00:05:48.400A quarter of a century of further experience and thought have gradually but steadily weaned me away from that Jesus who had stood before my mind and heart through the days and nights of my Franciscan venture, as in a vision.
00:06:04.300Many of the pages of this chapter, originally penned in 1939, I could not write now.
00:06:10.120nevertheless the inspiration that i originally got from jesus probably had more to do in determining
00:06:17.140the basic direction and the essential and enduring character of my life than any other that i have
00:06:22.500ever known if only because it came to me in the formative days of my youth and i am satisfied
00:06:29.860satisfied that this book would be incomplete and inadequate for its purpose if it did not contain
00:07:06.440I owe Jesus any further tribute. Any tribute I could pay in words must pale besides the stark fact
00:07:14.140that for nine years I literally laid my own life at his feet. But inevitably the consequence of
00:07:20.260this experience so worked into and permanently determined the very issue and texture of all my
00:07:26.320innermost being, my dedication to the truth, to beauty, to right, to the elevation of the life of
00:07:32.900man, there is revealed more fully and accurately than anywhere else what manner of scales it
00:07:39.460is in which the civilization of the West is to be weighed in this book.
00:07:44.480Whether or not it is Christian, each reader will have to decide for himself, but certainly
00:07:50.360religion, when it is vital, when it embodies what men live by and live for, what they hold
00:07:58.820most true and beautiful and sacred is the most formative power in the world. And in my Franciscan
00:08:05.920days, my conception of Jesus was the very embodiment of my religion. Now it wounds some
00:08:13.180of my readers to learn that I have moved on. Let them ask themselves and face honestly whether the
00:08:18.400same love for men and the same devotion to the truth as he sought, which made Jesus what he was
00:08:23.600in the Gospels, might not have compelled even him to alter his course and to move on into new fields
00:08:29.860and new thought if he had lived long enough to learn the lessons that his own experience might
00:08:34.720have taught him. That's funny. Nietzsche says the same thing in the Antichrist, that so much of
00:08:42.640Jesus's preachings were just like the, I don't know, silliness of youth, and that if he would
00:08:48.760have lived longer he would have changed his mind about everything well i i'd argue if you read the
00:08:57.960gospels you can see jesus like changing his mind like rather often like there is a lot of like
00:09:05.600inconsistencies between like the various events in the gospel like he'll say things out some points
00:09:13.720And then, like, he'll develop them later in ways that, like, isn't just a restatement.
00:09:23.660Like, it's a clear development that, like, his mind has adapted and changed.
00:09:29.060And, like, he'll say, I've come not to change the laws.
00:09:35.960And then he'll explicitly contradict the laws, stating openly that he is contradicting the laws.
00:09:43.720Like, I've come not to change a word of the laws that have been laid down.
00:09:50.460I've come to fulfill every one of them in detail.
00:09:53.460And then I'll say, you have heard it said, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, which is the laws.
00:09:59.240But I say unto you, resist not an evil person, which is an immediate contradiction.
00:10:05.960And, like, there's a lot of stuff like this where, like, there's even, like, word games.
00:10:13.720he plays that, like, some of them are quite clever and some of them, there's one that
00:10:21.780I actually find rather sniveling that I won't get into, but, like, there is, like, a clear
00:10:30.400development of a character in the Gospels.
00:10:33.140Like, it's not, Jesus Christ in the Gospels is not like an Ayn Rand novel where it's like, oh, there's this entire, like, very set idea that, like, the author has, like, before they start writing and is consistent with what they had after they start writing, you know.
00:10:56.160No one is as consistent in their autism as Ayn Rand or with one exception.
00:11:05.360It's also, I mean, I guess I object a little bit because Jesus is totally different between the synoptic gospels and John. It's like not even the same character in those different gospels.
00:11:21.820So I don't, I mean, I guess if there's development across the book of Matthew or Mark, you know, if you can watch his character arc move over that story, that makes sense.
00:11:31.540But it's like, it's not even the same guy.
00:11:33.960It doesn't seem like if you compare Mark to John.
00:11:39.160Yeah, no, this is something that like, it'd be interesting to do a close reading of the Gospels as well at some point.
00:11:51.000yeah uh that i i haven't dived that deeply into them but uh but just
00:11:59.800my most recent reading that was something that like jumped out to me was like yeah yeah like
00:12:06.780this is a way more like dynamic and developing character than like you'd naively expect or that
00:12:14.140like you get in like a lot of like similar philosophical works like there like there's
00:12:21.320a lot of works that it's like there's a philosopher character and he's you know the Socratic dialogue
00:12:28.120Socrates at the start of every dialogue is like like it's a narrative of the dialogue but also
00:12:34.880Socrates like has a complete idea of what he wants of what he's like largely complete idea of what
00:12:42.920he's thinking beforehand and at the end of it and socrates like his position doesn't really change
00:12:49.680in a dialogue or like yeah if you want or two whereas like and most philosophical works are
00:12:59.000like this where they have a narrative component like like uh it's very unusual for the character's
00:13:08.580ideology gift over the course of like a a narrative like this it would be interesting i i think i'm i
00:13:21.120don't like reading the gospels they rather give me the heebie-jeebies but um it would be interesting
00:13:27.640nevertheless to read them in comparison to the old testament too because like i was reading beyond
00:13:34.260good and evil yesterday, and Nietzsche says, like, he speaks with such high regard of the Old
00:13:42.320Testament. He says, in the Jewish Old Testament, the book of divine justice, there are human beings,
00:13:49.060things, and speeches in so grand a style that Greek and Indian literature have nothing to
00:13:54.160compare with it. With terror and reverence, one stands before these tremendous remnants of what
00:13:59.320man once was. And we'll have sad thoughts about ancient Asia and its protruding little peninsula,
00:14:06.340Europe, which wants by all means to signify as against Asia, the progress of man.
00:14:14.800So it's interesting. And he talks that way in the Antichrist too, like with reverence for the
00:14:21.760Jewish Old Testament. And I think I have made a comment in another episode about how I think
00:14:26.920There are these kind of two qualities of Christian today where I rank them that way as like Old Testament Christians versus New Testament Christians.
00:14:36.300And it would be interesting to like read through a little bit and compare, if not only because like so few Christians even actually read the Bible.
00:14:47.800Yeah, the Old Testament is weird because, like, it's actually, depending on the theory, it's actually, like, much younger than the Greeks.
00:15:01.500Like there is a theory that actually the Old Testament is like a platonic exercise that is like written under like after Alexander's conquest and is like a like it's the original return with like the V instead of the U that that it was like largely a project of of like dues.0.68
00:15:31.500jews as they were forming like there are some
00:15:35.420semitic people that weren't quite jewish yet and that like uh they're being influenced by all these
00:15:42.060like hellenic this hellenic culture and these hellenic thinkers and they're they're getting like0.93
00:15:46.820mogged by like this foreign culture that had like conquered them and then was like trying to change0.86
00:15:53.360them change them or like change the values of their society and like you know all conquered0.98
00:15:59.780peoples like uh your culture is being replaced at the same time that like the people who are like0.57
00:16:05.980eliminating your culture are now at the top of your society and like the cultural values new
00:16:11.260cultural values are favoring them so the theory is that like the old testament is like uh actually0.72
00:16:20.720influenced by plato and the idea of like like uh the republic and like a lot of the ideas in the
00:16:28.140and they like copy them they're like yes we want to do that but we're going to like include like
00:16:35.560retell all of our stories and like create this this like canon of our people uh yeah against
00:16:44.260this and this explains because there's a lot of anachronisms in the old testament that's like no
00:16:51.760No, that would not be in there if there's actually work written in like 800 or so, the same way that like in Homer we know it was written in, it dates like 800 because certain details don't line up with how things actually worked during the 1100s when Troy was sacked.
00:17:11.840And they also don't line up with stuff later.
00:17:14.000So we know that it is that old, that it comes from like the piratical oral tradition of Greek.
00:17:19.680Likewise, we know that basically all the Old Testament lines up with about 300, 100-ish B.C., after Alexander's conquest, during the Maccabees.
00:17:35.680And everything before that is them trying to reconstruct it.
00:17:40.860And that's also why most of the Old Testament does not line up with reality.
00:17:45.460yeah Nietzsche Nietzsche said that too I think he claims that it was more after the
00:17:53.500Assyrian conquest and like the exile that like Judaism as we understand it formed and like
00:18:02.020that's when they started writing things down and then um it's like like he again he praises the
00:18:10.380like actual old tribes of Israel in the old testament like the Pentateuch that you know
00:18:17.660the first five books of the bible and it's like once the conquest happens and they're totally
00:18:23.380divested of their land in a lot of ways their worship was you know quote-unquote pagan worship
00:18:29.660because it's tied to a place and the god of a place and then they get taken away from that place
00:18:36.980and lose their power over that land and they have to completely reinvent their concept of god like
00:18:44.460he's no longer the god of just this land he has to become like a traveling god so that he can go
00:18:50.940with them into exile and Nietzsche talks about this in great detail but like there's a way in
00:18:59.580which the priest and the warrior are one man for in these like healthier periods of the early old
00:19:07.520testament or you know the the time in the history of the hebrews that the old testament is allegedly
00:19:14.100telling us about in which the priest and the warrior are the same man the priest caste and
00:19:19.020warrior caste are the same people but like once you get conquest external conquest and like he
00:19:25.000talks about internal fragmentation of the tribes as well those castes start to diverge from one
00:19:31.340another and you get your warrior kings like your davids and your solomons you know and then like
00:19:37.460later down the line after they've been conquered and their warriors have been you know probably
00:19:43.020destroyed for the most part the priest caste is left over as this separate thing that because
00:19:49.340they cannot conquer physically they try to conquer spiritually and that's when they sort of invent0.79
00:19:56.860the bible basically and reinterpret the whole history of israel as a moral cautionary tale
00:20:08.480you know it's like everything bad that happened to us of the people it happened because we weren't
00:20:14.700And you can read this very clearly in the Old Testament.
00:20:17.060It's because we had this all written down from thousands of years ago, allegedly, but
00:20:23.880we were just blindly, willfully ignoring the revelations that we got from God, and we were
00:20:31.380sinning against Yahweh, and that's why all of this horrible tragedy has befallen us.
00:20:37.900It's a punishment that's been visited on us by God.
00:20:41.120And that's absolutely not how the, like, kings and judges themselves would have thought about their experiences of conquest and war. They would have had a much more pagan and less moral interpretation of those things, you know, assume, like, presumably.
00:20:58.720But as the priest caste gets separated from the warrior caste, the way that they rule is to insist that they are the mouthpiece of God and that God is making the decisions about what happens to the people based on whether or not they are obeying the will of God.
00:21:19.800and the priest is the one who knows what that will is so you have to listen to him even though
00:21:25.960he's not strong enough to force you into subjugation and even though you don't really
00:21:30.640want to obey him you have to because he's telling you what God wants you know and like that's that's
00:21:38.280what Judaism is and and yeah it developed later like I don't know if it's as late as Alexander
00:21:45.140that that happened but it's definitely not in the period of the sort of glory days of the tribes of
00:21:51.920israel yeah and this is um like this is the big difference between uh the like european tradition
00:22:01.580and the jewish tradition is that like the jewish tradition is like entirely priests writing about
00:22:09.040like there's this little faint memory of the war cast that they like retcon into being a priest
00:22:16.440class like there's there's exactly one duel in the entire bible and it's like david versus goliath
00:22:23.980and david cheats yeah and he's not a warrior like which is yeah actually very remarkable for the
00:22:31.920ancient world or any world that there's no dueling that like there's no private violence or like
00:22:38.780vendetta feuds like between individuals which like defines basically everywhere in the
00:22:46.320world pre-civilization but it's just not there in the bible there's no half fields and mccoys
00:22:52.740um that that it's like very much like the centralized priest class like retconning
00:23:01.240everything whereas like well didn't david david did kill bathsheba's husband that comes to mind
00:23:08.100so that he could get Bathsheba but I guess that's not really a duel it was just sort of underhanded
00:23:13.980murder yeah and it was like a like at that point wasn't he king already like yeah he was it's like
00:23:22.200an act of tyranny it's not like it's not like a contest of arms between like right years uh
00:23:31.120Whereas, like, the entire European tradition, like, like, from Homer, who, like, everyone, most commentators on him agree that he was, like, a warrior who became blind and then wrote because, like, all his, like, details of, like, the logistics of violence, like, it's not true to 1,100, but it's very true to violence, like, 800.
