How sad not to have actually spoken with a Christian theologian about the history of Christianity - as if a secular historian would know the Bible and the history of Christian thought, practice and influence better than a seminary professor would. I was excited to listen to the podcast and became more and more disillusioned as I listened since there were so many obvious misunderstandings on Holland's part. Perhaps Bari could invite a Theologian from Westminster Seminary or Reformation Bible College for example to clear up many misconceptions Holland put forth.
It is not true that “One of the things that Dominion does so powerfully is it shows the ways in which things we take for granted were actually Christian ideas. Some are obvious: the ideas of charity or forgiveness or redemption.” These are Jewish values, which preceded Christianity. Also Judaism is the first monotheistic religion, Christianity the second. Should be how Judaism remade the world!
While I have respect for Tom’s knowledge of history, it is quite clear that he hasn’t the faintest idea of what true Christianity is about or taken time to actually read the Bible.
For example, he says the phrase “man become god” in multiple places, when throughout the Bible the entirety of Jesus ministry is about God becoming a man and giving his perfect life as a ransom for all of our sins.
One of foundational axioms of Christianity is that all people are hopelessly evil and only restrained by morality, law, and order. He pretty clearly does not believe this to be true.
I did not notice a single reference to the Resurrection as important in Christianity. It's all crucifixion. But if Jesus did not rise from the dead, if He was just a really nice man with some nice ideas about how to live, if Jesus is just a symbol of how to live life sacrificially, then I agree with Flannery O'Connor on being informed by a nice modern "Christian" about Holy Communion/Mass being simply a symbol: "If it's just a symbol, then to hell with it."
He did mention it early in the podcast (time-mark 13:00) - and I thought it very well explained:
"Without the Resurrection, the crucifixion has no significance at all - Paul says this: 'If there is no Resurrection, my preaching is absolute nonsense'. And more than that, in the opinion of the early Christians, it suggests the kind of radical maneuver that God turns out to have done, in having come down and played the role of a slave, rather than of a conqueror - the implications of that wouldn't have reverberated at all if the Resurrection hadn't happened. It would simply affirm the fact that the strong govern the world, and the weak have to suck it up."
Unfortunately, after this profound observation, he seemed to forget his own insight. He ended up attributing the unique success of Christianity's message across cultures and centuries to everything except that "radical maneuver of God".
Thank you, Bari, for doing this interview. I respect you profoundly for being able to have a generous and intelligent conversation about a topic that many other journalists would find difficult to treat in such a way. But I'm particularly touched that you as a Jew could have this conversation, because there has been so much unnecessary bad blood between Jews and Christians for far too long, and I regret this as a Catholic Christian for the contribution that the Church has made to this animosity.
May the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob bless you and yours during these holy days.
For some expansion on these topics, at least tangentially, and with their own particular focus on the issues of Faith and Science, I recommend two books:
Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, by Harold Kushner
I have just listened to your discussion with Tom Holland about Christianity. As usual, on Honesty and within the Free Press it was nuanced, intelligent and informative. It is the reason I am a subscriber. Such outlets as the Free Press and the Dispatch give me hope that there can be discussions about the world that are not driven totally by some agenda.
However, as an orthodox Jew living in Israel, I was surprised to hear Tom Holland refer to the Jews around Jesus’ time and afterwards as ‘Judaeans’, and secondly, to hear him say that the world and the Jews, themselves only began to use the word Jew, to describe themselves a number of years after the destruction of the Temple and that, furthermore, it was derived from a Greek word. Last and perhaps most disturbing was his assertion we Jews only began to look upon ourselves as being one people when we no longer were connected to the land of Judaea implying that before that, we were only citizens of a certain particular place. Yes, Paul was most certainly a Jew though he came from Tarsus which was located north of Israel which now is a part of Turkey.
