Easter Message

available only on the Martyrmaid Substack up until now, which you should all go subscribe

to if you haven't already. But I thought I'd repost it here for everybody. So I hope you all had a blessed week and that you have a blessed day happy Easter. I'm content to die

“for my beliefs. So cut off my head and make me a martyr. The people will always remember”

it. No. Hell does it get? Hell does exist. God is a fort. God is an idea. It is a place. It is somewhere. Hell does exist. But it's a reference to something that transcends all this. So start this episode out. I thought I'd go with this. Well so the biblical scholar, Barty, Arman begins his introduction to the New Testament class in the following way. He says, even before he was born, it was known that he would be someone special. A supernatural being

informed his mother that the child she was to conceive would not be a mere mortal, but it would be divine. He was born miraculously and he became an unusually precosis young man. As

“an adult, he left home and went on an itinerant preaching ministry, urging his listeners”

to live not for the material things of this world, but for what is spiritual. He gathered a number of disciples around him who became convinced that his teachings were divinely inspired and no small part because he himself was divine. He proved it to them by doing many miracles, healing the sick, casting out demons and raising the dead. But at the end of his life, he roused opposition and his enemies delivered him over to the Roman authorities

for judgment. Still, after he left this world, he returned to meet his followers in order to convince them that he was not really dead but lived on in the heavenly realm. And later

“some of his followers wrote books about him. Now if they were really good students, really”

good students, and had read Professor Airman's book before starting his class, they would have already been in on the joke. But most of the students, assuming that they had at least a passing knowledge of the gospel story, are surprised when he tells them that he is not describing Jesus Christ, but the Neo-Pathagrian holy man, Apollonius of Tiana. Apollonius of Tiana lived during the same time as Jesus, although he managed to avoid

falling on the wrong side of Rome until much later, so he outlived Jesus by many years.

He died near the end of the first century. By the late third early fourth century, the spread

of Christianity was causing alarm among the pagan philosophers at the court of the Roman Emperor Diocletian. And so while simpler men took to the streets to go stamp out this strange new religion, the old fashioned way, the philosophers set out to attack the faith with public arguments in a series of anti-Christian polymix. One of these political tracks was by an infamous persecutor of Christians called Sassania's Hierocletes. Another was written

by Porphyry of Tire and was called Against the Christians. Both of those polymix used what had by then already become a well-worn trope among critics and enemies of Christianity in the Roman Empire. They both grew comparisons between the Christian Savior and Apollonius of Tiano. One of Apollonius's miracles is especially interesting for what we're talking about here. After Apollonius had traveled far and wide, purportedly studying under the naked

ones in Egypt and even trekking all the way to India, following in the footsteps of the

original Pythagoras. Apollonius returned to the Hellenistic world and finally settles

in the city of Ephesus. One day, he comes to understand that the city will soon be suffering a terrible plague. He warns the residents of this, but despite his reputation, the people

upon the city. The people, they come crawling back to him. They say, "We made a huge mistake.

“We should all listen to you. Apollonius of Tiano, please please help us." He says, "All right,”

I'll help you." But since you did not believe me the first time, I will only help you.

If you agree to follow my commands without question, well the people are desperate and so they agree. He tells the people that he will lead them to a spot at which they are all together. His chronicler, Phyllis Stratus, picks up the story from here. "Take courage for I will today put a stop to the course of the disease. And with these words he led the population entire to a theater, with the image of the averting God has since been set up.

And there he saw what seemed an old beggar, artfully blinking his eyes as if blind. And he carried a wallet and a crust of bread in it. And he was clad and filthy rags and was very

“squalled of countenance. Apollonius, therefore, ranged the Ephesians around him and said,”

