years, is preachers find these stories that they tell that are patently false, that support their some point or principle that they really want to uphold, and they really want to believe these stories. And they perpetrate. They perpetuate them, and they perpetuate them. Fully trusting that they're true, because they themselves heard it from some other preacher or pastor whom they trust, but they themselves didn't do the work to try to see whether or not this story is true. Right. And And I think that that just highlights kind of a certain condition of the human mind that there are things we want to be true. And when we hear stories or when things are communicated to us that confirm that thing we want to be true, our inclination, first of all, is to believe it. And second of all, if we find any kind of evidence to it, it makes it harder for us to be critical of that evidence, because we're just almost blinded by the excitement of it. And I can see Karen King kind of, if I'm, again, being charitable, falling into that, basically, there's this thing she really wants to be true. And all of a sudden, she found this thing that seems to confirm it. And there are reasons looking at it as like prima prima facia, to believe that it's real. And then it becomes really hard to not believe it. You're right. I'll give you an example for myself. I don't know if you guys remember. And this kind of it's funny how this played out. This would have been in the 90s, there was a, an issue of biblical archeological review that was published, that kind of introduced to the world that a sarcophagus had been found in Palestine or in in Israel that had the name, there had the inscription on it, James, the son of Joseph, the brother of Jesus. And so people like oh, my gosh, this is the sarcophagus of James, the brother of Jesus, this is so exciting. Everybody got on board. I was I thought it was the coolest thing. I told everybody about it. And then I don't know, within the next six months, a lot of stuff started coming out that really questioned the veracity of that inscription. Basically, people were saying, if somebody came in and, you know, started doing the face that basically somebody actually carved it in, to kind of add this excitement to what otherwise was just a first century sarcophagus with the name Jacob on it, which is, by the way, a very common name, right? G by the way, for those listening, James is actually kind of a modern variant that we got from what would have been Jacob back in that day. And so when I first started reading that I was saying, No, that's not true. I was thinking, these are the skeptics who hate Christians chiming in to try to discredit it right. And eventually, of course, I bought in wholeheartedly when a little bit later, it came out that another sarcophagus was found in that bunch that said, the name marry the wife of Jesus. And I was like, what forgery? Yeah, my point being that I wasn't, and I know, I'm not a scholar, and I'm not here. Like, I didn't have to go through any of the rigors of peer review. I'm just reflecting on my own inclinations, that when it was supportive of what I believed, I believed that, and I was critical of the articles I was reading that started questioning it, and when it oppose what I believe, then I started doubting it right. So that so much of my relationship to it was really rooted in what my predisposition was. Right. And so I think, I think that's universally true of humans. And so I suspect that's what happened with her, she probably wasn't as rigorous as she should have been. And I think she shouldn't be blamed for that. And maybe, Trevor, you made a good point that she went to people that she knew would corroborate rather than what you should do, which is go to the guys who are skeptical of your view, and will actually challenge it, because that's when you're going to get the best arguments. And I think she just felt good about it, because she believed that. And so I think there's I'm not saying she doesn't she's not to blame, but I think it's probably unlikely that she was not like, with full knowledge, just trying to deceive. It was probably like a combination of all those elements. Yeah.

Charles Kim 1:19:07

Yeah, there's so much psychology and that's what makes it it's an interesting story.

Trevor Adams 1:19:11

I mean, I do wonder if the thing that makes me really suspicious that she might have known is the fact is that all the timing issues, those are the ones that made me go, Ooh, she first told this guy No way, then all of a sudden accepts it decides to buy it from and then it all connects with supposedly these timings of the heartbeat. That is what adds a like a little bit of relevance to whether she knew or not, but I do see you're like probably in like a normal like if this was the story. She got this offer buys it right away. excitingly, it goes to your friend, then I actually hear your story is sounding like probably just the most plausible. It's the fact that she first actually, apparently wrote The guy off. Yeah, supposedly, and then all of a sudden turn to Him. And also, I guess I think it's actually kind of charitable to give her the other other motivation in a way because it's like, then it shows you're at least smart enough. But it was fake. Whereas really, like you're motivated reasoning is that bad that like, I don't know, in a way it's kind of like, huh, like it's a form of stupidity that we are like, ascribing at least in the other case, so I don't know. So chargeability goes both ways. And in a sense, but yeah.

Charles Kim 1:20:41

Well, that was that was pretty good. We should have almost started with that. I guess I'd be like that.

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