← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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- [00:00]
A
A BetterHelp ad therapy isn't just for times of major challenge. It's a valuable tool for anyone wanting to improve their well being. It can help you develop healthy coping skills, set boundaries, and Support personal growth. BetterHelp makes it easy to get matched online with a fully licensed therapist right from your phone. No commuting, no waiting rooms, and you can switch therapists at any time. Sign up@betterhelp.com and get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com it's not every day that you get to talk about an exciting new discovery. In biblical studies. The ravages of time mean that it's rare for a text to survive, especially a complete text. Even rarer is a complete text that records an entire sermon given by Jesus. Well, I'm excited to say that today is one of those days. Dr. Bart Ehrman is with me to talk about his take on a fascinating new text discovered recently in Egypt. Welcome to Ms. Quoting 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. Hello everyone and welcome back to Misquoting Jesus. I am sorry to say that my little intro there was a small April Fool's While I think we'd all be very excited about such a discovery, no such text has been found. And if it had been, I think there would probably be some very valid questions about its authenticity. Which does lead me to the actual topic of today's episode, Modern Forgeries of Early Christian texts. It's not quite as sensational as a brand new sermon of Jesus, but I think probably just as interesting. We also have news of Barthes upcoming two lecture miniseries and finally we'll be closing with a selection of audience questions. So Bart, how are you? Sad, obviously, because there's no new text to talk about.
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B
But apart from I'm very sad because I was hoping that, you know, between our announcement and today it would show up. But you know, things do show up sometimes and sometimes they're authentic and often they're not. And so we'll talk about the ones that are not.
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A
No, it's going to be good. Before we get into like the technicalities and all that kind of thing. Do you have a favorite forgery? Modern forgery of an ancient text?
- [02:32]
B
Yeah, as it turns out I do have a favorite, a favorite one. And in part it's because it's by. It was actually done by a scholar, not, not somebody who's trying to make money from selling a, you know, imagined book about Jesus. But it. A scholar who's a classic scholar, scholar of Greek and Latin, who taught at Princeton university in the 30s and 40s. And he, he was in the war, in the Second World War. His name was Paul Coleman Norton. He was in the Second World War and he was stationed in French Morocco and he had some time on his hands and he was visiting a mosque. And the, the leaders of the mosque showed him. They found out that he worked in the ancient world. They showed him an ancient book they had which was a collection of Arabic writings. And he was leafing through it and he found a page stuck in it that was on parchment that week. And it was a commentary, a portion of a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. And he didn't have time to photograph it, but he could, you know, you could tell what it was, but he didn't have time to. He didn't. He wasn't able to photograph it, so he just copied it down by hand. And then later he looked at it carefully and it turned out that it had an unknown saying of Jesus. So we, we talked about these in an earlier episode. These are. This would be called an agrophon. It's a saying of Jesus not found in the canonical Gosp Gospels. But this, in this sermon, it was a sermon by. We don't know who. Preaching. There's a sermon on the text in, in the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus is predicting what's going to happen near the end, the end of time. And Jesus in the text in Matthew talks about how people like this will be cast into the outer darkness where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth, which is a familiar. It's a familiar phrase to people. But in this, in this commentary, it turns out that this author of the commentary had a Gospel of Matthew a like an edition of Matthew that continued the story from there. Jesus said, there'll be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And in this manuscript the disciples replied, but teacher, what about people who don't have any teeth? And Jesus says, don't be troubled. Those who have no teeth, they will have teeth provided. Okay, good teeth will be provided. And so. And so Coleman Norton thought, well, that's really funny. And so. But when he got. When the war was over, he published an article in a. In a learned academic journal, Biblical Studies Journal, called An Amusing Anecdote, where he described his discovery and described the manuscript and then did an interpretation of the manuscript and talked about this little anecdote. And so, and so, you know, people just assumed, wow, okay, that's amazing. You know, you find strange things. This is one of those strange things. But as it turns out, it was a complete hoax. The reason we know it's a hoax is because of my teacher, Bruce Metzger. Metzger was my mentor and guided me through my PhD program. He had been a student of Coleman Norton when he. Metzger did a PhD in classics at Princeton University in the 1930s. And he said that at that time in the 1930s, Coleman Norton would tell that as a joke in his classes that teeth will be provided. And so Metzger exposes this thing. And so it's not a forgery of an entire gospel, but it is a forgery of a kind of part of a gospel. And in this case it was simply. We don't know why he did it. I think he might have died when Metzger exposed it. But we don't know if it was just to be funny or to see if he could get away with it or both, but there it was.
