← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
Loading summary
Transcript76 lines
- [00:01]
Shopify Advertiser
When it's time to scale your business, it's time for Shopify. Get everything you need to grow the way you want, like all the way. Stack more sales with the best converting checkout on the planet. Track your cha chings from every channel right in one spot. And turn real time reporting into big time opportunities. Take your business to a whole new level. Switch to Shopify. Start your free trial today.
- [00:28]
Megan Lewis
Foreign.
- [00:33]
Podcast Announcer
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.
- [00:54]
Megan Lewis
Hello everyone and welcome back to Misquoting Jesus. Today we are going to be talking about quite a personal topic. Meaning in a world without God. People find meaning in the world in a myriad of different ways. But for those who have been raised in particular faith traditions, it can be hard to understand how people outside of those traditions find meaning that is not necessarily rooted in the existence of a God. As someone who converted from mainstream Protestantism to evangelicalism and then deconversed entirely, Barth has found meaning and purpose both with and without God. So today we're going to take a more personal direction and ask him how he's done it. Before we get into the deeply personal topic. Bart, how are you this week?
- [01:35]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, good. Okay. The weekly personal topic. All right, as I was saying last week, this is right when classes are ending. So today's the last day of class. So the kind of personal problem I have with this is, well, one problem is I'm 68 years old and I still live by according to semesters that probably should have ended a long time ago, but my life is still organized around semesters. So the semester ends now and so we get done with grading everything kind of mid December and then all of a sudden every year same thing happens. I realize, whoa, I got a lot of Christmas presents to buy. How am I going to do that? As I said before, I love Christmas myself. I enjoy Christmas and most things about it I hate. I really hate the commercialism. I just hate, I hate all that. I think it's completely distracting. And I mean I get it for economic reasons and I understand the importance of it, but I don't like it. But then, you know, the burden of buying presence. It's like, okay, what am I? And I'm not good at it. That's the problem. You know, some people just have really a good knack of Knowing what would be good for someone else and I'm terrible. And whenever I like pick something I think would be nice and creative, it turns out to be either a complete dud or something they have 12 of already. It's that kind of thing. How about you? How are you? As we're moving into the season, I'm good.
- [02:51]
Megan Lewis
I likewise. I'm not overly keen on the commercialization of Christmas and having many small children, it's quite difficult. We're trying to navigate the waters of they get really excited about toys and it makes them so happy. And as a parent, you would like to make your children happy, but also they need to learn to find value elsewhere without material possession. So that's. We're working on that. I wouldn't say it's going terribly well, but we're trying. I do a lot of like homemade gifting. I sew and I build things and so I try and when I can. It's difficult with so many people. Both the children and I come from quite a large family as well. Back in the uk, I try and make things. Not make something for everyone every Christmas, but try and rotate so everyone gets something made for them at some point in like a three year cycle.
- [03:45]
Bart Ehrman
What kinds of things do you make?
- [03:47]
Megan Lewis
So for all of the babies, I do quilts. Everyone gets a baby quilt. Picture frames and clothes I made. Oliver is five and I made him a pair of cargo pants from Pokemon print fabric that he absolutely loves and I think wear every single day. If I didn't remove them from him so I could wash them.
- [04:12]
Bart Ehrman
Wow. Okay. I thought you were busy Assyriologist. You're off. You're off. Fashion designing and things. Wow. Well done.
- [04:20]
Megan Lewis
The sewing. The sewing happens when I need to rest my brain.
- [04:24]
Bart Ehrman
Okay, well that's good. Yeah, that's good. It's better than TikTok.
- [04:28]
Megan Lewis
True. Yes. I. I deleted TikTok from my phone because I have ADHD and having that much very fast, very accessible. Dopamine is not. Not good for my. My well being. So.
- [04:41]
Bart Ehrman
Right. Got it.
- [04:42]
Megan Lewis
Okay. We should dive into meaning and meaning without God specifically. Which is a nice light topic for a Tuesday morning. I'm sure everyone will. Will find this easy listening. But if we start with the ancient world, how did people derive meaning from life? Was it similar to modern Christian views in that the purpose of life is to do what God wants you to do, or did it work differently or did people just not worry about it?
