Bart Fact Checks Apologist Wes Huff

Summary

Episode Summary: Bart Fact Checks Apologist Wes Huff

Podcast: Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
Release Date: July 28, 2026
Hosts: Bart Ehrman & Megan Lewis

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Bart Ehrman and Megan Lewis critically analyze key arguments made by Christian apologist Wes Huff during his viral appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience. Huff—newly popular for his articulate defenses of Christianity using manuscript evidence—makes a series of claims about New Testament reliability, manuscript discoveries, eyewitness testimony, the resurrection, Christian origins, and canon formation. Bart and Megan fact-check these statements, discuss where scholarship ends and apologetics begins, and provide broader context for listeners seeking a deeper understanding of the New Testament’s complex history.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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1. Dead Sea Scrolls and Paratextual Claims

[03:36–06:38]

• Wes Huff’s Claim:
  Huff discusses the Dead Sea Scrolls, focusing on both the completeness (e.g., the Great Isaiah Scroll) and challenges with fragmentary scrolls. He describes his research in “paratextual features,” like space between words and margins, to reconstruct manuscripts.

• Bart’s Response:

  • Bart questions Huff’s understanding of “paratextual” material.

    “Normally, those aren’t paratextual materials. Paratextual materials are where somebody else adds something to the text… headings, summaries, marginalia.” (Bart Ehrman, [04:48])

  • Bart points out that features like spaces and punctuation are not found in most ancient manuscripts.
  • Suggests Huff might be using the wrong term or misunderstanding manuscript studies.

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2. Preservation of Isaiah and Other Scriptures

[07:14–09:24]

• Wes Huff’s Claim:
  The Great Isaiah Scroll is “word for word identical to the Masoretic text” found a thousand years later.

• Bart’s Response:
  • Bart acknowledges the similarity in Isaiah, calling it “quite amazing.”
  • Stresses this is not true for most other biblical books.

    “That’s not true of any other [scroll], I don’t think.” (Bart Ehrman, [07:57])

  • Warns against generalizing this preservation to the entire Hebrew Bible.

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3. Earliest Manuscript of John – P52

[09:41–17:52]

• Wes Huff’s Claim:
  P52 is “comfortably second century… potentially the beginning of the second century,” showing John’s gospel must have been written in the first century, possibly “in the lifetime of eyewitnesses.”

• Bart’s Response:

  • Notes minor but important factual errors (e.g., F.C. Bauer, not “CH Bauer”).
  • Emphasizes P52’s date is debated—may be late 2nd or early 3rd century:

    “Brent Nongbri… questions whether we can reliably date it to the early second century and points out… handwriting in P52 is best replicated by manuscripts found in the late 2nd and early 3rd century.” (Bart Ehrman, [13:13])

  • Observes the presence of a manuscript in Egypt doesn’t prove how or when John was written.
  • “It’s a bogus argument.” Bart criticizes the apologetic leap linking manuscript dating to eyewitnesses.
  • Admits: “I think John was written in the first century,” but P52 is not evidence for that.

• Quote:

  “He’s trying to argue on the basis of this little scrap, the size of a credit card, that John must be written sometime when, say, John son of Zebedee was alive. And it just doesn’t work.” (Bart Ehrman, [19:46])

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4. Resurrection and Historical Claims

[19:55–29:52]

• Wes Huff’s Claim:
  The rapid spread of Christianity after the resurrection demonstrates miraculous intervention; Jesus “claims to be God,” predicts his death, and disciples “overhauled the Roman world.”

• Bart’s Response:

  • Rebuts Christianity’s supposedly rapid growth (“maybe 2–3% of the empire” after 200 years).
  • Corrects the record: disciples did not personally convert most later Christians.
  • Comparison: Other religions grew as quickly or more quickly (e.g., Islam, Mormonism)—not evidence of miraculous truth.
  • Questions whether Jesus “claimed to be God”—only found in John’s gospel, the least historical of the four.

    “If Jesus is calling himself God, how can we imagine that all… sources… fail to point out that he called himself God?” (Bart Ehrman, [24:55])

  • Clarifies the limits of history:

    “If you say Jesus got raised from the dead, you’re saying that God intervened in history... once you start talking what God is doing, you’re not talking history anymore. It could have happened, but it can’t be demonstrated.” (Bart Ehrman, [27:41])

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5. Eyewitnesses, Fact-Checking, and Paul’s 500

[33:12–39:55]

• Wes Huff’s Claim:
  Gospels were written “in the lifetime of eyewitnesses,” so accounts could be “fact checked.” Paul reports “400” (actually 500) witnessed the resurrected Jesus.

• Bart’s Response:

  • Challenges the notion of ancient “fact checking”—geography, technology, language barriers made this impossible.

    “How are disciples supposed to fact check stories when they’re in Israel and these stories are being told in Antioch or Ephesus? It makes no sense.” (Bart Ehrman, [37:51])

  • Clarifies Paul’s 1 Corinthians 15 claim: Paul only reports what he “heard,” doesn’t name or personally know witnesses—other Gospels don’t mention this event.
  • “If it was a common story, surely Matthew, Mark, Luke and John would say something about it... Weird that no other person mentions it.”

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6. The Crucifixion & Swoon Theory

[40:20–44:31]

• Wes Huff’s Claim:
  Historians agree Jesus definitely died by crucifixion; dismisses “swoon theory.”

• Bart’s Response:

  • Agrees death by crucifixion under Pilate is very strong historically.
  • Barriers to the “swoon theory”—Romans were competent executioners, and most bodies were left on crosses for days (unlike Gospels’ burial story).
  • “Scholars certainly don’t [believe the swoon theory].”

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7. Earliest Denials of the Resurrection / Gnosticism

[44:41–49:05]

• Wes Huff’s Claim:
  Only Gnostics or docetists denied the resurrection, and for the “wrong” (theological/philosophical) reasons.

• Bart’s Response:

  • Gnostic beliefs diverse; some Gnostic gospels have resurrection narratives.
  • No first-century written denials of resurrection exist—but that’s because we have almost no first-century writings about Jesus (outside Christianity) at all.
  • Many/most non-Christians did implicitly or explicitly deny the resurrection by rejecting Christian preaching (“that means they didn’t believe it. That’s a denial.”)

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8. Canon Formation and the Muratorian Fragment

[50:11–55:18]

• Wes Huff’s Claim:
  By mid–late 2nd century, 24 of 27 New Testament books were “unanimously accepted”; the Muratorian Fragment is evidence.

• Bart’s Response:

  • Disputes the factual claims:
    • The Muratorian Fragment only lists 22 of our NT books (not 24 or 27).
    • It includes non-canonical texts (e.g., Apocalypse of Peter, Wisdom of Solomon).
    • There are no other canon lists from the 2nd century.
    • Unanimity on the NT canon not reached until the late 4th century (Athanasius, 367 CE).
  • “There’s this tendency among evangelicals to early-date the canon to provide assurance that there were no big debates about it.”
  • In fact, debates about canonicity persisted for centuries.