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A
That's amazing and interesting. It seems odd to me for someone to, to make a forgery with a joke inside it.
- [06:43]
B
Well, but you know, we did an episode on the secret Gospel of Mark and you know, some people think Morton Smith is trying to see if he could get away with it as. Not as a joke in the same way, obviously, but, but you know. Yeah, yeah.
- [06:57]
A
Now we've talked about ancient forgeries before and obviously you have a book, a couple of books on the subject. What experiences have you had with documents forged during the modern period and people trying to pass them off as authentic ancient.
- [07:12]
B
Well, you know, I get questions all the time connected with, with Jesus about especially where was he, what was he doing during the lost years. So in the New Testament, I guess there are two periods of lost years in the New Testament. Jesus is born and then we have the story of him as a 12 year old in Luke in the temple discussing matters of the law. But then he doesn't show up again until he's about 30 in the gospel of Luke. So you have this period and people wonder what was he doing then? And people often ask me, is it true that he went to India or is it true that he went to Egypt? And I think the idea is there's no way to explain how somebody from this little one horse town of Nazareth, who in the rural backwaters of Galilee could have this kind of insight and intelligence and, or could do These miraculous things. And so how do you explain that? Well, it's because he picked it up, so he went somewhere else. And so there are gospels that say that. And that's where people get this idea, oh, yeah, I heard that Jesus went to India. Well, you know, and you ask him, where'd you hear that from? Well, somebody said so. But you can trace them back. You can actually trace these back to written documents that started appearing especially in the 19th century, toward. Especially toward the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century. Documents that claimed to be newly discovered gospels about Jesus.
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A
Now, one of these is the Unknown Life of Christ, which I believe is where the India story comes from. How did the author of it claim to have, quote, unquote, discovered it?
- [08:47]
B
Yeah, okay, so it's an interesting. It's an interesting account that this, the story. I think most people today who know about it know about it from a public. An English publication in 1926 that goes under that name. It was actually published 30 years earlier. It was originally published in 1894 in. In French by somebody who was Russian, just to confuse things. A Russian. It was actually a Russian war correspondent named Nicholas Notovich. So Notavitch, in this account, he actually published this gospel that claimed to be a genuine gospel. And he begins by describing how he found out how he found it. And he says that in the late 1880s, he was traveling through India and he ran across some Buddhist teachers who told him stories about somebody named Issa. So Issa is roughly the Arabic term for Jesus. And they had stories about Issa that were unlike anything he had heard before. And they said that there are actually writings about Issa, you know, in. In the, in the Buddhist tradition. And so he thought, well, that was that. You know, he found that really interesting. He ended up going on travels, you know, throughout India and, and into Tibet. And, and, and he, he. He came to a monastery. There's this famous monastery, a Buddhist monastery called the Hemis Monastery. And he. He went there and he learned there from the abbot of the monasteries all these stories about Issa. And he found it interesting. And then he. He went on his journeys. Went. And a couple days after going on his journey, he broke his leg. He fell off his horse and broke his leg. He got carried back to the monastery. And while he was there, he's there for a long time. The abbot actually pulled out the book, the book about Issa and started reading these stories. And Notovich was taking notes, with careful notes and things. And then when he recovered, he left and event. And so then a few years later he published this book in 1894 that recounted what had happened. And so, you know, it's just kind of happenstance. He happened to be this monastery where they had this, where they had this Tibetan book.
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A
That's, that's quite lucky.
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B
Very lucky. Yeah.
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A
So what, what details were there about Jesus lost life in India that he apparently read in, in this book.