"Pick up as many stones as you can and hurl them at this enemy of the gods." Now the Ephesians

wondered what he meant. And were shocked at the idea of murdering a stranger so manifestly miserable for he was begging and praying them to take mercy upon him. Nevertheless, the last Apollonius insisted and egged on the Ephesians to launch themselves on him and not let him go. And as soon as some of them began to take shots and hit him with their stones, the beggar, who had seemed to blink and be blind gave them all a sudden glance and show that his eyes were full

of fire. Then the Ephesians recognized that he was a demon and they stone him so thoroughly that their stones were heaped into a great care and around him. After a little pause, Apollonius bade them remove the stones and acquaint themselves with this wild animal which they had slain. When therefore they had exposed the object which they thought they had thrown their missiles at, they found that he had disappeared and instead of him there was a hound who resembled

inform and look a Malosean dog, but was in size the equal of the largest lion. There he lay before their eyes, pounded to a pulp by their stones and vomiting foam as mad dogs do. Accordingly, the statue of the Everting God, namely Hercules, has been set up over the spot

“where the ghost was slain in quote. What's hard to imagine a more horrible miracle than that?”

But the miracle worked and the plague was lifted from the city of Ephesus. If a Christian writer had written that story about a pagan holy man like like Apollonius of Tiana, historians today would probably assume that it had been made up to slander him, but Philistraris and the others who shared that story did so as an example of Apollonius's great power and understanding. They were proud of the story. Here's another version of it. And in this version,

we might recognize a bit more clearly the dynamics at play. This one also involves a terrible plague. Only this time, it's the real historical black death in 14th century France. Our storyteller is Giam Dimashah, a poet, and his story is related in his judgment of the King of Navar. He tells us that no physician or doctor was there who really knew the cause or origin, or what it was, nor was there any remedy, yet this melody was so great that it was called an epidemic.

The whole community is in an uproar and in despair. But soon there are some among them who claimed that they knew how this whole thing had gotten started.

So these ones, who were just a few at first, but then more as rumors began to spread,

and soon everyone was pointing the finger at the cause of all their troubles. "After that came a false treacherous and contemptible swine. This was shameful Israel, the wicked and disloyal who hated good and loved everything evil, who gave so much gold and silver and promises to Christians who then poisoned several rivers and fountains that had been clear and pure so that many had lost their lives, for whoever used them died suddenly.

Certainly ten times 100,000 died from it in country and in city, then finally this mortal calamity was noticed. He who sits on high and sees far, who governs and provides for everything, did not want this treachery to remain hidden. He revealed it and made it so generally known that they lost their lives and possessions, then every Jew was destroyed. Some hanged, others burned,

During one peak of the plague from 1348 to 1351, some 500 Jewish communities were destroyed, west of the Rhineland. The hysteria reached a level so that in some cities Jews were massacred as

soon as the first rumors began, the plague was in the area. For the French thinker and author

Renee Girard tells us that Guillaume de Machais tale and the tale of Apollonius in Ephesus are actually the same tale, not that they tell the same events obviously, but that the events they describe are examples of an anthropological process that runs so deep and fundamental to human beings that other versions, in various guises, are to be found at all times, in all parts of the world, from primitive mythologies to the religions and histories of great civilizations.

To take a more familiar example, maybe more familiar, we'll go with the Greek myth of Etapis.

“You might remember this story from high school or college, but just in case you don't remember”

the outlines, this is how it goes. Etapis's father, Lyus, had once as a young man been taken

into the house of a king to tutor the king's son. Instead of doing his job, he ended up raping the prince who committed suicide and Lyus was then forced cursed by the god Apollon. When Etapis is born, Lyus, who's a king by now, consults an oracle to learn that his son that was just born will one day kill him and so he orders the infant bound and he orders his wife, Etapis's mother, to kill the boy. Well, she can't bring herself to do it and so instead,

she gives the little boy to a servant to go do the job and so the servant climbs to a mountain top and leaves the baby to die of exposure. But of course, the baby is found by a shepherd and

“named Etapis by the shepherd, which means swollen foot because his feet were badly deformed”

from being so tightly bound. It was a deformity that would cause him to limp throughout his life. It was the boy becomes a man, one day Etapis consults an oracle himself, which warns him that one day he will mate with his own mother and shed the blood of his own father and so still believing that the shepherd and his wife are his own actual parents, he doesn't want this to happen so he flees the area to the city of thieves which unbeknownst to him

is the city where he was born and where his real parents live. On his way there, he encounters another man accompanied by his servants and he and the other man begin to argue over whose chariot should be given the right of way on the road. The other man loses his temper and attacks

“Etapis but Etapis overcomes him and throws him down from his chariot and the man is killed.”

