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April 18, 2025 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
57:01
20250418_does-new-testament-prove-the-resurrection-really-h
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Actual Events Behind The Text 00:10:02
And if you could have a camera running on the tomb in and around 33 AD, that an actual Jesus would have walked out on the third day after his crucifixion and burial.
There were as many as, you know, Paul says, up to 500 witnesses who took part in this event.
The argument against it goes, look, all these witnesses are likely to have been pretty primitive, mostly illiterate.
That's what C.S. Lewis referred to as chronological snobbery.
The mythology builds up around incredibly famous people.
There are details within the New Testament that would be embarrassing if they weren't, if they were made up, unless those were actually things that actually did happen and they're trying to be honest.
And I can, you know, explain my reasoning for that.
Date the gospels really far much earlier within closer to the time frame of Jesus.
I've seen Ricky Gervais and he says, look, there are 3,000 gods if you add them all up from all the religions.
I think it's a rather foolish argument in that competition doesn't negate objective reality.
Easter is almost upon us and it's a time of renewal and optimism for millions around the world.
Even atheists generally get to enjoy better weather after a long winter and many people get a day off work.
For Christians though, it's one of the most important times of the year based on faith.
But how much of that faith is based on historical evidence?
Well, Wesley Huff is a biblical scholar and historian.
His use of historical reasoning and deep research to underpin Christian faith has captivated millions around the world.
And he joins me on Uncensored now.
Well, Wesley, great to have you on Uncensored.
Yeah, great to be here.
Thank you for having me, Pierce.
I watched your fascinating chat with Joe Rogan.
And it was really interesting to me because I have lots of arguments on this show with atheists like Richard Dawkins.
And it all comes down to they don't believe there's anything like God.
I happen to believe there is.
I'm a Catholic, was raised a Catholic.
And then we get round to the Big Bang and we get round to, well, what was there before the Big Bang?
And they can never answer me.
And I get, well, that's exactly why I think there's a superior entity out there because the human brain cannot tell me what nothing is.
So that's where I come from on this.
I'm a believer.
And this is a special time, obviously, for Catholics, as it is for all Christians.
But I'm also somebody that often gets frustrated that the atheist end of the argument often try and decry everything in the Bible, for example, in the New Testament, as all obviously nonsense.
And what's interesting about your perspective on this from your history and your studying is that you believe a lot of the New Testament is unarguably, factually true.
I do, yeah.
And I think that that's demonstratable from the actual evidence that we can look at through time and space with the Bible talking about real people in real times and real places.
I mean, is it indisputable to you that Jesus Christ existed, for example?
Oh, definitely so.
I think we can say pretty unequivocally that a character, a first century Jewish itinerant rabbi by the name of Jesus of Nazareth, did walk the dusty streets of first century Roman occupied Judea.
I think that even the most skeptical scholars will grant that if we know very little about Jesus, we know that he did exist and that he was crucified in and around the beginning of the first century under the overseeing of the governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate.
I want to play you a clip from one of my friends, Jordan Peterson, who's very skeptical about all this.
And he said this.
Profound religious account is bottomless.
And the biblical representations are like that.
There's no limit to the amount of investigation they can bear, not least because the text itself is deeply cross-referenced.
So there's like, there's an innumerable number of paths through it.
It's like a chessboard.
And so it's inexhaustible in its interpretive space.
That's true.
What do you say to that, Wesley?
Yeah, it's interesting, Pierce.
I really appreciate Jordan Peterson and kind of the angle that he reveals on the biblical text and some of the kind of allegorical perspectives that it reveals.
I don't deny that in the least.
In fact, I think I've found Peterson very helpful in his Jungian approach in drawing some of those things out.
Whereas maybe prior to finding Jordan Peterson, I might have dismissed them in a way that I think was probably too soon to do so.
However, I think two things can be true at the exact same time, Pierce.
I think we can grant that there is meaning that goes beyond the text, but not deny that there were actual events that took place, that the people that people like Jordan Peterson talk about from the biblical narratives, individuals at the core, like Jesus Christ, actually existed, actually walked this world, did predict his own death and resurrection.
And then if you could have a camera running on the tomb in and around 33 AD, that an actual Jesus would have walked out on the third day after his crucifixion and burial.
See, that is the crux of this, isn't it?
Is that whether Jesus of Nazareth was resurrected really goes to the absolute essence and heart of Christianity?
Because obviously, if he was, then that isn't a miracle.
And then everyone that believes in Christianity and what it all stands for and Jesus and everything would feel validated by the fact, well, how else do you explain it?
So it's at the crux of it.
From the text of the New Testament, then, where is the actual hard evidence for you as an historian that that actually happened?
Yeah, I think we do, Pierce, have a historical question in terms of we have an actual character who we can demonstrate that lived.
