Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Well, I enjoyed this discussion. I think it was very fruitful and it's always good to have a talk about faith and about its influence on the world. And I think I enjoyed this podcast. You asked me some really good questions that are really searching questions and hopefully I provided the answer. But I hope your listeners enjoyed it. But for me it was an enjoyable experience.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Thank you very much for inviting me. Yeah, thank you so much.
Welcome to Supernormalize, the podcast, where we challenge the conventional break boundaries and normalize the seemingly supernatural. Join me, CJ Barnaby, in the liminalist space to explore the less chartered realms of existence to unravel the mysteries of life. Experience each episode I'm blessed with the opportunity to talk to regular people from across the world where they openly share their understanding and wisdom in service to others. If you are looking to upgrade your life, you've come to the right place. Be sure to rate this podcast like and subscribe and I'll bring you great transforming conversations each week. If you value the value this show and would like to help me make it happen, please join my Patreon, which starts at as little as $5 per month, and you'll get exclusive content, live pro tips and a discussion channel, and more depending on the tier you join. Let's together embrace acceptance of the supernatural and unusual as what it really is. Completely normal. Today on supernormal eyes we have Frank Kenny, and he's a passionate researcher and author specializing in the history of the abrahamic religions. This discussion is, I would say, a bit heady when it comes to talking about those religions and how those all turned out. But it is interesting nonetheless, and delves into some of the reasoning behind, maybe we could even say, the misunderstandings of early religions and how those misunderstandings have led to even wars. And it's interesting and it's a deep conversation and I'm sure you'll enjoy so with the show, welcome to supernormalized Frank Kenny. Frank, I would say from the information that you provided to me that you're actually quite a spiritual person.
And also being a researcher and author, you've put your head deep into religious history. Would that be correct?
[00:03:11] Speaker A: Yes, that's correct. I'm very interested in religious history, in how the thought process of people who are religious and how it has affected us throughout the ages.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: Okay, okay.
So what actually drew to this in the first place? And I should say welcome to the show too. So, oh, thank you very much.
[00:03:35] Speaker A: Well, you know, as I said, I've always been interested in religion, but I think what drew me, what made me the spur, was my local shopkeeper at the time where I lived in the UK, and he was a muslim man. He was a very liberal minded individual. And one day I went into the shop to have a chat with him and I was buying something, and he said he wanted to kill somebody. And the person he wanted to kill was the writer Salman Rushdie. That was the time when the book that Simon Rushdie wrote, the satanic verses.
That's right, yeah, there was a fatwa. The italic community issued a fatwa against him, so he was all fired up.
I was really taken aback that this gentleman, this liberal, wanted to kill somebody who had offended his faith and that, I mean, I've always been aware how much faith affected people and how strongly it did, but that really brought it home to me. And so I wanted to write about why he felt like that, why people have felt like that down to the ages, and why it has spawned them on. Yeah, that was a catalyst for me to write.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: Right, right. Okay. So that's, that's very curious. Did you actually, were you raised at all, in any faith at all?
[00:05:00] Speaker A: Oh, yes, I was raised.
My upbringing was very strongly catholic. I was in the west of Ireland where I lived. Everybody shared that faith almost. There was a minority of other faiths, but, yeah, people were very religious. And I was an altar boy as like all my other friends. And then I later was sent to boarding school, which was run by priests, and that was kind of a pre seminary. I mean, we were expected, or a lot of us were expected to go from boarding school to a seminary, you know, to maybe the priesthood. So it was a very strong religious opening in that respect.
So, yeah, yeah, all of them. And then, of course, later in my, while I was in that boarding school, I began to have doubts and concerns about certain aspects of theology and raised them as well. So that came in as that affected me there at that time also. And I left the religion for a while and then came back again to study it in more detail after that.
[00:06:09] Speaker B: So what makes your approach to religious history unique?
[00:06:15] Speaker A: I hope that I saw a different insight on it by going back to where people were when they believed the things they believed.
