THE QUESTION THAT BREAKS JUDAISM (TRACT 10) (part 1 of 2)
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████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ SECTION 34 BEGIN — "THE QUESTION THAT BREAKS JUDAISM" (TRACT 10) ████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████
Series: Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins ```
``` ancestral Judaism was NOT an ethno-religion, that matrilineal descent is non-biblical, that pre-Christ Judaism actively proselytized, that Kabbalism is largely post-biblical folk mysticism, and that Christianity is closer to ancient Judaism than modern Judaism is. Also covers circumcision history, Noahide laws, the Trinity, and the false messiah Sabbatai Zevi. Key arguments:
- "Why the Jews?" as the question that unravels Jewish theology
- Judaism became ethno-religion AFTER Christianity's success
- Matrilineal descent is post-Second Temple, not biblical
- Jews actively proselytized (Roman sources, Josephus, Matthew 23:15)
- Kabbalism is largely Neoplatonic/Gnostic/Sufi influenced, not ancient
- Egyptian circumcision was partial (dorsal slit), not full removal
- Noahide laws are already covered by Christianity and Islam
- Christianity and TechnoPuritanism are closer to original Judaism
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The Question that Breaks Judaism (Tract 10)
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone! Today we’re going to do another one of our track series where we do deep dives into religion that are very, very offensive.
And for the first time we’re going to have one that’s almost exclusively focused on Judaism. Oh. This is track 10. The question that breaks Judaism. There is one question I started to innocently ponder that led me down a rabbit hole, which began to unravel Jewish theology, identity, and even raised the question of whether modern Judaism should be thought of as the less radical deviation from ancient Judaism when contrasted with Christianity.
The question, the question that breaks Judaism is Why the Jews? Why were the Jews, of all people, singled out by God as his chosen people? Oh, right. Yeah.
Simone Colins: Yeah, they gave her
Malcolm Collins: child. Yes. Why? This is gonna get very offensive, and it’s the type of information I hesitate to release if it could be used by antisemites.
However, I think theologically it is a conversation we need to have in the [00:01:00] same way previous tracks have had to uncomfortably point out where modern Christianity does not align with what is actually in the Bible. We will be doing the same with modern Judaism today. And I would note here for people who want to be like, Oh, this is, you know, antisemitic or something like that.
I did nine full tracks. Absolutely railing and ragging on modern Christian traditions and where I don’t think they align with the Bible. I do one on Judaism. No, you don’t get a be. I’m just trying to do as honest a dive as I can on these various subject matters. And I hope you can see that as I go through this and go over the data.
But this data shocked me to my core. So we’re going to be arguing that ancestral Judaism was not an ethno religion. The concept of matrilineal Jewish identity is a non biblical. In fact, pre Christ, Judaism actively and aggressively proselytized and even forced the mass conversion of conquered peoples at times.
As evidenced by both biblical sources. Roman historical accounts and [00:02:00] the Jewish historian Josephus and even Roman law, which we’ll see. The Noahide movement lacks solid biblical backing and is essentially a theological construct with minimal scriptural foundation. The biblical passages that Jews cite to argue against modifying God’s covenant with man, which they use to deny Christianity as the more faithful offshoot of ancient Judaism, do not actually communicate what they claim.
And this one is pretty in the extreme, which we’ll get to. Even the way circumcision is practiced today may be incorrect, or I’m going to say is probably incorrect. What? Compared with Egyptian practices contemporary with the writing of the Old Testament, which we have a reason to believe the Jewish tradition may have been influenced by at the time of Christ, Judaism was a highly diverse tradition and the Christian branch was not unique in its differences.
The quote unquote true Judaism that modern Jews claim to be descended from would have been just [00:03:00] one of many religious systems based on the Old Testament and was as different from the average theological understanding as Christianity was at the time. Original Christianity and Technopuritanism are much closer to the belief system of the average Jew at the time of Christ than modern Judaism.
And, if Judaism started as a religion that actively proselytized and became an ethno religion after the Christian branch of the Jewish tradition gained widespread adoption, this makes the entire modern Jewish tradition appear as a reaction to the success of a version with an arguably greater divine mandate.
Of course, we will be addressing the arguments against every one of these points, as I have discussed my positions with a few rabbis to gather the strongest counter arguments I could find. And, finally, we are going to go over a clever and unique Textual theological argument that fixes every one of the problems I raised throughout this entire video.
We will also discuss How Christians have to reconcile with the fact that demographically speaking right now [00:04:00] the Jews very obviously have God’s favor and will likely be the dominant world power within the next century. So I’m going to start all of this was the framing of, you know, when I first was growing up and I was, you know, an atheist growing up, really raised an atheist.
I always saw Judaism versus Christianity as being like no competition. Like Judaism was just obviously the more logical religion it had. More claims to antiquity which I no longer, I’m gonna argue it may not. It, it was basically in my mind, like, deism plus. Christianity added a bunch of weird stuff that I didn’t really get.
Like, transferring sins onto an innocent person seemed really off to me. The idea of Jesus as being literally God’s child on Earth. I was like, why do we need to, like, it’s a whole other theological element I have to believe other than God. And it, it felt very like just no contest. I was like, well, if I, if I could have been born in the Jewish tradition, that’s the way I would [00:05:00] have gone.
Now I’m not going to be a reformed Jew or something lame like that, but that’s where I would have gone. After digging really deeply into it, especially with this tract I am now quite glad that I don’t have to defend the Jewish position because I now have come to believe that textually speaking and, and, and in the eyes of history is actually a slightly harder position to argue for.
I say all this believing still that Jews have a divine mandate that they are still following a covenant that God gave them. But there has been a, another covenant since then. And so they’re not like inactive rebellion to God. But yeah. So thoughts before I dig in.
Simone Colins: I want to hear your arguments here.
This is intriguing, if a little intimidating.
Malcolm Collins: I will start this tract by saying this is not a path of logic I wanted to try down, but one that became evident as I began to examine what I thought was an innocuous question, like pulling a single thread only to watch the entire sweater unravel. Why were the Jews, of all people, singled out by God as his [00:06:00] chosen people?
This is a theological question that not just Jews need a good answer for, but one Christians and Muslims also need to address. Yet it is ignored by these traditions. There are two broad categories of possible answers. There was something phenotypically, genetically, or otherwise tied to the nature of the early Jewish people that led to God favoring them.
Or two, the Jewish people were set apart by their belief system and not by anything tied to their biology. Rabbinic scholars almost universally lean towards the second answer, early Jews had a more accurate conception of God, which led to them being rewarded as God’s chosen people.
I would note that this is also what I believe in what I find to be the most satisfying answer. The problem is. If the early Jews were God’s chosen people because they had a more accurate understanding of the divine, why should modern Judaism be gatekept around matrilineal inheritance instead of around a person’s belief system?
Why would an atheistic secular Jew be considered more Jewish than a deist when a [00:07:00] deist has a closer understanding of God and a closer belief system to what is theologically Jewish? Does this concept not contradict the very basis of God’s favor? For more insight on how Orthodox Jews answer this question, we need to examine a book composed in the 4th century CE, Strife on Deuteronomy.
An important note here is that the ideas discussed here were not added to Jewish canon until centuries after Christ’s death. Now here’s the exact Mishnah. Any thoughts before I go further, by the way? I
Simone Colins: will say that it has really bothered me that Technically, someone who is matrilinearly Jewish is seen as Jewish, whereas someone who like, personally went through as much material as they could and then practiced and followed all of the rules would not be considered Jewish.
Well, unless they were approved by a rabbinic court. Unless, yeah, unless they were, but like, it’s also [00:08:00] intentionally difficult for them to do that. So like, why someone who doesn’t follow any of the rules and is only matrilinearly Jewish. I find that a lot less, that makes sense to me. Look, I can understand.
Malcolm Collins: Well, so you would say. It’s just a genetic condition. It’s just, you know, you are. You want to gate keep the tradition to some extent. But what doesn’t make sense to me, and I think it’s a much harder question to answer, is why is a deist not more Jewish than a secular Jew? Because a deist, you know, the, the Jews would say monotheism is like a very important thing to believe, right?
So, so, if the deist is closer to the true faith
Simone Colins: shouldn’t they Now why, why is a deist closer to the true faith? Because my association with deists If we’re being honest here is just basically the atheists of the Enlightenment Pyramid period
Malcolm Collins: because they are a monotheist and the secular Jew is a pure atheist, a monotheist, theologically speaking, is closer to Judaism than a pure atheist.
But the [00:09:00] question is, to me, like, why? Now, I can understand some degree of gatekeeping here. But I suppose your question is right. Like, I can understand how they might want to keep out somebody from the Jewish community who otherwise had studied the text and everything like that. Sure. But I can’t understand why they would want to include somebody who has renounced all of the belief systems.
Yeah, and who doesn’t follow the rules. So we’ll get into all of this, because this gets really interesting, because this does not appear to be the way it used to be. Okay. Okay. So right now we’re getting to the Mishnah. This was written a few centuries after Christ’s death. Some of these traditions might be older but I think that we can sort of see which traditions were common within the period that Christ was preaching, because they were adopted in early Christianity.
This tradition was not, so I’m going to assume that this is a post Second Temple tradition. Okay, so, and this explains why the Jews. This is the standard Orthodox Jewish explanation. And he said, the Lord came from Sinai. When the Lord appeared to give Torah to Israel it is nott to Israel alone that he appeared, but to [00:10:00] all nations.
First, he went to the children of Esau, and he asked them, will you accept the Torah? They asked, what is written in it? He answered, you shall not kill. They answered, The entire essence of our father, it’s murder, as is written, and the hands are hands of Esav. And it is with this that his father assured him, and by your sword you shall live.
And then he went to the children of Ammon and Moab and asked, Will you accept the Torah? They asked, What is written in it? He answered, you shall not commit adultery. They answered, Lord of the Universe, is our entire essence, as is written, and the two daughters of Lot, conceived by the father?
Now you should note here, whenever I say, as is written, they’re quoting some other part about some figure in early Jewish, like, canon, who did something naughty. Okay. Like here, it’s basically saying that the children of Esen are, are descended from Lot, okay? Okay. And, and his daughters. He then went to the children of Ishmael and asked them, Will you accept the Torah?
They asked, What is written in it? He [00:11:00] answered, You shall not steal. They answered, Lord of the universe, Our father’s entire essence is stealing. I just find that they know they’re talking to God, the Lord of the universe, and they’re like, Yeah, but stealing’s like our whole bag, man. I’m just so in this feeling and he, and he, Ishmael shall be a wild man, his hand against all.
There was none among all of the nations who he did not go to and speak and knock on their door asking if they will accept the Torah. All the kings on earth will acknowledge you, oh Lord. And they have heard your words of mouth. I might think that they heard and accepted, it is therefore written, and they did not do them, and with anger and wrath, will I take revenge on the nations, because they did not accept the mitzvoth, And even the seven mitzvahs that the sons of Noach took upon themselves, they could not abide by until they divested themselves of them and ceded them to Israel.
[00:12:00] So, this explanation presents numerous theological problems. First, the Midrash portrays God physically appearing to numerous distinct nations simultaneously, an event of unprecedented cosmic significance that would have fundamentally altered human history. Yet no archaeological record, written tradition, or oral history outside the Jewish tradition references such a universally transformative revelation.
Furthermore, the Midrash’s genealogical framework attributing entire civilizations to single biblical ancestors, Ezzam, Amob, Moab, and Ishmael, Contradicts established anthropological understandings of human population dispersal and development. Archaeological and genetic evidence demonstrates that human groups evolve through complex patterns of migration, intermarriage, and cultural exchange, rather than the neat, biblically aligned family trees this narrative presupposes.
This anachronistic perception of later ethnic identities onto a mythic, pre Sinai world fundamentally misrepresents the accurate historical development of ancient Near Eastern peoples. Now, you might say the Mishnah is meant to [00:13:00] be allegorical and that God’s foreknowledge that other people would deny the Torah is why he didn’t bring it to them.
This leads to the second problem. Second, it is clearly immoral. The Old Testament makes it clear that children should not be punished for the sins of their father. Why can’t these people’s descendants simply decide to stop their sins? Ezekiel 1820 states, The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, Nor will the father share the guilt of the son.
The righteousness of the righteous will be credited to them, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged to them. If your response is to argue that this was just a deeply ingrained cultural tendency in these groups, then why is somebody still considered Jewish if they have left Jewish culture?
Why are they still Jewish when they break God’s commandments? Why maintain matrilineal descent at all? Third, it seems to suggest that one can inherit a core sin from something a distant ancestor did, at least at the cultural level. In the context of Jews being the descendants of King David, consider the [00:14:00] passage, Will you accept the Torah?
They asked, What is written in it? He answered, You shall not commit adultery. They answered, Lord of the universe. Evra, of this it relations, is our entire essence, as it is written. And the two daughters of Lot This just seems like trolling. I, this can’t be. Why, why are the, why are the children of Ammon and Moab tainted by their ancestors sins, but not the Jews?
Here I’m thinking the descendants of King David, who, you know, clearly did illicit relations. You know, why, and we know from the Bible that Jews did all sorts of horrible things in ancient times, even during the biblical period. Why are they not tainted like all of these other people? And then fifth, the midrash, and I love somebody, I was talking to one of you about this, and they go, Well, David later felt bad about that.
Oh, well, of course. That doesn’t cancel out that he did it. That’s, it’s like, not in the way this works. Apparently here, if the sons felt bad that their father did it, it doesn’t even remove the sin. Why, why, why did they have [00:15:00] to carry it for multiple generations? And David, it’s like A lifetime he feels bad about it is gone.
And then at fifth, the Midrash presents entire nations being judged based on the actions of single ancestors or representatives, which raises serious questions about fairness and individual moral agency, i. g. why can’t I, or why didn’t God bring this to them multiple times or something? So anyway, thoughts.
Why don’t people talk
Simone Colins: about this? This seems oddly discordant.
