← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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- [00:00]
A
Tired of your car insurance rate going up? Even with a clean driving record, you're not alone. That's why there's Jerry, your proactive insurance assistant. Jerry compares rates side by side from over 50 top insurers and helps you switch with ease. Jerry even tracks market rates and alerts you when it's best to shop. No spam calls, no hidden fees. Drivers who save with Jerry could save over $1,300 a year. Switch with confidence. Download the Jerry app or visit Jerry AI Libsyn today. That's J E R R Y AI Libsyn. Welcome to Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. The only show where a six time New York Times best selling author and world renowned Bible scholar uncovers the many fascinating little known facts about the New Testament, the historical Jesus and the rise of Christianity. I'm your host, Megan Lewis. Let's begin. Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. The podcast, as you've probably noticed, has been going for a whole year now. And in that time we've made some changes and improved on some things, but it's still recognizable as the same podcast. Is this also true for Christianity? What did that look like a year after Jesus death? Had it progressed away from the apocalyptic Jewish sect it was when Jesus died? Or was it much the same? Can it even be called Christianity? But before we get into all of that, Bart, hello. How are you doing today?
- [01:33]
B
Yeah, no, I'm doing well. The semester is rolling along. Students have gone through midterms and that kind of thing. At the beginning of the year, I always tell my students, look, don't wait till the midterm to start studying. You might be able to cram and do okay, but you start studying from day one. And I tell them, you know, look, when I give a lecture, go home and review your notes that night and then look at them again the next day. And they some of them take it to heart and most don't. But the ones who take it to heart get the really good grades because by the end of the semester they've been studying the entire semester instead of like at a couple times. So we're kind of at that point and now they're looking ahead and realizing, yeah, there's a lot of material in this class, I better get back on it. So, yeah, so that's, that's all good.
- [02:18]
A
So we've had similar conversations with our 16 year old. She's a junior in high school now and generally very much on top of schoolwork, but does have the tendency that I think a lot of teenagers have to leave things until the night before they're due. So we've had a couple of conversations of if you do it when it's assigned or a couple of days beforehand, then you'll be a lot more relaxed and be able to spend the time that it needs rather than rushing horribly at the last minute.
- [02:43]
B
It certainly helps the anxiety levels and the stress levels, but it also, I mean, in some ways it saves you time because you don't, you know, when there at the end, you're not spending hours and hours trying to cram stuff in your head because you already know it. You retain it. That's the thing. You retain it when you do it that way. Good. Okay, well, Apart from the 16 year old, I hope things are okay on your end.
- [03:04]
A
Yeah, no, all good. Very much looking forward to Halloween. We have a nice little neighborhood, so all the kids come out and do trick or treating. Our youngest three especially are quite excited about that whole process.
- [03:16]
B
Yes, I know. Oh, God. Yeah, those are the days.
- [03:22]
A
We should get into early Christianity, though, which is, I know, a new and different topic for you and I to discuss.
- [03:29]
B
Exactly.
- [03:30]
A
So we've talked about early Christianity broadly before. This episode, I think, is a little different in that we're going back right to the very earliest days, the first year after Jesus death. What sources, if any, do we have for those very first months that first year?
- [03:47]
B
Yeah, you know, we don't have very good sources for any of early Christianity. I mean, we do have some sources. The main source we have for the first 30 years of Christianity, including its, you know, first weeks and months and years, would be the book of Acts in the New Testament, which is the fifth book, as people know, and it's the one that picks up right after Jesus death. He's been raised from the dead. And it begins with Jesus talking to his disciples after his resurrection and before he ascends to heaven 40 days later. And then it takes the story from there. It doesn't give you chronological markers in the sense of saying year one, year two, year three, that kind of thing, but you can pretty well figure out from Acts what's happening in that first year. According to this account, historians try to figure out how to use things like the letters of Paul to see if there's anything there that can help. He wasn't a Christian at the time, but some of the things he talks about having happened after Jesus death might contribute to our knowledge about what was going on that first year.
- [04:52]
A
So if the book of Acts is our primary source. When was it written, and how reliable a witness does it provide for that first year?