We have this tradition that's been handed down to us when we learn religion, particularly those of us who were born into the faith. And I wanted to look back at the people who actually created that, you know, who brought that, who wrote the gospels or before that wrote the Old Testament and what it was that drove them and how they thought and how they saw the world at that time. People saw from a very different perspective.
So when you look at that aspect of religion, you see that many of the beliefs that have been handed down to us are actually answers to questions that they faced in their lives. Some of them. Some of those questions were political, and they. They related to conflict. That's why I called the book the Go to war.
I'm particularly interested in the conflict part of it.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: So it sounds like that maybe the interpretation of the Bible that has come to us over time, actually, is what you could say, like, time relevant. So it was written at a time and can only really be fully understood from that time, because if we look at it from our bias, it changes the perspective.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: That's putting it very well. Yes.
There's a reason why people wrote a particular phrase, a particular book, or a particular story.
[00:07:58] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:07:59] Speaker A: And that has to be said in the context of when they wrote it. When you understand that, you see it from a slightly different perspective.
[00:08:05] Speaker B: Okay. Okay. So what educational background do you have, and how has that influenced your work?
[00:08:13] Speaker A: My. When I left boarding school, I studied engineering, and most of my life has been.
I've been working as an engineer, specifically in power plants and in desalination plants throughout the world.
That's taking me to, you know, America, Central America, Africa, Middle east and Asia, all those places. And when you. When you go to those places, almost inevitably, religion plays the part. So in my work, my work is separate from religion. It's very technical, but you get to meet people and see the communities that you live in, how religion shapes their beliefs and how strong it is, and sometimes how it. It creates conflict as well.
[00:09:03] Speaker B: It sounds like your technical edge actually influenced your understanding and the way you framed things.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: It might have. I don't know. I don't know where it. Where it does, but maybe it does. Maybe it does.
I tend to. In the book the God of war, I've tried to analyze it, analyze things. When I write something, I try to find out and sort of give proof that, you know, this is. This has come from somewhere. This is not just an idea pulled out of the air, and this is the reference. So maybe that's. Maybe that's part of technical. Technical background. I'm not sure.
[00:09:40] Speaker B: Right, right. So how did your studies at Trinity College in Dublin and the open university shape your perspective on religion?
[00:09:51] Speaker A: Well, I wouldn't think that the Trinity had a huge effect. Of course, it does have an old history, the Book of Kells. I don't know whether you know about the Book of Kells. The gospels were written back in the 7th century, I think. Is there. So there is an old heritage, and there's a lot of philosophers and thinkers and people that have come through that college, but they were very much enlightenment scholars, more than religious, I think in the latter years. I'm thinking of a big time scale here. Now in the open university, it's very interesting. They have their own philosophy that they would describe as progressive.
I think that's common to all universities now. But I would really notice that when I, when I studied with the open university team, that they, they had that very, very strong perspective. Now you can argue, is, is that religious? Does that have its origins in Christianity or is there something completely separate? I think it probably does have its origins in Christianity or the Judeo christian tradition, but it's prevalent. But it's not. It's often not very sympathetic to organize religion of any kind.
[00:11:14] Speaker B: Right. Right.
Do you think that maybe by taking up the position of seeing the God as the. As that's been presented to us throughout history as the God of war, that you are taking like a heretical sort of edge or what do you feel about that?
[00:11:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't think I would have. My views on religion are mainline. If there is such a thing as mainline, I'm very interested in the conflict aspect of it and why it has generated conflict in the past and why it still generates conflict today.
Just one example of that.
Yesterday, the day before yesterday, the Olympics, the opening ceremony, and a lot of people were very offended by what they perceived as insults and insults to Christianity, you know, and I was watching this and I didn't actually see the image of the last supper, of da Vinci's last supper, which was parodied in that, and people got very angry about it. You can see in social media the reaction to it. So it is still there that. That it still has the capacity to make people very emotional and even to the point of violence, as we know. And of course, the conflict in the Middle east itself right now between Israel and Gaza, the Palestinians, is another aspect of that.