Malcolm Collins: Well, I think that’s why people don’t talk about it. I think that’s the
Simone Colins: well, hold on, right? Like within the LDS church, people don’t talk a lot about a lot of things. And then, you know, there’s, there’s an issue with a bunch of things being on the internet. So the moment you do start questioning, there’s all the people who have left the LDS church and.
Are talking about the stuff that doesn’t make sense and that doesn’t match up and it’s a little embarrassing. And why is there not an equivalent of this with Judaism that brings up these issues? It’s surprising. I
Malcolm Collins: think that there’s [00:16:00] there’s three things here, right? Okay. Jewish de converts that have a, that are both highly educated Jews, i.
e. not from one of these factions that doesn’t really educate people that they they don’t have the same axe to grind against their tradition. They often don’t feel like they were intentionally, had things kept from them or lied to. Like all of this would be taught to a Jew. An Orthodox Jew is gonna know all of this.
But they don’t have a reason to question it. They don’t have a reason to question the Mishnah in the way I an outsider would now a Christian is not going to question this because when Christians do proselytization to Jews, they’re genuinely terrible at it. They keep trying to be like, Oh, but look at all these prophecies here and see how they were filled by the life of Jesus.
And it’s like, well, I mean, you could have just written all that stuff to fill all those prophecies. You know, like there were, you know, I, that’s going to be super unconvincing to a Jew and a Christian is not going to take the time to study like the internally consistency. An atheist who’s arguing against this stuff, well, they’re gonna have a problem because they’re gonna approach this [00:17:00] and, and, and point out, like, factually and historically where this doesn’t make sense, or, like, logically things about, like, an all caring God don’t make sense.
They’re not gonna point to, like, the nitpicky things in the way that I am, because I’m like, oh, these texts are divinely inspired, I need to study them in my studies. I, I’ll hope you also see was the mission I hear why I do not count personally. Like a lot of people are like, why are you into like the Christian texts and not into the Jewish texts at post Christ?
And I’m like, because they’re honestly like not as well thought through or researched like the, the, the, the text here, like when I read it, that doesn’t, it felt like pretty poorly logiced.
Like, like I I’d say almost sort of like, a Popol Vuhi type religion, like a really polytheistic religion where it’s like, Oh, you have the X and the Y and then the Y crazy thing happened in the Z crazy thing happened rather than like polemics on morality or parables or stuff like that, which are like a sort of easy way to convey a moral system.
And not just easy, but [00:18:00] I think fundamentally more sophisticated and sort of the depths of morality that can be taught with it instead of Oh, actually God gave this to everyone. Just nobody else accepted it. Like that, that feels like a terrifically unsatisfying answer to me.
Simone Colins: It is unsatisfying. Yeah, I guess it’s just about hiding in the weeds then.
Malcolm Collins: Now before I go further, let’s examine every instance in the bible or old testament where someone attempts to address the question of why the jews deuteronomy seven seven eight the lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples For you were the fewest of all peoples, but it was because the lord loved you and kept the oath that he swore to your ancestors.
This passage is interesting because it specifically denies one potential reason, population size, but then provides a somewhat circular explanation, essentially because God loved you. Genesis 18 19 provides another perspective regarding Abraham specifically. For I have chosen him so he will direct his children and his household after him.
to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is [00:19:00] right and just. This suggests that the choice was based on Abraham’s future role in teaching righteousness. That is, I believe, the clearest and correct answer. It was because he had closer to correct beliefs, and his beliefs would influence future populations in a, in a positive direction.
I. e. that’s like technopuritan laid out because you know, his direction and his children and his household after him will keep the way of the Lord and doing what is right and just. Now Deuteronomy 9, 4 through 6 explicitly rejects the idea that the Jews were chosen for their righteousness after the Lord, your God has driven them out before you.
Do not say to yourself, the Lord has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness. No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is going to drive them out before you.
It is not because of your righteousness or your integrity. We see here that through, and you know, this one I find pretty interesting. Some people are sort of like, this shows that the Jews weren’t more righteous than other people. But I could argue that this doesn’t necessarily say that. It, it, it just says like everyone else was.
so completely deplorable [00:20:00] that maybe on average Jews were slightly more righteous, but they shouldn’t take any pride in it because they were still like pretty deplorable. It could, it could be read that way. But a lot of people read it to say, I think because it deflects one answer that people don’t want to be the correct answer is that the Jews were more righteous than other people.
And it kind of, it kind of sets that What we see here is throughout the passages is notably the absence of any claim that the Jewish people were chosen because of an inherent or unique qualities that they possessed. Thoughts before I go further.
Simone Colins: This just seems like so much guesswork. And it seems The conclusions made are putting words in God’s mouth in a way that makes me feel very uncomfortable.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. All right. All of this refocuses our question. Okay. If Jews are only Jews because of what they believe theologically, why did matrilineal descent enter the picture? Okay. Back to Simone’s question. This is good. First, let’s examine the academic answer to this question, then we’ll address what [00:21:00] Orthodox Jews believe.
The matrilineal principle in Judaism is particularly interesting because it’s not explicitly stated in the Torah slash Hebrew Bible itself. The primary biblical text often cited is Deuteronomy 7, 3 4, which discusses intermarriage. You shall not intermarry with them, for they will turn your children away from following thee.
However, this text doesn’t specifically establish matrilineal descent. In fact, if you look at the text It explains why you shouldn’t marry them. Because if you marry someone of a different faith, your kids will deconvert at a higher rate. That has nothing to do with matrilineal descent and is completely logical.
The clearest early source for matrilineal descent comes from the Mishnah compiled around 200 CE in Kiddushin 312, which states that a child follows the status of the mother. The Talmud, Kiddushin 68b, attempts to derive this principle from biblical verses, particularly from Deuteronomy 7. 4, but many scholars view this as an ex post facto justification of an Already existing practice.
In fact, we have substantial evidence to believe [00:22:00] that at the time of the Christian split, Judaism transmitted family identity patrilineally. Biblical precedents throughout the Hebrew Bible slash Old Testament lineage and tribal affiliation were traced through the father’s line. The genealogies in Genesis, Numbers, and Chronicles follow a patrilineal descent.
All of them follow a patrilineal descent. As far as I know, there’s no matrilineal genealogies in the Old Testament.
Josephus and Philo, the first century Jewish writers sometimes discuss Jewish identity in ways that appear to emphasize patrilineal descent. Priestly and Davidic lines. The priesthood being a Kohen, the royal lineage were transmitted petrolineally, and the messianic line was transmitted petrolineally.
Every major line went petrolineal in the Old Testament and we have lots of lines that we can be citing here. There are so
Simone Colins: many.
Malcolm Collins: Yes, the Dead Sea Scrolls generally appear to emphasize petrolineal descent, particularly in the Damascus Document CD and the Rule of the Congregation. 1qsa Neither Filio of Alexandria nor Josephus mentions patrilineal descent.
Instead, [00:23:00] both focus on concepts that implicitly support patrilineal descent. And I note here that if you’re talking about a figure like Josephus
27 to 100 A. D. So, Josephus would have been a post Christ figure. He would have been discussing post Christ Jewish theology. And so, when a, like a modern Jew, which I often hear, they’re like, okay, yeah, like the Mishnah was made a few hundred years later, but they were codifying pre existing Jewish tradition.
It’s like, why did nobody write about this pre existing Jewish tradition? We have a lot of Jewish writers like Josephus. We have a lot of people documenting the Jewish community. We have Dead Sea Scrolls community. They, this, this extremist community didn’t think to document matrilineal descent anywhere if it was common and important to Judaism at the time.
The Old Testament didn’t think to mention it anywhere. That to me beggars belief, and I think that if you’re approaching this from an atheistic mindset or a skeptical mindset you’re going to say [00:24:00] it probably wasn’t there. If you need to approach it for religious reasons, okay, let’s see. Now, do you have any thoughts here?
Simone Colins: No, keep going. This is intriguing.
Malcolm Collins: Now, if you ask an Orthodox Jew about this, I’ve heard one logically coherent, though not necessarily convincing, answer to the question of why matrilineal descent matters. Okay. This is other than my answer, which I think is much better than this one.,
if Jews are originally chosen for what they believed rather than who they were, this can be transferred on to them. Through the contract at Sinai, so if we say that when the Jews agreed to the covenant at Sinai, this contract would apply to their bodies in some way, and that’s applied specifically to those people and only those people who were at the signing at Mount Sinai a, this, this does make kind of sense because then you’re transferring the.
Okay Jews Yes, they were originally chosen because of what they believed being closer to accurate. That gave them the option to make the contract at Mount Sinai. And then the contract at [00:25:00] Mount Sinai wrote them on, wrote this on their body. This also explains matrilineal descent. Now the person who was telling me this, I don’t know if this is well known within Judaism, but it just seemed intuitive to me, so I’d add it explains matrilineal descent, because if it’s written within their body, new Jewish bodies are constructed within women.
Simone Colins: Okay, so it’s, it’s like, almost as though on the, their double helix, there, there was this tiny little tag added, a little
Malcolm Collins: Well, I’d say it’s not within the DNA, that’s why it’s matrilineal. It’s something else in their body that is, like, unique in some, or spiritually set apart in some way. And that’s why Okay, okay.
Spiritual
Simone Colins: epigenetics, somehow.
Malcolm Collins: No, if it within the DNA, then the father’s DNA would still be there. Yeah, that’s
Simone Colins: true, that’s true.
Malcolm Collins: It has to be The point here I’m making is that it’s not in the DNA, it’s something inherent to their bodies, which is why to have a Jewish body, it must be constructed within a Jewish woman.
Boom. Womb. Right. And I was like, okay, that’s actually fairly [00:26:00] satisfying. It explains that, yes, they were originally chosen based on their, their beliefs, but then this transferred to, like, a biological thing at It’s just really weird, though, if
Simone Colins: I were creating some kind of divine authorization process, or I were going to tag something, you know, add something to the human metadata of my favorite people who did the thing I wanted them to do.
It wouldn’t involve the gestation process. Like, that’s just
Malcolm Collins: weird. Everything involves the gestation process, but DNA, Simone. That makes sense to me. But why not the DNA? Because the DNA, then it would be like a specific piece of code that wouldn’t have any spiritual significance. Because like, like, it’s, it’s, I mean, it might.
If it’s like the lines from the Torah or something. Because, you know, that’s the way Kabbalism sometimes does things. But what I’m saying is I mean, wouldn’t it
Simone Colins: be, it would make more sense to me if it were like The divine semen, you know, like they at least have a little more. Agency, you know what I [00:27:00] mean?
Like they’re wiggling. What is it?
Malcolm Collins: I’m just saying there is a logic here that I can get behind. I might not buy it myself, but there’s a logic here that I can get behind. I’m not feeling it,
Simone Colins: but
Malcolm Collins: Okay, i’m glad i’m
Simone Colins: glad you feel okay about this. This is great. Okay. I don’t actually so
Malcolm Collins: okay I’d say now if you’re jewish and I say I encourage people to stay with their ancestral religions.
This is As good of an answer as you’re gonna get, other than the one I’ll have at the end of the video, you can skip to the timestamp at the end of the video. Other than that turn off the video now and walk away because it’s only downhill from here.
Simone Colins: Ruh roh.
Malcolm Collins: For those of us who are undone by such constraints, this answer fails at a number of levels.
Alright, so, first, you’ve got common sense. If the covenant God made with the people at Sinai traveled matrilineally through bloodlines, why was that never explicitly laid out in the Bible? That is an important point in what seems to be one of the existentially most important facts about God’s people, that their [00:28:00] identity travels matrilineally. And if it does work that way, why can people convert to Judaism at all? Something we see happen multiple times in the Bible. Like if this Thing that was written during the initial signing of the contract is actually important to Jewish identity Why are converts allowed at all?
That doesn’t make sense to me Why was Ruth able to convert? And we’ll get to this question more in a second But then there’s a second problem, which is we’re told in the Old Testament that it wasn’t written in their bodies Specifically we have Jeremiah here talking about the second covenant. So this is the covenant after Sinai
Simone Colins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them , by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. , dot, dot, dot, I will put my law within them.
I will write it in their hearts. This is said in regards to a covenant to come and is contrasted with the one at Sinai, making it clear [00:29:00] that the covenant created at Sinai was not. put within them or written within their hearts. Not great, not great. Then you have the problem of biblical conversions.
We see multiple fairly straightforward conversions into Judaism within the Bible. If this is possible, it negates the idea that some special bond within the Jewish body. We will examine each of these in turn along with the counter arguments from Jews and rabbis as these being easy conversions. Historical.
Finally, we know factually that early Jews did not see their religion this way. Traveling Jewish missionaries were so common in the Roman world that they are mentioned by multiple Jewish historians. We’re going to go over three Jewish historians, then a Jewish historian, Josephus, who talked about this phenomenon.
Then they’re also mentioned in the New Testament. But more damning than that. We also know the Jews used to force people in conquered regions to become Jewish and afterward considered these people fully Jewish. Again, I will cover all of these points in turn. [00:30:00] And then finally, as I mentioned here, the New Testament.
And this is actually really, really, really important to this point. And this is an argument that I think many Jews wouldn’t really think through, but it’s actually a really powerful argument if you think through the logic of it. Nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus say his goal is to open Judaism to non Jews.
If Judaism at the time was understood to have high requirements for conversion or some level of matrilineal descent, why doesn’t Jesus ever mention that this is now waived? Why did none of the people writing immediately after him mention this when Gentiles were converting into the religion? Why was this seeming, and they did write about other things, they wrote about like should we have circumcision, should we not have circumcision, they had these debates, and early Jews also had these debates which we’ll get into.
Simone Colins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Why was this seemingly a complete non issue for early Christianity, with the debate in the early church instead focused on whether circumcision was required for non Jews who converted? In Paul’s letters, and other jewish laws [00:31:00] specifically dietary laws discussed in acts This alliance was what we have seen in other jewish conversions of the time but more on that in just a moment.
So any thoughts before I go into all of these specific i’m dying for you to go
Simone Colins: into them.
Malcolm Collins: Just go ahead Because this goes against what I knew about early judaism, And we’ll go against the counter arguments too because I brought this up with rabbis multiple rabbis.
