My conscience is clear.
As well it should be.
It’s funny that all any of us have tried to do is to engage him in an actual conversation. It wasn’t happening in ** you do not have permission to see this link **It’s not happening in 2025.
The reluctance met at every step is remarkable in its breadth.
You require disciples.
Indeed. If only we hear his word, we will be healed.
In this open forum I reserve the right to stick my head through any door I see.
As do I.
Since he’s made it abundantly clear he’s not interested in a dialogue, I will no longer try. I will, however, dispute positions I consider absurd and continue to comment on videos that are sensationalistic in nature and arise from ** you do not have permission to see this link ** sources.
Your loss. Not mine.
It’s such a pity. There’s so much we can learn from one another.
The Gospels said a man who did miracles and signs existed. Spinoza doesn’t agree with that. Therefore THAT Jesus did not exist. THAT Jesus is a myth. THAT is not misinformation. So, there. Stephen does not have to watch the video that proves him wrong. If Jesus did not do miracles and did not give us signs of his supernatural nature, THAT Jesus did NOT exist.
Animosity does blind one.
Stephen in Post 3 says: “Spinoza did not deny the existence of Jesus. Spinoza interpreted Jesus and his ideas through an Enlightenment lens. Jesus was an exemplary moral teacher. ”
But, of course, that’s not what your video says, is it?
“This video uncovers one of the most unsettling revelations in religious history: Spinoza’s argument that Jesus may never have existed as a historical figure—and therefore will never return.”
One might wish to take a quick glimpse at 10:07-10:50.
Spinoza denied a supernatural Jesus. Supernatural Jesus did not exist.
The Jesus of Church did not exist. The Jesus of the Holy Bible – gospels did not exist.
There is no gospel of the historical Jesus. That gospel was never written and never canonized.
There is no Jesus of any church or any Holy Bible.
The Jesus of church and Holy Bible turned out to be a false prophet time has proved. The apocalyptic prophet of the Kingdom of God ruled by the Son of Man did not materialize because The Temple was destroyed and any Jewish faction to materialize the Kingdom of a Jewish God was put down in the Jewish Revolt.
Robert
If you go back and read my initial post here, you will see that I was speaking of your posting two other videos from the same suspect source, suspect because of the evidence presented by BJH1960, which you have ignored.
Steefen
The first video, plus the second video in reply to Stephen, and the third video about Paul.
So, you want people to first look at the titles of all the other videos on the channel disregarding the content of the video presented for discussion.
Go all off topic. Do not judge a video by the merits of its contents. Look at the off topic videos first.
Note that one logical lacuna in the video is the fact that Galilee having a mix of peoples is taken as if it implies that everyone from Galilee was mixed.
However, if Galilee was the host to some of the fights between the Lagids and Seleucids — a highway of invasion, as described in the video — and therefore was not heavily populated at the time of the Seleucid conquest of Jerusalem and its hinterlands, and was therefore open to repopulation by migration from neighboring areas, and then was later conquered by the Hasmoneans, we cannot simply presume that all, or even most, residents of Galilee practicing Judaism were of mixed ancestry.
And that assumption, presented as if it follows from a Biblical reference to Galilee as “Galilee of the Gentiles” many centuries before, bears the entire weight of the argument, since no evidence is adduced that Mary was of mixed ethnicity, but rather the argument is an argument of silence, that since there was no genealogy presented for her, and she is from the Galilee, and she is presented as a cousin of Elizabeth of the Levi tribe, she perforce must be of mixed ancestry.
SO yes, this video is among the videos on this site that appeals to Spinoza to present a poorly constructed argument. Now, it may well be that this poorly constructed argument is more securely based on Spinoza’s work than some of those others, but given the other arguments presented by this content creator, I was not surprised to find that the argument presented in this video does not bear the weight of its conclusion.
- Founder: Founded by Ptolemy I Soter, a general and trusted bodyguard (somatophylax) of Alexander the Great, and the son of a man named Lagos, hence the name Lagids.
- Territory: Ruled the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Ancient Egypt, with their capital at Alexandria. At its height, the kingdom also controlled parts of the Levant, the Sinai, northern Nubia, and territories in the Aegean and Asia Minor.
- Duration: The longest and last dynasty of ancient Egypt, reigning for 275 years from 305 BCE until it was annexed by the Roman Republic in 30 BCE after the defeat of Cleopatra VII.
