Celebrating Two Years of Misquoting Jesus: Your Questions, Bart's Answers

Summary

---

Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman

Episode: Celebrating Two Years of Misquoting Jesus: Your Questions, Bart's Answers

Date: October 23, 2024
Host: Megan Lewis
Guest: Dr. Bart Ehrman

---

Episode Overview

In this special second-anniversary episode of Misquoting Jesus, host Megan Lewis and renowned biblical scholar Bart Ehrman reflect on the show’s journey, its impact, and the global community it has built. The main focus is engaging directly with listeners by answering their pre-submitted questions about the New Testament, early Christianity, and the process of biblical scholarship. The episode celebrates audience participation, shares show milestones, and demonstrates Ehrman's accessible, engaging style of public scholarship.

---

Show Highlights & Anniversay Reflections

Bart’s Motivation & Podcast Mission

• Ehrman emphasizes the importance of teaching beyond the classroom, explaining how the podcast enables him to communicate scholarly knowledge to a wide audience:

  “This podcast reaches far more people than my books do, than my blog does. … We can reach a very broad audience and I’m able to communicate the stuff that scholars know about interesting topics that are really important to the world by this podcast.” (04:18)

Audience Reach & Global Community

• Megan shares remarkable listener statistics:
  • 5.3 million YouTube views and 1.4 million podcast downloads in the past year (08:56)
  • Audience composition: 57% US, 43% international, with significant numbers from the UK and Canada (10:23)

Most Popular Episodes (07:14)

1. “Who Says Mary Was a Virgin?” – 307,000 views
2. “Jesus and the writings of the first century Jewish historian Josephus” – 208,000 views
3. “Why Did Paul Hate Jesus and His Followers?” – 153,000 views

• Notable for audience engagement: “Who Says Mary Was a Virgin?” had 2,700+ comments (10:01)

  Bart quips: “Well, maybe 307,000 people say that she’s a virgin. I don’t know.” (08:23)

Memorable Guests

• Bart’s favorites include former PhD students who are now leading scholars, e.g. Kim Haines-Eitzen (sound and monasticism in Christianity) and Chris Frilingos (infancy gospels). (06:00)

  “It’s so fulfilling to see these people who become really top-level scholars...I learn so much from things like this.” (06:04)

---

Listener Q&A Segment

1. Did Any Gospel Events ‘That Probably Didn’t Happen’ Have No Plausible Motive for Invention?

Question by Jose (11:28)

• Bart discusses the example of women discovering the empty tomb—often cited as unlikely to be invented due to ancient biases against female testimony.

  “If you have creative enough mind and serious imagination, you…can think of reasons [why someone would invent a story]. … For example, maybe a woman started the story, or the narrative serves Mark’s theme of the male disciples never understanding Jesus.” (11:43–13:56)

• Suggests that most stories, even implausible ones, could have narrative or theological motives for invention.

---

2. Why Don’t We Have Any Surviving Fragments of Q, Given Its Importance?

Question by Ryan (14:04)

• Bart argues that lost important texts are common (e.g. Paul wrote hundreds of letters, only 7 survive).

  “Anybody who’s got Matthew or Luke who also happens to have Q would just say, well, why do I need Q? I’ve got Matthew and Luke. … There might not have been much of a motivation to produce a copy of it.” (14:20–16:04)

---

3. When Did Oral Stories About Jesus First Start Being Written Down?

Question by Theresa (16:42)

• Bart notes the likely illiteracy of Jesus’ first followers and absence of Aramaic records.

  “People who are accompanying him…are mainly day laborers from rural Galilee, and people like that never learned how to write. … [Written sources appear] in Greek, likely outside Israel.” (16:42–18:40)

• Earliest hypothetical written collections like Q may be from the 50s CE, but hard evidence is lacking.

---

4. Is ‘Evangelical Christian’ Now a Political or Cultural, Rather Than Religious, Term?

Question by Russ (18:45)

• Bart reflects on the shift from theological to sociopolitical identity:

  “My sense today is that’s no longer the case, that being an evangelical is more of a kind of cultural and social identity...It’s shifted from being a theological concept to being more of a social concept.” (18:45–21:06)

• Recommends: Jesus and John Wayne for understanding this transformation.

---

5. Why Do We Always Depict Jesus as Long-Haired and Bearded?

Question by Arthur (Brazil) (21:10)

• Bart explains this is a product of artistic convention, not historical evidence.

  “We don’t have...pictures of Jesus for several centuries after his death. … The people I know…have this kind of American look or maybe a Western European look...” (21:10–23:08)

• Early art, like catacomb paintings, show diverse images; the iconic look is invented.

---

6. Meaning of Disciples Sleeping in the Garden of Gethsemane?

Question by Safiya (23:08)

• Bart connects it to Mark’s theme of the disciples’ obtuseness:

  “Mark’s Gospel is especially keen to show that the disciples of Jesus never really understood him and never got him…they don’t get it at the end.” (23:29–25:37)

---

7. How Did Early Christians Know Which Gospels/Manuscripts Were Earliest?

Question by Tim (25:42)

• Bart explains there was no scientific dating; early Christians assessed manuscripts by physical age and attributed authorship by tradition.

  “It was simply assumed that the apostles themselves had written these things. … By the third and fourth centuries, that was accepted.” (25:42–28:22)

---

8. What Would Be the Implications if Acts (and Luke) Are Dated Later, e.g. 120 CE?

Question by Matthew (28:30)

• Some scholars see dependency on Josephus as evidence for late dating; Bart remains skeptical.

  “I find that their arguments are interesting, but not overly persuasive. … I think there are other ways to explain a lot of the parallels.” (29:10–32:05)

• A late date would intensify doubts about Acts’ historical value but not fundamentally shift synoptic source theories.

---

9. Did Roman Centurions Actually Build Synagogues?

Question by Anna (32:14)

• No evidence specifically for centurions, though inscriptions show some Gentile donors existed.

