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One of the best interviews yet! Thank you Dr. Trobisch and always Jacob for the bringing the best in historical scholarship to the masses! 🧠

Thank you for interviewing Dr. Trobisch! Excellent scholar!

Wow really loving this with David, what a breath of fresh air! Thanks for having him on Jacob

You’ve really knocked it out of the park with this interview! Great job! Thank you very much, dear Jacob!

Great interview.

Absolutely loved this interview and I will definitely get the book. I tell people that Paul created the theology of Christianity but Marcion created the New Testament and they have no idea what I'm talking about.

@sciptick

4 ай бұрын

Marcion seems to have created the notion of a New Testament, but the one we inherit had to have been assembled in reaction to his. The contradictory gospels we got probably were exactly those favored by the sects that were rallied against Marcion. Certainly Paul's letters, anyway, were composed long before any of that happened, because it would have been idiotic to have him fail to prophesy the destruction of the Temple, an event first acknowledged in Mark.

Thoroughly enjoyable! Kudos to you, Jacob, for finding all these exciting Marcion-scholars. Fascinating.

@mgbilby

4 ай бұрын

Trobisch was the lead scholarly expert at the Museum of the Bible in DC for several years. That would also be a fascinating story to have him tell on Jacob's channel or another podcast on religion, since Trobisch had to deal firsthand with people trying to sell forged and stolen artifacts to Steve Green (Hobby Lobby owner).

@Achill101

4 ай бұрын

@@mgbilby - was Trobisch an expert for the whole bible or just the New Testament, and were those artifacts relevant for the New or the Old Testament?

Magnificent guest Jacob, with mind expanding insights flowing one after the other. Dr Trobisch’s depiction of the author of LUKE-ACTS time period and agenda, actually is in alignment with Dr Paul Anderson’s’ view that John precedes Luke and that Luke has incorporated some of the small details of John. This would mean Luke has taken the ‘draught of fish’ in John 21 and placed it instead deep inside his own narrative & changing many of the details, for his own purposes, as he has done to Matthew in Dr Goodacre’s version of the Farrer Hypothesis.

I really enjoyed this interview. I like his view on the origins of the New Testament and I hope his ideas along with Vinzent’s, Bilby’s and Bull’s make a paradigm shift in New Testament studies. I’m tired of mainstream secular scholars like Ehrman being stuck in their paradigm with statements like “Luke was written in the 90s”. I also like his sense of humor, he cracks me up haha! Comparing the New Testament with Harry Potter was hilarious.

A couple years ago when I first found Jacob's channel, one of the scholars (sorry don't remember who!) prompted me to question whether Paul/,Saul was also a literary creation. I discarded that thinking it was the impulse of my uneducated self. Well Trobisch at the end of this interview brings this possibility up - Paul as either fiction or highly fictionalized. He has me thinking it is very plausible after all! That really changes everything if true. It is seeming more and more like Josephus is the basis for any historical information and many characters used by gospel authors. Many actions of Judas the Galilean become Jesus' in the gospels. The 'brother of the lord' reference - per Trobisch's comment about interpolation as standard practice -sure seems like one. Ditto the Testimonium. I am swinging back to Jesus & the gospels as literary fiction entirely.

@TorianTammas

4 ай бұрын

I share the same thought with you. Consensus is that half of the letters are fraud as in having various authors, but when you look at length, style and topics they dont sound like letters at all. We have letterd from Cicero who was well educated, rich and hold some of the highest roman offices like consul. He is known for long flowers and witted speeches as lawyer and he wrote them down. The letters if Cicero are much shorter and sound like you address a person. Paul's letters sound artificial look artificial and the whole idea that a guy who never meet Jesus, denies to have it from anywhere but his reading of jewish scripture or inner voiced becomes more and more insane.

@sciptick

4 ай бұрын

The name "Saul" is not reliably attested, and looks like a late invention. The suggestion that somebody would fabricate Paul failing to prophesy the destruction of the Temple is implausible; likewise, his failing to corroborate Mark's invention of a Jesus touring Judea. Paul confabulating elaborate logical arguments to support his opinions that match what Mark has his Jesus come right out and dictate would be similarly nonsensical. No, Paul unavoidably predates the Temple destruction and gospels, Mark unavoidably post-dates Paul and the Temple destruction, and Matthew, Luke, and John all unavoidably crib from Mark.

