← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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- [00:01]
A
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B
have you ever heard a Christian say something about the Bible and wondered exactly where they were getting their information from? I know I have, and I'm sure I've said some of these things myself. Today we are talking about the most common claims Christians make about the Bible that are not actually based in reality. We also have our bonus segment at the end, which this week is Listeners Questions, where I will be asking Bart, among other things, what relationship the apostles had to the proto orthodox tradition. So Bart, as a former believer, what made an argument feel convincing to you when you're in evangelical logic, authority, community, or something else entirely?
- [02:07]
C
Well, you know, when I became an evangelical Christian when I was 15, I was already deeply ensconced in the world of debate in high school and I was always a evidence kind of guy. And so if somebody said something about the Bible, I would just, I would try and figure out, yeah, is that right? I remember kind of a clear instance where I had one of my friends who had also had a born again experience telling me that in his view that heaven will be heaven will be just like it, kind of like it is now, just kind of repeating, oh, it's going to be up in the above and severe. And I said, where's that in the Bible? I didn't know myself but I thought, man, he's making stuff up here. And so I've Always been that kind of. That kind of evidence guy.
- [02:53]
B
Excellent. I was once asked when I was an early teen to describe what I thought heaven would be like. And my response was, I have no idea.
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C
Well, okay.
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B
Zero clue.
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C
Well, you know, Iris Dement has a fantastic song on that. I don't know if you're probably not an Irish Dement, in fact, fan, but those of you are. Yeah. Let the Mystery Be. It's called.
- [03:14]
B
I like the title. Okay. So we're talking today about common claims that Christians believe or make about the Bible that aren't really rooted in evidence, which as historians, I think you and I are both quite fond of. And the first one is actually something you brought up two episodes ago that I had never heard before. So I put it in my notes to ask you about Jesus is actually Yahweh. I've never heard that.
- [03:40]
C
Ah, yeah. You know, I had never heard that until I was having a debate with an evangelical apologist. And he just kind of off the cuff said, you know, you know, talk about Jesus as Yahweh. And I was so puzzled during the debate. I said, what? What do you mean? No, he's not. Jesus isn't Yahweh. I mean, that's the whole point, is that Yahweh is the Father God and Jesus is the Son. And no. And he insists, oh, no, it's in the. This guy's wacko. But then I started hearing people say that, and apparently it's becoming a thing in the evangelical community that. That Jesus actually is Yahweh. But I don't know who they think then the Father is. Maybe I. So part of is my ignorance of what in the world they're saying, because I can just tell you in the he in the Bible, Jesus is not Yah in the New Testament. I mean, for just to give you, like kind of an obvious thing. I mean, in Psalm 110, which Christians quote in the New Testament we have the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. And it's. Yahweh says this to my Lord, to my Adonai. And they're quoting this in order to show that God had given Jesus authority over all of his enemies, that Yahweh. So Jesus can't be Yahweh because Yahweh is the one who gives the Son the authority in the Bible. So I just thought, man, this is. It's bizarre. But I think it's. It's one of these things where people are trying to elevate the status of Jesus and affirm as clearly as they can his real divinity. And so now they're making him Yahweh, which I think. I think is just not. I'm not saying theologically. I mean, I don't have. I don't believe in God at all, but I'm just saying it's not what the Bible teaches.
- [05:33]
B
Have you, have you had any biblical arguments that they trotted out? Any passages that they think supports this idea or not?