00:24:01.120uniquely for a poem you know this is the first poem in history yet there's surgical detail
00:24:07.480in it like oh the head was cut off and the marrow spouted from the spine yeah it's amazing i love
00:24:15.340the gore in the iliad it's my favorite way there's so much of it's just so it's so like heavenly i
00:24:25.320don't know how to say like the heights of the beauty of the descriptions that he makes of the
00:24:31.740way people die and kill each other it's rapturous that's that's the word and like this scale of the
00:24:38.740violence like um like it's not killy achilles kills one guy or two guys it's achilles kills
00:24:45.08023 guys in that passage or like 36 or something like like enough that it's like you actually get
00:24:52.780like bored and redundant with it and you feel Achilles getting tired and it's like uh we know
00:24:59.680from like fire aces and like uh I count to like aces and like world wars and stuff that that's
00:25:06.960actually like like uh when people get on a kill streak that actually like it does build to that
00:25:15.120level where it's like wow this is like the same thing over and over again it's like yeah he's on
00:25:19.240a streak um and like uh you know you can see this in the animal kingdom uh scar face the lion i
00:25:27.320posted about before the uh the one lion that uh killed like 130 other lions and 400 hyenas over
00:25:36.640his like 14 year life and then oh my gosh amazing and then adult hippo and it's like that's just
00:25:42.740like what an apex like male predator does uh he and his like three brothers the four musketeers
00:25:50.520they controlled like 300 square kilometers of like kenya for like their their short lifetimes and
00:25:58.500like all the little wine cups are descended from them but uh oh amazing but like that's0.94
00:26:06.740that's like what what um apex males are like and the entire like european western tradition
00:26:14.880is apex males writing about apex males and like this is why like odysseus can never return home
00:26:22.240yet he's a worse because well homer was blinded and he can't go home because he's like a burden
00:26:28.360so he's like oh this warrior who's been artificially reduced to being a poet but uh
00:26:34.220And, like, basically every major figure in the Western tradition is, like, in some ways like this.
00:26:42.320Socrates even, like, did fight out of battle.
00:26:45.120But, like, the big historians, Herodotus and Thucydides, they were warriors.
00:26:50.840And then Caesar, like, wrote his own, the histories of his own campaigns.
00:26:57.640and and like uh several uh roman emperors right at town we've actually like lost a lot of the
00:27:07.620by roman emperors julius caesar uh wrote an epic poem about the the labors of history
00:27:15.480or sorry hercules that uh is lost a time that was apparently like quite
00:27:20.860comparable to like uh virgil or homer and uh like uh
00:27:27.900caesar augustus's autobiography loss and tons of this stuff is lost but uh then you go forward in
00:27:36.420in time like the sagas of the vikings are like recounted and like codified and stuff
00:27:43.600by warriors and they're it's an oral tradition tradition very similar to homer words like
00:27:50.200it's later written down but it is like very consistent with itself the works and then like
00:27:56.240right up until like la morta arthur in like the 14 90s uh mallory was a knight who was imprisoned
00:28:03.660for murder when he wrote la morta arthur and uh like right up until like the night it's amazing
00:28:11.460how like i'm feeling that um this like objection to what you're saying right now because it's like0.96
00:28:20.080no you know the the jock and the like young guy and the the athlete the warrior like he's dumb0.61
00:28:27.040like he doesn't write things so it's like a very powerful propaganda campaign to sort of reverse0.90
00:28:32.760that entire uh tradition of western values where like you know odium and bellum like the warrior
00:28:40.180is the one who fights and also has the leisure to be a poet or a um not a scholar but like a
00:28:47.540historian like you did like you said for Thucydides and Herodotus like yeah it's really
00:28:52.480it's really interesting and Nietzsche addresses this so beautifully too that like
00:28:57.660the warrior legislator like the warrior poet um the warrior wise man is like such an archetype
00:29:06.520and that's really what the high caste man is I think in Nietzsche's conceptions and
00:29:11.680we have now it's so clear but like even in his time he wrote very scathingly about scholars like
00:29:19.600people who study things and are little scientists and like allegedly know things but like
00:29:27.120they're just mediocre people who've never actually done anything amazing they're not warriors they're
00:29:33.860not masculine they're not high caste people they're just like little like insects gathering0.79
00:29:40.820information and like writing things down and um they it's like scholar is the sort of modern day
00:29:49.320priest in that in that relationship I laid out earlier where like there's a time when it's the
00:29:56.560warrior who is the one bringing revelations from the gods and he is you know writing poetry and
00:30:04.900history and like that those two casts have separated in our time as well where you get like
00:30:10.520the quote-unquote dumb jock on one hand and then the scholar on the other side who is physically
00:30:19.020an abortion yeah um i'm holding right now uh general william napier's uh history0.97
00:30:32.700history of england english battles and sieges in the peninsula uh he was a lieutenant general
00:30:41.800who fought in the peninsula war during the napoleonic wars and like fought at waterloo
00:30:48.480and then had an entire career as an historian afterwards and like wrote the uh the history of
00:30:55.120his own campaign in the uh peninsula like this is a tradition that continued like right up into
00:31:01.760right up into the 1940s um i have marshall zukov's uh memoirs i have uh the memoirs of
00:31:11.700field marshall montgomery like um like uh if you think of like a samurai uh
00:31:21.960like japan is always an interesting control group because they have like a very similar
00:31:28.140warrior aristocracy ethos, which the Japanese themselves insist is continuous with the European
00:31:37.200one. They're fans of the Japanese are white theory, not just because they have the
00:31:47.700genetic testing and a historical case for it, but also because if the Japanese are white,0.92
00:31:56.640that means they're not chinese which they quite quite like the idea they're like no we're people0.88
00:32:02.720like from the north that descended over with the migrations we we aren't like we aren't like the
00:32:09.280chinese we're we're like people we admire but uh yeah but like you look at japan and like the idea
00:32:15.940of like um like the samurai are all poets like they write their own their own histories or
00:32:23.300they're scholars they're they're like artists they're supposed to be like creating these
00:32:28.640beautiful work works of art you know before it's a samurai commits a seppuku because he's been like
00:32:35.800shamed you know he has to compose a beautiful death poem and like he might take several attempts
00:32:42.680to like make sure that he has it just right that it's suitably aesthetic and everyone knows that
00:32:47.440he was like really in the same way that like uh they'll like uh the the creepy kid at school
00:32:56.540will like obsess to make sure that his manifesto is well written and people won't criticize
00:33:02.540eyes his style uh that like you know you're gonna be judged on that they're gonna yeah for sure is
00:33:12.060this person like uh significant or are they just like like a reader well let's read what they wrote
00:33:18.200but uh yeah for sure but like uh yeah the distinction between like men of action and like
00:33:26.500men of letters letters is like this complete artifice and like yeah absolutely like especially
00:33:34.880like uh stuff well because it seems like biology is that like a is like psychometrics and stuff is
00:33:46.720a intelligence is 100 correlated with like general health elsewise like it correlates with height
00:33:53.100it correlates with like muscle mass it correlates with like lifespan and general health but um also
00:33:59.040like intelligence is not like uh like there aren't multiple intelligences like uh right like the
00:34:07.340entire multiple intelligence theory well i have why have bodily intelligence well i have
00:34:13.460uh social intelligence no it's all one value it's all g loaded yeah uh yeah well and it's i think
00:34:20.860that's like it's duh if you are i mean life is the will to power right so like wherever you are
00:34:28.980like however much intelligence or strength or whatever you have as long as you're alive you're
00:34:33.740gonna try to like you know discharge if you have it and get power if you don't so if you're
00:34:42.380weaker of body it's much easier to like fake being good at writing than it is to fake being
00:34:50.140good at fighting so of course you're gonna quote unquote play to your strengths but it's more like
00:34:55.560just try to conquer the world or the dimension that is more amenable to your physically weak
00:35:03.560body and it's it's clever like Nietzsche says this about the priests right they're very clever
00:35:09.620you have to hand it to them to find a way to socially enforce the idea that someone is good
00:35:16.800at writing when they're not the same exactly socially and so enforce the idea that someone
00:35:23.160is good at like comedy when they're not like oh you're supposed to laugh and you do it by and
00:35:30.340you do it by invoking a higher authority than man in any case right like the priests do it by
00:35:37.340invoking some metaphysical god and the religion of woke does it by invoking some arbitrary yet
00:35:45.260binding metaphysical claims about the equality of all people and that like works for whatever1.00
00:35:54.400reason there's like enough mystique to it that significant numbers of people fall for that shit0.96
00:36:01.240the same people who can like enforce and make your grandmother insist that stephen colbert is funny0.99
00:36:10.340can enforce and make people insist that that completely retarded thinkers are intelligent0.93
00:36:16.980whereas that doesn't work in war because like right like uh once you've taken like the lead0.99
00:36:23.900to the face and are dead like uh right like you can't have a bunch of y'all sitting around i
00:36:30.880believe in fairies i believe in fairies and then have like that person govern anyway right and and
00:36:38.080And, you know, the reason that it's so appealing to like grandmothers and other people of weak physical and moral character is that like it gives them the delusional hope that they too could be elevated just for no reason at all.
00:36:52.880So, of course, they're going to subscribe because you get subscriber benefits when you believe in that kind of worldview.
00:36:59.740It's like, oh, this like crappy person is being celebrated for whatever made up reasons.
00:37:05.220like maybe people will celebrate me for made up reasons too exactly no they're that's the exact
00:37:12.880mechanism anyway i just realized that this chapter is 30 pages long whereas usually let's get back to
00:37:19.580it oh like yeah we're gonna interject when you're excited or whatnot but we will like try to burn
00:37:30.140through it and any anything we don't discuss we can discuss at the end uh sounds good but i
00:37:39.640suspect that an inner radical element of jesus still remains in it uh his conception and will
00:37:48.260remain to the end let us now see therefore what jesus meant to me meant to me even 10 years after
00:37:55.600my Franciscan venture had come to an end. But at this word, let none of my readers settle back
00:38:02.540to go to sleep. Jesus, as I conceive him, is not for the conventional or for the orthodox either.
00:38:10.160For me in my Franciscan days, he was no less dynamite than Nietzsche was later. Perhaps if
00:38:16.100any of my readers be good church people, they'll find themselves wondering how in the world they
00:38:21.020could ever have read and heard their preachers read year after year the words of the gospel
00:38:26.520about jesus and ascribed to jesus without letting such a picture form in their minds
00:38:32.280as the word is properly called forth well they that have years to hear let them hear even now
00:38:39.440let them ask themselves whether the jesus that i picture doesn't fit the words better than any
00:38:45.520other they have ever seen whether it doesn't make more sense to answer the troublesome questions
00:38:51.620and above all bring before us a man who was real who was alive and who moved moves us to this day
00:38:59.280as no jesus of the conventional and orthodox mold ever did or ever could but after this forward let
00:39:05.340me now step aside and leave my readers alone with these words i read about jesus in 1939
00:39:10.540jesus is for everyone so the church has taught so practically all the world takes for granted
00:39:21.640but gradually it has come to seem to me preposterous that jesus and his message could
00:39:27.200ever have been so conceived do expect everyone to understand the theory of atomic vision
00:39:32.560or to appreciate the last quartet of beethoven the treasure in deep secrets of the universe
00:39:38.500do not lie so open as this. In truth, they are very well guarded. Neither force nor presumption
00:39:47.100will ever unlock them. And in Jesus, there was one greater than either Beethoven or a foremost
00:39:53.600physicist. To understand such a seer, one must be very much of a seer oneself. There is no other way.