  “I don’t know of any soldiers who did it. … I think that the story is unlikely and part of it is probably due to Luke’s attempt to show that gentiles too will be receiving salvation through Christ, which is a major emphasis of Luke...” (33:18–35:05)

---

10. **Why Do the Gospels Have Jesus Predict His Death and Resurrection?

Doesn’t That Undermine His Sacrifice?**
Question by Brian (35:07)

• Bart addresses both historical reliability and theological purpose:

  “If Jesus knew he was going to be raised, then, okay, so he suffers for six hours. He suffers for six hours, and then he’s raised for eternity. … Why does Jesus make the prediction? … I think that these are predictions put on his lips by his later followers who knew he was raised from the dead.” (35:27–38:27)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “There are a lot more dumb answers than dumb questions. If you give an answer, you ought to know.” – Bart Ehrman (40:04)
• “The possibilities of remote communication have just completely transformed what we can do. And I think this is fantastic.” – Bart Ehrman (10:53)
• On audience intelligence:

  “People are asking questions I would never think to ask. Having such a diverse and intelligent and well-read audience is an incredible benefit.” – Megan Lewis (39:37)

---

Behind the Scenes & Community Acknowledgments

• Megan thanks the production team:
  • Chris Huntley (producer)
  • Steve Dice (audio)
  • Ryan Lambert (video)
  • Roni Chowdhury (admin)
  • Glenn Sepert (graphics) (40:27)

---

Announcements & What’s Next

Upcoming Courses

• The Genius of the Acts of the Apostles (Nov 9-10, 2024): Deep dive, both literary and historical, with eight lectures over two days.

  “Acts is our first account of the history of Christianity…it’s about the spread of the Christian church from Jew to Gentile...” (42:12–44:53)

• Biblical Studies Academy (BSA):
  • Semester-long, university-level remote courses (currently Mark Goodacre on the Synoptic Gospels; Hugo Mendez on the New Testament to come).
  • Community features: chat groups, book clubs, discussion forums. (46:06–47:48)

Next Episode

• Comparison of Acts’ portrayal of Paul with Paul’s own letters—what Acts gets right/wrong, and what’s at stake. (48:08)

---

Episode Summary

This celebratory episode vividly illustrates the enthusiasm and diversity of the Misquoting Jesus community, the global hunger for deeper Bible scholarship, and Bart Ehrman’s commitment to evidence-based public education. The direct Q&A with listeners covers text-critical puzzles, historical reasoning, the construction of religious identity, and much more—with Ehrman’s characteristic candor and humor. This episode serves as an ideal sampler of the show’s core spirit: academic rigor made accessible, and community engagement driven by curiosity.

Transcript

[A]

Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full [e-mail]. 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. Good evening everybody. Good evening, Bart. I know we've kind of stopped the, the chit chat at the beginning of the show, but I feel like if we can do it at any point, it's today. How are you doing?

[B]

Yes, I'm doing well. You can see I'm in my, up at my mountain house which is in the western mountains of North Carolina. I was here when Hurricane Helene hit in this house and we weren't expecting it to hit, but 4 o' clock in the morning, Thursday last week or whenever it was is like two weeks of Vegas. Wow, that sure is a lot of wind. And man, what a devastation. But things are getting back much better here. The town of Waynesville is pretty well functioning and Asheville's getting better, so it's all good. Yeah, but I tell you, I mean there are a lot of issues in the world right now. So apart from the issues in the world, how are you doing?

[A]

Apart from the issues in the world, I'm doing pretty well, thank you. Life is ticking along as it does. There are children everywhere. Pretty normal for me. Working on bits and pieces. Yeah. Enjoying life. I always say this. Very happy the weather has finally cooled off in Maryland.

[B]

Yeah, you Brit man, you can't handle.

[A]

I just, I don't do, do not do. And again, I'm British, so talking about the weather is a thing I do, I do not do well with the heat.

[B]

Yeah, well, I live with one of those.

[A]

Yes, that's true.

[B]

You're used to it gets the 72. Oh my God, it's blazing hot out here.

[A]

It's just, it's ridiculous. No one, no one needs that amount of, of heat and humidity and. But it's our Second, officially, the second anniversary today of Misquoting Jesus. So congratulations. Happy anniversary. I didn't get you flowers. Sorry. Try and remember next time. And I wanted really to start with a really big thank you to everyone who's joining us live, everyone who will watch at a later time, comment, share the show with friends, family, and for those who keep coming back, because really we have a very enthusiastic audience and you guys are just amazing. And really, I couldn't ask for a better set of people to watch us and listen to us talk about the New Testament and early Christian history. Well, we're going to open by sharing some memories and some interesting, kind of like stats and facts from the last year. Should take about 10 minutes. Then we have our life question segment. I know people are submitting questions through the YouTube chat. I'm afraid we probably are not going to be taking those. Uh, we requested that people submit questions ahead of time so that we could actually bring them onto the stream and have them ask about their questions face to face or camera to camera. I'm not quite sure how that works, so I'm really sorry we. We won't be getting to additional questions today. You can always submit them through the website. That's Bart ehrman.com forward/ask. Bart. I know it takes me a while to get to them. We get a lot of questions, but I am trying to get through all of them. And we have a fantastic selection of live questioners standing by in our virtual waiting room. So will be coming on very shortly to ask Bard their questions, and it will be absolutely wonderful. Now, before we truly get going, I would like to briefly talk about exactly why we do Misquoting Jesus. You say to us as a team, and it comes up, I think, semi regularly in our recorded material, that what we're doing is important work. So I wanted to ask what you mean by that and how you see Misquoting Jesus fitting into that mission.

[B]

You know, I was just thinking today that the reason I went into the academic world in large part was so I could teach. And I love teaching undergraduates. And when I teach undergraduates these days, I often will have a small class, 25 students, 30 people. And that's fantastic. But I realized, you know, and you realize, we've all realized now over the last few years that we can reach a very broad audience and that I'm able to communicate the stuff that scholars know about interesting topics that are really important to the world by this podcast. And this podcast. Podcast reaches far more people than my books do, than my blog does. Then certainly my day job, my undergraduate teaching does. And so this is a way to communicate important information to a wide range of people who are interested. We really appreciate the audience because they're enthusiastic and, you know, we want to reach as many people as we can.

