The Bible Geek Podcast 19-018

The Bible Geek Show

Matthew 12:42 has Jesus say, "The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon's wisdom, and now one greater than Solomon is here." This seems extremely odd from any kind of Christian perspective. Is God calling character witnesses at judgment? How exactly is the Queen of Sheba relevant? What qualifies her to provide any input: she is presumably a pagan, even if she recognized Solomon's wisdom some thousand years earlier? And what is it she's supposed to do? She rises from the dead, scans the crowd comprising "this generation"--apparently judgment is being handled by generation for administrative efficiency--and confirms that, yep, anyone who didn't recognize Jesus as superior to Solomon should indeed go to hell? How do you translate Mark 14: 33-34? What would you require as substantial proof that an historical Jesus existed? In Hyam Maccoby's "The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity" he says that Jesus and his followers were Pharisees. Eisenman says they were Zealot-Essenes. Whom you side with? Would Maccoby have had all the same information Eisenman had to reach his late-1990s conclusion of Zealot-Essenism when he (Maccoby) reached his mid-1980s claim of Pharisaism?