- [05:10]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah. So I would say in general, in the ancient world, people found happiness and meaning in Similar things to what people do now. You know, they. They enjoyed family and they enjoyed friends. They liked having good things if they could have them. They enjoyed good food and good drink and. And so they, you know, they enjoyed many of the things we enjoy today. The problems we have today with poverty were exacerbated much, much worse in most parts of the ancient world. What we little you know, because what we know is based on written sources which are written by elites who had a different life from most people. But even judging from those, it looks like people had those kinds of things. I would say that religion functioned differently in terms of meaning and purpose in the ancient world than it does for most Christians today in our world. In part because most people in the ancient world did not follow religions for the sake of the afterlife. Many didn't believe in an afterlife. And so they didn't have the kind of deferred gratification that Christian. Many Christians have today, where they know life is awful now, but it's going to be good later, and that provides comfort for them. There wasn't that very much in the ancient world. The relationship with the gods was not the kind of relationship that many Christians feel with their religion, where they have this kind of deep kind of emotional connection with their worship. In antiquity, most people, so far as we can tell, everybody worshiped the gods. It was not because there was some kind of deep personal relationship in most cases. It was more that the gods were powerful beings who could provide things that people needed to survive. They wanted you to pray to them and to make offerings to them, and in exchange for that, they would provide you with what you needed. They really didn't provide guidance and meaning in life so much. They didn't provide guidance for ethics or for how to live. There weren't scriptures that people could turn to for solace and comfort. And so religion functioned differently. But I would say that in terms of kind of personal meaning and like what you can do to make life as enjoyable as possible, in most cases, I'd say it was fairly similar.
- [07:22]
Megan Lewis
So you mentioned that the writings we do have are generally from the elites who were the writers who were discussing these kinds of meaning and purpose questions for the Greek and Roman worlds.
- [07:32]
Bart Ehrman
It seems weird to most people today that these kinds of discussions about, like, meaning, purpose, why we're here, what we should be doing, how we should behave, those things were not religious topics. Those were topics that were dealt with principally by people interested in philosophy. Philosophy has kind of a bad reputation today as being this kind of nerdy, erudite Thing that like is irrelevant to anything, but it shouldn't be that way, even though it is for many people, because philosophy is really the word. Philosophy means the love of wisdom. And the idea in the ancient world was that wisdom can show you how to have a meaningful and purposeful life is in the writings of philosophers. And the philosophical ideas are the ones that filter down among general people. The religions didn't give ethical instruction, for example, but philosophers would say tell you what you need to do in order to have a happy and fulfilled life. And so this is very much one of the major foci of ancient philosophers was ethics and how to live the goal for all of the philosophical school, say at the time of Christianity, you have a number of different philosophical schools in Greek and Roman thinking, just like today you have different kinds of Christian denominations. You had different philosophical schools. You had the Stoics and you had the Epicureans and you had, you know, you had the Platonists and you had that, you had these various groups. But they all agreed pretty much that the goal of life is to be happy. Not in the kind of shallow sense, oh, I'm so happy today, you know, not like that. It's more like a kind of a contentment of sense of well being, knowing that you were doing well. And philosophical schools tried to teach people how they could have that sense of eudaimonia, of a sense of real kind of self contentment in a good way, not in an arrogant way.
- [09:24]
Megan Lewis
Do we see these views being passed down to Christians and coming up in scripture at all?
- [09:29]
Bart Ehrman
Well, I'd say yes and no, because the Christians as well were seeking the best thing for themselves and for their communities and for their loved ones. And so to that extent, yes, one thing that made Christianity different from early on was that Christians located ultimate happiness. The source was the Christian God. And the kind of time and place was after death in heaven. And that in a sense, Christians taught that suffering in this world is okay. In fact it's fine, maybe even good, because it will earn you a better afterlife. And so the focus shifts fairly quickly to rewards in the afterlife for real ultimate happiness. And life in this world is happy or content or purposeful when it gets you there. It's very much deferred from this life to the afterlife in Christian circles and not very often at all in other circles, pagan or Jewish. Whether you follow the traditional Roman and Greek religions or if you follow Judaism, the life after death is not really the point.
- [10:41]
Megan Lewis
So we've spoken about purpose of life and the meaning of life. What about morals and ethics in the ancient world? Was this generally the purview also of philosophy? Are they derived at all from religious beliefs? And how does it work for early Christianity?
- [10:57]
Bart Ehrman
This is something that a lot of people misunderstand today because people think that pagans were, you know, pagans. They were like, what do we use the term pagan as being kind of the wild guy living next door, sacrificing
- [11:09]
Megan Lewis
children, all that kind of stuff.
