Joe Rogan was left stunned on a recent episode of his podcast featuring Wesley Huff.
As one of the loudest podcasters around, Joe Rogan has never been known as the shy and retiring type. With that, he tends to make his feelings clear on everything from the American election to drone theories, the LA wildfires to drugs - he even famously featured Elon Musk smoking cannabis during a 2018 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience.
Rogan has also spoken about religion, and now the self-described agnostic might be having a change of heart.
Discussing all things religion with Christian apologist Wesley Huff, episode #2252 of The Joe Rogan Experience saw the host presented with a replica of Papyrus 52. Christians maintain that it’s one of the oldest manuscripts from the Bible, with it thought to be the oldest excerpt from the Bible's Gospel of John.
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The passage is said to be an eyewitness testimony from Jesus' trials in the run-up to his eventual crucifixion.
The front of the replica reads: "Jesus says, everyone who follows the truth, who is following the truth, follows me."
On the back, there are the words of Pontius Pilate saying, "What is truth?''
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Pilate was famously the governor of Rome who sentenced Jesus to death.
Despite only being a small fragment of the larger book, Huff says the full version 'would have been essentially like a pocket copy of the Gospel of John' that was carried from Turkey to Egypt. With the original being found in Egypt in the 1940s, historians have determined it's a Christian manuscript because there's writing on both sides.
Even though this small piece is only a replica, it clearly affected Rogan, who said: "Wow. That's unbelievable. Wow. That's so fascinating."
Rogan also grilled Huff on whether there are accounts of Jesus not dying on the cross, with the guest explaining: "No, the only ones from the ancient world that deny his resurrection are groups that come on afterwards that sometimes are — sometimes are described as Gnostics, and they’re not necessarily just denying it for the reasons we might think they were.
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"They’re denying it because they have incorporated ideas of pagan philosophy, where they believe that the spiritual is good and the physical is bad."
Rogan has previously described himself as an atheist but has become more spiritual since the death of his grandfather.
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As well as subscribing to Christianity's mantra of loving your enemies and practicing forgiveness, Rogan has said he's interested in a faith that's 'challenging' instead of easy. He's talked about religion several times on The Joe Rogan Experience, and in a 2023 episode with journalist Michael Shellenberger, the latter referred to 'wokeism' as a religion.
More recently, Rogan spoke to NFL star Aaron Rodgers in a February 2024 episode and said about Christianity's role in a 'chaotic' society. Here, Rogan mused: "I think as time rolls on, people are going to understand the need to have some sort of divine structure to things, some sort of belief in the sanctity of love and of truth, and a lot of that comes from a religion."
While we don't think Rogan being gifted Papyrus 52 is suddenly going to have him running to the church every Sunday, it's seemingly opened his eyes further to the idea that maybe there's more to this whole religion thing.