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9. Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On Paratextual Material:

  “Normally, those aren’t paratextual materials... Paratextual materials are where somebody else adds something to the text.” (Bart Ehrman [04:48])

• On P52 & Dating John:

  “This papyrus doesn’t show you one way or the other.” (Bart Ehrman [17:52])

• On the Gospels’ Historical Value:

  “If Jesus is calling himself God, how can we imagine that all of these oral and written sources… fail to point out that he called himself God?” (Bart Ehrman [24:55])

• On Historical Evidence for the Resurrection:

  “Once you start talking what God is doing in the past, you’re not talking history anymore. It could have happened, but it can’t be demonstrated.” (Bart Ehrman [27:41])

• On Ancient “Fact Checking”:

  “How are disciples supposed to fact check stories when they’re in Israel and these stories are being told in Antioch or Ephesus?” (Bart Ehrman [37:51])

• On Canon Formation:

  “There’s this tendency among evangelicals to early-date the canon… In fact, debates went on into the third, the fourth, the fifth [centuries].” (Bart Ehrman [55:18])

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10. Bart’s Closing Reflections

[55:26–57:37]

• Bart commends Huff’s intelligence and interest in historical aspects, but sees a pattern of stretching facts for apologetic purposes.

  "He doesn't strike me as an authority on those things yet... I disagree with him on a lot of the factual information, but I also disagree with him on a lot of interpretations."

• Emphasizes the importance of readers looking at the sources themselves.
• Observes that apologetic careers exert social and professional pressure, making it hard to change one’s mind.

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Timestamps for Major Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |-------------------------------------------------------|-------------| | Opening and context | 00:00–03:36 | | Dead Sea Scrolls & paratextual material | 03:36–06:38 | | Preservation of Isaiah scroll | 07:14–09:24 | | P52 and gospel dating | 09:41–17:52 | | Why early dating of John is important | 17:52–19:46 | | Resurrection—spread of Christianity & historicity | 19:55–29:52 | | Eyewitnesses, Paul’s 500, and fact-checking | 33:12–39:55 | | Crucifixion, death, and 'swoon theory' | 40:20–44:31 | | Early denials of resurrection and Gnosticism | 44:41–49:05 | | Formation of the NT canon and the Muratorian fragment | 50:11–55:18 | | Bart’s closing reflections | 55:26–57:37 |

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Overall Tone and Takeaways

• The episode is thoughtful but direct, with Bart providing careful and skeptical analysis of apologetic arguments.
• Megan serves as an adept facilitator, steering the discussion toward scholarly clarity.
• Bart consistently distinguishes between historical possibilities and apologetic tendencies, urging listeners to evaluate evidence directly.
• While appreciative of Huff’s passion and potential, Bart remains concerned about overclaiming and factual inaccuracies in popular Christian apologetics.

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For Further Listening

If this episode piqued your curiosity about lost Christian writings or the formation of the New Testament, check out the upcoming "New Insights into the New Testament" conference (details in-episode), or revisit earlier episodes of Misquoting Jesus for deep dives into gospel origins and manuscript history.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Megan Lewis]

Last year, West Huff was a relatively unknown Christian apologist. Then he went on the Joe Rogan Experience, one of the biggest podcasts in the world, and spent more than three hours talking with Joe Rogan about biblical manuscripts, the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the case for Christianity. The interview exploded online. It now has more than 8 million views on YouTube alone, over 40,000 comments, and it essentially lost launched Wes into apologetics stardom overnight. Wes is smart, articulate, and clearly very knowledgeable when it comes to manuscripts and textual criticism. But as the interview goes on, there are several moments where manuscript evidence starts turning into much bigger claims about eyewitnesses, gospel reliability, canon formation, and even evidence for the resurrection. Today, I'm joined, as always, by biblical scholar Bart Ehrman. We're going to watch some of the clips from the interview and ask an important question. Where does solid scholarship end and apologetics begin? Welcome to the Misquoting Jesus podcast with Bart Ehrman. Bart, I'm sure by now you've heard of Wes. Have you seen this interview?

[Bart Ehrman]

No, I've seen parts of it. And he's, I think he's an impressive guy. He's intelligent, he's, he's, he's doing a PhD now, as I understand it. And the parts of the interview I've listened to cover a wide range of things. And I'd say it's difficult to master this wide range of things. And there are a lot of things he says that are wrong, but I think that's as we'll see. But I, I often, you know, people miss. Say things in the context of an interview. And so usually it's just like detailed stuff that scholars say, wait a. But I do that all the time. So I'm like, I can't fault him for that. Oh my God. Kind of things. We miss that, you know, about an hour later you realize, wait, did I say that? It may, it may be that kind of thing, but there is a lot of that in the parts of the interviews I've seen. So, yeah, and you know, I'm all for Christian apologists getting learning factual information about, about the manuscripts and so forth. And so I don't know what his dissertation is on. I don't know if he's even writing a dissertation yet. He's in a. I believe he's in an evangelical program in Canada that is a. Training him for a PhD. I don't know who he's studying with. I don't really know anything about any of that. So I don't know enough about his background to be able to comment on, on his training.

[Megan Lewis]

Okay, well, I have. Thanks to the magic of Chris, I've got several clips lined up for us and I'm going to be providing context for each one. I want to start with a clip where Wes and Joe are discuss the Dead Sea Scrolls. Because there is no definitive point early in the interview where Joe asks Westhuff to introduce himself and explain what he does for a living. I think this clip will give you and me and our audience a good idea of who he is and what kind of work he does. Before I play this, I should mention the clips have been shortened and edited for brevity and clarity. We've done our best to preserve the original content and the spirit of what Wes was saying. But like I said, this was a three hour conversation. So if you want the full context, we definitely encourage you to go and watch the complete interview on YouTube. All right, clip one.

[Wes Huff]

And you know when it, when we're talking about the Dead Sea Scrolls, like you have ones like the great Isaiah scroll, which is fully complete. Like it's a, it's a copy of the book of Isaiah and it's a full complete scroll. But then other ones are so fragmentary that we, we think they're written in Hebrew, but we can't actually tell.

[Joe Rogan]

Oh, wow.

[Wes Huff]

Because no one's willing to like piece these. And this is true for a lot of stuff.

[Joe Rogan]

And if you're missing chunks, how do you even make that puzzle connect?

[Wes Huff]

Well, that's part of, so part of my area, area of speciality in research is in regards to. That is so I study paratextual features. We're really going to get nerdy today. Let's get nerdy where. So you look at the features of the manuscripts, not necessarily the words, but things like the spaces between the words, the development of punctuation, indentation, or outdentation. And I look at the margins and I try to, based on the average size of manuscripts in and around that time and also the average spacing of words and the margins on top, bottom and the side recreate what the manuscript could have possibly looked like.

[Joe Rogan]

Whoa.