- [05:42]
C
The. The one that I've heard people use is Philippians 2. The. It's a poem that Paul's reciting about Christ who was in the form of God, but he didn't regard equality with God, something to be grasped after. But he emptied himself and then he. And he was crucified. Therefore God highly exalted him and gave him the. That is above every name. And so they say, so Jesus has the name Yahweh, but that doesn't. And yeah, okay, I can see how you would read it that way, but that isn't what Paul's talking about. Paul's not saying that Jesus became Yahweh. He. He gave him Yahweh's name. And the way. In other words, he gave him the name Lord. And the way you, the way, you know, that is the way to think about that is what does it mean when. When. When the, when the messeng on the door and says, open up in the name of the King doesn't mean the messenger is the king. He means he's using the name of the king. He has the authority of the name of the king. And that's what Paul's thinking about. I mean, that's what Paul is talking about in Philippians 2 and everywhere else. Jesus is never identified as Yahweh. And so when they call him Lord, I think this is the other thing. People get confused because Yahweh is translated as Lord in the Hebrew Bible. In English Bibles. Hebrew Bible and Jesus is called Lord. Oh, okay, so he is Lord. So he is Yahweh. No, you misunderstand. The reason they use Lord for Yahweh in the Old Testament is because his name is not supposed to be pronounced. And so rather than saying Yahweh in Jewish tradition, going way back, many, many centuries, instead of saying Yahweh, if they're reading this, if they're reading Torah, and they come across the Tetragrammaton, the four letters that spell out Yahweh, instead of saying Yahweh they'll say Adonai, which is my Lord. And that gets translated into English then. So in an English Bible, when you say in the Old Testament, if you've got Yahweh's name, it's capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D, to differentiate it, that's the name of God as opposed to Lord, capital L, O, R, D, lowercase. And so I think people just get confused or they don't know any better.
- [07:54]
B
I wanted to segue into another kind of Jesus Yahweh relationship that I've always found very interesting is the idea that not that Jesus is Yahweh, but that you can see Jesus as being present with Yahweh in certain passages of the Old Testament. And there's a passage in Genesis that is quite often used for this. And I've always been very confused because it's very. He's not there. He's not named. It's just. Just a weird argument. But could you explain that argument to us and why it doesn't work?
- [08:32]
C
Well, there's. I mean, there's several paths. Christians started finding Jesus everywhere. And in. In the early church, and I mean, right off in Genesis, you know, in. In the book of Genesis, when. In Genesis 1, when God creates the heavens and the earth, and then the sixth day, he says, let us make man in our own image. Well, he has to be talking about somebody to somebody. And in John chapter one, we're told that Christ is the one through whom God created the world. And so when he says, let us, he's talking to J. And since right before that, a few verses before that, you've got the Spirit of God hovering over the water, you've got the Spirit, and you get the Son and you got the Father, and they're all God. And so that's one place. And a place that was popular in the early church was. And still, I guess some people today is in Exodus chapter 3, where Moses approaches the burning bush. And he sees this bush. It's burning, but it's not being consumed. And he said, wow, that's weird. And he goes to check it out, and we're told that the angel of the Lord, the angel of Yahweh, was in the bush. And then when Moses starts speaking to this angel, all of a sudden the text doesn't refer to the angel anymore. It just refers to Yahweh speaking to him. So the angel was Yahweh, the angel of the Lord was Yahweh. And so people say, well, that's Jesus, starting with Justin Martyr in the second century, he said that's actually a pre incarnate Christ. He's the one speaking. So Christ is the one who comes to earth in any form whatsoever when God shows up on earth and God's the one up heaven. And so it's that, that kind of confusion that happens.
- [10:09]
B
Could you talk a little bit about this pluralization that we see especially in places like Genesis 1 with, with Yahweh saying let us do X or using plural verbs or that kind of thing. Is it intended to convey that Jesus is there with Yahweh or something else?
- [10:30]
C
Jesus is not in the Old Testament, he said so. No, he's not until, you know, unless you put him there. So the, let us. The, the answer that I always had that was that it's a royal we. You know, when the king says we are not amused, it's like it's the royal we. But I think more likely it is. You can cross reference it to other passages in the Hebrew Bible, such as the Book of Job, where in the Book of Job, the beginning of Job, God is sitting among his divine council. It's a group of other supernatural beings that he's created, but who are giving him advice about what to do. And one of them is called the Satan, the adversary Hasatan. And so God, God in the Hebrew Bible in various places is understood to have these kind of supernatural advisors around him or people that he consults with. And that seems to be what's going on in Genesis. Let us make humans in our own image. And so that, that's probably who he's talking to.
- [11:31]
B
In, along similar lines you have arguments about the Old Testament predicting Jesus and predicting his arrival as, as the Messiah. Could you give an example of one of the passages that is used to make this argument and then maybe tell us why it just doesn't work?
