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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. Watch This Interview Live📚 David's book — On the Origin of Christian Scripture 🎯 CHAPTERS 00:00 The myth of how we got the New Testament 03:45 Start with the manuscripts 06:24 Why some books survive: conflict 09:51 The Easter dispute & four gospels as compromise 13:03 Dating the New Testament to 160–200 AD 14:45 One book, four volumes 21:02 Story vs. history: the trap in NT scholarship 26:28 "There was never a council" 29:24 What other collections teach us 31:04 A hundred 2nd-century books about Jesus 40:45 Hearing the editor's voice in John 48:52 Matthew the tax collector: building credibility 54:23 Miraculous discoveries & provenance stories 56:29 Acts dates itself: literature vs. document 58:47 Marcion's gospel came first 1:05:19 What the editors added 1:13:19 Who edited the New Testament? 1:16:30 The Carpus clue in 2 Timothy 1:19:12 Polycarp or Irenaeus? 1:20:30 Rethinking the synoptic problem 1:26:40 Read your New Testament looking for the editor

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. John J. Collins - Apocalypticism as a Worldview 00:00:00 – Introduction & welcome 00:01:01 – What is an apocalypse? Defining the term 00:02:14 – Building the genre definition: the 1970s SBL project 00:06:39 – How the Dead Sea Scrolls changed the field 00:07:24 – Ongoing debates: does "apocalypticism" even exist as a category? 00:07:42 – Genre in action: the case of Fourth Ezra 00:09:11 – Daniel's statue and the idea of "total history" 00:15:52 – A Persian parallel: the Zoroastrian Bahman Yasht 00:17:47 – Prophecy after the fact (Daniel 11 and vaticinium ex eventu) 00:20:06 – The end isn't the end: resurrection and the afterlife as innovation 00:22:58 – Mythic frameworks: the combat myth (Baal, Yam, and Daniel 7) 00:30:05 – The Watchers as allegory for cultural disruption 00:33:04 – Dualism, Zoroastrian influence, and the Dead Sea Scrolls 00:36:32 – The Visions of Amram and the Melchizedek/Melchiresha figures 00:38:20 – Ascending to heaven: the evolving picture of the afterlife 00:41:51 – Millenarianism and the restoration of Israel 00:43:22 – The Similitudes of Enoch, the Son of Man, and Christian transmission 00:52:06 – Q&A: Was "apocalypse" a category ancient readers recognized? 00:54:47 – Q&A: Reading Daniel through a trauma-informed lens 00:57:12 – Q&A: Thoughts on Michael Heiser's divine council/watcher work 00:59:37 – Q&A: "The time is fulfilled" — Mark, Daniel, and apocalyptic timelines 01:02:31 – The Jewish–Christian "parting of the ways" reconsidered 01:05:31 – Geopolitical fault lines: Persia, Greece, Rome, and apocalyptic literature 01:09:03 – Closing thoughts

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]

In this interview, I sit down with biblical scholar Laura Nasrallah to discuss her book Archaeology and the Letters of Paul. We explore how archaeological evidence — from manumission inscriptions to ancient toilets — complicates our understanding of slavery, hospitality, grief, and ethnicity in Paul's world, while challenging popular misconceptions about "biblical archaeology." The conversation moves through:- Case studies on enslavement in Corinthians and Philemon- The burdens of ancient hospitality- Grief and loss in Corinth- Ethnic tension in Romans- The question of pseudepigraphy and Pauline authorshipLaura's Book (Affiliate link) To watch these interview live and engage with my online community on bible scholarship and early Christianity Consider joining my Community - https://www.cjcornthwaite.com/community FOLLOW FOR MORE- YouTube: @cjcornthwaite - Website: cjcornthwaite.com- Email: [email protected]

What if one of early Christianity's most mysterious documents has been hiding two completely different texts — side by side — for nearly 2,000 years? WATCH INTERVIEW LIVE HERE That's exactly what New Testament scholar Alan Garrow argues in his groundbreaking new book The Didache Discoveries. In this interview, we dig into his stunning findings: buried inside the Didache is what he believes is the actual Apostolic Decree — compiled by James the brother of Jesus and the twelve apostles around 48 CE — and a missing epistle of John referenced in 3 John 9.If Garrow is right, this changes how we read Paul's letters, the Synoptic Gospels, and the Gospel of John. It may even offer solutions to the notorious Synoptic Problem.In this conversation we cover:- What the Didache actually is and why scholars have puzzled over it for decades- How Garrow identified two separate hidden documents within it- The Apostolic Decree: what it says and how it functioned as early Christian Scripture- The Missing Epistle of John — and why its discovery matters for understanding Johannine theology- What this means for Paul, the Synoptic Problem, and the development of the New Testament Alan Garrow's WebsiteAlan's Book - The Didache Discoveries ⁠Get the book here━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Join My Community - SkepeRead My Substack Patreon FOLLOW FOR MORE - YouTube: @cjcornthwaite - Instagram: @cjcornthwaite- Website: cjcornthwaite.com

