Undeceptions with John Dickson

The parting of the red sea is legendary today … and most people treat it as just that … legend.

Like many things in the Bible, the exodus from Egypt (recorded in the book Old Testament book of Exodus) is looked on with great scepticism by secular scholars - and some Christian scholars even.

It’s understandable. 

The existence of Moses, mighty prophet and prince of Egypt. The ten plagues that devastated that ancient civilisation. The blood of the passover lamb protecting the houses of Israel from the plagues. And, of course, the deliverance of the people of Israel en mass from the slavery in Egypt.

They all lack direct historical evidence outside the Bible. 

So it’s just made up, right? 

Well, sort of … not really! 

LINKS

• This episode is sponsored by Zondervan Academic's new book ‘God of All Things’ by Andrew Wilson.
• Meet our guest, James Hoffmeier, Professor of Old Testament and Near Eastern Archaeology at Trinity International University, Divinity School (Deerfield, IL).
• Check out the new book Five Views on the Exodus: Historicity, Chronology and Theological Implications, which showcases (as it says on the packet) five different views on the Exodus, including Hoffmeier's. 
• Read Rick Watt's "gamechanger" book, Isaiah's New Exodus in Mark (the super expensive, textbook like one!) 
• Connect the dots between The Exodus and the Gospels with John Dickon's A Doubter's Guide to Jesus. 

LISTEN

• Bonus Five Minute Jesus for this episode, listen here.

We all know Christianity thrives on ignorance, sunk us all into the dark ages, and has resisted human rights and equality for most of its 1500 year reign.

What have the Christians ever done for us?

Our guest today - who says he’s not a believing Christian - reckons many of us have things completely back to front. It’s Christianity, he insists, that gave us many of the secular humanitarian ideals we hold so dear.

LINKS

• This episode was sponsored by Zondervan's new book Person of Interest: Why Jesus still matters in a world that rejects the Bible by J Warner Wallace 
• Meet our guest, Tom Holland
• Read Holland's latest book, Dominion: The making of the Western Mind
• Or check out his YouTube channel, where you can watch one of the documentaries he made with the BBC on Islam 
• Here's a 5 minute primer on stoicism from Ted-Ed. Want more? Here's a good place to start to learn more about Stoicism.
• Watch the trailer for HBO's award-winning series, Rome. Be warned... it's brutal. 
• More on the Pax Romana ("Roman peace") 
• Watch this segment from the Centre For Public Christianity's documentary, For the Love of God, on the origins of western healthcare.
• Here is Stephen Greenblatt's book The Swerve from 2012, which offers a contrary argument about Christianity's influence on the world. Full disclosure: Tom Holland, while an admirer of Greenblatt's work on Shakespeare, thinks The Swerve is by far his worst book. 
• So ... the Dark Ages? Not so dark. We'll undoubtedly do a whole episode on that soon enough, but in the meantime, John Dickson's new book Bullies and Saints has a bit to say about it too. 

John Dickson is taking a bit of a break to grieve the passing of his friend, Ben Shaw. So, in the interim, Producer Kaley and Director Mark have decided to choose their favourite Undeceptions episodes to drop into your podcast feed for two weeks. 

Week number two is brought to you by Director Mark. He has chosen to re-share the Remembering Women episode. John visits Dr. Lynne Cohick to chat about how early Christians valued and celebrated women in the first centuries of the church. 

Director Mark recommends it because unveils a side of feminine history he'd missed, gets us outdoors again in the middle of an Australian lockdown, and includes a whole gamut of contributions, including Producer Kaley's favourite music.

John Dickson is taking a bit of a break to grieve the passing of his friend, Ben Shaw. So, in the interim, Producer Kaley and Director Mark have decided to choose their favourite Undeceptions episodes to drop into your podcast feed in the next two weeks. 

Producer Kaley's favourite is the very first episode of Undeceptions, called ‘Old Papers’. It harks back to a time when we were allowed to travel overseas, and John visited the University of Michigan’s Papyrology department to get his hands on some of the earliest manuscripts we have for the New Testament. 

Producer Kaley reckons it’s what Undeceptions does best: it’s historical, it’s hands-on and it laid the groundwork for what this podcast wants to sound like - friendly and factual, with a little nerdy excitement thrown in. 

Ben Shaw and John Dickson were friends since childhood, became Christians together in their teens, formed a rock and roll band in their 20s, and went on to study theology and minister in the fields God opened up to them.

The death of Ben Shaw has provided John with an opportunity to reflect on the sort of book his best friend felt was worth using his last months to write, and the spiritual lessons he has learned from decades of standing beside him.

John Dickson invites solicitor and social commentator Stephanie Kate Judd to offer an opinion on the sexism that simultaneously abuses and silences women. 

Outrage, she says, is an appropriate response to significant wrongdoing, but unchecked rage can corrode the very hearts that feel that injustice most keenly.