- [05:00]
B
Yeah, these are the problems. First, in terms of the date, the book of Acts was written by the same author who wrote the Gospel of Luke. And there are really good reasons for thinking that the Gospel of Luke was written after the Gospel of Mark, which was written sometime around the year 70. The Gospel of Luke is usually dated to the mid-80s or the common era. And so Acts would have been the second volume, would have been written sometime after Luke, maybe right away or maybe later. That's the traditional dating that people have had at least since I was in graduate school and way before that. But lately, the last 20 years or so, a lot of scholars have started thinking that the book of Acts is even later than that. Some scholars think that it's dependent on the writings of Josephus from the 90s of the common era. And so it's becoming, I wouldn't say completely widespread, but there are a lot of scholars who think that now that Acts was written around the year 120. And so if we're talking about it recording events in the year, say, 33 or 34, you know, it'd be our first account would be 90 years later, or I tend to think it's probably in the 80s, so it's, you know, 50 years later.
- [06:09]
A
Does that bring its reliability into question, the fact that it was written so long afterwards?
- [06:14]
B
Yeah, it doesn't make it automatically unreliable, of course. I mean, a scholar today can write something about Alexander the Great that's historically correct. I mean, so the fact that he's centuries later doesn't mean that it's incorrect, but it does raise the question, where does the author get his information from? How reliable is the information? Does it stack up against other things that we might know about, say, from Roman history or from other kinds of sources? One of the big issues is that Acts says things that seem implausible, given what else we know about the world at the time, and that seem implausible about what we know about early Christianity. And there are places within Acts itself that create these kinds of suspicions. There are places where the author of Acts will tell the same story of something that happened a couple times, like three times, and there'll be internal contradictions. And what he says about it, like how Paul was converted, for example, three accounts of it, and the details are all at odds with each other. So that's a little bit weird. But the other thing is that sometimes Acts will talk about something not for the first year, but for later in the account to something about what Paul did or what Paul said. And it'll be something that Paul himself talks about. And when you compare the two, they're almost always at odds in ways. And so it looks like Acts isn't completely reliable, not just because of the date, but because either he had sources of information that weren't totally reliable, or maybe he isn't as concerned for historical accuracy as many people today are.
- [07:42]
A
I see. So with the understanding that we don't have an awful lot of very reliable information, we're going to move forward and try and do the best we can. When we look at the disciples following Jesus death, do we know if they stayed in Jerusalem or did they return to their homes in Galilee?
- [08:01]
B
Well, this is a complicated question, as it turns out. You think it'd be a simple answer, right? In the Book of Acts, it's a simple answer. In the Book of Acts, they stay in Jerusalem. So the disciples and Jesus are all from Galilee, which is the northern part of Israel. And So it's about 100 miles. They come to Jerusalem for a Passover feast. That is when Jesus gets arrested and then crucified. And in the Book of Acts, when Jesus rises from the dead, Luke, chapter 24, Jesus tells them, don't leave Jerusalem. Stay in Jerusalem. Don't leave until the power of the Most High comes upon you. And that's the coming of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. And so they stay in Jerusalem. And in fact, they stay in Jerusalem the whole time. They never leave Jerusalem. The problem is that stands at odds with what we find in other accounts. In the Gospel of Matthew, for example, they explicitly leave Jerusalem and go to Galilee. And they're not in Jerusalem right after Jesus death. They get out of there, probably because they're afraid of being arrested themselves. And Mark also suggests that. And so there's a conflict there. And what most historical scholars think is that Luke has a theological reason for wanting them to be in Jerusalem after Jesus death. That for the author of Luke and Acts, part of his point is that the Gospel has gone from Jews to Gentiles. And the way it works is that Jesus makes this movement in Luke. He goes from Galilee to Jerusalem, and then the church starts in Jerusalem and moves out of Jerusalem. So it's kind of like an hourglass where it goes down to Jerusalem and it stays there until it goes out. And so in the Book of Acts, they're there long after the first year. But historically, there's some question about that.
- [09:54]
A
So talking Then about the conversion of gentiles, would that have started within the first year, or are we still looking at a predominantly Jewish apocalyptic sect? Almost.
- [10:03]
B
I think it's almost certainly a Jewish apocalyptic sect. Even within the Book of Acts, which is really quite concerned to show that the church expands to be gentiles as well as Jews. Even in Acts, it doesn't happen right away. It happens years later that the message starts going to Gentiles. And I think given what we know about the numbers of people involved and the situation involved, and if they're in Jerusalem, they're certainly talking to other Jews. And there's nothing like a mission to go outside of Jerusalem to begin with. It's something that happens later. Even in Acts. They don't go out of Jerusalem until there's a big persecution and they're forced to leave. And so their plan is just to kind of stay in Jerusalem and spread the word there. And I think that's part of probably what happened. It's still a Jewish sect, a group of Jews, small group of Jews who thinks that Jesus was the Messiah. And so it's not a big movement, it's a very small movement, but it's probably still located just among Jews.
