Continuing Education on YouTube

Stefan Milo is a British archaeologist who lives with his family in Murrka and has a great YouTube channel called, wittily enough, Stefan Milo: 

Well. There was supposed to be a link to Stefan's YouTube channel here. But we seem to be having even more technical difficulties. I repeat: it's on YouTube, it's called Stefan Milo and it's great.

I don't know what sort of archaeologist Milo is. He's very self-deprecating about his intellect and his academic accomplishments -- too much so, I would guess. He regularly talks to world-leading archaeologists on his channel, and he seems to keep up them pretty well. He has a degree in Archaeology from the University of Sheffield, but I don't know whether it's a Doctorate or some lesser degree.

I don't know whether he's published a lot of peer-reviewed papers. He's published a children's book about archaeology; he talks about that book a lot on his channel. 

I do feel that I've learned a lot about archaeology from Milo's channel after a few weeks of binge-watching his videos. That is in large part because I find his videos pleasant to watch: he has an engaging personality and his videos have good production values. 

For just a little while I said to myself: since Milo didn't make a career in academia, now he has to be an academic and a performer as well. And then suddenly it struck me: all teachers are performers. Some are good performers, some aren't. Milo is one of the ones who are more effective because they're more engaging and likeable.

I don't know why it took me until I was 62 years old to grasp this, but it's been grasped. Of course teachers who fascinate their students are more effective than those who repel them. And some teachers started showing slides decades ago, if not centuries, and some of them have been very good with the visual aids, and that doesn't hurt a bit when it comes to actual task of education.

Milo makes a great contrast here to Bart Ehrman, probably the world's most famous living academic authority on the subject of Jesus and early Christianity. Ehrman can be seen as having at least three separate careers: as an author of academic books, which contain footnotes and multilingual bibliographies and are peer-reviewed; an author of popular books, which eschew the footnotes and bibliographies, are aimed at the "general public," and sell several times as much as the academic books, routinely making bestseller lists; and also as a teacher who stands in front of students and talks.

Nowadays, of course, teaching is done not only in classrooms, but also in front of cameras, in the making of various kinds of videos. I've watched quite a few of Ehrman's videos lately, and... and I like his academic books very much.  So do many academics. And his popular books must have hundreds of thousands of ardent fans among the "general public" by now. If not actually millions.

Ehrman also appears on many YouTube channels, some seem to be run in part by him, and he's a guest on many others, and the videos get millions and millions and millions of views.

Would they get so many views without the books? I really have to wonder. There are probably some people who find Ehrman to be the epitome of charisma, because when there are millions and millions and millions of views, there will be every conceivable opinion. 

I watch the videos for Ehrman's knowledge. I have to put up with a lot of teeth-grittingly annoying behavior in order to get to that knowledge. One channel which Ehrman seems to at least partly control, is actually hosted by a British woman, and every video starts with her asking "Bart" about the latest in his private life, and why?! "Bart" never says anything edifying or remotely interesting in these intros, and I've taken to skipping ahead to where they're actually talking about Jeebus.

What a huge contrast to Stefan Milo's video, where the occasional glimpses of his wife and baby girl are actually charming, and sometimes even tied in relevantly to to the archaeological content.

Ehrman has said many times that his students in North Carolina are from North Carolina, and therefore are often fundamentalists, and therefore are often quite astonished by what he has to teach them. He's said this many times just that I've seen. How many times has he insulted his students in pretty much the identical way in his entire life?! It boggles the boggles. Why not try some new material for a change, and tell the world about the most surprisingly clever things he's heard from his students lately? 

And his laugh. Ehrman's laugh just sets my teeth on edge. it literally sounds like "Hyuck hyuck hyuck!"

Anyhow. Stefan Milo's videos on YouTube, and Bart Ehrman's academic books, the ones with the footnotes and bibliographies, are what I recommend. 

Also, since I'm sure some of you are wondering now that I've mentioned Ehrman: no, I am still not convinced that Jesus existed. I agree with Ehrman that most of the most prominent living mythicists, Price and Carrier and Freke and Gandy and Fitzgerald et al, are bozos as well as unpleasant people, I agree with him that Atlantis was not real and that the Egyptians and Mayas built all of those amazing buildings all by themselves, with no extra-terrestrial help whatsoever. I will almost always side with the academic consensus in the sciences and humanities. "Academic cover-up" strikes me as an oxymoron. I agree with Ehrman that there is no reason to doubt that Socrates and Caesar and Alexander the Great and Pilate and Herod Antipater and John the Baptist and Saul/Paul of Taurus were real people, and I trust Ehrman's opinion about which of the Pauline epistles were written by Paul and which of the Platonic dialogues were written by Plato, and about many, many other things. 

But I still haven't had that  "AHA!"-moment where it suddenly makes sense what Ehrman and almost all other academics say about Jesus: that he certainly existed. I'm also not certain that he never existed, the way I am with, for example, King Arthur. When it comes to Jesus' existence, I'm on the fence, where I've been for at least 30 years.

King Arthur and Jesus

 King Arthur never existed. I'm not sure whether Jesus existed. 

And of course, I'm talking about a completely non-supernatural Jesus, who was crucified by Pontius Pilate around 30 AD. Supernatural details were added to the story later. They were either added to the biography of a real person, or the entire biography is fiction.

Academics overwhelmingly say Jesus existed. This is the only case where I go against an overwhelming academic consensus. I still can't figure out why the academics are convinced.

I believe John the Baptist existed. I believe Pontius Pilate existed. I believe Saint Paul existed. But the evidence for Jesus seems very thin, to me. The story of Jesus could be based on John the Baptist. Paul could have made Jesus up because he thought the story would be good for people.

Or something else.  Or he might really have existed.

King Arthur is a slam-dunk case: never existed. 

 

Merlin might have existed. The earliest writing about a King named Arthur comes from Geoffrey of Monmouth, who wrote a terrific book (in Latin) in the 1130's called de gestis Britonum (The History of the Kings of Britain). Fantastic book of fiction, great story, zero reason to regard it as actual history.

What Geoffrey thought he was writing is very hard to tell. He said his book was a translation of a book in Welsh. But there's no trace of that book except Geoffrey mentioning it.

I see several possibilities:

1) Geoffrey never intended anyone to regard his book as non-fiction. The Welsh book was just one more fictional detail.

2) Geoffrey wrote what he regarded as a mixture of history and legends. In this case, the Welsh book could have been 2a) real, or 2b) made up by Geoffrey.

3) Geoffrey could have been completely sincere, and the Welsh book could have been real, and Geoffrey could have done no more or less than translate it into Latin.

If Geoffrey never intended de gestis Britonum to be regarded as non-fiction, Boy, did that go wrong: it took about 500 years until the main stream of academia began to have doubts about Geoffrey's book, and large parts of the general public are still, today, having trouble sorting this out.

It's possible that that Welsh book really existed, but if so, it's very strange and extremely unusual that we can find no trace of it except for Geoffrey's mention. Still, it's possible that that Welsh book, and/or some other written description of a Dark Age Welsh King named Arthur, may turn up. 

But if and when they are found, they, like all other tales of King Arthur, will be legends. There may have been a soldier named Arthur in 5th or 6th century Wales. There may have been more than one. One of them, or more than one, may have been what could reasonably have been called a general. 

 

But enough light has been thrown upon the Dark Ages that we can say, with great confidence, that there never was a King Arthur. 

 

Many of the stories are still magnificent, though. That hasn't changed at all.