It is true that in the Bible the word Jew is derived from יהודה, Judah, or Yehuda, the fourth son of Leah and Jacob and whose tribe and land ascribed to it, along with that of Benjamin were the only two tribes remaining in Israel after the exile of the ten tribes of Israel. The land of those ten tribes was called Israel. The land of Judah and Benjamin was called Judah. So that the word, Yehuda, referred mostly to the land of Yehuda or Judah.
However, in Esther we read: אִ֣ישׁ יְהוּדִ֔י הָיָ֖ה בְּשׁוּשַׁ֣ן הַבִּירָ֑ה וּשְׁמ֣וֹ מׇרְדֳּכַ֗י בֶּ֣ן יָאִ֧יר בֶּן־שִׁמְעִ֛י בֶּן־קִ֖ישׁ אִ֥ישׁ יְמִינִֽי׃. –
"There was a Jewish man in Shushan, the capital, and his name was Mordechai, son of Jair, son of Shimei, son or Kish, a Benjamite.
So we see the word being used in the Bible. I’m not sure why Mr. Holland says the word to describe the Jewish people some time after the destruction of the Temple and the second exile of the Jewish people and that it has a Greek derivation.
Indeed, after the destruction of the first Temple most of the Jews were exiled to Babylonia. Even after they were allowed to return to Israel and rebuild the Temple many Jews remained in Babylonia. In fact, by a century or more before the times of Jesus, there were Jews in many places in the ancient world. Needless to say, they did not call them selves Judaeans. In fact, because most were descended from the tribe of Judah, the word, Jew gradually was transformed from a description of a place to a more ethnic description of a people. Coins have been found along with a wedding contract which use the word Jew to describe us as a people.
I can assure you that the Jews living in Babylon at the time of the Second Temple and even those living in Israel did not refer to themselves as Judaeans, i.e. to refer to place or to a country. A great number of Jews did not live in Israel. And there were Jews in the north: the Galil, or Galilee. When the Greeks and the Roman attacked, they defended themselves as all members of the same Jewish people. At that time, the word Yisroel, (Israel) was more frequently used to describe the Jewish people.
Last, it is true that the Torah has many mitzvohs spanning all aspects of life and that maintaining our own laws, lifestyle and identity as a people was of primary importance so that, in many ways we were different from the cultures in which we lived. However, in spite of whatever Paul and Christians theologians throughout the centuries have asserted, our conception of spirituality and of G-d was not narrow at all and indeed, was very universal. Jonah, when asked to name his country and his people says:
Especially since October 7 and clearly for years prior to that (as we have come to see) there has been a concerted effort ( clearly funded by Qatar and other Moslem groups) to delegitimize our connection as Jews to the land of Israel. But of course this is nothing new. The Romes changed the name of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolia and changed the name of Israel to Palestine for that very reason. And before that the Seleucid Greeks did their best to severe our connection with the Torah.
I have no doubt that Mr. Holland has the best and most scholarly of intentions. But in this use of one single word to describe a people who have maintained their identity and their belief for centuries and in every kind of country, and in the most difficult of conditions I have to say that he has made a mistake. And it is a mistake that was disturbing to me because, on the surface and to a not very particular listener it would seem that even in Roman and Greek times, our identity as Jews and the very name, itself, is now also in question.
I hope you get my letter and are able to read it. I didn’t think it would be read by you or by anyone if it got buried in the comments section. I don’t have Facebook or X or Instagram so I could not used those mediums either.
I hope that you can address this issue. I only that Rabbi Jonathan Sachs were still with us because I know he’d address in the most respectful and informative way. If you can think of another course, perhaps Rabbi Soleveitchik who can address it, I think it would be very beneficial.
The genius of Christianity is it perfects the human need for sacrifice. If indeed God needs a sacrifice if he is to give us our wishes then we need the perfect sacrifice. This is the message of Cain and Able: Jews sacrifice lambs every Passover (only symbolically now of course), Muslims sacrifice all sorts of animals literally every EID, but Christians sacrifice God himself and give God to God as the final sacrifice. and we do this by eating God. Catholics do this every single Sunday too. Jesus is the Final sacrifice. God allowed humans to kill God for God. The point is Christians no longer need to sacrifice any more lives of any living things any more.