Instead, Stephanie suggests a way in which we can confront a problem but still keep our anger healthy.

Jesus was once a teenage boy, right? Was he a rascal? Who did he hang out with? Was he considered the ancient equivalent of a jock, a cool kid, a nerd, or something else?

And how on earth did he get through the normal teenage years of angst and still be … the perfect incarnation of God?

There’s a bit of speculation about teenage Jesus. And we promise to cover all the evidence for it in this episode.

LINKS 

• This episode is brought to you by Zondervan's new Bible commentary on the Gospel of Mark
• More about 10 Things I Hate About You, which you heard at the beginning of this episode.
• Check out the Infancy of Thomas, an apocryphal document that purports to narrate episodes from Jesus’ youth from the age of five up until his twelfth year.
• Get to know our guest, Dr Chris Forbes.
• Listen to Canon Fodder, from Season 3 of Undeceptions, which also features Dr Forbes. It's all about how the Bible was put together and why which books were chosen as scripture and some books weren't. 
• Here's that TedTalk on raising rebels. Good luck to listeners attempting to do so! 
• The Lost Years of Jesus documentary.
• The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ by Nicolas Notovitch (Yeah, we're not suggesting your rush out and get this one!) 
• Here's a travel diary to follow if you want to try to "walk in the steps of Jesus" in Nepal, even if he didn't actually go there! Articles like these just keep popping up. 
• Check out this talk that John Dickson gave on the difference between the teachings of Jesus and the teachings of Buddhism or Hinduism. 
• Here's the one passage in the gospels that talks about Jesus as a teen... Luke 2:42-51.
• More on David Flusser, the great Jewish Professor of History and Religion from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

For every voice decrying the evils of pornography, there’s another that says it’s healthy, part of our freedom of expression, “sex positive”! So, which is it? 

LINKS

• This epidoe of Undeceptions is brought to you by Zondervan’s new commentary on the book of Exodus by Christopher Wright.
• Meet our guest, Melinda Tankard Reist, and find out more about the Collective Shout Movement that she founded.
• Meet our other guests, Professor William Struthers and Simon Camilleri
• Read more on the protest of the 70,000 Korean women who held banners shouting 'My life is not your porn' in 2018 after a spike in the number of spycams found in female bathrooms. 
• Read the New York Times explosive investigative report 'The Children of Pornhub', published in December 2020.
• In response to the NYT report, Mastercard and Visa withdrew their cooperation with Pornhub later that month. 
• Read Melinda Tankard Reist's book, Big Porn Inc: Exposing the Harms of the Global Porn Industry
• Here's the research John Dickson lists off in this episode on pornography: 
  • A study by the Australian Research Centre in Sex Health and Society said it found that pornography enabled sexual confidence and positive community formation, especially for LGBTIQ+ people.
  • A 2007 study published in the American Journal of Medicine found that the sex lives of 18 million men over age 20 were negatively affected due to excessive porn viewing.
  • A recent study by the Kinsey Institute showed that people who use technology for sexting or webcamming gained a sense of emotional connection as well as sexual gratification from this contact.
  • In a study conducted at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, researchers discovered a significant association between reported pornography hours per week and gray matter volume in the human brain, and a drop in reactivity to sexual cues.
  • A study published in the Archives of Sexual Behaviour looking at Norwegian use of pornography found that couples who use pornography together tended to enjoy a more permissive erotic climate. But where only one person in the couple did, men who used porn were likely to experience problems with arousal, and women who used porn were likely to have increased negative self perception. 
• In February 2021 in Australia, a former Sydney schoolgirl launched a petition calling for ‘sexual consent education’ to be taught much earlier in schools.
• In this opinion piece, a high school teacher argues that 'Hardcore porn is to blame for disturbing teenage sex culture'
• This 'TraffickingHub' online petition to shutdown Pornhub has over 2 million signatures.
• Here's a [safe] link with more information on Pornhub's traffic numbers.
• Sexual health research stresses the ‘bonding hormones’ released with sexual encounters. Check out this with Australian sex researcher, Dr Patricia Weerakoon on this subject. 
• C. S. Lewis, the great Oxford literary don and public advocate of Christianity, once defended the biblical approach to sex against the call in his day (the 1940s) for more sexual ‘freedom’. His insights are as relevant today as then:

I know some muddleheaded Christians have talked as if Christianity thought that sex, or the body, or pleasure, were bad in themselves. But they were wrong. Christianity is almost the only one of the great religions which thoroughly approves of the body—which believes that matter is good, that God himself once took on a human body, that some kind of body is going to be given to us even in heaven and is going to be an essential part of our happiness, our beauty and our energy. 