- [11:10]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, exactly. And so the word pagan simply means somebody who follows any of the polytheistic religions of antiquity. In historical context, that's what you mean. And people tend to think that pagans didn't have very good morals and they were just, you know, kind of drunken reprobates the whole time, as much as they could be. And it's just not true. And when I, you know, when I give lectures on the difference between Christianity and the Roman and Greek religions, one thing I stress is that Greek and Roman religions did not have a strong ethical component. They didn't. But then people say, okay, so they were unethical and no, that's not true. People were just as ethical then or as unethical then as people are today. But it didn't come from the religion. The religion was about how to worship the gods, how to do things to satisfy the gods so the gods would provide help. And the gods weren't overly concerned with who you're sleeping with. They weren't concerned about whether you cheated on your income tax or whatever. They weren't like, they weren't concerned about things like that. They were concerned about being worshiped. But people were concerned about things like that. And they were concerned about things like that because they wanted to live good lives. Not because they wanted to be goody goody to earn the afterlife, but because they thought that by living good lives they would have a good life. And this was taught not in religious circles, but by philosophers. How is it that you can live a life that is satisfying to you, that is happy for you? Is it better for you to live a life that is self indulgent? Should you focus on yourself so that all you really care about is your personal pleasure, so that you constantly are getting drunk, so that you are just wildly having sex with everybody, so that you are, you know, rich and famous and everybody admires you? Is that the goal? Is that what's going to make you happy? Or are there other things? And philosophers almost always said, actually it's other things. And so people subscribe to that. You know, it's not that people were Sitting around reading Plato, you know, or Epicurus or Zeno or things. They weren't reading these things. But this, this kind of thought kind of trickled down into the population. Just as today, very few Christians read learned treatises on the Trinity, but they believe in the Trinity. Well, people then would behave in ways that these philosophical schools would urge. And it was a way of finding meaning and purpose in life.
- [13:30]
Megan Lewis
So I think we've, we've adequately covered the kind of historical background of what we're talking about. So I wanted to ask some personal questions. When you were raised a Christian, how did you think about the meaning of your life?
- [13:45]
Bart Ehrman
I think like most people when I was growing up, I didn't really think about thinking about the meaning of life. I mean, basically I was just, you know, as a kid in the Midwest who wanted, you know, I liked having friends and I liked doing fun things. In my case, you know, I like playing sports and I like reading books and I like having friends and you know, and so it was kind of general stuff and I didn't sit around, think about the meaning of life very much at all. Into, into high school, I would say, and in my case, I would say I started getting particularly serious about the meaning of life and what, what the point was when I became a born again Christian as I guess a 15 year old. And then I started thinking seriously about life. I had, I had been a religious kid growing up. I mean, I think during the week you wouldn't know it, but on Sundays you would know it. I went to church and I was an acolyte in my episod. And I said my prayers, I confessed my sins and I sang the hymns and I found all that meaningful. But it didn't have a huge effect on my life otherwise until I think I had this born again experience at 15.
- [14:50]
Megan Lewis
So what changed when you had your born again experience? How did that alter the way that you thought about the world?
- [14:57]
Bart Ehrman
It involved a lot of things. For one thing, I felt assured of eternal life and I felt grateful for that and made me want other people to have the same kind of experience. And so it made me think about what people were really striving for and what they should be striving for and what the point of existence is now if there's a very serious afterlife later that involves both heaven and hell. And so what's the point of living now? You know, is this a warm up? Is it a test? Is it, you know, might be all that. And so I started thinking about bigger questions and started having deeper Questions about, you know, why are we here? The thing was, for me, these weren't questions. I sort of got the answers before I had the questions. I think a lot of that happens to a lot of people. And so I had the answers. You know, God created us and we sinned against God, and we are alienated from God. And the secret to having a peaceful and satisfied and rewarding life is to return to God with your whole heart and to live for him. And that will guarantee a better life now and a better life in the afterlife. And so. And the other thing was that all of that I took to be not just kind of a, what do you say, not a key to heaven. It was actually, I now understood the truth. And having the truth was very important because if you didn't have the truth, you not only were living in falsehood, but it would have eternal consequences.
- [16:30]
Megan Lewis
So did your newfound, not newfound, religious faith, but did your shift in religious faith give your life a different purpose and direction? And did your conversion substantially change your behavior as well as your personal outlook?
- [16:44]
Bart Ehrman
I'd say off the bat, it changed my behavior in some ways. I started attending a Youth for Christ group, and I did that more kind of fervently got involved in prayer meetings and Bible studies and became more kind of personally religious. But in terms of my social life, I don't think it changed that much. Through high school, I still went out with my friends and drank a lot of beer and hung out and did things guys did. And then Sunday morning went for bent. And so it didn't change like how I approached school or learning or anything. It did lead me to decide, instead of going to Kansas University and being on the debate team, I decided to go to Moody Bible Institute and to get serious about my faith. And that absolutely changed my life.
- [17:31]
Megan Lewis
Did you worry that you'd lose this kind of purpose and direction when you. Or if you moved away from the faith?
