← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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B
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. Bart, are you ready for Christmas? The long dreaded question. I'm not.
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A
Yeah, I'm definitely not. I, I've always been a big fan of Christmas. Back when I was religious, it had very deep meaning for me. But also I just always liked the accoutrement. I was very, very big fan of Christmas trees and Christmas carols and everything. And I, and I, I still am. Although now for many years now we've gone over to England for the holidays because my wife Sarah's English. And so we go over and celebrate with them, which I like a lot, but it does mean no Christmas tree for me. And so, but I started to get the carols and so we're gonna, we're gonna go over and we'll spend a couple weeks over there with her family. Her family is scattered around. My family here in America is scattered around. Which means that every Christmas really is almost literally the 12 days of Christmas.
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B
You're opening presents every day throughout the
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A
country, somewhere or another in England or anywhere. It's like, oh my God, just go. Goes on forever. But then, but it's all good. I tend to enjoy holidays. I do like the Christmas scene. So how about you? You're looking forward to it?
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B
Well, I'm not ready, but I'm close. We're staying home this year. We have my two eldest children and my stepchildren, so they're having Christmas with us this year, which is lovely. So we will have a house full of children and it will be loud and chaotic and stressful, but also, I suspect, wonderful.
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A
How many kids are going to be there?
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B
Five total.
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A
Do you cook an English Christmas dinner or an American Christmas dinner?
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B
I don't think we've decided this year actually. My husband's going to be cooking. I normally would do lamb or something because I don't much like turkey. But I don't think we've decided exactly what we're having. I do enjoy a nice English Christmas dinner. My grandmother used to make the best roast potatoes in the world. It was always the best part about visiting her was the potatoes.
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A
You can't eat goose fat in this country.
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B
No, it's tricky. It's very tricky.
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A
You get duck fats and, you know, roast. I do a lot of roast potatoes. I like to cook. I cook a lot of roast vegetables. But this ain't the same with olive oil.
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B
No, it's not. I actually, I save. Very bizarre tangent for the audience. I save bacon grease in a jar and I use that and it tastes nice. It's not the same, but it's about as close as I can get.
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A
You should have grown up in the American South. I've had friends here, always got a thing of bacon grease. Boy, they slap it on their green beans. It's good, I think, oh, my God, how many years am I cutting off my life here?
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B
Yeah, it's not something we do regularly, but for Christmas, it's nice.
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A
All right, good.
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B
So today we're talking about the truth, which is a huge topic. So obviously we're narrowing it down somewhat. Is the New Testament true? And. And what does that even mean? Can a collection of writings even be called a collection of ancient writings, specifically even be called true or false? But I'm sure you have thoughts on this. Why do you think it's an important line of inquiry?
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A
Oh, well, it's important because, you know, there are several billion Christians in the world who think that the Bible is the guide to truth. And so it is important question for them, obviously, and for everyone who's a Christian. In what sense does the Bible contain truth and what does it mean? And if the Bible does contain truth, in what sense? And so there's. There's that. But even for those who are not Christian, there can be books that are true in a sense that they teach important lessons that you affirm. And it doesn't have to be a matter of belief. I personally read a lot of 19th century novels. I like Victorian novels. And so I'm reading a Dickens novel, Dombey and Son, right now. And I think there is truth in fiction, but it isn't the same as truth in history. I can say that the Allies won the Second World War. That would be a true statement. But is it true on a deeper level as well? Does it mean that truth triumphed That's a different kind of question. And so when you're dealing with the Bible, you're actually dealing with truth on a number of levels. Not just those two levels, but various levels.
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B
That's.
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A
That's why, I suppose what we need to be talking about.
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B
So if we're talking about the truth on different levels, I think something that can be confusing maybe to people is that if we cannot securely attribute the Gospels, for example, to a specific person, is that difficulty? Or if we're looking at pseudonymous or forgeries, which obviously are wrongly attributed, deliberately or otherwise, to does that falsehood then impact the truth of the writing that we're looking at either historical or ethical, moral truth?