If you think like, I’m just calling out one rabbi, no, no, no. I went over this with lots of people to get a diverse set of counter arguments and as strong counter arguments I could to what to me seemed a patent historical truth. That in early Judaism, they had active missionaries and aggressively tried to convert other populations.
Which again, why would they be doing that if they had matrilineal descent? Right. And I actually want to hear your thoughts on this, I think the, that the Christian Bible and the early Christian theologians never thought to mention, now Judaism or , , the Old Testament is open to non Jews, why didn’t they ever mention that?
The, the core thing they mentioned is now it’s open to non Jews [00:32:00] without
circumcision
. That’s a, that’s a big difference.
Simone Colins: That is a big difference.
Malcolm Collins: And it wasn’t even without circumcision because we’ll see people converting to Judaism without circumcision in just a second, historically speaking. Oh, okay. It was an active debate at the time, I’ll give you that, but the requirements were much lower.
What both history and the Bible reveal is that Judaism during this period was much closer to modern day Islam than an ethno religion. Specifically, it was a religion that anyone could convert into, that conquered other people and forced them to convert, and that had traveling missionaries who actively sought converts.
It was a religion that, like Islam, concerned how the state was governed. This is what makes it very different from Christianity. It was also a religion that, like Islam, carved out a place under that state for non believers with unique rules applied to them This is where the concept of Ger toshav emerges, which is very similar to the Muslim concept of Dahimi.
And I note here it’s also similar to Islam in like all sorts of other ways. You, you’ve got the, you were supposed to read it in the original language. You’ve got the, there is kind of one ethnicity that’s bound [00:33:00] to the religion, but not exactly one ethnicity. It’s really fascinating to me the parallels between Islam and this early Judaism from the perspective of how it related to things like governance and converts and an ethnic status.
We are going to start with accounts from ancient historians, then move to biblical accounts, beginning with the Jewish historian Josephus, who wrote in the first century BCE. Crucially, after the destruction of the temple, showing these practices were still common at the time. I think some of his writings might have been before the destruction, but it was generally around that time.
Like temple destruction, I should say. Crucially, after Christ, showing that these practices were still common at the time. During the Hasmonean period, 2nd 1st century BCE, there are accounts of mass conversions, particularly of the Imidians. According to Josephus, John Heraclius conducted military campaigns to expand Hasmonean territory.
After defeating the Idemians militarily, he incorporated their territory into his kingdom. After the military conquest, Heraclius gave the Imidians an ultimatum, either convert to Judaism, which meant circumcision [00:34:00] for males, and adherence to Jewish law, or be expelled from their homeland. , this suggests a relatively simple conversion process.
The conversion process consists of circumcision and following the Jewish laws. But interestingly, not necessarily following Jewish beliefs. It is clear , at this period of Jewish history, being a Jew was not based on matrilineal descent, or even belief, but on keeping the commandments. Anyone who followed the rules was fully Jewish.
And I’m talking about the common perception. And I note here, when I brought this up it was a rabbi. Their thing about the, the Hasmoneans was like, well, the Hasmoneans were like weird, basically, like they were an offshoot, but they, they were powerful enough to be conquering other people. I think that they are weird from the perspective, and again, we’ll keep going over this, from the branch of Judaism that ended up surviving and existing as modern Judaism.
For more color here. The Hasmoneans were the primary ruling dynasty of the Jewish people during their period. They were an independent Jewish kingdom that came to power, , after a revolt against
[00:35:00] Seleucid rule. , this was from approximately 1 67 BCE to 37 BCE. The reason why a rabbi might think of them as weird is because they align themselves more with these Sadducees, , which favored a more literal interpretation of scripture and a rejection of oral law. And the Jewish group that survived follows the Pharisees most closely, which focus on oral tradition and interpretation of the Torah.
Malcolm Collins: And, but again, As I’ve noticed, if you took the average of all the Jewish beliefs at the time, that branch was about as different from the average with Hasmoneans clearly being part of this average as the branch that led to Christianity. And, and, and why would he even think this was normal? I mean, clearly he thought this was normal, that you could, and we’ll see other instances where people are forced to convert.
And in a world where you can forcibly convert people, it, it seems to me be much more just follow the laws. Similar actually to like modern noahide traditions, but without the circumcision thing, like just follow the laws and everything’s good. Which I like, it’s, it’s [00:36:00] very Jewish, like I’m not going to say that’s important was what I understand about Judaism at this time period.
But I don’t think that this is actually what the Old Testament says you need, needed. I think of the Old Testament period, so not in this period, which is after the Old Testament. You actually needed to be a full believer and fully support the, the people of the, Faith of God. And if you did those two things you, while also keeping all the rules, you were fully Jewish.
I think that the believer part kind of got dropped among some of the Jewish groups here and may have been more, you know, unique to this time period. Also from Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 20, Chapters 2 through 4, we learn about the conversion of Queen Helena of Adebelini and her son.
Isaides to Judaism in the 1st century CE. This account is particularly noteworthy for what it reveals about conversion practices during this period. Key points from Josephus account include process of conversion. Helena and Isaides were drawn to Judaism separately through different Jewish merchants and teachers.
Their conversations were voluntary and occurred without any reference to their matrilineal ancestry. Again, this is common. Even today was Jewish conversions. [00:37:00] You could convert without it, but it is interesting that there is no mention of, you know, them converting or matrilineal requirements or anything like that.
It was based solely on their acceptance of Jewish beliefs and practices. What is That’s, that’s my game. I’m into that. About this is the circumcision debate that happened. Okay. Azades initially converted without circumcision on the advice of a Jewish merchant named Ananias, who feared political backlash if the king underwent the procedure.
Later, another Jew from Galilee named Eliezer convinced Azades that circumcision was necessary for observance of the law. And we’ll see a few times that there appears to have been some debate about the requirement of circumcision during this period, but most of the like trained rabbis would have said it was required, but trained rabbis were not required to approve of you to convert to Judaism.
We’ll see that in a second here. The conversion process appears to have been centered on accepting monotheism, adopting Jewish practices, and following the Jewish law. For men, Jewish circumcision was debated as either essential or optional. [00:38:00] No formal tribunal, notably absent is the mention of any formal beit din, rabbinic court, or extensive questioning process that became Standard in later rabbinic Judaism considered fully Jewish after their conversions.
Helena and Isaias were considered fully Jewish. Helena made pilgrimages to Jerusalem provided for famine relief for the city while Isaias sent offerings to the temple. And apparently they are talked about as being very good Jews by like Jewish historians. They are pious, good Jews. These two. The story of Metelius.
In the Jewish War, Book 2, Chapter 17, Josephus recounts a brutal episode that occurred at the beginning of the Jewish revolt against Rome around 66 CE. The Jewish rebels in Jerusalem attacked and overwhelmed a Roman garrison stationed in the city. The Roman soldiers took refuge in the royal towers, but were eventually forced to negotiate surrender on terms with the Jewish rebels.
The garrison commander, Metelius, arranged terms of surrender whereby the Romans would lay down their weapons, and be allowed to depart unharmed. However, once the Romans had surrendered their arms, the Jewish rebels, led by [00:39:00] Eliezer, attacked and massacred them in violation of the agreement.
Josephus writes, They, the rebels, fell upon the Romans when they had brought them into the stadium and encompassed them around, some of them being unarmed and others in such a condition as rendered them incapable of defending themselves, and slew them, all accepting Medallius. For they spared him alone, because he intrigued for mercy, and promised that he would turn Jew and be circumcised. Medallius was thus the sole survivor of the massacre, having agreed to convert to Judaism to save his life. Josephus presents this incident as a terrible crime that violated sacred oaths and brought divine punishment on Jerusalem.
Regardless of the act and the ethics of the act and anything like that, clearly this gang of Jews or this troop, like this was a large group of Jews thought that an individual saying, okay, I’ll be Jewish, don’t kill me, that that was enough to merit him being Jewish in some way. , and thus, Not like what are your thoughts on I think it says [00:40:00] something about the belief of about what a conversion meant during this time period
Simone Colins: well, I like that the conversion involved a Costly signal it seems
Malcolm Collins: again, we, we can, we can argue about, you know, were these good people or not, but it’s indicating something about what was commonly understood as the conversion process. If it was commonly understood, you had to go through a rabbinic court, these people certainly wouldn’t have thought of this as a conversion.
Nor would the mass conversions of the Hasmoneans been thought of as a conversion. Yeah. Okay, so now we’ve got the conversion of the women of Damascus, which I think is very interesting in regards to your note on costly signals. And we’ll see, I think, why Christianity spread as the branch of Judaism that ended up spreading.
In the Jewish War, Book 2, Chapter 20, Josephus describes events in Damascus during the early stages of the Jewish revolt. After news spread of Jewish rebel victory, the people of Damascus planned a massacre of the Jewish population in the city. However, they had a problem. Quote, but they were afraid of their own wives.
who were almost all of them addicted to the Jewish religion. [00:41:00] Oh no. It was the greatest concern was how they might conceal these things from them, end quote. The passage indicates that a significant number of non Jewish women in Damascus had embraced Judaism. These women had such strong attachment to Judaism and the Jewish community that their husbands feared.
They would warn the Jews about the planned massacre. The men of Damascus ultimately carried out their plan in secret, killing about 10, 000 Jews in a single hour. This brief mention illustrates how Judaism had attracted numerous Gentile women converts to the point where it affected political and military calculations during the Jewish Roman conflicts.
Now, I’ll note here. Josephus is known to exaggerate. Do I think that almost all of the women really were addicted to the Jewish theology? No, but I think that he’s noting something here, which we also see in the other stories, is that women converted to Judaism at a disproportionate rate. The question is, is why did women convert?
Likely because they didn’t need to get circumcision. There really wasn’t that costly a signal for women who converted to Judaism, but there was a very costly signal for [00:42:00] men to convert to Judaism. Yeah,
Simone Colins: that’s fair.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. And I’d also point out here that, like, do you even need a rabbinic court if you’re talking about, like, circumcision?
I can see why rabbinic courts weren’t really needed during this time period before first conversions became common. Because, like, no one’s gonna fake that. Like, no guy, it’s like, there’s a lot of things that a guy is gonna fake. And I think that they just didn’t really care about women converts that much.
They didn’t see them as you know, it was good to, to, to have them when they were really dedicated, but more often than not, and you’ll often see this, they’re a little worried about women converts. They’re like, oh, they’ll deconvert your kids because there’s some periods when the Bible was written, when like deconversions and like marrying outsiders was a big issue, but it doesn’t appear to be the case throughout the, like the entire old Testament.
The story of Fulvia in the Antiquities of the Jews, book 18, chapter 3. Josephus accounts an incident occurring in Rome during the reign of Emperor Tiberius around 19 CE. According to Josephus, there was a woman who was a proselytite converted to [00:43:00] Judaism, whose name was Fulvia, a woman of great dignity and one who embraced the Jewish religion.
The men, four Jewish scoundrels, had persuaded her to send purple and gold to the temple at Jerusalem. And when they had received what she had donated, they asked for their own purple dye. Oh. For their own uses. Or maybe fabric. And did not bring it to the temple. In this account, Fulvia is described as a woman of high social standing in Rome, who had converted to Judaism.
Her husband, Saturnalius, reported this fraud to his friend, Serjanus, keep in mind the husband wasn’t a convert, who then informed the emperor Tiberius. Tiberius used this incident as a pretext to expel all Jews from Rome, forcibly conscripting 4, 000 Jewish youths for military service in Sardinia. This story illustrates both that high status Romans were converting to Judaism, and that this was occurring during a time of increased Roman hostility towards Jewish practices, and that it seemed to disproportionately convert women.
Oh, actually, this could solve a mystery from one of our other And one of our other episodes, we were talking about what’s Christianity really more [00:44:00] moral than the other systems of the time, like our Christmas Day episode. So like nobody watched it, but I figured it was a good one for Christmas Day. And one of the interesting things is that early Christian communities seem to be overwhelmingly female, like a rate of like, And Scott
Simone Colins: Alexander discusses this in his book review on the early rise of Christianity.
Malcolm Collins: But he also noted that a lot of these early Christian communities were actually just converted Jewish converts. Sort of. It seems
Simone Colins: like the, the female interest in Christianity was, Especially all this extra simping for women.
Malcolm Collins: But he also mentioned that a lot of these early Christian communities were communities that had wanted to convert to Judaism or had flirted with Judaism.
Oh yes, but like the circumcision
Simone Colins: was just one step too far. And, or the rules. Because it can be very hard to convert to Judaism if you don’t live in a Jewish community. Because there’s so many things, like you need all these amenities.
Malcolm Collins: To be able to follow rules. The point being is this explains potentially why they were so overwhelmingly female because of these pseudo Jewish convert communities.
Mm-hmm . Were, [00:45:00] as soon as they saw an iteration of Judaism that didn’t require all this other stuff, they were fully on board with that. Yeah. So they were converting sort of prebuilt. communities. And I think early Christianity, as we’ll get in further about this, because you’ll see that these communities were super common of Jewish converts all around the, the Greek world, all around the Roman world.
That we might be understanding early Christianity wrong as being the super fast spreading religion when it was really spreading on kindling. It would have been. Yeah.
Simone Colins: I mean, Scott Alexander also discussed that in that book that he reviews. I
Malcolm Collins: don’t think the book fully emphasizes it. Yeah. How common, because we’re going to hear that almost every community had a group of Gentile Jewish converts living within it.
That they were that common, that it was seen as any town you go to, you can find Gentile Jewish converts as a community. So They loosened the lid. It’s not fair. Yeah, those communities all converted and it made it look like Christianity was growing much faster than it actually was. The Jewish Greeks [00:46:00] of Antioch.
In the Jewish War, Book 7, Chapter 3, Josephus describes the relationship between Jews and Gentiles in Antioch in modern day Turkey, one of the major cities of the Roman East. Quote, For as the Jewish nation is widely dispersed over all habitable earth, So it is very much intermingled with Syria by reason of its neighbors and the greatest multitudes in Antioch by reason of the largeness of the city, wherein the kings after Antiochus had afforded them a habitation with most undisputed tranquility.