- [11:19]
B
Yeah, so that's the thing. He, you know, the book was in Tibetan and so he had, it was being translated to him, but he remembered it somehow and he wrote it down. And, and so this is the story. Jesus is a third. As a 13 year old was decided there's a caravan going through town, through, up in Galilee and, and you know, selling spices or whatever caravans were selling those days. And, and he wanted to go to India to study with the, the wise men of the East. And so Jesus went and he, he went into a community of Brahmins and so, and he studied the Vedas and so he became trained in the, in basically the Hindu scriptures. But after a few, after some years he really got upset with the Indian caste system and started speaking out against it. And the, and the Brahmins dec, they were going to, they were going to kill him because they didn't like his attitudes. And so he escaped and he went to a Tibetan monastery to study Buddhism and he studied Buddhism for a few years. Then he went to Persia and he hung out with the Zoroastrians. And so he acquired the knowledge of the east from these various groups from Hindus and Buddhists and Zoroastrians. And then he came back as a 29 year old and that's when he started his ministry. So that's why he has so many ideas that are similar to what you get in Eastern thought. And, and so that's it. So that's, that's the account that he gives.
- [12:51]
A
Okay, so how was it then exposed as being a fraudulent fiction?
- [12:56]
B
Well, you know, a lot of people in 1926 once when, when the thing came out, it made, it made kind of a splash. There are a lot of people reading it in the US and in England I guess, but, but it was, it was, it had been exposed as a fraud 30 years earlier when it came out in France.
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A
Fantastic. So the French copy was known to be wrong, but maybe the English copy was.
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B
Well, people have short memories and so they, they didn't know or they didn't pay attention, but it had been exposed in several ways. When it came out in 1894, there was an English woman who had read it in French, who decided to check it out. And she, she actually went to the monastery and asked around and they said, yeah, no, we, we've never had some Russian guy with a broken leg. And you know, we don't know anything about this book. And so. But then a year later in I don't know, in the late 1920s, an actual scholar went to the monastery and qu. And talked to the abbot, who was still the abbot, who had allegedly had been the abbot then. And he asked him all sorts of detailed questions. The abbot knew nothing about it. And he said there hasn't been anybody. There haven't been a Russian visitor to the monastery. There's been no European visitor to the monastery for any stretch of, of time. No Russians here. Nobody broke his leg. We don't have such a book. We've never heard of such a book. And so, and so it, and so it was, it was exposed both for that reason and because scholars started digging into the story and pointing out there just all these implausibilities that made no sense in it. And so nobody today thinks it's, it's anything actual. It's one of these things that people hear about and they think, oh, that's exciting. And so they, they leap onto it.
- [14:37]
A
Does it seem like the author was trying to make a theological point with the story or is this probably a money making scheme of some kind?
- [14:45]
B
He was making money and he made, he made a lot of money from it. It was a complete hoax. And I would say today that's typically why you get this kind of thing, because you know, you'll sell some books and you know, and because to see if you can get away with it and see kind of titillate the imagination but not, you know, usually it's not really to make much of a point.
- [15:07]
A
We're going to take a very brief break, but when we come back, we're going to be talking about another fraudulent book called the Crucifixion of Jesus by an eyewitness. It's not every day we announce something this big. Hello, Misquoting Jesus fans. It's Megan and I've got some big news to show share with you today. After more than three years of creating world class courses on the historical Jesus, the New Testament and early Christianity, we're turning the page, literally. We've officially changed our name from Bart Ehrman Courses to Paths in Biblical Studies. This name change marks a big moment in our growth. What started as a platform centered on Barth's expertise has grown into a collaborative effort now featuring some of the top scholars in the field. It's no longer a one person endeavor, it's a full academic community. And the new name reflects that. Just to be clear, the Misquoting Jesus podcast isn't going anywhere and the name is staying the same. The change is on the course side where we'll keep pushing to provide high quality, affordable biblical studies courses that are accessible and, and understandable to a non academic audience. To celebrate, we're launching a month long April campaign with two major offers. First, every week this month, five of Paths in Biblical Studies. Best selling courses will be 50% off with new deals released each week. And second, for the entire month of April, we are reducing the price of our Biblical studies academy by an incredible, incredible 40% for new subscribers. But that's not all. Everyone who purchases a course of any value, even if it's just one course in April will get instant access to Paul and his Letters, a basic introduction, an online course by Bart Ehrman. Plus you'll be entered into a drawing to win a mystery prize. We're not saying what it is just yet, but we promise it'll be good. Head over to PBSCourses.com to explore this week's deals and take advantage of the celebration. That's pbs, short for Paths in Biblical Studies courses dot com. Once again, that's pbscourses dot com thank you. So you just talked to us about the unknown life of Christ, which details Jesus's extended gap year, shall we say, traveling around various different Eastern cultures, learning all of their wisdom. Another interesting text is the crucifixion of Jesus by an eyewitness. Could you talk a little bit about the story that that one presents?