- [11:03]
A
And do we know what the disciples and the original followers of Jesus might have been saying to other Jewish or members of the Jewish faith to convert them to their way of. Of thinking their beliefs about the Jesus?
- [11:17]
B
Yeah, well, the earliest followers of Jesus, the thing that made them distinctive from other Jews was simply that they thought Jesus was the Messiah. There were not other distinctions. You know, they were still keeping the law. They were following Jewish customs. They would have kept the Sabbath, they would have observed Jewish food laws, kosher laws, and they would have looked just like other Jews. They would have gone to synagogue, but they thought that Jesus was the Messiah. You know, they probably met together, but they also went to their synagogues and they probably were telling other people that Jesus is the Messia Messiah. But, you know, they would have been telling people Jesus is Messiah. And most people would be saying, you mean the fellow got crucified, he's our Messiah. Oh, my God, we're in trouble here. I thought the Messiah was going to set up a kingdom here in Jerusalem. And you're saying some guy got killed by the enemies, What? And so I don't think they were very successful. But that's what they were saying is they're trying to convince people that Jesus really was the Messiah, but he was a different kind of Messiah than they were expecting. The fact that God Raised him from the dead, shows that he's the Messiah. And so they had to try and reorient people's thinking about what it meant to be the Messiah.
- [12:26]
A
So I have a couple of questions following on from what you just said. So if they weren't probably terribly successful, do we have a feel for how many people would have been in this group within the first 12 to 18 months?
- [12:39]
B
Well, this is one area where the Book of Acts. I don't see how it can possibly be reliable, because in the Book of Acts, Jesus, as I said, told his disciples to stay in Jerusalem till the Spirit comes upon them. So that was right after the Passover feast. 50 days after Passover is the day of Pentecost. It's another Jewish festival, 50 days, Pentecost afterwards. And in the Book of acts, in chapter two, on the day of Pentecost, so 50 days after Jesus had died, the Holy Spirit comes upon the followers of Jesus and they start speaking foreign languages. And other people in Jerusalem hear them speaking these languages, preaching the Gospel in their own languages, and they're empowered to do this and language they don't know. And Peter gets up and explains that, in fact, they've been empowered by the Spirit of God. And it's because Jesus, the Messiah, has died and been raised from the dead. He tells them all that, and on the spot, 3,000 people convert that day. And then like a day or so later, he and John are going through the temple. And Peter heals a person who's been lame from birth, who can stand up and leap and run around. And people say, whoa, wait a second. How'd that happen? And Peter explains that, well, the power of Jesus has healed this man Jesus, you killed him, and God raised him. And so you need to repent of your sins. And 5,000 people convert. And so within a week, they've got 8,000 converts in Jerusalem, in a city that probably houses like 40,000 people. This is in a week or something. And so it's like, this is completely implausible. And so what's really happening? Well, there have been scholars who've tried to calculate the rate of growth of Christianity, because it's an especially interesting issue, because since it starts out as such a small group, even within the New Testament, it's the 11 remaining followers of Jesus and a handful of women who believe Jesus is raised from the dead right off the bat. So 20 people. And historians are interested in how that 20 people became 3 million people within 300 years and what kind of population growth you need, what kind of rate of growth do you need? It's usually thought that by about the year 60 or so, there may be a thousand or 1500 Christians in the world. So that's 30 years after Jesus death. So what is there one year after Jesus death? Well, how many did those 20 people convert? I don't know, 10, 20? I don't know, 30 maybe. I mean, it's like. It's not. We're not talking about, you know, tens of thousands of people, but my guess is that it's a small community of 30, 40, 50 people at this point, but steadily, you know, converting a few other people here and there.
- [15:19]
A
So you spoke also about this being a Jewish group who viewed Jesus as the Messiah and explained that he was crucified, but he was resurrected then by God. So he can still be the Messiah despite being crucified. Do we know how many of the disciples did come to believe in his resurrection and how quickly that belief formed after Jesus death?