And then we have that same character being demonstrated in multiple independent and cross-referenced sources, chief of which we call the Gospels, you know, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
But just because those are religious texts now doesn't necessarily negate that they are historical texts.
You know, these were independent written sources that come from the timeframe.
If we want to know about someone from the ancient world or history in general, we go to the earliest sources, preferably eyewitness sources.
And I think that's what we have within the Gospels.
So we have a character who lived, who died, and then a character who is said by an early Jesus community to have been resurrected.
And the accounts of that are not just kind of scant.
They're not seeing Jesus off from afar as some sort of apparition or something like that.
What we have is the case of instances of the early Jesus community saying they walked with him, they talked with him, they ate with him.
And this happened over the course of, as Luke in his combination, the Gospel of Luke and Acts, says over the course of 40 days.
This wasn't a short event.
And so there were as many as, you know, Paul says up to 500 witnesses who took part in this event before his ultimate, you know, resurrecting, going to the ascension of the right hand of the Father.
And so it's a historical question, Pierce, in the sense that we have to account for what is the best inference to that explanation of this particular thing happening.
And I would contend that given the historical data that we can look at, I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility to explain this from a historical perspective.
And that when we do so and we look at the independent testimonies that all intersect on this particular event, we actually, the best explanation to that is that this event actually did take place.
The counter argument is that Paul the Apostle wasn't there for the resurrection himself.
And there's no other reference really other than, I think, the 1 Corinthians chapter 15.
There's only one other reference to the fact that 500 people witnessed this.
Does any of that, in your eyes, put more doubt on it?
I don't think so, because I think when we look at something that we can try to historiographically explain, we look at the various explanations and then we account for the data.
So you're correct in the sense that 1 Corinthians 15 is the only place that's mentioned where we talk about these 500 witnesses who saw Jesus all at once.
However, when you corroborate those with the accounts that we find, particularly in Matthew, Luke, and John, I think it does explain, especially when you have the instance at the ascension in Matthew and Luke, that those 500 people could have been the individuals on the mount when Jesus ascended.
You know, it's not overt in the text, but I think even the fact that we have one instance of this being spoken about, and then we can look at the individuals, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and then others in the New Testament documents that talk about the resurrection of Jesus, that, you know, even James, the brother of Jesus in the Epistle of James, referring to his brother as our glorious Lord,
a title that is attributed only to the God of Israel, Yahweh.
So I think we have to explain these particular instances where we don't just have people who are friendly to this happening, but we have individuals who are actually hostile in James, the brother of Jesus, who the gospels tell us that Jesus' family was actually very hesitant in how public Jesus' ministry was.
Forgiving Sins And Divine Claims 00:07:45
Then we have likewise Paul, who started his life as a persecutor, and that has a radical 180 in terms of him then going on and writing the majority of holy scripture within the New Testament.
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Now, again, to play devil's advocate, the argument against it goes, look, all these witnesses were likely to have been pretty primitive, mostly illiterate people.
Eyewitness testimony notoriously is unreliable.
It's the least credible evidence in a courtroom these days, for example.
And since the historical method doesn't deal with miracles, it's ridiculous, people say, to base any history on it.
And even Matthew's gospel tells us when Jesus appeared in front of his 11 disciples, some of them doubted, to which people say, well, if even not all his disciples believe this, why on earth should we?
Yeah, I think there are a few things going on there in terms of the historical method and how we actually evaluate things.
We only have witness testimony.
You know, you do have something that's very different than a courtroom in a modern legal setting, right?
Even something like hearsay.
Well, all of ancient history in one sense is hearsay, but that doesn't apply when we apply it to the historiographical method.
We need to use the same standards that when we would look at something like, say, the biographies of Tiberius with Veleus Perticalus, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassiodio, when we have multiple instances of reporting on someone's life, we look at both the things that they agree on and the things maybe where they have a differentiation in detail.
And then we try, to the best of our ability, explain some of the different instances that are going on.
Now, I would say, you know, to the accusation, well, these are just ancient, illiterate people.
That's what C.S. Lewis referred to as chronological snobbery.
You know, just because people are ancient neither means they're stupid nor that they don't know what's going on.
And what we have in terms of this event is really early on after Jesus' death, we have an explanation of what if the resurrection didn't take place, what we would expect.
The 11 disciples are hiding in the upper room.
They're scared.
They're aware of other messianic movements in the ancient world.
Individuals like Simon Bargiora, who claimed to be the Messiah when his movement was squashed.
So when he died, his movement, his, sorry, rather, when he died, his movement was squashed.
And so I think we have to look at, okay, what explains these 11 scared disciples then going on to not just proclaim that Jesus did rise from the dead, but actually went to the point of risking their lives in persecution.
And some of them did die for that proclamation.
And so I think it's not outside of the realm of possibility for history to actually be able to evaluate this evidence and say, okay, we have these questions.
How then do we explain something like an empty tomb?