Only much later in the story would Etapis learn that the man he'd killed was his father, King Elias. On the outskirts of thieves, Etapis encounters a sphinx, which is a creature with the breasts of a human female and a body and head of a lion in the wings of an eagle who has been terrorizing any thiebons or other travelers who cross her territory. She would ask them a riddle and those who could not answer the riddle were immediately devoured. Well, Etapis of course guesses the right

answer and the sphinx is defeated and she no longer harasses the city and so an appreciation of his heroism, the city grants Etapis the hand of the newly widowed queen, unbeknownst to anyone Etapis's own mother. Well, a plague then descends upon thieves. It's known by everyone to be a curse of some kind but nobody knows the cause of the curse. Some say it's punishment by the gods for King Elias's murder, having not been brought to justice and so King Etapis consults an oracle again

to try to find out the identity of the killer. And after some back and forth things get a little

testy because the oracles being indirect and evasive as oracles do and finally the oracle tells

him that he, Etapis, is the criminal that he has been looking for. What Etapis is outraged believes that his uncle, Creon, who he thinks is his brother and law, which I guess is both at this point, has paid this profit to accuse him of the murder and so he returns to go face and accuse his uncle slash brother and law, Creon. Well, at the confrontation, Etapis's wife who, again, still unknown to all is also his mother tries to calm things down. She says, Etapis pay no attention to the ramblings

of some oracle, why my dead husband Elias once consulted an oracle and he was given a prophecy that proof false. She told him that the profit predicted Elias would be killed by their own son,

Hearing her mention, the location of Elias's death, it's Etapis like a bolt of lightning and he

“demands more information about where the murder took place. And then ask his wife, his mother,”

to describe the physical appearance of her dead husband. And then witnesses are called in and soon, Etapis is put two and two together and realizes that the prophecy has been fulfilled and that he has committed both parasite and incest. His mother hangs herself and Etapis in one version he takes two pins from the clothing of its mother's corpse and puts out his eyes in another version it's a vengeful servant of Elias who blends in. He then goes into exile and he

wanders the countryside until he dies. And the killer now having met his fate, the plague is lifted from thieves. And then to complete the story of this star-crossed family, Etapis is two sons who had agreed to share rule over the kingdom after their father was gone. Instead, went to war with

“each other and both of them were killed. Girard uses Etapis as an example of a myth,”

par excellence. He uses myth in a somewhat idiosyncratic way, but that's okay. We'll get to that. It's starkly draws several stereotypes common to myth. Girard writes, quote,

"The plague is ravaging thieves. Here we have the first stereotype of persecution.

Etapis is responsible because he is killed his father and married his mother. Here is the second stereotype." The Oracle declares that in order to end the epidemic, the abominable criminal must be banished. The finality of persecution is explicit. The third stereotype has to do with the signs of a victim. The first is disability. Etapis limps. This hero from another country arrived in thieves unknown to anyone, a stranger in fact, if not in right. Finally, he is the son of the king

“and a king himself, the legitimate heir of Lyas. Like many other mythical characters,”

Etapis manages to combine the marginality of the outsider with the marginality of the insider. Like Ulysses at the end of the Odyssey, he is sometimes a stranger and a beggar and sometimes

in all powerful monarch. The more signs of a victim in individual bears, the more likely he is

to attract disaster. Etapis' infirmity, his past history is of exposure as an infant, his situation as a foreigner, and a newcomer, and a king, all make him a veritable conglomerate, a future victim's signs. We would not fail to observe this if the myth had been handed down to us as a purportedly historical document, and we would wonder at the meaning of all these signs, together with other stereotypes of persecution. There would be no doubt about the answer. We would certainly see in

the myth what we see in Guillaume de Machés text, an account of persecution told from the perspective of the persecutors. The persecutors portray their victim exactly as they see him as the guilty person, but they hide none of the objective traces of their persecution. We conclude that there must be a real victim behind the text, chosen not by virtue of the stereotypical crimes of which he's