- [15:40]
B
Yeah, now that's a really interesting question, one that I've been interested in for a long time, because when you read the New Testament, of course, all of the 11 converted. You know, they all saw Jesus and they all became believers. And that may be true, it may be true that they all became believers. But it struck a lot of readers as interesting that in the Book of Acts, which is supposed to be about the apostles, it's called the Acts of the Apostles, the majority of these people are never even mentioned again, the 11, we don't find out anything about these people, like what their activities were, what they were doing, and what was Andrew doing and Philip and, you know, Bartholomew. We hear nothing about them. Why would that be? Why don't we have stories about what they're doing? I don't know. I mean, I think most people would say they all converted, but I don't know that for a fact that they all converted. In the end. I don't think we really know how many, but the records say they all did.
- [16:34]
A
Connected to that, then how plausible do you think it would be for the disciples who lived and spent months and years with Jesus and then watched him die? How plausible is it that they would then come to view this man as having been or still being God?
- [16:52]
B
Yeah, right. I mean, in the Gospels, they spend a lot of time with him. I mean, the Gospels aren't consistent necessarily in how long the ministry of Jesus was. In John's Gospel, it's maybe two or three years. With the other Gospels, it's not clear if it's some months or how long it is, but however long it is, they've been with Jesus going around, you know, and, and so then they're saying that he's been raised from the dead and become in some sense a divine being. And so how plausible is that? Well, it seems to have happened. And the reason they're come to believe that he's the divine Messiah, the Son of God, who is God's chosen one, whose death really matters, that he's a different kind of messiah, that he's not going to be political military leader that we might have been expecting, but he's somebody who died for the sins of others. I think that belief happened right away. I don't think that was something that occurred to them long after. It's certainly not something Paul invented. The way some people claim that Paul came up with the idea of Jesus death and resurrection, bringing salvation. As soon as the disciples came to think that Jesus was raised from the dead, that had implications and they certainly drew those implications for themselves. If somebody's raised from the dead and he's not here with us anymore, he's been taken up into heaven. And in the ancient world, whether in the Greek world or the Roman world or the Jewish world, if somebody's taken up into heaven, they're made into a divine being. And so the earliest followers of Jesus, including people he'd been running around with for months or years, came to think that he had been exalted to become a divine being. It doesn't mean they thought at that point that he was born of a virgin or that he was God from the beginning, or that he created the world, nothing like that. It's just that he had become a divine being. And I think it happens as soon as they believe in the resurrection. So, you know, we're talking very, very soon after his death.
- [18:50]
A
So if Jesus during his life, during his ministry, is obviously the leader of this, this group, this apocalyptic group, and then some decades afterwards, we see lots of different minority groups or splinter groups of Christians. We've talked before about non orthodox groups. What do we know about the leadership following Jesus death? And did that splintering occur within the first year? Or is it something that would have taken longer?
- [19:20]
B
You know, I think people tend to imagine that earliest Christianity was this unified whole and that there was one thing these followers of Jesus had, one idea. People think that primarily because that's what you find in the book of Acts, where the apostolic band is completely unified on everything. Paul gets converted, he's on the same side as they are. They're all, it's just One simpatical group for years and years and years, with every now and then somebody coming along who's causing problems, but they take care of that. And so it's a unified group. And it's not clear to me at all that it was unified even at the beginning. Everybody has different views about everything today. You know, you have. You have Republicans and Democrats or hardcore Republicans and Democrats. They don't agree with everything. And you get some who are kind of split. And it's like that with religious groups as well. So we don't know actually how unified they all were. There are hints that early on there were divisions among them. It's interesting that in our accounts it appears that Peter is the first to kind of take charge of the community in Jerusalem, or he might have started it out. He would have probably come to believe up in Galilee. I think they probably did get out of town and that Peter had his visions of Jesus, which I assume that he had some kind of vision to make him think Jesus was raised from the dead. I assume that was up in Galilee. For some reason they decided to go back to Jerusalem, possibly because they thought Jesus was returning soon and that's where he would return to the capital city. And there Peter's portrayed as the early spokesperson for the movement. But eventually the brother of Jesus, James, becomes the spokesperson for the movement. And we don't know really what the dynamics were between Peter and James, especially because in the Gospels at least, James is somebody who doesn't think much of Jesus during his ministry. And now apparently because he's the blood brother, he becomes the leader. And so we don't know. We don't know what kind of tensions there are there early on. But as far back as we can trace the movement where we have indications of the moon, there are splinter groups everywhere. I'm not even sure we would even call them splinter groups. They're just groups with different views. It's not like they've all splintered off from the same view. They've all. They probably start off with different views.