- [17:39]
Bart Ehrman
Early on in those college years, I didn't have any idea at all I would ever leave the faith. I mean, I was very, very gung ho and increasingly so and had no interest in leaving the faith at all. I went to. After Moody, I went to Wheaton, where I did an undergraduate degree in focused on the humanities. But so I did majored in English, but I did, you know, philosophy and history and things. And that kind of widened my horizon. But it. I took it at the time to be kind of making me a more informed Christian, more aware of kind of the world and the issues in life. But then I went, went off to graduate school with that kind of broader base. I, you know, as I studied the Bible, I started realizing that my views were problematic in some ways. I started changing my theological views, which took me into a phase of real doubt and struggle and emotional trauma because I was afraid that if I changed, what I believed may have eternal consequences and that God would be angry and I would be punished. It wasn't until after I had my PhD that I started seriously doubting my faith. When I started doubting my faith, it did. Did create emotional trauma because I was afraid both that might have eternal consequences and that it would rob me of any meaning and purpose. What would be the point of living if there's no afterlife? What could possibly provide meaning? And if I didn't have any kind of ethical guide like my Christian faith, if the Bible wasn't a reliable guide and the Christian tradition wasn't a reliable guide, why would I have even a moral compass? I mean, would it just be like, wild parties every night? And part of that sounded okay, but part of it was like, it just seemed so empty to me. And so what would you say? What would be guiding my life? What would keep me from just being just kind of a wild person?
- [19:30]
Megan Lewis
So you've been deconverted for a few years now. So how is that without religious belief? Do you feel like you've lost that purpose? Or did you lose it and then find it by different means?
- [19:43]
Bart Ehrman
Well, I did have a midlife crisis. It wasn't related to my faith, but I did get a divorce and bought a red convertible, so I was 40, so whatever. But no, it wasn't really. It wasn't related to my faith journey. As I said, I was fearful of losing moral compass and having no purpose in life. I thought there'd be just anarchy and I'd be a nihilist. Like, I would just, like, you know, there'd be no purpose and meaning. And it turned out I left the faith. I don't really have a precise date. I have kind of a precise date when I became born again. I don't remember the date, but I remember the moment. And I don't have a moment when I decided that I no longer believed in God. But I did come to that moment. And it was probably, you know, it was over 30 years ago. I guess at first I didn't know kind of where it was going to take me. But right off the bat, even though I didn't know where I was going, I didn't feel, like, different in terms of, like, my ethical values, my moral values. Remained the same. Of course I was interested in my own well being, but I continued to be interested in the well being of other people and interested in helping people and dealing with problems in people's lives, both those I knew and those I didn't know. And so that part actually didn't change for me.
- [21:08]
Megan Lewis
Has it got easier the further you've moved from that initial deconstruction?
- [21:13]
Bart Ehrman
There are a lot of problems with deconverting. One problem was like still fearing that there'd be an afterlife consequence for it, which I over some years got over. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that just didn't make any sense, that I was doing my best to pursue the truth and that a good and gracious God then would torment me for trillions of years for getting it wrong. I just, yeah, okay, that's not going to happen. I don't think so. The idea of finding meaning and purpose of life is something I really threw myself into because I didn't, I wasn't going to find meaning and purpose in my faith because I didn't have faith now. But what I found is that the things that I cherished while a person of faith, I continued to cherish. And I started cherishing them even more because they weren't just kind of a part of my life, they were my life. So family and having close family ties and loving and caring family friends. I became far more interested in having deep friendships after I left the faith. When before that I was kind of busy being in the church and stuff, but didn't have, I had a lot of acquaintances, I didn't have a lot of good friends and being concerned about social issues, I got more and more concerned about social issues. I was concerned about social issues for religious reasons because the Bible said you need to be concerned about these things. But I realized that I was actually personally concerned about the welfare of others and what social and political policies would best go that way. And I started finding meaning in things outside of the Bible. Bible in religion, I mean, meaning in literature, meaning in somewhat in philosophy. I'm not philosophically oriented, but I got interested, you know, and how to understand the world better without God. And that's a philosophical question. Just understanding humanity better, understanding sciences better, understanding the world better. For me, it's become a very rich and fulfilling thing that people have trouble believing this when I tell them we Christians have trouble believing this. But I actually feel like I've got a far more fulfilled and meaningful life now than I had then.
- [23:17]
Megan Lewis
So if we, if we turn Then to the question of, of ethics, which we've mentioned already, without a God or a Bible or some kind of scripture to tell you what's right or wrong, how you should treat others, specifically in order to avoid hell, how do you decide what is ethical? And if there isn't this consequence of eternal torment, why do you even worry about the morality of your actions?