Or even Jesus' disciples go back and the account of the Pentecost happens in Jerusalem.
So Jesus' disciples go back to the scene of the crime in the town where people would have saw him crucified and now they're proclaiming he's resurrected.
Well, why would you go back to the place where people could have actually known what actually happened, especially if you're trying to be disingenuous or dishonest?
And then that's where it happens.
And, you know, Stephen is the first martyr.
That also happens in Jerusalem.
That would have been a warning shot across the bow for the disciples if they wanted to continue on proclaiming these things.
They would have realized that this is controversial, both in Jewish circles and in Gentile circles, to be proclaiming these things, to be declaring Jesus as Lord.
You know, one of the earliest confessions of Christianity was Jesus is Lord when the society was saying Caesar is Lord.
And so there were risks politically, there were risks religiously, and yet the disciples go on to proclaim these things, even to the detriment of their own lives.
What do you say when people say, well, look, there are parts of the New Testament that allude to Jesus as another being the Son of God.
And then there are parts where he appears to be God himself.
How do you counter that argument that there's an inconsistency there?
Yeah, so son of God is a title that is reserved for not differentiating Jesus from God.
You know, in John's gospel in particular, we have instances where Jesus is referring to himself as the son of God in a way that actually has the Jews picking up stones to stone him.
And when he says, you know, what are these good works are you going to stone me for?
They say, not for your good works, but because you call Jesus your father, making yourself equal with God.
You know, Jesus then, he doesn't say, oh, no, no, you've misunderstood me.
You know, my Muslim friends like to point out that there are multiple sons of God throughout the Bible.
David was referred to as a son of God.
But what's unique is that despite there being, sometimes my Muslim friends like to say, sons by the tons, despite that reality, that Jesus is not claiming to be a son of God.
He's claiming to be the son of God in a unique way that not only puts him on equal footing with the father, but in this monotheistic context of ancient Judaism, actually ascribes to himself honors, attributes, names, and deeds that only God himself has the right to hold.
And so the Jews throughout the New Testament, throughout Jesus' ministry and his goings on, they aren't confused by the things he says.
You know, when he, at the beginning of Mark's gospel, when he forgives the sins of a person, their response is, who can forgive sins but God alone?
And they're exactly right.
Only God can forgive our sins.
And so Jesus is in his kind of answer saying, you know, I'm doing this so that you know that the son of man can forgive sins.
That's not a correction.
That's a reframing in saying, yes, you're right.
Only God can forgive sins.
That's what I'm doing.
Who does that make me?
I've seen Ricky Gervais on various talk shows.
He's one of the world's most famous atheists.
And he says, look, there are 3,000 gods if you add them all up from all the religions.
You know, who's to say your one's the real one?
And what about the others then?
Eyewitnesses And Early Biographies 00:16:02
Do they not exist?
Are they not real gods?
In other words, his position is, look, you can't all be right unless there are 3,000 different versions of a supernatural spiritual being overseeing us all.
What do you say to him?
Yeah, well, I think it's a rather foolish argument in that competition doesn't negate objective reality.
So say we're using a courtroom analogy.
If someone was convicted of a crime here in the city of Toronto where I live, and he stood before a judge and he said, really?
You think I committed this crime?
Do you know how many people are in this city?
We have 3 million people in this city.
And you think I'm the one who did the crime?
Really?
Out of all the, you know, how many people are in Toronto?
How many people are in Ontario?
How many people are in Canada?
How many people are in North America?
You really think that given the amount of people that are on this earth, I'm the one who committed the crime?
You know, we wouldn't then look at the judge and say, well, that's a good argument.
You know, have you really thought about how many other people are around who just because this particular individual you think committed the crime, really?
Well, no, we don't just arbitrarily, you know, pick someone or in the case of Christianity, pick a God.
We believe that the God of the Bible is the true God based on the evidence of not just what we find in the Bible, but the fine-tuning of the universe, of the morality in the objective reality of this world, and the fact that we are, Pierce, people who operate with morals, with meaning and intention and have intrinsic worth.
We look at these things and we don't arbitrarily pick Yahweh, the God of the Bible, over Zeus and Thor and Allah and Buddha.
We do it, I would argue, based on the concrete publicly available evidence that points to the truth claims that I would argue Christianity answers in regards to the ultimate questions we have.
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You could argue that Jesus Christ was the first and greatest celebrity that the world had ever seen.
I know lots of really big celebrities and I know a lot of stuff about them and then I read stuff about them which I know to be untrue.
In other words, a mythology builds up around incredibly famous people over time that often bears no relation to reality.
And often they don't really care if they're still alive because it all adds to the general mythology and celebrity status.
And, you know, why kill a good story if you can possibly avoid it and so on.
When you read the New Testament with an historian's eye, do you see evidence of mythology creeping in where the basic tenets of Jesus Nazareth and what happened to him and so on may well all be, you know, to your eyes, verifiable historically.