- Culture: The rulers presented themselves as Egyptian pharaohs to their native subjects while maintaining a strictly Hellenistic Greek culture and administration. They were famous for the Library and Museum of Alexandria.
= = = = = = =
Galilee under Herod (later Herod the Great)—that is, before 37 BCE, when he ruled Galilee as tetrarch under Roman authority—had a demographic profile that is often misunderstood. It was not a uniformly Jewish, Torah-observant region, nor was it fully Hellenized. It was mixed, transitional, and socially stratified.
In short: Galilean Jews were real Jews, but less temple-centric and less scrupulous than Judeans.
Non-Jewish Populations
Galilee retained significant non-Jewish elements, especially in urban and border areas:
- Itureans (Arab or Arab-Aramaean groups)
- Phoenician influence from Tyre and Sidon
- Hellenized Syrians
- Remnants of earlier populations (Assyrian-era resettlements)
These groups often lived:
- In cities or trade corridors
- Along the western and northern edges of Galilee
2. Language: Trilingual Environment
Galilee was linguistically diverse:
- Aramaic – dominant spoken language among common people
- Hebrew – used liturgically and symbolically; not widely spoken conversationally
-
Greek – used in:
- Administration
- Trade
- Urban settings
- Elite communication
This matters greatly for later New Testament interpretation: Galilee was culturally bilingual or trilingual, not insular.
Under Herod the Great, Galilee showed an urban–rural fracture.
4. Religious Character: “Peripheral Judaism”
Galilee practiced what scholars call peripheral or vernacular Judaism:
-
Loyalty to:
- Yahweh
- Ancestral identity
-
Less emphasis on:
- Temple pilgrimage
- Pharisaic legal precision
-
Greater openness to:
- Apocalyptic ideas
- Charismatic teachers
- Healing traditions
6. How Judeans Viewed Galileans
This is crucial:
-
Judeans often regarded Galileans as:
- Religious bumpkins
- Ethnically “impure”
- Linguistically rustic (accent mocked)
- “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:46) reflects real prejudice, not just rhetoric.
Bottom Line Summary
Under Herod (before he became king):
- Ethnically mixed, with a Jewish plurality
- Religiously Jewish but less orthodox than Judea
- Culturally hybrid (Semitic + Hellenistic)
- Politically unstable
- Socially marginalized in the eyes of Jerusalem elites
This Galilee was not a backwater—it was a frontier zone, and frontier zones are where new religious syntheses tend to emerge.
The Lagids (Ptolemaic dynasty) did contribute to Galilee, though mostly indirectly and structurally rather than monumentally, and their impact came precisely because Galilee lay in the contested zone between the Ptolemies and the Seleucids during the 3rd–early 2nd centuries BCE.
Economic Effects
Under Ptolemaic rule:
- Agricultural production expanded (grains, olives, wine)
- Galilee became a reliable tax-producing hinterland
-
Trade routes linking:
-
Egypt ↔ Phoenicia ↔ Syria
passed through or near Galilee
-
Egypt ↔ Phoenicia ↔ Syria
This laid groundwork for Galilee’s later prosperity under the Hasmoneans and Herodians.
3. Military Presence and Infrastructure (Limited but Real)
Because Galilee was contested:
-
The Lagids maintained:
- Garrisons
- Fortified towns
- Road maintenance for troop movement
However:
- They avoided heavy militarization that might provoke revolt
- Jewish communities were largely left to self-regulate internally
This policy of light imperial touch contrasts with later Seleucid overreach.
This helps explain why Galilee later appears:
- Jewish in identity
- But ethnically and culturally diverse
6. The Turning Point: Seleucid Takeover (c. 200 BCE)
When the Seleucids finally secured Coele-Syria after:
- The Battle of Panium (200 BCE)
The contrast was sharp:
- Heavier taxation
- More intrusive governance
- Cultural pressure
This memory of “good Ptolemaic rule” vs. “bad Seleucid rule” likely shaped later Jewish resistance traditions.
7. Long-Term Legacy in Galilee
Even after Lagid control ended, their imprint remained:
- Greek as an administrative language
- Market-oriented agriculture
- Mixed urban-rural settlement patterns
- Cultural hybridity without forced assimilation
By the time of:
- Hasmonean expansion
- Herod the Great
Galilee was already:
- Economically viable
- Administratively legible
- Culturally flexible
Much of that foundation traces back to the Lagid period.