- [21:38]
A
Do we know in that first year what the Jesus movement's relationship was like with the. The two main authority groups in their world, the Jewish leadership and the Roman Empire? Would they have been seen as a threat? Or were they just really too small for anyone to worry about?
- [21:54]
B
In the Book of Acts, we do have an account of their opposition being opposed by the same Jewish leadership that persecuted and then leading to Jesus death. And the same people who are opposed to Jesus are opposed to his followers. In the Book of Acts, that would be somewhat plausible, except for the fact that we're talking about a tiny group of people when there wasn't a festival going on in Jerusalem. There are different estimates about the size of the population at the time, but some guesstimates put it around 40,000. People say at the time. Some say there are a lot more, some say a bit less. But if there are 40,000 people there and you've got like 25 who have this strange view, strange for everyone else, you know, they're probably not like even on the radar of the Jewish authorities and let alone on the radar, the Roman authorities. In normal times in Jerusalem, there were no Roman authorities in Jerusalem. There were no Romans in Jerusalem. It was a Jewish city and the Roman governor didn't live there. He would just come for times when there could be lots of people coming in to protect against violence. So we do know from the writings of Paul that Paul himself, after his conversion, so several years after Jesus death, when he converted and became a missionary, he was opposed by both Jewish authorities and by Roman authorities. He tells us in one of his later letters that he was beaten with rods on numerous occasions by Roman authorities and that he had suffered floggings from Jewish authorities. And so eventually that happens within the first year, I bet. I just don't think it happened at all. Maybe what happened is, you know, some of the followers of Jesus would get up in the synagogue and start talking about this crucified Messiah, and people would probably shout them down or maybe go out and slug them in the mouth or something. But they didn't, you know, there's no. No kind of official persecutions, I think, early on.
- [23:53]
A
So if at the end of the first year, we have still a very small group of mostly illiterate rural peasants, how did they lay the groundwork for a religion that would ultimately take over the empire? And had that already started by the end of that first year? Or is it something that took a bit more time to get going?
- [24:13]
B
Yeah, it's an amazing issue, isn't it? I mean, it was a ragtag group by anybody's standards. These are peasants from a rural part of the empire. They're not urban folk. They're not educated. They're illiterate. In the Book of Acts, early on in Acts, in the first year, when people are hearing Peter and John are seeing them around, they're kind of scratching their heads. These guys are illiterate. They call them agromatoi, which means they don't, you know, without letters. So they don't know their Alphabet. So these are not like influential, highly educated elite. And yet eventually they converted enough people that who converted more people, converted more people that this becomes the religion of the Western world. What was happening in that first year? My guess is that they were trying to talk with other Jews to try and convince them that Jesus was the Messiah. They probably had some success, but probably not huge success. It's pretty clear that the Jewish mission as a rule was not ultimately successful. Most Jews rejected this message. But eventually they did convert people who converted people. What I argue in my book, the Triumph of Christianity is that they didn't have to convert thousands of people or hundreds of people at one time or even dozens of people. If they just convert a few people, who then convert a few people, who then convert a few people. Over time, that's what starts adding up. But the big shift comes later, after this message is taken to gentiles because that's where the mission field turns out to be most, most fruitful.
- [25:49]
A
Well, thank you very much, Bart. We're going to stop there. We'll be off with a quick ad break and then we'll be back with Bart's weekly updates. Have you ever wondered where the New Testament Gospels really came from? Were the books actually written by Matthew, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? As everyone seems to say, the answers to these questions may surprise you. In fact, what you discover may challenge everything you thought you knew about the Gospels. If you're ready to learn the historical truth, then you won't want to miss Bart Ehrman's free webinar. Did Matthew, Mark, Luke and John actually write Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? In this 50 minute talk with Q, Q and A, you'll learn answers to some of the most intriguing questions surrounding the Gospel's authorship, such as why did early Christians say the Gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? If they're anonymous, what's the best evidence that the Gospels were written by the apostles? Were the apostles of Jesus educated well enough to write books? And last, if the apostles did not write the gospels, who did? And where did they get their information? Don't miss your chance to uncover the truth behind the gospels. Sign up now for free lifetime access to Did Matthew, Mark, Luke and John actually write Matthew, Mark, Luke and john? @barterman.com Authors thank you.
