The following article was published by the Gazette on 12/16/2024.
University of Iowa Classics Associate Professor Robert Cargill, 51, grew up and earned all of his college degrees in California, but said he didn’t find his people until he moved to Iowa City in 2011.
People all over the world have been finding him, too, on such History Channel programs as “The UnXplained” with host William Shatner; “History’s Greatest Mysteries” with Laurence Fishburne; “Ancient Aliens” with Giorgio Tsoukalos; “Holy Marvels” with Dennis Quaid; and the new “Mysteries Unearthed” with Danny Trejo.
Cargill also has provided his talents to CNN, Good Morning America and various documentaries, including NatGeo’s “Writing the Dead Sea Scrolls.”
“This is what I love about working at the University of Iowa,” he said. “Our administration … understand the importance of a Humanities faculty that’s willing to reach out directly to the public and to make themselves available to the public in public scholarship.”
Always at ease in front of a crowd since his youth, leaping in front of the camera was a natural progression during his grad school days in Los Angeles. He was so comfortable adding his academic expertise to show after show that the expert in ancient Biblical languages, cultures and archaeology was able to carve out “a cottage side gig” that continues today.
“I am always saying, ‘Go to where the people are. Scholars just can’t talk to other scholars. We need to go to where the people are. And where the people are is on YouTube now, it’s on streaming services.”
He was working on his Ph.D. at UCLA and teaching at Pepperdine University, where he earned his master’s degree, when he found out about a documentary opportunity in Malibu. He jumped at the chance to interview as an academic expert.
“I knew it was just something that I could do naturally,” he said.
The producers saw that, too, and shows kept coming his way, including “Ancient Aliens,” where he describes his role as “the debunker.”
Just as that show grew his fan base, he’s also drawn scoffers.
“I would take some grief from scholars who would say, ‘Why are you participating in this? It’s garbage.’ ”
His answer?
“I get more emails back from people about that show, saying, ‘Hey, I saw you. Thanks for bringing real science (and) real scholarship.’
“(Producer Kevin Burns) kept saying to me, ‘You can reach people that you can never reach in a university. You can reach an audience that is never going to enroll in a university class, and even if you only reach 2 percent of them, 98 percent of them want to smoke pot and eat Cheetos and watch ‘Aliens,’ right? But the 2 percent that you can reach … you can’t reach them in a university.’ ”
Today, producers fly him to Los Angeles three or four times a year for recording, providing airfare, lodging and a paycheck. Other assignments may take him to Chicago or New York. And no, he doesn’t get to meet the show hosts, even though he’d love to meet Shatner, the “Star Trek” star celebrated in Riverside, which declares itself as the character’s “future birthplace.”
Those experiences translate to Cargill’s teaching and advocacy for the UI.
“I don’t show the episodes in class unless it’s absolutely relevant,” he said. “What I will show is some of the YouTube clips” in his podcast, Bible & Archaeology.
His History Channel appearances include a UI banner at the bottom of the screen. That branding, plus his YouTube clips, serve as UI recruiting and marketing tools.
“I’m lecturing in the classroom, but I’m taking some of that content, distilling it so that the general public can understand it, and I’m giving free content to the people — anybody who wants to watch,” he said, noting that the YouTube channel has 120,000 viewers, which generates a revenue stream for the UI.
He also uses his computer acumen to “rebuild in virtual reality archaeological remains and to test them to see what ancient structures would look like,” he said, such as the Qumran Caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, or the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem.
Students who otherwise couldn’t go to these sites can “walk through them” virtually.
Coming to the UI
Los Angeles was the starting point for Cargill’s road to Iowa City.
“California goes broke every 10 years,” he said, adding that while he was teaching and working on his Ph.D. at UCLA during one of those downturns, he discovered the UI was offering a position “tailor-made” for him.