But actually, there may be mythology built up around that kind of character.
And it's almost impossible to test that.
Yeah, I'm sympathetic to this argument in that I think we do see mythological drift for particular people, especially as there is a time gap between, you know, some of the instances that we have in terms of written documentation of these individuals.
I think what I would look at as a historian is when we're looking at the particulars of Jesus' life, there are things that I just don't think you would make up.
I mean, even the fact that Jesus comes from the city Nazareth.
It's really the boonies, for lack of a better way of putting it, of Israel.
People didn't expect Jesus to come from Nazareth.
They didn't expect the Messiah to be a traveling itinerant rabbi.
They expected in Jesus' day with the cultural expectation of who the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed one, who was predicted by particularly individuals like the prophets in the Old Testament, they expected him to be a conqueror.
They expected him to come and to release the nation of Israel from under the oppression of the Romans.
They did not expect the Messiah to be murdered by the Romans.
And so I think if you're making up stories about him, there are particular details that we find in the New Testament and in the biographies of Jesus' life that really the only true explanation for them, I would contend, is because they actually happened.
Even if you read the accounts of the biographies, the disciples really come across as pretty dumb sometimes.
In fact, Jesus is teaching them and they just continue to not get what he's talking about.
Ultimately, to the point where Jesus is telling them he's going to be handed over, he's going to be crucified, he's going to rise on the third day, and even his closest disciple Peter is saying, you know, that's not going to happen.
And he's pushing back against Jesus.
And so I think, in terms of what we as historians refer to as the criteria of embarrassment, women being the first eyewitnesses to the tomb in a day when women really weren't very good eyewitnesses for particular events.
They weren't considered good eyewitness testimony.
And we see kind of a trying to remedy that in later apocryphal documents like the Gospel of Peter.
Gospel of Peter, which is written in the subsequent centuries and has no real association with the Peter of history, tries to smooth over this by having Roman and Jewish officials being the first eyewitnesses to the tomb.
Because whoever the author of that document was was embarrassed by the fact that the historical gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, have women as the first eyewitnesses to the tomb.
So I think if we're asking the questions of mythological drift, I also think we need to account for the fact that there are details within the New Testament that would be embarrassing if they weren't, if they were made up.
Why would you make up embarrassing facts about the closest disciples of Jesus, about the first eyewitnesses, and even about the kind of circumstances surrounding Jesus's life, unless those were actually things that actually did happen and they're trying to be honest with the information?
How excited do you get, Wesley, when there's a new revelation which seems to support historical evidence of stuff in the Bible?
And I'll give an example.
There's been a new discovery at the site of Jesus' resurrection that appears to corroborate what is in the New Testament.
An archaeological discovery, which is remnants of an ancient garden beneath the foundation of the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, a finding that they say aligns with the Gospel of John.
John 19, 41 reads, Now in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden, a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid, there laid they Jesus.
I mean, when you see that as an historian, what do you think of it?
Well, in one sense, Pierce, I'm unsurprised that we continue to find historical verification of the things that are written about in the New Testament, because I actually do think they took place in the way that they're described there.
And I think that we can look at verifiable data historiographically.
And so when we continue to stick shovels in the ground or do further investigation or when papers are continued to be published, I'm very excited about particular discoveries, but I'm not overly surprised because I think as time goes on, you know, even though the time is farther from the time of Jesus, I actually think because of things like archaeology and historical research,
we actually tend to get closer to verifying the details that we find described in things like the biographies of Jesus' life, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
What do we know, do you think, historically about when the Gospels were actually written?
Because the sort of counter-argument to their veracity is that the earliest gospel, Mark, was written in 70 AD, which would be 40 years after Jesus died, and likely well after the death of the eyewitnesses, given the life expectancy at the time.
Similarly, scholarly consensus says that John was written in 90 to 100 AD, although I think you believe it was written a lot earlier.
From everything you've gleaned about this, what is the most likely time when these gospels were written, do you think?
Yeah, I mean, there is a historical consensus in terms of dating the gospels relatively late.
I think, you know, when we find the gospel biographies of Jesus being written is really at the height of ancient biographical writing as a genre.
This is when you get ancient individuals like Plutarch and Suetonius and Tacitus and so on writing biographies of important figures in their day.
And if we go back in that timeline, Pierce, the earliest life story accounts we see being written in detail are what we call protobiography.
And these start to pop up about half a millennium behind the gospels.
But at that point, what would have been considered biography would have been the equivalent of a funeral eulogy or maybe like the exploits of particular details, hailing someone as a soldier or as a good person.
This is where you find writers like Thucydides and Pericles and Aristophanes.
And after the time of Jesus, we get a genre of biography we call hagiography, where there's known and accepted embellishment.
However, between those two points, between the protobiographical material and the hagiographical material, is where we find the classical worlds considered the crown of ancient biographical sources.