They also made prostelitites. Of a great many Greeks. Perpetually, and thereby after a sort brought them to be a portion of their own body. So this is a Jew bragging about how many Jewish converts there were from Greek populations in this city of Antioch, and that they converted after proselytization.
This passage indicates that Judaism and Tioch was actively attracting Greek converts. The phrase they had in some measure incorporated within themselves suggests these [00:47:00] converts were integrated into the Jewish community. This provides evidence that Judaism during this period was not closed to outsiders, but was actively engaged in what we might today call missionary activity.
And throughout his books, Josephus writes of Jewish proselytization against Appian, book 239, Josephus proudly notes the widespread appeal of Jewish practices. Quote, the masses have long since shown a keen desire to adopt our religious observances, and there is not one city, Greek or barbarian, nor a single nation to which our customs of abstaining from work on the seventh day was not spread.
And where the fasts and the lighting of lamps and many of our prohibitions in the matter of food are not observed, end quote. Against Apion, book 239, he emphasizes how many Gentiles have adopted Jewish customs. Quote, many people have come over to our ways of worship. Some of whom have remained, while others, lacking the necessary endurance, have fallen away again.
End quote. Now, I also think this is pretty interesting here, is it talks about, you know, what makes you a Jew. It’s not that they were, like, turned away by a court or something like that. It was just too hard to follow all the rules, and [00:48:00] so they stopped being Jewish. So I think that that shows how a Jew of this time period, of the time period like a bit post christ deaths, would have thought about conversion.
Jewish War Book 2, 18 2. During the outbreak of violence against Jews in Caesarea, Joseph C. Smith notes the whole city was filled with confusion and it appears evident that the rest of the population would soon betake themselves to arms against the Jews. This event was mainly achieved through the work of proselytite converts.
, antiquities book 22 1 through 5 Beyond this specific story of helena and ezatis joseph mentions a merchant ammonius Quote taught them the royal family to worship God according to the Jewish religion, suggesting ongoing missionary activity.
Now, maybe Josephus made all this up. That’s possible. Or maybe this is just like super rare instances and all of the stuff about like mass conversions, or the, you know, multiple communities Total fiction because Josephus wanted to make the Jews look good. Now, why he would think this would make the Jews look good if you needed a rabbinic court and Judaism was considered a [00:49:00] matrilineal thing, I don’t know.
But clearly, he loved that people liked converting to Judaism. All over his works, okay? Okay. Let’s go to writers who hated Jewish people. We’ll start with one who really hated the Jewish people. This is Tacticus. Now, for people who don’t remember Tacticus, Tacticus was the guy, when he was complaining about how evil the Jews were, , one of , his complaints was that they didn’t practice exposure or drowning their infants.
He was very upset about that. He was like, what a disgusting practice to not drown infants. Everybody knows, you know, when you don’t want a baby, you just drown it. People wonder why women were into it. Yeah, you, you wonder why we talk about in the, with early Christianity, we’re more moral. This is one of the things that early Christianity really kept with Judaism, which is do not kill babies.
Yeah. And also like, don’t be a dick to women. Don’t be a dick to women. We’ll get it. We’ll get it. If you want to go into that episode, you can, but your early Judaism was significantly less dickish to women. Then the Romans [00:50:00] were I can see why women wanted to convert as well from that standpoint, but you can learn more about that in the other video.
So tacticus on Jewish convert in his history is book 55 written around 100 to 110 C. E. Tacticus notes was disdain quote those who are converted to their ways, follow the same practice, he’s talking about circumcision here, and the earliest lesson they receive is to despise the gods, to disown their country, and to regard their parents, children, and brothers of little account.
Now. This hostile characterization nevertheless confirms that the conversions to Judaism were occurring among Murbans. Tacticus presents conversion as a complete break. Tacticus is where the word tactics come from. He wrote the, our version of like, the art of war. The western canon version.
It’s not a bad name, what do you
Simone Colins: think about that?
Malcolm Collins: But most of it is like, I like Tacticus, let’s do that for a guy! Tacticus! I’m sorry, not taking into account what he had to say about Junes. No, no, no, no, I’m just like, We’re not pro baby drowning, I [00:51:00] just like Tacticus. No! Yes, thank you. But I, I think he, he shows some really interesting things here.
So what from his perspective was required from Jewish conversion? Today, what we would think of as a lot of like cults or alternate religions, much more so than modern Jewish conversion. We also see this with Ruth which is if you talk about modern Jewish conversion, yeah, it might be harder to convert, but you’re not supposed to cut ties with your family.
Jewish conversion during this period, cutting ties with your family was normal. Maybe not everyone did this because we see Ruth cut ties with her family and Tacticus complains about people cutting ties with their family. So I’m guessing it was normal for some converts. I’m not going to say all converts because we know of other individuals who didn’t, like the woman whose husband, like this highborn woman whose husband was clearly not Jewish.
But I’m going to say that, that really dedicating yourself to the Jewish community appears to have been one of the core things that made you Jewish during this period. Juvenal’s complaints in his satellites, particularly [00:52:00] satire 14, lines 96 to 106, written in the early 2nd century CE, Juvenal mocks Romans who adapted Jewish practices. Quote, Some of you have had a father who reveres the Sabbath, worship nothing but the clouds, and the divinity of the heavens.
Oh! I love that! The sound so much, he’s like, they worship the clouds and the heavens! Haven’t been trained to despise Roman laws. They learn and practice and revere the Jewish law. I, again, I love this. It’s like, it’s like, there is this level of, like, breaking from Roman laws. And there was a reason to despise many Roman customs.
Again, see, we’re Christians, actually more moral. He describes a multi generational process where first generation converts observe some Jewish customs while their children become fully observant Jews, showing concern about Judaism’s growing influence in Rome. Really interesting here, because he’s talking about, like, you whose fathers You have gone like full Jew.
Very interesting. Roman legal restrictions. Emperor Hadrian ruled 117 to 138 CE. Reportedly banned [00:53:00] circumcision, which effectively prohibited conversion to Judaism. Earlier Emperor Domitian ruled. 81 to 96 CE imposed the Jewish tax, fiscus judicus, on those who, quote, lived a Jewish life without publicly acknowledging the faith, in quote, targeting converts.
So that’s really interesting. If this wasn’t a big thing that was happening, why are they making laws about it? What, if it was just a few rare instances and that’s good evidence. I like that. And this is very different from, again, I think, like modern Jewish missionary activities, where there just is not a sustained modern Jewish missionary effort.
Even among Reformed Jews, that it’s at least competent or widespread, or that I’ve seen. Whereas you really get the impression, if you are a wealthy Roman, like, writer, or even emperor, like, like, Tacticus, or this, this guy who, who wrote the satirites, these are satires you know, You are going to know enough Roman [00:54:00] to Jewish converts that it’s gonna be annoying to you.
I don’t know a single convert to Judaism. I do. Oh, sorry. I do know. My sister converted. I don’t know a single convert to Judaism where it wasn’t involved with a marriage. I do. I should say. Is that the same with you?
Simone Colins: No. He just chose to convert on his own. Just really liked the religion. He was one of my former managers at my first job.
Yeah, I actually know,
Malcolm Collins: but I think that who they were marrying and their kids future played a role in it. So it’s a bit different than this. It wasn’t,
Simone Colins: it wasn’t his partner either. So,
Malcolm Collins: but here, here’s the thing. Apparently, these converts were obnoxiously Jewish to these, these Romans. Like, I mean, I
Simone Colins: think it’s like being a vegan or a marathon runner.
You know, my
Malcolm Collins: understanding is that these early Jewish converts were maybe closer to like, not like what we would think of as like a reformed Jewish movement, but like somewhat Orthodox in a lot of their practices. And, and like you say, I think like a vegan, like [00:55:00] they actually held the dietary restrictions.
They actually maybe did some of the Jewish. Yeah. Yeah. Like you
Simone Colins: bring them over for dinner and they’re like. I’m sorry. I recently converted to Judaism. You invite them
Malcolm Collins: over and they’re like, It’s the Sabbath. I’m sorry. Yeah,
Simone Colins: and I can’t eat this dish right now because you’ve combined the cheese with the meat.
Malcolm Collins: Yes, but here we’re talking about now Cassius Dio’s account in Roman history, book 67, 14, 1 to 2, written in the early third century CE, but describing events under Domitian, Cassius Dio reports, quote, many others who drifted into Jewish ways were condemned. Some were put to death and the rest were at least deprived of their property.
This passage suggests Jewish conversion was widespread enough to warrant imperial persecution and, and, they believed enough that they were killed for it, you know, really dedicated to the Jewish community. And then we have the new Testament Matthew 23, 15, the new Testament verse written CE 80 to 90 CE has Jesus criticizing certain Pharisees.
Quote, woe to you, teachers of [00:56:00] the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You travel over land and sea to win a single convert. While polemical, this suggests active Jewish missionary efforts during the late Second Temple period, confirming some Jewish groups actively sought converts. So it’s common enough that all these well known Romans had seen these, these Jewish proselytizers.
And, and Jesus, apparently, Was like, hey, I know your type, you travel all over the place trying to convert people. Like, this was a common activity. And, and I, I hear like, I brought this up with a one of the rabbis I brought this up with was like, oh, but see this book that was written hundreds of years later says that during this time period, we didn’t actively seek converts.
Well, I’m going to go into why you might want to whitewash this part of your history because there is a reason why they had to stop doing this. But it’s not even whitewashed, like, I see nothing actively wrong with this, it just poses a problem for the concept of matrilineal Jewish identity being something that’s biblically grounded or [00:57:00] even grounded in Jewish ancient history.
Simone Colins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Now, let’s turn to the Bible itself. By the way, any thoughts before I go further? No. You were thorough. , I’m pretty pumped on this because this changed, I had no idea, I had no idea until I started looking in on it that Jews used to have a big, like, proselytization effort. I didn’t either.
This is very surprising. And it feels very Islami, right? Like, they have their own country, , they have their own laws for their country and their own, like, system for those laws. They have their own system for people who aren’t Jewish living within their country, and then they, they have, like, active missionary efforts.
And a big diversity of beliefs as well. Like modern day Islam was like different Jewish groups, which we’ll get into in a second here. Let’s now turn to the Bible itself. I didn’t start with the Bible because most Orthodox Jews have already had to deal with the fact that all Ruth apparently had to do to become a Jew to become part of the lineage that led to King David was say that she wanted to be a Jew and was committed to the religion. They typically handle it with comments like this.
When Ruth converts to Judaism, she offers [00:58:00] a very radical declaration of commitment. See Ruth’s 1. 16. 17, and Ruth said, Do not entreat me to leave you, to return from following you, for wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die.
There I will be buried. So may the Lord do to me, So may he continue, if anything, but death separate me and you. I mean, that sounds like standard marriage stuff. Yes. It’s not like, oh, hey let me call, this is the other person talking here. It’s not like, oh, hey, let me call myself Jewish and keep living like a heathen.
It’s I’m totally committed to this people. And I am leaving my cultural context, my land moab, and totally immersing myself in Jewish culture and practice. And it’s like, yeah, but it is all still just saying that, and going to a land where all this stuff is like the normal rules, you’re not going to have an easy time living in Israel of this time period without obeying like the Sabbaths and the other Jewish laws, like It’s not, like, I guess as an outsider, I’m like, [00:59:00] I don’t know, I’m not convinced.
That said, when this is taken in context of all of the historic evidence provided above, it becomes clear that Ruth’s conversion was not something extraordinary, nor did it require such an extreme statement. She just needed to say, like, I’m committed now. I will also note modern Jewish interpretations of the story of Ruth are hugely weighed down by extra biblical rabbinic traditions, which makes her conversion sound more modern.
Here is an example of one of those. So this is another rabbi who got back to me on this. Okay. Ruth cuts her ties with her Moabite family. family and joins with the Jewish people that fits the Talmudic criteria of accepting the mitzvah as she is committed to the Jewish God and Jewish people. And even then she’s treated as an outcast until she manages to seduce Boaz, a local Jewish noble, and the marriage is only approved.
of after she goes to the analog of Beit Din Jewish court at the city gate. If it within the text that she went to a Jewish court to confirm her status as a Jew, this would be a significant blow to my argument. [01:00:00] This is not him saying that, this is me admitting that. If these Beit Din, if these Jewish courts existed during the time of Ruth, that would like blow a major hole in the argument I’m making here.
And I’d also note for the above story, there is almost nothing less you can do than make a verbal commitment to a religion. Right? Like, it really is, you might say, well, the verbal commitment was extreme, maybe. But if you actually want to change your religion
Simone Colins: Toasty all the time after breaking something or making a mess says, I won’t do it again.
Five minutes later He makes very strong verbal
Malcolm Collins: commitments.
Simone Colins: Yes, he makes extremely strong verbal commitments. They’re very earnest sounding.
Malcolm Collins: Okay, so this would have like really hurt me if it was true. So of course I go to AI and I’m like, is this actually in the Bible or is this later rabbinic tradition?
Or maybe just a fabrication. What’s in the biblical text? In Ruth 4 does go to the city gate, which is the place where legal matters are settled. He gathers 10 elders as a witness. However, the primary purpose was not to approve Ruth’s conversion or status. The legal matter [01:01:00] concerned the right of redemption of Nomi’s property and the Leverite obligation to marry Ruth.
The closer relative initially had first right but declined. Boaz then publicly declared his intention to redeem the property and marry Ruth. The elders and the people present blessed the union. What is not in the biblical text, there is no mention of Ruth’s appearing before this gathering. The gathering was not convened to approve Ruth’s conversion or status as a Jew.
There’s no mention of Ruth being treated as an outcast after her declaration of loyalty to Nehemiah and her people. All of, the characterization that Ruth went before an analog of a Beit Din and needed approval for her conversion is reading later rabbinic conversion procedures back into the biblical text.