- [11:49]
C
Yeah, you know, I, I often have people ask me, I just last week I had a, a student at an event I was doing say, well, you know, what do you, what do you do about the fact that the Old Testament predicts Jesus and like dozens of ways and Jesus fulfilled every one of those prophecies, you know, and so, so it takes a long time to explain that and it'd be fun. We probably should have a full episode on this. But there are all sorts of passages where Christians just assume it's talking about Jesus as predicting him. And Christians today do that because it's found already in the Bible. I mean the Gospel of Matthew is filled with what are Called fulfillment citations, where Matthew will quote a passage of Scripture and say, so Jesus did that. Supposed to be born of a virgin. Jesus was born of a virgin. So he quot Isaiah 7:14 or supposed to be born in Bethlehem, Micah 5:2, he's born in Bethlehem, you know. And the one that most Christians are completely convinced by today is Isaiah 53, which is a psalm of the suffering servant of Yahweh who has suffered for the sins of the people and has been punished. And now God is going to reward the suffering servant. And you cannot. Nobody can read Isaiah 53, who's grown up in a Christian world. Nobody can read that and think other than it's Jesus. You have to think it's. You just can't do it otherwise because you're trained to think this is. It's referring to Jesus. It's clearly not referring to Jesus. It's. It. It refers to the servant of the Lord who is talked about in four passages in Isaiah, all of which are talking about someone else. Two times we're told who it is. It's the nation of Israel. Israel has suffered for the sins of the people.
- [13:27]
B
How do Christians respond when you point that out to them?
- [13:32]
C
It can't be Israel because it's a third person singular. He. Israel's a they. It's a whole nation. And so. Okay, it's a fair argument. What I would point out is that in the Old Testament, often collectives are talked about in the. In the. With a third person singular. For example, in the Book of Daniel, chapter seven, which has close relations to Isaiah 53, the prophet sees beasts coming up out of the sea, one after the other. And the first beast is like this, and the second is like that. They're horrible beasts who rampage over the earth, and it's awful. They create havoc on earth and each beat. But then we're told each beast represents a kingdom. And so one is Babylon, one is Media, one is Persia, one is Greece. Well, okay, so it's. It's represented as a single. The Israel is represented as a single in. In. In Daniel 7 as well, by the way. The one like a son of man coming on the clouds of heaven. The angel who's interpreting this to Daniel identifies this as the. The holy ones of the people of the Most High. The one like a son of man is.
- [14:45]
A
Is.
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B
That's pretty conclusive, I would say.
- [14:48]
C
Here's to me, not to people who want to think otherwise.
- [14:54]
B
We are going to take a very brief break. We have an announcement to make, and then we will be right back with more interesting things that Christians say. And we're going to move on to biblical contradictions. So, you know, we're going to have fun with that one. Okay. I am very excited to share that. We have a brand new course coming up with Hugo Mendez called Decoding the Gospel of Symbols, Signs and Salvation. Salvation. If you've ever felt like John reads a little differently than the other gospels, you are right. And Hugo shows how it's packed with deep symbolism and a completely unique vision of Jesus. Now, but you've done already courses on Matthew, Mark and Luke. Can I ask why Hugo is doing the John course instead of you?
- [15:38]
C
I was going to do it and I, I, I kind of wanted to do it, but the more I thought about it, Hugh, you know, John is one of, one of the many things that I've studied for a very long time. My, my first college class was on the Gospel of John when I was 17. So I've thought about the gospel job. I've taught it for years and years and years. Hugo is a rising star precisely in the field of the Gospel of John. Like internationally in an international star. We had a, we had a fairly famous scholar from Europe here last week that I talked with who's talking about Hugo on the Gospel of John. It's like he's from, these guys are Finland, you know, it's like, so Hugo is, he's written a book on it that's, that's been on John that deals with the deep metaphors on the Gospel of John. And he is, he is a superb teacher and he really is completely up on everything that's been written on it. And so I thought, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna let Hugo do this one because it'd be, you know, I'd love to, but Hugo will do it better than I do. So I'm going to let him do it.