[A]

And I have to say, in the interest of reaching as many people as we can, we're currently at a viewing figure for just now of 417 people. So that's 417 people watching you. And I just sit here now and chat, which is wild to me. Thank you all for joining us on what is for me a Tuesday afternoon. What Tuesday evening, I suppose. There are people from all over the world. We've had people from Paraguay and Denmark and Norway and really thank you all for taking the time to join us. Really. We wouldn't be able to do this without, without you guys watching. Now we've also over the past year had some really great guests. People come on, colleagues of yours come on and you interview them and talk to them about work they're doing, books that are coming out their own particular area of specialization. Have you got any that stand out as being particularly memorable?

[B]

I'll tell you one thing I've really enjoyed doing when I interview someone else is when I'm interviewing a former student of mine. I've done this a number of times and these are PhD students, people who've done their PhDs with me. I mean, it's so fulfilling to see these people who become really top level scholars. You know, they start out with us and they, they graduate and they just go on to great things. And as an example, one of the people I had was Kim Haynes Eitzen, who's done this astoundingly good book with Prince University Press. It's her third major book. She was the chair of the department at Cornell. So she's like, she's really a high level. And it was so much fun interviewing her because she started out working in areas similar to mine, dealing with Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. And now she's into how sounds work in ancient Christianity, especially how monks listen to sounds. I learned so much from things like this because it's like, boy, that's not ever worked on. So that would be an example of one. But you know, with my student Chris Frelingas, who's an expert on the infancy gospels of where Jesus is a young boy, these apocryphal texts and he knows a lot about this stuff. So anyway, I'm going to be leaving people off. I don't mean to be leaving but those are just two examples that come to mind.

[A]

Thank you. Now, I wanted to dive into some fun facts and statistics. I have the top three most watched and listened to episodes from the past year. Audience, if you want to play along at home, please put your guesses in the chat and we'll see. We'll see if anyone hits it. I'll give you number three and number two. So the third most watched is why did Paul Hate Jesus and his followers? Which has 153,000 views. Number two is Jesus and the writings of the first century Jewish historian Josephus at 208,000 views. So that's quite a jump.

[B]

Wow. These are ones that we've done this last year. God, I have no idea. I would not have expected the Josephus. You know, the reason the Josephus one's up there is because people, you know, think that it's an interpolation and especially the mythicists argue this. And I don't think so. Okay. No, I'm stumped. I have no idea.

[A]

Well, number one went live last December, if that is a little bit of a clue.

[B]

Oh, oh, oh. I bet it's the one on. Did we do one on whether Mary was really a virgin?

[A]

Yep. Who says Mary was a virgin? 307,000 views.

[B]

What? Wow.

[A]

Huh.

[B]

Well, maybe 307,000 people say that she's a virgin. I don't know. Wow. Now that's. No, it's really interesting. And, you know, we always try to figure out what would people really want to hear, and we take our best stab at it. And like, a lot of times, like, we're just completely wrong. No, I'm not interested.

[A]

I get it wrong all the time.

[B]

And then other times I think, man, this ain't going to go well. And it's like, oh, my God, people just really are into this one. So. Okay, whatever. So. Well, okay, I'm glad to hear that. Those are some good numbers.

[A]

And now, in the past year, the show has had 5.3 million views on YouTube and an additional 1.4 million downloads through various podcasting apps.

[B]

I had no idea going into this that we'd have four times as many YouTube views as podcasts. Because I've. When I listen to podcasts, I'm just in my car, you know, I've got some time. I listen to a podcast, and I just assume that's what everybody was going to do. And no YouTube. Yeah, that's where the more of the action is.

[A]

Yeah, I. I do the same. I listen to audio while I drive. And I was at a podcasting convention in D.C. over the summer, and there were whole panels dedicated to trying to persuade. The podcast is there to get on YouTube, because that's really the number one way that people are finding and listening to new podcasts.

[B]

It's quite remarkable. And I'm Megan. I don't think I've ever watched one of ours on YouTube. When I walk my dog on Tuesday mornings and put on my earphones and I get my earbuds and I listen them, but I probably should see.

[A]

We know what we look like, though.

[B]

Yeah, Right. Okay, Fair enough.

[A]

Okay, so the most commented episode of the year was also who says Mary was a Virgin? Which I don't think is terribly surprising. Surprising with over 2, 700 comments.

[B]

Well, were any of them positive?

[A]

I didn't actually read many of the comments for that one. I suspect it's a lot of people arguing with each other and shouting at you.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Right. Yeah.

[A]

Okay. And finally, 57 of our viewers come from the U.S. which means an incredible 43% of them come from outside. Whoa. Of the U.S. nearly half of our viewership.

[B]

That is stunning. Okay, I had no idea.

[A]

Okay, so the. The second most popular country, I guess, is the UK with 6.8%. And then Canada is third at 5.5.

[B]

Okay, yeah, good.

[A]

So.

[B]

Okay. Go figure.

[A]

Pretty diverse viewership, actually.

[B]

Yeah. I'm just telling you that, you know, the possibilities of remote communication have just completely transformed what we can do. And I think this is fantastic.

[A]

I love it. I absolutely love it. And now we are very firmly in the territory of question and answers. So I am going to bring each questioner on. I'm going to remove myself so that you guys can have your conversation. And. Yeah, let's get going. Let's see what people have to say. First up is Jose. Jose, you are welcome to ask about your question.

[B]

Thank you for allowing me to ask you this question. It is this.

[A]

Are there episodes in the Gospels such that on the one hand, you don't

[B]

believe to have really occurred, but such that on the other hand, you find

[A]

it hard to understand why someone would make them up?