[00:12:49] Speaker B: Yeah, it does seem like that edge of conflict seems to be echoing throughout history and does come from all that way back there and is continuing right to the present day, which is something which is a bit surprising because, you know, you'd think that by now we would have all learned to get along.
[00:13:11] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, this is. This is the dual aspect of Christianity and. And the abrahamic religions. On the one hand, they bring people together.
It's a community based religion in a lot of ways people go together to worship, for example, and they have a sense of identity and belonging as well. We are in a community or all of a particular religion, a particular faith, and we do things that we have certain rituals that we do together.
That's the uniting part of it. And then on the other hand, it is. It promotes division because people have a different interpretation of the religion or a different outlook, and they can be very intolerant of competing outlooks or people who don't share that view. This is. The conflict arises and has been a feature of Christianity right throughout the ages. When you look back, and this is something I cover in the book, obviously in detail, that people have almost gone to war. They have actually gone to war over what appears to be very trivial differences of interpretation in the scriptures or in theology.
And we look back on it, why are they fighting over that? It's so trivial to our mind. Yet here we are today fighting over also differences. But maybe there's something different.
One of the examples of courtesy is the interpretation of whether Jesus, for example, was created or whether he was eternal, the aryan conflict. And to a lot of christians today, that wouldn't be important.
But to them, in the early christian roman empire, it was so important that they almost. There was actually a conflict in all of the major cities, and people were killing each other over that different interpretation.
[00:15:24] Speaker B: What do you think the solution is to this interpretation of Christianity as, you know, something that creates a God of war?
[00:15:34] Speaker A: I'm not sure if there is one. You see that, that if after 2000 years we haven't solved.
I mean, I don't want to sound pessimistic, but if. If that's inherent in the. In the faith in some respects, then it's difficult to solve it.
They, you know, there is strong prohibitions on veering off the path, and it seems to be inherent in all of the abrahamic faiths.
[00:16:05] Speaker B: So in all your research, have you seen any, any interpretations of the religion in such a way that does it allow for basically a connection to the divine without all the violence?
[00:16:19] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I mean, there are people movements that have. That are very spiritual and that focus on very much the spiritual aspect as distinct from the performance of the rituals, and that they've always existed. The Franciscans are an example of that.
I did, you know, but even there, they have also been involved in conflict, too.
This is actually very much a personal thing, I suppose.
If your faith is very personal to you and you're very strong about it and you don't really care what happens outside of your relationship, your spiritual relationship, then. Yes, but that's an individual thing.
How it affects the communities is quite different.
Individual people can, can have a quiet faith and somehow when you get people together in large groups, they behave differently than they do as individuals.
[00:17:29] Speaker B: Yeah. Gustave Le Bon wrote a book called the Crowd way back when. That sort of illustrated that the crowd was more of a unthinking wild animal almost. And it does seem to speak to that in some ways, although I know I've read other books about people when it comes to crisis situations suddenly dropping everything and helping each other without question. So it does make you wonder where this warring sort of entity comes from and why it's here.
[00:18:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Of course, in the Old Testament, deuteronomy and so on, there is, there is this very violent God. You know, I am the God of war and go forth and kill all the Canaanites and kill every man, woman and child.
So there are these exhortations to kill and Christians, it's the same, of course, in the Quran, Christians or other abrahamic faith, people can look to those passages when they want to and say, I'm allowed to do this in a certain circumstance because these people, whoever they are, deserve to be killed and we must fight them and all that sort of thing. And so if you want that baggage is already there. You can, you can grab it and use it to your, to your advantages and people do and people have, and I dare say they will. So that, that's an aspect of the faith that's just there. Now some, again, going back to the history of the religion, some movements have tried to distance themselves from the Old Testament and portray, you know, Jesus as somebody who's brought us away from that, that he does a new message and we should abandon the old faith and the old given to us by another God and all that sort of thing. But that doesn't stand up to scrutiny when you actually look at the scriptures and at the New Testament, what's been said, there is always the connection, there's always a reference to the Old Testament. So it's very difficult initiatives, particularly pick out certain passages and reject other passages to make that distinction. So that violent exhortation to violence is always. There can't be the rhythm.