- [16:46]
B
Perfect. Thank you. The live recording of this course is coming soon, so if you act fast, you can watch Dr. Mendez teach it live on August 29th and 30th. It includes eight lectures and two live Q& A's. You can get all the details and sign up@bertehrman.com John Course. Be sure to grab it before the early bird pricing ends on August 8th. And as always, use the code and MJ podcast for a special additional discount. All right, back to the episode on things Christians say. And as I said, we're dealing with contradictions. I have heard people say that there is no such thing as a biblical contradiction. If you think there is you just don't understand what is actually going on, what the text really says, or you don't understand the symbolism or the fact that it's ancient Near Eastern war rhetoric or all this kind of stuff. What is your response to that kind of argument?
- [17:43]
C
Well, it's what I used to think when I was a fundamentalist. And it's a view that many people have without actually looking into it. I, I didn't want to leave that view. I, I went kicking and screaming because I absolutely was intent on, on that view. And I just, I got to a point where I just realized, look, if, if something's true, it's true. I mean, if it's a, if this is truly a contradiction, it's a contradiction. I shouldn't pretend it's not because then I'm against the truth and that's not good. And so, look, there are flat out contradictions. There just are. I mean, and we've talked about a lot of them on the program. A lot of them are just little things, you know, picky and little things, but they are contradictions. I mean, when Jesus sends his disciples out to, to, to spread the Gospel, does he tell them, take a staff, or does he sell them? Do not take a staff. It's the same episode and two word for word. It's the same between Matth. Mark. But they disagree on that. That's like, who cares? Well, I mean, you know, Matthew's trying to make a particular point, Mark's trying to make a particular point, and they've changed things. In the Gospel of John, Jesus dies a day earlier than he dies in the Gospel of Mark. They both explicitly date it. And so you just go on and on. I mean, there are hundreds of these things, and once you see them, you start seeing them. It doesn't mean that you have to give up your faith. If you recognize that the Bible has contradictions in it, it doesn't even mean you have to stop being a, a, an evangelical. If you're an evangelical. I mean, Michael Akona at a debate we had one time, said that he thought that, that Matthew incorrectly reported Jesus said, don't take a staff. He went on to say that he thought that Matthew was inerrant. I'm not sure how that one works. But, but that's his view. Contradictions. But it's no, there are no errors, just contradictions. Okay.
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B
And something that is related to this, sticking with contradictions. If we look at the Old Testament specifically, something that I have heard is that even if there are contradictions in the Old Testament, it doesn't really matter because we don't follow the Old Testament as Christians. We should be focused more on the New Testament. Have you heard that one?
- [20:00]
C
Oh, yeah. And it's a very interesting view. This was the view of Marcion in the second century we talked about in our last episode, who was one of the. He was the first figure that we was kind of officially declared a heretic for having this view that the Old Testament doesn't matter. In fact, he thought it was a Jewish book and not a Christian book. So who cared? And so people say the. The Old Testament doesn't matter. Okay, that's fine. I mean, it's, you know, it's three, like four fifths of the Bible that you think doesn't matter, doesn't matter. But it's. I think that that view that it doesn't matter for a Christian is leaning toward a kind of opposition to Judaism for being. For being Judaism. And it is very close to being anti Semitic, in my view, because it's saying that Jews have an inferior religion to our religion and just inherently. And so I think it's problematic in lots of different ways, but it's certainly true. The Old Testament has contradictions. You get contradictions in chapters one and two of the first book between themselves. And so. So it certainly has contradictions. And if Christians don't care about that, it's okay. I mean, I don't. But I don't think, you know, it doesn't sit well with me for somebody to say it's. It's part of our scriptures, but we don't, you know, we don't follow it because that's the Jewish book.
- [21:30]
B
And again, sticking with contradictions. And what we were talking about a couple of weeks ago, looking at differences in manuscripts and how scribes changed things, something that does come up quite regularly is that none of the differences in the manuscripts of the New Testament are significant or relevant or important. So it's kind of not something we need to worry about.