- [05:54]
A
Yeah. Well, okay, you're going right to the heart of it here. This is a very. It's a very difficult question that I don't think people know how to wrestle with usually. I've written a couple of books that have set out the case that scholars have been making for a long time. So these are not like, it's not like I invented this or not like I'm the crazy guy who came up with this. I'm just writing the books, explaining what people have said for a long time. Scholars have long thought that in the ancient world, there are lots of writings that claim to be written by authors who did not write them. We get that today, of course, usually today you get somebody who uses a pen name, right? Or not just today, but I mean, like Mark Twain, his name was not Mark Twain. His name was Samuel Clemens, you know, and George Elliot. One of my favorite novelists, her name was Marianne Evans. And so people take pen names, and sometimes they have a reason for doing it, and sometimes they're just doing it. And so you didn't get that in the ancient world. What you also got in the ancient world a lot more than you get today, which you still do get today, are people claiming to be famous people when they're someone else. You get this in Greek circles and Roman circles and in Jewish circles and in Christian circles. We have all sorts of books written by Peter and Paul and Thomas and James and Phil. Just name your ancient Christian that didn't write them. So there are lots of questions about that. We will definitely be spending a podcast just on that phenomenon. In the ancient world, they considered that lying. You will often hear New Testament scholars say, oh, yeah, nobody thought it was lying. And New Testament scholars will often say, yeah, nobody thought badly of it. And that just bogus. I mean, it's not true. All you have to do is Read the ancient sources. They did call it lying. What they called these things were pseudoi. If you have a book that wasn't written by the guy that says it to be right, they called it a pseudo. They called it a lie. And so there's no question they thought this. But the question is, does that invalidate the claims within the book? That's a different question. If you wrote a scientific treatise that argued that E equals MC squared, and you claimed that you were Einstein, but in fact you are not. You are. Megan, does that mean that the equation's wrong? No. Well, what if it's not a mathematical equation or a physics equation or a report of a chemistry experiment? Or what if it's a claim about the importance of justice? Or what if it's a claim about the superiority of capitalism as a system? Or what if it's an argument for socialism? Does it invalidate the claim? My view is no. Claims have to be determined on other grounds. And so this is when I said originally, various levels. This is one of the levels. It's like, okay, on one level, it's not true that this is the author. On the other level, determining that's different from determining what you're saying is right.
- [08:43]
B
Yeah, I think that's a. That's a difficulty when you're working with ancient sources. When I was doing my PhD, I looked an awful lot at Mesopotamian royal inscriptions, which are historical documents. They contain a lot of very useful information for reconstructing history. They talk about battles and kings building specific temples. So you can track when this temple was built, when this temple was renovated, all that kind of thing. And the fact that you don't know specifically who wrote that particular inscription actually isn't terribly important and doesn't really say an awful lot about the information contained within it. Super famous example, Law Code of Hammurabi. Did he write it? Probably not. But does it provide us a really interesting window into cultural legal systems in Mesopotamia at that time? Most definitely does. And similarly, when you're looking at Herodotus, also a fantastic example, who was essentially a travel guide from ancient Greece, he writes some very suspect things. He writes about women in Babylonia being required to go and essentially prostitute themselves in the temple of Ishtar. No actual evidence for that. And he writes about how he went to Egypt and this Egyptian person he was talking to pointed to an inscription on a pyramid and said, oh, yes, this explains how many rations, like radishes or something, the workers were given to build the pyramids. Also not true. But Herodotus was Most likely a real person. And some of his other writings are historically verifiable. So I think the question of authorship is really quite complicated. And saying, oh, either we don't know who wrote this, or the person who says they wrote it is not who they actually were, actually doesn't really say an awful lot about how far you can trust the information within a document.
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A
It's an interesting set of examples because we're also not just talking about one level of truth and one level of falsehood. We're talking about various levels of truth. I mean, for example, the code of Hammurabi. If what you're saying is, does this truly come from the mouth of Hammurabi? You probably say, yeah, probably not. So, no, it's not true in that sense. Is it a reflection of what some people thought ought to govern how society functions at that time and place? The answer is that, yes, it probably does. Okay, so it'd be true on that level, be true on one level, false. But on another level, does it represent how people actually asked?
- [11:10]
B
It actually happens. Yeah.
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A
And then. Then the question there is, well, probably not. And so you got, you know, some things are true, some things are false. And so when you're saying, is it true? You can't ask it. You know, is it true? I mean, what part of it is true? And with Herodotus, like, if Herodotus, you know, if you've got an ancient author that's describing customs of somebody, it may be that it's not true that people really did this, but it would be true that the outsiders were imagining them doing it.