That's a dilemma.
[00:20:01] Speaker B: It is a dilemma.
In what ways do you aim to challenge conventional narratives about these religions through your work?
[00:20:11] Speaker A: When I, you know, much of what I challenge in the book isn't so much the scriptures itself as I do talk a great length about how, how the scriptures were brought together and what the outside influences were. What I think I challenge in the book is the subsequent history of religion after the.
After Jesus, right. Let's say after it began to affect the roman empire and how Christians behaved and how they related to, to the authorities.
Much of that is handed down to us in a way that isn't quite accurate. And I've challenged some of that.
For example, the first christian emperor of the Roman Empire was Constantine. And when I do the. When I did my research, I wasn't quite sure if he was, that in fact, he wasn't really a Christian to start with. He eventually converted, but the man that he fought against, Licinius, probably was a Christian. So it wasn't Christianity versus atheism or paganism.
It was the other way around. The atheist defeating the Christians put them converting to Christianity. So that's one of the things. And there are a lot of things in our conventional history that are just not right, but these are things that I think historians would be interested in and hopefully the general public as well. And, you know, how the Christianity that we practice today, and I practice down, down the ages is very much influenced by events that happened after Jesus lived. And they may not have much to do with what he was preaching. A lot of them don't have. There. There are things that people brought into the religion. They weren't there at all. And that's also added to the conflict and the confusion. Okay, so I spend a highlight that.
[00:22:25] Speaker B: Okay, so what specific misconceptions or traditional views do you seek to address?
[00:22:32] Speaker A: I just sort of open it up there for people to look at and form their own opinions. I don't want to tell people, well, this is what you should believe or you shouldn't believe. But early Christians, some of them didn't believe in the forgiveness of sin. For example, I mentioned briefly the aryan conflict about whether Jesus was a man or a creation or whether he existed from all eternity. And of course, the concept of the Trinity.
These are ideas, the concept of original sin, as well as another one that we are born guilty and we have to be baptized and we have to be absolved of an inherited sin.
And of course, then there are the rituals like Christmas and Easter and so on, how they evolved.
So these were all introduced by people. And some of them were compromises with existing, with competing faiths.
When Christianity was in its early stages, it was competing against a lot of faiths that were very similar to Christianity. And these faiths were different to the ancient roman traditions in that the God that they believed in was very much a personal God. Before that, the God was a local God that did harm or good to the community, and you had to keep that God happy, or he was the state God or the evolved to say God, like Jupiter. But what distinguished Christianity from the other faiths was that it was a personal God. The God that saves you personally, Jesus, has come on earth to save you and me. That's the idea. But that was competing against other religions that were similar in that they were very personal to people.
And in order for Christianity to win that battle, it had to adopt some of the ideas of the competing religions, like bitches.
And so the Christianity we practice today is kind of a compromise in some respects between Christianity and its competing, the competing faith at that time.
[00:24:53] Speaker B: How do your personal beliefs influence your research?
[00:24:59] Speaker A: Ah, that's a very good question.
I suppose it probably doesn't wait that I don't even, don't even know myself.
My attitude to it is very much curiosity and wanting to know more and more and wanting to understand how these things evolve. So in that respect, my personal views do affect my curiosity. I suppose probably the word is the word I'm looking for, but I'm not sure how much of my personal views come through in the book. They probably do to an outside reader. But I try to be as objective as I can and not say that this particular interpretation or this particular view is correct.
I try to keep it open and let the reader decide.
[00:25:56] Speaker B: Yeah, nice, nice. So I was going to ask you some of the framework around the book there and your understanding of it. Can you explain the evolution of the concept of God in the abrahamic faiths?
[00:26:10] Speaker A: Okay, that has changed. I think it changes depending on the circumstance.
I think one of the influences of later judaic period was that they, the conflicts that they were, the fact that the jewish state was unstable, they were surrounded by enemies.