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

In this interview, I had the pleasure of speaking with Professor Teresa Morgan (Oxford) about her landmark book Roman Faith and Christian Faith: Pistis and Fides in the Early Roman Empire and Early Churches (2015). ⁠WATCH INTERVIEW HERE⁠ We explore how the Greek word pistis and Latin fides — both rooted in the concept of trust — were used across the ancient Mediterranean world, and how early Christians gradually transformed this everyday language into the rich, complex concept of "faith" we have today. Topics range from Augustine's influential (but limiting) definition of faith, to Paul's "cascade of trust," to the Council of Nicaea's pivotal shift toward propositional belief. Enjoy! Dr. Morgan's books (affiliate links)📖 Roman Faith and Christian Faith: Pistis and Fides in the Early Roman Empire and Early Churches (Oxford University Press, 2015)📖 Trust in Atonement - God, Creation, an Reconciliation (Eerdmans, 2024

For John, Jesus divine. And makes his followers divineWhat does the Gospel of John actually claim about Jesus — and about everyone else? WATCH INTERVIEW HERE In this conversation, I sit down with Dr. Hugo Mendez (UNC Chapel Hill) to talk about his new book The Gospel of John: A New History (Oxford University Press), and the result is one of the most genuinely surprising readings of John I've encountered.Most readers know John as the gospel that "makes Jesus divine." That's half the story. The other half — the one Mendez argues we've been missing for centuries — is that John's Jesus extends that same divinity to his followers. The logos becomes flesh, yes. But the logos also draws human beings into oneness with God, gives them the glory he had with the Father, and even tells them in John 10, "you are gods."We get into:- Why John is almost certainly the work of a single author (and where chapter 21 gives itself away as a later addition)- How John knew and creatively reworked Mark, Matthew, and Luke — the Lazarus story is a wild example- John's Philonic logos theology and why it isn't yet 4th-century Trinitarian thought- The deification of believers — what scholars have missed about John 10 and John 17- Mendez's argument that humans in John may also be angelified (John 1:51 and the angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man)- Why Mendez calls John the first apocryphal gospel — and how it pioneered the eyewitness-claim playbook later used by Thomas, Mary, and the Protevangelium of James- The Beloved Disciple as a literary device, not John son of Zebedee- How the Johannine epistles and even Revelation may belong to a wider tradition of works imitating the Gospel of John. Dr. Mendez's books (affiliate links)📘 The Gospel of John: A New History (Oxford University Press, 2025) 📘 The Epistles of John: Origins, Authorship, Purpose (Cambridge University Press, 2026)

Bart Ehrman — one of the world's leading New Testament scholars and a self-described agnostic — makes a surprising argument: the West owes more to Jesus than it realizes. Not for salvation. Not for atonement. For something hiding in plain sight. ⁠Watch This Instead⁠ 📖 Love Thy Stranger by Bart Ehrman: (Affiliate Link)🎙️ Bart Ehrman's channel: In this conversation we explore Ehrman's new book Love Thy Stranger: How the Teachings of Jesus Transformed the Moral Conscience of the West — and the historical case that Jesus invented something the ancient Greco-Roman world simply didn't have: the idea that you should care for strangers, enemies, and the poor not because it benefits you, but because they're human.We also uncover one of the most striking ironies in the history of religion: Jesus almost certainly got crucified for teaching that God forgives freely — no sacrifice required. His followers then turned his death into the very mechanism he was arguing against.In this conversation:- Why C.S. Lewis's universal morality argument doesn't hold up- What the Greco-Roman world actually believed about the poor- How Jesus radicalized Jewish ethics through apocalypticism- Why Jesus taught forgiveness — and Paul taught atonement- How Basil of Caesarea institutionalized altruism into hospitals and orphanages- Why an atheist scholar is saying thank you to Jesus

