← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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- [00:00]
Bart Ehrman
When I found out I was going to be a parent, I immediately felt a lot of anxiety and worry. So I went on to BetterHelp to try to look for a therapist to help me with that.
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Megan Lewis
My relationship with my family and with
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Bart Ehrman
my boyfriend and with myself were suffering.
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Megan Lewis
I really needed help. I was ruminating a lot. Really getting those thoughts out to a therapist and getting feedback was just life changing.
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Podcast Announcer
Discover what BetterHelp online therapy can do for you and visit betterhelp.com today.
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Megan Lewis
If the accounts of Jesus life found in the four Gospels contain contradictions, how can we know what the historical Jesus actually said and did? Dr. Bart Ehrman explains how scholars sought historical truth from theological fiction. Welcome to Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman, the only show where a six time New York Times best selling author and world renowned Bible scholar uncovers the many fascinating little known facts about the New Testament, the historical Jesus and the rise of Christianity. I'm your host Megan Lewis. Let's begin.
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Podcast Announcer
Have you ever wondered how Jesus message of repentance and preparing for the Kingdom of God somehow turned into the Christian message of we must believe in Jesus for eternal life? It's Chris Huntley and I'm on the Bart Ehrman team. And that's the question that Bart's going to be answering in his upcoming talk for the New Insights into the New Testament Conference titled A Core Teaching of Jesus and why His Followers Abandoned It. That's just one of the 13 fascinating talks that we have on the historical Jesus coming up this September 26th through the 28th. Besides the talks, we've also got additional events like like attendee mixers, roundtable panels, and the chance to meet the scholars. If you're a Misquoting Jesus fan and you want to support the show, joining us at NIT would be a fantastic way to do that. We're offering two specials in August. One of them is early Bird pricing throughout the month and the second is we're giving away a NINT Journal to anyone who signs up at the elite level. So if you want to learn more or register for the event, head over to barturman.com nint and grab your seat before those deals are gone. And as always, use the code mjpodcast for an additional discount. Thank you so much and I hope to see you there.
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Megan Lewis
Welcome back everyone to Misquoting Jesus, where today we are talking about contradictions in the Gospels. We've also got a Barth's Books bonus segment that is a tongue twister, so be sure to stick around for that before we get to all of that. I have an important question for you, Barthes, and it's very, very important. So I need you to think long and deeply about the answer. What is your favorite movie?
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Bart Ehrman
Ah, yeah, good. Okay. Yeah, good. You know, I just. As you know, I just got back from a kind of a meditation retreat last week where it wasn't like with a group where you meditate. It's like I was by myself in a cabin and it was fantastic, and hiking and stuff and reading and thinking and meditating. But every evening I'd watch a movie, which I rarely can do because I'm always too, too busy. And so I watched a bunch of my favorite movies. And like, so like every night for like seven nights in a row watched a movie. I'll tell you one though, that the one that I was. I, I've always liked. I've only seen it maybe, I maybe seen it twice before. It's called Manon of the Spring. M A N O N. It's the name of a woman and it's a French movie and it is fantastic. I. I'm kind of a sucker for like, like interesting French movies. And so. Yeah, so it's a. There, there is, it's actually two, two part of it. Like the first part of Jean is Jean de Florette, which is with Depardieu in it, but this one is like the sequel to it. And yeah, it's about this young woman who's this kind of a shepherdess, who's kind of a mystery person and, and a guy, local, kind guy in the village falls in love with her and it's, it's just, it's really cool. So, so that's, that's my favorite movie this week.
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Megan Lewis
Excellent. Does it change on a weekly basis?
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Bart Ehrman
Well, no. The thing is I have a ton of favorite movies. I mean, last week, you know, I watched everything from Casablanca Fantastic. To Back to the Future. Also fantastic. Are you a movie buff?
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Megan Lewis
I wouldn't say movie buff. I do enjoy the odd movie and I think my favorite, I was, I was thinking as you were talking, I was trying to think what was my favorite. I don't think I have like an absolute all time favorite, but one that I will reliably come back to again and again is Monty Python's Holy gr.
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Bart Ehrman
Yes Indeed.