accused, crimes which never spread the plague, but because of all the characteristics of a victim

specified in that text which are most likely to project on him the paranoiax suspicion of a crowd tormented by the plague. In the myth, as in Guillaume and the witchcraft trials, the accusations are truly mythological, parasite, incest, the moral or physical poisoning of the community. These accusations are characteristic of the way in which frenzied crowds conceive of their victims and quote. Many of you might be familiar with the Bible story of Jonah, but to recap, it goes like this,

the word the Lord comes upon Jonah, instructing him to go to Nineveh and preach against its wickedness. Now, I would be hesitant to roll into any foreign city and start announcing its wickedness on my first day, but I would be really hesitant to do that in the capital of the Assyrian Empire, and Jonah understandably was too, so instead of going Nineveh, he goes and books a ride on a ship to Tarshish. But you can't run from God and soon the ship is overtaken by a storm, and everybody

is aboard is sure that they're about to die, and so they all cast lots, which you can say is kind of like insulting an oracle, to determine who on board is the cause of their trouble, and the lot of course falls to Jonah. They discern that he has brought a curse upon their ship, so they

great fish and remains in its belly for three days and three nights before he spewed out on shore.

“The theme of the scapegoat is maybe most obvious in the Jonah story, short as it is.”

Just as we all know that in real life, plagues are not actually brought about by the presence of a beggar or the hidden crimes of a king. Storms are not actually caused by having the wrong guy aboard your ship. We accept these stories on their own terms because they're delivered to us as myths. But if anybody were to write them down in a history book, as Gerard says, we would all say,

wait a second, wait a second. I see it's going on here. Those guys on the boat, they just threw

overboard some random guy, and since they survived, they came up with a story afterward that he must had been a cause of all their trouble. Oh hey, those piratins and Massachusetts were not really hanging witches. They were just freaked out by all the Indian raids and smallpox and political turmoil. They got caught up by hysteria and started killing people that they already didn't like and who they decided were responsible for all the stress in the community.

Or as we do now, wait a second. Those Jews weren't actually engaged in a global conspiracy to

take over all the governments of Christian countries to exploit and destroy the Gaoyam.

Germany was just under a huge amount of social and political stress in the 20s and 30s and keyed on them as a scapegoat for everything that had gone wrong after World War I.

“And one day, I think, we will look back and say that maybe, maybe some of those handicapped”

Russian kids that we banned from the Paralympics or the ethnic Russian patients we turned away from hospitals or forced to stand up in public and make public denunciations of their home country, like we were red guards during the cultural revolution that maybe they didn't actually have anything to do with the complex geopolitical crisis in Eastern Europe and maybe we were just using them as substitute victims because we couldn't get it the one we really wanted. This week's version of

a manual Goldstein Vladimir Putin will have to wait for that one because we're still in the middle of it and nobody ever recognizes that they're scapegoating others while it's going on. As one such victim said of his persecutors, they know not what they do.

“I think a lot about how strange it is just historically speaking but even psychologically”

sociologically speaking, a strange it is for a religion to have as it's symbol, the central figure of their story hanging as a criminal on a cross. Beaton stabbed humiliated with a mocking indictment pinned over his head, destroyed by his enemies and held up for all the sea. And for the devotees of that religion to say that that cross, that horrible torture instrument, that that awful scene is their salvation that the blood dripping from the crucified man has saved

them and that his death is given them new life. After Jesus had been betrayed and arrested, the disciple Peter fulfilled a prophecy by denying three times that he had ever known Jesus. Peter, Petra, means the rock and he had that name because he was the strongest and the most uncompromising of the disciples. When Jesus was taken away, he was Peter who had drawn his sword and cut off the ear of malcus. He was ready to fight and die to protect Jesus from the band

of soldiers facing them. It was in superblocks. It was a whole group of soldiers there. But when he saw that it was not only the temple priests, but the people as well. The very sane people who one week before had welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem with waving palm fronds. His peers that it was they who had decided Jesus was at the root of all the trouble plaguing the community, then Peter did not have the courage to stand up to them. I know him not, he told one group.