[B]

Wow. Jose, thank you for coming on. And thank you for that very difficult question. You know, I often have people tell me that this certain episode must have happened because nobody would make that one up. And I found that if you have creative enough mind and serious imagination, you, in fact, can think of reasons. And so just about everything that I think did not happen, I think I usually can think of a reason for why somebody would put it in. I Never think that. Like, I'm sure that that has to be the reason. But I'll give you one very common example that people often tell me about, which is that in the Gospels, women are the ones who discover the empty tomb and are the first to believe that Jesus is raised from the dead. And I often am told that that must mean it historically happened that way because women were looked down upon, they were not seen as authorities. Their testimony could not be accepted in a court of law. And so nobody would invent the idea that women were the ones who testified to Jesus resurrection to begin with. You know, I think it's a good argument. I think it's an argument that has to be taken seriously. But I also think that there are lots of reasons one can think of for somebody coming up with stories of women finding the empty tomb. And for one thing, what if a woman came up with a story that would make sense and then spread it around? But an even bigger thing for me is that in the first Gospel that has this, the Gospel of Mark, one of the major features of Mark is to say that the men disciples never understood who Jesus was from beginning to end. They just never understood. And it's always others who recognize him. The first one to recognize that he's the son of God who had to die is the centurion who crucified him. And who's the first to discover he's raised from the dead? The women, not the men. My view is that almost anything can have an explanation and you have to look hard enough and then see which one makes the best sense. But there are good reasons for thinking that some of these didn't happen. And if so, then you do have to come up with with a plausible explanation for why somebody would come up with it. Otherwise it's more plausible that it's original. Thank you, Jose.

[A]

Jose, thank you so much. Have a lovely evening. All right, next up we have Ryan. Hi, good evening, both.

[B]

Here I am. My question is, given how important Q is thought to be for the Synoptic Gospels, is it somewhat surprising that we

[A]

don't have any surviving fragments of it?

[B]

And do scholars have any theories as

[A]

to why early Christians might not have

[B]

copied or preserved it to the same

[A]

degree as they did for the other Gospels?

[B]

Yeah, it's a great question. The courses that we do that I've been sponsoring, we have a course now being done, an eight week course by Mark Goodacre on the Synoptic Gospels. And he and I disagree on Q. He actually thinks there was no Q. He probably uses an argument like that, I don't know. And so I do think there was a Q. And it's a very good question, you know, why wasn't it copied? Why wouldn't we have it? And so I don't think it's surprising we don't have an important document from early Christianity. I think there were tons of important documents that we don't have, far more than we do have. As an example, Paul must have written hundreds and hundreds of letters, and we've got seven. I mean, that would be important to have. Why in the world wouldn't they keep his letters? And so. Well, so it happens. And Luke says that there were many people who wrote gospels before him. Well, where are they? So I think there are a lot of important things. Why wasn't Q copied? Q appears to have been principally a collection of Jesus sayings. And my sense is that people who are interested in knowing about Jesus in the decades after his death were just as interested in the things that he did as the things that he said. And that a collection of sayings, by and large, was simply not as important to people as having a narrative where you actually have indications of what he did and the things he said. And anybody who's got Matthew or Luke who also happens to have Q would just say, well, why do I need Q? I've got Matthew and Luke. It's all. It's all there in Matthew and Luke. And so there might not have been much of a motivation to produce a copy of it. I wish I knew the answer, but that's my best guess. Thank you, Ryan. Thank you very much.

[A]

Thank you so much, Ryan. All right, the next person is Theresa. Teresa. Welcome to the stage. Please go ahead with your question. Thank you very much, Megan. And thank you, Dr. Ehrman, for taking my question and have the opportunity to ask you, at what point in the development of the Gospels, in terms of dates, would the oral stories about Jesus and his sayings have begun to be written down? And is there evidence that there were writings about Jesus that might have been contemporary with him or created within years of his death?

[B]

Thanks, Teresa. It's not just a good question. It's a really important one about the oral traditions. You know, oral traditions obviously started before his, you know, while he was alive. And the question is, did anybody write them down? My guess is no. And the reason I'm guessing no, it's not just a wild guess. It's because in the Gospels, the people who are accompanying him during his public ministry are also mainly day laborers from rural Galilee and People like that never learned how to write. The vast majority of them could not read. It's not clear to me that any of his disciples could read, for example, let alone write. To be able to read and write took many years of education in the ancient world. And the only people who could afford it were elite people who were wealthy, who were living in urban areas. I do think that there were accounts written down before our gospels, and we don't know how long after Jesus death it would have been. We have no evidence of anybody writing down these traditions originally in Aramaic, which was Jesus own language. The writings we have and what appear to be the sources that we don't have anymore, but the sources behind these writings all appear to have been written in Greek. That means it would have almost certainly would have been written outside of Israel somewhere in the diaspora. And so it's kind of guesswork. Luke says, as I just pointed out to Ryan, was that Luke says there were many predecessors who had written a gospel, but Luke's probably writing the mid-80s or so, and so we don't know when those predecessors were writing. The idea of Q. Many scholars think that Q is at least contemporary with Mark or possibly earlier than Mark, possibly in the 50s. So that may be our earliest account. We don't know. You know, this is one of those things that man. We just really wish we knew the answers to these things. But in some ways the question is just as important as the answer because it gets us to thinking about what we actually have and how reliable what we have is. Thank you very much. Thank you, Teresa.

[A]

All right, next up, we have Russ. Russ, good evening. Please go ahead.