00:40:01.840But in trying to make the teachings of Jesus a teaching for everyone, it was inevitable that
00:40:07.220the teaching should be dragged down to the level of those to whom it was preached. That is, it was
00:40:13.280perverted into the ops of Jesus. Sheep, which the great masses of people are, can hardly be expected1.00
00:40:20.520to appreciate the virtues of the line. And while Jesus was tender, he was no less terrible. We have
00:40:27.040remembered his talk of love as is natural to sheep, but we have almost entirely ignored, as again is
00:40:33.860natural his insistence on the place of hate and of the sword or if you prefer of really having
00:40:40.840one master in keeping one's eye utterly single and of having a god whom you love and whom
00:40:46.920with your entire being organized christianity has looked too long and too far afield for the
00:40:54.900antichrist the antichrist is none other than jesus himself but christ is the name of what
00:41:01.720Christianity has made of Jesus. And what Christianity has made of Jesus is the opposite
00:41:06.540of what Jesus himself actually was. Let me turn first to examine the conception covered by the0.77
00:41:14.320word Christ, which in the large is the conception of Jesus that organized Christianity has been
00:41:20.200giving to the world since it first became a significant institution. It is the conception
00:41:26.420that has been the established, the prevailing, and the orthodoxy of the church. The conception
00:41:31.600by the way which I grew up with. We'll try next to piece together from the fragments of historical
00:41:38.220evidence that have come down to us what sort of person Jesus himself must have actually had been.
00:41:44.320In each case, both for the conception that is behind the word Christ and for the conception
00:41:50.280I put behind the word Jesus, we will examine his mission, his teaching about life, and the field
00:56:46.580All right, I'm confusing my apostles with my, yeah.0.93
00:56:53.160Yeah, Paul was just some Jewish like carpet maker or something who persecuted the early church and then like had a vision of Jesus on the road that knocked him off of his donkey.0.93
00:57:06.880And then from then on, he was like, you know, somehow had the authority to determine the entire nature and future of Christianity because he allegedly was visited by an apparition of the Christ long after, long after his death.0.91
00:57:22.980Don't even name the guy. This is why I was thinking it was Paul. It's not Peter.
00:57:26.400it's um um and suddenly one of those who were with jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword
00:57:35.700and struck the servant of the high priest cutting off his ear but jesus said to him put away the
00:57:40.860sword for all who take up the sword will perish by the sword and he actually heals the servant
00:57:47.500of the priest like this thug of the pharisees they don't even name the guy who like drew the
00:57:54.120sword and struck it which is like this is the most bored detail like if any man is yeah telling a
00:57:59.780story any european is telling the story like wait the entire the entirety of the iliad is just
00:58:06.340which individual guy did which specific movements with which specific sword against which guy what
00:58:12.700did he say did he cry out did he beg for mercy did he say i will never yield and like go down
00:58:20.120swinging did he hack off the neck and like the marrow spurt out did he you know catch him like
00:58:26.800short in the jugular but he could like still fight as he was like gurgling and stuff like
00:58:32.940these are the most important important details because this is like the story of like otter and
00:58:38.180how like some someone conducts himself in like modes of violence well isn't it just your whole
00:58:45.060essay you wrote about like condemning violence like the one the one time someone did something
00:58:51.920in jesus's service he was immediately condemned for being violent yeah and like you think like
00:59:00.100any other religion like if you're a 40k fan you know you know the sanguineous you know there's
00:59:08.820all this fan art of sanguineous there's all this stuff for like 30 years this entire franchise
00:59:14.620has like been quietly in the back celebrating uh this one extra who wasn't even in any of the books
00:59:21.560yet who who died uh defending the emperor for like long before uh the accounts of the event
00:59:32.600were like uh translated to book like uh like this is what you'd naively expect from like a religious
00:59:39.480institution is like oh wow someone was like the one person who like drew a sword and fought for
00:59:45.200god when he was like there in person wow that should be like the most celebrated thing ever
00:59:51.160whereas like most christians don't know this specific detail happened like disappears immediately
00:59:56.980or they only know like those who live by the sword die by the sword like the quick phrase
01:00:02.680yeah as a condemnation and like don't even yeah and like can't even name the guy who did him
01:00:08.520who like actually struck the blow because like the bible doesn't even record which guy did it
01:00:14.800oh it's in john it's not in the synoptic gospels but john names peter oh i'm writing matthew matthew
01:00:22.900does not name the one who does it yeah yeah none of the first three do but john names him as peter
01:00:31.320So it's another one of the differences between this and not like John is trying to make your seem less like a cuck because, of course, Peter's the one who denies Christ three times.
01:00:44.540So it's like, oh, yeah, he denied him three times, but he's also the one who struck the blow, you know, trying to like, yeah, like balance it out.
01:00:52.360Whereas Matthew, you know, it could be, could be any one of those characters.
01:08:09.360Anything in the way of a problem or consequent doubt was pure purpose and pretense.
01:08:14.400He knew from the beginning why he was on earth and how his life must end.
01:08:18.880and as his divine power there was never any question but that he would carry out his part
01:08:24.740faithfully and fully he was an actor with his role all laid out for him indeed he was little
01:08:30.740better than a puppet pulled by heavenly strings with us on the other hand the greatest struggle
01:08:36.740is not so much to do what once one sees as to see amidst all the conflict of values and loyalties
01:08:47.100to be sure. We feel not so much from a lack of courage as from a lack of certitude.
01:08:53.940Certitude, which is to say that the experience of the Christ simply lies outside our world.
01:09:00.720It does not touch us. It is dead, alien, other, mechanical, like a dynamo, if you will. Something
01:09:08.340that we may be able to use to our advantage, but which really does not touch the springs of our
01:09:13.840own human existence the teachings therefore that the christ really took flesh upon himself
01:09:19.540and was in all points tempted like as we are simply has no foundation it would hardly be too
01:09:26.800much to say that it is a hoax the character which like is so funny the taste and love teachings that
01:09:36.140like the idea that that oh you're god but you're tempted 40 days in the desert or like and like
01:09:43.500the devil mocked you that you weren't alexander the great you know that's like like in a lot of
01:09:51.660conceptions of jesus like that's just like obviously like not compelling you know you know
01:10:00.680i was in like heaven for 4 000 years now i've been here like 20 and you're like
01:10:09.820temptingly with like minor details here on earth about like uh you know a lot of conceptions of
01:10:19.600jesus like he immediately remembers the 4 000 years he wasn't in heaven like uh like uh
01:10:29.080whatchamacallit um john milton's paradise lost like his jesus is just sitting up there in heaven
01:10:37.660from the dawn of creation and like remember that's how john puts it yeah yeah it's like
01:10:44.380really uh this guy who's like god of the universe for 4 000 years and it's just been like
01:10:51.740on earth for like 20 30 years he's gonna be like really bitten that the devil compares him like
01:10:59.560negatively to like alexander or like some bedouin traitor who has a lot of slaves
01:11:06.180i mean it's a confession of the envy of somebody probably not of the envy that jesus himself felt
01:11:15.140but maybe it's a self-insert like uh there's
01:11:21.100like there there's obviously like two characters or like three three there that are like being
01:11:31.320conflated but uh the character that the christ manifested was quite in keeping with his life
01:11:39.560life's purpose he was sinless and indeed as this purpose was conceived this is logically necessary
01:11:47.200the sin against an infinite god cannot be paid for by the death of an any ordinary man but only
01:11:53.780by the death of one who was perfect so the christ though tempted like as we are was yet
01:12:00.520without sin. Moreover, the perfection that we see consists largely of the feminine and heard
01:12:08.120virtues. The faith is represented as the essence of unselfishness, charitableness, forgiveness,
01:12:17.260humility, patience, and pity. You're laughing. Do you have any comment on the feminine virtues of
01:12:27.760jesus i mean we touched on it already and it's a very claim i always thought i i was talking about
01:12:37.900this with a friend and i thought that it's devastating if you gender swap jesus uh because
01:12:44.540i i'd always found like the story of jesus like very like alien and just like kind of
01:12:50.920incomprehensible why does this move people why people find this so compelling like this is like
01:12:56.000i feel that way yeah like um like to my mind i was like this bad story i i'm not like really
01:13:04.140it's gross yeah by this and i'm like why why are people so taken with this and then i said to
01:13:13.320someone while i feast together i said to someone well you know if you swap jesus it's like the
01:13:19.720female power fantasy you know uh like if you imagine a like like instead of a naked guy on
01:13:26.940the cross it's like an attractive 30 something naked woman uh like that's the ultimate power
01:13:32.760fantasy of um of like oh oh i'm up here just because i love you so much even though you don't0.95
01:13:43.320Well, that's how women do. Yeah, that's how women do, right? It's like, I'm crucifying myself for you. And like the magnificent self-righteousness I feel at being, at martyring myself for your sake is heaven for a woman.0.95
01:13:59.640Like, not all women, but there's a certain type of woman who, like, there is no greater erotic pleasure on earth than to, like, advertise up high on a cross how much she has martyred herself for people that just don't love her the way that she deserves to be loved.
01:14:18.220Yes, but she's so, she's so virtuous and she's so loving that she loves them anyway.
01:14:28.460and she forgives them them yeah because they're they're just little babies and they don't know
01:14:35.320what they did wrong yes and well you see even though you don't love me that much now
01:14:42.560when heaven itself opens and you see that i was right
01:14:46.100right you you will feel sorry you'll all see and i will and i will forgive you because i love you
01:14:58.580even though you don't always love me oh you will and and like if you if you picture like all the
01:15:05.220exact expressions but it's like um it's like your nagging girlfriend um like also me all the
01:15:13.780psychology is like incredibly familiar it's like wow this is like the ultimate power fantasy
01:15:18.880absolutely you know it's the you know you dear listeners out there out there you probably had
01:15:27.140these conversations you've been in these relationships you know you know your mother
01:15:33.040has done this to you your girlfriend has done oh my gosh yeah your grandmother has done this
01:15:37.880And Deleuze talks about this as, like, really interesting in one of his, in his Nietzsche and philosophy. He talks about the, like, the nagging, negating feminine and, like, her immense, destructive, nihilistic, reactive power to just shame and negate and, like, chide and chastise and nag.0.89
01:17:02.920And I'm guilty of being still a little bit like, yeah, naggy and chastisey when I talk about Christianity. So it's a good, he sets a good, he sets a good example here for how to say something factually without getting so girly about it as I tend to do.0.98
01:17:21.960yeah no but like uh this is this is why like traditional like manor buns and like the spartans
01:17:30.460and stuff like kidnap young boys from their mother at like eight so that like they could not
01:17:38.240experience the nagging hassle like while they were in puberty uh that no the only the only1.00
01:17:46.700moral instruction you're going to receive from the age of like nine onwards is don't be a pussy0.99
01:17:52.880you know god i love the spartans yes uh the spartans in space king uh and and the space0.99
01:18:05.160brains you listeners out there you you might get your letter to to uh to ultramarine hogwarts
01:18:15.680at some point but i continue with simpson uh moreover the perfection as we see consists
01:18:25.180largely of the feminine in her in her virtues the christ is represented as the essence of
01:18:31.340unselfishness charitableness forgiveness humility patience and pity his life was one of doing good
01:18:38.980of helping others of service for the ordinary churchgoer it is epitomized by his parable
01:18:45.720in his parable of the good samaritan and in the miracle of healing he is the good shepherd the
01:18:52.380shepherd of the sheep his work was largely an expression of pity for the weak the sick the
01:18:58.160defective the inferior the suffering and the sorrowful he is love all over and as for his
01:19:07.160teaching about life, this, like the kind of life he lived, was really, or at least logically,
01:19:14.460without significance. All that finally counted was his death, death, his paying the price on the cross.
01:19:22.520In reform movements, to be sure, the effort has been made as already intimated to stress
01:19:28.760Christ's teachings and his example, but really this effort has always been brought not by
01:19:35.440residues of the orthodox belief or by the almost total lack of comprehension of what jesus's
01:19:41.260teaching was the orthodox teaching has been virtually one that all of us are born in sin
01:19:48.400are evil and in and of ourselves are worms and nothing two that on this earth we cannot be like
01:19:56.820jesus since he was god and we are human three that moreover we do not need to be like jesus
01:20:02.940since he fixed it up for our shortcomings anyway.