So it's during this time that we actually get standards being laid out by individuals in the ancient world like Lucian, who wrote a document called How to Write Good History.
And in that, he stresses things like impartiality, detachment, and rigorous devotion to the truth when characterizing the writing biography.
And we find something very similar to how Lucian lays out his criteria in the preface to Luke's Gospel, when Luke says in the beginning, in chapter one, verse one, that he's undertaking a task of writing an account, and he's doing so by interviewing eyewitnesses and carefully investigating everything from the beginning.
And so that's where we find the biographies of Jesus' life being written.
In fact, Alexander the Great, who died in 323 BC, the earliest material we have for his life are the exploits of Arian, which are written 450 years after Alexander the Great wrote.
And so even if we're taking more of a skeptical date and putting kind of the earliest gospel as John in the 70s, maybe, that's still a lot earlier than we have for basically every other ancient biography, bar maybe a couple for people in the ancient world.
Now, I would, and I can, you know, explain my reasoning for that, date the gospels really far much earlier within closer to the time frame of Jesus.
But even if we're going by the skeptical dates, we're still getting these biographies of Jesus being written much more early than some of the most important figures in the ancient world, like Alexander the Great, you know, where we're waiting hundreds of years, where with Jesus, we're really only waiting a couple of decades.
And why do you think, Wesley, it could be a lot earlier than the assumed scholarly consensus?
Yeah, well, I think if we go by the assumption that Mark is written first, which I think is approximately reasonable to assume based on a number of different factors, and then Luke, then Matthew and Luke come afterwards.
Well, Luke's prologue certainly indicates that he's, as I said before, he's writing up an orderly account on the basis that previous accounts are either not as well researched or simply floppy in their writing.
And I think if you look at Mark's syntax and grammar and the flow, certainly qualifies a bit of an unorderly account.
So I think that Luke probably has Mark in mind when he makes that comment.
And I do think that the evidence bears out a literary relationship between Matthew and Luke based on their parallel usage in sections that certainly extract wording that is very, very similar, if not identical, and most likely indicates Luke coming after Matthew.
However, Luke was a traveling companion of Paul, and Luke writes the Gospel of Luke and then Acts.
They're kind of a part one, part two.
Well, we know based on external biblical evidence, so sources outside of the Bible itself, that Paul dies in 64 AD, and then Peter between 64 and 68 AD.
And I think actually that Luke's book of Acts is making an argument with a relationship between the connection of the apostolic brothers of Peter and Paul.
According to Richard Balcombe, who's a historian in the UK, he actually ascribes that Acts is written at least before 64 AD.
And Acts follows Luke's gospel, and Matthew predates Luke, and Luke precedes Mark.
And so therefore, it isn't ridiculous to put Matthew, I think, because Luke doesn't include Peter and Paul's death.
And we know that both Peter and Paul die somewhere between 64 and 68 in the same city in Rome and are martyred.
And yet, the book of Luke, or the book of Acts, doesn't include their death, even though the argument kind of flow throughout it is to connect these individuals.
So I think we can say at minimum, Acts is written before the death of Peter and Paul.
And so therefore, I think at the very least, given the lack of Peter and Paul's death, it's a good marker to put the synoptics pre-70.
That's Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
And I'm certainly not alone on that early dating either.
You know, Richard Balcom, who I mentioned, Dan Wallace, Peter J. Williams, John Dixon, F.F. Bruce, Jonathan Bernier, Michael Kruger.
There are lots of scholars who do do that.
But I would put Mark anywhere within the realm of 40 or 50.
And then the other gospels not coming long after that, but certainly all of Matthew, Mark, and Luke before 70 AD and getting right into kind of the first couple of decades within the early eyewitness testimony of Jesus' life.
Historical Reliability Of The Quran 00:10:24
As we approach Easter, why do you think Christianity is getting less popular as Islam is now the fastest growing religion in the world?
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Yeah, I think there are a few kind of sociological factors that we can look at with that.
I don't necessarily think that Islam is growing because of conversions.
I think that Islam is outpacing us in terms of birth rate and immigration.
So if we look at traditionally Christianized countries, the birth rates are lower.
People in the West are having less children.
And in fact, if you look at kind of the statistics of Christian growth, I think we're actually seeing a movement to the global south of Christian conversions, where in places like Asia and Africa, you're seeing a growth of Christianity and religious observance in that sense, whereas you see a lot of the importing of Islam into Western countries.
And so I wouldn't go as far as saying that Islam is growing because lots of people are converting.
I would actually say that largely we're just being outbred in terms of the growth rates with people having children and the amount of people who are coming into places like the UK, the United States, Europe, and Canada that come from majority Muslim countries.
But somewhere like the UK, for example, I mean, church going has been, you know, pretty rapidly reducing, I'd say, in terms of the general population now for several decades.
People just don't go to church like they used to.
What do you feel about that?