[B]

Thank you, Megan. Bart, in view of our current political environment, do you think that the term evangelical Christian is now more of a political term or a cultural term as opposed to a faith term? That's a good question. Because when I was an evangelical back in the day, back in the mid-70s, the term evangelical Christian was purely a religious term. We identified ourselves as evangelical because we believed in evangelism. Evangelism. We believed in converting people to our particular understanding of Christianity. And we had a set of doctrines that somebody had to subscribe to if they're going to call themselves an evangelical. No, you had to believe in the infallibility of the Bible, the virgin birth of Jesus through physical resurrection of Jesus. We had this list of things that, you know, if you didn't believe any of these, you weren't really an evangelical Christian. And my sense today is that's no longer the case, that being an evangelical is More of a kind of a cultural and social identity that people go to evangelical churches, but they don't define themselves in terms of what they believe about God or Christ or salvation so much as they define themselves in terms of their social agendas. Evangelicals are this person with this kind of agenda, which might be, for example, opposed to abortion, might be in favor of, you know, kind of pro American, might be in favor of gun rights. I don't know. I mean, there are a list of things you can come up with. And so it's shifted from being a theological concept to be more of a social concept. And I'm not passing a value judgment on that. I'm just saying that's an interesting phenomenon that many people consider themselves evangelical but would not be able to even tell you what a dispensation is or where the rapture is found in the Bible or stuff like that that we just knew inside out. There's a really good book about this, Russ, that you may know of. And so it's called Jesus and John Wayne. Everybody should go out and buy it. It's a fantastic book by somebody who a woman who teaches at Calvin College, which is a conservative Christian school. But she explains how it is that evangelical willism went from being a theological perspective to being a socio political view. Thank you. Thank you, Russ.

[A]

All right, we have Arthur up next.

[B]

Hey. Hi. Speaking from Brazil here, Bart. So one of the internationals listening to your podcast. So we often see Jesus depicted as this long hair and bearded guy, right? And I always wonder, like, do we think he actually looked like this? And if not, like, where did that come from? Why are we always depicting him like this? It's kind of weird, right? Yeah. Right. Well, yeah, you know, it is kind of weird. When my kids were little, they could be like 6 years old and I'd have a picture of Jesus and the disciples on my refrigerator or something and say, which one is Jesus? They could always point to him. They always knew which one was he in different pictures. They would just because we have the stereotypical image of what Jesus must have looked like. It was especially funny for me when I was in my evangelical days when I went to Moody Bible Institute, because at Moody we had a hair coat and a dress code. You could not have a facial hair. You could have a mustache that didn't go below your lips and you could not have a beard and you could not have hair that was as long as touching your ears. And then you have these pictures of Jesus. You know, he's a kind of long hair guy. Whatever. So, okay. It's really because of artistic conventions. We don't have actually pictures of Jesus for several centuries after his death. And people. People have a firm idea of what they think Jesus looked like. But the. But the people I know are, you know, they have this kind of American look or maybe a Western European look. And he would have actually looked. You know, it wouldn't have looked like that. He would have looked like somebody from the Middle East. Yeah, there's no definitive answer. Like, it doesn't all go back to one particular point, but it's because you start getting these representations of Jesus originally, the original, the oldest representations actually have him as a fairly young man carrying a lamb on his shoulders because he's the good shepherd. And so you start getting art, especially you can find some in some of the catacombs and stuff. But, yeah, people by that time were just guessing.

[A]

All right, next up, we have Safiya. Hi. My question is, in the Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane scene, what's the significance of the disciples repeatedly falling asleep even after Jesus explicitly asks them to stay awake?

[B]

Yeah, I know, right. So in the first accounts in the Gospel of Mark, and Jesus is in deep agony, and he asks Peter, James and John to wait for him while he goes off and prays. And he prays by himself that God will remove this cup from him. He doesn't want to have to go through with the crucifixion. It's interesting, by the way, just as a sidelight, you kind of wonder where Mark got this information from, because the disciples are asleep, far away, and Jesus is then crucified. And so he's like, he didn't tell anybody, so where'd he get that from? But anyway, he goes back to the disciples and they're asleep, and he tells, you know, he upbraids them for sleeping, and he goes away again. They go to sleep again, goes away. It happens three times. And so, you know, what is it all about? The three times is maybe significant. You know, Peter later denies him three times. So maybe that's it. But why are they. Why is it portraying them as continually falling asleep? Mark's Gospel is especially keen to show that the disciples of Jesus never really understood him and never got him. And in some ways, this scene is some way portraying this in a narrative form. Not just saying, as you get throughout the Gospel, don't you understand? Don't you get it yet? As Jesus keeps saying, but also, you know, they don't get it. He's in deep agony. He's going to be crucified soon. And they're just like, you know, I think I'll catch a nap here. And so they just don't. They don't get it at the end. Of course, they don't get it at all because the angel comes to the women at the empty tomb and says. The young man says to them to go tell the disciples that he'll meet them in Galilee. They never tell the disciples. So the disciples never do get it. But I think this is a way of saying that they just never really were fully on board with what Jesus was about. It's a very interesting portrayal for Mark to give because you would expect him to be celebrating the disciples as the only ones who got it. But his point is they never did get it. And maybe that in part is to show that you can get it. If you read this carefully, then you can get it. Even those close to him didn't. Very nice question. Thank you.

[A]

All right, we have Tim up next. Tim, good evening. Please go ahead.

[B]

Good evening. My question is one of the criteria for a gospel originally being in. Included in the canon was that it was written close to the time of Jesus. And I'm curious. Today, scholars have ways to date manuscripts, but how did Christians in the third or fourth century know which manuscripts were early? I think there are two questions here, Tim. One is which manuscripts were early? And the other is which gospels were early? Because those are two separate questions. And so in terms of manuscripts, people in the third and fourth century were not able to come up with something like a scientific dating for a manuscript. These days, there are two ways to date manuscripts, by which we mean a handwritten copy of a text. The two ways that you could date them is theoretically you could date them with carbon 14 dating, which is a scientific method that gives you a kind of a window within which probably the thing was written based on analyzing the carbon 14 that remains in the organic material of the manuscript, either papyrus or. Or parchment. And so they couldn't do that, Obviously. The other way they do it today is by analysis of handwriting, paparology. It's called the study of ancient handwriting. And they couldn't really do that the way we can today. But people in the third and fourth century could recognize an ancient manuscript when they saw it. Kind of the rough analogy is if you've got two copies of Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, and one of them was printed in the 1890s, and the other was printed in the, you know, 2010, you can pretty well tell this one's pretty old. And so it's really more like that. You have church fathers like Origen or even later Jerome, who say, this is in the oldest copies. And by that they mean, you know, they've seen a bunch of manuscripts and these ones that look really obviously old. It's in those. The reason they thought that the compositions went back to the days of Jesus, not the manuscripts, but the compositions, was because by that time, by the third and fourth centuries, they were known by the names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And it was simply assumed that the apostles themselves had written these things. That is much disputed by scholars today. I'd say the most. Most critical scholars don't accept that. But in the third and fourth centuries, that was accepted, and that's why they were. It's why they were given the names in the first place. By the way, the books themselves are anonymous, but if you want it to be accepted, it's got to go back to an apostle. So you name it after an apostle. But then in later times, everybody just assumed that was right, as do probably most Christians today. Does that answer your question, Tim? Yeah, thank you. Good question. Okay, can I just interrupt and say you're driving me crazy here.