01:22:15.480and spiritually died in their tracks. And each man who makes a mistake pays the price,
01:22:22.340internally if not externally, and he pays it immediately. If with his soul he sees one thing
01:22:28.420and yet allows himself to do another, that soul of his sensiveness to all that is a matter of
01:22:34.280value, his aliveness in the realm of all life's demeaning, will go a little bit softer, lose its
01:22:39.920edge and begin to die if he keeps on thus it will die altogether and there's no forgiveness whatever
01:22:46.920either a man or a god that can make him as he was was before he shall never be where he was before
01:22:58.440let alone go higher until again again he shall have met the same sort of issue in which before
01:23:05.500who was false and this time proved true the law is do what you see or go blind everyone is
01:23:13.540interested with a matter measure of spiritual comprehension some with a measure that might
01:23:18.720be represented by 10 talents and others with only five or one how much one starts with does not so
01:23:26.020much matter but there is one law that holds equally for all if you use what you have you will get
01:23:32.760more. But if for any reason you fail to use it, if you take it and, as it were, wrap it in a napkin
01:23:39.460and bury it in the ground, you'll wake up at last to discover that even what you started with has
01:23:44.320been taken away. And this is the worst of the matter. The worst is not that a church has
01:23:49.680perpetrated upon mankind a pious hoax and turned the life and teachings of Jesus into a piece of
01:23:56.580hocus pocus, an imaginary transaction to counteract imaginary sin to get people into an imaginary
01:24:02.640heaven for there's no such heaven as people picture and the sins people labor under are
01:24:08.140mostly of man's makings and the transaction never took place neither is the worst that the church
01:24:14.560has made promises are utterly impossible to fulfill and that thereby people are lulled into
01:24:19.860a false sense of security is rather that they are thus led to prideful with the only real life with
01:24:27.080their spiritual potentialities, and with the comprehension, the instincts, the sensiveness,
01:24:32.260intuition, and living impulse, which alone can lift them to heights and hang rainbows over them
01:24:40.400and give them stars. In short, give their days on earth some meaning, some value, some significance.
01:24:47.160Is the crime of the church against life not only promises a life it does not and cannot give,
01:24:52.680but that takes away from men the real life they did had and which might have gone no one knows
01:24:59.240how far in the beginning it's led by the church to believe that doing is not necessary that jesus
01:25:05.980will fix it up with god it comes about the many see and do not it's jesus said of the pharisees
01:25:14.120mat 23 3 and presently they are not able any longer to even see they see and do not and are
01:25:23.640not aware that they do not they're false and do not know that they are false they're still blind
01:25:30.140and it never enters their head that they are blind all sense of reality in their moral and
01:25:36.260spiritual existence has vanished they live in an artificial world a world of imaginary values
01:25:42.740which cut them off from all actuality so that their organic spiritual existence slowly starves
01:25:49.280to death it doesn't it doesn't work it doesn't eat it doesn't digest assimilate or excrete
01:25:56.040shut off from food and light and air it languishes and dies dies because it never exerted itself
01:26:02.700never kicked or used its fists or raised its voice or got up and went anywhere it allows
01:26:09.060itself slowly to be wound about with grave cloths over its eyes and ears and mouth and around its0.54
01:26:16.740arms and hands and legs and feet and now it's a mummy people walk around talk and laugh but0.53
01:26:23.500without their their breasts all the while that their breasts and their chests all the while0.51
01:26:31.560but within their breaths people walk around and talk and laugh but within their breaths
01:26:39.520all the while is a mummy a dead thing a corpse and presently erots and stinks and affects and
01:26:46.540poisons everyone who comes near until today almost our whole society is poisoned poisoned
01:26:53.140above all with false values which make our whole direction false and the sickness is so prevalent
01:27:00.260that escapes notice and is looked upon as health while the truly healthy man instead of being
01:27:05.980recognized as a norm and held up for admiration is regarded with suspicion and pressed to become
01:27:11.640sick like the rest and i want to interject briefly hopefully briefly about like
01:27:21.120I'm very moved by like saddened by the story that he's telling here and I think it's personal for
01:27:30.880me it's very personal because I feel like I'm a you know was sort of tainted and poisoned in a lot
01:27:37.400of ways by Christianity and made sick and my soul was wounded by it in some ways that maybe are0.51
01:27:43.660irreparable and I haven't quite been able to heal even now but there is a way in which like0.96
01:27:50.720to the herd the herd religion is suitable it's just you don't want to try to make wolves follow
01:27:59.140a sheep's religion but I don't think it's necessarily like super harmful to most women
01:28:07.380probably and herd type men like you know mediocre type men to practice a religion that's maybe
01:28:18.520similar to Christianity that has like a set of virtues that helps people to get along
01:28:25.380well when they have to live cheek to jowl like people do in in herds basically so it's like0.94
01:28:33.300I'm not I'm not sure that the mediocre type or the like really sort of ignorantly feminine type0.78
01:28:40.520is really suffering that much from Christianity I think this is more a story about like the higher0.52
01:28:47.740type of man or the sort of naturally inherently predator type of man and how christianity really
01:28:55.240is like a very deadly disease for that type of person and they should not be held to that kind
01:29:02.160of morality because it does destroy them like body and soul it's like making cats eat vegetables
01:29:09.620you know they're not they can't eat vegetables they have to eat meat but it's like it's not wrong1.00
01:29:14.980to make sheep eat grass like it's good for them so i i'm not convinced entirely that women are
01:29:21.760meant to be in herds like if you think of like you like european civilization or like uh
01:29:29.060the institutions of like i i've been obsessed with like trying to like uncover and1.00
01:29:36.420recreate and discover what the ancient german women were were doing like at the modern like
01:29:44.220heard like woman the great crowds that like women enjoy being part of like uh the jazzercise class0.99
01:29:53.180like a hundred women in it all like like coordinating as once as like it like a school1.00
01:30:00.140fish or like a sheep in a meadow like um yeah like it's obviously like a lot of a lot of women1.00
01:30:08.920like that like i'm not really like that but i think i also have a lot of more masculine virtues0.79
01:30:14.840um but like women like are so excited to go to their little exercise class and put on their
01:30:22.560little matching outfits and do their choreographed moves they're like a lot of that stuff is1.00
01:30:29.240kind of hacking the feminine desire to like fit into a tribe1.00
01:30:34.860drive which like should be like majority like led and directed by like men men and is like
01:30:43.720hacking it not not men like a warrior yes exactly like uh not just any man a warrior poet yes
01:30:52.080exactly that like uh like you see this in like european traditions like the warrior halls of like0.82
01:31:00.140viking lords and stuff or like uh like in japan where like the women would be like1.00
01:31:07.080have their ordered world under it like this uh politically dominant man and like uh who'd have0.99
01:31:15.660this manner of um of like other warriors that he was great friends with and they coordinate in this
01:31:23.120And, like, Christianity hasn't always contradicted this, but what you see consistently in, like, especially, like, the modern era or, like, a lot of, like, different Christian traditions is it becomes, like, this parallel institution to create, like, you know, the piranha school of fish that can, like, henpeck down great men.0.98
01:31:50.120Great men are like the longhouse, the return of the longhouse is like a trap for civilizations that if you can get all the old women at once moving in coordination, which is empowering, feels empowering for them, you can like drag down the entire tribe.
01:32:13.820um yeah and i think that that's kind of the point i was trying to make is it's like1.00
01:32:20.320these that christianity is really like empowering to a certain type of person like there's a reason
01:32:27.420that they feel drawn to it like life is the will to power right it's like where wherever you are
01:32:33.380you're seeking the thing that allows you to like leverage your power as much as possible and
01:32:38.920I don't think that old women suffer under Christianity. I think actually they really enjoy being able to nag and henpeck and diminish young men. The resentment they feel towards not being loved by those men is so painful to them. It feels really nice to them to be able to hurt those men and punish them.0.99
01:33:01.820in turn like women love punishing men who don't love them enough like it's a wonderful feeling
01:33:07.760for them so I don't think Christianity makes necessarily everybody suffer but it makes the0.86
01:33:13.280most valuable people suffer and that's I think really the root of the indictment against it is
01:33:20.620like it's not about what makes the most people thrive I think or you know my value system I think
01:33:27.560the honor culture value system the warrior value system is like we're not really worried about like
01:33:33.160keeping everybody comfortable the idea here is to like privilege the most valuable amongst us which
01:33:39.920are the warrior poets like the samurai the the iliad type warriors like those are the peak of
01:33:50.660mankind and like our cultures and institutions should be geared towards elevating those men
01:33:58.060ever higher but what happens with christianity is those men are pushed all the way down to
01:34:03.540the bottom of the heap yeah and i i i'd be interesting to contrast like um christianity
01:34:11.080with like uh the maenads or like uh accounts of like women like the the nymphs are like these
01:34:21.120female or the um what we know of like the valkyrie or like the uh female priest class of uh the
01:34:31.140vikings because like i i'm i'm not sure like which of these like behaviors are like unique
01:34:40.220christian or like which of this like uh if there's a lot of this stuff that is just like0.99
01:34:47.020you know oh yeah this is like a healthy normal woman behavior that like actually that that's
01:34:54.420perfectly functional and like like most societies and it's fine it's actually this this like0.97
01:35:01.060specific thing that's uh uh causing a feedback loop or it actually isn't the women at all it's
01:35:08.640like uh the relationship of they're like like uh this is what happens when you have choirs
01:35:16.760there are also ngos that you can't let choirs and ngos interact right you have to recognize0.99
01:35:24.520with this as with everything that not all women are created equal so there's going to be low0.98
01:35:30.560caste slave type women who do very well in these sort of herd herding religions and these religions0.60
01:35:37.380um slave morality religions as Nietzsche calls them like it suits them it yeah because that's0.88
01:35:44.460the type of woman they are there are male listeners who this is quite the experience0.74
01:35:50.520listening to two women go on about William Gailey Simpson and Nietzsche um uh yeah I remember that0.60
01:35:57.660female power dynamics uh are the opposite of male power dynamics where men are constantly
01:36:04.680trying to distinguish themselves and like uh you know win that that ribbon from napoleon for bravery1.00
01:36:11.960uh female social circles are always trying to like artificially insist on inequality that none1.00
01:36:20.580of them believe in to like men all want to win the medal for bravery even though like we're all1.00
01:36:26.480in this together in the uh regimen or whatnot women all insist that like the chubby girl is0.97
01:36:34.600like the most beautiful amongst them even though they like viciously tracking you know whose makeup1.00
01:36:41.280and whose whose uh fashion is on point or not and did you see becky and whatnot whatnot and like the
01:36:50.460most viciously judgmental thing but then the second yeah like uh they see an outside observer1.00
01:36:57.120or think someone else is like watching uh no uh 300 pound ruth is just as beautiful as the rest
01:37:06.320of us she's more beautiful she's so brave she's so wonderful you know uh this very like uh
01:37:14.080yeah i just don't i think like i don't think all women are like that but yes i think that
01:37:21.160most most of them are i mean and most men are mediocre as well like and don't care really about0.55
01:37:29.580um establishing themselves as a great warrior it's like most people are mediocre it's most
01:37:36.800that's just the mathematical reality of it but like yeah i think like it's not so much like an
01:37:43.720inherent trait of the people it's like the trait of like the institution and having people together
01:37:48.400So, like, a cowardly man who, like, is not exceptional or daring in any way, if you get him in, like, a unit of, like, military men, it's like, okay, we're going to war now.
