Gnostic Informant on the Origins of the Bible and the Ancient World
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Summary
In this episode of the True Gnosis Podcast, we have none other than the Gnostic Informant himself, to talk about the Bible and the historical accuracy of the Bible. We talk about his origin story, how he became a Christian, and what it was like growing up as a Christian in the early 20th century.
Transcript
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If we're live. I suppose we are live. Let me just check.
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Oh yeah, I see the live. I see the live. The red on the top.
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Then I suppose we can get straight to it. Welcome everyone.
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We are about to attain true Gnosis and we have none other than the Gnostic informant himself.
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And yeah, I will let you cook. I will let you cook.
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I think you have, I know you have a lot to say about the topic.
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So we're going to get into the main topic will be the Bible and the historical accuracy of the Bible, everything like that.
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Before we get to that, I have a few different sort of opening questions.
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So the first would be like an origin story specifically, because I know you were Christian for a while.
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so i would like to know the sort of like the moment the great revelation that made you you
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know the question that came into your mind like you know is this really it and then you started
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down the the rabbit hole and entered you know where you where you are now so give us the that
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origin story yeah i i've told the story quite a few times but it's it's an interesting story
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because i was i kind of got caught up in the wrong crowd in high school and you know early
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after like you know the early 20s era and i wound up in prison like i don't i don't really give a
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lot of details nothing violent nothing work like nothing that's like oh wow he did that it was all
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just wheeling and dealing and hustling and and getting caught with possession of substances
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stuff like that but we're not gonna get into i'm not gonna get demonetized with buzzwords and all
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that anyways i end up uh i end up in prison and that's when i found christianity and i grew up
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catholic so i had an understanding of what christianity was i was baptized i was confirmed
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i was i understood christianity the basic level but when people are myself i'll just talk for
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myself when not when people like myself get to that rock bottom we're looking for some some sort
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of way to save ourselves and christianity really speaks to people i think as nietzsche and other
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writers point out it really does reach out to the botched and the downtrodden that's kind of the
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message is that anyone can be saved you can be a murderer on the cross and jesus will take you to
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heaven with you and that message really resonated with someone like myself in that time period in
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my early 20s actually i was 20 years old i turned 21 in prison very young guy um but yeah so i was
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i was i resonated i was going to the church service every sunday and it was it was it wasn't
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a catholic service it was a protestant service so i started getting into the whole baptist
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evangelical they're very zionist that type of thing um yeah i was really deep into that and
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so when i got out i had a friend who was a part of one of those churches from high school who was
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got his life together too he's like come to my church and um and by the way when i was in prison
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i read the bible cover to cover but i didn't just read the bible i was going to the to the library
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and reading other texts reading about greek mythology reading about plato reading about
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But even back then, I was a stickler for Christianity being the only true.
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Even though I was interested in not reading all the stuff,
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I was like, no, Christianity is obviously the truest.
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So when I got out, I had a lot of knowledge now.
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that taught that the King James 1611 English Bible
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was the only approved bible by god because it was perfectly written or perfectly translated by these
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by these great bishops from the anglic i think it's the yeah there was the anglican church at
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the time yeah uh under king under king um uh james obviously and it was it was perfectly
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translated from greek in the new testament and hebrew in the old testament and it was like
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all the modern bibles are all satanic and they're taking verses out so they would tell us and i just
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thought to myself, huh, so let's, you know, we would have these little, we would have
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Sunday sessions that we would do, the church service, but we'd also do Bible studies on
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During these Bible studies, I would, I would ask, I'd say, can we compare the new Bibles
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I'm just curious to see which verses they took out.
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The pastor was like, of course, this is what I've been doing my whole life.
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He would bring out the NIV Bible, bring out the King James Bible, and we would go, the
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the first thing they would point to is in the letter,
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but you know how there's three letters of John,
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there they would point to the letter called first John,
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the epistle of John and verse five through seven.