@GeorgeCostanzais10.

3 ай бұрын

I know the name of that hack, a political fanatic posing as a scholar (and a poor one at that). His theory about Paul is a rehash of an old theory by second rate scholars that has been discredited and Dr M. David Litwa has already explained a lot about that bogus idea. Don’t forget: there are no ‘angels’ or imaginary figures with such ordinary names such as ‘Jesus’ or ‘Paul’. The mythicist theory has its merits, but it has no solid ground on which to stay on. And also, even if (as I believe) most letters and all narrative texts we have were written decades or even centuries after the first 50 years of the first century and they have all been messed with by later scribes well into the middle ages, there’s no possibility they were not the fruit of either oral or written sources dating back to even before Jesus, nothing to do with ‘factual truth’, but there’s no possibility whatsoever they were mere fiction out of some nuts’ minds, that is NOT how things worked before literacy became near-universal (and that’s a work in progress) and Dr. Trobisch has a book about that. No one would invent that a nobody with the most common of names, follower of an unimportant baptizer and prophet that got beheaded, that then later assembled a group of equally nobodies and then perfomed some deeds and said some stuff in some irrelevant villages of an unimportant region then got himself crucified by the Romans next to the main center of a ridiculed religion and was seen back alive by some women and a bunch of nobodies and then invent that he was seen by an irrelevant greek speaking jew who wrote some letters and expect that to stick as a higher truth and gather followers in such diverse places as the Mediterranean Region, Armenia, Ethiopia and even (probably a little later) in India and China. And how exactly a fictional character would even have the authority to have forgeries made on his name not even a century after he was supposedly alive? Why would the author/editors of the canonical Acts go to so much trouble to create a ‘Paul’ to his/their liking so different from the one we get from the 7 legitimate letters if the original one was fiction? If it was all part of some plot by some con men and prolific authors, why not just keep it simple (like Marcion did) and have a single view and make that the truth to be sold, why even keep copying the damn letters at all? These pseudo-scholars have waaaaay too much attention on social media, which is not Academia. They are entertainers, not serious academics. In that regard, I have much more respect for a figure such as David Fitzgerald, who does not hide behind some PhD title (which means less and less as they become so much more common, anyway) and who is an absolute delight to hear, very funny and entertaining, which is how I see this kinds of things: an entertainment relating to a field I’m passionate about, so it’s like the perfect combination of seriousness and comedy. YT videos and podcasts are valid, but our opinions on serious/hard academic topics must be informed by the reading of thousands and thousands of pages by different respected academics (most popular books are just ‘enlightened entertainment’ or pure crap).

@stevendebernardi8291

3 ай бұрын

I understand your thinking about Saul-Paul and the historicity of Yeshua. I am confident that Yeshua of Galilee was a real person. A teacher-“rabbi” but not divine. And not resurrected. If you are not familiar with James David Audlin I recommend you find him byway of a web search. He has been featured on Jacob’s HV. Best regards.

@TorianTammas

3 ай бұрын

@@sciptick Half of Paul's letters aren't written by him or fraud. People enjoy to hide their made up claims under a bigger name.

Great video! I’d love to see you interview Tom Dykstra and Thomas Brodie!

Thank you. Trobisch's work is very important to reverse the normal expectations built on proto-orthodoxy's governing narrative for the emergence of Christianity. My question would be, if canonical Luke and the canonical Paulines reflect a multi-stage, cross-generational phenomenon (Marcion's Gospel and Apostle are first editions, then canonical Luke and canonical Paulines are largely rewritings and expansions), is this sui generis, or is it typical of a broader pattern of multi-stage composition and rewritings that can also be seen on close examination of canonical Mark, canonical Matthew, canonical John, Thomas, Peter, etc.? To put it differently, if we take an evolutionary approach to Marcion and the Pauline gospel and letter traditions, shouldn't we also be open to an evolutionary approach to the non-Pauline gospel, letter, and sermonic traditions?