- [27:22]
B
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.
- [27:36]
A
We are back. So, Bart, what do you have to tell us about this week.
- [27:40]
B
Well, you know, last month we did this bible conference with 10 speakers. It was great fun and my God, I thought it went really well. So I took some downtime from that because I was basically brain dead for a week after doing all that. But now I'm getting geared up for the next thing, which I'm going to be doing. I'm going to be doing a course in a few weeks. It's going to be on November 11th. And we're calling it the Scribal Corruption of Scripture. And this is this issue about how Christian scribes change their texts of the New Testament they were copying. And since we don't have any of the originals of the New Testament, but only these changed texts, how does that affect not only how do we understand the Bible generally, but like specifically like how does it affect how we interpret these texts? I mean, how do these changes affect things? Many people listening to this podcast will be aware of this problem because we're calling this Misquoting Jesus Podcast. And that's the name of my book that's about this topic. And so what I'm doing is I'm coming up with stuff that like, even people who've read that book, they aren't going to know this stuff. And so a lot of it. So I'm going to come up with new examples, new explanations, and I'm going to lay it all out. It'll be a four lecture course on November 11th where I lay out this really interesting thing that until about 20 years ago, nobody even knew it was interesting. And the last 20 years, scholars have been starting to talk about this stuff in public and people say, whoa, really? Yeah. So we'll talk about the really in this course on November 11th.
- [29:07]
A
Do you have a favorite manuscript difference?
- [29:10]
B
A favorite? Oh God, no. I've got 100 of them.
- [29:13]
A
Like asking someone to choose their favorite child.
- [29:16]
B
I mean, my favorites are ones people know about probably. I mean, you know, the woman taken in adultery was not really in the the New Testament or the last 12 verses of Mark originally Jesus. And Mark didn't appear to his disciples. And so those are rather big. But you know, at this Bible conference, I did one that people probably didn't know about. It's one word. I decided to take one word in one verse in the Gospel of Mark that actually is kind of startling. It's where Jesus at the end, he's hanging on the cross in Mark's gospel and he cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? But in some manuscripts it's changed to my God, my God. Why have you reviled or even why have you mocked me? Whoa. God's reviling or mocking Jesus. And so, like, it's just one word and it's in different man in some manuscripts. And I was dealing with that, you know, just to show that one word can make a huge difference. And so I'll be doing some of that stuff, some things that people wouldn't expect that could just change the meaning of an entire passage or even, you know, a book. And so it'll be that kind of thing.
- [30:21]
A
I think it really is interesting the difference a single word can make. And I think one of the things that people will often think when they hear you talk about manuscript differences and you say, oh, well, a lot of them are just changed by one word here or there. Actually, that one word can, like, turn the whole meaning of a passage on its head.
- [30:36]
B
Well, I mean, it made a big difference in the history of the printing of the Bible, especially when the edition came out that's called the Sinner's Bible, where the printer accidentally left the word not off of the seventh Commandment. Seventh commandment off of the commandment that said thou shalt not commit adultery. They left out the word not.
- [30:56]
A
That definitely makes a difference.
- [30:58]
B
Look, out of a hundred words, there's only one wrong. Why is that for? Why is that a problem? So, yeah, one word can make a big difference. And sometimes it's a lot more than one word.
- [31:10]
A
Well, that I'm sure will be fascinating. We'll have more details for people coming up as we get closer to the time. So thank you for that. And now we are going to head over for our listeners questions time.
- [31:23]
B
Now it's time for questions from listeners where Bart answers real questions submitted by misquoting Jesus fans. If you'd like to submit a question for future segments, please visit bart erman.com Ask Bart.
- [31:41]
A
Okay, Bart, we have a good selection of questions from our audience today. Are you ready?
- [31:45]
B
Yeah, I hope so.
- [31:48]
A
So first one I think is relatively easy. It says, as I learn about textual criticism, I was wondering what translation of the New Testament you'd recommend that includes information about manuscript differences.