Christianity has glorified marriage more than any other religion: and nearly all the greatest love poetry in the world has been produced by Christians. If anyone says that sex, in itself, is bad, Christianity contradicts him at once … There is nothing to be ashamed of in enjoying your food: there would be everything to be ashamed of if half the world made food the main interest of their lives and spent their time looking at pictures of food and dribbling and smacking their lips. 

I do not say that you and I are individually responsible for the present situation. Our ancestors have handed over to us organisms which are warped in this respect: and we grow up surrounded by propaganda in favour of unchastity. There are people who want to keep our sex instinct inflamed in order to make money out of us. Because, of course, a man with an obsession is a man who has very little sales-resistance. God knows our situation; He will not judge us as if we had no difficulties to overcome. (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. HarperCollins, 1997, 81-82)

This is the second part of our two-part series on the Crusades. For Part One, click here.

A brutal slaughter at the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem marked the end of the first crusade. The Crusaders had recaptured Jerusalem and the Holy Lands. They had regained control and care of The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, probably medieval Christianity’s most sacred site, built over what was believed to be Jesus’ empty tomb. 

Their job was done and most of the crusaders packed up and went home, bolstered in their belief that God had been with them and seized their victory. Job done! 

So, why the need for a 2nd Crusade? Or a 3rd, 4th or 5th for that matter? 

LINKS 

• This episode is brought to you by Zondervan's new book Bullies and Saints: An Honest Look at the Good and Evil of Christian History by John Dickson. There's plenty more on the Crusades that we couldn't fit into this episode.
• Meet our distinguished guest, Professor Christopher Tyerman and check out his magnum opus, God's War: A New History of the Crusades. 
• Here's more on that terrible movie, King Richard and His Crusaders from 1954. 
• The 50 Worst Films of All Time, according to Wikipedia.
• Learn more about Saladin, the most famous of Muslim warriors.
• Meet Francis of Assisi, one of the most charismatic and influential clerics of the Middle Ages.
• Here's some more on Rabbi Hillel, who John quotes from in this episode's Five Minute Jesus.
• John quotes extensively from David Flusser's book The Sage of Galilee: Rediscovering Jesus' Genius, also in this episode's Five Minute Jesus.
• Watch President George W Bush's full remarks from 16 September 2001, where he said of the 9/11 terrorist attacks: "This is a new kind of  -- a new kind of evil.  And we understand.  And the American people are beginning to understand. This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while." 
• Here's the Wall Street Journal article, 'Crusade reference reinforces fears this war on terrorism is against Muslims'
• Read up on the Ottoman Empire here.
• The Crusader City - Caesarea - and its archaelogical ruins make for an interesting travel destination, according to The Washington Post. 
• Just one example of the Crusades misinterpreted history: 'The New Zealand massacre and the weaponisation of history'from Al Jazeera.

This is the first of a two part episode on The Crusades.
 

Over nine hundred years after the launch of the first Crusade, world leaders are still invoking their memory to explain ongoing conflict. But how plausible is that?

Chances are, whether you're a Christian or a skeptic, what you think you know about the Crusades is wrong. Or so says our guest for this episode.

What were the Crusades? How did they start? What did they achieve? Why did they stop? 

And does their shadow really fall over modern tensions between the West and Muslim lands?

LINKS

• Get John Dickson's new book Bullies and Saints: An Honest Look at the Good and Evil of Christian History, published by our sponsor Zondervan. It's got a heap more on the Crusades than we could fit into this episode.
• Meet our distinguished guest, Professor Christopher Tyerman. 
• Check out Tyerman's magnum opus, God's War: A New History of the Crusades. He has a written a bunch more, too. 
• Watch the full news segment from France 24 about the Charlie Hebdo caricatures that enraged Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
• Listen to this fascinating episode of The New York Times podcast The Daily, all about the killing of French teacher Samuel Paty and the raging debate in France over the relationship between government and religion - primarily the idea of Laïcité - the constitutional principle of secularism in France. 
• Listen to the Undeceptions Single all about 'The Troubles' of Northern Ireland. 
• Here are the Old Testament references where God commands violence:
  • In 1 Samuel, when God commands Saul to completely destroy the Amalekites. 
    • Read this article from The Gospel Coalition writer and blogger Steve McAlpine, Indefensible? Saul and the Amalekite Genocide
  • In the book of Joshua, God ordains a holy war against the Canaanites.
    • And then check out this article 'But, what about Canaan?' quoting John Dickson giving an explanation about what in the world is God doing in the Book of Joshua with the Canaanites.
    • You might also like to check out this explanation, Why did God demand the invasion of Canaan in the Book of Joshua? by The Bible Project.
• Check out Saint Augustine's City of God for more on his broad principles of just war. 
• Read Pope Urban II's full speech at the Council of Clermont in 1095, where he officially called for the First Crusade.
• Here's more on Ridley Scott's 2005 film, Kingdom of Heaven.