- [21:51]
C
Yeah, yeah, I get that one a lot. Because in my book, misquoting Jesus, I was trying to argue that, in fact, you know, there are lots of differences. Most of them don't matter. Some of them matter. Some matter a lot. And so does it matter whether the Gospel of Luke got rid of the idea of atonement? Is it. Does it matter that Luke, Luke and Acts make up about a fourth of the New Testament? Does it matter that they don't think that Jesus death was the death for your sins? Does that matter? Does it. Does it matter Whether the Gospel of John actually calls Jesus the unique God or not, is that, is that significant? Does it matter if the Trinity is in the New Testament, there's one, two verses that have. It doesn't matter whether they were really there or does that matter? Does it matter? I mean, you just go down the line of things of really important. I mean, some very important theologically and, and others important for interpreting what a verse means. Sometimes important for an entire book, sometimes important for know what theology is actually in the New Testament. So some of them, some of them really do matter a lot. And I, you know, it's not that they all matter, but some of, some of them do. And I think people want to. One line that people have, just to follow up on this a little bit further, one line that some, a lot of people have is that, well, they don't. The textual variants don't change any of our cardinal Christian doctrines. You know, none of the major Christian doctrines hang on any variant. And I absolutely agree with that. I absolutely agree with it and I've always said so. They, they cite that as if like it's an argument against me, even though it's a view I've always had. Because the reason it doesn't affect any theological view is because no doctrine is based on a single verse. If a particular verse is worded in a different way, then you just go to some other verse. And so for the doctrine of atonement, the doctrine of atonement does not hinge on what the author of Luke Acts thought. But if you are a Christian and you're interested in what the Bible says, it is interesting to find that Luke Acts does not think that God requires an atonement. Luke Acts thinks God will forgive you without any payment being made. That's a different theology. And once you reincarnate, it's a different theology and based on, based on textual variants, among other things, once you realize that that's a different theology, then you, you have a choice. Which of these theologies do you think is more suitable? One where God requires a human sacrifice or one that he forgives you like a loving father? Two different views. And it hinges on textual variants.
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B
And even if they're not, even if they don't like, give the, the death blow for any particular theological point, it's still, it's written in a book that you are considering to be important, in some cases, inerrant, inspired. Knowing that there are differences is, I think, important. Yeah, even if it doesn't change how you end up feeling overall, it's still Something that you should be be thinking about.
- [25:09]
C
Look, do words matter? You know, we, we've all been hurt by words that somebody's spoken. And if they'd spoken other words, you know, we wouldn't have words matter. And if you're reading a book that you think is, that is the basis of the religion, followed by 2.3 billion people in the world, if there, if there are textual variants that, about what the words are, surely that should matter to people. I'll tell you one of the ironies is that the, My, my evangelical opponents who say, look, none of these really matter. Some of them run projects that are trying, that are trying to establish that, that are recording, for example, photographing all the manuscripts in the world of the Bible. And they're raising hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to get so that we have all of this evidence available. If we already know the original text, what evidence do we need? Why are you raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for something that you already know? I mean, and so it does. And why do you, why do people spend their entire lives in scholarship working on establishing the original text when they think we already know the original text? What are they doing? Why not do something about something? You don't know it. Like, it makes no sense to me that you're going to spend your lives working on this thing when you already know the answer. So.
- [26:27]
B
So on the topic of the importance of words, and words most definitely mattering, the argument that Paul and Jesus essentially say the same thing is a fascinating one. We don't have an awful lot of time, but could you give like a nutshell of Paul and Jesus theologies and how people try and reconcile them?
- [26:53]
C
When you read the Gospels, it's pretty clear that Jesus thinks that salvation comes to those who follow the will of God by helping those who are in need. Read the passage of the sheep and the goats. Read the Good Samaritan, read whatever you want. I mean, it's helping those in need. When the rich man comes up to Jesus and said, what must I do to have eternal life? Jesus says, keep the commandments. He's talking about the Torah. We know he's talking about the Torah. He says, keep the Torah. You want eternal life, keep the Torah. We know he's talking about that because the guy says, well, which ones? And he starts listing some of the ten Commandments. That's how you have eternal life.
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B
Life.
- [27:26]
C
You do the will of God, you keep the Torah, you'll have eternal life. Paul does not think that Paul think Paul claims. Paul explicitly argues against that view in Galatians and Romans, you are not made right with God by keeping the law. The law cannot save anybody. Keeping the commandments is not going to bring you salvation. Only the death of Jesus brings you salvation. Well, those are different. And so, you know, which is it? Is it keep the law or is it not keep the law? Well, that's. I mean, it's like, it's the major thing for both of these speakers. And they, they disagree with each other. Well, people will tell me, well, Jesus is talking before his crucifixion and Paul's talking after his crucifixion. And so, so it changed with the crucifixion. But then my response to that is, well, if that's true, then what if g. If Jesus was right, that you could be right with God by keeping the commandments as he says, why did he have to be crucified? Just keep the commandments. And so that, I mean, that's just like one point. You can. There are lots of differences between them, but I don't. I don't think you can reconcile the two.