- [31:59]
B
Yeah, good. Good question. And a lot of people ask me about this. I'd say that most modern translations, if they're, if they're any good and most are very good, will have footnotes. People don't pay attention to these. But there'll be like a little note next to a word that. And you look at the footnote and say, many ancient authorities omit this word or omit this verse or something like that. And that's referring to the manuscripts. My preferred translation is the New Revised Standard Version, which has come out in an updated edition. So nrsvue Updated Edition. Not a particularly catchy title, but that's what they've called it. That's my preferred translation. I especially like it in a study edition that has annotations, that has notes and like footnotes and introduction to each book, such as the HarperCollins Study Bible. And now this coming month, they're putting out a new edition called the SBL Study Bible. SBL stands for the Society of Biblical Literature. So I think that's an updating of this HarperCollins or the Oxford Annotated Bible. These are done by very serious scholars where they not only include the NRSV and say, and with the notes about manuscripts, but also with, you know, interpretive comments to help you understand difficult verses. The big problem is that none of the translations goes into any kind of depth into the differences among the manuscripts. That's. And it's, that's too bad, but it's the way it is.
- [33:32]
A
Is that because there are just so many, it would be unwieldy for a non specialist to deal with?
- [33:37]
B
Probably. I think the Bible translators don't want to weight people down with it. You know, I regularly get people saying, you know, why don't we have one that actually gives a full indication? You can't give a complete indication because that would take, you know, 100 volumes. There's so many manuscripts. But you could have one that would have more indications and you know, scholars ought to produce that. And for the people who write in and ask me to do it, the answer is no.
- [34:01]
A
With all of your free time, Bart, that's just selfish of you.
- [34:04]
B
Right? I know. I know it is.
- [34:08]
A
Okay, next question. As Christianity spread through the Roman Empire, was it influenced by Greco Roman religion? And if so, in what ways? And the question gives an example of. Some Protestants have speculated that the veneration of saints in Catholicism has its origins in Greek polytheism.
- [34:26]
B
Yeah, I think that's been kind of a standard line among Protestants since the Reformation. I would say the basic answer to the question is, you know, were the Christians influenced by other things, Greco Roman religions? The answer is absolutely yes. For my undergraduate class this semester, for actually for both of my undergraduate classes, I gave them an assignment. I had them read stories about other divine men from the ancient world who were born miraculously when a God got a woman pregnant and who could do miracles who could heal the sick and cast out demons and raise the dead, and who ascended to heaven after death to live within the divine realm. And then I had them compared to stories in Luke, and students just couldn't believe it. They said, well, wait, why hadn't I heard any of this before? I said, well, you know, nobody told you, but here it is. So there are lots of. Lots of interesting stories told about other divine men that influenced. Appear to have influenced how Christians told stories about Jesus.
- [35:25]
A
Thank you. When people produced their own versions of gospels and other religious materials, were there any personal gains to be made? So could you earn money or get, like, personal glory from it, or did they do it purely for the chance to get their point across?
- [35:40]
B
I think the latter, I think, is to get their point across. The earliest gospels we have would never have been sold or anything like that. The authors don't name themselves in these documents. I assume the people who received the Gospel of Matthew when Matthew wrote whatever his name was, when he wrote the Gospel of Matthew, he would have distributed it within his church, and so they would have known who wrote it. But as soon as it gets spread to other places, people don't know who this person is and don't even hear his name. They just see the book. And so he's not getting any kind of personal glory out of it, probably, and he's not getting any money out of it. He basically has a story to tell, and it's important for him to tell the story. It's a little bit hard for us, many of us, to get our mind around that in our, you know, in our capitalist society, you know, you do things to get something out of it. And sometimes, you know, especially in those kinds of religious circles, that isn't the issue at all. And the later gospels that we have outside the New Testament often do have names attached to them where people claim to be Peter or Thomas or James or, you know, pick your name. And in those cases, the author himself is certainly not getting anything out of it because he's pretending to be someone else. But he's doing this in order to get people to read his account. He thinks he has something to say, and so he names it after someone who's famous so that somebody that other people will read it.
- [37:04]
A
Do you think this has changed as Christianity has become more of a mainstream, more popular, powerful religion? Do you see people writing about Christianity or predicting things based on the Bible in an attempt to get money or fame? Or do you think that, for the most part, these are still driven by faith?
- [37:27]
B
Absolutely. Well, I'm sure it's a combination, and different people will have different motivations. There's some really great ironies about the whole thing. The one that I've always thought is really pretty funny is the prophecy writers who are fundamentalist Christians who are predicting that the world is going to end and they name a date, you know, within a year or two and it doesn't happen, but they sell millions of copies and they get fabulously rich while
- [37:57]
A
encouraging everyone else to sell everything they own because the world is entertaining.