[Bart Ehrman]

I'm not sure what he means when he says that, that we, that nobody's bothered to piece them together. Because I mean, in fact, people have spent decades doing that. And, and I don't know what he means when he says that some of the fragments, you can't tell if they're written in Hebrew or not. I, so I don't, I don't know what he means because, you know, you, if you look at a fragment, the letters are either Hebrew or they're. Or they're Greek or there's something else. But I mean, there's a. You know, if you got three letters, you can tell, you know, maybe it means that, like it can't tell whether it's Aramaic or Hebrew. I don't know what it means. I was especially confused, though, by a SP field of expertise. He says that his. When he says that he works on paratextual material and he mentions things like spaces and punctuation and indentations of margins. Those aren't paratech normally. Those aren't paratextual materials. Paratextual materials are where you have, like where somebody else adds something to the text. Like they'll add headings to the text or they'll. They'll add like a chapter description, or they'll add summaries or they'll add commentary in the margins, like marginalia stuff or like an introduction to a book. And those are paratextual. They're beside the text that allow you to read them. And again, I don't know if he's talking about Hebrew or Greek, but when he talks about spaces and punctuation and indentation, you don't get those in, I mean, manuscripts. So I don't. So I don't know. I don't know what he's talking about. I hope he does. I'm sure he must. I guess. I don't know. So it'd be interesting to know what he means. Okay.

[Megan Lewis]

Okay. One would hope he does know what he's talking about. Although, as you've said in interviews, sometimes if I give an interview, I. I just start talking and who the hell knows where I'm going with it?

[Bart Ehrman]

Well, I get that, but he's talking now about what is. Apparently what he's doing is PhD and you would think that paratext, I mean, maybe paratextual means something different in his universe. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

[Megan Lewis]

It is a mystery. Okay, we have second clip. Before we move on, I just want to say there are two kinds of clips that we're going to be looking at today. One type are clips where you may have an actual disagreement with the factual nature of Wes's statement. So the facts of what he's saying. The other type is one where I don't think you'll have issue with the statement itself in as much as what is being left out. So this first clip falls into the second category and they are continuing their discussion on the dead Sea Scrolls.

[Joe Rogan]

So when you say the Book of Isaiah is intact, how similar is it to the Book of Isaiah that's in the Bible?

[Wes Huff]

So that one is fascinating. So this isn't true for all of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but when we discovered the Great Isaiah scroll previous to that, the earliest copy of Isaiah that we had was in the Masoretic text, which is in the Middle Ages.

[Joe Rogan]

Whoa.

[Wes Huff]

Yeah. So it was literally a thousand years. We literally pushed back our understanding of Isaiah a thousand years. And the thing that really shocked scholars, like I said, this isn't true for all the Dead Sea Scrolls, but one of the things that shocked them about Isaiah was that it was word for word identical to the Masoretic text. Word for word. Word for word. Wow.

[Megan Lewis]

Yeah.

[Wes Huff]

So this is the Great Isaiah scroll.

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, well, that's true, yes. I think we said this on the podcast recently that, that Isaiah, the Isaiah scroll is quite amazing. And it is, it is comparable to Masoretic. The problem is that you have other, you have other scrolls like the Jeremiah scroll. That's not nowhere close. And so it's. No, he's right. He's right to say that. I think, I think if you don't point out that it's an. He did say, he says, he said it's not true of all the other scrolls, but in fact it's not true of any of the other, I don't think. But so it's. Yeah, so I, you know, that was Right.

[Megan Lewis]

That was actually my second follow up question was why does he not talk about the preservation of any of the other Hebrew Bible scriptures found in the Dead Sea Scrolls? And I assume it's because, I mean,

[Bart Ehrman]

he had three hours, so I guess he would have had time, but I think it wasn't. I don't know. I mean, my hunch is, of course, I mean, usually with apologists, they want to show that we still have the exact words that Isaiah wrote. And so if you've got a manuscript that's a thousand years earlier than the other one we had, then you've got thousand years of it being written the same way. He doesn't comment on how much it got changed before the Dead Sea scroll version of Isaiah and during those 700 years, how much scribes change it then? But it is a remarkable thing that you have this, this girl. And so, you know, he's. I agree with that. It's just, you don't want people to get the wrong impression from that. That's the only thing.

[Megan Lewis]

So the next clip is they're going to be talking about John and P52. And I have a sneaking suspicion that you probably won't agree with everything that Wes is saying here. So let's. Let's see what they have to say.

[Wes Huff]

So you were talking about, like, what is our oldest manuscript evidence. So this guy is P52, John Rylands 457. So that is. So that's a genuine Egyptian papyri that I made. I cut it out for you and then I transcribed the text on that manuscript. So when we're talking about what is potentially our oldest evidence for the New Testament, this manuscript that most likely comes from Oxyrinchus, Egypt, is the one that usually is universally accepted as our oldest one. But so part of my research. So the reason I bring this up is because before this was discovered by C.H. roberts in the 1940s, the convention was because of a guy named C.H. bauer that the Gospel of John was second century. And so he had this. He was a student of Hegel. So Hegel had this philosophical theory, and his student Bauer takes that and he incorporates this into history. And he says, you know, the earliest Gospel, Mark has this very. This very Jewish Jesus. And then the later gospels have a very, like the last of what I call the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. Luke has a very kind of more divine Jesus. And so he says, based on this, John is the last. Last written one. And it combines these two, where you get a very human and a very divine Jesus together. And so based on this, he says that John has to be second century. Well, we discover this guy, C.H. roberts, is, you know, literally going through these piles of manuscripts in these drawers that are being, like, stashed away. And he finds this guy and he sees that it's written on both sides, which is almost exclusively a Christian convention. So he sends it off to the leading paleographers or guys who date manuscripts, and they all say this is the beginning of the second century. And so there's still debate about the dating of this, but the unanimous consensus is that it's comfortably second century. Second century. Potentially the beginning of the second century, which means that this is found in Egypt. John is probably writing his Gospel in Ephesus. So it has to be written by John, spread around, find its way to Egypt, be copied, and then end up in this manuscript. Which means that, at minimum, you've already pushed the Gospel of John back into the first century comfortably and potentially even, like, most likely into the lifetime of the eyewitnesses of these events.

[Bart Ehrman]

Whoa. Okay. Wow.

[Wes Huff]

Yeah.

[Bart Ehrman]

That's an Argument. Whoa. Okay. So I think he's getting a lot of his information secondhand or thirdhand because he's getting a lot of details wrong about things. But again, it might be just under the pressure of the moment. I mean, most anybody talking to Joe Rogan is going to be a little bit, like, on edge. And so. But they're, you know, it's not. I mean, it's FC Bauer, and I don't think he. It's not CH Bauer, and I think that he. I don't think he's read Bauer. I. Maybe he has, but his explanation isn't really what. How Bauer is doing things. It's kind of. Bauer was not a student of Hegel, and so he didn't study under Hegel or the philosopher Hegel, but he was a Hegelian. He. He absolutely had a Hegelian view, and his Hegelian view was kind of like what he described, but it is not really it. But like, that doesn't matter what really matters. I mean, it does matter, but. But what really matters is his. His argument that since P52, by the way, in people. In case people didn't catch this, he's not showing Joe Rogan P52.