Yeah, I think that we saw a shift when it was much more culturally acceptable, whether you truly believed in, say, a convictional Christianity or not in decades past.
You would just go to church.
That was definitely true here in Canada.
We even had laws like the Lord's Day Act, which made it illegal to open a business on a Sunday.
And so there was just more of a cultural zeitgeist for Christianity.
And as that waned, I think the cultural zeitgeist, it became much more comfortable for people to then not go to church and attend.
So I don't think we actually saw a great kind of influx of people leaving the church as much as the people who were convictional Christians continue to go to church.
And people who were more cultural Christians or Christians out of convenience, because that was just what you did within the overall day-to-day of society, those people left.
And so statistically, it looked like there were a lot of people leaving the church when I don't necessarily think that was the case.
I think the culture moved and everyone else just kind of moved with the culture and where once it was acceptable and just kind of more of the norm to go to and attend a church on a Sunday, when it was no longer the norm, those people just followed the norm of the society.
I actually think we're seeing somewhat of a resurgence in that Bible sales have skyrocketed in the last couple of years.
I think we're seeing individuals kind of come into the limelight and are bringing a Christian message in a much more overt way where we didn't see before.
People who are popular, if they're not Christian, are bringing kind of a spotlight on Christianity, people like Jordan Peterson or Joe Rogan, who I think are much more sympathetic to Christianity.
And so although I do think we've seen that cultural shift where it's just become less culturally acceptable to go to church.
And so those people are no longer attending church.
I actually think we are seeing, Pierce, kind of a grassroots movement that's very interesting in terms of people who might have been more interested in the new atheism 10 years ago actually saying, hi, I think there's something, there's something about this Christianity thing.
And they're doing things like reading the Bible or attending a church on Sunday when they otherwise wouldn't have.
I mean, there's no doubt, for example, that President Donald Trump, his faith was massively cemented.
I think he's been quite open about this by surviving an assassin's bullet last summer.
And he talked about how he started praying more and everything else.
And that, you know, he's got a massive following in America, obviously, the big MAGA movement.
Do you think that's been partly one of the reasons why you're seeing a resurgence of interest in Christianity in America, sales of Bibles and so on, when the president is out there talking in the way that Trump has been doing?
Yeah, I think that's a possibility.
I think we're probably seeing a multi-valent issue going on in that I don't know if there's any kind of one factor.
I think there are convening factors.
I think we live in a very tumultuous world where we're sort of the onslaught and prevalence of just the information online is bringing attention to questions of meaning and purpose and morality.
I think we're kind of coming to the end of our rope with some of the subjectivity of objective truth in this world.
And I actually think that a lot of the seeds that were planted by the new atheists in the early 2000s ended up growing into trees that produced fruit that really didn't give any nourishment.
And so I think people are seeing that.
And we're seeing a resurgence at minimum of people who are becoming quote unquote spiritual but not religious, but also looking at what something like Christianity or organized religion has to offer and saying, hi, I think there's something there that actually can ground me that I can plant my feet firmly on rather than kind of the planting my feet firmly in midair that atheism was offering.
But even though it was giving me maybe some superficial solace, it didn't actually give me the ability to say that I had objective truth and meaning and value.
You've seen the likes of Andrew Tate, a big influence on young men in particular, converting to Islam.
Do you find that a convincing conversion?
Or do you think he's doing it for commercial reasons?
Yeah, I'm not sure what to think of Andrew Tate because as someone who is very well aware of kind of the theological intricacies of Islam, he's sort of an anomaly in that he will give lip service to certain things within the framework of traditional Sunni orthodoxy within Islam, but then also kind of doesn't adhere to other ones.
So I'm not really sure what to do with Andrew Tate.
He's certainly not someone I would point to as a moral standard.
Not that I think necessarily Islam is the place to look for a moral standard in general.
But I'm, yeah, Andrew Tate is a bit of an anomaly, although, you know, clearly risen to fame because he's so outlandish and a little bit or boisterous in the things.
The text of the Quran, like all religious texts, including the Bible, has been misused, misinterpreted, or accurately interpreted, depending on who you talk to.
From a historian perspective, How accurate do you think the Quran is, for example?
Well, I think the Quran has a number of problematic historical issues, the chief of which is that Surah 4, 157 denies the historical crucifixion of Jesus.
And so there's ambiguity as to what's going on in that text when it says that Jesus was neither killed nor was he crucified.
And I think that really paints the historical reliability of the Quran into a corner in that.
Like I said before, Pierce, if there's one thing that even the most skeptical scholars historically will say, you know, if they say we really can know not that much about Jesus of Nazareth, they will admit and say what we can know is that he did die under the reign of Pontius Pilate, the governor of Judea at that time, that he was indeed crucified.
And so I find that the Quran has a number of very problematic historical issues.