This represents an anachronistic interpretation that projects later Jewish legal frameworks onto the earlier biblical narrative. , the Biblical text itself presents Ruth’s transition to becoming part of the Israelite community as primarily based on her declaration of loyalty to Naomi and her people and her God without detailed legal procedures for [01:02:00] conversion that developed in later Rabbinic Judaism.
And then I again ask, and hey, I like Is this actually correct? And it goes, Ruth’s declaration to Naomi, your people will be my people and your God, my God constitutes her allegiance with Israel without any formal conversion process. And it again, affirmed the gathering at the city gate. Ruth’s four was specifically about property redemption and marriage rights, not Ruth’s religious status.
There is no mention of Ruth’s being treated as an outcast after her declaration of loyalty. And Ruth never appears before any court like body to have her conversion approved. But let’s say Ruth’s conversion wording was so powerful. You’re convinced it parallels to modern conversions. What about Zipporah, the daughter of a Midianite priest who married Moses, with no conversion process at all?
In fact, just how unconverted she was, was made clear when God threatened Moses to make sure she circumcised their son because she wasn’t practicing circumcision of their children. What’s striking about all these conversion processes described is while they don’t align with what modern Jews believe about [01:03:00] Jewish identity, they match exactly with the Jewish experience, identity, and covenant made with God described in the Bible.
Simone Colins: Wow.
Malcolm Collins: Made you Jewish was following the rules and to some extent your belief, your heritage, had literally nothing to do with it outside the priestly caste. What about passages in books like Jubilee that warn against sparing outsiders? Okay. Well, they do. But they also explain why the warning exists in context, not due to concerns about purity or blood or matrilineal descent, but because children from such marriages often had less Jewish beliefs and led the community astray.
If I warn my children against marrying non believers, which I will, does that mean I wouldn’t consider converts to be technopuritan? Does that mean I would still consider them technopuritan if they left the faith? Of course not! It was a practical concern and a logical one. To the notion that Jewish identity should be passed on matrilineally and Judaism should become an ethno religion represents such a bizarre series of conjectures drawn from practical concerns in the Bible that I [01:04:00] am astounded. The Bible and Judaism of biblical times didn’t have to address the question why Jews because it simply wasn’t relevant.
Anyone could become a Jew. At any time. Just by following the rules and dedicating themselves to the community of God. Interesting. Okay. So, did this blow your mind, first part? Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know. I hope we’ve reached a point here where anyone without a strong, and this, this really gets me like when people are like, Oh no, like you’re misreading it.
Look, I’ve got like four historians here of different faiths. I’ve got the new Testament. I’ve got Jesus never mentioning that he was opening this to non Jews. I’ve got stuff in the Bible. I’ve got what’s actually said in the Bible and your, your core argument against this is coming from sources hundreds of years later.
Like. Mm hmm. You, you really, it is a [01:05:00] theological belief, given the preponderance of historical evidence, that Jewish missionaries and proselytization efforts were not common and widely accepted in the period of Christ. Mm hmm. All right. I hope we’ve now, would you agree, like, am I being crazy here? Am I, like, reaching or something?
I don’t, I don’t think you’re being crazy. I’m being super biased here. That’s the other thing. Like if somebody was like, I
Simone Colins: think maybe here’s the problem. And I think this is what it’s going to come down to. If I can try to predict the comments or the emails that you’ll receive after this, it will be that like, you’re applying a very Protestant or Calvinist.
Or materialist mindset to our religion. Like you’re, you’re, you’re just applying the wrong logical framework. and this doesn’t interest us.
Malcolm Collins: Like, it doesn’t matter. If, if you approach this from more of like , a theological community base, or vibe Or mystical. Like, if [01:06:00] it’s just vibes,
Simone Colins: then, or, you know, mystical feeling, whatever, I mean, I’m, I’m not, I’m clearly not a mystical person.
Then move like it doesn’t
Malcolm Collins: matter and this criticism is like if you’re a Jew and you think like, I’m, I’m, I’m calling out Jews here in some way, this criticism and the difference , in sort of, if you just approach this with a different vibe, you get it. Is exactly my concern with Catholicism as well.
Like when I rip on Catholics and say they’re practicing demonic stuff and they’re blah, blah, blah. All of that is coming from just being ultra obsessed with the text itself. Trying to like interpret what the text means and not being like, yeah, but like, look at the community and traditions and vibes.
And so I’d argue that my, if you want to call this, like. You know, investigation or, or criticism of these traditions is completely analogous to the criticism I’ve had of everyone else’s traditions and in no way unique. And I would emphasize with all of this, I like the Jews. I think they’re still clearly being shown God’s divine favor right [01:07:00] now.
So we’ve got to keep all that in mind with any, like, Clearly, they’re doing something right, or at least comparatively right when contrasted with other groups. And I, I don’t think that they should be targeted for conversions. I think they’re following a covenant that they made with the actual God, because it’s the same God of Jesus.
So again, like, I’m fairly positive on Judaism more broadly, but I also really like, the truth. And if I’m getting truth from these texts and from historians and from, you know, like trying to suss out, like, what actually happened, what was actually written here, This is what I can’t help but come to.
Simone Colins: Yeah, I think a lot of it also, though we have to separate the truth and sort of your religious journey from what was more broadly discussed in the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion, which is First, you’re looking at this from the perspective that only very people very deep in the doctrine get and unless you’re a Catholic priest or really high up in the LDS church or a rabbi or, you know, some equal thing, right?
[01:08:00] You’re not going to be in the weeds. I think what’s more important about cultures and religions. Is what the soft focus Vaseline over the lens audience is experiencing and doing. And that’s one reason why I still, I mean, well, I know that they’re experiencing more problems now, but I love the LDS church because in the end.
They are, I mean, at least the ones that I know are happier, they’re more functional, they’re, they’re they’re thriving, they’re having kids, they have successful careers, they’re satisfied with their lives, they’re enjoying their lives, they have lower instances of mental health issues, all these lovely things, right?
So that’s like a good cultural technology, and I think that the same can be seen For judaism, I agree 100.
Malcolm Collins: I think judaism makes people’s lives better. I think it makes jewish lives Like
Simone Colins: does it matter? Does it matter if it’s true? I mean in there, I mean I think that on both sides, we have met people who are like, they kind of wave their hands when it comes to the religious stuff and they’re like, whatever, you know, like, do I, I actually, I don’t know, but the [01:09:00] religion, like the culture is good.
Like
Malcolm Collins: just as you can see. And I’d actually go so far as to say, I actually agree with matrilineal descent. from a practical standpoint. I think it helps the current Jewish community’s cohesiveness, sense of identity, sense of historical connection to the ancestors and the Bible and the, and the traditions.
I don’t think like, I’m not here arguing that this should be dropped within modern at all. Okay. I think it is actually core to modern Judaism, but I, as a Christian derived religious system, this significantly changes the way I relate to that system and Jesus’s teachings. Because my branch broke off before Judaism became matrilineal, before Judaism became exclusive.
And if it broke off before Judaism became exclusive, the idea of Christianity is like a Judaism fan [01:10:00] club disappears. It is, it becomes more of an equal and viable branch of the early Jewish traditions, which is what we’ll get to here. Because I think a lot of people contextualize Christianity that way.
It’s like a cult that was radically different from Judaism of the time, that broke off from Judaism. And I think that that belief, what we’re gonna see, is mostly downstream of how different modern day Christianity is from modern day Judaism, instead of Christianity of this period from Judaism of this period.
I hope we’ve now reached a point where anyone without a strong theological reason to believe otherwise will see that Judaism, at the time of Jesus, was a religion attempting to grow aggressively through proselytization. While it had some ethnic connection, this was closer to the modern relationship between Muslims and Arabs than how contemporary Jews view their religion.
So now the question is, why would a religion like this transform into an ethno religion? The sad answer appears to be that it within response to the success of the Christian branch of the Jewish tradition. First, we need to be clear that the branch of Judaism [01:11:00] taught by Jesus was not particularly deviant for its time period.
Yes, it was distinct, but not more distinct than all the other contemporaneous branches of Judaism. For a quick list, you have the Pharisees, who emphasized oral tradition along the written Torah, and believed in resurrection, angels, and fate, slash free will. They were the forerunners of rabbinic Judaism.
You have the Sadducees, primarily aristocratic priests, who rejected oral tradition, resurrection, and afterlife concepts. They emphasized temple worship, and only accepted the written Torah. Now note here, the, the Sadducees would have been significantly more different from the Pharisees than Jesus would have been from the Pharisees.
Which is really interesting given that they did, , they denied resurrection and afterlife concepts.
And they rejected oral tradition. Now, I note here, because this is very important. A Jew today could argue Yeah, but the mainstream Jews, they always believed about the same thing. Except the problem , is that if you went to a person during this time period, if you went to the [01:12:00] Kingdom of Judea and you said.
Okay. I understand there’s all these different forms of Judaism, but which one is the real Judaism? The answer they would’ve given you is, oh, it’s the Sadducees, that’s the Judaism that’s practiced both by the royal family and the priestly cast, except the Sadducees are extinct. It is the Pharisees that modern rabbinic Judaism descends from. And I also wanna emphasize how different the Sadducees were than modern Jews. They, when I say they denied the resurrection of the dead, what I mean is they did not believe in the immortality of the soul, and they believed that there was no. Afterlife. The Sadducees rejected the Pharisaic use of the oral Torah to enforce their claims to power citing the written Torah as the sole manifestation of divinity.
, the Sadducees denied the existence or influence of angels as well. All of these were things that the Pharisee branch of Judaism and Christianity shared. This is what I mean when I say that. [01:13:00] If you look at how these groups were different from each other, the group that modern Judaism came from really and truly was as different from the mainstream Jewish group.
The group that the royal family and priesthood practiced as Christianity was.
I’d also note here if you’re like, well, okay, maybe the royal family and the priesthood practiced this other form of Judaism, , but the one that turned into rabbinic Judaism, this was the Judaism of the people. This wasn’t like some weird offshoot. , well, unfortunately we happen to have historical documents showing that’s not correct.
If we look at the Jewish historian Josephus. He reported that there were only around 6,000 Pharisees
This was out of a Jewish population at the time that would’ve been, , about 1.5 million in Israel and 4 to 4.5 million already dispersed throughout the Roman Empire.
I know this is an offensive thing to state, but it aligns with the historical facts we have on the ground.
The good news about this from a Jewish perspective is it [01:14:00] means that any who claim that the quote unquote Jews were involved with the execution or persecution of Jesus are just factually incorrect. It was the Sadducees who were as different from the Christian group theologically speaking as the. , Pharisees, which later became rabbinic Judaism were, , the Pharisees had nothing to do with the persecution of Jesus,
Malcolm Collins: you have the Essenes, a separatist group who lived a monastic life. Like communities, possibly including the Dead Sea Scrolls community. They practice extreme ritual purity, communal property, and apocalyptic beliefs.
These people thought the world was about to end and were communists. Again, very different. The Zealots, a revolutionary movement focused on violent resistance against Roman Occupation, believing God alone should rule Israel. You have the Therapudae, a Jewish contemplative community in Egypt described by Philo, practicing asceticism and mystical interpretation of scripture.
They would have been more like a monastery type community, you could almost say? Yeah. You have the Herodians, [01:15:00] supporter of Herod’s dynasty. who accommodated to Greco Roman culture while maintaining Jewish identity. This is like a mix of like Judaism and Greco Roman traditions. You have various messianic movements, multiple groups formed around charismatic leaders claiming messianic status, including Theodos, Judas, the Galilean, and the quote unquote Egyptian.
You have the Samaritans though they consider themselves followers of an Israel of an Israelite religion, mainstream Jews viewed them as a deviant sect. They accepted only the Pentateuch and worshipped on Mount Gerizim. You have Hellenistic Judaism. Jewish communities, especially Alexandria, who synthesized Jewish practice with Greek philosophy, represented by figures like Philo.
That’s an important figure. You have Jewish Christian groups. After Jesus, various groups like the Ebonites, maintained Jewish practices while following Jesus as a Messiah. You have the Boethusians , often grouped with the Sadducees, but considered a distinct sect by some sources.
They were founded by followers of Boethus, [01:16:00] appointed high priest by Herod the Great. They rejected the oral tradition and had specific calendar related disputes with the Pharisees. Note here. I, the Ebonites, like our tradition, like technopuritan, it’s actually probably of all of the traditions. If somebody was like, what are you closest to?
We’re probably closest to the Ebonites because the Ebonites also didn’t believe that Jesus was literally God’s son. They just believed he was the Messiah. So very, and they were very similar to older Judaism in many ways. So I’d argue like, if you’re actually like, which branch are we closest to?
We’re very close to the Ebonites.
Side note here, but if you are one of those Christians who is like, well, it was very obvious to those writing the Bible, specifically those around the time of Christ, that he was a divine being who did lots of spectacular, and undeniable miracles, I must point out that this is factually untrue, even among his followers who thought he was the Messiah. The Ebionites, who believed Jesus to be the [01:17:00] Messiah, and who were one of the largest groups of his followers in the geographic region where he actually preached, believed him to be a man.
And just a man, not also simultaneously the son of God and also God himself.
Malcolm Collins: Ebionites believed Jesus to be the Messiah foretold in Jewish prophecy, and thus a man. The group most tied to the region where Jesus actually taught, and who would have had the most oral history of his teachings from their parents and grandparents, and who believed he was a literal messiah, so like, not against Jesus or his teachings, did not believe him to have claimed to be literally the son of God. Those traditions only evolved in regions where no one would have had any cultural memory of the actual Jesus like Rome and Egypt. This is why the Technopuritan tradition that follows what is actually written in the Bible most resembles the Ebionites and what they believed than the early church movements who were very, very far from where Jesus actually preached.
They went extinct, by the way. You have the Hemera Baptists, a Jewish sect mentioned in early Christian [01:18:00] and Rabbinic literature who practiced daily rituals of immersion for purification. So this was a Jewish sect that practiced daily baptism. Again, showing that, like, the baptism that Jesus was practicing, other Jewish groups were doing this.