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B
Other people thought they did it.
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A
That's interesting, too, because then it can show you what a Greek living in some other culture thought and said. And so that would be a true representation of what the Greeks were thinking, but it wouldn't be what was really. What do you mean by true? And what. What are you looking for? What are you looking for?
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B
And I think another kind of additional layer is, especially when you're working with textual material, what genre is it that you're working with? Yes, another, again, Mesopotamian example is, for me, the deification of Naram Sin. Naram Sin was an Acadian king who ruled around the 23rd century BCE and we have documentation that says he was deified, so he was made a God for a military victory. As historians, when we look at that, we don't say, oh, this man was clearly a God, because that's overly simplistic and it's just silly. Honestly, what we do is we talk about it in terms of propaganda and royal rhetoric rather than is it true or false. So you can't just look at it and say he wasn't a God and then also dismiss out of hand everything that the rest of those texts say.
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A
That's right. But you're right. A historian would not ask, you know, did he really become a God? A historian would never ask that about that text. But the weird thing is with Christianity, not weird, but the expected thing, when it's within your own religion, you do ask that question, is it true? Did Jesus really ascend to heaven? You know, and so you wouldn't ask that. We have accounts analogous to the ones you're talking about in your field. We have accounts like that in Greek literature, too. Apollonius of Tiana lived in the first century, same century as Jesus. And we have reports of him ascending to heaven at the end of his life and, you know, an eyewitness talking to him after he came back to explain what had happened. And so you get that. But there's no historian that's going to go around asking, how do I verify whether that really happened? You just don't do that. That's not a historical question. You don't ask it as a historical question. But then with Christianity, you have people who are apologists who do ask that question. Okay, how do we prove that it's true that Jesus ascended to heaven? You would never ask that of other historical fig. You know, you don't go around asking, did Romulus really go to. You don't. So it could be a true story. Okay, here's one thing I wanted to say when we're getting into this whole thing. When my kids were young, we used to watch a movie. We would watch a movie and kids would say, after getting this movie for a while, it's pretty interesting. The kids would say, is this a true story? And I would always say, yes. And they say, no, wait a second. Did this really happen? I said, oh, no, it didn't happen. Truth isn't just about what happened. Right. And so if you talk about somebody in, you know, in Assyria or somebody in Rome or somebody in Greece or somebody in Japan who is deified, you know, when you say it's true, what does it mean? Do you mean historically? Do you mean in terms of my religious faith, Is it symbolic? You know, what is it?
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B
Yeah, it's quite the question. And I wanted to ask, actually, with my usual source material from Mesopotamia, you often will deal with a corpus, so a group of texts that are the same genre, maybe the same time period, maybe the same geographical location. I mentioned royal inscriptions. You can look at literary texts or liturgical texts or a group of letters. With the New Testament, I feel like that it's a corpus in and of itself, but a very diverse corpus that I think, in a way, you don't often see that kind of diversity in a single corpus outside of New Testament studies. When you're dealing with something that complex and varied, how do you go about deciding what is reliable specifically for reconstructing history and what is propaganda or metaphor or theology? How do you kind of unpick all of that?
- [15:30]
A
Well, that's it. Yeah, it's really important because one area of truth, of course, is historical truth. You know, what really happened in the past, you know, and you were mentioning genres. You know, if you. Some genres are not interested in that. You know, if you write poetry, you know, poetry is not usually interested in what actually happened, and novels aren't interested in what actually happened. But there are genres that are interested in what really happened. But it's difficult when one of the genres is narrative. You know, in what sense is narrative history? And so I think when you come to the Gospels, for example, you get Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the four Gospels, they sound like biographies, right? You get to get the birth or the beginning. Yeah. Life, you get teachings, you, deeds, you get death. You know, it's like you get. In a biography. And today, when people read biographies, they simply assume they're the. The author's trying to tell you what actually happened, and there'll be disagreements about how to interpret things and disagreements about what did happen and that sort of. But the author's trying to. Basically, the idea is to show what actually happened. And so our natural inclination then is to read the Gospels like that, because that's what we're used to in biographies. And I certainly think the Gospels are biographies, but in the sense that they're telling the life of Jesus. And there were biographers in the ancient world. We have a number of them, Suetonius and Plutarch, and I was mentioning Diogenes, Laertes in previous episodes. And so there are people who write biographies, but the writing biography was very different then, in part because they simply didn't have the data reprieve most of the time. They didn't have libraries, they didn't have the research tools, what they said they wanted to get right. But they. They weren't like, obsessed about getting everything, like, down to the detail correct. In ancient biography, they're far more interested in showing what a person was like, than getting the details correct.