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Megan Lewis
Just. I love it. I love it. My, my siblings and I, when we were in our teens, went through an extended period of just quoting the whole thing every meal time.
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Bart Ehrman
Yeah. Those guys are so smart. Yeah.
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Megan Lewis
Oh, they're so, they're just so clever, so funny. And somehow my mother didn't kick all of us out, probably because she was, you know, quoting along with us.
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Bart Ehrman
We'll have to do an episode on Life of Brian because I think we
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Megan Lewis
do need to, because that's fantastic as well.
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Bart Ehrman
Yeah.
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Megan Lewis
Okay. Very important question. Most important question of the entire episode is out of the way so we can move on to the more trivial stuff, such as, when did you first. Well, when you first understood that the Gospels contained contradictions, did it raise questions or concerns for you about the historicity of the accounts?
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Bart Ehrman
Well, it took me a long time to think that that did have contradictions, because the Gospels, I, I, you know, I had understood them to be the divine word of God without any mistakes. And it, it was. Yeah, it took me years before I actually would bring myself to admit, yeah, actually, that's a contradiction. And once I did it, it proved troubling for me theologically because I didn't know, you know, if there's, if there's like this contradiction, they both can't be right. And so it's got. One of them has to be making a mistake. And if that's the case, then it's not right. And if it's not right, how can you tr. Know if this one's not right? How many other things aren't right? And then I started finding lots of other things or contradictions, and it was difficult for me as an evangelical to deal with that. But it also, you know, on the. I'm not sure this is troubling, but made me realize that when you're dealing with the Gospels, you have to figure out what actually happened and what didn't. How much is fiction and how much of anything is fact. And that's been, you know, more or less a lifelong enterprise for me, is for, for the New Testament scholars.
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Megan Lewis
So the, the title of this week's episode describes the Gospels as being filled with contradictions. Is that a reasonable assessment or is it a bit of an exaggeration?
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Bart Ehrman
Well, it kind of depends what you. Well, it depends what you mean by both words filled and contradictions. And so filled. I mean, it's not filled to the brim. It's not like every verse has a contradiction in it or anything, but, you know, they're certainly enough. I mean, you know, I wrote a. One of. One of my earlier books was called Jesus Interrupted, which I, I've mentioned on here before. It's, it's, you know, in some ways, it's like, it kind of encapsulates a lot of what I do. And I. I go through a lot of contradictions in there, and that's just scratching the surface. So there are. There are a good number of them. But the. The other issue, though, is what we mean by the term contradiction. And I think people use that term loosely in a way that I don't. And I. I try to differentiate between something that is a difference and something that is a contradiction. And I even know New Testament scholars who don't make the distinction very clearly. I'll give you an example. I'll give you an example. In the resurrection narratives, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the accounts, the four counts, they all have Jesus being raised from the dead and the tomb being empty. But these women go to the tomb. Well, how many women go. Is it just Mary Magdalene by herself? Is it her with, you know, two other Marys? Is it with a group of women? What. What. How many women? What are their names? What do they see there? What do they hear there? And these are all differences, but they're not necessarily contradictions, because there. There are ways that you could probably recon. You can reconcile most of those kinds of differences. If you really worked hard at it, you could come up with some plausible explanations. There are other things that are contradictions that really no matter, in my judgment. You. Everybody has to make their own evaluation. But when I look at some of these others, I say, yeah, I understand how you're trying to reconcile that, but it doesn't work. These are actually contradictions. And so that's. So the difference between, you know, where really is the opposite thing, that they both can't be true versus something you can explain.
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Megan Lewis
So in the instance of the. The women going to the tomb, a direct contradiction of that would be a statement that absolutely no one disturbed the tomb.
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Bart Ehrman
So I'll give you an absolute contradiction in that scene, because in. In the Gospel of Mark, our first account, when the women show up to the tomb, the stone is rolled away, and they're surprised and they, you know, they check out what's going. What's inside the tomb. In Matthew, the stone's not rolled away. When they get there, the stone starts to roll away. And so, you know, it can't be both. And you say, well, who cares? Well, I don't know. I mean, if you. If you want to know what happened, I guess it matters at least. But it matters in part because it shows that in fact, you know, not every word is right. And that's, you know, of course, people might think that's trivial, but there are, like, there's some big contradictions in the Resurrection narrative that really do matter.