“They had a religious studies, classics and digital humanities joint appointment, and that’s what I did,” he said. “...I fell in love with Iowa City soon as I saw Iowa City. I love the people. I love the way it felt. I didn’t have to commute an hour to get to work. It’s a nine-minute commute from where I live. You can afford to live here. It’s a progressive city. There’s concerts downtown in the summer, and good schools. And so I was like, ‘These are my people.’ ”
He tries to impress that upon his students, too, tossing in some “dad jokes” for eye-rolling good measure. (A married father of five children, he and his wife have four children ages 9 to 13, and he also has an adult daughter from his first marriage.)
He wants to be relatable in the classroom.
“I’m trying to say, ‘Look, I’m just a goofy dad who you know you can make fun of. You can — that’s fine. I’ve been through some things. I’ve been through the stuff that you’re going through. I’ve cried myself to sleep in my pillow. I’ve been through heartbreak. I’ve been through a divorce. I went to junior college. I started off at Fresno City College. Some of you went to Kirkwood.’ … I told them this today: ‘I’m not from L.A. I’m not from San Francisco. I’m from Fresno. This is the Iowa of California.’ ”
He shrugged when asked if the students think he’s cool, but then admitted his classes always fill up. And while he teaches courses related to religion, he doesn’t teach theology. Students’ faith journeys are their own to figure out.
“We’re at a public university. We don’t do theology. We read it as literature,” he said of ancient texts, including the Bible. “I try to encourage students who are raised in faith like I was, to remove the faith aspect of it, and just treat it as any other piece of literature. Read it that way and see the differences, see the see the tensions that ancient peoples would have had to struggle with.”
Throughout his own life, he’s moved from conservative Christianity to a more progressive Christianity, then agnosticism. His kids don’t go to church, but they celebrate Christmas in their home, as well as Hanukkah, and Cargill has a Buddha statue next to a pyramid on a shelf in his UI office.
Christmas and the Gospels
A popular holiday song touts Christmas as “the most wonderful time of the year.” But Christmas brings up a whole new conundrum, since Gospel writers Matthew, Mark, Luke and John bring different perspectives and different versions of the birth and life of Jesus. John doesn’t even mention the birth. So Christians harmonize those aspects to create today’s celebrations, Cargill said.
Matthew and John were Disciples who witnessed Jesus’ life, while Mark and Luke were friends with people who witnessed it.
“Mark is the first gospel written,” Cargill said, “and then Matthew, when he writes his gospel, has a copy of Mark in front of him. So the similarities between Matthew and Mark are because Matthew’s got Mark, and then he’s adding to the basic timeline, the basic outline of Mark, with his own sources.
“Luke either has a copy of Matthew in front of him and he’s copying Matthew pretty closely, or he’s got a copy of Mark in front of him, and he’s bringing in some similar sources. And that’s why Matthew and Luke are very, very similar — almost identical, word for word in many places, but different some places. They’re both using Mark as a basic outline. …
“And then John is the big controversy. John is very different in many places, but in some places, he’s similar. So that’s where the big the big argument is today. Did John know about Matthew and Luke and just said, ‘I’m familiar with this, but I’m not going to repeat it. … I’m going to tell you a bunch of new stuff.’ ”
In Matthew, Mary and Joseph live in Bethlehem, where Jesus is born, then they go to Egypt to escape Herod’s death decree for male infants ages 2 and under, intending to slay the foretold Messiah. After Herod dies, Mary, Joseph and Jesus go to Nazareth. In Luke, however, they live in Nazareth, go to Bethlehem for the birth, then return to Nazareth.
Matthew and Luke’s accounts “both wind up in Nazareth, and they both got him born in Bethlehem. But if you read them separately, it’s two different stories. They don’t match,” Cargill said. Luke brings in shepherds, while Matthew introduces the Magi, and by harmonizing the stories, today’s Nativity scenes incorporate both shepherds and Magi visiting the baby.
Cargill encourages his students to read the Gospels separately and make notes — to view and analyze them as literature. That’s when they’ll see not only the differences, but the themes that carry through.
“And this is what I do,” he said.