- [23:44]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, I'll say on one level that thinking of the Bible as the guide obviously doesn't work very well. People inside the faith don't see that. But outside the faith, you look at the Bible and it says if your children disobey you, you're just supposed to stone them to death. So that's not a very useful guide. And it's not just the Old Testament, the New Testament too. So I don't have that kind of problem now. And so one issue is, why is it that I feel ethical? Why do I care that there are these horrible events happening in the Middle east, for example? Or why do I care about foreign wars among people I don't know anything about? Or why do I care about people starving on the streets of America or people in my community who are illiterate and can't get a job and can't find housing? Why would I care? They're not, you know, so I've had to wrestle with that, and I have become completely convinced by the findings of the scientific community, especially respect to evolutionary psychology. I think we have evolved as a species to care for one another because that's how our species has survived. And the reason we have the DNA we have is because our remote ancestors were the ones who cared for each other and they passed on their DNA. And so it's part of being human to care for others. And within evolutionary psychology, of course, you care for those who have, who share most of your genes. And so that's why you care a lot more for your children than you do for some stranger on the street. But you, still, stranger on the street, still share some of your DNA. So I think that there are explanations for why I feel the way I do it. And I don't think it makes any sense to say, well, you shouldn't feel that way because, you know, you don't have any authority over you to tell you you have to behave well, you know, telling me how I ought to feel doesn't really work too well, you know, or that I have to have it. I have to have it this way, or it doesn't make sense. I mean, I'm sorry, it does make sense, and I Feel actually like it makes better sense to me now than it ever did before.
- [25:46]
Megan Lewis
So, final question, and I think I know the answer to this, but it's going to be asked anyway. Is believing God do you think necessary for life to be fulfilling and ethical?
- [25:58]
Bart Ehrman
No. I mean, I think absolutely not. And you know, Christians who say, you know, without belief in God, you know, have no reason to be ethical and can't find any meaning in life, they're just being ignorant. I mean, look around the world, most of the world is not Christian. And are you saying like the rest of the world is unethical and that people in other cultures who don't have the Christian God are just like self centered, mean spirited, like don't care about anybody, they don't love their families, they don't love their friends, they don't love life. Of course it's not true. And so just empirically it's not true in my case, as I was saying in a way that I did not expect, it's made life a lot more meaningful. And for me it's a lot more meaningful precisely because I don't believe that there's an afterlife. So I don't see this as a warm up, you know, I don't see it as a practice. I don't see it as a dress rehearsal. This is it in my judgment. And you know, people don't have to agree with that or anything. But I will say that for me that means that I want to life more because I know this is it in myself and that I want to cherish people because I'm not going to have them forever. I want to cherish my experiences because they're not going to be around. I think the fact that there's no afterlife for me is very, very sad. But it doesn't rob my life of meaning. I wish I'd be around longer, but this morning I was out taking a walk. It was gorgeous outside. Sunshine with gorgeous trees silhouetted against the sky. And I just, you know, was just relishing this and just think this is just a wonderful, wonderful existence I have. And it provides a sense of fulfillment. And in terms of meaning and purpose, I want to continue to find satisfaction in life. And I have a purpose of trying to help other people do the same thing. And my meaning and purpose in life comes from understanding the world and myself and the people in the world and helping other people to have good and happy lives as well. And so I feel extremely lucky. But also, I mean, it's weird, I feel thankful. I mean, I don't have anybody to thank. But I am thankful and grateful for the life I have. And so for me, having God is not really a necessary part of the equation.
- [28:18]
Megan Lewis
Well, Bart, thank you so much for sharing so much of your life and your personal experiences. We are going to take a quick ad break and we'll be back with Bart's Weekly Update.
- [28:28]
Podcast Announcer
Most people know many of the stories of Genesis, the Creation, Adam and Eve, Noah and the Flood, the stories about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. But do you know what scholars say about those accounts? What archaeology, science and history can reveal about them, what their significance could be, even if they aren't literally true? Enter Bible scholar Bart Ehrman's captivating online course in the history, legend and Myth in Genesis. In six enlightening lessons, you'll journey through questions like did Genesis borrow its stories from other cultures? Are these accounts historical or legendary? And who were the real authors behind the Pentateuch? Whether you approach Genesis as a believer, a skeptic, or simply a seeker of knowledge, this course will challenge your understanding understanding of these ancient narratives. It's a unique opportunity to navigate the complexities of the Bible's most famous book. Don't miss out on this intellectual adventure. Visit barterman.com Genesis to learn more or sign up today and be sure to use discount code mjpodcast for a special discount.