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B
Yeah, so that, that one's also interesting. Instead of dealing with kind of Jesus young life, it's dealing with his, with his end. And in some ways this kind of account has attracted even more attention, I think among popular audiences. So this is published by a German scholar in the 1890s. And the scholar claimed that he had come across a, a letter that was written in Latin by a Jewish authority living in Jerusalem that was written several years after the crucifixion. And if somebody who was an eyewitness to the event and in this Latin letter, the Latin letter was written by a, an Essene. So some of our listeners will know the Essenes were the ones who produced the Dead Sea Scrolls which were discovered in the 1940s. And they were a Jewish sect that were, were mentioned by ancient authors like Josephus. And so until we had the Dead Sea Scrolls. We didn't know a lot about them, but. But they, you know, they were known to be this Jewish sect. So somebody who is an Essene writes this letter in Latin in Jerusalem describing what actually happened at the crucifixion. He tells an account, a brief account about Jesus, his life and then the crucifixion. And in his account of Jesus life and death, all of the supernatural elements have been taken out. It's not that Jesus was doing miracles or that he was raised from the dead or anything like that. There were no miracles associated with him. He lived a natural life, and he lived and he suffered a natural death. He was crucified, but he did not die at the crucifixion. In this account, what happens is he gets rescued from the cross by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, who were also Essenes. And he survived the cross and he lived for another six months. He ended up dying from the wounds, but he lasted six months more. And so this is. This is an allegedly an eyewitness account by a fellow Jew.
- [20:07]
A
Was it difficult for biblical scholars to show this one to be a hoax as well?
- [20:11]
B
Not so much. It is, especially since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, where we actually know what the Essenes were like, and they're nothing like this. For this alleged scene was the. These things are exposed, by the way. There are. There are. There are a couple books about these. I talk about. I talk about these things in the last chapter of my book, Forged, which is, you know, it's written for a general audience to talk about forgeries, but I describe these things in greater length than several others. And this whole phenomenon of forgeries, ancient and modern. But there are a couple books devoted to them. One by a guy named Irwin Goodenough, wrote a book in the 1950s which is about the strange. About these strange stories, strange gospels of Jesus. And people can read that kind of thing. So. But people like that had no problem at all exposing something like this. For one thing, this. We know a lot about the Essenes now, and they're nothing like this. The scene was. And so we didn't. Nobody before the 1940s had any idea, really. And so he's just picking somebody. But the idea that. That there'd be this. This Jewish. This devout Jew in Jerusalem writing a letter in Latin. What. Where does that come from? Not only that, but it allegedly is written seven years after the cruc, and it mentions Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as the four gospels. So it's like, oh, My God. So it's like this obvious thing that it can't possibly be right. But you know, this idea that Jesus survived the crucifixion, that, that continues to live on, people think, oh yeah, maybe so, maybe so.
- [21:48]
A
So I know you said when we were talking about the unknown life of Christ that by and large these things are financially motivated. Is there a theological point at all in the crucifixion of Jesus or just another.
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B
Yeah, this could be, because what it is is the naturalist account of what happened. Naturalist, meaning that there's nothing supernatural about it. The, the, the, the most, some ways the most interesting part of the story is when it was absolutely shown to be a forgery by a, by a New Testament scholar, a well known New Testament scholar named Martin Deus, who was a, who is a German scholar who read it and realized what it was. There. There was a. In the early 19th century, in the 1800s, early 1800s, there were a number of books written about Jesus by people who were influenced by rationalism, this movement within the Enlightenment, which argued that we can figure everything else out by reason, we don't need anything supernatural. And so these naturalist lives of Jesus portrayed his life without any miracles. And so there was one written in the first years of the 1800s by a guy named Venturini that claimed that Jesus was in a scene and that he had been crucified, he had done no miracles, he had been crucified and he survived the crucifixion. And it is this gospel story. Venturini's book was a two volume scholarly work. And what the author, the, the author of this account did is he simply took Venturini's thing and he condensed it into kind of a, kind of a mystery story kind of thing. And Dubeli showed that completely. So, yeah, so these things, these things are almost all, they're always easy to detect if you're a scholar, you know about it, if you know enough information to realize this can't be right, can't be from the period. But if you're not that, you know, you read it and say, wow, that's interesting. That might be right. Maybe that's true.