What if the resurrection wasn't the foundation of early Christianity — and most early Christians never even heard of it? Watch This Instead! That's exactly what New Testament scholar and historian Professor Marcus Vinzent argues in his groundbreaking research on Christ's resurrection in early Christianity. And in this conversation, he changed my mind. In this interview, Professor Vinzent walks through the stunning evidence that resurrection belief was not a universal early Christian belief — but a Pauline belief that slowly spread through the Christian movement and eventually became central to the faith we know today.We discuss: - Why major early Christian texts like the Didache and Shepherd of Hermas never mention the resurrection - How Marcion of Sinope may have introduced Paul's letters — and resurrection belief — into mainstream Christianity - Why the canonical gospels may have been written later than scholars assume - How theology shaped the resurrection stories, not the other way around - What "docetism" actually reveals about early Christian controversy If you've ever wondered where the resurrection story came from, why the gospel accounts contradict each other, or what early Christians actually believed — this conversation is for you. More From Markus Vinzent Get the book! Christ's Resurrection in Early Christianity (affiliate link) Follow Markus & Team on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@Patristica Markus' Academia Page

Did Jesus actually predict his own second coming — or did the early church invent it? I sat down with Dr. Tucker Ferda (Pittsburgh Theological Seminary) to talk about his book "Jesus and His Promised Second Coming: Jewish Eschatology and Christian Origins" — and what I found was one of the most honest and challenging historical arguments I've encountered. Watch this interview instead 📖 Tucker's Book: Jesus and His Promised Second Coming: Jewish Eschatology and Christian Origins (Affiliate Link)🎓 Tucker's Faculty Page: 📄 Academia.edu: ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━  📱 FOLLOW FOR MORE  - YouTube: @cjcornthwaite  - Instagram: @cjcornthwaite - Website: ⁠⁠⁠cjcornthwaite.com⁠⁠⁠ - Email: [email protected] 🎙️ FOOTNOTE FAMOUS Conversations with the world’s top scholars of the Bible and Christian origins.  🔗⁠⁠⁠https://www.footnotefamous.com/⁠⁠⁠ SUPPORT THE CHANNEL Patreon - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/FootnoteFamous⁠⁠⁠  YouTube Memberships - ⁠⁠⁠C. J. Cornthwaite - YouTube⁠⁠⁠ Book a 1:1 Conversation With Me: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.cjcornthwaite.com/book-online⁠⁠⁠  ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Why don't the Gospels describe what Jesus looked like?Every ancient biographer described their subject's physical appearance — except the Gospel writers. Want to watch this instead? In this interview, we explore:- Why the silence on Jesus' appearance is MORE surprising than you think- What ancient "physiognomy" reveals about how Greeks and Romans read bodies- The suffering servant problem — why early Christians struggled with an "ugly" Jesus- How clothing in the Gospels reveals Jesus' radical social message- The emperor cult and why Jesus' appearance inverts Roman power- What the transfiguration almost — but doesn't quite — tell us📖 John Nelson's Book: "Jesus' Physical Appearance" - (Amazon Affiliate Link)John's blog - Behind The Gospels ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━  📱 FOLLOW FOR MORE  - YouTube: @cjcornthwaite  - Instagram: @cjcornthwaite - Website: ⁠⁠cjcornthwaite.com⁠⁠ - Email: [email protected] 🎙️ FOOTNOTE FAMOUS Conversations with the world’s top scholars of the Bible and Christian origins.  🔗⁠⁠https://www.footnotefamous.com/⁠⁠ SUPPORT THE CHANNEL Patreon - ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/FootnoteFamous⁠⁠  YouTube Memberships - ⁠⁠C. J. Cornthwaite - YouTube⁠⁠ Book a 1:1 Conversation With Me: ⁠⁠https://www.cjcornthwaite.com/book-online⁠⁠  ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Are the Gospels historically accurate? In this conversation with Dr. Richard C. Miller (author of "Resurrection and Reception in Early Christianity"), we examine the evidence that biblical scholars use to evaluate Gospel reliability—and why most historians don't treat them as eyewitness accounts. WATCH THIS INTERVIEW ON YOUTUBE Dr. Miller's Book: Resurrection and Reception in Early Christianity (Amazon Affiliate Link)🔍 KEY TOPICS COVERED:- Why biblical studies has been "sequestered" from normal historical methods- How ancient biography actually worked (vs. modern assumptions)- The Julius Proculus parallel: Roman "eyewitness testimony" that evolved over centuries- Why gospel writers had no interest in historical accuracy- The translation fable pattern across Mediterranean cultures- What "son of god" actually meant in the Roman world ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━  📱 FOLLOW FOR MORE  - YouTube: @cjcornthwaite  - Instagram: @cjcornthwaite - Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠cjcornthwaite.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - Email: [email protected] 🎙️ FOOTNOTE FAMOUS Conversations with the world’s top scholars of the Bible and Christian origins.  🔗⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.footnotefamous.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ SUPPORT THE CHANNEL Patreon - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/FootnoteFamous⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  YouTube Memberships - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠C. J. Cornthwaite - YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Book a 1:1 Conversation With Me: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.cjcornthwaite.com/book-online⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━