- [17:32]
B
So I was just going to ask, is that attempt to get the essence of someone's character for the ancient writers, more of the truth that they're trying to get at than what we might term truth in terms of historical accuracy?
- [17:46]
A
That's a great way of putting it because it's exactly what we were talking about earlier with this example. Because for an ancient person like Plutarch, who's writing a biography of Alexander the Great, for Plutarch, what is true is what is the portrayal of the character. For us, we're just interested in did he really cross the Euphrates there? You know, like, we want the, we want the accuracy, historical accuracy. And of course he wants to be accurate, but that's not really what he's after. He's after expressing the truth of who this person was. And if you think about the Gospels like that, it solves a lot of problems because you're not worried so much about, you know, did Jesus really walk on the water at this part of the Sea of Galilee? It's really about like, what is the author trying to say that this means? And what matters for the author is far more what it means than what actually happened. I'm not saying that they didn't care what happened. They did care what happened, but it wasn't the kind of obsession that we have in the modern world since the Enlightenment. It's really since the 18th century that this became major concern for people, which means they're reading the Bible with kinds of questions and assumptions that the authors themselves didn't have. So that we today, we do want to know what happened. And so there are methods that historians use to figure out, did this happen, did that happen the other thing with Alexander the Great and Jesus and everyone else. But when you're trying to deal with this genre and you're asking what really, you know, what is true? A story can be true. If it didn't happen, it's just true in a different sense.
- [19:19]
B
Do you think that modern Christians run into problems with this because they're reading often the Bible and specifically the Gospels for historical accuracy, so they not only get an historically inaccurate picture because as you've mentioned, that the Gospels aren't like a blow by blow detailed account of what actually happened and they miss the truth maybe that the authors were intending them to get, so they missed the, the main message.
- [19:49]
A
I think this happens all the time, and I think it especially happens with people who have a conservative theological bent who are really just interested in what happened. You Know, the idea is that God is a God who acts in his. This is their. Their idea that God is a God who acts in history. And so the history really matters. And so you have to get the history right. You know, I don't disagree with that. I absolutely think history matters. I mean, I think it really matters. It matters if there was a holocaust, you know, it matters what happened on January 6th. I mean, it matters what happens in elections. It matters what happens. But if that's the only thing that matters, it seems like you've got kind of a dry life. I mean, you mean, like facts and figures of what matter to you? What about, like, things that are actually meaningful to your being, like the meaning of life? I mean, it doesn't matter that if Jesus feeds the multitudes with five loaves and two fish, you know, does it really matter that that's exactly what happened so that you can make a little note of it in your book? Okay, yeah. On June 3rd in the year 29, Jesus in this, you know, you make your little notation, you come up with the history. Is that what the story's about? I mean, the story's about feeding people who are hungry and using whatever resources you have to do it. I mean, does that matter? And can't that be true in that sense without the detail being right? So again, you know, what does it mean to say something is true?
- [21:19]
B
You mentioned earlier that when we're looking at poetry, it's much easier because that's a genre that we have. We understand that poetry is not supposed to be like literal fact in the same way that we would expect historiographical writing. Example, my husband always uses his psalms, I think. I think David says, I wept all night and my tears were my food. Like, we don't think David actually ate his tears. It's just a metaphor to show how very sad he was. Right.
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A
Yeah.
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B
In the New Testament, do you have divisions of genre that align more closely with what a modern audience would expect, so that it's more of a natural read so you can read it and say, oh, this is poetry, and understand the truth of the poetry, as opposed to, say, reading the Gospels and looking for the historical facts?