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Megan Lewis
Could you give us an example of one of these big contradictions that are more problematic?
- [09:55]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, I mean, I. I give this as a writing assignment to my undergraduate students, and it's a. It's an interesting assignment. Anybody could do this. I simply have them read the four accounts. I might even just pick two accounts. I don't know. I have them read the four accounts, and I have them list all the similarities between the accounts and all the differences and then explain, are any of these differences, in your judgment, irreconcilable? And usually they say, yeah, no, you can reconcile all of these. And so I point out this Rolling Stone thing and they say, oh, yeah, well, maybe that is a little bit. Yeah, but this other one's really important because in. In Matthew's Gospel, the women go to the tomb and they're told, go tell the disciples to go to Galilee and Jesus will meet them there. And they go. And the disciples go to Galilee, and that's where Jesus appears to them, in Galilee. Okay, great. When you read Luke's Gospel, the women go to the tomb, and there they are told, go tell the disciples that as Jesus told them, in Galilee, he will meet them. And that day. If you actually look at the chapter, chapter 24 of Luke, if you actually look at the chapter and look how every paragraph begins in this chapter, it's on the day of the resurrection, they're told that they go tell the disciples. It happens that day, on that very day, Jesus appears to them in Jerusalem. And he tells them, don't leave Jerusalem until the power from onmost high comes upon you. He's referring to the day of Pentecost, which happens in the second volume of Luke's work. And so they stay in Jerusalem for those 50 days, and then they stay in Jerusalem after that. And Jesus has ascended to heaven. So in Luke, Jesus appears to them in Jerusalem, only in Jerusalem. He tells them to stay in Jerusalem. In Matthew, they're told to go to Galilee, and he doesn't appear to them Jerusalem, but he only appears in Galilee. So the thing is that you can't have it both ways. You know, it's not just that, like, one is in Galilee, one's in Jerusalem. It's that he says, don't leave Jerusalem, and they don't. So how could they go 100 miles up to Galilee? That's a contra. In my view, that's a contradiction. I know people try to reconcile it, but you cannot reconcile this one in my judgment.
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Megan Lewis
So how were these contradictions introduced into the stories about Jesus that we have preserved in, in the Gospels?
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Bart Ehrman
Well, I, you know, it's a complicated question and involves a lot of issues. One is that many of the stories about Jesus were kind of the, you know, many early Christians told the same basic outline, for example, about his death and resurrection. You know, he's put on trial by Pontius Pilate, he's crucified, buried third day, he rises from the dead, the women find out. You know, the basic outlines are the same. But these stories are circulating in different parts of the world among different people who are simply telling stories. And you know what happens when you tell stories. Things get changed. And so Mark have probably heard a different version of it from Luke, who's heard a different version from Matthew's, heard from John. And so some of it is that they've heard different versions of it. But even more interesting in some ways is that it's quite clear that sometimes one author is intentionally changing what the other author says. Luke had, Luke had Mark's gospel in front of him, Matthew had Mark's gospel in front of him. And in the resurrection narrative, they change things that are in Mark. That means they're intentionally doing it. For one thing that shows they did not think that Mark was sacred scripture. You know, they thought it was an account of Jesus life and death and resurrection. And okay, this is good, I'll build on this. And they, but they change it. So they're intentionally changing it though and sometimes they change it in ways that are contradictory. And so it's, it, it's especially interesting because, you know, Luke starts his gospel, the first four verses of Luke Gospel. He says, you know, many people have put together an account of what Jesus said and did, but I've researched it carefully and I'm going to give you an accurate account. Well, okay. And so you know, he wasn't, he wasn't afraid to change things or was Matthew or anyone else.
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Megan Lewis
We're going to take a brief break, but when we come back, we will look in a bit more detail at some of these deliberate changes made by the writers of the gospels.
- [14:08]
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- [14:40]
Bart Ehrman
Welcome to our upcoming Highlights and Events segment where we catch up on bart's courses, community updates and all the latest news from the Biblical Studies Academy and beyond.