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A
Have there been any modern forgeries that have passed or come close to passing as authentic?
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B
Well, you know, the one that comes closest is the one we had a whole episode on, the secret Gospel of Mark and it's, it's much debated. I'm probably in the minority among scholars who think that that is actually a modern forgery. I think probably, I think most people still kind of cling on to it. It's possibly authentic, but a number of us don't. But, you know, it's. I. My view about the secret gospel, if people listen to that episode, they'll, they'll hear more about it. But if it is a forgery, as I think it was by Morton Smith, it's one of the greatest works of scholarship of the 20th century. To be able to pull, to make it that convincing is really, really impressive. And almost nobody in the world could do it, but I think Morton Smith could.
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A
Do you think it's possible that some of the, maybe shorter snippets that exist, smaller manuscripts could be. Could have been forged? Or is it just too easy for scholars to detect them?
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B
Well, it's, it's difficult to detect them. And, you know, there could. There are always questions. And so I just, I'll give you two kind of instances from very different genre. So, you know, the Gospel of Judas was discovered. When it was discovered, it was kind of. We've had an episode on it, I think. Have we had an episode on it? I think we have. Maybe we haven't. If we haven't, we need to. So the Gospel of Judas is the most recently discovered gospel that was first published, made public in 2006. And it's a Gnostic gospel. And the National Geographic had acquired rights to publish it once it had been reconstructed. It's a Coptic manuscript. And they had. I was involved with the team that was trying to authenticate it, and the National Geographic was a little bit nervous about publishing it because they wanted to make sure that it wasn't a forgery because of all these other forgeries. And so they got a team of people together and to examine it and to think and talk about it and figure it out whether or not it was a forgery. And so there's, there's a very real concern that people have whenever anything is discovered, can this be, can this be modern? About the same time we had the, the Gospel of Jesus Wife, which was, which. Which was initially validated as an ancient document by highly reputable scholars, but soon shown to be a modern forgery. This was a gospel that just. It was a little fragment that had just a few lines of text in one of these texts. It's also written in Coptic. One of these texts, it said, it's Jesus talking. And, and at one point he says, my wife. Whoa. And so it was a very big deal. But it too is definitively exposed as a forgery. So you have, so you have questions about ancient forgeries. You do have modern forgeries like that. But the other thing you've got that's worth thinking about is that you've got people writing accounts of Jesus that claim to be historical that are just completely bogus. And the most famous in modern times is the Da Vinci Code. Code. Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, which was a best seller for roughly forever. Forever when it showed up. I mean, it was number one forever and ever. And the. The book claims to. It's a. It. The book admits that it's a modern. You know, it's like this modern mystery thing, but. And a real page turner. But Dan Brown claims that the historical information in it is factual and it involves, among other things, Jesus being married to Mary Magdalene and having children and that. That the family line continues down till today. And so he. He actually comes out and says this. This. This part's factual, but the story itself is made up. And so. Yeah, well, that's not true. And so it's not exactly a forgery in the same. Like, he's not enforced the gospel, but he is. He's basing this on a forged concept.
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A
So it seems like some ideas presented in modern forgeries, like Jesus being married and having children, like Jesus spending time in India, even though they're known to be hoaxes or just simply wrong or however you want to phrase it, still kind of persist in modern consciousness.
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B
Yeah.
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A
What do you think it is about these ideas that really capture people's attention and makes it so hard to completely remove them?