01:38:03.220like uh he can actually be compelled by like the social situation to be like
01:38:09.360rather brave or rather upstanding or not in spite of like having no like
01:38:14.700inherent initiative or virtue in and of itself because like this social institution can force1.00
01:38:21.360that in the same way like like uh women who get in like a um what you call a group of women a0.99
01:38:30.720heard a murder a gossip a gaggle a gag a gossip yeah a gaggle i would call them yes uh uh like
01:38:40.760uh even if inherently themselves they don't like they aren't like personally that gossipy or that
01:38:48.260like uh connivian machiavellian or like deceptive like the dynamic of the group in itself uh0.77
01:38:56.400unlocks that behavior and you know if you watch a lot of like women's media you know it's all
01:39:05.340about like some fish out of water girl who's like not like the other the other girls and like uh0.97
01:39:11.760and like it so we all feel that way isn't really gossipy and isn't really girly but as soon as
01:39:19.600she's in a group of the other girls who are like that suddenly she has to because she's defensive0.72
01:39:25.080you know everyone's everyone's lindsey lohan from africa who just happens to be amongst the1.00
01:39:30.720mean girls now you know but all the mean girls think they're lindsey lohan you know oh yeah okay0.94
01:39:38.120i didn't know i didn't know that but that that does make sense no everyone thinks no well they're1.00
01:39:44.260all these gossipy bitches whereas i'm just defending myself you know the crowds in the1.00
01:39:49.400fuck in okay but that's okay but that's true but then there's girls there are girls I know some1.00
01:39:56.180no I know some girls who recognize that if you put yourself in that situation with the mean girls1.00
01:40:03.140you become one of those girls or the dumb girls the sheep girls whatever like you obviously yes0.94
01:40:09.460your native instinct is to like mold to the group expectations so some women just choose not to0.99
01:40:16.200interact with groups of women because they can preserve their ability to not act like that a
01:40:21.920little bit better when they're independent and i mean i think that nietzsche talks about this a lot
01:40:26.140too it's like that's true of men as well as soon you're right as soon as you enter into a herd
01:40:30.300dynamic he says what does he say like in individuals madness is very rare but in masses
01:40:36.720it's the rule but there are people who can't stand they can't stand to be alone like they
01:40:43.720can't affirm themselves enough to be like lonely so they and those are the herd types and then you
01:40:53.180have like your more predator types that like yeah for sure if they're exposed to that type of an
01:40:57.780institution for long enough it starts to have some power over them but they just don't they just
01:41:03.400choose not to involve themselves in those institutions then even if it means like a
01:41:08.300harder life or they lose their way more easily or they have to sort of make it on their own
01:41:13.620and they fail more often and like don't reproduce as successfully like there is a type like uh
01:41:21.680the independent like sup like a loner who like doesn't need the group or like can be outside it
01:41:29.460or like like uh maybe enjoys their solitude to uh have their thoughts themselves i i often wonder
01:41:39.580if that like these of course like we all recognize that in ourselves like if you're listening to this
01:41:45.180you recognize this in yourself I often wonder if that person like referring to myself and
01:41:50.580all of us here uh if that person isn't like profoundly broken that like uh the light it's
01:41:58.940like oh yeah you learn to like affirm yourself and be comfortable in your own thoughts and whatnot
01:42:05.040because you were shut out of the group and like uh at one point or the other and because you
01:42:12.560had to learn to do it because you couldn't relieve the the crushing burden of like your loneliness
01:42:20.200and lack of affirmation you had to like you know you had to come up with like this massive
01:42:28.000preparatory way of like discussing with yourself in your head whereas like uh you know
01:42:34.440you know the people who um who can't be alone with your own thoughts like uh like they're the
01:42:43.720ones who were never shunned by the group and like uh they're the ones who are like actually very
01:42:48.020socially adapted to like compete for for status within social hierarchies and you know you know
01:42:56.840the the ability to like think in your own head and affirm your own ideas and like stand on your
01:43:03.280own outside the group is like the same thing as like uh the masturbatory in uh behavior like oh
01:43:10.360yeah you're doing that because you can't uh like uh you failed to find a mate a mate like the same
01:43:18.720way like oh yes you can have like these rational arguments in your own head because you failed to
01:43:25.340i mean i think like you're touching into you're touching into something that's so uh like crucial
01:43:32.880or like i don't know just it's like differentiating it's the crux of what i would say are people that
01:43:42.200understand nietzsche and people who are like larping as some kind of ideal like a higher
01:43:50.620caste noble type warrior man through a misinterpretation of or like a vulgar interpretation
01:43:58.700of Nietzsche because like I think I read it out loud in the first episode there's a aphorism in
01:44:04.700Beyond Good and Evil where Nietzsche says like it doesn't matter what you do like your works do not
01:44:10.760determine the nobility of your soul the nobility of your soul is determined by the feeling of
01:44:15.820reverence for yourself so yeah the the interpretation that you just made like if you're
01:44:21.660going to look down on yourself and interpret yourself in that way then yeah that stands
01:44:28.820and there's definitely people who are going to stand before you and say like yeah you're just1.00
01:44:33.760like a weird autistic like fuck up and nobody likes you and that's why you know how to like0.99
01:44:39.860yourself maybe I left but that like like the second part of the argument like unstated which1.00
01:44:45.080is like oh that's like uh like actually like a weird masturbatory failure mode that like turned
01:44:54.460out to be very adaptive that's like uh well i don't even i don't even know if like the utility
01:45:02.740of adaptation is an argument in its favor it's just like it it just is a rare type and the rare
01:45:09.500type can very easily go to ruin like the nobility of soul as ninja describes it is not like a proof
01:45:15.960in the pudding kind of thing where like you get to say yeah maybe i'm like an outcasted weirdo but
01:45:21.480like oh look i saved the day or i invented this amazing thing that saved humanity or whatever
01:45:27.060it's like it you never prove your nobility by citing your works or like explaining how even0.71
01:45:34.660though you have these um handicaps or whatever or these these abnormal qualities that like you're
01:45:41.560still good or you're still useful or like there's still a situation in which you come in handy
01:45:46.460because like that utilitarian interpretation of value is in itself very vulgar like the herd
01:45:53.280interprets value utilitarianly they they decide that you're good based on how useful you are to
01:46:01.820the rest of the group like that is the sheep standard of value this is where like red-nosed
01:46:08.240reindeer is like the ultimate cuck because he saves the day in spite of them them uh not letting0.98
01:46:16.600him join in the reindeer games you know he should have used his nose to massacre the other reindeer
01:46:21.720when they couldn't see in the snowstorm you know the last thing they see is just the red light
01:46:27.520coming to them you know it would have been a funnier story for sure this is this is the point
01:46:35.180i'm making is like well no i don't think so though i don't because i don't think that the
01:46:40.940master really feels resentment towards the slave like he doesn't if they don't recognize him like
01:46:47.380yeah it's hard and it's like it's a wound in some ways but think like he's driven by all like the
01:46:54.000warriors of the cities and whatnot if they were exiled from the city they came back and got
01:46:59.520revenge like uh they they were they were well it is a big part of like uh revenge cycles are a huge
01:47:07.640part part of like master morality in the ancient world you know you see when you can't take revenge
01:47:14.200but uh back to simpson we are way off topic uh yeah
01:47:20.140and it is the church with its paralyzing conception priced that has done this thing
01:47:30.800the church has been the great enemy of the life of man in the parable of the sower
01:47:35.800the sower sowed seeds in his field hoping that would throw each according to its kind0.93
01:47:41.900in fulfillment of the shape and color and strength it bore within itself
01:47:46.600But in the night an enemy came and sowed terrors in the field.0.85
01:47:50.080For the terrors were not so bad as what the church has done to the field.0.59
01:47:54.400With the terrors the seed could at least struggle.
01:47:57.520Some of them might come to be what it was meant to be.
01:48:00.620For the church has sterilized the soil so that nothing would grow at all,
02:19:03.420Yeah, he might have some revisions and some updates,
02:19:08.520but I think he has something pretty stable here, like valuable here,
02:19:16.560that he might amend or addend, but in its core is really, is very, it's gold.
02:19:24.180As our inspirer, therefore, Jesus serves us or not at all. But yet again, his inspiration is to be
02:19:31.400ourselves as he was himself, not at all to get men to coffee after him, to turn themselves into
02:19:37.900an imitation of him, which must ever be but a poor thing as compared with the original.
02:19:42.880even as the sun in its shining does not tempt to turn every plant it shines upon into a sunflower
02:19:49.900but to make all that grows more alive after its own kind we've been examining what lies behind
02:19:56.700the concept christ which is what the church down through the centuries has made of jesus
02:20:02.300and we have seen that in its most direct result it turned men away from life sucked life out of
02:20:09.180them was the arch betrayer of the life of men under its touch men died died in their souls
02:20:15.240remained dead in life and under the touch of some as under the touch of some leprosy or some creeping
02:20:21.660palsy and even when there has been an effort to take the life and teachings of jesus seriously
02:20:28.580it has resulted in little more than the soft sentimentality of humanitarianism and the
02:20:34.200escapism and hypocrisy latent in the social gospel or in the barrenness and slavery of another moral
02:20:41.120code. All this, obviously enough, was exactly suited to the plane on which the mass of the
02:20:48.360people of every land and age have always lived. It was suited to people of little perception and
02:20:54.080feeble aspiration, weak of will and recoiling from pain, afraid to think for themselves or
02:20:59.840to stand alone feeling freest and most content when they were like everyone else or at least0.95
02:21:06.180not too unalike brains of sand in the sand pile knowing nothing yet of a life of their own
02:21:14.200seize with panic at the thought of undertaking to stand up in the face of the world and of the
02:21:20.220universe by a certain certainty and strength they found holy and solely within themselves
02:21:27.520in short it was for the sheep and as the sheep are in the overwhelming majority and naturally
02:21:34.540always seek to enhance their importance and in this case moreover were making the
02:21:39.140the pronouncement they have always declared that their religion was a universal one
02:21:44.220it was for all men in field it fields was a world and if there were any for whom it was intended
02:21:52.120especially, it was for the poor, the weak, the sick, the defeated, the lowly, the sinners,
02:21:57.840and outcasts. But there was one part of the population to whom it really offered nothing.
02:22:04.080These were the well-constituted and healthy and beautiful and capable and strong and proud.
02:22:10.060But as these were relatively few, and as it was always the part of the sheep to bring down
02:22:14.940these people who carried their heads high and who walked much alone, and to infect them with0.86
02:22:20.180the sickness of the mass and to make them also like the rest it was to be expected that no
02:22:26.500exception should be made for them it applied to them even though as yet it was still rejected
02:22:32.140ultimately it was indeed for everybody but such a position as that jesus jesus himself would have
02:22:40.940been one of the first to reject and in no uncertain terms as i should like now to present it in
02:22:48.140contrast to what the church has made of Jesus, what it seems to me Jesus himself and his teachings
02:22:53.620were actually like. The material for this picture I gather almost entirely from the so-called
02:22:58.900synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. These, as scholars have long recognized, and as the word
02:23:06.360synoptic itself means, were written from a common point of view. They are the earliest of the four
02:23:12.280Gospels, and against John, they are in very substantial agreement with one another, so that
02:23:18.960if one wants an authentic record of what Jesus actually did and said, the near-seeking come to
02:23:26.300it is in these three Gospels. John, on the other hand, is in an entirely different class. It is not,
02:23:34.380and on the whole, I should say, it rather obviously is not intended to be a historical record. It has
02:23:41.140rather all the atmosphere of an interpretation. It was an attempt on the part of its author to
02:23:47.240represent what Jesus had meant to him. But in any case, this picture of Jesus and John cannot be
02:23:53.200reconciled with the picture of Jesus presented in the synoptics. It is simply impossible. One must
02:23:59.160take one's choice. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus really walked the earth and his body had
02:24:05.020substance and weight whereas in john he did not walk he moves as one might imagine a ghost moving
02:24:12.180with a leg as a shadow moves oh i literally i have chills like my little arm hairs are all
02:24:20.720standing up because that's so true john jesus is so creepy so so creepy i think that's why i get
02:24:29.820scared of the word jesus in the synoptic jesus's voice vibrates to his changing mood his spirit
02:24:36.760loves and hates and caresses and curses and pleads and labors or exalts and sings and dances
02:24:42.560it is vibrant flexible buried but john it seems always hushed repressed pious something like the
02:24:50.080tone in which the preacher today reads it the book has no passion in it no reality you can put your
02:24:57.080hand girded yes it's it's platonic like i think it's really um informed by the gnostic movement
02:25:07.260that was like taking shape at that time and it's like it's so platonic it's very it's it's uncanny
02:25:14.040you can put your hand through it as it seems you could have through jesus's body the whole
02:25:21.700atmosphere of it is their oppressed oriental ethereal supernatural eerie how can anyone let
02:25:28.680the statements of a book like that stand against the contrary statements of the books like the0.98
02:25:33.380synoptics from the latter in spite of the rubbish of the miracles you you feel standing forth the
02:25:39.960figure of man who whatever else he may have been was real who could bleed and who could stab
02:25:46.200the worse than this is the complete change as regards the person and purpose and teaching of
02:25:53.580jesus in the synophics the important thing was how you lived what you loved and how much you loved
02:25:59.920jesus does not point to himself rather he always points on to god well one thinks of him doesn't
02:26:07.440not greatly matter a man cries what shall i do to inherit eternal life or as we should more likely
02:26:14.260put it today what must i do if i really want to live jesus had reason to consider his answer well
02:26:21.020and his answer was thou shalt love the lord thy god with all the passion of thy being
02:26:26.580and thy neighbor as thyself this do and thou shalt live really live know what really living is
02:26:35.600but there is no mention of himself this saying however is confined to the synoptics
02:26:41.560So there's quotations in there, and I'm almost certain those quotations are like, he's paraphrasing not liatural excerpts from everything.