And then ultimately, as a Christian, the Quran seems to talk about what I believe, talks about the Torah and the gospel multiple times, and seems to fundamentally not understand what the Torah and the Gospel are.
Particularly, I would highlight verses like chapter 5, verse 46 and 47, which has this chain of custody where it says that Allah sent, that God sent following in the footsteps Jesus, the son of Mary, to confirm the Torah, which came before him, and that he gave the gospel, which in the Quran uses the same terminology for the revelation of the Quran, that it has guidance and light, and that the gospel preceded the Torah for instruction and righteousness.
And then verse 47 of chapter 5 of the Quran actually addresses me as a Christian.
It says, let the people of the gospel judge by what God has revealed therein, being the gospel.
And whoever does not judge by what God has revealed, then it is he who's the defiantly disobedient.
And so I find a problem with the Quran in that it confirms the Torah and the gospel.
And it tells me as a Christian in chapter 5, verse 46 and 47, to judge by the gospel.
However, Pierce, when I judge the Quran by the gospel, I find that the Quran does not understand what the gospel is or says.
And ultimately, I would say, if the Quran is true and I need to take it seriously to not be one of the defiantly disobedient, as it says, and I judge the gospel by using the gospel, I judge the Quran.
I find that the Quran is hugely problematic historically, but also in that it simply does not understand either what the Torah or the Gospel are or what Christians actually believe.
Debating With Joe Rogan 00:04:48
Your Joe Rogan appearance blew up massively online, led to huge debate raging all over social media.
What was that like for you?
You know, you go on Rogan now, as Trump and others have found.
It's a much bigger deal.
Obviously, uncensored is right up there, but Joe is the king of the podcasters.
What was your response to the reaction you got?
Yeah, I mean, I knew that there obviously were going to be a lot of eyeballs on me as a relatively insignificant Canadian historian after that event.
I mean, someone recently said to me that what Oprah was in decades past, Joe Rogan is today, and that the people who go on Joe Rogan really are the people who kind of get the attention in society.
Whereas in the past, the Dr. Phils and the Deepak Chopras of the world who would go on Oprah and then become somebody, Joe, as kind of, you know, the individual who is exemplified of the cultural zeitgeist of the 2025 does that same kind of thing.
And so I was at least to some degree aware, you know, I need to brace myself for what's going to happen.
But, you know, I have nothing but good things to say about Joe.
I have nothing but good things to say about his team and the way that they have encouraged me following that and the brief and sporadic messages that Joe has sent me since going on his program, but that are just really encouraging and uplifting.
And so I'm very thankful for that and the attention that it's drawn to my work historically and with the organization I work with, with Apologetics Canada.
But yeah, it's an interesting experience to gain that much attention in a very short period of time, as I'm sure you're aware of, Pierce, in terms of your own kind of the amount of eyeballs that are watching you.
Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, it's a whole new world for me.
I've been doing full on YouTube now for, you know, like a year and a half, whatever.
And it is, you suddenly become aware of how many different people around the world consume, avidly consume this kind of thing.
And also the debate that they start having amongst themselves through other social media about shows that appear on Joe Rogan, on Uncensored, whatever it may be.
That's why it's always interesting, I think, for people like you who are clearly, you know, very bona fide historians.
I'm always curious whether, take with your appearance on Joe, did you find afterwards, with everyone debating stuff you'd said, did anything change your mind about anything?
Did any of your opinions change because of reaction you had to a particular thing you said?
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Not necessarily, although you become more acutely aware of how you should say things in public.
And always the problem with generalizing, especially when we're talking about sometimes technical, historical, and academic issues, is that you're going to say things imperfectly.
And the internet is notorious for nitpicking and capitalizing on what you may or may not have said correctly.
And so some of my colleagues in academia would have rathered me just sit across from Joe and read an academic paper, citations and all.
And that would have, you know, cured all the issues, but it would have made for more of a boring podcast.
And so, you know, you just kind of, you take those things, you eat the meat and you spit out the bones.
My exposure and my experience after the Joe Rogan podcast, the positives have far outweighed any of the negatives.
And I'm very appreciative of him and that and those kind of things.
So, you know, you're never going to say things perfectly.
They're always going to be a better way to articulate yourself.
But at the end of the day, you know, own your mistakes and be glad for what's happened.
And I'm very grateful for what's transpired since appearing on the Joe Rogan experience.
If you had your chance to do a do-over of that appearance, what would you say differently?
You're clearly hinting you think some things came out the wrong way.
What would you point to as an example of something you might have phrased a little differently?
Explaining Supernatural Beings 00:07:24
Yeah, well, when Joe and I were talking about a particular Dead Sea Sprawl manuscripts, I mentioned that the great Isaiah Spiral 1QIZAA was word for word identical to the proto-Masoretic text.
And a lot of people capitalized on that online, pointing out that although it is somewhere between 95 and 99% identical, there are differences between the manuscripts.