- [38:00]
B
Yeah, prepare for the end. Sell everything, you know, and by the way, also buy my book. Yeah, buy my book. But please, you know. Oh, God. People obviously have mixed motives, and I think even most of these people genuinely think that they're right. You know, I don't think that they're just. Some of them are just doing this as a specious enterprise to make money or get fame. There are certainly some people like that, but I think most people are sincere about it. But, you know, they are making the money and they. So I think they're mixed motives, usually.
- [38:31]
A
Thank you. And we have one last question before we finish up.
- [38:34]
B
Up.
- [38:34]
A
The New Testament seems to have a richer and more complete or perhaps less incomplete set of manuscripts than any other ancient text. Do text critical scholars use patterns in New Testament copying as a template for predicting how other ancient texts with sparser manuscript records would likely have been altered by copyists?
- [38:54]
B
Yeah, it's an excellent question. And what I would say is that the best text critics don't isolate one text or, you know, and kind of privilege it over others. They kind of see what's happening broadly in the world of copying, so that the kinds of mistake, accidental mistakes that New Testament scribes make would be the same kinds of accidental mistakes the scribes of Homer or Plato or, you know, pick your author would be making. The big difference with the New Testament is that the reason we have far more copies of the New Testament is precisely because of who is doing the copying. Throughout the Middle Ages, when we get most of our copies, most of our copies of the New Testament come to us after the 9th century. You know, we have thousands of these manuscripts, about almost 5,700 manuscripts we have, but 94% of those are after the 9th century. And the vast majority of those are being copied by monks and monasteries, and that it's a spiritual practice, a religious practice. And people who are copying a text for personal reasons involving their own views of life, their philosophies, their religions, their ideologies are more prone to change. The manuscripts to make them, say, kind of to coincide with their views. And so with the New Testament, it's a little bit different because when somebody's copying Plato, for example, or is copying like a Greek, an ancient Greek novel, you know, they don't have a vested interest in what it says per se. They're just recording what the person wrote. When it came to the New Testament, they tended to have more of a personal stake at it. So especially as it turns out in the early years, the changes appear to be intentional. Changes happened precisely because of the value of these things. And so that would be different, but that could not map onto a lot of classical texts the same way.
- [40:48]
A
Thank you so much. And everyone, thank you very much for sending in your questions. They're always absolutely fascinating to read and to hear Bart's responses to Bart. Before we finish for the week, could you just summarize what we talked about and let people know where they could find more?
- [41:03]
B
Yeah. So we've been talking about something that we have little evidence of, which is what was happening with the early followers of Jesus in the first year after the crucifixion. We have some indications of what happened in the Book of Acts, but exaggerations make it a little difficult to believe. Very difficult to believe. We also have some hints in Paul and in some other sources, but what we can say is that that first year, probably the entire movement was still Jewish, keeping Jewish customs and practices and following Jewish religious laws, but was proclaiming that Jesus was the Messiah. They probably were converting a few people. And over time, those few people converted more people, and it led them to the growth of Christianity that. That in the end produced the largest religion of the Western world.
- [41:51]
A
And is there anything that people can read to find out more? I know it's a little bit of a tricky subject.
- [41:57]
B
Yeah. Is it because it's, you know, there's nothing that I know of about year one of Christianity like. Like a book about. About that. There are a lot of books about the Book of Acts and about its reliability and whether, you know, we can trust it. My book, the Triumph of Christianity, does trace the spread of Christianity from its earlies days onward. But even in that book, nothing really big starts happening until the conversion of Paul. The best thing to do, I would say read an annotated Bible that talks about the Book of Acts and talks about how, like, what it says and can that really be right, that kind of thing.
- [42:36]
A
Wonderful. Thank you, 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. Episodes Remember that you can use the code MJ podcast 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?
- [42:57]
B
So next week we're on to a very different topic. So we're dealing with a topic that isn't just about early Christianity per se, although it certainly is that. It's something that affects all of us, Christian, non Christian, everybody in the world. It's the fear of death. And we'll be talking about how this fear of death is pervasive throughout and always has been, but how ancient people tried to deal with it and especially how it was dealt with in the early Christian tradition, trying to deal with the fact that people are afraid of dying and and how to cope with that.
- [43:29]
A
We will see you all next week. Thank you everyone and goodbye. This has been an episode of Misquoting Joy 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.