[Megan Lewis]

It's not the actual fragment.

[Bart Ehrman]

He had a papyrus, so he didn't have a papyri, he had a papyrus. And he. He cut it into the shape of what P52 is. And. And it is a remarkable find. P52, Manchester, John Ryland's library. One time filming something for the BBC, and they had me looking at this, the real thing itself, for 45 minutes, because as they were filming me, so I studied this thing for 45 minutes, and, man, it was really something. That's really cool. It is usually dated to the early second century. I get confused because a couple times he said things like, oh, it's debated, but the unanimous consensus is it's like, huh, okay. But I think that's under pressure again. So, okay, fair enough. But he makes a categorical mistake, though, which many people have made, which is this. Two things. One is. It is debated. One of the most recent paleographers to look at P52 is Brent Longbre, who is a PhD at Yale and is one of the best papyrologists in the world, who. He questions whether we can reliably date it to the early second century and points out that, in fact, the handwriting in p52 is best replicated by manuscripts found in the late 2nd and early 3rd century. So it's a late. Could be later. And you date these things by handwriting. A handwriting analysis. That's called paleography, a handwriting analysis. So the mistake he makes is a common mistake where he says that John would have had to write this thing in Ephesus. Somebody had to copy it. Somebody had to make, and the copies had to circulate until it got down to Egypt, until this thing was made. And if this thing is made in the early second century, there's no way that could all happen like in a few months. Right. And so that must mean that John is dated back to the first century comfortably possibly into the time of the eyewitnesses. Now, that's sneaking something in there. Possibly the time of the eyewitnesses. Why doesn't he just say what he means? He thinks that this is probably based on somehow an eyewitness testimony. Well, if that's his case, this P52 has nothing to do with it. And so he shouldn't, he shouldn't be saying stuff like that. Moreover, the problem, the problem that he's not paying attention to is this P52 probably was discovered at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt in the early 20th century. We have lots of manuscripts of things discovered in Egypt that were not made in Egypt. And the date that it was written is not the date where it got deposited in the ground someplace. In other words, this manuscript. Suppose p52 does come from a manuscript written in the year 125. That's the typical date. People give plus or minus 25 years. I think a lot of people are saying more like 125, 140, something like that. You can't give an accurate date with this. But suppose it was composed in. In 125. Where was it composed? The problem is that there's a lot of circulation of books, especially among Christians, but among others too, in the early centuries, where somebody's traveling someplace and they take a manuscript with them. That's how manuscripts circulate. And so we have a copy of the writing of Irenaeus found in Egypt, Irenaeus, the second century church father, a copy of Irenaeus, who was writing in Gaul, in France. And this manuscript is virtually contemporary with Irenaeus. But it doesn't mean that that Irenaeus, you know, was speaking in Egypt or that the copyist was in Egypt. Somebody had made a copy of thing and somebody traveled to Egypt and it ended up in Egypt. So we don't know how long this thing was, how long before this thing was like, disposed of, that it was made. And there's nothing to indicate that was made in Egypt, if you see what I mean. So, so it's a bogus argument. I'm not sure if that was clear. It's kind of hard to. But. But so it just simply doesn't work. And so, look, I think John was written in the first century, but part of the problem is that when you hear somebody like that saying, it sounds like, like, you know, all of these people now think it was written in the middle of the second century. But we have this thing. I mean, FC Bauer was kind of unusual about this. He was dating these things very late. And so, you know, I don't know. I mean, there are people who still think that. But this papyrus doesn't show you one way or the other.

[Megan Lewis]

That was clear. Thank you. I. I do want to ask why is it important for west to try and show that this or that the dating of John is so early, and why is it important that it could be based on eyewitness testimony?

[Bart Ehrman]

So John is almost always considered the final gospel to be written. It's been considered that since the early days of Christianity, going back to. As soon as people start talking about the Gospels, they almost always talk about John as being the last one written. Scholars have widely considered John to have the highest developed theology of Jesus of Christ. It's a higher. It's more theologically developed than Matthew, Mark and Luke, in the opinion of many of most scholars traditionally. So sometimes even in the ancient world, they call it the spiritual gospel because it's more interested in kind of spiritual theology about understanding Christ. In modern times, since the 19th century, it has been recognized as being so theologically developed that it's not. Does not contain as much historical information about Jesus. And so it's widely considered the least historical of our gospels. But a good deal of Christian thinking comes from the Gospel of John. And evangelical apologists want to argue that John is not. It is theological, but it's not unhistorical and that it's deeply historical. And so if you can start giving hints that it was actually written by an eyewitness or in the time of eyewitnesses, when people could correct things or something like that, then it adds veracity to the gospel as a historical document. So he's, he's trying to argue on the basis of this little scrap, the size of a credit card, that John must be written sometime when, say, John the son of Zebedee was alive. And it just doesn't work.

[Megan Lewis]

Thank you very much. We have now got a clip of Wesson Jo talking about the resurrection.

[Joe Rogan]

If a miracle did take place, like, let's assume that there is actually a higher power that occasionally interacts with human beings. And if a miracle did take place and you were there, you don't have a camera, you don't have a cell phone, you don't have a pen, you can't write things down, maybe you can't even read. And you have this thing that happens to you and this thing changes the course of human history.

[Wes Huff]

Well, I mean, that is kind of the crazy thing about Christianity where you have this Jewish itinerant guy who's walking around 1st century Roman occupied Judea, he's making some pretty audacious claims, claims to be God himself, and then he predicts his own death and resurrection. And then his disciples, they think it's over. Like, they're like, he's dead, we're done. And then they go from 11, you know, scared men because Judas commits suicide, scared men in an upper room to completely overhauling the Roman world in only a couple hundred years because of this claim that they say they saw Jesus resurrected. Like there's something different that goes on there, that they're like, this is a miracle. Right. Dead people don't usually rise from the dead.

[Joe Rogan]

So what is your personal belief when it comes to the resurrection? What do you think? Do you have a belief or do you just try to interpret the text and try to see what is the message?

[Wes Huff]

Well, I think so. As a historian, I do think it is a historical question. You have a guy who objectively lived, he objectively died, and then individuals close to his inner circle claim that they see him not dead.