I am not he, he told another. He denied Jesus a third time in a cop code and Peter remembered

Jesus' prediction and he was ashamed. That Peter and the other disciples eventually came back around and refused to join the crowd in pronouncing Jesus guilty is the only reason we have the story of the Gospels as we do. If they had been too afraid or if the mob had successfully sucked them in, convinced them that they had been tricked by Jesus, but that they could rejoin the community

like that of the beggar, set upon by the mob at the order of upelonius of Tiana.

“The Gospels are the story of that unfortunate beggar told from the beggars perspective”

or from the perspective of his friends who refused to join the crowd in turning on him. For 2,000 years Christians have been torn by ambivalence toward the Jews. The Jews killed Jesus, but of course Jesus was a Jew and he was a devout Jew and one who proclaimed that he had come not to destroy the law but to fulfill it. The Jews in the Christian telling are the chosen people because they had been designated as the vessel that would deliver the Holy Wonder Earth

for the salvation of mankind, but what does that really mean? Maybe it means that the history of the Israelites made them the only people who could have been prepared to recognize the historical importance of what was being done to Jesus when he was crucified. The history of most people's

“just name them, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Hittites, the Romans for that matter.”

Their stories all share a pretty similar trajectory. They start small, they get big and powerful,

and then one day they're conquered by barbarians or a stronger neighbor. And then that's it. That's pretty much the last you hear from them. You hear the story of their rise from the people themselves and then the story of their fall from the people who took them down. But that's not the case with the Jews because the Jews figured something out. They figured out that if they just remembered who they were focused on it, wrote it down, studied it, made remembrance of their history and identity

a holy duty, then they could survive anything. They could survive enslavement, conquest, exile,

even Holocaust. So we don't even have the story of the Jews' defeats and tribulations from the

people who did it to them. There's a few notes here and there in the Roman, Egyptian, and other chronicles, but not much. We don't have the story from them. Instead, probably uniquely in history, certainly in ancient history, we have the story of defeat and disaster from the people who went through it. Now this was a people who knew, who remembered what it was like to be on the wrong end of an askkicking, who knew what it meant to be the victim. News a whole book in the Hebrew Bible called

“"Lamentations." In the Psalms we read passages like, "Lord, how many are my foes?”

Many are they who rise up against me. Many are they who say, his God will not help him. Oh, Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger, or chase in me in your displeasure. Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am helpless. O Lord, heal me for my bones are troubled. My soul is also greatly troubled. But you, O Lord, how long? Return, O Lord, deliver me. O save me for your mercy's sake. I am wary with my groaning. All night I make my bed swim. I drench my couch with tears.

My eye wastes away because of grief. It grows old because of the number of my enemies. Lord, my God, I take refuge in you. Save and deliver me from all who pursue me, or they will tear me apart like a lion and rip me to pieces with no one to rescue me. And this is the voice of that beggar, saying, if I'm guilty of what they're accusing me of, then let them throw their stones. Lord, my God, if I have done this and there is guilt on my hands,

if I have repaid my ally with evil or without cause, have robbed my foe, then let my enemies pursue and overtake me, let them trample my life to the ground and make me sleep in the dust. Now, it is simply impossible to imagine a holy book of the Romans, or the Assyrians, or the Hittite, or the Babylonians, or any of the warrior peoples who rose to a rank where their literature would have made it down to us containing verses like these, crying of their own humiliation

and helplessness. These passages that I'm about to read are from the Book of Isaiah and are taken by Christians as pre-figuring the appearance and mission of Christ, and we call them today the songs of the servant. The sovereign Lord has opened my ears. I have not been rebellious, I have not turned away. I offered my back to those who beat me. My cheeks to those who pulled out my beard. I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting. But now the Lord speaks of this one

affima and been subject to rumors and made the object of hatred and persecution. These are the Lord's