Like, it might be weird. from a pharisee’s perspective, but it wasn’t weird from the perspective of the
Simone Colins: Hemerobaptists,
Malcolm Collins: right? And when we go to like John the Baptist, probably one of these guys. You know, he was, he was a Jew who was practicing baptisms, right? But again, like a lot of these traditions in Christianity, they weren’t that deviant.
You have the natherites, while not exactly a sect, they were individuals who took special vows of abstinence from alcohol, cutting hair, et cetera. For dedicated periods of consecration to God, you have the Reshabites, a clan that practice an ascetic lifestyle, avoiding wine and permanent dwellings, living in tents as a religious commitment.
So when I bring up like all of the conversion stuff that’s happening to modern Jews, I often get like a no truth Scotsman’s fallacy. It’s like, well, that must have been like deviant [01:19:00] rabbis or like overzealous weirdos who were like not mainstream Jews. It’s like they may not be mainstream. If you consider mainstream, the sect that survived to become modern Judaism.
But that sect within this period was one of many highly deviant sects. That had a huge diversity of traditions. And the only reason that sect today is seen as true Judaism is because it’s the one that survived and still calls itself the Jews. Not due to any uniqueness during this period. I’d also note that I actually do not discount the possibility that there was a sect of Jews during this period practicing matrilineal descent as an important part of Jewish identity, just that this community was probably not the community involved in proselytization, but there was a community involved in proselytization that seemed bigger and better resourced.
And this community appears to have nobody having written about [01:20:00] them. It appears to have not really impacted any of the literature written during this period. So my guess would be, is this community was either small or insular. What also is note to me that the extremists, like the Dead Sea Scrolls community, didn’t appear to be of this community because they didn’t appear to practice matrilineal descent.
So I’m not saying it’s not possible that it wasn’t practiced during this period, but it would have been considered a weird practice in the same way Jesus was a weird practice.
Simone Colins: Okay. But, but, but You’re always gonna get weird subgroups in any culture. This is normal.
Malcolm Collins: No, not like this. This is way more diverse than modern Judaism.
This is a series of things that in a modern context might even be called a collection of different but related religions. I actually don’t even think in a modern times we would call these the same religion. They’re probably about as similar as like Mormons are to Christians. Like Mormons call themselves Christians, but like, this is a huge diversity.
The point I’m making here is that mat the matrilineal descent group [01:21:00] may have existed. And you may even say, well, they were always the real Jews because they ended up being the group that survived, and that proves God’s favor of them. Fine. But I could equally say, well, the Christian branch proved God’s favor by their rapid expansion.
And a few other things that we’ll get to. All these various branches of the Jewish religion were attempting to convert followers and spread their influence. The only reason we think of the branch ancestral to modern Jews as the quote unquote true branch is because it is the one that survived and proliferated.
But if surviving and proliferating makes you the true branch, why isn’t Christianity considered the true branch? Just because they don’t call themselves Jews anymore is one of the main reasons. We need to look at Christianity in the context of its actual text and not let later traditions that were added, which makes Christianity radically different from ancient Judaism specifically these later beliefs were not actually in Christian scripture and, and they deviate significantly from Judaism.
So if you look at Christianity today, I, I, I agree. It’s very radically different from Judaism of this period but it’s because of a [01:22:00] few later additions to it. The addition of an immediate heaven and hell afterlife in addition to the afterlife in which you’re raised again at some point in the future,
See our last track, track nine.
If this is shocking to you that this is not well attested in the Bible, and I’d also noticed the belief in like the garden of Eden that you go immediately when you die in modern Judaism is a massive deviation from what the Jews of. Jesus’s time would have thought you know, so to again, go to track nine.
If you want more on this, the belief in using the son of God as a sin transference ritual, mirroring the goat that Jews transferred their sin to, and then sent to the demon Azazel, see track eight of this is shocking to you, but this idea was added to Christianity by Anselm of Canterbury. 10, 033 to 11, 009.
It is influential work, Cure Deus Homo, Why God Became Man, and is not found in the original text, which seems to be arguing Jesus needed to be sacrificed to seal a new covenant, a common practice during that time period being sacrificing animals when signing a new covenant. And Jesus even says this a few times that I’m being signed for the new [01:23:00] covenant they are killed for the new covenant.
Anyway, so, Three, the belief that Jesus was literally both God and God’s son. We have not yet published our track pointing This out in the Bible and the Bible actually explicitly argues he is not so I will summarize the key point and go into detail on this maybe in a future track or maybe it’s so offensive to Christians I’m just gonna bury it deep in this one because I don’t want to deal with the backlash from pointing this out it was actually common in the old testament to call favored individuals children of god.
This is likely why what Jesus meant in the parts where he calls himself the son of God. Christians today call God Father all the time, and no one gets confused and believes they think God the Father is literally that individual’s father. Plasms 2 7, I will proclaim the Lord’s decree. He said to me, you are my son, today I become your father.
This is referring to the Davidic king. Another clear example is Exodus 4 22 23, where God refers to Israel collectively as his son. Quote, then say to Pharaoh, this is what the Lord says, Israel is my firstborn son, and I will tell you quote, let my son [01:24:00] go, so he may worship me, end quote, in Hosea 11. 1, God refers to Israel as his son, when Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt, called him my son then also there’s a reference in 2 Samuel 7.
14 regarding David’s descent, Solomon, and You I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with a rod wielded by men, with floggings inflicted by human hands, end quote. God be like, he’s my son, and I will punish him with a rod, inflicted by human I don’t know,
Simone Colins: floggings and, oh, yeah, I guess You can use the human hands to hold a stick or something, but I was just pictured like a slap fight.
Malcolm Collins: Point being is god saying you know, jesus saying like god is my father doesn’t mean god’s literally his father. No for sure
in the Old Testament, God helps other women conceive when it should not be possible without those children being considered God’s son. We see this, like, all the time in the Old Testament. God helps women get pregnant, and we’re never like, well, that’s God’s son. We also need to think about the logistical problems.
If it means that Jesus is literally God’s son, what [01:25:00] is his Y chromosome? God used some human male’s DNA to create Jesus, as God does not have DNA, and it is the DNA that mixes with the female’s that determines God’s son. Who the literal father is of a child whether or not that man slept with that woman.
So even if God took some other man’s DNA and implanted it in Mary, that man is still Jesus’s, like, human father. That IVF, like, I don’t say because we do IVF that, like, Simone was miraculously conceived. No, I do think Jesus conception was miraculous, I just think that a human’s DNA was used for it.
To highlight how absurd it is to claim that God was literally Jesus’ father, just because he assisted in combining Mary and Joseph’s DNA. , this would be like all of my kids were had through IVF. It would be like if somebody said, oh, Malcolm, you are not the father of those kids. It’s the IVF doctor.
It’s the doctor who helped implant the embryo. , which is obviously laughable. Nobody thinks like that. The father of a [01:26:00] child, it’s a contributor of the DNA.
quick aside here. If you are wondering who’s, why chromosome Jesus had, we actually know this. It was Joseph’s. The prophesied Messiah had to come from the paternal line of David.
If Jesus is literally God’s son, he cannot be the Messiah. I will also note here on multiple occasions, Jesus accepts the title of son of David, Mark 10 46 52 and Matthew 15 22 28. The only occasion you could use to plausibly argue he is not David’s son is Matthew 22 41 46. We know from other passages that Jesus is the son of David.
We know this passage isn’t about invalidating that connection. What it appears to be doing. is pointing out that while he is descended from David, he is above him in terms of spiritual connection. We will see in a second Jesus pointing out that a part of God is in him and a part of God is in us. Maybe this is him arguing the part in him is more than the part that within David.
And it doesn’t make sense in [01:27:00] context.
If he and God shared the same will, why would he say things like, quote, My father, why have you forsaken me? End quote.
I once have somebody tell me that the reason he said that was to fulfill prophecy, and I’m like, do you know how stupid that sounds? That okay? So Jesus is up there suffering on a cross. He is not thinking, nor does he believe God has forsaken him. He doesn’t want to ask this question yet.
He feels compelled to ask it just so that he can check a box on a prophecy even. Why would you create. A prophecy that you, like anyone could just choose to fulfill as well. , just don’t have that be part of the prophecy. If that wasn’t something Jesus was going to naturally say,
it, it is like that south park scene with the red heifer where they paint it red and they’re like, oh, yeah. That’s what the prophecy was always about. It was a bunch of kids painting a heifer red. It’s like n no, very clearly. If you can just choose to fulfill a prophecy, then it’s not a meaningful prophecy.
There.
There it is. Right there. See a redheaded cow.[01:28:00]
Whoa. Look it you right Kyle. A ginger. I shall never question your keen intellect again.
Malcolm Collins: But, more importantly, Jesus tells us he is not literally God’s son on each of the three occasions he has pressed on the subject. One, quote, But Jesus remained silent and gave no answer.
Again, the high priest asked him, Are you Christ, son of the blessed? This is when he’s on trial to be potentially killed. And Jesus said, I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven. So, note here, Jesus is asked two questions. The first being, is he Christ the Messiah, who Jews understood to be human?
And the second being, if he is the Son of God. He answers both in turn and very explicitly. I am, I am the Messiah, and You will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power. I am the Son of Man. He literally inverts their phrase. Are you the Son of God? No, I am [01:29:00] the Son of Man. Okay, people use the I am word to be like, well, God said I am when he first announced himself to Moses.
That seems, I don’t, I think it’s a, it’s a much easier parallel to say, are you the son of God? I am the son of man. To be pretty, pretty explicit there. Note here, because he does believe himself to be set apart by God.
And people who are set apart by God are called the children of God throughout the Old Testament. He does not deny this, but clarifies that he is the Son of Man to ensure there is no confusion that he perceives himself to be literally the Son of God. But he is confirming that he’s the Messiah here.
And I’d also note here, very interestingly this is one of the only places in the entire Bible, and I actually think The only place where Jesus hard confirms that he’s the Messiah which is really interesting because the one time when it will lead to his death is the one time when he absolutely confirms it.
Without ambiguity. Two here. How long will you keep us in suspense if you are the Messiah? Tell us plainly. Remember, they don’t think the Messiah is literally the Judaism. The Messiah is a [01:30:00] guy. Jesus answered. I tell you, but you do not believe. The works I do in my father’s name testify about me, but you do not believe me because you are not my sheep.
My sheep listen to my voice. I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. My father who has given them to me is greater than all. No one can snatch them out of my father’s hand. I and the father are one. Note here the line, I am my father are one.
He is referencing the unity of their ability to catch lost sheep because the question is in reference to him being the Messiah. As we continue, we have a case of people misunderstanding Jesus on this exact point in him correcting them. And his Jewish opponents picked up some stones to stone him. But Jesus said to them, I have shown you Many good works of the Father.
For which of these do you stone me? So note here, Jesus is implying that he has not done anything blasphemous. Meaning he must assume that they are not meant to infer that he is literally God or the Son [01:31:00] of God, but is set apart by God. So here he’s being like, what, why are you gonna stone? Like, what are you doing?
If he understood that he was claiming to be God, he’d know exactly why they were about to stone him, right? And they say to him, we are not stoning you for any good work, they replied, but for blasphemy, because you are a mere man claiming to be God. Jesus answered them, it is not written in your law.
I’ve said you are gods, if called them gods to whom the word God came. So it’s saying you are gods to whom the word of God came. And scripture cannot be set aside. What about the one whom the father set apart as his very own and sent it to the world. So here he is saying, I have been sent apart, and I have heard the word of God through Scripture.
Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I say, I am God’s son? Right here he makes it clear that he calls himself the Son of God because he has been set apart by God as the Messiah. Not because he is literally God’s son. He is correcting them here, pointing out there is no blasphemy in what he is saying, otherwise his argument does not make sense.
If you believe that he thinks he actually is the son of God, this argument doesn’t make [01:32:00] sense. And then he says, do not believe me unless I do the works of the Father. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you know and understand the Father is in me and I am in the Father.
So here, when pressed for more information, we see Jesus explaining when he says he is the Son of God or he is God, he means that the Father is in him and he is in the Father. The intention of this statement is made clear in the third place Jesus denies being literally the Son of God. So note here, you might be like, well he is saying God is in him and he is in his God.
Certainly he never says that about anyone who has faith. Thomas said to him, Lord, we don’t know where we are going, so how can we know the way? Jesus answered, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know the Father as well. For now on, you do know him and have seen him.
Philip said, Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us. Jesus answered. Don’t you know me, Philip? Even after I have been among you for such a long time, anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. [01:33:00] How can you say show us the Father? Don’t you believe I am in the Father and the Father is in me?
Now pause and note the phrase he says here, okay? I am in the Father and the Father is in me, okay? So by seeing him, you have seen the father, because the father is in him and he is in the father. The words I say here, I do not speak of my own authority. Rather, it is the father living in me who is doing his work.
Believe me when I say, I am in the father, and the father is in me, or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. Very truly, I tell whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will be greater things than these, because I am going to the Father, and I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. Jesus promises the Holy Spirit, quote, if you love me, keep my commands, and I will ask the Father, and will give you another advocate to help you, and be with you forever. The Spirit of Truth. This is the Holy Ghost. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him.
[01:34:00] But you know him, for he lives in you, and will be in you. Bam. Right there, ladies and gentlemen. He says, he lives in you, and will be in you. Whenever Jesus says the Father is in him, he means it in the same way he believes the Father is in all believers. In this passage, we see the language mirrored. The Father is in Jesus, and It’s just the whole we’re all made of stardust thing.
It’s fine. It’s fine. Yeah, and the Father is in all faithful believers. Also note, Jesus is not putting himself above other faithful believers. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these. Because I am going to the Father.
So here we see him saying, he is not the be all end all. If he was literally God, other people would not be able to outdo him in the name of God after he dies. He also ends this section pointing out that he will not be on this earth forever, and will in a traditional [01:35:00] sense die. In the Old Testament, as we point out in the last track, it is common When someone dies to be said to going back to God or that the rock is going back to God, they’re animating for us.
And then, finally, I will not have you as orphans. I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you will also live. On that day, you will realize that I am the Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Listen to that. On that day, you will realize that I am in the Father, and you are in me.