They needed to have pursued faith that made them special, and that made them feel that God was on their side. So that that was very important. This is where the connection with Abraham comes.
Now. Some people would argue Abraham maybe didn't exist, that he's a concept, not a person, but whether he's a person or a concept, he is somebody who has a personal God that tells him that he and his, his followers are going to be going to inherit the earth, or at least, at least going to inherit Canaan. And so that was jews politically. And so you have a God that's looking after you, but looking after our group, in that group being the Jews. And, you know, our success is dependent on doing what he wants and he look after us and make us successful. So that's where they. That's, that's part of the evolution that changes from time to time to, to a God that's very, very kind and generous to a God who's very brutal and punishes people.
So, so that's, that's how it evolved.
And then you have Jesus, the long awaited Messiah, and then you. What I look at in Jesus is how much of that idea of God does he believe? Is he preaching or is there a different interpretation of that that somebody has taken after he died and put in there?
I am inclined to think that the message that Jesus was preaching isn't quite the same as what people believe today.
There was a big disagreement in the early church between the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem and the followers of St. Paul, and two different interpretations. And of course, we know that St. Paul's interpretation is one that survived and won out, which it was inevitable because it's more inclusive.
But there is that other interpretation there still hanging there in the background.
[00:28:54] Speaker B: So where did you source your information from for your research, for your book?
[00:29:01] Speaker A: I tried as much as possible to get the information from, as I said, the people who lived at the time.
And you get that from all sorts of ways.
You get it sometimes from correspondence. This isn't very opening. Now, historians of the past, people who are writing about things that happened in the past, just like people who are writing about things that happen today, are usually biased. They have a reason for saying what to say, and you have to try and interpret that yourself. You have to. So what you do that is you use competing stories. There's two people are writing about the same thing and they both have different interpretations. You have to look at those, read them and publish them and say which of them is telling the truth or that the reader decides which is the most telling the truth. So I try to go back to sources, in other words, as close to the time that they were written, rather than what people are saying about them now.
And that gives you a better idea of how people. The thought process, as I said earlier.
Yeah, that's how I do it. Of course, I rely also on research carried out by modern scholars. And I read papers produced by them where they reference regional sources.
[00:30:24] Speaker B: Interesting. Yeah, right. Have you heard of the work of Doctor Amon, who takes the original Greek and translates it?
[00:30:32] Speaker A: I haven't, actually. That's new to me.
[00:30:34] Speaker B: Yeah, it's good.
I would say that he's very challenging, to put it plainly.
[00:30:40] Speaker A: Right.
[00:30:41] Speaker B: It seems like that the early, early christian religions may have been right into using, what would you say, poisons and things like that for changing their consciousness to possibly reach religious sort of ecstatic states. And that might have been what part of the reason why they weren't so popular with the Romans.
[00:31:07] Speaker A: I didn't, I didn't know that. I think. I think me the main reason that the Romans were suspicious of them was because they, they had, you know, the rituals like the church indoors. And it was reserved, reserved for those people who believed and they didn't allow other people to command and join unless they are believed. So it had an era to aura of a subversive cult. You know, what are these guys doing inside these churches? What are they up to?
That's I think what had people very suspicious.
Also the fact that they didn't show respect to the local gods. So when something bad happened, like you had a flood, the crops didn't work. Well, maybe the christians were responsible for this.
[00:31:55] Speaker B: Pesky Christians.
[00:31:57] Speaker A: Yeah. They didn't go to the temple and give the required offering to the local God. And the God, local God is really annoyed and he's taken it out on the community and it's all the fault of the Christians.
That's how they thought. Yeah, yeah.
[00:32:12] Speaker B: They may have been escape goats of things at the time then.
[00:32:15] Speaker A: Yeah, they were, they were.
The punishment of christians in the past wasn't. Wasn't actually as bad. You know, this is one of the kind of myths that. That we have handed down, that christians have been persecuted and thrown to the lines and all that. It did happen, but not often. And very often. Sometimes there was arbitrary justice. You know, it wasn't that the authorities decided to punish the christians. It was that they looked the locals, you know, the kind of mob violence. There's something else that happened occasionally throughout the empire for reasons that I just said.