- [14:57]
Megan Lewis
We have an exciting announcement today. I've talked before about Dr. Joel Baden's course. It's a 28 lecture series called the Hebrew Bible Exploring the Literature of Ancient Israel. And I'm very happy to tell you that along with the purchase of that, you will also be getting access to a free course also by Dr. Baden called the Rise and Fall of Israel. This particular offer is only valid in August so you need to sign up before the end of the month. You can do that@bartehrman.com the Hebrew Bible and I'm very fond of Dr. Baden. We've interviewed or I've interviewed him several times before and he's got another interview or I've got another interview with him coming up in a couple of weeks here. So you'll be able to kind of get a taste of his lecture style and hear what he has to say. But he's, he's a very engaging speaker. I think this is going to be a really fun lecture.
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Bart Ehrman
Can I say something about it?
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Megan Lewis
Yeah, yeah, please.
- [15:53]
Bart Ehrman
If people don't know, he's, he's a, he's a senior professor, you know, he teaches at Yale. And this course, you're going to be getting a Yale level course with this by somebody who's one of the best Hebrew Bible scholars and best teachers in the country. And you're not going to be paying Yale level tuition. So, so you can pocket that hundred thousand of yours or whatever they charge these days and, and take this course and it's going to be great. Going to be great.
- [16:19]
Megan Lewis
Yeah. He's a very engaging speaker. So you can go to bart ehrman.com forward/the Hebrew Bible for more information on the full course that is Exploring the Literature of Ancient Israel. And again you get the free Rise and Fall of Israel along with that as well. And the course page actually has all of the lecture titles there so you can take a look and kind of get a sneak peek of what you're going to be sitting through. But highly recommended. Welcome back. Before the break, we were looking at how and why contradictions were introduced into the Gospel stories. And I wanted to look in a little bit more detail. You gave us a couple of examples before our break. Part of contradictions in the resurrection narrative between the various Gospels, other passages in the Gospels that directly change or contradict what Jesus said or did when you look at the other gospel accounts.
- [17:18]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, well, you know, there are lots, there are lots of these problems. And I, I would say there aren't too many contradictions in what Jesus says in the sense that, you know, when it's not that like in one gospel he says, love your enemy, and the other he says, yeah, don't love your enemy. It's not like, you know, he never. They don't really kind of report contradictions, but they certainly report major differences. And these, sometimes the differences, even when they're not contradictory, are really stark and important. Important. But there, there are lots of contradictions in various aspects of other things besides the teachings. I mean, you know, one of the, one of the ones that first caught me, I think, once I started realizing there are contradictions, is the one of the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke. We've probably talked about it this on the, on the podcast before, but Matthew and Luke are the only two gospels that have genealogies tracing Jesus genealogical line. And they both go back from Jesus back to King David, back to king, to Abraham, the father of the Jews. Luke keeps going. It goes all the way back to Adam as an Adam and Eve. So they're different in that sense and they're different in other ways. But one of the main differences is that between David and Jesus, they are completely different genealogies. Jesus line is traced from a different son of David, different grandson, different great grandson, or doing it the other way. Jesus father has a different father and different grandfather depending which one you read. And so, you know, I knew about that one when I was an evangelical because that was one that's kind of obvious that people had to deal with and we had ways to deal with it, you know, and, and evangelicals still do the, the most common ways to say that Matthew is giving Joseph's genealogy and Luke is giving Mary's genealogy. And so, you know, that's, you know, that was convincing to me until I actually read the accounts very closely, and they are both completely explicit that this is Joseph's genealogy, that this is tracing the genealogical line to Joseph and he has a different father, grandfather, great grandfather in the two genealogies. It's just, they've got different genealogies. And so, so it's, you know, so you, you get that kind of thing. And with, with something like that, again, people might say, well, who cares? Well, I don't know. The gospel writers cared. That's why they gave it to you. They both can't be right.
- [19:38]
Megan Lewis
Are there any examples that might impact what we understand of Jesus historical activities?