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It says in the King James Bible for these three are one,
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the modern niv once just says for these three are one and it stops doesn't say father son holy
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spirit and i was like that's ah they took the they they took the trinity out maybe this is satanic
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maybe these people are right and i was like and so they kind of got me and they got me for a little
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bit and then i was curious to know because i've heard people rebuttal this i heard people say
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no the original greek manuscripts don't have father son holy spirit that was added by latin
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bibles because of the nicene creed so after the nice so post nicene creed jerome translated his
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own latin bible called the vulgate and in that vulgate he adds this little caveat to that verse
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father son holy spirit because he wanted to make it more more uh obvious that this is about the
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trinity so you get for these three are one father son holy spirit and that that latin bible makes
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its way into the king jamie's bible and the modern niv scholarly bibles are going back to the
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original greek manuscripts from the first second third fifth century to the fifth century before
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jerome and they're going no that was added we're not going to use this added verses we want we want
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to we want to be as close as we can to the actual original so the niv for all its flaws does get
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this right i don't think he's not perfect either i'm not going to sit there and say the niv is the
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best bible but it's not but sorry to interrupt real quickly so i'm i'm nowhere near as knowledgeable
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about christianity as you of course so that's why you're here so what you're saying is that
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the original bible the original teaching of christianity did not have the holy trinity
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is that correct it didn't have a clear cut description of the trinity anywhere in the
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new testament i would not but i would say there's a new there's some nuance here because
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there are a lot of people who will say the trinity doesn't exist in the in the new testament and
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these other unitarians and a lot of scholars will say this too a lot of critical scholars who you
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know atheist critical scholars because they just want to like pick apart the bible and they'll say
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yeah there's the trinity came later i'll actually say i'll actually admit in john in the gospel of
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john in john 1 it introduces a triad so you have god the father and the logos is with god in the
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beginning in the beginning was god and was his word and the greek word is logos and then it says
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in him was zoe or life in english and that's a triad that's it's retelling genesis with adam
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eve and god but now these adam now these are the new adam and eve are divine it's the holy spirit
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jesus so i would i would say i would even say the trinitarians are correct the people who whoever
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were when the nicene creed was being hashed out they were going they weren't just making stuff
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up out of thin air they were they were basing it off real biblical concepts most mostly john
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so i would say i would say yes and no it wasn't clear and that's what that's what jerome was
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doing jerome was trying to make it more he's trying to make you hit it like you see it you
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can't miss it um but and and by the way first the letter first john this is called the joe
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henine text john the letters of john and revelation are all considered like one group of
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text probably written by the same author or authors whereas luke acts is another group of
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luke and acts go together that's like a one author wrote luke and acts and then the paulian epistles
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all that stuff but anyways whoever wrote first john does say these three are one so there is
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there is that so okay so the trinity it's a it's a nuance it's a nuanced thing it develops over time
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it becomes standardized in the fourth century by the nicene creed but i would argue there is
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biblical roots to the trinity i'm not going to say there isn't now now to go back to my to what
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was happening with my my studies when i went i wanted to check i said is that true is it really
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that the latin bible is who added these verses so i learned i started to pick up a little bit of
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greek i started getting greek tutors and i started to learn a little bit of hebrew as well on my own
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just learning online and and using apps and paying for tutors and i picked up the basics i'm getting
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pretty good now i'm getting a little more advanced now but back then it was basics i was able i was
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able to just like kind of transcribe things you can so there's a website you can go to where it
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shows you photographs of manuscripts of biblical text so these are oxyrhynchus papyri dead sea
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scrolls papyri wherever some some papyri from rome somewhere um and you can look at the picture of it
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and you can you can read if you can read greek you can look at the text and you can go and you
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you can compare it to modern bibles so i was i was doing this this is like 10 years ago now
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or no maybe like eight to ten years ago and um and so i found out to make a long story short i
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found out that my church was wrong and i was like wow i'm i'm at a false i'm at a false church
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teaching false things that are not true so i was like and i went back there on the bible study and
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i brought this up to the to the church i said look um i brought a picture of the manuscript by the
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way i brought a picture printed out for my printer to the bible study and i said here's a greek
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manuscript right here this is the oldest one we have the most fullest oldest one we have
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and it's here's first john and it doesn't say these three are one father son holy spirit i go
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you can see it it ends right here these three are one and then the next word picks up and they're
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all they're all putting their glasses on they're all looking at it and they're all i'm just it's
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me and a couple guys that are doing bible we had a bible study for everyone and then we do a we do
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a more a more deeper bible study for the more serious nerds this is what this was that this
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was that at so we're sitting there and uh the pastor mike he's looking at with his glasses and
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he's like he said yeah there's different manuscript traditions and i'm sure that this one probably
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just has the false reading and i said well i goes okay fair maybe there is different ones
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can you provide me a one that that provides your interpretation and he he uh he called his friend
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over who was like a a really knowledgeable guy and the guy walked over and he says yeah it's in
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jerome's bible i go that's latin that's from the fifth century fourth century sorry uh late fourth
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century and i go that's what he he goes yeah but jerome must have had this is what he said
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jerome must have had original greek manuscripts that we lost so i'm like all right now we're just
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making now we're just pretending that this is all true this you're just going this is another thing
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that i if you if you follow me on twitter is like i'm i'm again i i will sometimes um attack
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people who are just trying to push narratives rather than be truthful and sometimes i'll i'll
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i'll get people get like come on dude he's not he's just kind of saying people get mad at me for
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that and I'm sure and I'm working on not being so rude to people I'm trying to
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stop that but like this is one of those cases where you're no longer trying to
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find out the truth about this matter you're you just want the King James
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Bible to be the perfect Bible you're you're looking for reasons to make this
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true hmm so I this is how I this is how I got into the soul sort of mindset of
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good methodology and searching for the truth and and then sorry let's go ahead
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Did you talk to any, like, Catholics about it since you grew up Catholic and then you switched, like, to talk more with...
