Footnote Famous

Who was Josephus? What does he say about Jesus? And did the author of Luke-Acts copy from Josephus? I sat down with Steve Mason, one of the world's leading Josephus scholars, to investigate the evidence.Watch this interview insteadWhat we uncover is remarkable: the same unusual Greek terminology, the same historical figures mentioned in the same configurations, and historical "mistakes" in Luke that only make sense if the author was working from Josephus's account.📚 EVIDENCE COVERED:- The Quirinius census problem (and why it matters)- Judas the Galilean and Theudas - why Luke gets them backwards- "The Egyptian" and the Sicarii - a smoking gun?- Why Luke calls the Pharisees "the most accurate school"- The mysterious Lysanias of AbileneSteve's Books- Steve Mason, Josephus and the New Testament (Affiliate Link)- Steve Mason, "Jews, Judaeans, Judaizing, Judaism: Problems of Categorization in Ancient History." (That Famous Paper)My Article on Jews/Judaeans - Wayward Jews, God-fearing Gentiles, or Curious Pagans?━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📱 FOLLOW FOR MORE - YouTube: @cjcornthwaite - Instagram: @cjcornthwaite- Website: ⁠⁠⁠cjcornthwaite.com⁠⁠⁠- Email: [email protected]🎙️ FOOTNOTE FAMOUSConversations with the world’s top scholars of the Bible and Christian origins. 🔗⁠⁠⁠https://www.footnotefamous.com/⁠⁠⁠SUPPORT THE CHANNELPatreon - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/FootnoteFamous⁠⁠⁠ YouTube Memberships - ⁠⁠⁠C. J. Cornthwaite - YouTube⁠⁠⁠Book a 1:1 Conversation With Me: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.cjcornthwaite.com/book-online⁠⁠⁠ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Paula Fredriksen joins me to discuss her new book "Ancient Christianity: The First 500 Years" - a masterful overview of how diverse early Christian movements evolved into the institutional church.Watch the interview on YouTube instead.Professor Fredriksen (Boston University) is one of the world's leading scholars of early Christianity, Paul, and Jewish-Christian relations. Her previous books include "Paul: The Pagans' Apostle" and "When Christians Were Jews."In this conversation, we explore:- How Jewish scriptures in Greek shaped early Christianity- The surprising diversity of second-century Christianities- What we actually know about early Christian persecution- Constantine's complex relationship with the church- Apocalyptic expectations and their evolution- Asceticism, celibacy, and religious authorityPaula Fredriksen, Ancient Christianities: The First Five Hundred Years (Affiliate Link)━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📱 FOLLOW FOR MORE - YouTube: @cjcornthwaite - Instagram: @cjcornthwaite- Website: ⁠⁠cjcornthwaite.com⁠⁠- Email: [email protected]🎙️ FOOTNOTE FAMOUSConversations with the world’s top scholars of the Bible and Christian origins. 🔗⁠⁠https://www.footnotefamous.com/⁠⁠SUPPORT THE CHANNELPatreon - ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/FootnoteFamous⁠⁠ YouTube Memberships - ⁠⁠C. J. Cornthwaite - YouTube⁠⁠Book a 1:1 Conversation With Me: ⁠⁠https://www.cjcornthwaite.com/book-online⁠⁠ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Why do biblical scholars say Paul didn't write half the letters attributed to him? I sat down with Dr. Harry Maier, from Vancouver School of Theology, to understand exactly how scholars determine authorship of ancient letters—and why some of Paul's letters are considered "disputed."Want to watch this instead? Find the video here!Dr. Maier's Academia page - https://vst.academia.edu/HMaier ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📱 FOLLOW FOR MORE - YouTube: @cjcornthwaite - Instagram: @cjcornthwaite- Website: ⁠cjcornthwaite.com⁠- Email: [email protected]🎙️ FOOTNOTE FAMOUSConversations with the world’s top scholars of the Bible and Christian origins. 🔗⁠https://www.footnotefamous.com/⁠SUPPORT THE CHANNELPatreon - ⁠https://www.patreon.com/FootnoteFamous⁠ YouTube Memberships - ⁠C. J. Cornthwaite - YouTube⁠Book a 1:1 Conversation With Me: ⁠https://www.cjcornthwaite.com/book-online⁠ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Anders Petersen (University of Aarhus) bridges evolutionary biology and New Testament studies to argue that religion functions as emotional investment in shared symbolic systems rather than abstract belief. We discuss why humans aren't naturally social (unlike bees or ants), how pistis means "faithfulness" not "faith," why the Gospel texts are myths rather than historical records, and what it means to embrace Christianity as a 21st-century tradition rather than returning to Jesus's original religion.Links- Prof. Petersen's Academia page- The Emergence and Evolution of Religion (Edited Volume - Affiliate Link)Anders Klostergaard Petersen is professor and chair of research at the Department for the Study of Religion at Aarhus University, Denmark. He has published extensively in the fields of Late Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity, as well as on methodological and theoretical questions pertaining to the overall study of religion and culture. He is currently involved in a grand project on cultural evolution with a special focus on the history of religion.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📱 FOLLOW FOR MORE - YouTube: @cjcornthwaite - Instagram: @cjcornthwaite- Website: ⁠cjcornthwaite.com⁠- Email: [email protected]🎙️ FOOTNOTE FAMOUSConversations with the world’s top scholars of the Bible and Christian origins. 🔗⁠https://www.footnotefamous.com/⁠SUPPORT THE CHANNELPatreon - ⁠https://www.patreon.com/FootnoteFamous⁠ YouTube Memberships - ⁠C. J. Cornthwaite - YouTube⁠Book a 1:1 Conversation With Me: ⁠https://www.cjcornthwaite.com/book-online⁠ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

What can 2,000-year-old letters tell us about how Paul actually lived? I sat down with papyrologist Peter Arzt-Grabner to find out what ancient papyri reveal about Paul's real life - and the answers shocked me.Peter's Academia Page Peter's book, "Letters and Letter Writing" - (Sponsored Link)━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📱 FOLLOW FOR MORE - YouTube: @cjcornthwaite - Instagram: @cjcornthwaite- Website: ⁠cjcornthwaite.com⁠- Email: [email protected]🎙️ FOOTNOTE FAMOUSConversations with the world’s top scholars of the Bible and Christian origins. 🔗⁠https://www.footnotefamous.com/⁠SUPPORT THE CHANNELPatreon - ⁠https://www.patreon.com/FootnoteFamous⁠ YouTube Memberships - ⁠C. J. Cornthwaite - YouTube⁠Book a 1:1 Conversation With Me: ⁠https://www.cjcornthwaite.com/book-online⁠ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━