And I am in you. Bam. And for those in the back, on that day you will realize I am in the Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. All of the believers are in each other and the Father in the same way Jesus means when he says the Father is in him. So this isn’t a unidirectional thing. It’s not that Jesus is in you because you’re a believer.
You are in him. He is in God because he believes in God. All of these people in this belief circle exist within each other, but not literally as each other. Again, why would [01:36:00] he say, My lord, my lord, why have you forsaken me? If he was literally had the same will as God.
Another wildly important part of this particular segment, where Jesus is laying out that when he says the Father is in him, and he is in the Father, he means it in the same way that he is in you, and you are in him, and you are in the Father, and the Father is in all of us if we are a believer.
In this very segment he says, quote, No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know the father as well. For now, you do know him and you have seen him. And actually, this entire segment comes at somebody saying, basically, he says this and the person’s like, oh, so do you mean that you are literally God?
And he’s like, no, I do not mean I am literally God. I mean that God is in me and God is in you and I am in you and you are in God, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So a lot of people use this line, no one comes to the father except through me to mean that there is no other path to God. i. e. if you’re Jewish, you cannot get to God.
And yet we clearly [01:37:00] see here, he says, except through me, if you really know me, you know the Father as well. He is saying this in the exact context of the passage, where he makes it clear that the part of the Father he has in him, we also have in us if we are true believers. So when he says the only way to God is through him, he clearly means when read in context, that the only way to God is through true believers, not literally just him.
It’s pretty clear from other words in this segment that he does not see himself as the be all end all, quote, truly, truly, I say unto you, whoever believes in me will also do works that I do and greater works these he will do, end quote. Oh, that’s
Simone Collins: pretty clear.
Malcolm Collins: Pretty clear. Yeah. What he’s saying here in context is that yes, the only pass to God is through him, which The him here could be any believer, because we all have God in us the same way Jesus did, [01:38:00] in Jesus own words.
Which means that Jesus literally, i. e. Christianity literally, is not the only path to God, so long as it is one of the other true religions. So, while this tract may contradict both Jews and traditional Christianity, you can still be a technopuritan and follow one of those traditions. This track contradicts them because it is an evolution of my own ancestral tradition, which has a focus on facts and textual slash historical accuracy.
That is not as important as things like buying spiritualism and tradition , that within some of the other true branches determine it. Objective truths. Basically, all I can do is describe truths from the perspective of my tradition and culture, but the limited understanding of truths afforded to humans of this age means that other truths which might seem in direct contradiction to me can still be true as long as they follow one of the truth faiths.
Now, to those who say it is sacrilege to say that Jews could actually be right with God, it is pretty [01:39:00] striking that throughout the Bible, Jesus never said he invalidated the covenant that the Jews had with God or that they could not continue to be right by God by following the old covenant.
In fact, he even explicitly states, do you think I have come to abolish the law or the prophets basically implying, no, I have not come to do that.
Simone Collins: Right.
Malcolm Collins: He says, I have not come to abolish, I have come to fulfill, for truly, I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest feather, nor the largest stroke of the pen, will by any means disappear from the law until everything is accomplished.
I hear the old covenant still stands. It is just a separate potential covenant to God, but he has fulfilled it, allowing for a new covenant. As you see here in Luke 2022 20, the new covenant in my blood, as I have mentioned many times when they say Jesus died for our sins, what they mean is Jesus was sacrificed to create a new covenant, not [01:40:00] as a sin transference vehicle like you would have had with the demon Azazel that was actually really common during that time period, i.
e. sacrificing something or an animal specifically to create a new covenant. You would sacrifice animals when you were signing a new covenant. This makes sense in context and assigns an added degree of value and importance to Jesus’s sacrifice without making it nonsensical, which removing literally all of man’s sins.
does. And I would also note here on the Sermon of the Mount, Jesus repeatedly uses the formula, you haven’t heard it said, but I tell you, showing that the Bible’s continuity is a reinterpretation of various commandments without an invalidation of those original commandments. The best you’re going to get if you’re looking for the old covenant being completely invalidated.
is not from Jesus, it’s going to call from Paul’s writing in Hebrews. By calling this covenant new, he has made the first one obsolete. And what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear now, if you think he meant this in absolute terms, like it would soon disappear from the [01:41:00] world, he clearly didn’t.
Because, you know, Jews still exist. If you think he meant this, Oh, well, as soon as Jesus made the new covenant, the old covenant was no longer relevant for anyone on earth. Well, that also is clearly not what is meant because he said it will soon disappear as in it hadn’t disappeared yet. So let’s take another alternative.
Suppose what he meant is it will disappear in relevance for members of the community, the followers of Christ. Keep in mind that many of the Jews. who converted to Christianity in the early days still kept the Old Covenant at this time period. Well, then it was absolutely correct. So, that’s what I think he meant here.
, if we’re assuming he had any prophetic wisdom in what he was saying. Not that it will disappear as it passed to God, and not that it will disappear from Earth. Because if it was a pass to God, and it would disappear, it would have disappeared as soon as Christ made the New Covenant.
If it was going to disappear from the Earth, well, it clearly didn’t do that. He meant within the Christian tradition, which of course it did. Very astute that he was [01:42:00] able to predict that. There might have been one other way that he meant it which was that it would last until the end times started, or the messianic age, as rabbis talk about this however, I don’t I think that’s, that’s not the way I read it but he could have meant it that way. Just, just another logical alternative.
But he definitely didn’t mean that it disappears in the path to God or it would have disappeared the moment Jesus created the no covenant. Not soon. No, I will note here that it makes. clear that this new covenant is superior though. So it may not completely replace, like for Jews, the old covenant, but it is better.
Quote, the ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is the mediator is superior to the old one. Since the new covenant established is established on better promises, end quote. And he explains here why the new covenant is better. Is that specifically I will put the laws in their minds and I will write them in their hearts.
As we go into more detail on this [01:43:00] shortly in this tract, the core difference between the new covenant and the old one is that the new covenant or within the new covenant, you are supposed to have a direct relationship by God, not one mediated by a temple, a bureaucracy or religious experts. You are now responsible for making up your own mind about what is right and wrong.
Was the old covenant that was like the old Testament that explicit about needing a mediator? Yeah, the Old Testament is very clear. I mean, the rabbis determined God’s will. Basically, they would debate on it and then they would perform councils. And that’s where all of these Jews, like when you’re talking about maybe what,
Simone Collins: like the practice tradition was, but in the actual text and
Malcolm Collins: yeah, but if you’re looking at like modern Jews, like, yeah, no, I
Simone Collins: get that.
But I’m just saying, where in the book does it say that? I
Malcolm Collins: don’t know. Oh, well, so you get this from things like, not in stuff that was still recorded at the time of the split with Jesus Uhhuh . But if you look at the, like, snake oven story or the oven of, of course,
Simone Collins: I I get that. I get that. I just, I was, I was wondering if there was some Old Testament based precedent for this, and it doesn’t seem like you’ve come that No, there,
Malcolm Collins: [01:44:00] this, that did wasn’t invented until after this.
Okay. But it,
Simone Collins: it was more like then Jesus was attempting to reform. How things were playing out in practice, almost like a correction, because people
Malcolm Collins: weren’t doing it. He seems to really explicitly be saying, you don’t need to listen to the Levite cast, you don’t need to do things through the temple anymore.
He was removing the cast. And not
Simone Collins: even like that was the original rule, because it never was. He was just saying, by the way, you don’t need this.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, basically, by, well, the original rule, if you go to like the original rules that God laid out, it was definitely, yes, you have to follow the rules God laid out, but Yeah, but
Simone Collins: I mean, it was just the Ten Commandments, as long as you knew those.
Yeah, it was just the
Malcolm Collins: Ten Commandments, and then a tradition arose. You didn’t have to go to someone
Simone Collins: else to have you tell, tell them, like, I mean, as long as, like, mom and dad told you.
Malcolm Collins: A hundred percent right. The, the rabbinic tradition was within one group of Jews within this period. But it was not like the dominant, there were many old Testament faiths during this period as we go over elsewhere in this tract.
And you are 100 percent correct in saying [01:45:00] that really all you had to follow was the original 10 commandments when the covenant was made and not all of the additional rules. Okay. And Jesus. was just you’re creating a new covenant, which is written in our hearts. And within this new covenant that’s written in our hearts.
It is up to us to determine stuff like what food is good to eat, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Me, and I agree with the Bible with my intuition that this is a superior covenant because it allows you to make moral judgments on your own and gives you the ability to make those moral judgments. Well, it’s
Simone Collins: almost, I mean, to use sort of, Current contemporary terminology. It’s like the doge of Christianity or at least like, Abrahamic religion and that Jesus was saying all this bureaucracy, all these extra layers, all this regulation.
Is not necessary and if you cut it out you might be better off. Let’s all try to
Malcolm Collins: Well, no, I actually think it’s more than that I mean the new covenant said that you now have the responsibility If you agree to it to make these decisions for yourself It is an additional [01:46:00] responsibility not a removal of responsibility to decide for yourself Whether something is good and righteous and in line with god’s plan So if you look at jesus’s words here you have so whatever you believe about the things Keep between yourself and God, blessed is the one who does not condemn himself by what he approves, but whomever has a doubt is condemned if they eat because they’re eating is not from faith and everything that does not come from faith is sin.
Basically everything you have to do has to come from faith and you’re responsible for making these decisions yourself.
Simone Collins: Okay. Interesting.
Malcolm Collins: Thoughts. Did you, did you know that he denies this three times in the Bible?
Because I’ve never actually read these sections that are supposed to be, and followers will say, Oh, this affirms that he’s actually God’s son. When he’s like exactly saying I’m not, like I’m the son of man. And then they have to get around this with the Trinity and say, well, he’s also the son of man. Well, then why did he say, I’m the son of man and the son of God?
He doesn’t say that.
Simone Colins: It’s just subsequent hyping. I get it. I was just watching this really long YouTube video on the history of animatronics. And they tried to, [01:47:00] Disney, Walt Disney wanted to make a very, very perfectly accurate Abraham Lincoln. And the big sell originally was the accuracy of this animatronic.
But in the end, they accentuated his cheekbones to make him look more distinctive. And they made him. Like, four inches taller. He was six foot four. I think they made the animatronic six foot eight because he needed to feel bigger. And they gave him a low, booming voice, even though it was understood that the historical Lincoln’s voice was actually fairly shrill and kind of grating.
And I think this is the same kind of thing. It’s very hard for us to have a revered figure and to not make them bigger than they were. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Well, I agree. It is, it is very hard to do. And I think that that’s, you know, part of what’s going on here. And, and you know, some theological intensities that were created by some belief systems built up in some branches of the early church.
So, what about the Trinity? Let’s start with how the modern concept of the Trinity started in the first place, because it’s a little absurd. Basically, even though Jesus denies being God’s literal son multiple times and [01:48:00] explains that God is in him in the same way he is in all believers, some branches of the early church, and I note here only some branches, tried to insinuate that Jesus was literally God’s kid and thus a God himself.
This creates theological problems, because if Jesus is a God, Now you are clearly no longer a monotheistic religion, despite the Old Testament constantly warning against believing in multiple gods.
Now you could argue that Jesus is God, except it is made clear in the Bible on countless occasions that he is not, as he frequently beseeches God for things and prays to God. We don’t have just, My Lord, why have you forsaken me? But we have John 17 3, where Jesus refers to the Father as the only true God, and to himself as the one, quote unquote, sent by God, or 14 28.
Quote, the father is greater than I, the Christian groups that had a polytheistic idea that despite what the Bible said, Jesus [01:49:00] was actually a God had to find a way around this contradiction. Tertullian. 1 55 to two 20. CE came up with the concept of the Trinity under the name Titas in 200 to 210 ce.
Simone Collins: It’s funny because it’s. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like the Old Testament again and again is like, don’t do this. Please stop.
Malcolm Collins: Can you,
Simone Collins: can
Malcolm Collins: you just
Simone Collins: not,
Malcolm Collins: can we, this is why a lot of the early Christian groups like the Ebonites and stuff like that didn’t believe this. Which we’ll get to in a second.
Haven’t we been told something about, Oh, right. Don’t, but what’s interesting here is. I mentioned that Tertullian came up with the concept of the Trinity in Trinitas. What’s interesting here is that Tertullian, when he originally came up with this concept, it was actually closer to the technopuritan perspective than the way Catholics later reinterpreted it.
Okay. For example, first off, he was a materialist, arguing for divine corporeality, that God literally existed as a spiritual, physical thing in the same way we do. [01:50:00] And he argued that the material thing within part one of the materials that made up Jesus and the Holy Spirit was also one of the materials that made up God.
And obviously we agree with this. So we agree with Tertullian because we agree with what the Bible said. And when the early Christians were grappling with this, they were like, okay, so then we have to go to the next thing, which is okay, well, then where did the Trinity really come from? The idea that Jesus was literally the same thing as God was not made up until the Council of Nicene in 325 CE, literally a third of a millennial after Jesus death, and was hotly debated at the time.
Keep in mind how crazy this idea is. Jews had the concept of the Holy Spirit for centuries without being tempted to think it was meaningfully separate from God. So how did the Holy Spirit get looped into this craziness? Well, since there was literally zero biblical backing for this concept, and it was true that there would need to be given how critical this was to the concept of God for Christians, i. e. [01:51:00] if this trinity concept was actually accurate, clearly God mentioned it somewhere. They need to pull the idea from somewhere. So the two best lines for pulling this are the baptismal formula for Matthew 28 19.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Where it says quote baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in quote That’s how the Holy Spirit got roped into this But again, that doesn’t really say that they’re all one thing. It says in the name of the things and the benediction in 2 quote the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all in quote Okay, definitely doesn’t say they’re all one thing but does mention them all at once. That’s it. The entire policy istic concept of the Trinity is derived from just those two lines, which clearly to any level headed person do not indicate, say, or insinuate God is literally the same thing as Jesus. The other line sometimes used to argue that God is Jesus in Genesis were a plural us [01:52:00] used for God, but see track nine for a much more satisfying explanation to that.