- [22:08]
A
It's an important question, and scholars are very keen to do what you were suggesting earlier, which is look at the genre of a writing. You have to see the way genre works. And so, you know, everybody knows there are different genres today. A science fiction novel is not the same as an op ed, and neither of that is like a scientific treatise. And you have to read different things differently. And the way a genre works is that the author and the audience have this kind of unspoken contract that this is how this one's going to go. So that, you know, if you read an account of how a. How there's a biological agent that's escaped the laboratory and has polluted the entire water supply of New York City, you know, if you read it in a science fiction novel, you know pretty much how that's going. If you read it on the front page of the New York Times, you read it very differently.
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B
It's different.
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A
Yeah, because you've got the contract between the author and the reader is different in those two contexts, and the genre is the contract.
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B
And then you'd be very upset also if you read that in the New York Times and then found out it was fiction.
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A
Yes, you would. Oh, yeah, I was just making that one up. You know, like. Well, like the War of the World, right, Where people. It was like. It's like a radio program. People miss that part and, oh, my God, they took it literally. Well, it doesn't lead to good results sometimes. And so. But with the Bible, it's definitely that way, and certainly that way with the New Testament. You know, we talked last time about the Book of Revelation and how people read it as a prediction of what's going to happen in our future. And the problem is they don't understand the genre. The apocalypse genre is not a literalist prediction of what's going to happen. That's not how that genre works. So if you read it as a straightforward prediction of what's literally going to happen, you read it one way. And if you actually, actually understand the genre, you read it a different way. There are books in the New Testament, though, that appear to be meant to be read literally is what you know, so especially the epistles. Paul writes letters, he addresses problems in his churches. He writes the city of Corinth. And he says, I've heard this is happening. That's happening, that's happening, that's happening. None of it's good. You need to do this, you need to do that, you need to do this other thing. And you read it as a letter where he's not, like, making stuff up. It's not a narrative. But you also understand that when you're listening to a conversation like that, where you're reading the author, you're hearing one side of the conversation, and you have to reconstruct the other side. And so it's like you're talking on the phone, you're hearing somebody talking on the phone, you hear what they're saying, and you have to imagine what the other side's saying. So you treat letters like that because that's what you've got. You got the authority, but it's not somebody telling a poem or telling them. And so, yes, the genre ends up mattering a lot. And there are some genres that are meant to be straightforward and literal.
- [25:03]
B
I think no one would disagree. You said it earlier that a lot of Christians reading the Bible read it to find truth and instruction, an understanding of how the world is and should be and how God is working to bring about his kingdom. And clearly you find value in the Bible separate from any religious importance that others may place on it. What do you think is a good way to find the truths in the Bible that are useful and valuable to modern society, but that does not result in placing your own religious values on other people who do not hold those same values?
- [25:48]
A
Yeah, it's very interesting how people tend to read the Bible. A lot of people read the Bible as if it's a kind of a Ouija board, you know, which gives you your guide to the future. So you kind of, you know, you take your Bible and you open up, and it's like, you know, God's now, you know, you've got a question and you open up, you read a verse, and that's the answer, you know? And so, I mean, it's okay. People want to do that. It's okay. I mean, it's fine. You know, a lot of other people, though, like, people read the book of Revelation, don't read it. Read it like a Ouija board. These prophecy writers today, people who are predicting what's going to happen in 2026 or whatever, they, they. What they do is they take a verse from Nehemiah and a verse from Ezekiel and a verse from Matthew and a verse from Revelation and a book from Daniel, and they tie them all together and they treat it like a jigsaw puzzle. It's not a Ouija board, it's a jigsaw puzzle where, like, you got these puzzles hidden everywhere and the pieces and you got to put them together in the right place, and then you see what the. Then you see what the picture is. And so the thing. You don't read books either way. Right. That's not how you read a book. If you're going to read a novel, you don't read it like how most
- [26:55]
B
of us do it.