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B
Yeah, you know, it's a. It's a. It's an issue for lay people. It's also an issue for scholars who are dealing with ancient materials because people have worked on the Bible, the New Testament and, you know, on the classics and everything else for. For centuries, many centuries. I mean, critical scholarship of the Bible has been going on since the Enlighten Enlightenment. And, you know, the first accounts of Jesus come historic, like attempts to be a critical account of Jesus that are not just repeating what the Gospels say start showing up at the end of the 18th century. Well, that's a long time ago. And there's not that much more that you can say. I mean, there's. There gets to a point where you've got a lot of information. Well, how do you. How do you make anybody interested in it if it's stuff that everybody knows already? Well, you come up with something that, you know is made up, that's a lot more scintillating. And so that's what happens with the popular thing. People know that if they just write an account, they summarize the gospels about Jesus, who's going to buy their books? They can just like people know that. But if you come up with something, that Jesus actually survived the crucifixion, which by the way, was in a modern scholarly book book, the Passover Plot, by Hugh Schonfield, who argued that Jesus intentionally faked his death, got drugged on the cross intentionally so that he could appear to be raised from the dead. You know, so you get that in modern scholars write those things, the Passover plot. But also you have people who are just out there to make money, who just make stuff up. And scholars can recognize that. But I think people gravitate toward that kind of thing. Both because the. Even people who are not conspiracy theorists have this kind of inclination to want something a little more scintillating than they normally hear. My view about that, by the way, is that and relevant to our podcast is that scholarship itself is really interesting to people because they haven't heard it. If you just, you just even hearing what the scholars actually know is so surprising to many people that, whoa, I had no idea. And that's without making stuff up. So my view is you don't need to make stuff up. You just need to like explain what we really know that itself is scintillating enough.
- [31:20]
A
Yes, I, I agree. We did on digital Hammurabi. I had like an audience survey a few weeks ago asking people a few months ago, asking people what they are interested in, why they are following us, what kinds of things they want, want to know. And so many people just want what I would consider as an academic to be basic information.
- [31:40]
B
Yeah.
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A
Because it's just not shared. People are not. Academics are not very good at sharing the information that they have.
- [31:47]
B
So I mean, even on the most basic level with the stuff we deal with on misquoting Jesus, you know that Jesus thought the world was going to end in his generation. The Gospel of John is not historically reliable. The book of Acts contradicts Paul. I mean, just, you know, and you can hear those. The thing is, you can hear that kind of basic stuff and you might not know it. You think, really? I don't know. But then you start seeing the evidence and it's interesting. But once you start digging into what the actual evidence is, you start learning all sorts of stuff. You had no idea, really. And so that's, I mean, it's why I became a scholars, because it's like detective work. It's trying to uncover stuff and you. And you know, it's not that you're not doing it for, you know, from scratch. You've got like centuries of scholarship behind you, but you still find stuff. And it's just, it can be really interesting. And so I think these popular, the forgeries and these popular ideas about Jesus going to India or learning his magic in Egypt, these kinds of things are like, they're just, they're scintillating but in such a superficial, artificial way where, you know, it's kind of clever or interesting, but it's like the truth itself is really interesting and most people don't know it. So that's. So that's good too.
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A
Absolutely. And that is why we're here.
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B
That's why we're here. That's why we exist.
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A
That's a good note to end on. We will be going to our announcements in one minute, so definitely stay tuned.
- [33:10]
B
Welcome to our upcoming highlights and event segment where we catch up on Bart's courses, community updates and all the latest news from the Biblical Studies Academy and beyond.
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A
Okay, as I said at the top of the episode, Bart is going to be teaching a two lecture miniseries that's going to happen on Sunday, April 6th. It is April themed. It is Easter themed and is called the Other Doubting Thomases. There are two ways you can sign up for this. As always, you can get access to the live recording of the course and all of our courses by being a member of the Biblical Studies Academy. There is a free trial for that. You can go to bart ehrman.com BSA or you can purchase the course as a standalone@bart ehrman.com Easter2025 and be sure to use the code MJ Podcast for an exclusive MJ Podcast only discount. But what do you think of my new glasses?
- [34:13]
B
You know, I just think. I think you look marvelous.
- [34:16]
A
I feel very fashionable.
- [34:18]
B
I think you were right there, man. You, you've got it. You've nailed it, I think. Yeah. Okay, keep.
- [34:23]
A
Someone in the comments asked me to, I believe, stop with the oversized granny glasses. I think I'm just going to wear these from now on.
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B
Well, I just, I just wondered why you didn't get a large pair.
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A
Well, I. They are quite small.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Yeah, they are. Okay, now Bart is going to answer some listeners questions.
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B
Now it's time for questions from listeners where Bart answers real questions submitted by misquoting Jesus fans. If you'd like to submit a question for future segments, Please visit bart erman.com Ask Bart.