At the end of the podcast, Holland talked about ignoring the blatant historic inaccuracies of the Gospels. Does anyone know what inaccuracies he is referring to?
So interesting! And while I agree that Jesus was definitely an activist for the well-being of all humanity, especially those who are considered to be "the last" in line. Which makes sense because at that time and place, there was seemingly little recourse for those unfortunate people. They were often left to fend for themselves however they could. However, what I will put out there is that part of Jesus' core message always centered on love and its kissing-cousin, respect. It was about how one treats another person. The other part was that we, humans, are not the center of the universe. God is.
Thank you to TFP for raising the topic of religion. When I took the survey a couple months ago it was topic I requested, and it’s nice to see TFP respond. Where I live, in the progressive SF Bay Area, there are few places I can speak openly with others about spirituality and faith. Holland’s discussion of the division between the secular and the religious being a (Latin) Christian invention was a new idea to me. I agree with him it is a “fatal conceit” that having a secular space is somehow neutral ground. It feels as though that division has made religion unwelcome in most contexts and not a topic of conversation in polite discourse, especially among the educated class. I also think that division has contributed to the seeming contradiction between science and faith that some readers here have contended with.
As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, what I find missing in this discourse is the history arc of Judeo-Christianity found in the Book of Mormon. This religious text, aptly subtitled “another testament of Jesus Christ,” is an ancient record of descendants of Abraham through the line of Joesph whom God led out of Jerusalem in 600 BC and brought them to settle somewhere in the American continents. These people had and observed the Law of Moses as recorded in the Old Testament—they brought with them their own record of it—and had a succession of prophets through the centuries that foretold of Jesus Christ. They had an understanding of the ultimate blood sacrifice He would perform that would fulfill the law and redeem believers from sin and all people from death. Following his death and resurrection, He appeared to these ancient people and taught them the sermon on the mount and other teachings, quoting heavily from Isaiah and expounding its meaning. They lived in peace, but interestingly around the same time as Christianity went through a change in the Old World between 200-400AD, these people fell into apostasy and their civilization decayed and fell, according to prophecy. The Book of Mormon foretells of the discovery of the new world and how the “Gentiles” would restore the ancient covenant with God in the “latter-days.” This is one interpretation of “the first shall be last and the last shall be first.”
Through the Book of Mormon lens, I view Jews and Christians not as separate but one covenant people under the umbrella label of Israel. This isn’t exactly a bloodline distinguisher and is universal in that anyone can choose to enter into a covenant relationship with God.
I know others will strongly disagree with me, and that’s okay. I think many people are not familiar with what the Book of Mormon actually is or where it came from, but it adds profound dimension to the stories of both Judaism and Christianity.
Lastly, I appreciate Bari’s question of “is it true?” Personally I believe most religions and ancient traditions have parts that are true and often the truths are what they share. I believe truth is revealed by the Holy Ghost to our minds and our hearts.
How sad not to have actually spoken with a Christian theologian about the history of Christianity - as if a secular historian would know the Bible and the history of Christian thought, practice and influence better than a seminary professor would. I was excited to listen to the podcast and became more and more disillusioned as I listened since there were so many obvious misunderstandings on Holland's part. Perhaps Bari could invite a Theologian from Westminster Seminary or Reformation Bible College for example to clear up many misconceptions Holland put forth.
Read Jonathan Cahn’s book The Dragon’s Prophecy! He details Old Testament prophecies that are being fulfilled in this day and age.
It is not true that “One of the things that Dominion does so powerfully is it shows the ways in which things we take for granted were actually Christian ideas. Some are obvious: the ideas of charity or forgiveness or redemption.” These are Jewish values, which preceded Christianity. Also Judaism is the first monotheistic religion, Christianity the second. Should be how Judaism remade the world!