- [26:56]
A
Yeah. So what scholars try to do is to try and help people understand there are better ways of reading books than others. And with the Bible, it's a little bit tricky because people who don't use either of those two methods. Typically, if you go to a Bible study, like you're just in a church and you aren't scholars or anything, you just go into a Bible study and, and you're studying like the book of Galatians. What you do is, you know, somebody will read a verse or two and they'll talk about what it means to them, how it affects their lives. And usually it's got nothing to do with the book of Galatians. And so what scholars tried to do is to mediate in these various ways of reading. And what scholars have done for several hundred years now is insisted that it's important to know what an author meant. And to do that, you've got to understand something about the historical context, the writing in, what the situation is, what kind of terminology is being used, what's actually being said. How do you interpret this in a way you would interpret something from the newspaper, when you actually try and figure out what the sentence means, and only then do you try to figure out what it means for your life. You're not just kind of picking up a verse and just going off on some kind of scattered thing, you know, about. Oh, yeah, for me. So what's it going to do with what he says here? You know. No, it's actually engaging in a serious study to try and understand what this may have meant in order to help explain how it can have meaning today. So there's, there's both the process of interpreting the text in its historical context, trying to figure out what the olive probably meant. And another thing seems like, how does this apply to me? Those aren't the same thing, but they should be connected somehow. A lot of people just completely have a disconnect. Other people are just all interested in the literal meaning and differences between then and now be damned. And, you know, I don't think either way is right. You've got to figure out what it meant. And then you try and figure out, does that meaning have any relevance?
- [28:53]
B
For me, this is a completely off the wall question that I literally just thought of. So read a response, which is what you were saying about the, the Bible study group reading a passage and saying this. This is the value it has for me. Obviously divorced from the context the book was written in, the author's original intent. Do you not think reader response can be, in its own way, a kind of truth in the Bible?
- [29:18]
A
I think people certainly find truth that way. I Think with the Bible, people do it that way because they understand it to be God's word that's speaking to them today. And so they treat it differently from other books because they don't read David Copperfield that way, where they'll just read a line and say what it means to them. And so it's because it's divinely inspired that they treat it that way. And so I understand that. And it does provide comfort and solace to people. It also leads to some very bad things because their interpretations, then they come up with something in their head and they put it on the Bible. And Bible's not saying that at all. And so I think that's a problem. But the other issue for me is that if I were a Christian who believed that God inspired the books of The Bible, the 66 books of the English Bible, if I thought that those were inspired, I would believe that God had inspired books. He didn't inspire Ouija boards or jigsaw puzzles or he inspired a book. And presumably if God inspired a book, he wants you to read it like a book. And if you read any book from the ancient world, of course you want to know when the author was living and what his context was and why, what he's addressing. And that's how you read books. And so God inspired books. I just think that people should read them as books. And in this case it's hard because, you know, we aren't born knowing much about the first century or anything. But I think to understand the book you really have to, you have to learn that kind of material.
- [30:45]
B
Thank you. I have to say I agree entirely. I am a massive fan of understanding historical and cultural context for really any piece of, of ancient literature. I think understanding it for the Bible, given the place the Bible holds in our civilization, is of paramount importance. We are going to take a brief break and we will be back with news from Barth and some more of your excellent audience questions.
- [31:08]
A
If you're enjoying the Miss Quoting Jesus podcast, you'd probably like my online courses as well. I've produced a number so far with multi lecture courses on the New Testament Gospels and the books of the Pentateuch, standalone lectures on the Christmas story and the earliest Christian views of Jesus, and a six hour debate on whether Jesus was actually raised from the dead. If you're interested, check them out@Barterman.com. you'll receive a discount on your purchase simply by entering the code MJ podcast. Are you interested in learning about important academic topics but don't want to go Back to school. You need to check out Wondrium, the service that streams university level courses taught by top scholars who are also skilled communicators. I've done nine courses for them and can tell you for high level adult learning, there's really no other game in town. For a free trial, go to barterman.com wondrium if you decide to subscribe to Wondrium, this podcast will receive a referral fee, but that'll have no effect on the cost of your subscription and you'll be supporting our show.
- [32:29]
B
Now, everyone, we're going to have Bart's Weekly Updates.
- [32:35]
A
This is Bart's Weekly Update where we get to catch up on all the latest about Dr. Ehrman's book releases, speaking engagements, ermenblog.org happenings and online course launches.
- [32:48]
B
Bart, what is going on for you this week?
- [32:50]
A
As we said at the beginning, I've got a trip to England planned and
- [32:55]
B
I'm very jealous of that, by the way. Very.