@MarthaEllen88

4 ай бұрын

Help. Was doing childcare while trying to listen. What was evidence for putting gospels in second century,? And where does he put Mark and Matthew in relation to Marcion/Luke/Acts. Thank you!

@TorianTammas

4 ай бұрын

​@@MarthaEllen88There is a gap of 150 yrar of silence. We have nothing from the firdt cebtury and the earliest scrab is dated 125-175, but this is dubious as the 12 or so words are not enough for any dating based on writing style.

@MarthaEllen88

4 ай бұрын

@@TorianTammas thanks. Do we know why they usually put Mark around 70, not later? Just tradition?

@hardwork8395

4 ай бұрын

@@MarthaEllen88Trobisch would point to the fact that we have evidence of editorializing in the second century via the NT being physically bound in volumes; he points to flashpoints in history like the Easter Controversy; he points to early church fathers’ reactions to Marcion’s new testamanent, etc. he talks about other editorializing tampering that points to that century.

@hardwork8395

4 ай бұрын

@@MarthaEllen88there are considerations like the destruction of the temple and other historical dating, but a lot of the reasons are fairly arbitrary for guessing circulation times of Mark and other gospels, for example. If you are looking for a conservative evangelical take, they purport to give many reasons to suggest even earlier dating. Just google for such books if you are interested in knowing what they think. Trobisch isn’t alone in his dating. He mentioned Vinzent, but Bilby, Walsh, and many others would push the dating of the material very comfortably into the second century-if I’ve read them correctly.

Please also do a segment on intertestamental literature.

Great interview. I want the book!

v. nice, thanks

What an amazing talk! What he says is absolutely true- the genre of the first few books- Mark, Mathew and Marcion is story telling (mythos) and not eyewitness testimony (which Luke and John try to bring in). Pilate is a character taken from Josephus. There is nothing historical we can glean from the Gospels because there is no first century literature to back its claims.

@sciptick

3 ай бұрын

Certainly the gospels are wholesale fiction, but that does not support a Marcion origin for them. We have no evidence of Marcion originating any text; he seems only to redact and assemble texts by others. The gospels we have were each clearly intended to supersede their antecedent, so it would make no sense to produce all four together. The only scenario consistent with the evidence is of an anti-Marcionite coalition whose factions favored different popular gospels that were therefore shoveled together into a competing NT edition.

@Peejayk

3 ай бұрын

@@sciptick you should check out Mark Billy’s reconstruction of Marcion’s Apostolos (Pauline Corpus) mainly based on Tertullians word for word critique of Marcion’s collection- it would seem as if the later orthodox faction has indeed redacted and added so much to the Paul’s original letters. We should thus expect the same of the Gospels. Marcus Vincent and David Trobisch believe based on their assessment that Marcion was before Mark (although Bilby doesn’t agree). The degree of vehemence against Marcion in the second cannot simply conclude that he had “false teaching” ( which others also were accused of but not to the same extent)

Thanks Jacob. Great to see you allow a scholar who gives such great support to the mythicist position.

Fabulous, fascinating interview. Trobisch really makes me rethink a lot. I plan to get his book though as a secular vaguely cultural Protestant layperson it may go over my head. His explication of what "according to" could mean for authorship & editing is brilliant. The consensus dating is already under great reassessment and that would blow it out of the water. The idea of a teacher assigning students to take different points of view & compose gospels is a great analogy. Or perhaps what really happened? Hmmm.

@TorianTammas

4 ай бұрын

We have war, people wrote a different gospel as they considered the other false. We have around 90 different greek-roman literature works about an Iesous (Jesus). Every single one diagreed with the others.

@sciptick

3 ай бұрын

​@@TorianTammas Making things up was evidently the usual mode of text production, early on; later on it became harder to sell original material, so altering existing texts gained favor. Pasting four contradictory gospels into one edition makes sense only as a political compromise to rally 2nd-century anti-Marcionite factions, similarly to the wholly incoherent Nicene creed much later stitched together by the winning coalition at that meeting.

If the Gospel of Mary, which is a gnostic text, was written during the same time as our New Testament's 4 gospels, then it all makes sense! The New Testament additions and re-organizations is to discredit the gnostic movement.