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, okay, Right. So. Well, I mean, again, you know, the, there's kind of these fact, kind of small factual mistakes that kind of keep, keep showing up here. And so to say that, that the disciples of Jesus had basically converted the empire within a couple hundred years is just factually false. After about 200 years of Christianity, maybe 1 to 2%, maybe 2 or 3% of the empire was converted. And so, you know, that's just wrong. But. And it's not the disciples who said they saw Jesus, who converted the empire when the empire converted? It doesn't. It doesn't. The empire is about 50% Christian by the year 400, 50% Christian by the year 400. But. So there are about 60 million people in the empire. 30 million people. Then. Let's just say 30 million people are Christian at this point. They are not converted by the disciples. It's not that disciples are going, the disciples were dead. You know, 380 years before, 350 years before that. They've, they've been converted by people who said that the God of Jesus was more powerful than the pagan gods. And they said that Jesus got raised from the dead starting in the. So the disciples are not going around converting people. So far as we know. The. The only disciple that we know of, of Jesus who was out trying to convert people was Peter, who at least was up in Antioch and possibly in Corinth and was out trying to convert Jews. But the vast majority of people, 99.99 of the people who are converting are people who have heard the stories about Jesus resurrection. They're not. They're not. They haven't heard him from eyewitnesses. The only eyewitness we have who is converting people is Paul, who is not one of Jesus disciples. And so I don't think that. I guess what he's trying to argue is that this shows it has to be a miracle because so. Because they converted so many people. And that's not true at all. Of course, Islam spread very quickly, and I don't think that Wes would say is because there really were miracles behind it. The Mormon Church from the time it started to the mid-1990s grew at about the same rate as early Christianity grew. And I don't think he wants to say that that's evidence that Joseph Smith actually had seen the Angel Moroni. So I'm hesitant about where that's going to go with him in the interview. I don't know. But I don't think the fact that some of the disciples came to think Jesus got raised from the de is. Is necessarily an evidence that Christianity is true. They said they saw him.

[Megan Lewis]

Okay, what do you think about Wes's claim that Jesus walked around saying he was God and, and predicted his death and resurrection? Would those be historically accurate statements?

[Bart Ehrman]

Well, it depends who you ask. I mean, I was going to comment on it, but I decided maybe not to go there. But the idea that Jesus claims to be God is really. This is related to the other clip we looked at, because Jesus only claims to be God in the Gospel of John. And if it's not a historical account, then did Jesus call himself God? My view is if you could argue that Matthew, Mark and Luke also understood that Jesus was divine in some sense, you could import divinity claims into the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, but they are not there. Jesus does not say things like before Abraham was I am, or that before that I and the Father are one, or if you've Seen me, You've seen the Father. These are all in the Gospel of John. These divine claims are only in the Gospel of John. And so you have to ask just if you're looking at it historically, I mean, Wes is saying he's a historian. Good. So if you're a historian, you have to ask if that's the case, that Jesus was making these claims for himself. Okay, you've got three earlier gospels. Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Matthew, Mark and Luke have earlier sources. Luke says that there were many gospels written before him. Matthew and Luke used Mark, but they have other material not in Mark. Probably comes from a Q source. If you don't believe in Q, that's fine. They had other stories from other sources. They call M, you call L. You have multiple sources in early Christianity, and you have the Apostle Paul who mentioned some of the teachings of Jesus among all of these sources. None of them records Jesus calling himself God. So if Jesus did call himself God, how can we imagine that all of these oral and written sources that describe Jesus and celebrate him and honor him fail to point out that he called himself God? Like they didn't think that part was important. I mean, three entire gospels don't have. And their sources don't appear to. And so. So for me, it's unimaginable that if Jesus is calling himself God, people wouldn't bring that part up until the last Gospel written, you know, 65 years after he was dead.

[Megan Lewis]

Okay.

[Bart Ehrman]

So I think it's a Johannine construction. And did Jesus predict his passion? Well, he does in the Gospels. Yes. Is it historical?

[Megan Lewis]

Well, that's another question.

[Bart Ehrman]

Another question.

[Megan Lewis]

So Joe also asks Wes what he personally thinks about the resurrection. And the response is that it's an. I think. I view it as an historical question in. We talked about this briefly before. But in what sense is the Resurrection an historical question? And where do historians hit a wall when they're discussing it?

[Bart Ehrman]

Well, it depends what you mean. And I think what he means is that he thinks it's something that actually happened in the past. And since it's something that happened in the past, we can use historical methods to try and figure out if it happened or not. Okay. So I think that's what he means. I think, though, the problem is that the past is not actually history, and it's a little hard to get people to understand what that means. But the past is everything that's happened. And most things that have happened cannot be demonstrated. They can't be shown to be historical. So if you mean by history, things that could be shown probably to be historical, then the resurrection wouldn't be history in that sense, even if it happened in the past. Because, you know, there are roughly, you know, 20 trillion, trillion, trillion things that we cannot show happened in the past. So they happen, but we can't show they happened. And so to call it a historical question, I think I agree with that. It's a historical question, but the question is, can use historical methods to show it. And if he thinks that he's giving historical evidence to show Jesus was raised from the dead on the basis of some people saying they saw him afterwards, I would say that isn't. That's not good enough for a historical demonstration. Because if you say Jesus got raised from the dead, you're saying that God intervened in history and brought him back to life. But once you start talking what God is doing in the past, you're not talking history anymore. It could have happened, but it can't be demonstrated. As I think I said on the podcast once, you can't demonstrate that God raised Jesus from the dead any more than you can demonstrate that God is the reason the Allies won the Second World War. You can think that you can believe that, but how are you going to show that it was because of God? And so what you do have is you've got people saying they saw Jesus alive after his death, and you have to come up with an explanation for that. If you have a miraculous explanation for that, okay, you can't show that historically, it's what you believe, but you shouldn't pretend you're doing history because you can't do history to prove what God did.

[Megan Lewis]

Thank you for that, Bart. We're going to take a quick break to make an announcement, and then we'll be back in to see some more clips of Joe and Wes. I am excited to share that our fourth annual New Insights into the New Testament conference, or NINT, is coming up September 26th and 27th. This year's theme is Apocrypha and Canon, Lost Scriptures and the Making of the New Testament. We'll be exploring the writings that did not make it into the New Testament, why some texts became scriptures while others were left out, and what these lost writings can tell us about early Christianity. Bart, you are one of the eight main speakers this year, along with scholars like Mark Goodacre, who's giving the keynote presentation, Elaine Pagels, Karen King, Craig Evans, and others who why do you think apocryphal writings and the formation of the canon are such fascinating topics for people who want to understand the new Testament.

[Bart Ehrman]

Well, I think it's a great topic. This is really, I think, you know, since about the 1970s, people, since Elaine Pagos wrote her book, the Gnostic Gospels, people have realized there are these other books out there. Why didn't they get in? And it is the most common question I get asked by people. Why, why these books? Why not other books? Why did, why they get out, how they get in, when. And so we're going to be focusing on these other books and showing how they, you know, what they. We're going to have. We have talks on various ones of these books from, you know, from the Gospel of Mary to the Gospel of Judas Iscariot to the. We're going to have talks about these various books by experts in each of these books. And then we're going to. There'll be, as you said, eight presentations. I'll be talking about the Apocalypse of Peter and we'll. So we'll talk about it and also talk about how they relate to things in the canon and why those canon books got in and these others did not get in. It's going to be a blast, this one, because, you know, most people who, like, who listen to our stuff, you know, they, they know some stuff about the New Testament stuff. How many people really know very much about, you know, the Gospel of Judas? They've heard of it, maybe, or the Gospel of Mary or maybe they've read it. So, but, so this will be, this will be really interesting. And we're having really good people, of course.

