Joe Rogan Experience #2252 — Wesley Huff Transcript

Transcript

0:00 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! when people get caught with their pants down. And I'm not an expert in many things, but I love all that ancient history stuff So what was the fallout of all of that? So I mean, I was never worried because I'm a Canadian, and anybody who's tried to sue What was his argument? Apart from the fact that he was embarrassed that he'd have to prove that he could win. What was his argument?

3:01 online and they've got receipts. and reroutes it through Get four extra months of fresh, clean privacy protection with my special link at expressvpn.com and anything you've used up until this point, wrote this season desist? So I actually was sent one by his lawyer, which I, you know, screen-shotted, posted publicly online, Yeah. And we told him that.

6:27 Well, and especially with languages. someone who hasn't studied them, it's super apparent. So, he's friends, or I should say was friends. Their sons are friends, their wives would hang out. podcasts in the past, and they've been friends, but more like business colleagues. that Billy has talked about, I can tell him who you are. No, he'd been given all of the prerequisites.

10:02 I watched a little bit of like, oof, and then I shut it off, then I watched a little bit me up out of a full sleep and give me a couple seconds. I'll go, okay Well, again, it's all very unfortunate. And your knowledge of the history of the biblical texts parents working in Amman, Jordan. Like I often say, we had the Bhagavad Gita this worldly perspective is true,

13:06 and that. But what happened was that I had the flu and my body's immune system attacked the nerve And so, yeah, that's the acute part of the acute transverse myelitis was that it was in that it's neurological, One month, yeah. in this because it's a very rare condition. Can you? because they'd be testing where the reactions were and they'd have used a syringe.

16:22 were the first ones that used the word miracle. Yeah. I mean, as much as you could at 12 years old. to wake up and walk out of the room. I realized, okay, there's something out there, something happened that I can't totally explain to a certain level of degree because of the openness within my household, where I did, I pulled the Quran off the shelf and I read it, you

19:07 Digging through, okay, well, what do these guys believe? and I was expressing kind of my perspective on what I believed. And they would say things Pete Slauson Because we know who wrote it. And when he was 14. Yeah, which is fascinating. right? Well, I mean, I think that's why, you know, experts themselves feel a lot of inadequacy I mean, you're talking about things

22:45 are the criteria that you're using when you're looking at one source versus another source that we look at when we look at something that does come from an oral tradition and eventually Do you have power? and really interesting to me. Which is very young for someone who has chicken the depth of knowledge that you have, you know I did my undergraduate studies

25:59 It could be. In life man, I always tell people when they're in high school, like you can chill out. Like it's gonna be okay. Yeah. Yeah. do. like whether it's an intellectual endeavor or like, who are better than you. he was part of that relay team. being able to push yourself, but at the exact same time, it creates a realism that like, I'm never gonna,

29:15 place to do that was, but I knew that I needed to lean into that to some degree, particularly I had an obligation to actually investigate those things as far as I could Ready to place your bet? What is the oldest version of the Bible or the stories in the Bible? Is it the Dead Sea refer to. Well, all sorts of things, animal skins, papyri, was not his Sacred Mushroom and the Cross stuff,

32:55 There it is. Does it say what the treasure is? skins, and it's a number of different languages. very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, Oh, Jamie, look at that. Yeah. which we get a good portion of our oldest manuscripts of the New Testament from. and translating it, most people are then go to the effort of transcribing and translating it.

35:51 the spaces between the words, the development of punctuation, indentation or out-dentation. So that one is fascinating. one of the things that shocked them about Isaiah was that it was word for word identical What is vellum? So, uh, so I should be more specific. like cursive. Cursive is very beautiful. But that is so fascinating because the, I mean, obviously coming from a point of ignorance,

38:03 It's really, really tricky. And so it tricks you because you start off and you're like, the rabbit hole, you're like, oh crap, none of the things that I learned about that are Hebrew and to understand it in context. Well, you're self-taught. How many courses are available? how any of this was pronounced. at how I'm pronouncing things. But if you've never heard, no one can speak ancient Sumerian.

41:35 So Sumerianologists are very like, they're a field of their own because I learned a little Jared Slauson I mean, the Sumerians lost to the Assyrians and the Assyrians got taken over by the Babylonians. Jamie, if you pull up, if you look up, I never even heard it until five seconds ago. I know. There you go. So in the corner there, that one on- So there's this very interesting kind of, if we're talking about a story in the Bible

43:38 But when you're looking at the words that carry over, I think his videos are fun, but I also think truth is important. to have a vast knowledge of this to help me out. Linear. If you scroll, there should be a cup, So see that inscription of the top beside the face? And so when, so actually, interestingly enough, Oh, there it is. Wow. Yeah. And in the archeology section, I have that one on... I'm blanking on what it's called. I make ones for manuscripts too.

