In this episode of Cogito Ergo Pod, your host Daniel explores the shadows of the early Christian and Jewish imagination. While the canonical Bible provides the foundation for Western views on morality, many of our most vivid images of the Devil, the architecture of Hell, and the nature of betrayal actually stem from the "Expanded Universe"—texts written between the 1st and 4th centuries CE that didn't make the final cut of the New Testament.

We often think of the Bible as a complete manual, but for early believers, there were massive narrative gaps. How did Satan fall? What exactly happens to sinners in the afterlife? What was Jesus like as a child? In this deep dive, we dissect the non-canonical answers to these questions.

In this episode of Cogito Ergo Pod, Daniel dives into the most complex and controversial text in the Western canon: The Book of Revelation.

Far more than a roadmap for the end of the world, Revelation serves as a profound "unveiling" of the systemic and cosmic forces that govern our reality. As the penultimate chapter in our series on Evil in the Bible, we move beyond simple archetypes to dissect the "Unholy Trinity"—the Dragon, the Beasts, and the False Prophet—and explore how this ancient text creates a scathing critique of political tyranny, economic coercion, and the deification of the state.

In this episode, we explore:

• The Symptoms: Why the Four Horsemen are the harvest of human ambition rather than just divine punishment.

• The Source: The cosmic "Accuser" and the "wounded animal" theory of the Great Red Dragon.

• The Power & The Propaganda: Dissecting the Beast from the Sea (Tyranny) and the Beast from the Earth (Ideology).

• The Riddle of 666: Moving past modern myths to uncover the 1st-century reality of the Mark of the Beast and the Imperial Cult.

• The Fall of Babylon: How Revelation defines evil as the commodification of "human lives and souls."

• The Endgame: The trajectory of the Dragon and the philosophical implications of the "Second Death" in the Lake of Fire.

Whether you approach this text through the lens of theology, history, or philosophy, join us as we do justice to John of Patmos’s visionary masterpiece. It is a story of resistance, a theatre of the mind, and ultimately, a defiant message of hope that evil—no matter how systemic—has an expiration date.

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In this episode of Cogito Ergo Pod, we continue to dive deep into a multi-faceted and often misunderstood subject: the anatomy of evil in the Bible. While many look to the dramatic imagery of the Gospels or Job, this episode shifts the lens toward the practical, "boots-on-the-ground" letters found at the end of the New Testament—the Pastoral and Catholic Epistles.

Drawing from texts like James, 1 & 2 Peter, 1, 2, & 3 John, Jude, Hebrews, and the letters to Timothy and Titus, Daniel dissects how these second and third-generation communities defined the forces threatening to undo their mission. We explore evil not as a single, abstract monster, but as a three-dimensional threat:

• The Evil Within: How disordered internal desires—pride, lust, and the "love of money"—serve as the "source code" for human destruction (James 1:14-15; 1 Timothy 6:10).

• The Evil Between Us: The social collapse caused by favouritism, the "poison" of the tongue, and the absence of love within a community (James 2-3; 1 John 4:20).

• The Evil From Outside: The terrifying rise of the "False Teacher," the ideological spirit of the "Antichrist," and the prowling "roaring lion" that seeks to devour the faithful (2 Peter 2; 1 John 2:18; 1 Peter 5:8).

Whether you view these texts as sacred scripture or fascinating historical artefacts, this episode offers an accessible, scholarly, and engaging look at how ancient writers mapped the struggle for human goodness.

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