- [28:34]
B
Thank you. We have one final thing to talk about before we move on. And it's kind of a two for one. The claim that the Gospels are based on eyewitness testimony and are therefore reliable.
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C
Yeah, those are two different things. And people don't seem to. I don't know why people don't recognize that. Yeah, because you have scholars who spend a lot of time trying to prove that the Gospels are based on eyewitnesses. And once they think they've established that, then they conclude, therefore, they are reliable. You think, wow, huh. Maybe you should do some reading on eyewitness testimony. Because I'm just telling you, it doesn't work that way. And there's a lot of interesting literature on eyewitness testimony. Not, Not. I mean, mainly by, by psychologists and, and criminologists. I mean, people who are interested, going back to the early 20th century, lawyers, attorneys, criminal investigators had to figure out how reliable is eyewitness testimony. And boy, I tell you, once they, Once they started doing DNA testing, that put the clap on it, because there are so mo. Most people who have been convicted on the basis of eyewitness testimony, who are later vindicated is because of DNA, DNA evidence, not because of some other kind of evidence. And eyewitnesses just get things wrong. And. But there's also a whole psychological study of this. Study, Study, study, study, lots of studies of this. And so, so the second part, that if it's an eyewitness therefore it's right, just boggles the mind. You and I have both had people who are eyewitnesses to things we've heard that we've said and done, who botch it the next day. That's just absolutely not true. Not true. And so, and so is there, so is everybody. It's a separate question whether the Gospels themselves are based on eyewitness testimony. One of the most interesting features of the Gospels is that none of them claims that to have talked to any eyewitnesses for their information. The Gospel of Luke comes closest. Luke begins his Gospel by saying that the stories about Jesus have been handed down from eyewitnesses and ministers of the word. But he doesn't say he talked to any of them. And he, he himself, Luke. Luke allegedly is the companion of Paul, which I don't think he was. But, but he wasn't one of the disciples. He doesn't say he knew any of the disciples. He doesn't quote any of the disciples. And so, and the same is true of Matthew, Mark and John. They, they are, they are anonymous books written in a different language by people who are not living in Israel who say nothing about having any reliable sources. Sources. And so, so the idea that they are based on eyewitness testimony is based on later, later claims by Christians who wanted to affirm that they are accurate. And whether they're accurate or not is actually not proven by whether they're written by eyewitnesses. So you can, as you're right, you've got two things. I absolutely don't think they're based on eyewitness testimony. I mean, that the authors actually were getting eyewitnesses to tell them things. And also, even if they were or if they weren't, they're not accurate in places.
- [31:44]
B
Thank you so much, Bart. That is all I had on my list to discuss. Is there a claim that we did not cover that you would like to talk about before we move on?
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C
Yeah, roughly 29,000.
- [31:56]
B
We have two minutes.
- [31:57]
C
No, I'll just say, you know, I, I think it's really important for people who have views of the Bible who haven't engaged in with what scholars have said about it, that it's. If you really think it's important to know what the Bible's about, you know, you don't need to listen to me. Almost everything I say is stuff that's common among scholars, even Christian scholars. Most, the vast majority of scholars who have come up with these kinds of views are Christians, practicing Christians. And so I didn't leave the faith because of contradictions or anything like that. I left the faith for other reasons. But the stuff that I teach now, stuff I taught when I was a Christian. If you really wanted to know what the Bible's about, you should see what scholars say about it. And not just scholars who are saying things that you want to agree with, with, but actually look at evidence. What is the. If somebody says this is not a contradiction, just look at it honestly. Do you really think this is not a contradiction? I mean, and if you think, honestly think, yeah, I don't think it is. Okay, fine. But at least you've thought about it. So I, I just encourage people to think about it. Because if, if you don't have a faith that's built on some kind of knowledge, then you have a faith built on ignorance. And who wants to have an ignorant faith? So get some knowledge.