46:41 Yeah, Mark Dash. That's what it's called. So yeah, you see this. So I have Sumerian, That looks different than some of the clay scrolls, of what that later Akkadian looks like, right? That's a good question. language models. the language. you've got to figure out how to pronounce it as... And that's what you see when you like look So if people in the future go to read ancient scripts

50:05 It's all printed. Well, let's hope people in the future and then you went to read that and you said, and then they did completely different shit in Korea, that knew how to read Latin were like hey hey slow down yeah partly I mean there Yeah, well, Tyndale's line was that he wanted, I believe it was Tyndale, it was either Wycliffe of the, what we call the Protestant Reformation was that he read

52:54 And so he comes out with this printed edition of the Greek New Testament, and Luther gets And so part of his motivation is, like, the Latin isn't reflecting, at least at the point Latin. And so they're like, hey, Jerome, you need to produce a Bible in Latin because nobody can And he's risking his life. is that you're dealing with these priests, You see that in cults, you know, for instance,

55:30 They just they just want to make sure you're doing the right thing. But it they all look good in the beginning. Yeah. I love them because there's something about people absolutely believing things that's When something but when there's a cult it's like god, it's so obvious like there's the guy And then we found this new place on Sixth Street, You know what's interesting about that is

57:53 Don't watch the Book of Mormon. There's something, I mean, it's like really easy and the reason you need to have children You get your own planet. But you're right, they are incredibly nice people. in a religion, that guy's dead. of this at a time that something in a time where there's no printed press Yeah. Because the Christians were less discerning in their proliferation of written documents.

1:02:01 for completely like understandable reasons. and you're like, you wouldn't do this if you knew how to read, because God is in the middle have copies in Syria, and you have copies out into Asia and into Europe and the British so many manuscripts, but we do it with, you know, Marcus Aurelius. So we just kind of accept that okay we get computers involved.

1:04:57 between the different ones by like computer models. And there is a manuscript from the second century which has the exact same scribal conventions that Codex areas of Codex Vaticanus, are actually second century in their origination. Epic of Gilgamesh and the And so there are actually parallels between that and say the Genesis 6 Noah arc story in like making a big boat,

1:07:53 that. is a little bit more stretched out. Testament gospels and other ancient Greco-Roman biography in that these are products of ancient Like Socrates is famous for saying that he didn't believe that you should write things. Yeah, make people lazy. Right, it makes you lazy. the series of writings, like these are long stories survival, right? in this oral tradition? Like, what was the original story and what were they trying to

1:11:17 The people who are writing everything the professor is saying word for word, probably ancient biographers, and saying like, it's Jesus' childhood. And we all know that good biographies tell about your childhood and That's a significant story. and that they have a different mindset in terms of the distribution of information. Totally. even clearer for you.

1:14:53 to convey in their intention. and then people have translations of it He's fun. that I have a hard time getting my head around. it's, it is a word that appears within Akkadian. And Akkadian is what time period? What's the oldest timeline? And Akkadian develops into like it has stages of the site? So yeah, I mean, I think there's certainly incentive

1:18:37 and you go to the Valley of the Kings, That's so nuts. I'm just too damn busy. between the pyramids being built Egypt is one of the wildest places you'll ever go. Yeah. and just trying to put your brain back thousands of years. on the walls. what do you really mean by that? And we didn't know he was as extravagant, as rich, until we discovered actually rubbing off the names of previous Pharaohs on statues and just putting Ramses on it.

1:21:57 We're talking about it now in 2024. There's something to that. Like longevity, health, food is just on a completely different scale. And so the conventions of needing to make sure that, and maybe even some of the people, That's ridiculous. So they say. Yeah, I think even just looking at the Sphinx, Like that's one of the things about these layers of limestone.

1:25:13 Restoration and recreation. It was carved from one piece of stone. So if you look at that picture over there, this is 1932 and 2022, that's what he did, So that's actually- I don't want to see a recreation, which is very similar to what they've done to the Sphinx. Like you can see the restoration. I mean, obviously they took the original casing stones off,

1:27:44 I think that was the case. Before they like uncovered it. of years of rainfall, you have to go back to when there was rainfall in the to be representational. Ancient Near Eastern cultures like the Babylonians, the Akkadians, the Assyrians, they had a base And you look at some of these lists and they're operational and all divisible by like 12 and 60.

1:30:36 the Israelite kings, they're random. I have no idea. We have to establish like, okay, there being morning Ancient timekeeping is very inexact and very messy. an extra month every certain number of years because, you know, their thing is not perfect. Yeah, yeah it starts getting colder, and then it warms up again, the days start getting longer. So how did you guys nail that?

1:35:07 than anyone else, anywhere around there. I mean there have been a lot of things that have been lost Oh, yes, I did know. And it's manmade stuff, which is so bananas. but they're like, this is unbelievable, or the Aztecs rather. Where people have visited places and brought their cooties The ground penetrating radar stuff. is that it is a constant and never-ending search.