While I have respect for Tom’s knowledge of history, it is quite clear that he hasn’t the faintest idea of what true Christianity is about or taken time to actually read the Bible.
For example, he says the phrase “man become god” in multiple places, when throughout the Bible the entirety of Jesus ministry is about God becoming a man and giving his perfect life as a ransom for all of our sins.
One of foundational axioms of Christianity is that all people are hopelessly evil and only restrained by morality, law, and order. He pretty clearly does not believe this to be true.
Agreed
I did not notice a single reference to the Resurrection as important in Christianity. It's all crucifixion. But if Jesus did not rise from the dead, if He was just a really nice man with some nice ideas about how to live, if Jesus is just a symbol of how to live life sacrificially, then I agree with Flannery O'Connor on being informed by a nice modern "Christian" about Holy Communion/Mass being simply a symbol: "If it's just a symbol, then to hell with it."
He did mention it early in the podcast (time-mark 13:00) - and I thought it very well explained:
"Without the Resurrection, the crucifixion has no significance at all - Paul says this: 'If there is no Resurrection, my preaching is absolute nonsense'. And more than that, in the opinion of the early Christians, it suggests the kind of radical maneuver that God turns out to have done, in having come down and played the role of a slave, rather than of a conqueror - the implications of that wouldn't have reverberated at all if the Resurrection hadn't happened. It would simply affirm the fact that the strong govern the world, and the weak have to suck it up."
Unfortunately, after this profound observation, he seemed to forget his own insight. He ended up attributing the unique success of Christianity's message across cultures and centuries to everything except that "radical maneuver of God".
Thanks for the helpful information. I have an aversion to listening to podcasts, so was relying on the "edited" transcript.
Thank you, Bari, for doing this interview. I respect you profoundly for being able to have a generous and intelligent conversation about a topic that many other journalists would find difficult to treat in such a way. But I'm particularly touched that you as a Jew could have this conversation, because there has been so much unnecessary bad blood between Jews and Christians for far too long, and I regret this as a Catholic Christian for the contribution that the Church has made to this animosity.
May the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob bless you and yours during these holy days.
For some expansion on these topics, at least tangentially, and with their own particular focus on the issues of Faith and Science, I recommend two books:
Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, by Harold Kushner
The Tao of Physics, by Fritjof Capra
Dear Bari and the Free Press,
I have just listened to your discussion with Tom Holland about Christianity. As usual, on Honesty and within the Free Press it was nuanced, intelligent and informative. It is the reason I am a subscriber. Such outlets as the Free Press and the Dispatch give me hope that there can be discussions about the world that are not driven totally by some agenda.
However, as an orthodox Jew living in Israel, I was surprised to hear Tom Holland refer to the Jews around Jesus’ time and afterwards as ‘Judaeans’, and secondly, to hear him say that the world and the Jews, themselves only began to use the word Jew, to describe themselves a number of years after the destruction of the Temple and that, furthermore, it was derived from a Greek word. Last and perhaps most disturbing was his assertion we Jews only began to look upon ourselves as being one people when we no longer were connected to the land of Judaea implying that before that, we were only citizens of a certain particular place. Yes, Paul was most certainly a Jew though he came from Tarsus which was located north of Israel which now is a part of Turkey.
It is true that in the Bible the word Jew is derived from יהודה, Judah, or Yehuda, the fourth son of Leah and Jacob and whose tribe and land ascribed to it, along with that of Benjamin were the only two tribes remaining in Israel after the exile of the ten tribes of Israel. The land of those ten tribes was called Israel. The land of Judah and Benjamin was called Judah. So that the word, Yehuda, referred mostly to the land of Yehuda or Judah.
However, in Esther we read: אִ֣ישׁ יְהוּדִ֔י הָיָ֖ה בְּשׁוּשַׁ֣ן הַבִּירָ֑ה וּשְׁמ֣וֹ מׇרְדֳּכַ֗י בֶּ֣ן יָאִ֧יר בֶּן־שִׁמְעִ֛י בֶּן־קִ֖ישׁ אִ֥ישׁ יְמִינִֽי׃. –
"There was a Jewish man in Shushan, the capital, and his name was Mordechai, son of Jair, son of Shimei, son or Kish, a Benjamite.