- [33:16]
B
Thank you very much, Bart. That is all for today's interview. So we're going to move on to the bonus segment for this week, which is listeners questions. We're going to dive right in with the Gospel of Luke. I like to imagine in Luke's birth narrative, Joseph subversively intercept interpreted an order to go home for a census in a way that asserted his right under Torah law to reclaim his ancestral land that should have reverted back to him in a jubilee year. I'm not making a claim that this is historical, but is this a plausible interpretation for the author of Luke?
- [33:56]
C
It sounds like he's saying what I think the question is. He's not saying if there really was a Joseph who wanted to claim his land. He's saying, yeah. Is Luke trying to portray that. That if Luke is trying to portray that, he gives no indication of it. The only reason he goes to Bethlehem, according to Luke, is to register for a census. And it's not to reclaim some kind of land that he, that he owned, that he was. He got ripped out of. Ripped off from. Yeah.
- [34:26]
B
Going to manuscript traditions if there are only small fragments of pieces of scripture, how did biblical writers fill in the blanks? If you tear half a page from a novel, how could the writers speculate the rest of the text?
- [34:41]
C
I don't know what this person's asking
- [34:44]
B
the biblical writer saying that if we only have, if we as biblical scholars only have small fragments of the text. I think the assumption is then that biblical writers going back in time only had those small fragments. So how did they write an entire gospel?
- [35:00]
C
Yeah, I still don't get it. I mean, the gospel writers are not facing there no, no, no, I want to answer it because I think, I mean it's a genuine question and I want to give it a serious answer. But we have fragments of manuscripts, but we also have complete manuscripts. And so we, we're, you know, we have lots and lot. We have thousands and thousands of complete manuscripts. The biblical authors weren't writing their accounts from fragments. They, if you're thinking about the New Testament authors, for example, the Gospel writers are, are basing their accounts on, on stories that they've heard about Jesus. Paul is just. And so the oral, oral tradition. So they didn't, they weren't writing from fragments and trying to piece everything else together. Paul was composing letters when he wrote. Most of, most of the New Testament are compositions by an author. They're not attempting to, to copy something. And the same thing is true with the Hebrew Bible. So I think it might be a little confusing when you say all we have are fragments. Well, we, we have much more than fragments of manuscripts, but the authors themselves are composing things.
- [36:00]
B
After Pontius Pilate washed his hands of the Jesus affair in Matthew 27:25, it's said that the crowd yelled his blood is on us and on our children. This has always seemed an oddly specific thing for a crowd to say. So I'm wondering, Bart, is this more or less the wording of a contemporary oath that people would have proclaimed?
- [36:23]
C
Well, in some ways it's a reference to a passage in Scripture in the book of Ezekiel about who the blood is on whose head and which means who's responsible for this? It's a troubling verse. It's found only in Matthew. This question is right. It's only in Matthew. It's a complicated verse because it actually doesn't say the crowd, it says all the people. And the word there, Laos is the word for like the Jewish people, like the people, an ethnicity. All the people cried out his blood be upon us and our children. And so they're taking responsibility and passing it on to their descendants. That's the thing that you also get in the Hebrew Bible about God visiting punishment on those to the third and fourth generations. And so this is the verse that was used for really bad, bad anti Semitic purposes in modern times, but also through the Middle Ages that Jews were responsible for killing, killing the Christ. They're Christ killers and their descendants are still responsible.
- [37:31]
B
This might be a little outside your wheelhouse, but I was listening to a conservative theologian who made an offhand remark about how the disciples of the disciples of the apostles formed the core of the proto Orthodox tradition. I was wondering if there's any scholarship to support this claim that those disciples descending directly from the apostles are more or less exclusively represented in the Proto Orthodoxy and not in the heretical groups.