The authorities only became concerned really late, very concerned, very, very late on. After a few hundred years, when Christianity was really powerful. It was like a force within the empire that had its own laws and its own hierarchy and its own control, like a state within a state. That's when the persecution started and it was widespread. And it was by one emperor that was Diocletian. He tried to wipe it out and he failed. And it was very shortly after that that Rome became Christian officially.
[00:33:24] Speaker B: So they chose to maybe absorb Christianity into their ways rather than try to stop it.
[00:33:32] Speaker A: That's right. That's what they did. And there was also a lot of examples of what I call in the book suicide markers. These are people who deliberately would go into the temple and destroy something or vandalize something so that they would. They would get persecuted. They became a kind of martyrdom complex.
This is particularly true in North Africa, the Christians in North Africa, and in some parts of the Middle, what we call the Middle east today in Syria. And, yes, and it was encouraged, you know, usually young people and local bishops would say, oh, great, that's wonderful. This shows us how strong our faith is. Look, and that did have an influence on. On other people who aren't christian. They either either caused them revulsion or cause and said, oh, my God, these people believe that so strongly, there must be something there.
[00:34:29] Speaker B: Inspiration.
[00:34:31] Speaker A: Yeah. They're willing to die for what they believe. Yeah.
[00:34:37] Speaker B: Okay, well, that's a. I suppose you've got to be good at something. So. Yeah, so people engage in different ways with their. Their faith.
Yeah. Yeah. So what are the surprising findings that you've found about the origins of these religions that you could share?
[00:34:59] Speaker A: Well, of course, I think much of what I've written about and the origins of the religion, it would be known, I think, to people who have studied it already. I think the mythology of the, of the Old Testament, for example, has origins in other faiths, like sumerian ideas, you know, Gilgamesh and various other books. So that, that's interesting for me.
The more I delved into that, the more I. I discovered how. How much these other beliefs had influenced Christianity.
Sorry, not Christianity. That would be Judaism. And of course, zoroasterism, for example. It's another one. And some of the. The egyptian ideas, the book of the Dead, also had influences on those scriptures. Now, what some theologians will say is this is because the people who wrote those other books, books got influenced, were themselves guided in some way. And of course, that's the debate. But, yeah, that was, that was interesting when. When I delved into it to find that art.
[00:36:21] Speaker B: Okay, so what are some common misconceptions about ancient religious texts that you could share?
[00:36:29] Speaker A: Um, in. In.
I don't think there's. For scholars who studied it. I don't. I don't think there's misconceptions. I think probably what, what. A lot of fundamental believers today would argue that they've got the sequence wrong and they would say, no, the. These other books were influenced by the scriptures rather than the other way around. They will say that, you know, what came first?
Did the flood, as recounted in the biblical text, did that narrative come before the Gilgamesh account?
So who's influencing who? And this is where you have a difference of interpretation there. I think fundamentalist scholars would say that. That the Bible itself is the original text and all other things come from there. I think they would be wrong. I think most christian scholars or Judaism scholars would say that, you know, would be. Would agree with the idea that it was. It was these other texts that influenced the ancient jewish scriptures.
That's one of those things where people have disagreement about.
[00:37:56] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. But stepping beyond the disagreement, wouldn't you say that, you know, there is some sort of entity which represents itself as Bryce consciousness that seems to be revealing itself amongst many believers nowadays?
[00:38:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I think. I think that's. That's what people would. Yeah, that would be the interpretation by many that, in fact, it's. It's, you know, these ideas came to other societies and other cultures in a different way and then found their way into. Into this scripture, that it's the same entity that's influencing them. There's, of course, through all societies, through all ancient societies, there is a similar set of beliefs.
Fundamentally, if you take the ten Commandments, apart from the first three commandments, they are very similar to laws that have been passed in other cultures, in other societies. So there's a common thread there that exists. What distinguishes their abrahamic religions is the first three, which says, I am God, and you don't tolerate any other God. That's a distinguishing fact feature, and that's a thread that runs right through the scriptures, right to what we believe today.