02:26:53.280He doesn't cite those as specific passages.
02:26:59.100In John, on the other hand, Jesus occupies the center of the stage, and the stage is a timeless and placeless stage, a world stage, a stage suspended in the middle of the universe.
02:27:10.040in short an unreal stage and from the stage this imaginary stage he utters eternal truths for all
02:27:17.220mankind he says he does not talk to the actual individual or group of people in front of him0.67
02:27:22.960they are almost like dummies stooges set there to give jesus a show of justification for long
02:27:28.800disquisition on some idea or other and it seems that he speaks less to be understood than to make
02:27:35.060an impression one is almost empty to say to show of his superior wisdom in the synoptics on the
02:27:42.440other hand everything is said as it were at high noon everything stands out sharp and clear and
02:27:49.280the purpose is to make clear to reveal to let light in to be understood and at that to be understood
02:27:55.920by the people to whom he was talking whereas in john it often seems that jesus's purpose
02:28:02.520is not to illuminate but to obfuscate to love your enemies and to judge no man injunctions found
02:28:09.320only in the synoptics may be very different difficult to do but they are not difficult to
02:28:15.120understand when he is made to talk about himself as the bread of life or the vine and the branches
02:28:21.260which occurs only in john one feels confronted not by so much with the inherent impenetrable
02:28:29.200in eternal mystery of life but with mystification the razor-edge masculine hard sayings and the
02:28:35.880simple luminous similes of clear direct childlike inner gaze which again the synoptics are placed by
02:28:42.460the soft sugar-sweet feminine fairy airy generalities and abstractions that the reasoning
02:28:50.160faculty has fabricated in john mystery is made more mysterious lalissers are not let in but held
02:28:58.080law. Jesus talks over their heads. He does so deliberately. His unavailable real purpose is
02:29:05.180not to reveal but to impress. The teaching is less important than the teaching. The effort is to make
02:29:11.300Jesus sound like a God. The effort is to make people feel that he is God, son of God. The only
02:29:17.380trouble is that this God Jesus does not talk so well as the man Jesus in the synoptics. His teaching0.85
02:29:24.560is less deep less clear less beautiful and there's far less love behind it but the point of view of
02:29:32.500the teaching the drop from the synoptics to john is really enormous the hard sayings are gone
02:29:38.440entirely there's nothing about judging not condemning not never being angry nor resisting
02:29:43.800not resisting evil loving one's enemies nothing about if a man does not part with all that he
02:29:50.040hath he cannot be my disciple nothing about if a man comes to me and does not hate his father
02:29:56.740mother and wife and his children and his own life also he cannot be my disciple nothing against
02:30:02.900repetitious formal prayer and praying in public or about the absolute necessity of rising above
02:30:09.320all one's resentment forgive all men always and talk is constantly about love and in a soft loving
02:30:17.380But nowhere is there the synoptic's clear definition of what you are to love.
02:30:23.980With all loving comes some softness, sentimentality, effeminacy.
02:30:30.380The author of the Gospels of John must somehow lack full manhood.0.98
02:35:05.600to the post-mortem attempts to understand,
02:35:07.920explain what had happened on Golgotha,
02:35:10.080but for which actually there was no factual evidence.
02:35:14.580At first, no one knew anything about either a virgin birth or a resurrection.
02:35:21.120I want to say two things about that really fast.
02:35:24.400Like in the Antichrist, Nietzsche does a really good job of like exploring the psychology of the first followers
02:35:31.760and how they had to sort of invent the stories about Jesus as the Redeemer
02:35:37.300because of it was a way of dealing with their trauma of watching their leader be um uh crucified
02:35:43.780and there's a guy bart airman a scholar like modern day and he's got several books out and
02:35:51.640a lecture series on that great courses um about exactly the synoptic gospels and and john and how
02:35:59.640they compare and he like goes into really like very scholarly depth about exactly everything
02:36:06.140that simpson is discussing here so if the listener is like more interested in the the philology
02:36:12.140around all of this it's available in abundant detail from those two sources send me those
02:36:19.620links in a dm i will include them in the show notes for our listeners okay okay
02:36:25.160the miracles themselves fall into two category two classes they're the classes of mental healing
02:36:34.560these i have the least difficulty in accepting the presence of any man who is whole who's deeply
02:36:40.100at peace with himself and with the universe is very quieting and ordering to anyone who is
02:36:45.580nervously or mentally unstrung that sort of thing happens even nowadays the other group miracle it's
02:36:52.220happening to me right now listening to this guy talk because it's like infectious to be around
02:37:00.060men that are well, they heal people. Oh man, we're going to get to the next chapter and he's
02:37:06.560going to like completely reverse this 40 years later and it's going to be really disquieting to
02:37:12.420you. No, no, it's not. This sort of thing happens even nowadays. The other group of miracles such
02:37:20.080as the walking water, the healing of the blind, the raising of the dead, I frankly am inclined
02:37:24.700to reject altogether, simply on the grounds that such things do not happen, those dead
02:37:30.160to the point where organic disintegration has set in, do not rise, ever.
02:37:37.920But where it comes to the walking water and the healing of blindness, I must admit that
02:37:42.420I can no longer be so dogmatic as I might have been ten years ago.
02:37:46.940when science is confirming the mystic perception that matter as it presents itself to our eyes
02:37:55.300and to our consciousness simply does not exist that matter is only something stamped upon our
02:38:01.280energy that reaches the subconscious receiving apparatus of our organisms and has not no reality
02:38:08.820except for a receiving apparatus of the human sort when trained and experienced scientific
02:38:14.640of observers of the English Society for Physical Research can report and show with actual photographs
02:38:21.340to support their statements that certain Indian yogi had walked on a prepared bed of red hawk
02:38:28.120some 15 feet wide without any apparent injury even to the skin of his feet, whereas the feet
02:38:33.920of others who attempt to the same thing were so blistered that they are forced to give it up.
02:38:38.240When a scientist of the standing of Alexis Carroll, famous as a winner of the Nobel Prize and for brilliant biological research at the Rockefeller Institute, can soberly record his awe at seeing a large cancer sore on a workman's hand drilled to a scar before his eyes,
02:38:57.500and cures of other sorts involving an alteration of the whole human organism
02:39:04.520affected either by the faith or prayer of the patient himself
02:39:08.680or even by the faith or prayer of someone else nearby.
02:39:11.880In view of all of this, it has become almost impossible for me to draw the line anywhere
02:39:25.300uh so as for the indian yogis and the red hot coals uh there's like a there's a lot of stuff0.97
02:39:34.360like this where it's like uh oh this faith tradition actually was doing something but it
02:39:39.820was like exploiting some bizarre physical property that like was kind of unrelated
02:39:45.240that was unrelated to the faith but it is like a weird bizarrity so like uh walking on red hot
02:39:51.960coals there's a um there's a few things that happen there but uh there's weird physical
02:39:58.840properties around um uh certain hot objects in skin uh there's a famous one that um
02:40:08.040certain types of molten metal but only certain types uh don't cling to skin or don't cling to
02:40:15.020certain objects or like boil off the water immediately on the surface of the skin that
02:40:20.640You can look up theon lines of, like, metal workers who know the property, like, very intimately, like, slapping their bare hand through, like, molten, like, steel and just, like, swatting it away.
02:40:37.140I don't know if it's specifically steel or a specific alloy that they do it.
02:40:42.580But there are, like, a few, like, one-off alloys that you can just, like, slap 2,000-degree molten metal.
02:40:51.780And instead of, like, searing off your hand instantly, like, it flash boils the, like, oils on your hand so that it never actually touches your skin.
02:41:01.920And so it looks like they're just, like, slapping around molten metal with their bare hand.
02:41:07.460presumably if they did it like too much though there wouldn't be enough oil left so like it's
02:41:13.960like they're slapping around like um you know a guy like doing a dance move miming slapping girl
02:41:20.720and then like one random slap also their hand melts off or something presumably that that would
02:41:28.000be the case but like there there's a lot of like really weird stuff like that with like individual
02:41:34.280like scientific principles or like individual specific diseases where it's like like miracles
02:41:42.020happen every day because like there's so many like dinky little scientific principles and oddities
02:41:49.880that like you know well it's fundamentally a vulgar concern anyways and i think he's right
02:41:57.020that it's extraneous to the message to the gospel like it you know i i was reading the passage it
02:42:03.900was preparing to make excuses for him that i thought he was going to say something about
02:42:07.760psychics i'm like look he's writing this in 1939 uh you know it just doesn't free government was
02:42:15.540putting psychics stuff into the 70s but but no yeah she constrained himself quite well well and
02:42:21.820he says it in the first sentence of the next chapter i must admit that for me from my conception
02:42:26.180of jesus the miracles are most unimportant and they are because the the reason they even probably
02:42:31.100were inserted into the gospel or that people focus on them is because it's a very vulgar
02:42:36.540concern to prove yourself, you know, like you have to have all of these proofs in your
02:42:42.340hands whenever you present yourself to somebody like Jesus is God because, look, he did all
02:42:48.700It's exactly what I said earlier about Nietzsche's conception of the noble soul is that which
02:42:53.260has reverence for itself, not what proves itself by its works.
02:42:58.120And Simpson is touching in, like, psychically to the reverence that Jesus had for his own soul, and he doesn't care if Jesus proves it by conducting a bunch of miracles.
02:43:13.200Like, Simpson has that feeling in his own soul for his own self, and so there's a resonance between himself and that feeling in Jesus, and there isn't need for works to prove any of that between two people that feel similarly about themselves.
02:43:29.800um also people don't appreciate this this are like it crops up occasionally in like biblical
02:43:39.440narratives it's just like a cute thing but like in like the first century roman republic like
02:43:46.500mystery men and like magicians and stuff like this is the first time like the world has been
02:43:52.640united like caesar conquered the world like just 50 years before um jesus was born like the idea
02:44:01.060that you could travel from like britain to egypt to like anatolia through greece to italy and like
02:44:08.780back to spain and like all that's like largely peaceful or that like our a guy could do that
02:44:16.400and like not have to like fight his way through that was like very new at the time like only
02:44:22.900great heroes did that before so you had this some flowering of like all these traveling acts and
02:44:30.300like miracle men and stuff in the era and you encounter this like there's there's like we have
02:44:37.760dozens of these figures who are named that like this is like a genre of character the same way
02:44:44.520that like you know the 60s have op stars stars that like rock musicians or like um
02:44:51.560or like metal acts are were a big thing in the 2000s you know goth bands are like now we have
02:44:58.620influencers influencers and youtubers and stuff that like uh part of me often thought the miracles
02:45:07.240because like they're so like they're really performative in the gospels like it's like um
02:45:13.820like it's kind of like oh oh we're gonna do miracle and then we're gonna do a sermon and
02:45:19.780then we're gonna do x or y like that's part of the like retinue of things that they're doing
02:45:26.900that uh that's like um part of me wonders if like you know some thinker today like there's
02:45:37.120going to be this great significance attached to like oh he had all this this thinker had all this
02:45:44.160thing about the importance of being able to express your ideas in the small 240 characters
02:45:53.260and it's like no that like that wasn't something he included on his own that was like a genre that
02:45:59.400he just did well in that like uh that like no like you shouldn't be art you shouldn't be
02:46:07.680attaching significance to the form of the tweet just because the thinker you're following like
02:46:13.680having to live in the 2010s and that's how how they were able to get big like uh yeah and it's
02:46:21.080something else if they left in another time right right and it's like what jesus says about what the0.81
02:46:27.960jews or like the israelites as they became the jews did to their god they made him this wandering god
02:46:34.680and they're making jesus into a cosmopolitan god and you know suitable for an empire environment1.00
02:46:44.040like you just described and which um like the way you didn't actually wander that far for like
02:46:50.140person of the time like uh like you could could actually go all the way to britain and to egypt
02:46:57.440and stuff like rome was a big place you can you get well they made him cosmopolitan after his
02:47:04.040death right because they because the church and the missionaries transported him all around the
02:47:08.800empire and but that's how you when you're um appealing to a cosmopolitan audience like an
02:47:16.420influencer on the internet you have to present yourself with um you know you have to present
02:47:23.020your credentials in a certain way. You have to impress upon people your power by the evidence
02:47:28.720of your works. You can't meet with people one-on-one if you're an influencer or if you're
02:47:34.340a story about Jesus. There's no actual interaction with the man himself. So they have to prove that
02:47:40.600he is what he says he is by demonstrating like a CV, like here's his resume of miracles. So now
02:47:49.480you can know that he's a God, even though you didn't get the privilege of being with him one
02:47:55.000on one in person and feeling that God-like energy emanating from him. So it's, you know,
02:48:02.620Christianity is fundamentally a universalist religion. And that's why they have to insert
02:48:07.960the miracles because that credentials the God to all of mankind, most of whom never actually got
02:48:17.240to meet him and determine for themselves his own value makes sense uh we do have 15 more pages to
02:48:27.420go and i don't want this to be five hours uh i will i will burn through uh try to burn through
02:48:38.120the next couple pages uh nevertheless i must admit that for me my conception of jesus the
02:48:44.040miracles are most unimportant. The whole lot of them, even if they were all true, would not weigh
02:48:50.080heavily. For one thing, there is eternal evidence enough, if one has the eyes to see it, that Jesus
02:48:58.220himself did not like doing them, did not like have come to him for this sort of thing. Their
02:49:04.100self-centered absorption and being relieved of their physical ailments got in the way of his
02:49:08.780real purpose. He's combing the land for the men who had eyes to see and ears to hear, whose spirit
02:49:15.860hungered and thirsted for what he had found and throbbed and leaped in response to what they had
02:49:20.800heard him say about life, life here and now, and in all the length and breadth of the land,
02:49:26.720he was able to find only a few, only a handful. Instead, all these sick, crippled, defective
02:49:33.800people wronged him and with him importunity demanded his time and strength the blind and1.00
02:49:41.040deaf the lame the lepers yes they actually bring their dead to him to him who showed how he felt0.96
02:49:49.040about the dead when he said let the dead beat handed by those who are spiritually dead but go0.90
02:49:55.680you and the good news uh luke 9 60 just picture the swarming mass of diseased humanity limping
02:50:04.360crawling dripping on pressing close to hideously for some sort of salve not caring at all about
02:50:12.240life as jesus saw it not at all about quality of life about that complete renovation of life for
02:50:18.680the very core out that he had achieved in himself and that he was eager to help other men achieve
02:50:25.320What, therefore, could there be and come between Jesus and these people with their lust for healings?