@sciptick

4 ай бұрын

Mainstream historians do not believe there was a Gnostic movement, or Gnostic sects. Rather, each sect held a varying number of gnostic-esque notions, most insisting theirs own were not, and reviling those of other sects. The New Testament as compiled seems rather to be meant to enforce "Jesus historicity" as the gospels tell it. This is particularly evident in the forged 2 Peter, where we are enjoined to shun numerous Christians who denied it. The alternative to that mundane historicity, apparently professed by Paul, was of a Jesus who lived as a powerless man in The Firmament, where "archons" or sky-demons were tricked into killing him. (The Firmament, in the understanding of Jews at the time, was the lowest layer of worlds in the sky where the rebellious angels had been "cast down" to, from the seven heavens. 3rd heaven was where Adam's old human body was buried after he got his resurrected body. If all this seems wacky, you are right. But it is manifestly what authoritative accounts show most Jews earnestly believed, at the time.) There is nothing at all plausible about the various gospels being written under one roof. They clearly started out in competition, only later to be gathered together as a political compromise among enough factions to overpower the Marcionites.

@stridedeck

4 ай бұрын

@@sciptick You assume Jesus was an historical person, even though Paul never mentions Jesus as a person. Resurrection is a mystical symbol. These mystical movements are pointing, using symbols and poetic imagery, to hidden mystical transformation. The Qabalah, Kabballah, and Cabala are Jewish mysticism! The Old Testament is not about historical events, nor of people, but to the same internal transformation.

@sciptick

4 ай бұрын

@@stridedeck Of course Paul thought of Jesus as historical, albeit "somewhere else". We today know there is no such place as a Firmament, so can recognize Paul's sky-Jesus as imaginary. 'Mark' relocates his Jesus to Judea for sound marketing reasons, understanding that Jesus as a wholly fictional character, but _probably_ believed in Paul's sky-Jesus. Matthew, Luke, and John freely alter details at will to match their own opinions, so also see their Jesuses as fictional. Later writers seem to have missed that memo. Most likely the notion of an earthly Jesus was originally meant as a shuck for rubes that insiders would quickly be disabused of, as in the Osiris cult. It is odd that this was so quickly forgotten.

@TorianTammas

4 ай бұрын

​@@sciptickMarc is a highly mystical story for the initiates of a cult. He uses tropes from Homer, greek philosophy and ithers to connect jewish and grerk ideas to the new cult about the became a god (empty tomb trope). It is no different then grerk-egyptian gods and cults. We have the Isis cult and each new member was called out of a tomb. So they died to join the cult and reenacted the death and resurection of Osiris.

@sciptick

4 ай бұрын

​@@TorianTammas Christianity differed from the other prevailing mystery cults in exactly the ways one would expect such a cult meant to appeal to Judeans would differ, and matched in exactly the ways people drawn in from other cults would have demanded.

Thanks

Why is this book 25 dollars in UK and under 10 dollars in US

Beautiful last 15m or so.

I wish he picked a different analogy than Harry Potter

"Don't make it a book of history" yep

Did the gospel writers know about or participate in the Jewish Roman war? Did any of them literally see the ruins of the 2nd Temple with their own eyes?

@sciptick

4 ай бұрын

Knew about, _certainly._ See it? Probably not, possibly excepting 'Matthew'. Luke, in particular, is seen to crib from Josephus for local geographical color, and John is vehemently not interested in Judea or anybody in it.

@TorianTammas

4 ай бұрын

The anonymous authors of the greek-roman literature are highly educated people that are able to produce literature and in their writing are references to and tropes from Homer, Euripides, Vergil and even Josephus. As we have various mistakes about geography, culture and regional customs and the use of Josephus this makes it implausible that they were ever present nor had any close connection to or it was irrelevant for their storytelling. As they are unknown we can speculate and a lot is invented and invented by later generations. Not to mention that the literature is a product far removed from anyone present.

@carlenewarner8384

4 ай бұрын

⁠

No doubt that this guy is brilliant. But maybe too brilliant. He seems to be throwing down and breaking the stone tablets, as Moses did. Too much speculation. But he provides seeds for thought. I won't be buying his book. I would sort of consider reading his book to be like "falling into the trap." But I respect his opinions and his schollarship.

