Show Notes
Fake Bible Scholars Are Going Viral. Real Scholars Need to Step Up Child sacrifice, God's wife, & how Bible editors "fixed" them WATCH INTERVIEW HERE I sat down with Dan McClellan — one of the most followed actual biblical scholars online — to talk about how we got here, why it matters, and what real scholarship looks like when it finally shows up to the fight. We cover: → Why "biblical" is a political term, not a scholarly one→ How apologists learned to sound credentialed without being credentialed → Why real scholars abandoned the public square — and what it cost us→ The identity politics engine driving Bible misinformation → What it looks like when actual scholarship pushes back → Dan's new book "The Bible Says So" — and what it gets right that apologists get wrong Find Dan McClellan on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram Book: "The Bible Says So" (Affiliate Link) Podcast: Data Over Dogma
More from Footnote Famous
When was the New Testament actually published? Not written — published. Manuscript scholar David Trobisch, one of the editors of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament, argues it appeared as a single, carefully edited four-volume book in the second half of the 2nd century, about 150 years after Jesus. We talk about why there was never a council that "picked" the books, how a dispute over the date of Easter left its mark on the four gospels, how to hear the editor's voice in the text, why Marcion's gospel may have come before Luke, and who might have edited the New Testament: Polycarp of Smyrna, or Irenaeus.
Get the book! https://amzn.to/4ybTkls (affiliate link) Watch this on YouTube - https://youtu.be/txVqkdQyv-E What is sin, where does it come from, and how does God fix it? Early Christians gave very different answers, and each answer produced a different Christianity. Historian Paula Fredriksen joins me to walk through her book Sin: The Early History of an Idea, from John the Baptist and Paul through Valentinus, Marcion, Justin Martyr, Origen, and finally Augustine, whose vision of original sin came to dominate the West.We cover:- Why Paul saw Sin, Flesh, and Death as cosmic powers, not moral metaphors- The New Perspective (and the newer "Paul within Judaism" perspective)- How ancient cosmology determined what "salvation" could even mean- Valentinus's myth of Sophia and the accidental origin of matter- Marcion's God of love vs. the God of the Jews, and Justin Martyr's opposite move- Origen's breathtaking system, in which God saves everyone (even the stars)- How Augustine invented original sin and turned God into a late Roman judgeThis conversation wraps up our summer book club on Sin. Thanks to everyone who read along!━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 👉 Get the Armchair Bible Scholar Emails 👉 https://www.cjcornthwaite.com/armchair-bible-scholar Community - https://www.cjcornthwaite.com/community Substack - https://substack.com/@cjcornthwaite 📱 FOLLOW FOR MORE - YouTube: @cjcornthwaite - Instagram: @cjcornthwaite- Website: cjcornthwaite.com- Email: [email protected]🎙️ FOOTNOTE FAMOUS (MY PODCAST)Conversations with the world’s top scholars of the Bible and Christian origins. 🔗https://www.footnotefamous.com/
Watch Episode on YouTube What is an apocalypse, really — and why do we keep reducing it to "the end of the world"? In this episode, I sit down with John J. Collins, one of the foremost scholars of ancient Judaism and Christian origins, to discuss his newest book, Apocalypticism as a Worldview in Ancient Judaism. Collins — who literally helped write the modern definition of "apocalypse" as a genre back in the 1970s — walks us through what fifty years of scholarship (and the full publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls) have revealed about this strange, vivid literature. We talk about Daniel's statue of four kingdoms and the idea of "total history," the myth of the Watchers as an allegory for cultural upheaval, the Persian roots of Jewish dualism, the puzzle of the Son of Man in the Similitudes of Enoch, and why the "end" in apocalyptic thought is never really the end — it's always the doorway to something else: resurrection, judgment, a new creation, life with the angels. Along the way, we get into trauma and apocalyptic literature, the messy boundary between early Judaism and Christianity, and how geopolitical pressure from Persia, Greece, and Rome shaped the way these texts imagined history and the cosmos. Whether you know Daniel and Enoch inside and out or you're just apocalypse-curious, this is a rich, wide-ranging conversation about one of the most influential and misunderstood genres in the ancient world.
Over the first season of Footnote Famous I interviewed 22 Bible scholars, and I read every one of their books cover to cover before we spoke. Some of what I heard confirmed things I already suspected. Five ideas genuinely changed how I read the New Testament — and I haven't been able to stop thinking about them since.In this season one roundup I walk through all five: why the "gospel communities" every seminary teaches may be an invention of 19th-century German Romanticism; why the Christmas story might originally have been about John the Baptist; why the Paul we read could be third-hand at best; why Luke looks like he was reading Josephus; and why "faith" didn't originally mean what Augustine made it mean.Featuring conversations with Dr. Robin Faith Walsh, Dr. James McGrath, Dr. Markus Vinzent, Dr. Steve Mason, and Dr. Teresa Morgan.Full interviews:Ep. 2 — Robin Faith Walsh Ep. 3 — James McGrathEp. 5 — Markus VinzentEp. 10 — Steve MasonEp. 18 — Teresa MorganBooks mentioned (Sponsored Links):- Robin Faith Walsh, The Origins of Early Christian Literature 👉 - James McGrath, John of History, Baptist of Faith (and the popular version, Christmaker) - Markus Vinzent, Resetting the Origins of Christianity and Christ's Resurrection in Early Christianity - Steve Mason, Josephus and the New Testament - Teresa Morgan, Roman Faith and Christian Faith - Paula Fredriksen, Ancient Christianities — not on the list, but everyone should read itQuestions this episode answers:Where did the idea of "gospel communities" come from?Was the nativity story originally about John the Baptist?Have Paul's letters been edited?Did Luke use Josephus as a source?What did the Greek word pistis actually mean?A reconstructed Baptist infancy 👉 Get the Armchair Bible Scholar Emails 👉 https://www.cjcornthwaite.com/armchair-bible-scholar Community - https://www.cjcornthwaite.com/community Substack - https://substack.com/@cjcornthwaite 📱 FOLLOW FOR MORE - YouTube: @cjcornthwaite - Instagram: @cjcornthwaite- Website: cjcornthwaite.com- Email: [email protected]
WATCH VIDEO OF INTERVIEW Did the author of Luke's Gospel actually know the geography of first-century Palestine? In this interview, biblical scholar John Kloppenborg — my own PhD supervisor at the University of Toronto — breaks down the evidence that Luke's geography is full of errors, and explains what those mistakes reveal about Luke's sources. Kloppenborg identifies three levels of geographic knowledge in ancient texts: place names, relational knowledge (how places connect), and deep local knowledge. Using this framework, he shows that Luke has genuine local knowledge of sailing routes in the Aegean, only relational knowledge of the Levantine coast, and almost no accurate knowledge of the interior of Galilee and Judea — where Jesus's own ministry supposedly took place.We look at specific geographical mistakes in Luke's Gospel: Nazareth called a "polis" (city) when it was a village of a few hundred people, the feeding of the 5,000 near Bethsaida, and the confused travel narrative in Luke 9–19 where Jesus seems to be in two places at once. Kloppenborg argues this points to Luke using an ancient map — possibly a predecessor of the Tabula Peutingeriana — to reconstruct a journey through territory he had never visited. Tabula Peutingeriana Interactive Map 🔗PDF of John's Chapter - “Luke’s Geography: Knowledge, Ignorance, Sources, and Spatial Conception.” Skepe Community Patreon 📱 FOLLOW FOR MORE - YouTube: @cjcornthwaite - Instagram: @cjcornthwaite- Website: cjcornthwaite.com- Email: [email protected]