In this episode Jonathon takes a break from the narrative to explore the history of Christmas. Well, some of it. It's a pretty long history.

No potluck guests this week. Merry Christmas ya filthy animals!

In this week's episode we meet some really friendly characters like Nero and Domitian, Christians start to be called Christians, and something bad happens to Jerusalem...again.

In this episode, Jonathon is joined by Diandra Nelson to talk about the apostle Paul, who seemed to go by many names and who may have been kind of ugly. Also, he wrote a third of the New Testament and has had a huge role in shaping our understanding of the Christian faith, so he's kind of a big deal...

So, we got ALL of the back story out of the way, now we can start to get to the meat of the podcast: telling the story of the church. But exactly where do we start? The logical place seems to be Jerusalem, since this is where the church as a post-Jesus organization seemed to have gotten its start. There’s just one problem: in many ways, the Jesus movement of 1st century Jerusalem has gone missing. 

So, using historical-critical methodology, what can we feel confident saying about the Jesus of history?

There are a few things. Friend of the show Jimmy Doyle pointed me towards the works of Luke Timothy Johnson and EP Sanders, who, independently of each other, tried to deal with the question of what we can reliably know about Jesus. A compounded version of their findings would look something like this:

1. Jesus was from Galilee.

2. He was Jewish

3. He was associated with John the Baptist.

4. He gathered a number of followers, likely with a core of 12.

5. He taught about the Kingdom of God.

6. His life was associated with miraculous healing.

7. He had conflict with Jewish political/religious leaders, likely associated with critique of the temple.

8. He was crucified under the authority of Pontius Pilate near Passover.

9. His followers claimed that he was resurrected.

I think these are all valid data points that we can build the episode on.

So, let’s dive in.