But can you talk about that and how that informs human behavior and this idea about sacrifice?

Yeah, the German philosopher Max Scheller wrote a very interesting book called Résentiment.

He picked up this term from Nietzsche, and it's basically the term resentment, but they use the French term kind of like the Germans used angst to typify a certain type of anxiety.

So resentment is a term, a specialized term to signify a certain kind of resentment.

So this resentment is not just, oh, I didn't make a good score on the test.

I resent my teacher.

I resent these other people who did better than me.

But I think that your book is like, well, let's really talk about what that actually entails.

Again, my French isn't as good as yours, I'm sure, but, but can you talk about that and how that informs, uh, human behavior and th- this, this idea about sacrifice?

Yeah.

The German philosopher Max Scheler wrote a very interesting book called Resentiment.

He picked up this term from Nietzsche, um, and it's basically the term resentment, but they use the French term kind of like the Germans used angst to typify a certain type of anxiety.

So ressentiment is a term, a specialized term, to typify, to signify a certain kind of resentment.

So this resentment is not just, um, "Oh, I didn't make a good score on the test.

I resent my teacher.

But I think that your book is like, well, let's really, let's really talk about what that actually entails.

My French isn't as good as yours, I'm sure, but can you talk about that and how that informs human behavior and this idea about sacrifice?

Yeah, the German philosopher Max Scheller wrote a very interesting book called Résentiment.

He picked up this term from Nietzsche, and it's basically the term resentment, but they use the French term kind of like the Germans used angst to typify a certain type of anxiety.

So resentment is a term, a specialized term to signify a certain kind of resentment.

So this resentment is not just, oh, I didn't make a good score on the test.

I resent my teacher.

I resent these other people who did better than me.

But I think that your book is like, well, let's really talk about what that actually entails.

Again, my French isn't as good as yours, I'm sure, but, but can you talk about that and how that informs, uh, human behavior and th- this, this idea about sacrifice?

Yeah.

The German philosopher Max Scheler wrote a very interesting book called Resentiment.

He picked up this term from Nietzsche, um, and it's basically the term resentment, but they use the French term, kind of like the Germans used angst to typify a certain type of anxiety.

So ressentiment is a term, a specialized term, to typify, to signify a certain kind of resentment.

So this resentment is not just, um, "Oh, I didn't make a good score on the test, I resent my teacher.

I resent these other people who did better than me." That's a kind of ordinary resentment, but this kind of resentment is a festering resentment, which I call-- It's recognized by having a res- what I call the resentment loop.

But I think that your book is like, well, let's really, let's really talk about what that actually entails.

And I was wondering if you could just sort of summarize that part of it so that we can use that, like I said, as a jumping off point for some further discussion.

The book began out of my own... sort of curiosity about why in the modern age we Christians still, all of us in one way or another, still use the language of blood sacrifice.

and in the 10 stories of blood sacrifices that I relate in the first half of the book, I explain how bloody this actually was.

And for instance, as a Christian pastor and a sacrificing Catholic priest, I've often read the books of Leviticus and be quite grateful that I'm a priest in the New Covenant, not the Old Covenant, because it was a messy business, okay? And so, but still...

My core question is why do we in the modern age with Netflix and Zoom and jet planes and all the modern tech, why do we still use the language in our religion of blood sacrifice? You know, Catholics talk about this oblation, this sacrifice, this perfect sacrifice, the blood of Abel, the sacrifice of Isaac.

In every church we have a bloody crucifix hanging on the wall, and that's actually mandatory.

In my Protestant upbringing, we sang hymns like, being washed in the blood of the lamb, there is a fountain filled with blood.

is where you start.

[chuckles]

... because it was a messy business, okay? Uh, and so but still, my core question is, why do we, in the modern age, with Netflix and Zoom and jet planes and all the modern tech, why do we still use the language in our religion of blood sacrifice? You know, um, Catholics talk about this oblation, this sacrifice, this perfect sacrifice, the blood of Abel, the blood of...

the sacrifice of Isaac.

In every church, we have a bloody crucifix hanging on the wall, and that's actually mandatory.

Uh, in my Protestant upbringing, we sang hymns like, um, Being Washed in the Blood of the Lamb, There is a Fountain Filled with Blood.

And all Christians, apart from perhaps very modernist ones, use this blood sacrifice imagery and language all the time.

What could it possibly mean to a modern person who does not have any background in the Bible, in the scriptures, and in, um, the history of religion? Uh, and so I wanted to try to answer that and say, "Well, here's a, here's what the ancient people did What were they thinking? What did they imagine that they were doing? Why did they do this? Why did they go to this effort? And it was a great effort and a great sacrifice because those people didn't sacrifice their babies and their young warriors and their young virgins, um, without any sc- and without any, um, compunction.

Mm-hmm.

have known Aramaic.

Aramaic was common right back through the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries BC in Persia.

It was the lingua franca for the entire ancient world.

So they would have known Aramaic.

But the thing about where they came from also, an important piece of evidence, right when Matthew says that wise men came from the east, Remember I said that Christianity's center of gravity had shifted north and west to Armenia, Turkey, Greece, and Italy.

Well, if you're there, then the east is Persia and India.

But Matthew's gospel was written to the Judean Christians in the early days in Jerusalem and Judea.

So how did they fit into this story?

How do you see them in the nativity story? What would cause Nabataeans who are in Jordan to come up to Israel, to Bethlehem during his birth? How does this all fit together?

You've got Herod the Great, who is a vassal king of the Romans.

And Caesar Augustus, Octavian Caesar, is the emperor at the time.

And his vassal king in Judea is Herod.

Herod is a very shrewd political survivor.

He survived through basically cruelty, murder, suspicion, and being pretty smart.

And his neighbor is King Aretas IV, the Nabataean king.

What do you think that would have been?

Father Longenecker, who are the Nabataeans, and how do you think that they've connected to the real nativity story?

When I dug into the history of the Nabataeans, it just got interestinger and interestinger.

The Nabataeans are this mysterious civilization who didn't leave any written record of their history.

And this is a mystery to the historians.

Therefore, we have to piece together from graffiti, archaeological finds, a few scraps of writing about the Nabataeans, which are extant in contemporary historians, Greek and Roman historians.

But there's very little to go by.

But the more you piece together comes.

did they mostly retain their Jewish identity and religion living here, or did it become something like the Samaritans, where it's not quite the Orthodox practice?

What interested you in the story of the Magi originally, and what made you want to investigate their historicity?

I do a lot of freelance writing for popular journals and magazines and websites, and around Christmas time, editors are always looking for some kind of a Christmas story.

So someone asked me to write a story on where did the magi come from? So I began looking into it in my article, and the typical pat response is, Well, a lot of Bible scholars, first of all, believe that the whole Magi story is a pious fiction.

They think that it doesn't have any root in history and that it was a story added on much, much later after the death of Jesus Christ in order to make Jesus that much more special person.

Some others believe the past historical answer would be if the Magi existed, they were Persian astrologers, Persian shamans who saw signs in the night sky and set off to Jerusalem to find this king of the Jews.

So I looked a bit further and said, what if actually the Bible itself indicates where they come from.

And there's prophecies in the Old Testament book of Isaiah that they came from Taba and Ifa.

What would a Bible scholar, if they assumed the Magi to be a fiction, why would they think that they're added into the Nativity story? Is it because they're from the East? It bestows some sort of prophetic or messianic type of embellish to what would they say about that?