So we see the word being used in the Bible. I’m not sure why Mr. Holland says the word to describe the Jewish people some time after the destruction of the Temple and the second exile of the Jewish people and that it has a Greek derivation.
Indeed, after the destruction of the first Temple most of the Jews were exiled to Babylonia. Even after they were allowed to return to Israel and rebuild the Temple many Jews remained in Babylonia. In fact, by a century or more before the times of Jesus, there were Jews in many places in the ancient world. Needless to say, they did not call them selves Judaeans. In fact, because most were descended from the tribe of Judah, the word, Jew gradually was transformed from a description of a place to a more ethnic description of a people. Coins have been found along with a wedding contract which use the word Jew to describe us as a people.
I can assure you that the Jews living in Babylon at the time of the Second Temple and even those living in Israel did not refer to themselves as Judaeans, i.e. to refer to place or to a country. A great number of Jews did not live in Israel. And there were Jews in the north: the Galil, or Galilee. When the Greeks and the Roman attacked, they defended themselves as all members of the same Jewish people. At that time, the word Yisroel, (Israel) was more frequently used to describe the Jewish people.
Last, it is true that the Torah has many mitzvohs spanning all aspects of life and that maintaining our own laws, lifestyle and identity as a people was of primary importance so that, in many ways we were different from the cultures in which we lived. However, in spite of whatever Paul and Christians theologians throughout the centuries have asserted, our conception of spirituality and of G-d was not narrow at all and indeed, was very universal. Jonah, when asked to name his country and his people says:
וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אֲלֵיהֶ֖ם עִבְרִ֣י אָנֹ֑כִי וְאֶת־יְהֹוָ֞ה אֱלֹהֵ֤י הַשָּׁמַ֙יִם֙ אֲנִ֣י יָרֵ֔א אֲשֶׁר־עָשָׂ֥ה אֶת־הַיָּ֖ם וְאֶת־הַיַּבָּשָֽׁה׃
“I am a Hebrew,” he replied. “I worship the ETERNAL, the God of Heaven, who made both sea and land.”
Our conception of G-d has never been a narrow one. He has never been our G-d but the G-d of the Heavens and the Earth.
This is a link to an article from the Shalom Hartman institute that gives an excellent overview of how the word Jew came into use.
https://www.hartman.org.il/how-did-the-word-jew-become-identified-with-the-jewish-people/
Especially since October 7 and clearly for years prior to that (as we have come to see) there has been a concerted effort ( clearly funded by Qatar and other Moslem groups) to delegitimize our connection as Jews to the land of Israel. But of course this is nothing new. The Romes changed the name of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolia and changed the name of Israel to Palestine for that very reason. And before that the Seleucid Greeks did their best to severe our connection with the Torah.
I have no doubt that Mr. Holland has the best and most scholarly of intentions. But in this use of one single word to describe a people who have maintained their identity and their belief for centuries and in every kind of country, and in the most difficult of conditions I have to say that he has made a mistake. And it is a mistake that was disturbing to me because, on the surface and to a not very particular listener it would seem that even in Roman and Greek times, our identity as Jews and the very name, itself, is now also in question.
I hope you get my letter and are able to read it. I didn’t think it would be read by you or by anyone if it got buried in the comments section. I don’t have Facebook or X or Instagram so I could not used those mediums either.
I hope that you can address this issue. I only that Rabbi Jonathan Sachs were still with us because I know he’d address in the most respectful and informative way. If you can think of another course, perhaps Rabbi Soleveitchik who can address it, I think it would be very beneficial.
Please keep up the good work.
All the best and Happy Chanukah.