- [32:57]
A
Well, yeah, I know. Well, you know, I'm from Kansas, so it's like, you know, more interesting going to go to London in some ways. But the thing about Christmas trip in England is English people don't have this problem that Americans have, which is Americans have turkey at Thanksgiving. When I was growing up, you also wanted a turkey at Christmas. And as you were saying earlier, you know, like, you don't even like it once a year. I actually like turkey a lot. But the problem is in England, well, I guess the tradition was a goose maybe, I don't know. But it was. But, but, you know, turkeys. And so for me, it's really, it's a different meal in some ways. Like, Americans are not big on roasted parsnips, even though they ought to be.
- [33:35]
B
Roasted parsnips are delicious.
- [33:36]
A
Oh, they're fantastic. No, completely underused. Completely underused. But also things like bread pudding, like I never knew what bread pudding was or. And so there are lots of differences, including, by the way, crackers. If you tell an American that you're having crackers for Christmas, what saltines. That's your Christmas. But crackers are like these explosive like, and they've got gifts and yeah, they pop and then with little gifts inside. And so, so that's all good. But what I was thinking is this turkey, like, you know, you're gonna have another big turkey. I just had one. The problem is you go with the turkey, it's such a big, you know, you eat it for about two weeks after you're done eating. And now you. Yeah, yeah, so it's a lot of turkey. Yeah, exactly.
- [34:21]
B
We have now some time for listeners questions, so thank you to everyone who sent those in.
- [34:30]
A
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
- [34:46]
B
so we have a good selection of questions on a variety of topics today. Again, if you want to ask Bart a question, you can go to bart erman.com Ask Bart we get a lot of questions in, so if we don't get to yours, I'm very sorry. We'll do our best to get through as many as we can. So, first question. If a scribe changes biblical text because they have a different theological opinion, is that change divinely inspired? And if it is, does that mean that the previous scribe who copied that passage wasn't divinely inspired, or did God just change their mind?
- [35:19]
A
Okay, well, that's a great question, and it's one that technically I can't answer because I don't know what God inspires and what God doesn't inspire. But I can say that this is a phenomenon that happens a good deal. I talk about it a bit in my book Misquoting Jesus, where scribes have changed the text because they think it should say something else or thought it really means something else. And so the question is, well, is the change inspired or not? And early Christians had different opinions about this. There was one church father named Origen in the early third century who thought that not just the originals were inspired, but also the textual changes made by scribes were inspired by God. So that got around the problem of, you know, what? If we don't know the original, we don't have the inspired word anymore. And you say, well, actually we have these change texts, but those are also inspired. What's actually inspired or not? Yeah, that's a theological question that I'm not qualified to answer.
- [36:15]
B
When did Christians begin to believe that the original books of the New Testament were inerrant? Or at least in inspired, that is, it's difficult to imagine that a body of Paul or the author of Mark considered their writings inspired. When asked to prove that, I definitely
- [36:30]
A
don't think the authors of the Gospels thought that they were writing inspired scripture. When Matthew wrote his Book of Matthew, he didn't think, I'm writing the Bible now. He was writing an account of Jesus life. Of course he thought he was right. And Paul, Paul is somewhat a little different because he really does seem to think that he's really inspired by the spirit of God for everything he thinks. And so maybe he did think his writings, but he didn't think they were inspired in the way that people today do. The books of the Bible started being considered to be on a level with those of the Old Testament. So not written by God, but inspired by God. Probably early in the second century or maybe a little bit earlier, some of the books. And eventually this became the view that they were inspired, but that didn't mean that they were inerrant in every detail, the way that many modern fundamentalists would say, or even strong evangelical Christians. That view of inerrancy, that there's no mistake of any kind, scientific, geographic, you know, philosophical, religious, any. No different, nothing, no mistake of any kind. That didn't come about until the end of the 19th century. That became a view that was developed in England principally, but then came over to America. That was in response to the rise of the sciences. Darwin, for example, the geologists, for example, dating the Earth and evolution. They wanted and says, no, the Bible is literally right on everything. And that's when you started getting inerrant, which, strangely enough, many people today think is Christianity, that if you don't believe the Bible's inerrant, you can't be a Christian. Yeah, well, that's completely modern.
- [38:06]
B
I've certainly been told I'm not a Christian because I don't believe in inerrancy. So I didn't realize it was such a late idea, though.
- [38:12]
A
It's a late idea. People tell me I'm not a Christian for other reasons, but that's certainly one of them.