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Bart Ehrman
Well, yeah, I mean, if you. If you count his death as an activity, for example, rather important differences there. So, I mean, one example I really like using with my students because. Because they really wrestle to try and reconcile it. And I know a lot of people try to reconcile, but at the end of the day, it just can't be reconciled. In my view, is. Is. Has to do with when Jesus died. What day did he die on? And you say, well, who cares? It's actually gonna. It actually ends up mattering. But in, in the Gospel of John, it's very clear. It is explicitly stated in the Gospel of John in chapter 19, verse 14, that Jesus was executed by the Roman soldiers under Pontius Pilate on the day in which they were preparing for the Passover meal. Is on the day of preparation for the passover sometime after noon, we're told, okay, when you read the Gospel of Mark, Mark is equally explicit. Jesus in Mark's gospel lives through the day of preparation. He eats the Passover meal, and he dies the morning after the Passover meal instead of the afternoon before it. And they. And Mark is equally explicit in the dating. Well, it can't be both. I mean, if he's crucified, it was either the day before the Passover or the day after the 8th. Amen. The day of Passover. It can't be both. Well, it's a contradiction. So students, you know, they come up with, you know, you. You'll read all sorts of things trying to reconcile this one, Roman calendars and Jewish calendars, and they're using the Dead Sea scroll calendar instead of the Jerusalem. You know, people come up with all sorts of stuff, but in fact, it cannot be reconciled. You know, having thought about this one for 40 years, I. I don't think it can be reconciled. And so, you know, yeah, I would say that's pretty important.
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Megan Lewis
When we have these irreconcilable differences, how do scholars go about trying to work out which account is more likely to be historically accurate?
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Bart Ehrman
Well, there. There are two issues, really. There are more than two. There are lots of issues. One is, you know, which one is accurate, and the answer might be neither one. You know, it might be. It might be. You know, it might mean either one another, but we can get to that in a second. How do you decide? Accuracy? But even apart from that one, another question is, which is the earlier version, which isn't the same as which one is accurate? You know, is it. Is there a way to see who's changed something for A particular reason. And so, you know, for example, with. With this. Which day did Jesus die on in John's Gospel? John tell John indicates that Jesus died on the very day that the lambs, the Passover lambs were being sacrificed in the temple by the chief priests. By the priests in the temple. He dies exactly when the. In Jerusalem by the chief priests on the day they're slaughtering the lambs. And John is the only gospel that identifies Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes the sins of the world. So John appears to have changed the historical datum to make a theological point that Jesus really is the Lamb. He dies at the same day in the same place by the same people as the Passover lamb. He really is the Lamb of God. So he's trying to make a theological point here. And that's more important to him than the historical thing. So you get that kind of thing. But sometimes you have other things that's pretty easy to explain, I think. I mean, I'll just give you like, a small example of this one because it's. It's like. It might seem like a picky you in detail, but it's kind of important. There's a guy named Jairus who's a leader of a Jewish of a synagogue whose daughter has become very ill in Mark's gospel, And he comes up to Jesus, he says, my daughter's really ill. Can you come and, you know, and heal her before she dies? And Jesus gets delayed and. And then, you know, before he can get there, messengers come, say, it's too late, she's died already. Ah. And. But Jesus says, don't worry, I. I've got this. And he went. Goes and raises her from the dead. Okay, so. So you have the same story in Matthew. In Matthew's gospel, it doesn't work like that. In Matthew's Gospel, Jairus comes to Jesus and he says to him, my daughter has died. Can you do anything? And so it's not that he's delayed and she dies in the interim. She's already dead when he comes and Jesus goes and raises her from the dead. So you think, well, who cares which it is? Well, I mean, you know, Matthew changed Mark's account. And so you can reconcile it, you know, how do you reconcile it? I had a New Testament scholar tell me one time, well, it happened twice. The first time, the girl was sick and died before he got there. The second time, she had died already. So it happened twice. That's why. Really? But the reason it's changed, actually, I think, is because Matthew Shortens the entire account. Like, he condenses it, and he just kind of getting to the point. And so for him, rather than, you know, trying to make a theological point, it's really just kind of a literary thing that he's. He's created a contradiction by, you know, because he wanted to shorten the account.