- [29:42]
Bart Ehrman (Weekly Update Host)
This is Bart's Weekly Update, where we get to catch up on all the latest about Dr. Ehrman's book releases, speaking engagements, ehrmanblog.org happenings, and online course launches.
- [29:57]
Megan Lewis
Okay, so I'm actually not going to ask Bart for a weekly update because I wanted to ask about the blog that you run. It's been going for a while now. I don't know how long, but it's several years, I think. Do you struggle to find topics after so long that you want to write about and that you think are interesting?
- [30:15]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah. So this is a weekly update because it's like every week since 2012. April 2012. And so it's like, oh my God,
- [30:22]
Megan Lewis
more than a few years. We're going on for a decade.
- [30:24]
Bart Ehrman
This is what we're past the decade we're up to. We're going up to number 12 here pretty soon. Year number 12 is like, oh my God, every week. You know, when I started this thing, I, I started it for two reasons. One reason very similar to why we're doing this podcast, because I really believe in the importance of disseminating expert knowledge to a population that's interested in it, that doesn't have the time you to spend, you know, every day reading books in a library or whatever you like, the way I do to spread knowledge about early Christianity, the New Testament, the historical Jesus, Paul, those kinds of issues. And so I started this blog in 2012 in order to spread information that scholars know about the Bible and early Christianity to outsiders who'd be interested. But the second function of the blog, unlike the podcast here, was to raise money for charity. And so I charge started off, and I still do charge a membership fee. If people can't afford it, I just give them a membership. So we raise significant money. We raised last year, we raised over $500,000 that we gave directly to charity. So I don't get a penny of this stuff. So do I run out of things to say. So when I started the blog 12 years ago, I thought, man, this is going to last for like a year. Then what else am I going to talk about? It just kept coming and coming. I mean, these fields are inexhaustible. You know, you could write for hundreds of years and still deal with these kinds of topics. And so the problem I've developed, it's not a problem, it's kind of a good thing, is that in the early years in the blog, I talked about a lot of stuff that was really interesting and important. Every day, five or six days a week, I'd write a blog post of 12 to 1400 words every day, every week. And I've never missed a week. And I thought I'd run out of things to say things early on. I wrote about all sorts of interesting things that people on the blog now didn't read because it was 10 years ago. If they did read it, they don't remember that I don't even remember writing the thing. So it's kind of a problem. And it's a good thing because I can return now to some of these same topics. Because people, people never read this or didn't. I haven't run out of things to say. I always have more ideas to things I want to write about than I have time to write about. And the other nice thing about this blog is that people who are at a certain membership level, they're different tiers of membership, but most members can ask questions and make comments on what I say. So I get 30 or 40 comments a day, and I answer every question I get. So. So when you asked earlier, we were talking about my meaning and purpose in life. My purpose in life is to answer every comment. The only thing I can do that
- [32:52]
Megan Lewis
is very, very impressive. And I have to say, as someone who's worked in YouTube for a few years now, I don't read the comments anymore. I suspect it's a little bit of a different experience because your, your viewers are. Well, your viewers, your readers are people who are paying for the experience and are generally interested in and engaged in the academics of what you're saying. But that is quite the mountainous feat.
- [33:14]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, this is part of the purpose of the blog and it's. But you're right, I don't read comments either on YouTube Things I do or stuff. It's like every couple months I might look at a few things and think, oh God, okay, yeah, but there just aren't enough hours in the day. You seem to have 36 hours instead of the 24, but the rest of us mortals have 24. And you just can't do everything. But the comments on the blog. I just take as part of the mission of the blog to answer what people want to know.
- [33:38]
Megan Lewis
I think it's a wonderful public outreach exercise. And if people are interested in looking at the blog, the. The web address is ermenblog.org there's all kinds of information and you can donate there and join the blog and ask Bart questions. Because I know we get a lot of questions submitted to the podcast and it can take a little bit for us to get to individual questions. So if you're frustrated because it's taking us too long, the blog is probably a good place to go and to try and find some information.
- [34:07]
Bart Ehrman
But as much as I'd like to raise money for charity, I hope that 10,000 of you do not join the blog tomorrow and ask a question.
- [34:15]
Megan Lewis
Yes, maybe. Maybe stagger it. Stagger it a little bit. Okay, well, we are going to now go to some listeners questions.
- [34:28]
Bart Ehrman (Weekly Update Host)
Now it's time for questions 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]
Megan Lewis
so speaking of answering questions, these are not questions submitted to the blog. They are submitted for the podcast specifically. And we have five excellent ones, starting with While the historical Jesus is a likely probability, his resurrection is a physical impossibility. How did the story of his resurrection start, evolve and become so central to Christianity? And does it distract from Jesus core message and teaching?