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There's probably some good Catholic theologians out there who would be willing to have deep conversations.
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But every time I tried to pull aside a Catholic, they just didn't care.
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the protestants are like no this manuscript says this and this one says this the catholics are just
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like so what we have the church we have the ritual we have the eucharist we have baptism
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that's all and i and i get that that's actually very pagan yeah it's not about what the text says
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it's about the ritual it's about continuing the tradition that your ancestors laid out for you
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Yeah, that's huge for what to say that Catholicism is syncretic paganism and Christianity.
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I don't know what the Catholics actually think when I say that,
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but for me, the sort of charm with Catholicism is that...
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And I can only suppose that you have so many different, especially in America,
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but we have here in Sweden as well, actually, you know,
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there's Protestant sects and they're sort of diverging to even smaller sects
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So that's something I don't really see in Catholicism.
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Catholicism, I know you have the split between the Second Vatican Council from the 60s, something like that.
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But in Protestantism, you have so many different and I can always suppose that because of their emphasis on scripture all the time and then different interpretations and whatnot.
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It's like the Germans always had loosely, loosely confederacies of peoples, but they all ruled themselves and they all had their own chieftains and they all had their own city states.
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They never completely unified until the Holy Roman Empire tried doing it, and then Second Reich, Third Reich.
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That's the first time Germany actually gets unified.
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But going back to the Protestants, their mindset was like, well, we can just have our own church.
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And then you end up seeing all these Germanic lands having their own churches and having their own sets of doctrines, which makes a lot of sense.
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Yeah, we had also, so when we did the reformation, Sweden was quite impoverished because we had the Kalmar Union, so it was a Scandinavian union with Denmark, and that was sort of the main player then.
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So then Gustav Vasa, that's like one of our greatest kings, he did away with the union, and when he did that big war against the union, against Denmark, he needed some liquidity.
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and the churches of course they had built up a lot of treasure over the centuries uh so he's
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simply that was a convenient way for him to just break away from rome and then also to seize a lot
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of treasury i know that henry the eighth in um in merry old england he did something similar so it
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was convenient from a like political perspective as well and then also i know that you know
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allegiance to rome if you are in sweden it's quite far off to be honest right um yeah they
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didn't have they didn't have a long history with rome like like france did you know yeah so it was
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very much easier for them to break off and do their own thing when you don't have that they
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were the last that's the last lands for rome for i mean it's not even rome anymore it's just
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it's like the frankish rome is holy romans at that point but um but yeah like you said there's
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I would actually argue that a lot of the chivalry
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a lot of people will say it's all like adopting
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I would argue that a lot of that's German to begin
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in the later stages of the western roman empire then plus one christian thing one catholic thing
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would be the humility which i sort of i can appreciate it but humility today when we see
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the pope and he is you know four open borders everything like that today the last thing we
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need is that kind of humility the last thing we need is to you know turn in the other cheek
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back in the day when you have so iceland is actually a good example i'm gonna i'm gonna
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defend christianity here for once usually i'm quite skeptic but they had blood feuds between you know
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stretching back centuries one family having a blood feud against another christianity sort of
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cooled things down a bit in iceland for example now in sweden's case it was more like um
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an economic convenience you could trade better with the franks the frankish empire and they
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had like the white christ sold in as a warrior god in the pantheon of the germanics so it was
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a quite easy sell so perhaps you read the book the early germanization of christianity yeah it's like
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first christianity is molded by greek roman tradition and then by the celtic celto germanic
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one so then you have this warrior ethos and then you add a touch of humility that was good then
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i'm not saying that is good now it's not the energy we did now but back then when you had
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you know there's ruthless warriors and then you had a touch of humility it yeah creates chivalry
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great stuff yeah it's it's like it's like a good medicine that you take when you need it to be
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prescribed but you don't want to overdose on yeah i'm just all just taking humility all the time
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yeah you end up with uh some pretty interesting states we'll say that yeah definitely we have in
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i suppose i think the orthodox church is the only one who's not completely anti-european
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because we have the protestants in europe and america very anti anti-europe anti-europe anti-white
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open borders bring them in catholics as well so if you look at i know this is the case in america
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if you look at religious organizations you have um you know jewish ones protestants ones and
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catholic ones so i'm not sure how it is about orthodox but uh yeah the the current church is
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it's completely completely wrecked and i was actually going to ask you about this um now we
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can get back to the origin story because it's interesting but just a side note do you think
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that christianity has an in like an inborn weakness when it comes to openness and universalism
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or is it more dependent on zeitgeist or do you think christianity can be can be good can it
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it be redeemed, or is it better to just leave it behind forever?