- [24:54]
Megan Lewis
I wanted to ask you about Jesus baptism, because when I was reading for this episode, that struck me as an interesting one. So I wanted to ask if you would talk a little bit about that one.
- [25:07]
Bart Ehrman
Well, there are several things about the baptism that are very interesting. I'll tell you the one thing that I've always kind of thought was interesting, which is that the voice that comes from heaven says different things. And so the way it works in Matthew, So we have it in Matthew, Mark and Luke. The Gospel of John mentions John the Baptist, but it doesn't say that he baptized Jesus, But Matthew, Mark, and Luke have Jesus getting baptized. He comes up out of the water, the heaven splits open, Spirit of God descends like a dove, and a voice comes from heaven. In our earliest account in the Gospel of Mark, the voice says, you are my son, in whom I'm well pleased. Okay? In Matthew, so the voice is talking to Jesus, and it's not clear if anybody else hears, because the voice is just coming to Jesus, you are my son. Okay? In Matthew's Gospel as the same event, but there the voice is slightly different. There the voice says, this is my beloved Son, in whom I'm well pleased. He's announcing it to either John the Baptist or the entire crowd instead of just to Jesus. And you think, well, who cares? Well, I don't know. I mean, it doesn't matter what it says or not. But then when you get to the Gospel of Luke, Luke, this one's a little bit more complicated because the manuscripts have different readings. For the Gospel of Luke, the reading, it looks like the original reading, the oldest reading, the void, the spirit descends, the cloud, the heaven splits open. The spirit descends, voice comes from heaven and says, you are my son. Today I have begotten you. Whoa. In other words, this is the day that I've brought you forth as my son. That's different now. So what I find interesting about this example is kind of related to these three accounts. But it said, in the early Christianity, people realized you had these three voices. And, like, how do you explain that? Because they're different. It's saying different things. And in one of them, it sounds like he's adopting Jesus to be a son on that at the spot you know, and so the other is not. And so what's going on here? So there's a second century gospel. We don't have the entire thing. It's called the Gospel of the Ebionites. We just have quotations of it from a 4th century church Father named Epiphanius. And this gospel appears to have tried to harmonize the three, the three Synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, kind of to splice them together so that they were one consistent story. And the way it's told in that gospel is John, that Jesus gets baptized by John. The voice comes and says, you're my son, in whom I'm well pleased. And then later the voice came again announcing to the crowd, this is my son, in whom I'm well pleased. And then it came again later and says, you are my son, today I've begotten you. So it came out three times. So yeah, so I think that's a great way to reconcile it.
- [28:04]
Megan Lewis
That's a drawn out baptism.
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Bart Ehrman
Yeah, exactly.
- [28:07]
Megan Lewis
So what if we're looking at these particular contradictions, what do they tell us about the ways that the writers of the Gospels were thinking about Jesus and his relationship to God?
- [28:19]
Bart Ehrman
Well, I think one thing is that they recognize that they're telling stories that they think are very important that can illustrate why Jesus matters for salvation and for how one is supposed to live and behave and what one is supposed to believe. And they see these stories about Jesus as being extremely important, important for understanding the Christian faith in him. And the stories for these authors are so important that they want to make sure that they get them right, even if it means changing the stories as they've inherited them. So for them, their own version of the story is what ultimately matters. So none of these authors is treating the story that they've heard or seen in print before as being some kind of infallible scripture or some inerrant revelation. They have insights they're trying to pass along. And that's what makes it somewhat ironic that in the modern world, especially with conservative Christians with a high view of scripture, that where scripture can't have any mistakes in it, they have to deny exactly what these gospel writers were trying to do, which is trying to present their own version of it because they thought that version was correct. What people do today, even if they're not, even if you're not conservative, you know, evangelical scholars, conservative Catholics, are trying to reconcile everything. But what everybody try does today, unconsciously, if they're not trying to do it, is they'll read three different accounts or something, or four different accounts or something, and reconcile them and make them all the same, you know, so they're all saying the same thing, man. That is just, that is doing the opposite of what each of these authors wanted you to do. To do, which is to take their account as, as the most important, important one for understanding Jesus. But instead you're making, you know, you're making Luke sound like Matthew, and Matthew sound like John, and John sound like Martin is like, you know, and you're, you're just ruining what each one, what each author is trying to emphasize.