- [37:59]
C
As it turns out, it is right in the middle of my wheelhouse. This is something I've dealt with a lot in my, in my work. This is, this is not a modern claim. This is an ancient claim that you get in Proto Orthodox authors starting with Irenaeus and Tertullian, who claim that the leaders of the Orthodox churches, what they would have called the Orthodox, we would call proto Orthodox. So before Orthodoxy became the thing you had, you had various groups claiming to be the right view do, and the group that ended up winning out going back to the second century claimed that the bishops, the leaders of their churches, were appointed by people who were appointed people who were appointed by apostles, who were appointed by Jesus, who was appointed by God. And so if, if you disagree with our leaders are saying you're disagreeing with God, that's called the apostolic succession. And it is, gets to a kind of a fevered pitch by the time you get to Eusebius, Eusebius the, the father of church history in the, in the early 4th century in his 10 book Ecclesiastical History, the church history in some, some of the major churches of Christendom, he will trace, he'll trace the lineage all the way back to the apostles. And so you'll have, you know, you'll have a, the, the Church of Rome, you know, okay, the current bishop is this person before him, was this person, was this person versus and you go back, who appointed whom all the way back to Peter or to Peter and Paul, depending which source you're reading and, or Alexandria or, you know, pick your church. And so this is the apostolic idea of the apostolic succession. The question is, is that, is it actually historically true or not? It's a very interesting question because it looks like the answer is no. We don't actually have solid, solid evidence for these lineages, these apostolic lineages is one point. Second point is that the heretical groups made the same claims and we have some of their tracing of their lines where, where you get, you know, you, where you'll have an app, a Gnostic group, say, you know, our leader is so and so who is appointed by so and so who is Peter's disciple. And they'll, they'll also trace lineages.
- [40:22]
B
Thank you very much. Final question. Blessed are the peacemakers, but who in particular are the peacemakers?
- [40:32]
C
I was about to make a snide comment about modern political situations. But I think I better not because I think, I think maybe, you know, I do try to stay up of politics on this, on the podcast, but you could say like most, most leaders of the world right now, maybe, I mean, how many peacemakers do you know? And so it's talking about. I think Jesus is portrayed in the Gospels as being a pacifist. And I think he was a pacifist. Many scholars think that in fact he was not a pacifist. And they point to some passages that suggest that he was in, in favor of violent overthrow the Roman world. And I don't think that's true. I don't think the historical Jesus was. He is fairly consistently portrayed as a, as a pacifist. And I think he urged pacifism on his followers. His reason would be different from today. Many of us are opposed to wars today because of the senseless brutality and the, the slaughter of innocents. Other people think that that's a price worth paying for broader purposes. Jesus. Jesus had a different set of concerns. It's because of his and it's because of his apocalyptic message. Jesus did believe that those who were enemies were going to be destroyed, enemies of God. But Jesus did not believe that, that humans should undertake the task. Jesus thought God was going to do it. And so he was one of these apocalypticists who thought this is what God is going to do in the near future. He's going to wipe out all of his enemies. But he did not encourage his followers to do it. His followers were not to take up the sword. If you take up the sword, you die by the sword. And so I think he was a, I think he was a pacifist. But is because it wasn't because he thought that, you know, everybody was going to be, have a fantastic future. And it wasn't because if he's worried like what it would lead to in the future, he didn't think there's going to be much of a future. He thought that God was coming soon and people needed to prepare for that. So that was his main interest and it made him a pacifist.
- [42:52]
B
Thank you audience all for sending in your questions. But before we finish for the week, could you remind us what we spoke about today?
- [43:00]
C
Well, we're talking about ideas about the Bible that, that many Christians have. I mean, I would say that, you know, most Christians in some sense think that the Bible has been given by God. And whether a person thinks that or not, there's still a question about how to understand the book. And how to understand it historically. And many kind of widespread beliefs among Christians are not sustainable on historical grounds. These beliefs are not necessarily central to their faith, even though they think they are sometimes. But it's important just to see what scholars have to say, and often what they say is contrary to what people generally think think.
- [43:37]
B
Audience, thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don't miss future episodes. Remember that you can use the code MJ podcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.barterman.com. misquoting Jesus will be back next week, but what are we going to be talking about next time?
- [43:58]
C
Well, some episodes ago we talked about about hell. We thought maybe we should talk about heaven, where the idea of heaven come from, from. And so we're gonna where did it come from? Interesting question. We're gonna find out.
- [44:12]
B
Join us then. Thank you all and goodbye. This has been an episode of Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. We'll be back with a new episode next Tuesday, so please be sure to subscribe to our show for free on your favorite podcast listening app or on Bart Ehrman's YouTube channel so you don't miss out from Bart Ehrman and myself, Megan Lewis. Thank you for joining us.