02:50:31.960What could they be but an obstacle to him, something that stood between him and his purpose?
02:50:37.900No, I'm afraid that in spite of Alexis Carroll and the Indian yogi, I cannot believe these miracles happened.
02:50:45.360I may be unable to deny their possibility, but I cannot believe that, as a matter of fact, they did happen.
02:50:51.560Or if they did, that it was the result of some intangible power that involuntarily emanated from Jesus, which people felt and sought to bring themselves within reach out.0.54
02:51:01.820But Jesus himself, now, he must have felt about him more like Muhammad, who disclaims supernatural powers and solemnly enjoined upon his followers that they were never to attempt miracles.
02:51:14.340more like more like vivek khan khanada who in spite of stupendous mental powers never tempted0.80
02:51:22.740any miraculous works of healing or whitman or blake or tickle or gandhi men like the men
02:51:29.220in considerable part of jesus jesus's purpose and calivar simply do not do this kind of thing
02:51:37.780in any case the miracles are not important jesus's stature his divinity if you will
02:51:43.440is not and cannot be evidenced by walking on water or healing of any sort, whatever.
02:51:50.280It is evidenced in the profundity of his insight into the menial life, the singleness of purpose
02:51:56.160and depth of devotion, which he is able to give up his family, the possibility of marriage,
02:52:02.100security, his good name, even his influence, the strength by which he is able to stand up
02:52:08.080in the face of all the powers and authority of his age, absolutely alone, sure of his values
02:52:14.300and his course by a certainty he found only within himself. This is magnificent, but for me,
02:52:21.200the miracles would only spoil the picture. They really do not fit in. It is only they who
02:52:27.840do not have eyes or ears for Jesus who want miracles. The first means of sifting the material
02:52:34.700in the synoptics, therefore, is reason and her handmade Irocritism. My second method is one to
02:52:43.340which I got the cure from the opening chapter of Edmund Holmes' The Creative Christ. He says that
02:52:49.860the incomprehension and the opposed belief and weakness of ordinary human nature, in which any
02:52:56.540great man's life and teachings are immersed and by which they are followed, constitute in effect
02:53:02.620a wash of time which tends to wear down and even to carry away all that lies in its past
02:53:09.120and whatever is a given boulder has been able to survive this wash and wear it is the surest
02:53:18.380evidence that it belongs not to some sedimentary deposit but to the basic ingenious work of the
02:53:24.660original teaching thus there were three classes of incidents and sayings that the early christian
02:53:31.460committee would have liked very much to get rid of, to wash out of their records and out of their
02:53:36.820memories. These were A, the teachings that were beyond their comprehension and contrary to the
02:53:42.080tradition they had grown up on, such as, for example, as Jesus' teaching about the kingdom of
02:53:47.620God. B, the sayings are evidence that did not fit in with the slowly forming orthodoxy about Jesus
02:53:55.380self the case in point is his reply to the man who said to him good master what shall i do to
02:54:01.580inherit the earth and his reply was why do you call me good none is a good save one even god
02:54:08.740and this of course was contrary to the trend towards making jesus divine and perfect
02:54:14.520likewise the genealogies tracing his ancestry to joseph do not fit in with the growing desire
02:54:21.680to believe he had been born of a virgin finally see we have all the hard sayings which struck
02:54:28.620right in the teeth of human nature a psychologist whom i was reading 15 years or more ago whose name
02:54:35.580slips me declare that jesus's teachings virtually called upon the slub sublimation of every one of
02:54:42.060our instincts it strikes at the very root of the life of the ego which for most people is life
02:54:48.260itself the only life like they can conceive of and this every one of us without exception at least
02:54:55.380at the outset and for a while resists with all the strength of these threatened instincts combined
02:55:01.120if there were any part of the record upon which the wash of two thousand years must have been
02:55:06.820harder than upon any others any part that a hundred generations have wanted and tried
02:55:13.080especially to get rid of it must have been these hard sayings judge not condemn not forgive all
02:55:20.480men always no man can serve two masters but not anxious about what you shall eat be simply seek
02:55:28.520ye first the kingdom of god and all these things shall be yours in addition whoever he
02:55:34.940he be of you if he does not part with all that he hath um and if any man comes unto me and does
02:55:46.260not hate his father and his mother his wife and his children and himself also he belongs not to
02:55:51.980me and yet it is precisely these sayings which that weak blind nature would like most to get
02:55:58.520rid of that are most surely established as part of the original teaching by the mere fact that
02:56:03.620they still stand in the record in general the test by the second method fully confirms the
02:56:09.720result that i reached by reason and higher criticism my first means of sifting and no
02:56:15.500less those i reached by my third which is my spiritual insight every theological seminary
02:56:21.880has men called exegedes whose business it is to discover and to expound the true meaning of holy
02:56:28.800writ with their heavy creaking critical apparatus they laboriously count off how many times jesus
02:56:34.940uses this word or that and in what varying context they note the tense the person and the number and
02:56:43.120an almost unbelievable amount of other minutiae and at last they pronounce judgment the passage
02:56:49.160under examine under examination means so and so well there is a place for all of this in
02:56:56.360determining as nearly as possible the authentic tax or the like but when it comes to sensing the
02:57:02.320spiritual meaning of a teaching such as that of jesus these scholars are about the last men i
02:57:07.960care to refer to i cannot remember that in all my three years in seminary i got a single insight
02:57:14.540that led me towards the steps i took in 1920 when i was 28 years old at which time i feel that my
02:57:22.040real life began their method are like methods are like those of men who would try to catch life in
02:57:28.940a cage and weigh it on a scale there the modern scribes the unimaginative unintuitive men of
02:57:35.040scientific mind the rationalists the literalists who squeeze the letter of the text until it is
02:57:40.760trying dead i don't know whether i the more laugh at their presumption or hold in contempt their
02:57:47.000methods. They seem never to have heard the answer that George Fox, the founder of the Society of
02:57:52.380Friends, once gave to the clergy of England when they were trying to prove, by quoting Jesus and
02:57:59.000the prophets, that his teaching was all an error. Unable any longer to endure them, he turned upon
02:58:05.480them at last and said, in effect, can you not understand that except you yourselves have had
02:58:11.500the same experience out of which jesus and the prophet spoke for all you use their words you
02:58:16.940cannot understand what the words mean uh just to digress slightly uh he's talking about the
02:58:32.600exegetes who like focus who like uh closely inspect the word of the gospels or like try
02:58:41.380to draw out some meaning from like some slightly different translation or like uh
02:58:47.540does the word thou shalt not kill mean kill murder or like slay or what's the specific
02:58:57.720english translation out of like the 50 000 english words for like for butcher or
02:59:05.720or cut down that exists for, like, the one Hebrew word that fits the context.
02:59:14.120I always found this very odd just because, like, you know,
02:59:18.880there is actually a form of writing that exists for, like, that kind of close reading,
02:59:27.700You know, there's this entire, like, literary tradition that, like,
02:59:32.140The Hebrews did write, like, songs in verse that does exist within the Bible, like, sections of the Old Testament are written in verse, that this is what songs and poems are written out of, a structured, metrical verse.
02:59:53.040this deliated odyssey are entirely instruction metrical verse uh whereas the gospels and like
03:00:00.860the vast majority of the bible is written in prose uh it's it's not like a a metrical verse
03:00:09.680text that like lets you know that the specific linguistic wording or like the timing of the
03:00:19.900the syllables matters and and so i i always found it very strange the idea that like
03:00:28.820like on the face of it like if it was divine you you would expect that like counting the
03:00:40.780individual letters of the passage would reveal you know some mathematical numerical secret or
03:00:48.280something but like uh just on the face of it like the text as a text is not structured
03:00:55.200to like reward that close reading or that brand reading it's it's yeah it's grasping at straws
03:01:06.400for sure but like i i can understand if you're raised that like this is like the word of god
03:01:12.700this is like, like, uh, this is, every word of the Bible is divinely guided and inspired.