[Megan Lewis]

I'm really excited. It sounds absolutely fascinating. I love it when we get to talk about the Apocrypha. And one thing that I'm really excited about for this year's format is that we've reduced the number of talks to four per day, which means shorter days for people watching and more time for a live Q and A after each presentation, which I think is a really, really valuable thing to be able to bring your questions and ask, ask the experts. We're also moving the attendee mixes to after the talks, so everyone has the opportunity to discuss what they've just learned. And VIP and elite attendees will also have special opportunities to. To interact with the scholars after the presentations. As I said, the conference is September 26th and 27th, but you can get discounted early bird pricing until August 22nd. You can learn more or sign up at bertlman.com forward/nint. That's n I N T. And as always, use the code MJ podcast for a special additional discount. All right, we are going to dive back into Wes Huff on the Joe Rogan Experience. Next, we have Wes talking about eyewitnesses to the resurrection.

[Wes Huff]

And you do have, I mean, you're right in terms of all of these ancient conventions and the ways that things were spread around and. But the Gospels are written in the lifetime of the eyewitnesses, and they're written in this period of time where you have groups of individuals who could have fact checked those things.

[Joe Rogan]

So how do you fact check someone coming back from the dead?

[Wes Huff]

Well, if you.

[Joe Rogan]

How many people saw his body? Right.

[Wes Huff]

Well, Paul says that 400 people saw him all at once.

[Joe Rogan]

400 people saw the crucifixion?

[Wes Huff]

No. Saw the resurrected Jesus. Yeah. 1 Corinthians 15. Paul says that Jesus appeared to the disciples and then he appeared to 400 people all at once.

[Bart Ehrman]

I think that's just a slip on his part. It's 500 people is what Paul says. So the Gospels written during their lifetimes. Okay. You know, there are evangelical scholars who argue, not just evangelicals, but I think traditionally people thought that because, I mean, they're called Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Right. Well, those people lived in their lifetimes. And so the question is, you know, how to, how to demonstrate that there's really good reason for thinking that all the Gospels were written after the destruction of the temple in the year 70. So we could, we could probably have an argument about that. But, but the, the bigger thing for me is this claim that strikes me as really, I don't understand why people make this claim that if they're written in the lifetime of the disciples, that they could be fact checked. So Joe, Joe then asked a question. How do you fact check somebody coming back from the dead? Well, you know, the way you fact check it, I, you would fat. You could fact check whether people said that. You know, you certainly do that. But that's not actually what he was claiming, what Wes is claiming. He's claiming that the gospels narratives themselves were written while eyewitnesses were alive. And so they couldn't have falsehoods in them. They couldn't have anything wrong in them because they could be fact checked. Let's suppose that he's right, that the Gospel of Matthew, let's say he dates it to the year 60. Okay. I don't know when he dated. We. It's normally dated to around 80 to 85, but for this person, it's not going to matter. Let's say he dates it to the year 60. Okay. Matthew was not living in Israel. He is, he's Writing in Greek, highly literate Greek. It's not like, you know, the best Greek in the universe, but it's, it's highly literate Greek by somebody who has a training in Greek who is living somewhere else. And so we don't know where he was living. Suppose he was living in Antioch, you know, suppose he was living in Ephesus. Suppose people come up with these places earlier. West said, you know, John was probably written in Ephesus. We have no way of knowing where John was written. But, but people say Ephesus. So I mean, just say one of the, say Matthew's written someplace else. Okay, how does Matthew have his information? Is he, was he there? Well, he says he was an eyewitness. Okay. And if he says anything wrong, eyewitnesses could have fact checked him. How do you fact check something? So, all right, people are telling stories about Jesus and the gospel is spreading. Suppose it spreads up to northern Syria someplace. And you know, so 30 years after Jesus death, Matthew has heard a bunch of stories in his community about Jesus and he writes them down. And he. And so who has fact checked these stories? Are we supposed to think that disciples are everywhere throughout the Mediterranean, fact checking stories? I mean, if John, if John is writing in Ephesus and he's heard stories that have been circulating for 30 years, which disciples actually are going around checking everybody's stories? Wes, many Christian apologists tell stories about me that are not true. Now suppose I tried to fact check all of them. How would I do it? How would I fact check what somebody says in Cleveland about me today? I'm alive, I'm an eyewitness. To me, somebody says this story about me in New York, how am I supposed to fact check that? Or in California, how am I, how are, how are disciples supposed to fact check stories when they're in Israel and these stories are being told in Antioch or in Ephesus? It makes no sense. But people don't think about it. They think, oh, well, it was written at the time. People could have just checked, right? In the modern day, it doesn't work. And we have massive ways of communication that they had no way. I mean, just to walk from Jerusalem to Ephesus, it takes forever. And so I just. This thing, oh, they could have fact checked. I just think that's so that is, it just makes no sense at all.

[Megan Lewis]

I wanted to ask about the, the people that Paul said saw Jesus. The 500. Does that mean we have 500 independent witnesses for the resurrection? Or does that mean that Paul is reporting what he's heard Paul's reporting what he heard.

[Bart Ehrman]

He doesn't say he knows these people or that he's talked to any of them. He just says 500 saw Jesus at one time. He says some of them are still alive, so you can check. So he had heard the story that it was something that had happened, you know, within the last 10, 20 years or something. I guess. So he's writing Corinthians, he's writing First Corinthians around the year 55 probably. I think Wes would probably agree with that. And so he's saying some are alive, meaning, you know, even if it happened, it happened before Paul saw Jesus. So Paul said the 500 saw him and then he was the last one. So if Paul saw Jesus, you know, three years after his death, it's sometime before that he's claiming. The odd thing is that we have no mention of this anywhere else. And you would think that if it was, if it's like it was a common story, like it was a widespread story. So surely Matthew, Mark, Luke and John would say something about it because they're trying to show that Jesus appeared to people. And would they just like, would they, I mean, would they leave that one out? It seems like a rather important one to leave out. And so I, it's certainly true that Paul says that, but Paul says other things that cannot be historical. And this is one of them. I mean I don't think it could be historical. It might be. If it is historical, it's weird that no, no other person mentions it it other than Paul.

[Megan Lewis]

We're going to move on to a clip about the crucifixion now. Jo is telling Wes about a man, a real man who was considered dead and comes back to life. It's in the context of weird things happen in real life. So I think what Joe's trying to say is why can't we just say this is just a weird thing that happened to Jesus, it wasn't actually a miracle. And we've got Wes's response here.

[Joe Rogan]

His family had been told that he was going to be harvested for organs. They were preparing for that. This guy comes back.