[00:39:19] Speaker B: I think it's probably time for the end of the jealous boyfriend God. And.
[00:39:26] Speaker A: Yes, as a way of putting it.
[00:39:30] Speaker B: And maybe just everyone. Yeah.
Adhering more to the goddess love, Christ consciousness, ascendant sort of perspective, which is the aggregor, which seems to have grown over time, separate from these stories which seem to inflame people.
[00:39:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I think modern Christianity are certainly Christianity in recent times has that approach. I think that's how christians see the world and see their religion. They don't. They see it as embracing and inclusive. They don't see it as exclusive. But that aspect is there. I mean, you will see it all the time that the other. The other view, the jealous boyfriend, as you put it, is still there. And it's. That's. That's when you. That's when you have conflict, and particularly when it's, uh, when it's been challenged, that's when that comes out. That's when people dig their heels in and get very intolerant.
And I've seen that throughout my life, and I'm sure you have as well.
[00:40:42] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. For sure, looking back in time, um, you know, it would have been, uh, much more interesting, I think, for us all to be able to be a fly on the wall and hear the original stories in the original way. But unfortunately, we've lost that with them being written down in the way they have come to us. So it's. In some way, it's unfortunate, but it's just the legacy, I think, of human condition, that things get transmitted in such ways.
But can you discuss the major themes of your book so people can get an understanding of it?
[00:41:18] Speaker A: Okay. And. Well, in the God of war, I start off by talking about Abraham and the strength of his faith, particularly the sacrificing of his son. And this is something I focus on because it goes to show the extremes that faith can bring a person to and discuss whether that actually, because they're different, that even that story slightly may have been changed.
And then I go through how this developed into a jewish faith, how this tribe of people, the Hebrews, adopted that faith, and how Yahweh became their God. He initially was one of. One of many gods, and then he's narrowed down to become a goddess. So I discussed that and. And how that evolved from they. This. This singular God of Abraham to a God of a tribe of people, and how they managed that in terms of, you know, with things, when things went against them, how they managed that, and how the God becomes not a fixed object, but a God that's movable.
This is different. This is quite unique in history, because most people had a fixed God who lived in a particular place. When the Jews were kicked out of Jerusalem, they had a God that was movable. That's how they interpreted.
And so they become the personal God that comes. Goes with you. Wherever you are, God is there. And then, of course, the various messiah messiahs that arose.
And finally, Jesus.
And I take it, I explore how Jesus, the message of Jesus interpret is interpreted after he died, and what he might have said and what people said he said is difficult to interpret. And probably we will never know that. As you said, the original scriptures of Jesus, which most of which were written, I think, probably from 30 years after his death onwards, and how the church finally decided which ones were authentic and which ones were not.
And then how that evolved into a roman religion that competed against other religions in Rome until eventually Rome adopted it. And then. Then we go on to how that affected roman politics and how it affect the laws that we met and the laws that we live by today.
It's volume one, by the way. So I'm going to continue with volume two later on, which takes it from the time the book ends with the emperor Heraclia. And the reason I end with that roman emperor is because during his reign, Muhammad or Islam, you know, launches itself into the world. And so the next volume will deal with that.
[00:44:32] Speaker B: Okay, that's great. Okay.
So, Frank, if.
If you were God, how would you. Would you have changed history? If you could have changed it?
[00:44:45] Speaker A: Well, if I was in a position to change history or sort of, you know, somehow got on a time machine and went to the back, what would I do? And the answer is probably nothing.
The reason for that is that, you know, it's like the butterfly effect. If you do anything different, you don't know how it's going to turn out. You might. History is full of people trying to make the world a better place and ending up making it worse.
And most of the greatest people in the past who are very powerful, in my view, they often did a lot more damage than good, even when their intentions were good. So the answer there is, I probably wouldn't do anything. I make things even worse than they are.