- [30:21]
Megan Lewis
So we've spoken quite a bit about how these contradictions can pose problems to Christians and how scholars try and understand and explain them. Are there positive aspects of any of these contradictions?
- [30:32]
Bart Ehrman
Oh, I think they're hugely positive. And this comes as a surprise to people, but, you know, I think a lot of people think that scholars like me are out to destroy the Bible. You know, I get, I get talk. People tell me that, that I'm out to destroy or I'm trying to deconvert people. You know, I'm trying to, I'm trying to destroy Christianity. And that's just bogus. I mean, it's completely false. I'm not. I learned this material. Everything I've said here today, virtually everything I've said I learned being trained to be a pastor in a theolog Christian theological seminary when I was a Christian. This is just stuff you learn at a, at a high level school. I went to Princeton Theological Seminary and it was, you know, there were scholars, they were all Christians that my professors were all, most of them were ordained ministers. But they all saw this and they, they realized it. But they, they, their thing was they, when they saw this, they realized not that Christianity is a problem, but that fundamentalism is a problem. I know a lot of atheists and agnostics who hate fundamentalists, but I'm telling you, liberal Christians who are really highly trained in this kind of material hate fundamentalists too, because they think they're a big problem for Christianity. And when I would myself was a conservative evangelical fundamentalist, I tried to fit everything into the mold of my theology. My theology was that the Bible can't have any mistakes in it. That meant if I saw something that was a contradiction, I had to reconcile it by making the text say something other than what it said. Once I realized that in fact the Bible is not an inerrant revelation, it exploded the interpretation of the Bible. It opened up meaning in ways I had no previous way of understanding or Realizing so that now it is more, much richer and fuller. When I read the Gospel of Mark, I'm not pretending he has the same Jesus as the Gospel of John. I'm reading what Mark has to say, and it is really insightful and enlightening, and Mark is very clever about it. When I read John, I don't pretend he's talking like Matthew does. John is very different from Matthew, and if you pretend he's doing the same thing, you completely miss his point. And for me, recognizing these differences open, opened up interpretation, so it's no longer bound to some kind of modern theological construct about inerrancy or infallibility. And it's made me appreciate and understand the Bible a lot more. And so when I, when I teach my classes, you know, I tell my students, look, this is not so you can come out of this class saying, oh, yeah, it's full of contradictions. It's so you can figure out how to read these texts and understand them better.
- [33:10]
Megan Lewis
I think definitely, for me, having an understanding of the contradictions and the, the motivations and the theological drive behind the individual authors, which you and I have spoken about at various different times, it really brings a deep richness, I think, to the New Testament that you definitely lose if you try and flatten it and harmonize everything.
- [33:32]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah. And you know, the people who say, well, yeah, but if you see their contradictions, you can't be a Christian. Once again, so bogus. I mean, it's just not true. You know, this is one fight that fundamentalists have won. They've won the argument about the Bible because they've convinced people who are not Christian that if you, if you think there's mistakes in the Bible, you can't be a Christian. That is, like, historically so wrong. I mean, it came about in the 19th century, and now people act like this is like the gospel truth. It ain't. And so I think that this is material for Christians especially because it helps you understand your Bible better.
- [34:10]
Megan Lewis
I have one final question before we wrap up the interview portion of today, and that's going back to how we understand the historical elements within the Gospels. So if the writers of the Gospels change, inherited to begin with, change stories because of how, like, word of mouth, oral transmission works, and then they themselves change them further to fit their own theological agendas, can we trust that what they are or that anything they're recording can be used to reconstruct history?