Yeshaya Zimmerman
Beitar Ilit
Israel
The genius of Christianity is it perfects the human need for sacrifice. If indeed God needs a sacrifice if he is to give us our wishes then we need the perfect sacrifice. This is the message of Cain and Able: Jews sacrifice lambs every Passover (only symbolically now of course), Muslims sacrifice all sorts of animals literally every EID, but Christians sacrifice God himself and give God to God as the final sacrifice. and we do this by eating God. Catholics do this every single Sunday too. Jesus is the Final sacrifice. God allowed humans to kill God for God. The point is Christians no longer need to sacrifice any more lives of any living things any more.
Oh how I wish Tim Keller were still alive to be a guest to answer some of these types of questions on this podcast.
Thought provoking episode, which is the point of these very good conversations. Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to all.
At the end of the podcast, Holland talked about ignoring the blatant historic inaccuracies of the Gospels. Does anyone know what inaccuracies he is referring to?
So interesting! And while I agree that Jesus was definitely an activist for the well-being of all humanity, especially those who are considered to be "the last" in line. Which makes sense because at that time and place, there was seemingly little recourse for those unfortunate people. They were often left to fend for themselves however they could. However, what I will put out there is that part of Jesus' core message always centered on love and its kissing-cousin, respect. It was about how one treats another person. The other part was that we, humans, are not the center of the universe. God is.
Thank you to TFP for raising the topic of religion. When I took the survey a couple months ago it was topic I requested, and it’s nice to see TFP respond. Where I live, in the progressive SF Bay Area, there are few places I can speak openly with others about spirituality and faith. Holland’s discussion of the division between the secular and the religious being a (Latin) Christian invention was a new idea to me. I agree with him it is a “fatal conceit” that having a secular space is somehow neutral ground. It feels as though that division has made religion unwelcome in most contexts and not a topic of conversation in polite discourse, especially among the educated class. I also think that division has contributed to the seeming contradiction between science and faith that some readers here have contended with.
As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, what I find missing in this discourse is the history arc of Judeo-Christianity found in the Book of Mormon. This religious text, aptly subtitled “another testament of Jesus Christ,” is an ancient record of descendants of Abraham through the line of Joesph whom God led out of Jerusalem in 600 BC and brought them to settle somewhere in the American continents. These people had and observed the Law of Moses as recorded in the Old Testament—they brought with them their own record of it—and had a succession of prophets through the centuries that foretold of Jesus Christ. They had an understanding of the ultimate blood sacrifice He would perform that would fulfill the law and redeem believers from sin and all people from death. Following his death and resurrection, He appeared to these ancient people and taught them the sermon on the mount and other teachings, quoting heavily from Isaiah and expounding its meaning. They lived in peace, but interestingly around the same time as Christianity went through a change in the Old World between 200-400AD, these people fell into apostasy and their civilization decayed and fell, according to prophecy. The Book of Mormon foretells of the discovery of the new world and how the “Gentiles” would restore the ancient covenant with God in the “latter-days.” This is one interpretation of “the first shall be last and the last shall be first.”
Through the Book of Mormon lens, I view Jews and Christians not as separate but one covenant people under the umbrella label of Israel. This isn’t exactly a bloodline distinguisher and is universal in that anyone can choose to enter into a covenant relationship with God.
I know others will strongly disagree with me, and that’s okay. I think many people are not familiar with what the Book of Mormon actually is or where it came from, but it adds profound dimension to the stories of both Judaism and Christianity.
Lastly, I appreciate Bari’s question of “is it true?” Personally I believe most religions and ancient traditions have parts that are true and often the truths are what they share. I believe truth is revealed by the Holy Ghost to our minds and our hearts.
"I exist in the kind of shadowlands between belief and agnosticism."
Well put. I exist in the same space, wrestling with God every day.
I just checked: the word אלמנה (widow) occurs 44 times in Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), and יתום (orphan) occurs 30 times.
"Christianity came to define the entirety of the Western world."
OK, Jews are marginal, but Muslims?