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A
Okay, listeners, questions. First up, I have heard many times that the Gospel of Mark was written around the year 70. However, in my understanding, at least, the first full manuscript we have, and even the first fragments are from much later. What are the methods by which we can determine the age of the Gospel of Mark or any of the books in the New Testament for that matter?
- [35:30]
B
Yeah, well, it's a great question. We actually need a whole episode on that if we, if we haven't done one. So, you know, the date of a manuscript is important, but the date of the manuscript never tells you the date of the composition, except that the composition was before whenever this manuscript was made. And the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament are not unusual in having only later manuscripts for earlier writings. You know, for a lot of classical writers, I mean, Plato or, you know, Euripides or, you know, name, name your ancient author. We don't have manuscripts near their time at all. Most of the time, the manuscripts come to us from hundreds and hundreds of years later. And so you have to date the composition differently from the time of the, you know, of the manuscript. So I've got a, I've got a Bible here just sitting right in front of me that was manufactured in 1989, but, you know, the books in the Bible were written 2,000 years earlier, that kind of thing. So how do you decide? There are two things you look for, Basically, I won't go into great depth here, but you want to see before, when did it have to be written? And after, when did it appear to be written? So if you've got a book like the Gospel of Mark, if you have somebody who actually quotes the Gospel of Mark and you can date that person, then it had to be written before that. And so the Gospel of Mark appears to be known by the middle of the second century, say by Justin Martyr in 150. So it had to be written before 150 for him to know it. And so then you look at, well, when did it have to be written after? And there are reasons for thinking that Mark knew about the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70 and that, that, that the book was written some near that time or somewhat after time, after the time of the Jewish war. So it had to be written after the year, probably had to be written after the year 70 and before the year 150. And then you start looking at other factors too, to narrow it down and narrow it down, narrow it down, and you end up, you end up with a window. But I would say that with Mark, almost everybody would date it to around the year 70, but maybe a few years later, thank you.
- [37:46]
A
The next is a more of a personal question. Given your personal religious evolution and how devoted you are to learning about the Bible, what do you think the Bible is and why or how it came to be? Is it a history book, fiction, nonfiction, a guide for life, or something else?
- [38:03]
B
Well, the first thing I'd say is that the Bible is not a book. It's 66 books. And so part of my. Part of my real interest is knowing about each of these 66 books. And I take each one individually and I try to figure out what is it. I think as a collection, you would say for Old and New Testaments together, it's the collection of books that Christians consider to be authoritative for the New Testament. It's a collection of books that represents, by and large, our oldest Christian writings. And so if you want to know about the historical Jesus, the life of the early church, the teachings of the early church, what to believe, what to do, then these are the books you go to. If you're interested in that historically. I am interested in that historically. For me, it's the book that is at the basis of the largest religion in the world and the religion of just about everybody around me who has a religion. And so I'm deeply interested in it for historical and cultural reasons. But for me as well, it's one of these ancient books, the collection of books that convey really deep and interesting insights into things, some of which I agree on, on the meaning of life and what the goal of life is and why I should be here. And some of them I disagree with. But it's kind of a dialogue partner for me, but at often a very profound level.
- [39:25]
A
Thank you. Next question is about the Gospel of Mark and the purpose of Jesus. Crucifixion. In Mark 2. 9, Jesus tells the paralytic man, son, your sins are forgiven. Does this mean that Jesus did not need to die on the cross for the forgiveness of sins? If he did not need to die to forgive sins, then aside from the tearing of the curtain in the temple, what did Jesus death accomplish in the Gospel of Mark?