03:01:21.280Yes. Uh, not just as Simpson says that, like, you know, Jesus was a brilliant,
03:01:28.440brilliant prophet or maybe divinely inspired, what, what have you. And like some part of that
03:01:36.200has continued on and survived the wash of two thousand thousand years and like the tightest
03:01:43.260text you can find for the idea but like uh if you believe the entirety of it is uh divinely
03:01:50.820god inspired i suppose you would like think well there's gotta be like secret hidden codes and
03:01:58.780stuff in there because the word of god would naturally reveal that you know you know take a
03:02:04.780magnifying glass to anything else in creation and you start discovering like little secrets you know
03:02:10.760you start seeing like the mites and like the hidden structures of like crystals and other
03:02:17.620other things things whereas like uh1.00
03:02:21.920with human made art like eventually the like depth of meaning terminates she can't apply a micro0.83
03:02:31.280of magnifying glass to like an individual page of a poem and like looking at the microfibers
03:02:40.900of the page discover hidden substructures that relate to the poem because you know it's not
03:02:48.680creation it's it's like the artistry of man and like at a certain point the art has to end whereas
03:02:57.940fundamentally scientific principles we still haven't found the bottom if you keep if you keep
03:03:06.000going smaller with the microscope eventually you find subatomic particles and they behave in even
03:03:11.120stranger ways yeah i mean that's where it's a more interesting assertion to say that
03:03:19.320i guess like john did that jesus was the logos become flesh i think that's
03:03:28.660fundamentally the problem with christianity is it is artifice and it is like
03:03:34.620representation and you do get to a point where you zoom in on the image close enough and it's just
03:03:43.400like the illusion falters and there's actually nothing living underneath all of that so john is
03:03:52.940like it consistently doesn't point to anywhere where you would look for the real thing
03:03:58.620is like the remarkable thing like uh like this is like the fundamental limitation of like
03:04:05.700falling a tradition that you're divorced from that like uh you know the old testament whatnot
03:04:11.720god is really alive if you're a jew in the like first millennium like you're ethnically and like
03:04:20.720temporally tied to those people like the like the locations are tied tied to them whereas like um
03:04:28.360you know i i talked to a lot of people about like uh the movie excalibur like uh
03:04:37.080the traditions of the europeans and like it's remarkable how much more alive people find those
03:04:45.200because of course it's immediately gesturing and like stuff that like relates in your life you know
03:04:50.420uh if you're reading like lamor darthur and a knight comes upon like a strange like witchy lady
03:04:57.800who asks him to go on a quest like for her and like maybe she's tricking him or maybe she's like
03:05:05.780uh going to be the love of his life and he doesn't know and he might die or he might
03:05:10.020might get laid because of it like uh you know every teenage boy has been in exactly that
03:05:17.500position at exactly the kind of party where he might where he might like really screw himself
03:05:23.940up for the rest of the year or get it get her for life yeah he might like uh get a wife for life
03:05:30.440and it's like you know it's very lively or at least at least this is still what life was like0.99
03:05:39.320when i was uh like in school and stuff now the poor zoomers do not get to experience that but uh0.87
03:05:49.860but like yeah but like uh this is like you part of the child unique thing about like1.00
03:05:58.900the abrahamic tradition is just how like unattached it is to the life of like
03:06:06.000like europeans and like most of the people who like follow those texts
03:06:12.600yeah i think that's what makes reading the bible such a like taxing experience because
03:06:20.160you're supposed to feel like this applies to you or has anything to do with your life or
03:06:26.860like that it's definitive of life itself this is the truth this is god's word encoded in text you
03:06:34.680know and it's like so either just foreign or uncanny that you really have to contort yourself
03:06:42.400into a lifeless thing yourself to relate to it at all and it's it's like very unhealthy it's like
03:06:50.440it's like eating something poisonous because it's like eating kale and like it's so like
03:06:56.600because it's good for you you know the iliad and odyssey are a thousand years older than the new
03:07:02.820testament and yet like you know uh play playing the edit of like some passage from the iliad
03:07:12.160and like like you every you feel like you've come home like as a as a white person i don't know i
03:07:21.100don't even know if we're in any way ethnically related i think probably yes to the bronze age
03:07:25.400greeks but like it feels like coming home it feels like you've just been reading lies and like
03:07:31.960been gaslight your entire life and then you read the iliad and it's like oh my gosh like i'm real
03:07:39.440elections and stuff is exactly like no immediately familiar and uh i yes um the
03:21:14.380yeah so like uh that's how it was romanticized in like the 30s um my impression is that like
03:21:22.000the actual practice in india because it was like the western romanticized version of hinduism
03:21:27.580that was like really in vogue in the 30s when no one had actually interacted with the hindu
03:21:33.060and then there's like the actual practice of it's actually practice in india which is like
03:21:37.900completely different uh so like the actual rice i'm pretty sure like they just like
03:21:44.620forced it on widows like it wasn't the widows were like really excited to dive on funeral fires0.61
03:21:52.100it's that they were like violently forced to and the british stopped them from doing it
03:21:57.520and as soon as the british stopped people from forcing it the widows like didn't keep it up1.00
03:22:02.220themselves whereas uh the I mean I would imagine though that like you have the Aryan invaders of0.95
03:22:13.520the Indian subcontinent who brought that as part of their religious tradition and that it was
03:22:19.260actually a sincere devotional practice for certain high caste women and then you have like0.88
03:22:24.240the same phenomenon that plagues everything of value on this earth that like when high caste
03:22:31.020people do it out of the like sincere felt desire then low caste people try to replicate the feeling
03:22:40.340of the high caste person by doing the action without actually having that reverential devotion
03:22:46.860which is the same thing that simpson's discussing here with the way that people
03:22:51.660misappropriate jesus where they try to like do what jesus did without having the feeling that
03:22:57.100jesus had and the action could be objectively the same but the quality of the actor is different
03:23:04.420and therefore the value of the action is different so like brent brent hilder jumping on the pyre is
03:23:12.120based but like low-cast indian women who jump on their husband's pyre because they're forced to do
03:23:18.880Yes, and there was like a forced funeral pyre ritual recounted in Ibn Fathlin that the Vikings would do to slave girls.
03:23:31.320But that was almost certainly eugenic when the Vikings did it, almost certainly like the practice decayed when it got to India.
03:23:44.240Like, you no longer have, like, a Viking warrior class, so I was able to, like, enforce and naturally select for traits by doing it.
03:23:52.580I'm almost certain that, like, I don't know, maybe there was, like, some lost, like, caste in India that was, like, desperately trying to cling to, like, some functional virtue with the practice.
03:24:05.500who knows but uh I again I can't I can't quite guess uh part of the problem is I've read too
03:24:17.780much on this I can't quite guess what like the metaphor what the simile is uh in the 1930s when
03:24:27.440it's like romanticized and no one's like actually interacted with it but uh continuing on
03:24:33.260to be the slave of this life which of course is to be holy oneself and this the only freedom
03:24:41.020that matters to step forth at last from the prison house of all fear and to slip the holds
03:24:48.180of all the hands that would hold him and to stand forth in the free air and under the high sun
03:24:54.520and to go his own way to the end no matter where the way went and no matter what the cost or
03:25:00.600consequence or lack of consequences to do this was above all else the primary object of his existence
03:25:08.180and then along with this as a kind of side partner to it he sought to find at least a few others who
03:25:15.900were able to see and who also were willing to pay any price for their vision men who meant to go far
03:25:23.180and to climb high and to that end were ready to strip themselves light and to leave behind
03:25:31.660everything they had. It was such a group if he could find it. He would cut loose from the
03:25:38.580timid herd and together they would blaze a trail into the wilderness as far as they had
03:25:45.660had it in them to go but if he could not find such a group then he would cut loose and fare
03:25:52.880forth alone he would not at all he was not at all a reformer he never talked about advancing
03:26:00.020the kingdom of god but undertook to live in it then and there even though it was in the teeth
03:26:07.080of a world set dead against him he never lowered the hurdles and those that were and those with
03:26:14.580short and wobbly legs might be able to get that those with short and wobbly legs might feel
03:26:20.040able to get over you got over the hurdle and unaided at that or you stayed behind the price
03:26:27.000was all that you had but you had to pay it in full and you cannot be one of the or you cannot
03:26:33.340be one of the inner circle they left all and followed him if they were only 12 who went with
03:26:40.440him all the way, it was because he could not find any more. Scholars have questioned whether there
03:26:46.000was even so many. Jesus, I say again, was not a reformer, nor anxious to keep the whole flock of
03:26:55.380weak little sheep at his heels. He was a seer, a pioneer, a lone wolf, a lone eagle, a lone lover,
03:27:02.560and the group, small as it was, was enough to form a kind of suicide squad. A group of men pledged,
03:27:08.860though they died for it, and make a breach in the wall that shut out consciousness to the kingdom of
03:27:15.200God. The life Jesus lived under the drive of this purpose had little in common with the life we have
03:27:24.000seen ascribed to the Christ. The whole orthodox theological conception of Jesus' life I have
03:27:31.440had to sweep away as rubbish. In or out of wedlock, Jesus was born in Nazareth of Mary and
03:27:39.300Joseph. The miracles really do not enter into my picture of him at all. His death did not affect
03:27:46.340any change whatever in any God and was unnecessary to any such end. Even in the days when I had a
03:27:54.500theological or metaphysical God, there was no place for any blood atonement. My God was no
03:28:01.180shylock who demanded the money on the counter before he delivered the goods of forgiveness1.00
03:28:06.520my god was like the sun and the counter before he delivered the good and while if one would one0.98
03:28:14.880might turn away and walk with one's face in the shadow one had only to turn again towards the sun
03:28:20.920and his life would flood all of one's being as though one had never turned away jesus's death
03:28:27.200for me was that of a martyr to all that he had lived for final witness with his last breath the
03:28:33.340last drop of blood that what he had said he had meant and meant still and had nothing to take0.97
03:28:41.160back but what he had stood for he had created an impasse between himself and the pharisees
03:28:47.240and the pharisees were the most morally earnest people of his day but he had declared that their
03:28:54.680very goodness was not enough except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of
03:29:00.460the scribes and pharisees you shall not shall no wise enter the kingdom of god their very law he0.99
03:29:08.120annulled and their authority he contradicted the whole world they lived in and lived on0.99
03:29:14.880rocker under his rocked under his impact it was he or they there is no longer room for both on
03:29:24.500the same earth so they stepped on him and though and thought that therewith they were through with
03:29:31.860him but though it turned out that they were by no means through with him yet the bleeding and
03:29:39.260broken body that was finally laid in the earth never again stood up and walked
03:29:43.500but while he lived everything about him was real his psychology was real no one ever had
03:29:51.520has felt that the struggle for which the spirit drove him into the wilderness was a perfunctory
03:29:58.100performance acted out by rote in fulfillment of the memorized part he went into the wilderness
03:30:03.980as many among men has gone because for a while the struggle with in him was so intense and so
03:30:12.000desperate that he was utterly incapacitated for carrying on the ordinary activities of life
03:30:18.120Before he could go on, certain things must be decided.
03:30:24.820He or Moses and the prophet, whom they were always quoting?
03:30:29.100How far could he trust this voice that spoke in the deep stillness of him,
03:30:33.740being so nearly, so tangibly, and so insistently?
03:30:38.160It was so different from all that was thought and said and done by nearly everyone about him.
03:30:44.660if he dared to step out in obedience of it what would become of him what would he have even
03:30:50.920would he have even enough to eat enough to keep him warm what would happen to the whole
03:30:57.100physical side of his existence or how could he ever expect many people to understand him or to
03:31:02.960go with him and if they did not go how could he ever bring relief upon the relief to the people0.75
03:31:09.360he loved who labored in the toils of the pharisees and who were broken under the heel of the roman0.81
03:31:15.640master what good would it do to hold a course that lost him his folly and if he took away that0.99
03:31:23.680brought increased life only to a chosen few to himself above all what did it boil down
03:31:31.080to but self-gratification ought he not to take a leaf from the reformers who followed a
03:31:38.400middle course and counseled compromise and affected some immediate intangible amelioration
03:31:44.600condition or might not the truth lie with the apostle of the sword how far could he trust this
03:31:51.680inner voice it already had shown self-capable of being severe was there nothing that it might
03:31:58.740command him to do that he must not obey to puzzle or to order him to jump off the top of the temple
03:32:05.080or to go naked like the birds was there no place where common sense could draw the line and say
03:32:10.660thus far not but no farther must he be absolutely like a child before a father like a soldier under
03:32:17.180orders or a slave before a master neither the voice had come to him was the whole law of his
03:32:22.980life summed up in obedience to it after all what was it what did it come where did it come from was
03:32:31.360it life in it did life all that really was life for him and any other man draw near and touch him
03:32:39.480with most nearly and nakedly and try through him to reach the hearts of other men was it possible
03:32:47.200that after all it was as the priest had told him only his own fears and self-seeking in disguise
03:32:53.720a device by which to escape from grappling with the sordid evils about him a means by differing
03:33:00.200with the crowd and with constitute authority of drawing attention to himself and of lifting
03:33:05.960himself out of the ordinariness that really belonged to him into a position of leadership
03:33:11.260of a kind? Was it something to love or to hate? To throw himself at the feet of or to trample down?
03:33:18.960Where was the truth? How could he be sure? This inner voice. Yes.
03:33:25.120um i have to i have to i have to go i have to be somewhere in a few 20 minutes
03:33:35.160we've gone for three and a half hours yes uh i i was
03:33:41.780do you want to just finish it in another installment it looks like there's a lot more
03:33:50.500Yeah, there's 10 pages left. We'll cut off there and I can, yes, that is it. Perks off to leave off. You listeners out there, thank you for sticking around, around this long.
03:34:07.260uh i think most episodes coming up uh on simpsons will not be this long uh and i i will add a little
03:34:16.460note at the start that if you like tap out during this like long drive into christian mysticism uh
03:34:25.700i do come back because simpson is going to be changing topics variably that uh if you don't
03:34:33.700want to dedicate five hours to Simpsons' deep dive into the biography of Jesus, come back and
03:34:41.160he will be talking about Nietzsche and eugenics and the real question of the six million in World
03:34:51.220War II and all the rest in later chapters. He's going to get as based as you can possibly imagine.
03:34:58.640You listeners out there, come back and stay glorious.