- [34:40]
Bart Ehrman
Well, you can't trust it just implicitly without, you know, doing some kind of analysis. This is, this is the quest of the historical Jesus, as it's been called since the days of Albert Schweitzer, where scholars recognize that there are these problems with the Gospels, not just contradictions and differences, but the fact they're written so much later based on oral traditions. There are many problems with the Gospels as historical, as historical accounts. But there are criteria that scholars use to study these accounts that are, they're basically the same criteria they use to study, you know, the historical Socrates or the historical Shakespeare or the historical whoever There, there are criteria that historians use that have to be applied rigorously. And you know, we won't go into that what they are here, but, but they are the generally accepted ones. And you can come away with a pretty good idea of what Jesus said and did that. Well, most people are going to agree with applying these kinds of, these kinds of criteria. And so this, by the way, this is what we're going to this conference we're doing that we've announced the New Insights into the New Testament conference this year is on the historical Jesus with like 8, actually 13 presentations by top scholars in the world on this topic about various aspects of this. And so you can see it in action at this conference, at the New Insights into New Testament conference and in September. But it's, it's simply what New Testament calls scholars do is try to figure out what actually happened.
- [36:04]
Megan Lewis
Thank you so much, Bart. We're now going to have a segment of Bart's Books
- [36:12]
Bart Ehrman
seeking to expand your knowledge of biblical studies. In this segment, Bart shares influential works shaping biblical scholarship. It's time for Barthes books.
- [36:27]
Megan Lewis
Okay, Bart, what book are you recommending for us today?
- [36:31]
Bart Ehrman
Well, you know, I mentioned at the end of our, our interview that we're going to be doing this conference this New Insights into the New Testament on the Historical Jesus. And we're doing something different this year. It's our third year doing it. We're going to have a keynote address. We thought we'd have it like have some, you know, really good, important scholar come in and give a keynote the night before. And Elaine Pagels is going to come and Elaine Pagels is probably, she's probably the most famous scholar of early Christianity in the known universe because of var writings, but especially because of her first book, which I thought would be the one I should recommend. Her talk won't be on this book. Her talk's going to be on the historical Jesus, which she just published a book on that that just came out. And so. But her first book for, for a general audience was called the Gnostic Gospels. And it is still really worth reading. This came out in the late 70s and she, she just completely opened up the minds of so many people with this book in realizing that there are other gospels out there that are not, they're not in the New Testament. And she engages in a very interesting assessment of these things, trying to show their huge significance for understanding an alternative form of Christianity, especially in the second and third Christian centuries. Very different from the kind of Christianity that emerged and the kind of Christianity practiced today. And it's based on a discovery of manuscripts, Gnostic Gospels that we've talked about before. The Nag Hammadi Library. This is the first time most people ever heard of Gnosticism or found out anything about it or even started thinking about non canonical gospels out there. And so it's, it's made a huge impact and it's still selling really well all of these years later. And so it's, it's definitely a book that people ought to take, ought to take a look at.
- [38:21]
Megan Lewis
Thank you very much. I believe I actually have a copy downstairs.
- [38:24]
Bart Ehrman
Everyone on the planet should have a copy, and many do. It's like you go into people's houses, you see a copy of this thing.
- [38:32]
Megan Lewis
If they have one New Testament book, that's the one they have.
- [38:34]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah.
- [38:35]
Megan Lewis
Now, but before we finish for the week, would you mind summarizing what we spoke about today?
- [38:40]
Bart Ehrman
Well, we're talking about the issue of the Gospels of the New Testament having contradictions where not just like differences between them, but actual statements that both can't be true because the contradict each other. True historically. And we discussed, like, I gave some examples of that and discussed why they're there and why they matter. And I've been arguing that they matter a lot. Not just so you can go around saying the Bible's full of mistakes, but so you can understand the Bible better. You can understand each Gospel better if you allow that each writer is saying his own version of the story, even if it's at odds with the others.
- [39:19]
Megan Lewis
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.bartehrman.com. that includes Joel Baden's Hebrew class misquoting Jesus will be back next week. Bart, what are we talking about next time?
- [39:40]
Bart Ehrman
Well, we're sticking with the Gospels. I get asked a question a lot. What? Why did it take so long? If these things are written 40 or 50 years later, why, why didn't somebody write it down at the time? And so we're gonna, we're gonna explore that. Why? Why were they so late?
- [39:56]
Megan Lewis
Join us next week to find out. 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.