All that said, technopuritan do believe in the Trinity, just not the one developed at the Council of Nicene. the Jesus you pray to and can reach God through is the part of God that lives in all true believing humans, as Jesus laid out.
The Jesus you pray to is a part of all believers actions and words that are directed towards the divine and eventually culminate in God, making them literally part of God. As for the Holy Spirit, that is a way of distinguishing God’s will and identity as existing simultaneously as a singular entity and as a hive mind entity being both literally God, but meaningfully separated from the way we conceptualize identity.
Simone Collins: Oh, so trying to basically articulate that this is beyond our normal comprehension.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: But not that it’s these three distinct things, which is bringing it strictly back into our comprehension.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, he’s singular, but he’s also the Holy Spirit, [01:53:00] and he’s also you which, you know, I think was really powerfully done with, with the original concept of the
Simone Collins: nuance is just ripped off by being like, no, no, no, it’s Jesus, and then the dude God, which is his father, and then the Holy Spirit,
Malcolm Collins: by the way, side note here, another popular branch of Christianity that doesn’t include the concept of the trinity are Mormons. They don’t All right, good for them.
Simone Collins: I mean, everyone
Malcolm Collins: knows I love Mormons. You can get good if you’re looking for like anti Trinity arguments for Mormon you know, apologies.
Hmm. So how was original Christianity actually different from original Judaism? Only in three meaningful ways. And by the way, I’d note to Jews here, I, I just pissed off Christians a bunch too. Like you think I’m just being heretical. You’re
Simone Colins: just, yeah, yeah, it’s fine.
Malcolm Collins: Okay, so the three ways that it was actually different from, from Judaism of its time is Jesus was the Messiah who was prophesied heavily in the Old Testament.
This seems to me at least self evident given how much he expanded the reach of the Jewish faith under the name of Christianity. Why would the Old Testament not have prophesied about that? Could any figure in human history [01:54:00] be a better candidate for the prophesied Messiah? We’ll get into that in a bit in a second.
So I do believe that Jesus was the Messiah that was prophesied in the Old Testament. He created a new covenant that did not require the temple to fulfill. Coincidentally, only 40 years before the destruction of the temple, more on that later and he was sacrificed to create a new covenant that consolidated the rules mankind was expected to follow from a long list to essentially just dedicating your life to God.
Romans 14, 19, 23, did a good job of laying this out. Consider the old stranded Jewish food restrictions compared with this. And I’d also note, consider this line when contested with the mission line I led above to get an understanding of why I take Like, I’m really interested in the Christian text and not the Jewish text.
The Mishnah sounded like, I don’t know, like I wasn’t impressed with it, theologically speaking. Then I get to something like this and I’m like, ooh, that’s impressive. Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food.
All food is clean, but it is wrong for the person to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. [01:55:00] It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother or sister to fall. So whatever you believe about these things, keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who does not condemn himself by what he approves, but whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat because of their eating is not from faith and everything that does not come from faith is sin.
Basically lays out all the rules in one system. Don’t do things that randomly impede your brothers and sisters, you know that hurt other people but also do not go against your conscience when you are doing something the rules around food existed for a reason If you believe that those rules are important hold them if you don’t believe those rules are important don’t hold them what matters is that we are doing our best to serve god’s will and trying to interpret god’s will through whether it’s the restrictions God has laid out like what’s their actual intention or through you know, trying to build a better relationship with God ourselves.
Simone Colins: Seems very reasonable. [01:56:00]
Malcolm Collins: And you also see why like that compared to the Mishnah, like just the difference in like theological quality. Which is why I, I go for, and people are like asking, like why do you go for the New Testament and don’t go to this other work? It’s, it’s because I can get in, like originally it wasn’t because I believed all of it.
It was just like, it was like, Juicier and also much cleaner, tighter, more compact didn’t have to memorize as much,
And I should note here that this is actually saying quite a lot because when I came into all of this, I was leaning towards Judaism. , people can look at some of our older videos like raising our kids with Jewish traditions and stuff like that to make it easier. They wanted to convert into the religion as they got older, or me, as a young person, I always thought, oh, you know, , while I was raised atheist, if I converted into one religion, I always thought Judaism seemed the most reasonable.
It was actually. Studying the theology and the text themselves, which drove me away from it. , which I, again, I don’t mean this as an insult to Jewish people. I think it’s useful to get the perspective of an outsider who has actually put a lot of [01:57:00] personal focus into this. , that may help you see things through a different lens.
Malcolm Collins: So I was talking with Simone after we had originally recorded this and she had some really interesting thoughts
Simone Collins: I was musing to him that I’ve watched a lot of content delving into the lives of Mormons, and delving into the lives of Orthodox Jews. Like, I find the content of both really, really interesting, but for different reasons. So, I, I realized that I watch content about Mormons and Mormon lives because I’m interested in what they’re doing, and I want to do it.
Like, I’m interested in building up a year’s worth of food storage, and putting you know, raw grain into buckets, and sealing it, and figuring out which fats remain shelf stable the longest. And I find that quite, Fascinating. And I’m, I’m interested in that versus the, the reason why I watch the lives of Orthodox Jewish women is I’m just interested in how they live and I want to understand it, but I don’t find it aspirational because so much of it, instead of feeling useful, like I get excited about prepping.
Cause I’m like, well, who knows? Like, you know, what [01:58:00] if, what if society falls apart? That would be so great. Or even, even in a disaster, it’ll be nice to be prepared and I’ll just feel so secure versus like, Oh here is, The, the wig shop that we’re going to go to, and I’m going to explain, you know, how we fit wigs and, and why we wear wigs.
And I’m like, wait a second. So you’re supposed to cover your hair during this period of your life. But you’re doing it by putting on more hair and isn’t the whole point to cover your hair because it’s, you know, it’s a beautiful thing. And, you know, you’re not going to, you know, I mean, I know there’s lots of different interpretations of the, I think it’s Corinthians 11 about covering, you know, women should cover their hair.
Both in worship and in everyday life. But I think the idea, the principle, the, the, the spirit of the law would be that women’s hair shouldn’t be seen. So if I can’t tell as an outsider that this orthodox Jewish woman is hiding her hair because her wig is so good and these wigs are beautiful, you’ve [01:59:00] completely ignored the spirit of the law.
And that, that I would never do that because one, it’s a lot of work to To put on a wig and maintain a wig and choose a wig and buy a wig and it also costs a lot of money but two, if I’m going to cover my hair, I’m going to make sure that everyone knows that they can’t see my hair.
Malcolm Collins: It just seems to be a privilege.
Would you say that it felt sort of counterfeit to you? Like it was Not
Simone Collins: counterfeit. I mean, it feels in its own way very extra, very It’s own thing very, very aspirational, but it doesn’t feel aspirational to me because it doesn’t feel functional. It feels like a lot of extra work, a lot of extra steps. And in the end, not even doing the thing it was supposed to do.
And I find that very, very frustrating. And in the same way that I find it very frustrating to. Go through some government bureaucratic processes knowing that it’s not going to work. Like, right now we need to get some, some documents at Bastille with the Peruvian consulate. And [02:00:00] I’m going through the process, I’m getting the lawyers to write this stuff up, I’m collecting the paperwork that I need to do.
I’ve already paid a lot of money to do this and spent a lot of time doing this. And I’m about 85 percent sure that when we show up at the consulate, they’re going to be like, Mmm. We can’t help you. And here’s why and it just really, it feels so futile and I don’t like any system that makes me feel like that.
Like I’m wasting my time. Like this is not going to do anything.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and I think that for people who aren’t born within the Jewish tradition I think this really highlights the differentiation between the covenant that Jesus attempted to put in place and the covenant that the Jews still follow as God.
And to the average outsider, the old covenants understanding is going to appear somewhat contrived, like a fridge that doesn’t have a light on it because you know, turning it off and on is work on the Sabbath, but you still want to be able to open the fridge. I just this morning saw a Reddit post at the top of my feed on sheitels, the thing that Simone was talking about, and people complaining about them.
And so this was one of the most [02:01:00] upvoted comments on there, which I think is the average non Orthodox Jews interpretation of Orthodox Judaism saying, quote, I swear every time I hear about a new tradition in Judaism, they seem like creating loopholes to avoid obeying God’s will. 90 percent of them seem right out of Wile E.
Coyote, a mile long fishing line connecting all the houses in New York. And I think to a Jew like this wouldn’t be confusing at all. They’d be like, well, of course you would put that up there because you know, you need to differentiate between the indoor and outdoor and domestic and public spaces and it would be basically impossible to live without this in a city like Manhattan.
But to a non Jew, they’re like, what do you think? Maybe God just want you to take a day off. Like, and I’d also note here that this really aligns with the prophesied second covenant where the laws are written on your heart, so you are no longer required to listen to or have a rabbi or human authority interpret the laws, but you are responsible for interpreting the laws yourself because they are written within [02:02:00] you, and you know when you are breaking them versus when you are not.
As they relate to you specifically. And this also, to me, is one of these things where I look with less favor on things like the Catholic tradition or the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition. Because it seems like they just rebuilt the Jewish system of having like an intellectual caste that’s supposed to interpret everything for you instead of making, you know, being responsible for those decisions yourself.
Important for me, personally, to reinforce that Judaism is a path to God and how I’m putting this together. Because while it is critical of Judaism, I still need to say, you know, I, I do not think it is helpful to have the religion say, well, all of these religions are strictly wrong.
Simone Collins: Oh, I hear that. Well, maybe you could do a little more in favor of Judaism, because I’m not hearing a whole lot. I’m hearing,
Malcolm Collins: Well, I, I want to say that I think this system is superior. I, I do think it’s superior, but that doesn’t mean that Jews aren’t right with God.
Simone Collins: Well, yeah, I mean I think sort of the way that [02:03:00] I’m categorizing Judaism in my head at this point, based on everything that you’ve said, and based on what other people have told us too, is Judaism is just a very different cultural take that really is, it’s like, you know what, we are going to be all about this blockchain of rules that evolves, and it evolves within our community, and those rules are kind of independent of it.
God and that there’s a clear precedent for that and We very much respect God, but our key bet in terms of civilization surviving is that we’re going to do our rules. So God, you do what you do and we’re going to do what we do. And our rules are our own thing. They’re not about God. They’re about The point is the rules.
It’s like, but you forgot about the cones. You forgot, you’re right, it is, you forgot, it was all about the rules. It was all about the cones and the rules.
What’s so funny? Oh, no, no, [02:04:00] no. You’re a smart guy. Clearly picked up some flashy tricks, but you made one crucial mistake. You forgot about the essence of the game. It’s about the cones.
Simone Collins: And it, they, I think that the important thing for me is I’m starting to see it’s almost like, like a workout regimen or, or their health.
Like this is what keeps us sharp. This is what makes us exceptional. Yes. And it clearly, when you’ve looked at how we’ve done over, thousands of years. Clearly it’s working for us. It’s clearly imparting fitness. And this whole time we have still done well by God. We have still done well. And so let us do our rules.
And we will we will do well by you god and and our rules
Malcolm Collins: They’ve objectively sometimes done well by god. So by this what I mean is it appears clear to me and it’s laid out in the bible. We know that god does punish the jewish people when they are not or his people. Whatever that means so People when they are not acting good with him We [02:05:00] know this because of like, you know, when they’re the babylonian exile, right?
The bible makes it pretty clear like okay, you get punished as a people when you do bad things. Well, I mean The pogroms happened, the holocaust happened I think as No, no, no, any
Simone Collins: group of people gets punished by circumstances when they go soft, and sometimes No, no, no, but what I
Malcolm Collins: mean is as favored as the Jews are today, and they do appear to be clearly divinely favored, and the rules appear to be working, there were periods of history where the opposite was true.
Simone Collins: Yeah, I’m just saying, like, the key bet of Judaism is the blockchain of rules and the meritocratic intellectualism and that is that should be seen and respected independent. Of theocratic truth. Like they are two separate, sometimes even somewhat incompatible systems, but they should not be considered.
It’s kind of like, this is your financial management system and this is your nutrition system. And I don’t know, like you use [02:06:00] money to buy food, but like, they’re not really related. And, and, you know, your financial manager is not going to be the one who advises you on how to eat. Okay. Like let them be. And I think that’s, what’s going on here.
Malcolm Collins: I think you’re right. And I love you to decimum.
Simone Collins: I love you too, gorgeous.
Malcolm Collins: But to continue why are these tracks so long? The reason they’re so long is because if I am laying out an argument here where I’m like, actually Christianity should be thought of as a direct continuation and a not a less deserving direct continuation of the ancestral Jewish teachings. Then modern Judaism, there are going to be a hundred thousand counter arguments that a person is going to have to that, and I don’t want to address in piecemeal, because then the person watches the first video, they put the counter argument right under the video.
You know, I, I prefer to handle them all together for anybody who actually wants to engage with a topic like this. Fair. I mean, it’s a, it’s a meaningful topic you know, from any religious perspective. And I would note here that this is not the pure technopuritan law of the land that [02:07:00] we’re laying out here.
This is our part of the technopuritan tradition to be within the broader technopuritan tradition. You can be a technopuritan Catholic. You can be a technopuritan Jew. You can have wildly different beliefs than we do. You can take some of these tracks and not others of these tracks as you decide which ones you think have the most evidence.
The key things that make a person a technopuritan, is that they attempt to investigate what is actually written in the text. Two, they when they’re arguing for what is theologically true, they attempt to use logic and they attempt to. Convince people with things that everyone has access to. IE no personal revelations, no, God just talked to me.
No miracles that nobody saw. Everyone has to have access to this. Like I can say, I think that this religion is sanctified because it did so well or because this guy wrote this down and this predicted these events in the future. Those are things that I have access to and you have access to and, and can’t be easily faked.
And then the final thing is, and I, and I know that this will exclude a lot of traditional [02:08:00] frameworks, is the belief that God is a real entity that actually exists at a different point in time. Mm-hmm. And this is one that Simone and I debated on adding as part of the criteria and saying that you’re actually part of the tech community.