- [35:12]
Bart Ehrman
Right. So that's a book, but I'll give the short answer I deal with in a number of my publications as to where it started. I deal with that in my book How Jesus Became God. What I think happened was Jesus was thought to be the Messiah by some of his disciples. Instead of setting up a kingdom by driving out the Roman authorities from Israel, he was arrested and crucified. Sometime after that, I'm not sure how long after that. But soon after that, some of his disciples said that they saw him alive again. And the disciples started believing that he had been raised from the dead. It was based on visionary experiences they had. It was not based on a tradition of an empty tomb. I explain this at length in my book How Jesus Became God and why that is, once they believed he was raised from the dead, they came to believe that his death must have had meaning before God. God favored him at the resurrection. It must mean that he was following God's plan. God had planned for him to die. Why would he plan for him to die? He must have died as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. And once people started thinking that, and that he not only had been raised, he had been taken up to heaven where he now as a divine being, they started spreading this message, trying to convince people that Jesus is the way to have a right relationship with the God of the world. How they succeeded is a complicated story. I deal with that one in my book the Triumph of Christianity. But they managed to convince people that their God was more powerful than others because of the resurrection. And people started converting slowly and over time they took over the empire.
- [36:48]
Megan Lewis
So does this distract from Jesus original message of apocalypticism?
- [36:53]
Bart Ehrman
Ah, good point. Right. I already just summarized two books in three minutes, so. Right. Does it distract from Jesus message? One of the things I'm going to be arguing in my next book is that the view of Christians after Jesus death, the view of Jesus after his death was the view that was different from Jesus himself in one way that we mentioned in the previous episode. Jesus taught that the kingdom of God was soon to arrive and people needed to repent so that God would forgive them of their sins. The followers of Jesus before Paul. Paul didn't invent this. The followers of Jesus said that the point of Jesus message was that he had to die for the sins of the world. And so that's a different message. So the message of the resurrection of Jesus I think is very different from the message Jesus himself preached. Scholars have long recognized that. So that there's an old way of putting this that's been around for a long time, which is that the religion of Jesus is not the same as the religion about Jesus. The religion of Jesus became the religion about Jesus.
- [37:57]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. In the triumph of Christianity, which you just mentioned, you make the case that the growth of the early church was not necessarily explosive as described in Acts, but was probably quite gradual. If that's the case, it seems that there would have hardly been any Christians for Paul to persecute within those first few years of the church, especially if he was in the Diaspora outside of Palestine. How do you square these two facts? And were Paul's persecutions just a few local Christians?
- [38:25]
Bart Ehrman
Paul doesn't tell us how many Christians there were. He doesn't tell us where he was when he was persecuting them. He doesn't say how many times he engaged in persecution. He doesn't give us any information. Basically, he doesn't give us any data. What he tells us in the book of Galatians is that he was out to destroy the church. So we have to surmise what was happening. Based on the that and based on the fact that there are certainly not thousands and thousands of Christians in the world. It does appear that Jews who came to believe in Jesus were not just locals, but that there were people in, for example, people visiting Jerusalem, say, who were there for a festival, who maybe ended up converting or something, coming to believe that Jesus was Messiah. They'd go back home, wherever that was. My guess is that Paul encountered Christians, followers of Jesus in a synagogue, wherever he lived. He heard them proclaim that Jesus was the Messiah. He thought it was ridiculous, persecuting them. We don't know what that entailed. Increasingly over the last few years, I've thought that meant that Paul probably just took these people outside and beat them up, or else shouted them down or did something to oppose them. So it doesn't have to be that he's persecuting churches of people with hundreds of people in each church. It may be that it sounds more like he's persecuting individuals who are calling themselves followers of Jesus and probably in his local situation, wherever that is, in the Diaspora.
- [39:56]
Megan Lewis
Thank you very much. Considering that Christ is a translation of Messiah and there were dozens of Messianic movements in the first two centuries ce, how do we know that extra biblical references to Christians are referring to the followers of Jesus? And could they have been followers of a different Messiah?
- [40:15]
Bart Ehrman
That's an interesting question. So we don't know of any other Messianic figures who had followers in the Diaspora who are called Christians. So that's one thing. Another thing is when outsiders mention the Christians, Josephus and Pliny and Tacitus, they are explicitly referring to followers of Jesus. We do know of other Messianic figures, for example, the followers of so Theudas, for example, seems to be a messianic figure figure or the Egyptian or there were people during the Bar Kokhba revolt, for example, thought Bar Kokhba was a messiah or, you know, so during the war 66 to 70, there were messianic figures who arose. We don't have evidence of them having followers after their death who were called Christians. John the Baptist probably was considered a messiah by his followers, but they didn't call themselves Christians. They called themselves followers of John the Baptist. So it's an interesting idea, but I don't think we have any evidence that anything like that happened.