“words about this desperate figure. See, my servant will act wisely. He will be raised and lifted”

up and highly exalted. Just as there were many who were appalled at him, his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being and his form was marked beyond human likeness. This is the deformity, the limp, the stigma, the hunchback, the beastly appearance of the mythical scapegoat. So he will sprinkle many nations and kings will shut their mouths because of him. For what they were not told they will see and what they have not heard they will understand. And

here it gets pretty explicit. Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been

revealed? He drew up before him like a tender shoot and like a root out of dry earth. He had no

“beauty or majesty to attract us to him. Nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. After”

all he was born a barn and slept in a livestock feeding trough and people would whisper that he had been born abastored. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces, he was despised and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering. Yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our

inequities. The punishment that brought us peace was on him and by his wounds are we healed. He was oppressed and afflicted yet he did not open his mouth. He was like a lamb led to slaughter and as a sheep before it shears his silence so he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away yet who of his generation protested. For he was cut off from the land of the living, for the transgression of my people he was punished. He was assigned a grave with the wicked,

though he had done no violence nor was any deceit in his mouth. Therefore I will give him a portion among the great and he will divide the spoils with the strong because he poured out his life on to death and was numbered among the transgressors. One of the sections near the end there of what I just read is very interesting and you can see why Christians focus on it so much. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering and yet we considered him punished by God,

stricken and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our inequities. The punishment that brought us peace was on him and by his wounds we are healed. And so of course Christians hear that and they say that this is a prophecy of the healing power of Jesus' crucifixion. But what's the mechanism of that healing power? What does that actually mean? He took up our pain, bore our suffering and yet we considered him punished by God.

And when a society is in a state of great turmoil or an individual for that matter but we'll

“talk about a society and many of these myths I think plague is kind of a stand-in for general”

social breakdown and stress. When a society is in a state like that it is felt by the individual and it's felt at every level of society and considered the United States in the last 20 years. We suffered 9/11 and then a whole bunch of subsequent terrorist attacks and in a general sort of fear permeating the air all the time that that terrorist attacks might happen.

We went through two failed wars. We had a financial crisis that saw 9 million people lose their

jobs and 6 million homes lost to foreclosure and lately of course we had an actual plague. Millennials are building wealth at a historically slow rate and are on track to be the first generation of American history who standards of living will decline relative to their parents. On top of it all we are adjusting to a radical new media technology that has thrown many of our institutions and are basic ability to process reality in the chaos.

Well, how does all this stress all of this building latent permeating stress? How does it manifest?

It manifests in a shared feeling that things are going downhill.

“It manifests in nastiness between strangers and protests and riots and extreme political turmoil.”

All this stress, all the frustration and feeling of instability and uncertainty. All the rage of unfulfilled hopes and desires builds to a point where it threatens to tear a society apart. We hear different versions of that all the time. The liberals say the right is trying to bring about a fascist revolution and must be dealt with as a law enforcement or military threat. The alt-right says there's a race war coming. The new right says we need a national

divorce. Groups of people fight in the streets. Families break down over political arguments. Suicide and overdose deaths are at all time highs. Violent crime is spike to levels not seen in decades. What's a time like that? A time like this that Satan comes to us. A Satan means the accuser. Sometimes it's translated as slanderer, but there are points in the Hebrew Bible where the word is used to refer to someone who brings a lawsuit or a formal accusation

against someone else. So think of it like a prosecuting attorney or a plaintiff.

A Satan's very clever and comes in many disguises but ultimately only ever says one thing.

He says that person or those people over there. They're the cause of all this. Everything you're feeling, all the pain, all the frustration, all the stress and hopelessness in fear, they're to blame. And if you just get rid of them, then everything will become better. You'll see.

“And here's the thing. That last part about things getting better. He's not lying.”

When a community is tearing itself apart falling into that hobby instead of a war of all against all, but then comes together to identify a single party, whether an individual or a group,

as the one great evil that is brought about this crisis,

changing that war of all against all into a war of all against one. Then they're able to put aside their own differences to unite and destroy it. They convince themselves that the chosen one really is the embodiment of evil. On a deep psychological level, they identify their own personal pain and frustration with that figure. And when they can put aside their lesser conflicts with the rest of the community and have the

shared experience of purging and overcoming the great enemy, there's a sense of catharsis and they really do feel better. And the community really does seem healed. And so they're sense that the rumors must have all been true, that everything they said about about the person they had purged must have all been true, that the person they purged really was, the cause of their troubles, that sense is reinforced since things did actually improve once they were

taken out of the picture. And you can imagine if they tell the story to their kids and their kids tell it to their kids and it makes its way down through the centuries, it might come to us as a simplified tale about the people of Ephesus taking up stones against a beggar who turned out to be a demon of flicking their community. All myths are told from the standpoint of the surviving community.