Bottom Line
Yes—the Lagids contributed to Galilee, but subtly:
- They stabilized it as a productive border province
- Integrated it into a Hellenistic economic system
- Allowed Jewish identity to persist without coercion
- Created the conditions for later demographic growth
Galilee was not built by the Ptolemies—but it was prepared by them.
Steefen:
Thank you, Bruce. Because of your contribution, I have more information about Galilee.
Bruce:
not heavily populated at the time of the Seleucid conquest of Jerusalem and its hinterlands, and was therefore open to repopulation by migration from neighboring areas, and then was later conquered by the Hasmoneans, we cannot simply presume that all, or even most, residents of Galilee practicing Judaism were of mixed ancestry.
Steefen:
Thinking back on my research for Historical Accuracy, I could wonder what Galilee was like when ruled by Herod, before he became Herod the Great.
Bruce:
The Content Creator of the first video could have done a better job (it could have been very good, instead of poor).
Steefen:
Through discussion and working with AI–and my scholarly books on the life of Herod the Great, I have a better idea of Galilee.
Your criticism does not negate the general flavor of Judeans for Galileans presented in the Gospel of John and in the Spinoza video. I can see some uppity Judeans saying Galileans were so less than, they practically are not Jewish. Can anything or anyone good come from Nazareth? I don’t think you know the reality of prejudice, the darkness and power of prejudice and classism.
Maybe you do. I’m thinking: “We’re both Black but I’m a light skinned Black” sort of racism.
Nevertheless, true to the video, Jesus was more prone to Apocalyptic openness and some of his disciples were bumpkins, sometimes unimpressive to Jesus himself.
So, was Mary and Jesus so much from the wrong side of the tracks?
AN UNMARRIED PREGNANT WOMAN LIVING IN GALILEE?
These aren’t upper class Jewish people by ANY stretch of the imagination. I won’t even call them Jewish.
Galileans: we consider ourselves Jewish.
Jesus: That’s in Your Law, not My Law.
Do not judge a video by the merits of its contents. Look at the off topic videos first.
Why would anyone trust a video from a source that creates such blatant nonsense?
This YouTube content creator who specializes in Spinoza
Now that’s just downright ridiculous.
Perhaps, you have some information you’d like to share about this Spinoza specialist? Did he study under Steven Nadler at the University of Wisconsin-Madison or Michael Della Rocca at Yale?
If you know of any of his peer-reviewed publications, please share them with us at the earliest opportunity.
I weary of the discussion but on the off chance there might be somebody out there who wants to take a deeper dive, meaning, you haven’t actually read Spinoza, there are any number of collections of his work. The Penguin editions are very fine. Eventually all readers of Spinoza are going to need a bit of assistance to traverse the rough patches. The best general introduction to Spinoza, his life situation and his work I’ve encountered is Steven Nadler’s ** you do not have permission to see this link **.
Nadler has also written a straight-up biography and recently, a book discussing Spinoza’s ideas.
Spinoza lived on the cusp of two worlds; one dying, another being born. In one sense he straddled them; in another he stood apart from both, not entirely comfortable in either. This is the source of much of the difficulty. But there are rewards to be had.
Great surfacing of John 10:34, Steefen!
The Mandaean take on Jesus is that he’s tricky with words, and I would argue he’s doing it for a really good cause.
The very earliest Lord of Life/The Living One descriptions seem to have him as a God of Wisdom as well as of water ablution. In Sumerian parables, intellect > strength.
And that iterates into “clever god’. like speaking to a reed wall when told not to warn humans of the flood.
Abstract
The god Enki (Sumerian)/Ea (Akkadian) is central to Mesopotamian myth, ritual and scholarship but there is still disagreement as to precisely what he is the god of. He governs subterranean water, magic, and ‘wisdom’—but what kind of wisdom was it? A traditional argument in Assyriology claims that Enki is more trickster than sage; his knowledge has to do with craft and cunning, not ethics or rectitude. This essay analyzes important neglected associations of Enki with Mesopotamian wisdom literature, demonstrating parallels with ideals found in the biblical book of Proverbs. In these texts Enki is associated with the proper conduct of human life, making him not just crafty and cunning but wise.