[Wes Huff]

Yeah, I mean we know a lot about Roman crucifixion. It's brutal and we know that they did their job well. And so in fact if you look at say very skeptical biblical scholars like non believing, atheist, agnostic Christian scholarship, they will say if we can know anything about Jesus, like they'll cast a doubt on a lot of the things that we read about in the Gospels in Terms of the actual historical Jesus of Nazareth, they'll say one thing we can be sure of is that he died by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate.

[Bart Ehrman]

He may be talking about me because there aren't many two people who are agnostic atheist scholars. Yeah, there's ain't a lot of us out there trying to think of anyone else. And so it may be me. And no, he's absolutely right. Yes, Jesus was crucified. I wouldn't say we know a lot about Roman crucifixion. We, we, we hear accounts of the crucifixions. The thing that we really wish we had were descriptions of how it happened, like what they did. But we just get vague, vague descriptions. But they certainly knew, knew when people were dead. And the party doesn't mention, of course, is that one reason we knew, we know that the Romans made sure they were dead is because they left on the crosses for days after they die. And that's a problem because in the Gospels Jesus is buried that afternoon and we don't have accounts of that. And so again, if you're talking about history, it seems unlikely.

[Megan Lewis]

So one thing I did want to ask is how quickly and confidently west kind of dismissed the idea that this could have been just like a weird, a weird thing that happened and, and emphasized that no, Jesus definitely had to die, had to have died. Do you think he was, he was too quick to dismiss that or do you think that's actually a reasonable thing that, that historians can say?

[Bart Ehrman]

I think it's reasonable. I mean, I think it sounds like Joe was giving an example of a near death experience right before this, talking about somebody who was, had his, he was going to have his organs used for someone else, donate his organs. Then he woke up and had a near death experience. And he sounds like he's wondering, could that have happened to Jesus? Could he have wok up? And that is an old theory, it's sometimes called the swoon theory, that Jesus seemed to have died, but he woke up in the tomb and then he appeared to his disciples and that's why they thought he got raised from the dead. And so you get that that's a theory that floated around. Seems implausible to me in part because I don't think they buried him that day. So I don't, I don't think, I don't think the idea that Jesus didn't really die is very plausible.

[Megan Lewis]

No. So on a side note, you've already said multiple times on this podcast and indeed three minutes ago that you Agreed. Jesus was in fact crucified. But what does that establish and not establish if we're talking about the resurrection?

[Bart Ehrman]

The only thing it establishes is that the swoon theory probably is not right. But I don't know anybody who holds to the swoon theory. And so I don't know. I mean, scholars certainly don't sometimes. I'll get somebody. Write me about it. The most famous instance of the swoon theory, by the way, was a book that came out in the 1970s called the Passover Plot by a scholar who's a scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Who. Who wrote this. Hugh Schoenfeld is his name. He's a very fine scholar, but he wrote this book that argued that Joseph of Arimathea and Jesus had worked out this plan that Jesus would get drugged on the cross and that when they gave him the vinegar or the wine to drink on the cross, that actually it was drugged so that his vital signs would slow down and that he could appear to rise from the dead and start Christianity. And it was all a hoax. And so it was a kind of form of the swoon theory. But what happened, according to Schoenfield's Passover Plot, this book, is that they didn't expect that a soldier would take a spear and stick it in his side and, oh, no, it ended up killing him. So then the disciples had to make up the resurrection. Yeah, no, like, scholars don't believe that kind of.

[Megan Lewis]

All right. The next one is about the earliest denials of the resurrection. And I'm interested to hear what you have to say about this.

[Joe Rogan]

So we have an account of the resurrection. Do we have an account of the denial of the resurrection? Is there an historical record of him just dying? And this like a refutal or rebuttal, rather, to what they're saying?

[Wes Huff]

No, the only ones from the ancient world that deny his. His resurrection are groups that come on afterwards that sometimes are. Sometimes are described as Gnostics. And they're not necessarily just denying it for the reasons we might think they were. They're denying it because they have incorporated ideas of pagan philosophy where they believe that the spiritual is good and the physical is bad. So if Jesus was crucified. So let me back up. If Jesus is God, he cannot have a physical body, so they deny that he actually had a physicality to him. This is sometimes called Docetism, because do cane in Greek means to seem. So these groups that we describe as the Docetics, they are denying that Jesus had a physical body. He only seemed to have A physical body.

[Bart Ehrman]

Several things to say. I don't think Wes has studied Gnosticism yet in his studies. Maybe he has, but his description is not accurate. Most Gnostics actually weren't docetists. Some may have been, but both, most of them thought the dosages says that Jesus had a phantom appearance. He wasn't really, didn't really have flesh and blood. Marcion thought that, but Marcion wasn't agnostic. And some Gnostic groups may have thought that. Most Gnostic groups thought that the divine Christ was a spiritual being that temporarily inhabited a physical shell of a body and that left it. And Gnostics. Gnostics actually many Gnostics do believe in the resurrection of Jesus. That's one of the points a lot of the. Some of the Gnostic writings are called resurrection dialogues where after Jesus is raised from the dead is when he delivers his true teachings to his disciples. So many Gnostics did believe in a resurrection of Jesus. The, the bigger point that, that I think is important because I don't think it wasn't in the clip but it sounds like where Joe wanted to go with this and that Wes probably responded to. Joe said well, okay, we have accounts of Jesus being raised. We have anybody account, contemporary accounts of anybody saying Jesus was not raised. And I haven't seen this bit of it, but I, I'm confident Wes will say no, we have no account of that. That only accounts that he was raised. And that is true. But one has to recognize, one has to recognize the fuller implications of all this because of course we do not have any writings that say Jesus was not raised from the dead by an opponent of Christianity in the first century. But we don't have any first century writings about Jesus that even say Greek and Roman writings that even mention Jesus in the first century. So of course they don't have writing denying it that he got raised from the dead. The only. And so we, we have, we have probably thousands and thousands of denials that Jesus is raised from dead from the first century, not in writing. But Christians were preaching this message to people throughout the Mediterranean and the vast majority of them rejected it. That means they didn't believe it. That's a denial. So yeah, I don't know if that's what you wanted me to answer, but that's, you know, that's what came to mind.

[Megan Lewis]

That was actually my first question. What about the early tradition that the disciples themselves doubted that Jesus was raised?

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, well they, you know, we don't have any writings by any of the disciples of Jesus Period. So we don't know what they really thought. But we do have, throughout the, throughout the Gospels, every time somebody finds an empty tomb, they don't believe that Jesus got raised from the dead. They doubt. And even the disciples, when they see Jesus, virtually every time they see Jesus, they doubt it's him. And it's a very interesting phenomenon. And my own view of this is that the best explanation is many of the disciples really did doubt that he got raised from the dead. In other words, they weren't sure or they didn't believe it. And the Gospel writers reflect that in these doubt traditions.

[Megan Lewis]

Would you call what Wes is doing here an argument from silence? And do you think it's, it's good evidence for the historicity of the resurrection?