- [38:19]
B
So a questioner has put in a quote of Galatians, There is no longer Jew nor Greek. There is no longer slave or free. There is no or male or female, for all of you are one in Jesus Christ. Does Paul think men and women are equal when he says these verses, or is he addressing another?
- [38:35]
A
This is a topic we easily could have dealt with in our previous episode on women in early Christianity. And it's because it's a very important verse. We'll spend more episodes on that, on that issue. This is a very important, important verse in the book of Galatians, Paul says, in Christ, you know, there's not slavery for you, male or female, and so are they equal? And the answer is complicated. This is why we probably could spend an entire episode on this issue, because Paul does think that men and women are on equal standing within the Christian faith and that men are not superior to women as Christians. But at the same time, Paul does think that in society as we're living in it now, wives especially are to be subservient to their husbands, and women are to be fulfill their roles, and men are to fulfill their roles. He didn't go all the way with what we would think of as equality between the sexes in the current social order, even though spiritually he thought that they were equal. For many people, that suggested, you know, he really wasn't very advanced as a modern feminist, and that I think I was probably right. But other people point out that the equality in Christ is really something for somebody to be saying. The context, it is more liberating. So the answer is not. It's an ambivalent answer because it's a. It's an ambivalent issue with Paul because he thought both that men and women were equal, but not. They weren't equal yet.
- [40:02]
B
Thank you. And we have one more question. First Corinthians 15:29 talks about baptizing the dead. What was that all about? Did they baptize on behalf of dead people?
- [40:13]
A
Paul's trying to convince people in Corinth that there's going to be a future physical resurrection of the body. Bodies are going to be raised from the dead. And people completely misread First Corinthians 15. People think that Paul is talking about there's going to be a future spiritual resurrection that's not a physical resurrection. That's just the opposite of what he's arguing. He's arguing there's going to be a future physical resurrection of bodies because Jesus was raised physically in the body. In that context, he uses an argument that is very difficult to understand because he says the Corinthians, if it's not going to happen, why are you baptizing for the dead? What's it mean? And There are roughly 29,000 interpretations of this verse in the Mormon Church. They do baptize for the dead so that you're getting baptized in the place of someone else who's died already so that they can have been baptized. And so it may be something like that. Well, we really don't know because Paul doesn't say this is some kind of practice. And I don't know whether he initiated it or not. Is it being baptized for relatives who died before they were Christian so that they too can have salvation? Is it being baptized for people who had committed to Christ but hadn't been baptized yet, like an infant, you know, so that they can have the experience of baptism? Is it being baptized for those who are Dead in spirit. But I mean, you know, what does it mean? We don't know. We don't know what it means.
- [41:44]
B
Before we finish out for the week, would you mind just giving your final thoughts on what we've been talking about?
- [41:50]
A
Yeah. So, you know, it's a very important question about what it means to say the Bible is true. Over the last probably 20 years, I have had people tell me that, you know, when they find out, for example, we don't have the original manuscripts of the New Testament, but we have changes in the manuscripts. And so people say, okay, so the Gospels got changed. So they're not true. For me, no, that's not right. Knowing what an author wrote isn't the same thing as saying that what he wrote is true. You might not have the original words, but his words might have been true. You might not have his original words and the words you now have are true. It's a different question. Truth works on different levels. Is it true we have what Matthew really wrote? That's one question. Is it true that Matthew actually wrote it? That's another question. Is it true that the historical events that he narrates actually happened? That's another question. Is it true that the teachings of Jesus in fact are what God wants you to learn? That's another question. There's all these levels of truth and we shouldn't collapse them and think that if you answer one of those questions, you've answered all of them. Truth works on many different levels and it's important for all of us, not just with the Bible, but just generally to think, you know, when you're asking if something is true. What do you mean by that and why is it important to you?
- [43:05]
B
Thank you so much, Bart. AUDIENCE thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss any future episodes. Remember also that you can use the Code MJ podcast for a discount on all of bart's courses@www.bartehrman.com. misquoting Jesus will be back next week. Bart, what are we talking about?
- [43:26]
A
We're going on to something different. We're going to talk about the King James Bible. Where did that come from and what is it? And is it valuable? Is it valid? Is it? Why do people so devoted to it? And what can we say about the King James Bible? That'll be next time.
- [43:40]
B
Beautiful. Thank you so much. And thank you, audience 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.