- [39:53]
B
The questioner is right that there's a. There seems to be varying views about things in the Mark and in most of the other books and throughout the New Testament. When Jesus says, your sins are forgiven, in this particular passage, it's important to note that he does not say, I forgive your sins. People often say, well, he's claiming to be God because he's just forgiven his sins. He doesn't say, I forgive your sins, your sins are forgiven. He's Pronouncing forgiveness. And so in this context, it's somebody who's paralyzed. And there was an ancient idea that the reason people get sick and is the reason they're injured or sick or have a disability or whatever is because of some kind of sin. And so basically he's saying that whatever this person did, you know, has been forgiven. That's not very comfortable thought for many people today, but that was the ancient thinking. But you're right, the person's right. If sins could be forgiven, why does Jesus have to die? And the death of Jesus is not the same as forgiveness. Because if Jesus has to die for sins, then God's not forgiving your sins, he's requiring a payment for your sins. That's, it's very different paying for something than being given it for free. Forgiveness is free. And you know, atonement is, is a payment. Mark's overall view is that Jesus had to die for the sins of others. In Mark, Jesus says, I came not to be served, but to serve and to give my life a ransom for many. And at the cross that's what he does. He dies for the sins of others as an atonement. So that's Mark's overarching view. And the question is, right, if sins could just be forgiven, why does Jesus have to die? That is a, that is a problem that simp, I think, cannot be solved. I think it's either one or the other. I talk about this in my new book, by the way that's coming out, that there's a difference between forgiveness and atonement. And many people want it both ways, but conceptually they're, they're, they're at odds with each other.
- [42:02]
A
Thank you. One final question. Your books and this podcast have been influential to me over the past few years as I slowly left fundamentalist Christianity behind. I find myself agreeing with a lot of your conclusions, but I want to do my due diligence and ensure I'm not getting only one unbelieving scholars views. Do you have any recommendations for books from experts that you respect but who are still Christians and, and might have significant disagreements with your conclusions?
- [42:31]
B
Yeah, about, you know, 20,000 recommendations. You know, my, my views. You know, I am, I'm not a Christian believer, but almost everything we've talked about on this podcast would be, are things that I either learned while I was a Christian and remained a Christian, or I'd be, would have been very comfortable talking about when I was a Christian. My classes at UNC Chapel Hill, my undergraduate classes on the New Testament I you know, the views I represent there are views that the Christian critical scholars have I learned it I learned most of them in seminary. And so so these are not views of an agnostic. These are just the critical views. And of course, I have my own views about this, that or the other thing. But in terms of scholarship, so I'll tell you, you know, my views of scholarship are basically views of scholarship. One way to go about it is I have I have this textbook on the New Testament that is that covers every book of the New Testament and at the and it's a widely used textbook in colleges throughout the country and in also in seminaries, in Christian seminaries. And at the end of each chapter, I include a a bibliography of books to be read, a you know, that other books that deal with the topic. And just about all of these other books I recommend are written by Christian scholars. And so that would be a good place to go for bibliography, if you're in whatever you're interested in. We've had a couple questions about Mark, and so I have a I have a list of seven or eight, ten books about various aspects of Mark, and most of them are written by Christian scholars because it's mainly Christian scholars who who, you know, write about the New Testament. The other thing I'll say is that this textbook of mine came out just this last year in the 8th edition, and I got a co author for the 8th edition because I was just getting really tired of doing new editions on my own. And so the scholar asked to do it with me is Hugo Mendez, my colleague at unc, and he does identify as a Christian. And so anyway, that's what I'd recommend. Look at my textbook and look at the bibliography at the end of each chapter and you'll get get you get more than you need. And yeah, that's it.
- [44:45]
A
Thank you, Bart. AUDIENCE thank you so much for your questions. Now, before we finish for the week, would you mind just summarizing what we spoke about today?
- [44:52]
B
Well, we've been talking about this fun topic about modern forgeries of gospels, and they started showing up in the 19th, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, and it's where people sometimes get their information about about Jesus, you know, maybe going to India as a as a young man or or not or, you know, not dying at the crucifixion. And and so we talked about how we know their forgeries. We talked about a couple of instances of them and just, you know, how scholars go about verifying whether something is authentic or not.
- [45:24]
A
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, you can use the code MJ podcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.bartehrman.com. misquoting Jesus will be back next week, but what are we talking about next time?
- [45:44]
B
Well, it's another interesting but very different topic. There have been a lot, there's been a lot of discussion, a lot of scholarship on women in early Christianity, starting with Jesus, going into Paul and lots of various views. You know, is Paul one of the great misogynists of antiquity or did he have a liberated view? And we're women actually active in the, in Jesus life? And, and if, if women did have a prominent role early in Christianity, what happened so that they end up, like, not even being able to talk in church? How did that happen? And so that we'll be talking about women in early Christianity, it's going to
- [46:19]
A
be a good one. So make sure you join us then. Thank you all and goodbye. This has been an episode of Misquoted 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 favourite 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.