[Bart Ehrman]

Well, it's hard to me from that clip to know exactly where he's going with this because it sounds like he's saying the only ones who denied Jesus got raised from the dead were Gnostics. And most Gnostics believed he got raised from the dead. But he's talking about docetists. But. So I don't, I don't know. I don't know what he's going to be arguing based on that. But my guess is that he's going to be arguing that this was a universal Christian belief. Since all these Christians believed it. It's more likely that it happened. And that is a, that's a bad argument. If he, if that's the argument he's going to make, it's a bad argument. Just because people believe something you could have, you know, you could have millions of people believe the earth is flat, doesn't mean it's likely flat because people believe it, you know, and so people believe all sorts of things. And, and you know, there are, there are a couple billion Muslims in the world who believe things that Wes doesn't agree with. The fact that you have a couple billion people believing it doesn't make it right.

[Megan Lewis]

Thank you. Now we have one final clip of Wes and Joe discussing the formation of the New Testament canon.

[Wes Huff]

And so they start to have these conversations of what are the writings and where can we find them? And so very early on, because the New Testament has 27 books in it very early on, 24 of the 27 are unanimously accepted. So by the time you get to the middle of the second century, we have lists in documents. Like there's a document called the Meritorium Fragment, which there's debate on its dating, but it's probably like mid to late second century, and it includes 24 of the 27. And it gives reasoning why. Now, the other books that are in our New Testament that aren't in that 24 are ones that were discussed because the earliest Christians were trying to figure out, okay, can we tie this to either an apostle or someone who knew an apostle? Because we have a lot of books flying around with the names of John and Peter on them. So you have the Acts of Peter, and you have the Revelation of Peter, and you have the Gospels of Peter, and you have. So how do we do our due diligence to try to tie this back? So there's two letters of Peter, first and second Peter in the New Testament. And the early Christians are like, we got to make sure we can tie these to Peter or the book of Jude and the book of James, which are ascribed to the brothers of Jesus. They were like, can we really say that those are written by those people? And so there are some books that the dust kind of takes time to settle on within the whole 27 canon. Because these groups are debating and discussing, you know, well, why. Why do we have these ones and not other ones?

[Joe Rogan]

Right,

[Bart Ehrman]

okay. Yeah. I mean, basically, you know, kind of the basic picture that he's painting is right. So many of the details are wrong that it's a little bit tricky to. To deal with. I don't know. Okay. He says that by the end of the second century, 24 are unquestioned. That's. That's absolutely false. That. That the 24 are unquestioned, and that there's a solid canon already at the end of the second century. He says he's getting it from the Muratorian fragment, but he gets information about the Muratorian fragment wrong. He says that there are 24 books in the Muratorian fragment, and he says it dates from the mid second to the end of the second century. I don't know where he's getting mid second century from. The earliest for most scholars is around 185 or so. So toward the end of the second century. He says it's one of many lists in the second century. There are no other lists in the second century. This is it. It's the Muratorian fragment that is not dated in the mid second century and not dated. One dated 185 does not. And does not affirm 24 of our books. It gives 22 of our books. Again, that might just be a slip on his part or doesn't. Doesn't. Doesn't have that part mastered or something. Has 22 of our books, plus it has other books. It has the Apocalypse of Peter, for example, and the Wisdom of Solomon as a book of the canon. The Wisdom of Solomon. Wow. Okay. Who would have thought that'd be in the New Testament? And so we don't really start getting lists until later. And you simply cannot say that there was unanimity by the end of the second century on 24 books, because we have church fathers who are arguing about it for centuries later, for centuries. And so you have, the first time you have anybody list our 27 books. And he would know this is Athanasius in the year 367. And even after the Muratorian canon, for example, we know of a church in Syria that used the Gospel of Peter as one of its texts. And we know people using other books as their text. There are debates about lots of books. So there's this tendency among evangelicals to early date the canon to provide assurance that there were no big debates about it. And the way he put it is it just took a while for the dust to settle. But it wasn't like that. There were heated debates that went on into the third, the fourth, the fifth. Even after Athanasius in 367, there were still debates going on in 367. A. N. Athanasius wrote this. This is the first academic article that I published. There was another teacher in Alexandria named Didymus, Didymus the Blind. And one of, my, my first academic article showed that Didymus had other books in the New Testament besides the 27 in the, at the end of the 4th century. So to talk about unanimity at the end of the second century, it's really just, it's trying to comfort people that, you know, this was not a serendipitous thing. It was, you know, it was kind of a done deal from the beginning. But I don't, I, I just don. That's true.

[Megan Lewis]

Thank you very much, Bart. Those were all of the clips we had. Do you have any closing thoughts before we finish for the week?

[Bart Ehrman]

Well, no, I, I, I don't. I just want to say, you know, a lot of the things I was saying that he got wrong, I, I completely understand. As I said, I get a lot of things wrong too, especially in details of, you know, you haven't looked at it for a few years or something. Wes, Wes strikes me as an intelligent, a really pleasant guy, and, and, you know, and he's, he's, he's interested in historical aspects and manuscripts, which is great. I, he doesn't strike me as an authority on those things yet, even though they're his main field. But he'd probably become an authority on those things. And I think that, you know, he's got a, he's got a apologetic mission. He wants to, he wants to show why, why Christianity is a reasonable faith and why he believes in it. And I have, I actually have no, no, no problem with that. I disagree with him on a lot of the, a lot of the factual information, but I also disagree with him on a lot of interpretations. And the one thing I like about apologists who, who stress history is the thing I like is when they urge people to look at the sources themselves and not take their word for it, and not take my word for it, but just to look at the evidence and see which way you come out. It's interesting. I just listened to a, a podcast by CJ Cornthwaite, who also used to be a gung ho Christian who now recognizes the critical scholarship is just more convincing. And he talks about like how, yeah, he just realized, man, I just started studying this, I just couldn't hold on to that belief anymore. I really respect somebody like that because it shows they're willing to change their mind. My view is a lot of apologists or my experience is a lot of podcasts will never change their mind about anything thing. And I don't know if Wes is like that or not, but it comes to be a lot of pressure on an apologist if you're publicly defending the faith and your livelihood depends on it. Your social life depends on it. Like everything depends on. It's really hard to give it up to go the other direction. It's hard to go the other direction even if you're not a public apologist. But I, you know, I just. So it'd be fun to share stage with Wes. We'd have an interesting back and forth, I think. But, but I disagree, you know, with virtually all the conclusions he was reaching.

[Megan Lewis]

Bart, thank you so much, 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 [e-mail]. and that includes tickets for the New Insights into the New Testament conference, which you can find at bart erman.com forward/n I N T misquoting Jesus will be back next week. But what are we talking about next time?

[Bart Ehrman]

Well, okay, we're talking about John the Baptist. I'm not sure. We've talked about him before. He's a very important figure for understanding Jesus and early Christianity. And most people, you know, don't know a lot about him because there may not be a lot to be known. But we're going to talk about some of the really interesting aspects of John and his and his preaching.

[Megan Lewis]

Make sure you 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.