I'm really interested.

Yeah, the basic thing and most important is this book is doing theology based on history.

Now, you can do theology based on philosophy on all sorts of stuff.

You can also make it all up, of course.

Sure.

And doing theology without history, for me, is like playing basketball without a hoop.

Yeah.

I mean,

And I would, Dom, invite you to share any additional thoughts because I'm sure you have plenty to add in terms of, of this question.

Yeah, no, that's marvelous, Michael.

That's how you get traction.

You...

Jesus had a tradition.

Of course, the prophets have been at this for at least seven hundred years.

It's when you get traction.

Dom, tell me more about that, and Michael, jump in if you want.

Tell me about that, that, 'cause that historical context of empire and Judaism and, um, h- before we get into the books.

Yeah, and if I say something, you know, feel free to interrupt and say, "Wait a minute," anything like that.

Make it a conversation.

And I, I, I've touched on it in a way already, that I couldn't get away from his being Jewish because it raised that question of antisemitism.

In fact, the first article I, first scholarly article, first scholarly article I wrote was in Theological Studies '65, and it was called Antisemitism and the Gospels.

So it, it raised this, this whole issue for me.

Now, the way I went at it is I, I was trained.

So just tell us a, a word or two about the book and the theme, Who Killed Jesus?

Mm-hmm.

And that it comes from, uh, the core of who we are.

And but really, and just to say it in a nutshell, what we're, what we've done through this whole curriculum that we've developed from, uh, grade three up to eighth grade, and we're doing cartoons and everything that's in it.

But really, um, inviting the youth, just like with virtue, to in- invite them to participate in their own character development where, um, in which we would say in the church is becoming saints, right?

Mm-hmm.

So that if you can imprint that scripture verse on a mind, upon your mind and your heart.

You know, John was the evangelist, was the apostle that leaned up against the heart of Christ at the Last Supper.

He heard the heartbeat of God.

Why is that moment so theologically important, and why do churches often avoid it?

Yeah, I'll take a shot at that one, but starting from the history.

The first thing you have to figure out is what was John doing before Jesus ever arrived and if J- Jesus never arrived.

Josephus tells us about John, never bothers, and he calls him the Baptist, by the way, but he never says 'cause he baptized Jesus.

Jesus isn't even mentioned in that context.

So John had his own vision.

Leave Jesus out of it for the moment.

From your experience, why is it that Christian nationalism is so spiritually pers- uh, per- we'll say persuasive when it contradicts, as we mentioned earlier, Jesus' teaching?

When you say the, quote, revolutionary Jesus, what do you think modern Christians most misunderstand or resist about that particular claim? I'll start with Dom on that one.

Well, if I can start with that one, you could see about the way they don't know what to do with, well, almost, not quite 2,000 years, to be fair, of Christianity doesn't know what to do with the fact that Jesus was executed.

Let me use the shocking term.

You know, crucified might have been it for the first century, but executed for us.

Jesus was executed legally, publicly, officially, and not really because Pilate was having a bad hair day or something.

He was executed.

And from the Roman point of view, it was actually a just condemnation.

So early in the book, you write that Revolutionary stories are often buried or sugar-coated by powerful institutions, which I suppose is another way of saying that the victors are the ones who write the history, right? The age-old saying, who benefits today from a non-revolutionary version of Jesus? And I'll start with you, Dom.