“That's what makes a myth, a myth. The story of the Hebrew Bible that culminates in the”

gospels does not tell the story from the standpoint of the ones holding the stones but of the ones being struck by the stones. Jesus tells us disciples that although he must depart in order to fulfill his mission, he will not leave us alone but will leave behind. Well, we usually translate it as holy spirit, but the Greek word is paracly, paraclytists to be literal. And paraclyt means advocate as in a defense attorney to serve as the counterparty to the accuser, Satan.

When Satan whispers in our ear that that one right over there, that beggar, that old lady available repute, who lives outside Salem, the Jews, they're to blame for all of this. The Holy Spirit is there to whisper, no, no, no, no, you know better than that. The things that they're saying about

if you can, but whatever you do for the sake of your soul, do not join them. Most of the disciples were martyred because mobs don't like it when you stand up for the one they're targeting. So we're Paul and many of the other apostles. It's a truism that it was not Christian preachers but Christian martyrs who spread the early faith by their example. What does it mean to be martyred in a Christian

context? Many people say it means that you die for your beliefs but I've never really thought

that made much sense. A lot of people die for their beliefs, comocasi pilots and suicide bombers

“die for their beliefs. I think a martyr is not someone who dies for a cause. It is someone who refuses”

to go along with a mob, refuses to join the crowd of persecutors and instead stands with the victim and then pays for his or her life. That's a martyr. Humans are hyper social mammals, which means we are intensely sensitive to the demands and expectations of our peers and our communities.

And so the pull of the crowd is extremely powerful. I remember times when I was in school,

you kid through 12. I remember different times when I would be around when a bully or some group led by a bully would be humiliating or intimidating some other kid. The impulse to persecutors very strong and once it gets going you can run out of control very quickly and people who are kind and thoughtful 10 minutes ago can tear someone apart. Well some of the times I stood up for the kid being picked on. But sometimes I didn't and sometimes I even made a comment to denigrate the

kid myself to be a part of the crowd and I swear to you that to this day, I'm talking things that happen. I was in 3rd, 4th, 5th grade. To this day I remember every single one of those times when I was

“too cowardly to stand with the kid getting picked on. Because I knew it at the time and when I think”

about it it still brings me shame. Jesus doesn't call on us to be martyred for him but to be martyred with him for all the people in the world who have been unjustly victimized if fate happens to put one of them in front of you and you're the only one between them and the mob. The word scapegoat comes from a passage in Leviticus describing a ritual whereby a priest would lay hands on the head of a young

goat and speak aloud all the sin and all the iniquity and all the hatred and frustration. Basically

all the negative energy of the community in order to put it all onto the goat and once it's all been purged onto the goat the goat itself has purged from the community chased out into the wilderness

“carrying all their negative energy with it. Isaiah's song of a servant says that the one who has been”

pierced for our transgressions crush for our iniquities was led like a lamb to slaughter and the gospels follow up on that by informing us that there's another word for scapegoat. Once the scapegoat is recognized as the innocent victim beloved by God that he actually is. The word for scapegoat seen in the light of the gospels is the lamb of God. Well you guys have listened to enough of my amateur hour preaching. I am even less of a theologian than I am a historian and this is not meant

as a complete account of the gospels or the meaning of Easter or of anything else. I mean I didn't even mention the resurrection. These were just the thoughts that came to mind when I decided at the last minute to sit down and talk to you today about Easter. I just want to say thanks again to everyone for everything for listening to the show for helping support it for being patient with me many of you for putting up with me when I go on Twitter and violate everything I just said in this

episode and just for being there. I really am grateful happy Easter. [Music]

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