[A]

I know. I'm sorry. I'm driving the chat crazy as well. It's great.

[B]

I hope everybody else knows why

[A]

we have Matthew up next. Okay, Matthew, Welcome. Hello. Hi, Dr. Herman. Thanks for taking my question. Luke Axe. On my favorite New Testament books, I have found that the argument put forward by scholars such as Steve Mason for a potential late dating of Luke Acts be very interesting and somewhat compelling. Some examples of this evidence include the parallels with Josephus between Diudas and Judas from Acts 5 and the Egyptian from Acts 21. If true, what are the implications for

[B]

a late dating of Luke Acts to

[A]

biblical scholarship and to the synoptic problem specifically? Thank you so much.

[B]

Good. Thank you. It's a really good question. Matthew and for people who don't. Let me give a little bit of background to it. Traditionally, among critical scholars, for, like, the last 80, 100 years, it's been thought that Luke and Acts were written sometime in the mid-80s of the Common Era. So 55 years or so after Jesus death, Luke written first, then Acts written later. Over the last 20 years or so, there have been scholars who proposed that Acts in particular appears to have been written much later than that, in part because, in their view, it is dependent to some extent on the writings of Josephus, writings that Josephus produced in the mid-90s. And that would require that Josephus wrote the thing in the 90s that it circulated, that somebody got a hold of it and used it for some of his information for the book of Acts. That would put Acts into. Usually dated by these people to around the year 120 or so. And so that would affect things. It would mean that Acts, if it was written in 120 or so, its action ends about the year 62 or so. Acts begins around the year 32 or 33 or so. And it'd mean that he's writing, you know, 90 years after the first events he narrates, and 60 years after the last event he narrates. And it would probably call into question even more seriously how accurate Acts is. And it's describing the life of Paul and the Ministry of Paul, et cetera. One big question then is if that's true for Acts, is it true for Luke? Some people have proposed that Luke and Acts were actually not written by the same person, that Luke was written in the 80s and acts is written later. Or you could say both Luke and Acts were written in the 120s. So if you say that, what does it do to the synoptic problem? I don't think it does a lot to the synoptic problem. Because whether you think that Matthew and Luke both used Q and Mark, that's certainly possible in the 120s as well as it is in the 80s. If you think that Luke used both Matthew and Mark, then that would be just as possible in the 120s as in the 80s. So I'm not sure it would affect those findings. What I'll say is that I'm not convinced by these arguments. I think that they are very interesting. And Steve Mason is an incredibly good scholar of Josephus and of the New Testament. And there have been others, such as Richard Purvo, who have argued this as well. I find that their arguments are interesting, but not overly persuasive. I have a pretty high bar for not a pretty high bar. I think some people have a way too low bar on how, you know, if somebody else was influenced by another author. And I think, like a few hints here and there are not really what does it for me. I've got to see some real hard evidence, like verbatim lines like you get between Matthew and Mark where you say, yeah, obviously Matthew's copying, you know, but you just don't get that here. And so I think there are other ways to explain a lot of the parallels that they come up with.

[A]

Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

[B]

Thanks, Matthew.

[A]

Thank you very much, Matthew. Okay, and next we Have Anna.

[B]

Hello. Nice to see you.

[A]

Hello, Very nice to see you. And thank you.

[B]

Hi.

[A]

Oh yes, we have some, some good time in Italy.

[B]

Yes, we, we've traveled the world together, Anna and me.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And some tour, some tours with, I think with Unc maybe.

[A]

That's right. That's right.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

So this is about Luke 7. In Luke 7, a Roman centurion once to ask Jesus to heal his centurion's beloved servant. And to do so, the centurion sends the elders to ask Jesus. The elders plead for centurion's request, saying that Jesus should do this because the centurion is a good guy. He even built the synagogue. So my question is, did Roman centurion, centurions being just commander of hundred soldiers, did they have authority and means to build synagogue and do we even have synagogue from that time?

[B]

These are really good questions. Right, so. Yeah, well, it seems highly unlikely. We do know of non Jews who assisted in building and supporting synagogues because we have inscriptions that indicate that there were Gentiles, inscriptions from ancient synagogues indicating that gentiles had participated and helped fund building synagogues. I don't know of any soldiers who did it. I don't know that a Roman centurion would have the financial means to do that. Normally they were not wealthy people. Possibly, possibly centurion could, I mean, you know, he's, he's not just a, not just a foot soldier. But I think it's unlikely that that's the case. We do have synagogues from the period. I think Anna maybe, you know, Jody Magnus, maybe, I don't know if you do or not, but she, you know, she's an expert on ancient synagogues. And there has been, there's been a synagogue that's turned up just within last, I don't know, recent years, five or seven years in Magdala, which is on the coast of Tiberius. It looks like a first century synagogue. And so, and there certainly were synagogues. It's just that, you know, we don't have a lot of them left because they tended to get destroyed and built over. I think that the story is unlikely and part of it is probably due to Luke's attempt to show that gentiles too will be receiving salvation through Christ, which is a major emphasis of Luke, more than in Mark and Matthew and John, and becomes a huger, even a bigger emphasis in his book of Acts. And so this is showing that. And it's also showing that a, you know, Roman soldier favors Jesus. And that's good because you're trying to show that the. Luke is trying to show the Romans generally favor Jesus. And so it fits in with some of Luke's agendas. And so it seems to be unlikely.