"Paul" =small/diminutive/less, the super small Apostle not like the super-super bigsuperbig apostles. Yep seems legit.

Why are there hundreds of variant versions of the Christian bibles?

@Achill101

4 ай бұрын

The versions differ only at the margins. The core of the four gospels, Acts, the Pauline letters (including the Pastorals), and some Apostolic letters like 1 Peter seem to be always there. The margins are Hebrews, Revelations, and some Apostolic letters, about which there are arguments for many centuries.

@Achill101

4 ай бұрын

(This video is only about the New Testament, not the Old Testament and the attempts by the Reformation to take out books not canonical for Jews.)

@MitzvosGolem1

4 ай бұрын

@@Achill101 Ok why are there hundreds of variant versions of the new testament? None match the original earliest koine Greek.

@Achill101

4 ай бұрын

@SJW4all - I understood your question first in a way that you ask why the list of books in the New Testament varied? Now, it sounds like you ask for variations among manuscripts, e.g., that some verses of Matthew are in one group of manuscripts but not in another. Were you asking for the former or the latter?

@charlesbrowne9590

4 ай бұрын

There are more variations between the ancient New Testaments than there were words in the New Testament. These variations range from apparent typographical errors to entire texts entering and exiting the canon. Christianity is the result of merging all of the cults of the empire. Each cult had its own religious biases and sought to promote its own interests. The purpose of this policy of syncretizing the cults - called “pax deorum” - was to impose conformity on the empire and so make it easier to rule. Variations on the gospel story were used to appeal to different groups. Later on, some of these groups felt justified to change scripture back to what they thought it must’ve been.

On the women stuff, I don't think it's obvious men and women are the same. Or that they're interchangeable as leaders, etc. I'm not sure why so many people think Atheism means Feminism/Leftism.

@DrWrapperband

4 ай бұрын

Because cultist are gaslighting bullys?

The level of fabrication being implied here is beyond reasonable. I’m willing to believe Marcion was first but after that you lose me

@johnnonamegibbon3580

4 ай бұрын

I haven't watched it all but have seen similar things from Robert Price and others like Vincent. . He means that Marcion wrote the original and then it was made orthodox by the early Church Fathers. Some editor. He made Marcion's into Luke and also wrote Acts. And added some epistles. Jack Bull's been also working on this. You can see the editing in and out of things.

@CheddarBayBaby

4 ай бұрын

@@johnnonamegibbon3580 he seems to be implying more than that. He seems to be implying that Mark, Matthew and John were also all made at the same time by the editor. He also credits Marcion with creating the letters of Paul. I just find that unbelievable

@johnnonamegibbon3580

4 ай бұрын

@@CheddarBayBaby Ah, I see. Let's go full 'tism here: There is good evidence from Vincent and Jack Bull (I think that's his name) that whoever made Luke out of Marcion's work also likely wrote Acts. They appear extremely similar in style. And the original Pauline letters, Which are the ones found in Marcion's Evangelion, appear to have a similar style and tone to whoever wrote Marcion's Gospel. As for Mark, Mathew and Luke, and John, those are never believed to have been made by either person. Robert Price thinks John is a Gnostic work that was edited, likely by Valentinus originally. He thinks Mark could have been a proto version of Marcion as it also has similar anti Peter and apostle elements and similar theology. The best I can give him is that Vincent thinks the authors likely knew one another as we have no commentary on the gospels originally outside of Rome. Suggesting to him the authors must have lived close to one another. So it could have been compile by one person, but one person writing it all is silly.

@DrWrapperband

4 ай бұрын

@@CheddarBayBaby They probably just repurposed old documents, to start with, then filled in details later.

@sciptick

3 ай бұрын

​@@DrWrapperband We have no evidence of Marcion composing original text. He is seen collecting redacted texts together to make a NT. The anti-Marcionite coalition gathered their own favored (contradictory) texts into a competing NT that won in the end. Certainly the seven authentic Pauline letters make no sense composed after the Temple demolition.