1:38:30 There's so many versions of that all over the world And we did it in a bunch of different ways. Was it just to keep society together or was it to retell a very important story that was is eternal and the gods come out of the created world and that there's this narrative of the battle that takes place where And then you read Genesis chapter one, and it says,

1:41:22 a lot of ancient Near Eastern cultures believe that What are we supposed to do while we're here? And how do we get out of here? Jared Larkin I don't know. So like even the Epic of Gilgamesh, the copy that we have that kind of is the final, if I wouldn't actually, I don't actually actually know what the oldest, oldest one is. And establishing chaos and certain things being representational of chaos within the

1:44:26 Really? But the point of that though is not necessarily that like the body of water is not going to exist. So the sea kind of working as an analogy of that which is unpredictable. down into the sea and down into the fish, and he eventually, the fish takes him down You know, come on, do a trick, do a trick, Jesus. be that he saw and understood, as a person of his day,

1:47:24 No. No? No. Vikings did, bodies? In the ocean? Yeah. No. Not that I know of. Do you remember that, Jamie? That's like 11 inches high. Yeah The ways that they're burying, like, What we think they look like, right? I ultimately would be an advocate for intelligent design, My friend Jonathan McClatchy is a biologist like, if you want to call them like our

1:51:52 And a lot of people read the origin stories in Genesis as a scientific textbook, and I I think that might be missing the force for the trees in what we're actually looking at in that process of change, we might miss out, No. So see if you can find that. Nuts. The universe is bonkers. Yeah. So, you were talking about like what is our oldest manuscript evidence.

1:55:45 And yeah, so that's the one. It's in the John Rylands Library in Manchester, England. So that's actually, yeah, so that's someone else's facsimile, which is not as good as discovered by C.H. Roberts in the 1940s, the convention was because of a guy named C.H. Matthew, Mark, and Luke. and the Christians, for reasons we're not entirely clear on, the second century.

1:58:34 Which means that at minimum, And it's because of that guy. the spacings of the words and That's unbelievable. written in their day. You know why is that we used to do that, but actually the oils in your hands are more abrasive I was at the, two summers ago, I was at the University of Pennsylvania, and I was looking Matthew's gospel. Actually, you know what, Jamie, if you go up to the search bar and put CSNTM,

2:02:37 you know, the date or the time. And so you could read the translation and then go and look at the original source of that you can figure these things out. fits in there. The words, a lot of the words don't fit. But it's Middle Ages. Is it just fake words? Well, didn't JRR Tolkien, didn't he create an entire language for Lord of the Rings? It's a real language.

2:05:30 Guys like him and even Lewis, they were friends. But yeah, they were the Inklings Society. Wow. got a literal Jesus, who's sacrificed? Come on, rises from the dead? What are you doing That would be fascinating. Isn't that crazy? That is crazy. vision and dedication so much so that they're writing an elvish language and combining words that the theory of dark matter has been debunked and then you get clicks. Yeah.

2:08:30 ACDM is the current best model of cosmology the CDM stands for cold dark matter So this is a long, I don't know if this is exactly thing that you could ever see, we gave up so that we could drive at night. It's really So it should look like that. Because you're just presented with something Yeah, this is the one. There's probably a paragraph at the bottom that's what you're looking for.

2:11:40 dense areas like the Milky Way galaxies than in voids with more time passing in voids increased expansion takes place making it seem like than 13 point, you know, whatever billion years. And Terrence McKenna had a great line that said that science requires one miracle. Well, yeah. And if you propose a point in time where everything starts to exist, well that for... and you

2:13:58 existed pre the Big Bang. Don't they call it the environment? Is that what the Which my wife tells me are synonyms and that's nonsense. Yeah, I don't really know what that looks like. I kind of do. My brain's not set up that no other creature has even come close to. Pretty fucking crazy. Yeah, you know and just to say that that just happened and you don't you don't really I know you don't want to

2:16:46 the ultimate worldview questions that we have. But at the end of the day, you have one miracle. and you have this thing that happens to you, and this thing changes the course of human history. That in itself, even if this is just a revelation without a divine where people are telling the story exactly the same, And then his disciples, So what is your personal belief when it comes to the resurrection?

2:20:10 Highly unusual. that someone died and come back to life. There's something else, yeah. So... to 400 people all at said. And you go from a bunch of scared guys who, because Jesus wasn't the only messianic They thought he was dead and this guy started moving again and came back to life. They will say if we can know anything So one of our earliest, in fact not one of, the earliest depiction of Jesus on the cross

2:24:22 Because crucifixion was for the lowest of the low. Or what was, he didn't deserve it Listen, the Romans were pretty brutal. So that's where we get that word is because this was designed to he have died? It's, get me to a hospital. And actually, if you correlate between the two, they match up pretty well. So it's not like he had recovery time. That's the claim that Paul makes.