So I actually did a video on my YouTube channel where I talked to a friend of mine, an Old Testament textual critic, where he went through that issue.
And I should have said that it is nearly identical, not word for word identical.
And so that was an, you know, in the course of a three hour conversation, unscripted, no notes, you know, non-linear.
We talked about all sorts of things.
In the grand scheme of things, it was not. nearly the issue I think it was made out to be online.
But if I could go back, I would say that it was nearly identical, not word for word identical.
And, you know, I'm sure people would have found fault with that too, but you take what you can get.
You know, Wesley, you just, you discovered how pedantic social media can be.
And finally, on the Bible, it also talks about things like angels and demons and stuff like that, which people point to as, well, obviously that can't be true.
I mean, what do you say to people when they raise things like angels and demons?
Well, I mean, it's starting with the assumption that the supernatural doesn't exist.
And I simply, I don't think that's true.
I mean, there are all sorts of things that, from say, a secular materialistic perspective, are far more of needing an explanation than the existence of supernatural beings.
I mean, my friend Glenn Scrivener out in the UK, who runs an organization called Speak Life, he talks about this a lot, where, you know, there are things that atheists and secular materialists have to account for.
Things like everything coming from nothing, order coming from chaos, life emerging from non-life, minds from mindless matter.
You know, is that, is it more of a leap in logic to believe in angels and demons or that everything came from nothing, Pierce?
That order came from chaos, that life emerged from non-life and that minds form from mindless matter.
I would say these are answers that arguably in terms of the topic of what we're on the eve of Easter, the resurrection is not one more absurdity.
Neither are angels or demons.
But the resurrection, I think, actually is the explanation that makes sense of the supernatural world that we see talked about in all sorts of religious perspectives.
And I think that people will assume that the supernatural can't exist.
And yet at the exact same time, they will, as a conscious human being in a world where we're still not really entirely sure what consciousness is, try to explain logically some of these things when the rules of logic exist objectively and yet they are outside of time and matter and space.
And so there are obviously things that things like science and secular materialism can't account for.
And I have no qualms saying that supernatural beings exist in light of this very strange supernatural world that we live in.
You know what?
I completely agree.
And it comes back to what I started this interview with, which was when I debate with atheists and so on who mock me for having any kind of faith in God or whatever.
I say, well, you cannot explain to me what was there before your big bang.
You cannot explain what was there when it was nothing.
You can't even explain what nothing is.
So because the human brain cannot understand that, as I said at the start, then to me, there must be super beings, entities out there.
And all right, I've chosen, because I was raised as a Catholic, I've chosen to take a certain path of my belief and faith system and so on.
Actually, the idea that there can't be anything supernatural when a human brain cannot explain basic things like what was there before your big bang or whatever, that to me is the evidence I need.
Of course, there must be stuff that is more powerful than humans, because otherwise we would be able to explain all that stuff.
And we can't.
I think that's exactly right, Pearson.
And Joe and I talked about that on my episode on the JRE in that some people believe in the virgin birth and others believe in the virgin birth of the universe.
And so a big bang requires a big banger.
And so I think it's not entirely a leap to find an explanation for that, right?
Something like survival of the fittest doesn't explain the arrival of the fittest.
There are still explanations for origin questions that I think, you know, we can ascribe it to, like Lawrence Christ wants to do, nothing.
But then he has to define nothing and you find out he actually doesn't think nothing means no thing.
He actually thinks it means something.
And so that's exactly right.
I think, you know, when we're talking about everything coming from nothing, a finely tuned explosion, that order from chaos, then I think actually when we're looking for the answers to these questions, it was once said, I can't remember exactly who, that the scientists and the philosophers have been climbing the mountains only to find the theologians at the top all the way along.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And the other thing about atheists is they must die so unhappy because that's it.
Whereas you and I, just the beginning.
Well, I would want to instill hope in those atheists and say, you know, you may think this is all there is, but it's not.
And, you know, there is so much more than just this and to really push into some of those more metaphysical existential questions.
How does everything come from nothing?
How does order come from chaos?
How does life emerge from non-life?
How do minds come from mindless matter?
And I would really encourage them to say and look into something like the Bible, which I think ultimately gives answers to.
Well, I can't wait to meet Richard Dawkins and Ricky Gervais on the other side just to see their faces and say, you see, I told you.
Well, between you and me, I hope that they come to a place where on the other side, they're going to be in the same place where I am and that the told you so is grasping it and unity rather than them maybe going some different direction.
So I continue to pray for Ricky Gervais and Richard Dawkins and have hope that if Jesus can change Paul from being a persecutor of the church, Richard Dawkins is far outside of the realm of possibility of salvation.
Wesley Hoff, what a pleasure to talk to you.
Hope For Dawkins And Gervais 00:00:32
Thank you very much indeed for being on Uncensored and happy Easter.
Thank you.
It's been my pleasure.
Happy Easter.
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