I just have access to the abstract, if anyone has institutional access to Brill that reads this I would love to know what’s inside:
** you do not have permission to see this link **
I think the Mandaean position that Abraham switched priesthoods doesn’t disinclude Ea from remaining a personal deity. Think Jacob’s hairy hand switcheroo. That is cleverness accounted to the good because you need an intelligent leader, not a strongman.
Since Enki/Ea is local to Eridu, his AGENT is called Edit: ** you do not have permission to see this link **. I think this may possibly iterate to Iahu and perhaps Yahu – like the deity presupposed to be fully Yahweh in the Elephantine papyri. Lahmu is the “hairy one.”
And all of them are described as ‘shining’ mellamu, apparently. This may be what transliterates as Egyptian Iah, the ‘one who shines’ symbolized by the crescent moon, whose Hyksos-preferred spelling is Yah.
And Hammurabi’s epithet I think is the Great Mountain? Which further may correspond with the El Shaddai epithet.
Steefen said
… Your criticism does not negate the general flavor of Judeans for Galileans presented in the Gospel of John and in the Spinoza video.
And it was not aiming to. It was aiming to explain that the video presents a definitive conclusion that the argument presented in the video is inadequate to support.
I can see some uppity Judeans saying Galileans were so less than, they practically are not Jewish. Can anything or anyone good come from Nazareth? I don’t think you know the reality of prejudice, the darkness and power of prejudice and classism.
Maybe you do. I’m thinking: “We’re both Black but I’m a light skinned Black” sort of racism.
Nevertheless, true to the video, Jesus was more prone to Apocalyptic openness and some of his disciples were bumpkins, sometimes unimpressive to Jesus himself.
This is moving the goalposts. The video unambiguously concludes that Jesus was of mixed ethnicity on the basis of the fact that the Galilee was a region populated by a mix of ethnic groups. The conclusion quite clearly over-reaches what its premises can support.
Hypothetical upper class Judeans viewing Jews in the Galilee as backwater rubes from a mixed ethnic region is not a defense of the actual conclusion of the video, so I’m going to take you walking away from the conclusion of the video as a tacit admission that the video is, indeed, hyperbolic rhetoric that does not stand up as a credible argument.
Now my YouTube feed is full of videos about Spinoza. Could be worse i guess. Beats videos about UFO-Anunnaki-Bigfoot-hidden chambers beneath the pyramids-conspiracies. Occasionally I wax nostalgic for those lost innocent days when you could only find nine minute videos of pet pigs frolicking in someone’s backyard. And I can’t find the pastor of the church in Wales anymore who videoed his sermons delivered before a flock of sheep. And the young lady who would post each week of what was revealed to her by Jesus about current events. I need an app that would restrict all videos of more than 100 views. Those are my people. The genuine zanies. The sort of thing that never reaches the attention of the recommendation algorithm.
Bruce:
I’m going to take you walking away from the conclusion of the video as a tacit admission that the video is, indeed, hyperbolic rhetoric that does not stand up as a credible argument.
Steefen:
I agree with the conclusions of the video:
Under Herod (before he became king), Galilee was:
- Ethnically mixed, with a Jewish plurality
- Religiously Jewish but less orthodox than Judea
- Culturally hybrid (Semitic + Hellenistic)
- Cultural hybridity without forced assimilation
Second, the video increases the possibilities that Joseph, Mary, Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and James were ethnically mixed.
Could this be true of most of Jesus’ disciples?
Almost all of Jesus’ twelve disciples were from the Galilee region, with eleven of the twelve being Galilean, including Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James (son of Alphaeus), Judas (son of James), and Simon the Zealot; only Judas Iscariot is generally considered to be from Judea. Key Galilean towns included Capernaum and Bethsaida, where fishermen like Peter, Andrew, James, and John lived and worked. So, yes it could be true of most of Jesus’ disciples were mixed bumpkins. Andrew, a disciple of John the Baptist became a disciple of Jesus.
Interesting: Only Judas was from Judea and he betrayed Jesus. The Jewish bureaucracy tapped the Jewish disciple.
And poor, holy James from mixed Galilee was killed also.
Mary Magdalene was from Magdala, a town on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, which is why she’s called “Magdalene” (meaning “of Magdala”). This makes her a Galilean, as Galilee was the region around the Sea of Galilee where Jesus also primarily ministered.
You are wrong, Bruce.
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