2:28:06 The thing with Matthew, Mark, and Luke is that Matthew and Luke, or Matthew and John He uses writing conventions of the day that would fit within regular biography that was in the way they describe how you should write history I'm not an eyewitness, so I'm going to try to find the people who are eyewitnesses, and 06 No, the only ones from the ancient world that deny his resurrection are groups that

2:30:37 as the docetics, they are denying that Jesus had a physical body, He only seemed to have So we don't actually get like a concrete denial It's not an ancient document. So they were less surprised that he was resurrected. with supernatural events. where it says that the Holy Family fled to Egypt during the reign of Herod, he corroborates There's no such thing as like a secular work in the ancient world.

2:33:40 people that live back then when you try to interpret what these stories were all about, yeah, but this one really was true. B happening. for this particular event. And so the Roman Emperor, who's the most famous, most powerful person at the time, has a similar like Josephus mentions him, end of first century, beginning of second century. He was a Jewish

2:36:40 there was this idea that your religion could be tied to your ethnicity and that was okay. Because the ancient world was polytheistic, but more than that, it was what's sometimes But then the Christians are coming around, say, a famine in Athens and they're going, okay, what's the reason for the famine? Well, So, Christians were this very oddball group.

2:39:06 Jared Slauson Yeah, so Constantine is a pagan up until He actually made it so that if you had to go into like the equivalent of your town hall, Wow. so it's no longer illegal to be a Christian. What was their motivation? And so he becomes friendly to Christians. While Constantine, as like a peace offering, commissions all of these documents to be brought together

2:43:02 Like it took 360 sheep just to put together, which would have been the equivalent of, I don't Yeah, great question. So this is the issue of what's sometimes called the canon of Scripture. So very early on when you community of the disciples of Jesus wrote. that they're not associated with the names that are attached to them is because they're And so we have these early conversations.

2:46:21 right? And so the story in search of a conclusion in the Christian understanding is that Jesus where can we find them? And so very early on, century and it includes 24 of the 27. Gospels of Peter, and you have... So how do we do our due diligence to try to tie this have these ones and not other ones? And so these books that were not included, are any of them interesting?

2:50:22 biblical gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, have women being the first witnesses to the empty tomb. rights within first century, second temple Judaism, but is also clearly the Gospel of Matthew to the first century in Judea is studies that have been done on And that's called a disambiguator. And so we can look at the popularity of names written in documents and actually pinpoint

2:53:21 a guy named Luke VanderWey who published this in, I believe it was at Cambridge. No, people's names often tended to be geographically located. have a qualifier or nickname and others do not. In contrast, the Gospel of Judas only has two names that would fit, Jesus and Judas, A test in standard that the non-biblical gospels simply do not pass. If we really want to figure out, okay, where was this written and is it coming from early

2:56:41 That's that's really amazing because it's like real easy to lean into the fun stuff. Yeah. So the Gospel of Barnabas, which I mentioned before, which Billy Carson has brought up Yeah. Yeah. Well, a lot of the Middle Ages throughout the Middle Ages... And also you're getting someone describing it to an artist. are a small example, but geography or distances between places, you know, the biblical gospels

3:00:26 short and he can't see over the crowd, and here's this miracle worker, Jesus is coming, has been there because they actually know what tree Yeah. I think that would be fun. is so bizarre and so spectacular. It's especially when you're talking about something that's as bizarre as death. it that makes you, I just think it's a little silly because how could you know what you

3:03:24 and to not wonder if maybe you have a very narrow perception that we're not willing to like, They're very strange. they nurture their loved ones, but their perception the intricacies of the universe? Yeah. and trying to find answers to ultimate questions? What do you think of the historical person that had this vision of humanity and this way of educating

3:06:55 And is he a representation of the best version of that? is offer them a very unique way to change the way they feel about the world itself. and you do follow the principles of Christ, around that particular claim. where virtual reality is indistinguishable from regular reality, which we're probably a hundred Or maybe that's how he returns in the first place.

3:09:46 for the trees. where he walks up to the line, That's an example for us to look on and live by. But I actually think that Jesus condemns moralism. So we talked about the Essenes, who actually aren't mentioned in the Bible, but there are other groups like the Pharisees So one of the things he says is like, if your donkey falls in a ravine on the Sabbath,

3:12:24 And that there's this intention, this is the whole Sermon on the Mount, he says like the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. And that there's this intention, this is the whole sermon on the Mount. Matthew chapter five It shows you how dirty you are. But his critique is he's like, if Jesus is a moral example, They go crazy when they get older.

3:14:09 We will find a great place for them on the wall here. My pleasure, thank you very much. I'm going to be traveling in 2025 to produce more of that content, to try to get this stuff All right, beautiful. Thank you.