- [41:19]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. When the Gospels were translated from the original Greek, why is it that Jesus name was kept as Jesus instead of being translated to the Yeshua equivalent in the corresponding language? Given that most of the apostles names have been Anglicized Peter rather than Petros and so on, why does the English speaking world know the man as Jesus Christ and not Joshua the anointed one or Joshua the Messiah?
- [41:44]
Bart Ehrman
Well, because Joshua isn't the anglicized form of the Greek word Jesus. So the deal is that Jesus name in Aramaic would have been Yeshua. That's the Aramaic form of the word. We translate Joshua in Hebrew in the Old Testament. So Joshua in Hebrew becomes Yeshua in Aramaic. Yeshua in Aramaic becomes Iesous in Greek, and Iesous in Greek becomes Jesus in English. And so it's similar for example to what happens with Jacobus. Jacobus becomes James in English it could become Jacob in English it could become either one, but James is a translation of Jacobus. And so when we say the word Jesus, we're using the English word. If we're speaking Greek, we'd say Iesous. If we're speaking Aramaic, we'd say Yeshua. And so these are all the names that you find in the Bible are all English forms of the names. There'd be no reason for a Greek speaker to keep his Aramaic name if they're speaking Greek.
- [42:47]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. Final question. I think this is a fun one. If you could choose time travel and interview one of the authors of any of the biblical books, which would you interview?
- [42:57]
Bart Ehrman
I would hope it'd be a long interview.
- [43:00]
Megan Lewis
I think if you're traveling back in time, you can, you can have a long interview.
- [43:04]
Bart Ehrman
Okay. I'd probably interview Paul. I would like to know more what he's thinking because a lot of the things he says are very difficult to understand. Most people don't realize this because they just read Paul. And you read things quickly and you don't realize, wait a second. This is really hard to figure out. And a lot of Paul says are hard to figure out. I'd like to find out more about his life and what he saw and what he really believed and what changed in his life. I mean, I'd like to know a lot more about Paul. The problem with all the other authors of the New Testament is we don't know who they were. We don't have any other book in the New Testament that actually we actually know the name of the author. I mean, I'd love to interview, you know, Mark or Matthew, whoever they were, but I don't think they were Mark and Matthew. I don't know who they were. Paul wrote seven letters, and we have those letters, and we know exactly what Paul thought in some ways. And so I'd like to know more about that because I actually know who he is.
- [43:58]
Megan Lewis
Excellent. Thank you very much and audience, thank you all for submitting your questions. But before we finish for the week, would you mind just summarizing what we talked about?
- [44:07]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, we were talking about an issue that's important to everybody. How does one find meaning and purpose in life? And in the traditional Christian tradition, that's impossible to do without faith in Christ and belief in God. I at one point had faith in Christ and belief in God, and now I don't. How is it that I can have meaning and purpose? This is an increasingly important question for people because so many people are leaving the faith or having doubts about their faith and wondering, is there any reason? I mean, why would you even care to live anymore? Or what would be the purpose? Or would it just be empty? And I was trying to say that in my life at least, it's not empty at all that I find more meaning and purpose now than I did when I was a Christian, precisely because I think this life is all there is, and I'm trying to grab it for all I can and to love it for all I can and to help others do the same. And so for me, it's more meaningful and more purposeful.
- [45:06]
Megan Lewis
Bart, thank you so much for sharing that audience. Thank you all for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please subscribe to the podcast and make sure you don't miss future episodes. Remember that you can use the code mjpodcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.barterman.com. misquoting Jesus will be back next week. Bart, what are we talking about Next time?
- [45:27]
Bart Ehrman
Well, we're talking about a rather timely issue. We're coming up to Christmas, which has a lot of features to it, but one of which is that Jesus was born of a virgin. And we're going to talk about the traditions about Jesus being born of a virgin, maybe maybe ask was she a
- [45:41]
Megan Lewis
virgin, almost like we planned this.
- [45:45]
Bart Ehrman
Okay. We'll see.
- [45:47]
Megan Lewis
Thank you all and goodbye.
- [45:51]
Podcast Announcer
This has been an episode of Misquoting
- [45:53]
Megan Lewis
Jesus with Bart Ehrman.
- [45:55]
Podcast Announcer
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.