[A]

Thank you.

[B]

Okay, thanks.

[A]

Brian, can you hear us? Yes, I can. Thank you so much. Hi, Bar.

[B]

Thank you. So the question is, why do the

[A]

Gospels tell a story where Jesus not only predicts his own death, but also his resurrection?

[B]

Doesn't that prediction undermine his bravery and

[A]

resolution of that sacrifice?

[B]

Ah, now that's a good question. Now, Brian, I wasn't expecting you to go that direction with it, but I thought you were going to ask. It was something about, you know, how could Jesus predict his own resurrection? Or is this reliable or anything like that. But you're asking, if Jesus knew he was going to be raised from the dead, then doesn't that somewhat compromise his horrible suffering? And I have heard people ask this question before, and the idea behind it is that, that you often hear people say that Jesus suffered more than anybody. You know, he suffered more than anybody ever in history because he took the sins of the world upon him. Being crucified, of course, was a horrible, horrible way to die. But there are thousands and thousands of people who died of crucifixion and people who've died by worse ways. Actually, the issue is, if Jesus knew he was going to be raised, then, okay, so he suffers for six hours. He suffers for six hours, and then he's raised for eternity. I said, you know, it's not a bad exchange really, if you think about it, you know, six hours. And so why does Jesus make the prediction? Number one, I don't think a historical Jesus made the prediction. I think you were suspecting that when you asked the question. But I think that these are predictions put on his lips by his later followers who knew he was raised from the dead and they knew he was crucified. My view that I won't develop here at great length, but I've talked about it on my blog before and we've actually done a podcast on it. I don't think that Jesus was expecting to get crucified. I think Jesus went to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover feast and to bring his message of the coming kingdom of God to the heart of Jerusalem, where there'd be more Jews there than at any other time in the year. And his message was virgin, and this was how he was going to reach people. I don't think he was expecting to be arrested and then crucified. His followers, though, believes he got raised from the dead and when they tell stories about him, they certainly didn't want anyone to think that Jesus was caught by surprise. For them, the whole point was that he died. And so they didn't. So they had him predict that he was going to die. But if he's going to predict he's going to die, it makes sense he's going to predict that he's going to be raised because he must know it's not going to be the end of the story. Since the whole point for the later Christians is that Jesus came to die and be raised from the dead, and salvation's dependent both on his death and his resurrection. Therefore Jesus must predict both. But it does create the kind of problem that you're mentioning that I don't know that maybe there were people in the ancient world who raised this kind of similar question. Like if he knew he was going to be raised, you know, what's, you know, how bad is it? And I mean, obviously, look, it's horrible. I do not want to be crucified for six hours. I could tell you I think about, you know, roughly a million ways I'd rather die instead of that. But it does seem like it kind of takes a little bit of the edge off. But I think that's why I think the followers of Jesus with sayings on his lips, that would be one that they would have put on his lips. Thank you, Mark. You're welcome.

[A]

That was everyone and I think a fantastic set of questions as always. And for people asking in the chat if they can like come in and ask questions now, I'm afraid not. We do ask for our anniversary livestreams that people submit questions ahead of time. So if you have a question you want to ask in person, like in about 11 months, just go to www.bartlman.com Ask Bart. There should be a live anniversary option in the drop down menu there and you can submit your questions that way. That just gives us a chance to kind of touch base with people who are interested in asking questions, make sure they can attend the live stream and work out all of the administrative sections and parts of everything that goes into this. So thank you everyone for your questions. Those were great. But thank you for your answers.

[B]

Well, thank you. I'm thankful everybody. Those are not easy questions, I gotta say. I don't know if you notice this, Megan, but we almost never get easy questions. Not just with the, what is it called, Stump Bart thing, I mean, which is like impossible half the time, but I mean, just on regular questions. They're really deep and interesting and Important questions. These are getting to the heart of some of the really crucial things about the Gospels and the New Testament.

[A]

Absolutely. And I think this is one of the reasons why I think it's important to do this kind of public outreach work, if that's what we're calling an academic inspired podcast. Maybe because people are asking questions that I would never think to ask. They're just, they're not things I would come up with by myself. So having such a diverse and intelligent and well read audience is an incredible benefit for me as far as I'm concerned.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Somebody will say, you know, I know it's a dumb question, but, you know, and my view is, you know, like, if you're wondering about it, it's not a dumb question. I have dumb. I do have questions I think are dumb when I asking some scholar in some other field, but I just ask it anyway. And my view is there are a lot more dumb answers than dumb questions. If you give an answer, you ought to know.

[A]

Absolutely. Now, before we, we wrap up, we've got some thank yous because I don't really think people understand. I certainly didn't until I started doing this podcast. How much work goes into all of the video editing and the audio editing and just making sure that this is as polished a piece of content as we can put out. So we have Chris Huntley, who is our show producer. He kind of keeps everyone on track and trust me, I need keeping on track. If you hadn't picked up on that from our various conversations. So, Chris, thank you. You do an amazing job. Steve Dice, who is the audio editor for the podcast version of the show, does an amazing job with all of our audio and God bless him, puts up with the fact that occasionally we forget to have the correct mics connected to our computers, you know, podcasting 101 people. But somehow we still, we still managed to get it wrong. So, Steve, thank you. We have Ryan Lambert, who is the video editor for our YouTube. YouTube content. She Again, fantastic job, wonderful person. Roni Chowdhury is our general assistant who adds episodes and descriptions to YouTube, manages all of our email notifications, all the really like, important stuff to keep everything running smoothly. So, Roni, thank you. And finally we have Glenn Sepert, who designs all of our shows thumbnails. And I mean, they're beautiful, they're really lovely. He does a great job. So thank you all. This truly wouldn't be such a success without you. So we have one announcement before we head out. Bart's going to be teaching a new Course the Genius of the Acts of the Apostles. You can find [e-mail] Actscourse and obviously use the podcast code which is MJ podcast. Bart, what kinds of things are you going to be covering in this course?