But, of course, if you want. If you want to say a controversial thing about religion is when, that I deal with in the. In the book and the God of war is, you know, when. When Constantine made religion, read Christianity, the official religion of the roman empire, which he did eventually do, was he actually doing Christianity a favor or not?
Some people would argue he wasn't. So if. If there was a pivotal time in history, that was it.
That was one of them, because it became. It became the state religion and remained a state religion in Europe and in many parts of the world forever. Since almost up to recently, we've now separated church and state. But even still, there's a debate in America about that.
But for Constantine and his people, there was no. There was no debate. You know, we're going to make Christianity the official religion. It's now a state religion that's separate.
And that probably contributed to a lot of the conflicts as well.
[00:46:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Right. Right. Okay. So are you still a man of faith yourself?
[00:46:50] Speaker A: I'm. I'm. Let's say, skeptical.
Skeptical, yeah.
[00:46:56] Speaker B: What does your faith look like then? Do you. Do you pray?
[00:47:00] Speaker A: I don't. I don't take part. Well, no, I wouldn't say I don't take part in any ritual. Sometimes I do. You know, there's an occasion where. Where we have to meet for a particular purpose that has some asset of faith in it, then, yes, I do attend ceremonies in that respect, but not on a regular basis.
It's very, for me, it's. It's very. Religion is very. Something very private and personal, rather than something that's part of the community, except. Except on occasion. Um, so I don't have a formal religious life.
Yeah, practice. Yeah, I don't have.
[00:47:42] Speaker B: Okay, so, um, we're getting to the end of the podcast. How. How would you like people to come and find you and your book?
[00:47:50] Speaker A: Well, if people want to buy the God of war, it's available on Goodreads and on Amazon. And it's. It's available in hard copy, also in electronic ebook, like a Kindle if you want to buy it. And they can also get it on audiobook. So whatever. Whatever way they like to read or listen to a book is available on Amazon.
[00:48:14] Speaker B: Okay, awesome. All right, well, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your understanding of the abrahamic religions and how they've affected us over time. I've appreciated your time and, yeah, we'll say goodbye to the listeners.
[00:48:29] Speaker A: Thank you very much for having me.
[00:48:32] Speaker B: Okay, thank you.
All right, just wait there.
Okay. There we go. Thank you, Frank. That was great.
[00:48:48] Speaker A: Thank you very much for that.
[00:48:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I hope I hit you with some nice questions there that got some.
[00:48:53] Speaker A: Information are you happy with? Yeah, you hit me with some unexpected ones, but, yeah, that was good.
That put me thinking. I had to think about.
[00:49:04] Speaker B: Oh, good, good.
Yeah. Interested to see where you. Where you go with these books and how you help to shape people's understanding Christianity and where it possibly could go.
[00:49:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I hope some people buy it, but if not. Anyway, I still enjoyed this discussion. It's nice to talk about excellent things to someone who's interested. Yeah, yeah.
[00:49:27] Speaker B: So I have one little request for you, if you don't mind. Could you give me like a five to ten second testimonial of your experience of the show? And I can use that for some promotionals as well.
[00:49:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Do you want me to say it right now?
[00:49:40] Speaker B: Just say something, if you don't mind. Yeah, I'll just say, yeah, CJ, or. Okay, we can just go straight for it. You go for it.
[00:49:47] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:49:50] Speaker B: That was a cool discussion with Frank, and I enjoyed his sharing and his understanding, which is way beyond anything I've got. So, you know, I felt a bit out of water when it comes to that sort of thing, but I still, I think that I managed to guide the conversation in such a way to keep it flowing and interesting, and I hope you've enjoyed the show as much as I have. If you have, please like and subscribe. And if you're on your pod podcast app, give me five stars and give me a nice rating. And if you've enjoyed the show or you enjoy these shows and you'd like to support the show as well, please join my Patreon. It's patreon.com supernormalized. And from $5 a month, you get the shows released early. And you also get access to a discussion group as well. And any of my extra pro life tips that I find along the way that could be helpful to help you enjoy your life even more. So, thank you so much for listening, and until next episode, it's bye for now.