[B]

You know, I'm really excited about this course. It's a weekend course. It's a two day, Saturday, Sunday kind of thing. Four lectures a day with Q and A each day. So I've got eight lectures to cover the book of Acts. And it's a little bit strange because I, you know, I cover the book of Acts in one day in my undergraduate class and now I'm thinking eight lectures are not enough. So like one lecture is kind of like, okay man, here I'll scratch the surface a bit. And eight lectures is not enough either. We really need to do a full semester long course on Acts, which we probably will do for the Biblical Studies Academy that we have going that people should check out. By the way, the Biblical Studies Academy where we do semester long courses, we definitely need to do on Acts because there's so much in it. You know, I've been rereading it in Greek the last couple days and just thinking, eh, there is so much here. So what the course is going to be is talking about both the literary nature of Acts and the historical aspects of Acts. Acts is our first account of the history of Christianity. It explains the spread of Christianity from right after Jesus resurrection for the next 30 years up to when Paul is imprisoned in Rome. And so it's about the spread of the Christian church from Jew to Gentile, but also from Jerusalem to all, you know, throughout major chunks of the empire. It's not a disinterested history where he's just recording names and dates, he's telling stories about what had happened. And a lot of what we'll be doing is looking at these stories and just seeing how brilliantly he's done this. Because he's shown he's got all sorts of kind of themes interwoven in these stories that you wouldn't notice if you just gave it a quick read through, which is what I did when I first read. Just kind of read it and took it as factual. No, there are literary themes here. He's trying to give you a theological perspective on what this all meant. And I'm going to be talking about how he actually accomplishes that in a serious way, going into some detail with that. But I'm also going to then be asking, is it historically accurate? Is this what really happened and how do we know Are there things that are, that we can show are inaccurate and if so, how do we account for that? And then combined with that, we're going to be asking this one person asked when it was written. I think it was written in the 80s. I'll be trying to explain why. But then the big question is, who wrote it? It's attributed to one of Paul's traveling companions. Can that be right? I mean, it can be right. It could be right. Is it right? What do we think? Why? And so these are the kinds of issues we're going to be dealing with. And what I think is the most important book of the New Testament. For anybody who wants to know about the birth of Christianity, this is it. This is the one that tells us.

[A]

Thank you. And if people are interested again, you can go to bart ehrman.com forward/actscourse for more information. It's going to be a live record recording on November 9th and 10th, so you can join us live. If you can't join us live, you will always have access to the recordings. The Regular price is 59.95. Early bird price is good through October 26th. So that's one week left and that's 49.95 now. But we've mentioned before the, the BSA, the biblical studies Academy, and there was a little bit of confusion about the podcast discount code. It unfortunately doesn't work going through the regular checkout link. But if people are interested in the Biblical Studies Academy and want to sign up with the podcast code, you go to bart ehrman.com BSA which is just for, for listeners of the podcast. And that will be 39.95 is the regular price. But if you go through that link, you can get the free trial and only 34.95. So that is just clearing that up for people because I think I got that wrong last week.

[B]

Okay. And for people who don't know, this is really. It's a pretty.

[A]

Oh yeah, we should tell people what it is.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, because that's a good idea. Came up with this idea and you know, we've been teaching these. I said we should do a semester long course on act. We're doing semester long courses on the bsa. I'll do some of them. But the ones going on now is Mark Goodacre doing in the Synoptic Gospels. It's not quite semester, it's a week's worth. So it's 16 lectures. He lectures twice a week, week 50 minutes with Q A at the end of it and next in Starting in January, we're going to have a full semester course, 13 weeks as an Intro to the New Testament taught by Hugo Mendez, who is my colleague at unc, who co authored with me my most recent edition of my textbook on the New Testament, who's an absolute expert in New Testament and is a really good, good teacher. Twice a week he's going to, for 13 weeks he's going to give lectures for 50 minutes remotely and with Q A after each lecture. And there's reading assignments if everyone wants to do them. The quizzes, if you want to take them. We won't fail you. There's, there's stuff connected with it to make it like a syllabus. It's, it's, it's like a university course. So you know, Mark Goodacre teaches at Duke, Hugo teaches at unc. These are like, these are university level classes that you can take for joining the bsa. An even bigger thing is it's a community. It's a community of people who are interested in these topics. And so there are chat groups and there are viewing clubs and there are book clubs and people come and they talk with each other. And for so many people who like, are interested in this stuff, they don't know anybody in their neighborhood who's interested in this. It gives them a chance to do this. And so anyway, just check out the bsa, the Biblical Studies Academy. We've just started it, it and I think it's gonna be a really good thing.

[A]

And for something that's just launched, it's growing very fast and there is a very, very engaged group of people. It's, it's really cool to watch. So if you're interested in discussing this kind of stuff with other like minded people, it's definitely, definitely a good thing to look out for. Now then next week. Do you remember what we're doing next week?

[B]

Yeah. Well, we're doing something kind of connected with the Paul, in fact direct with the Axe course. One of the issues with Acts is that he talks about the Apostle Paul and describes things that he said and did. And we have letters from Paul that describe the things that he said and did. And this means that we are able to compare the two to evaluate them to see whether what Acts says about Paul is what Paul says about Paul or not. And so we're going to have an episode on that. It'll be one of our interview episodes where we'll get into kind of the major issues, but not like spill the entire beans. There are lots of beans in this particular pot, and we're not going to spill them all. But, but we're going to, we're going to show why this is such a big issue and some of the major, major considerations we have in it.

[A]

Bart, thank you so much. It's been, as always, a pleasure and a delight audience. Thank you all for joining us. And we will see you next week. 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.