← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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- [00:00]
A
Know someone in your life celebrating a birthday. They deserve to feel truly celebrated. That's what 1-800-Flowers has helped people do for 50 years, turning everyday gestures into meaningful moments of connection. And this April, during their 50th birthday celebration event, when you buy one bouquet, get a second bouquet, 50% off. Celebrate more birthdays with our 50th birthday event all April long at 1-800-flowers.com podcast buy one bouquet, get a 2nd bouquet 50% off at 1-800flowers.com podcast. We've been talking a lot about the revolutionary message of altruism in Jesus teachings recently. But how do we know what the historical Jesus actually taught? Today, Dr. Bart Ehrman joins me to discuss exactly how scholars reconstruct his message. 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. Welcome back everybody to Misquoting Jesus. Today we are talking about how we know or think we know what Jesus actually said. We've also got our bonus segment listeners questions at the end where I ask Bart if the book of Revelation talks about climate change. Bart. But before we get into all of that, how are you today?
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B
Well, that'll be good. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. Yeah. So yeah, I'm doing well. I've been, I've been up in Michigan for a couple weeks and I'm heading, heading back home tomorrow gratefully and thankfully and so but think things are, things are good and the only thing I'm finding is that I thought when I retired I'd have like tons of time. Yeah, yeah. No, no, Sarah told me. Yeah, you're not going to have any time, Barbie. It's just know, it's just, it ain't in you. Oh no, sure I will. Yeah.
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A
No, I don't take up fishing and go hiking more often. No.
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B
Well, well you know, hiking more often is definitely is something I wanted to, you know. So I do walk every day and we have nice woods across the street from us so I can actually do some nice walks. But still not enough time. So. And you know, you're not retired and, and you're, you're busier than I am so that makes me feel good.
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A
Yes, I think, I think so. I, I also don't think I'll be not busy when I eventually retire. I think I will fill the time with all of the things that I want to do now and just can't because there are small children like everywhere. I don't know where they come from. Well, I do know where they come from. I was there. But they just, they just appear and demand things. I'm like, oh, okay, well, I guess I'm not working anymore today.
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B
I was gonna say they do have books on this, you know.
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A
Apparently.
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B
Apparently.
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A
All right, so today we're talking about what Jesus actually said and taught and how scholars get to all of that information. But my icebreaker before all of that, what do you think is the most important online course that you've done?
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B
Huh? Okay, that's a good question. Important. Yeah. You know, I've done 10 courses for the teaching company, the great courses, and since, you know, first one came out in like year 2000 and I've done a bunch for. Are for the public pasm, Biblical Studies, which is the, the business I run and that you're. You're involved with too. Just the podcast is kind of part of it. Which is the. What, the most important, significant. What? Yeah, okay. It's hard to, I mean, you know, look, they're like children. You love all of them. I, I suppose I would say that in terms of kind of overall significance, the, the one that I think might be is that I did one for our passing biblical studies called Paul and Jesus the Great Divide, which was showing how the teachings of Jesus and the theology of Paul, they, they do of course have similarities, important similarities, but they are also quite different in many ways. And people say that, you know, people will sometimes talk about Paul being the founder of Christianity or the second founder, the co founder of Christianity. They'll say that, but people don't really know that. Know what that's really about a lot of. And, and in this course, it's an eight lecture course where I just lay it out, I show this is what Jesus stood for. This is what Paul stood for. These are, you know, these similarities are really important, but these differences are really stark. And it's important because it's a foundation of Christianity. And so I would say probably something of that. Like that is really pretty important for people who want to understand the New Testament and early Christianity.
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A
Thank you. Now, we've been talking a lot about your new book, Love Thy Stranger, which is actually being released today. So congratulations on that. For those listeners who have missed the last couple of episodes, what is the main argument that you make in the book?
- [05:08]
B
So it's called Love Thy how the Teachings of Jesus Transformed the Moral Conscience of The West. And the idea that I have, what I set forth in the book is the thesis that Jesus, Jesus teachings were like moral philosophers at his day in Greek, Roman moral philosopher, and like Jewish teachers of his day in some ways. But he also had distinctive teachings that transformed how we think about morality today and how we think about what it means to be a moral human being and how we ought to behave. And the, the teachings have to do with his particular view of how altruism is to work. Of course, he didn't use the term altruism. He wasn't speaking English for one thing. But, but when, when he talks about how you're to behave to, to others, it, it was a, it had a very different vision from what you can find in other writings of the time. And it, and it, since Christianity took over the Roman Empire, it became the moral code of the Roman Empire, which became the moral code of the west, which means we have inherited it.
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A
Now, an argument like this requires a level of certainty that we know at least some of what the historical Jesus actually said. So what texts do scholars try to use to reconstruct his teachings?
- [06:24]
B
This is one of the, you know, core aspects of New Testament scholarship is how do you know what Jesus really said? What was his message? And it's complicated in ways that I didn't realize. You know, when I was in evangelical, I just thought you were, read the Gospels and there you are, okay, Jesus said that, that's what he said. As time went on, I started realizing that the Gospels themselves have, have problems when it comes to historical accuracy. And, and so one, one thing one would normally do in that case is to look around. Well, what other sources do we have? I mean, you have to, you have to identify what the problems are with the Gospels. Once you do that and you say, okay, well maybe they're not historically accurate. What else do you do? And, and you look around. And so scholars of course have done this time. What do, what do non Christian sources say about Jesus? Do any Jewish sources at the time report what he said? Do any Roman sources, any Greek sources report what he said? And if so, how does that stack up against the Gospels? Are there Christian sources outside the Gospels, like elsewhere in the New Testament? What kind of record do we have of what he said? And outside the New Testament? Are there other Gospels? Are there other. The answer is yes. Are there other. There are other sources of information. So you look for the entire range of, of, of sources, everything that could possibly be a source for knowing what Jesus said and did, and you examine it and you look in relation to one another and you try to figure out is there something here that we can say with some reliability is probably what Jesus preached.
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A
So if we start with the non Christian sources, what is available to academics to try and answer this question?
- [08:05]
B
You know, there are actually books written about this, about the non Christian sources I've always found remarkable because wow, to get a book out of. That's something I tell my students. And this is, you know, people, people get on my case for saying this. But it's, it's absolutely true that within, if you just stick within the first hundred years, the, from the time Jesus would have been born for the next hundred years, like so the first century, the first century of the common era, what do Greek enrollment sources say about Jesus? You know, like what, you know, did the like Roman governors say anything? Or did like you know, soldiers? Or did anybody, Greek experts in religion, do they say what do they say? And the answer is they don't say a single thing. There's not a mention of Jesus name in any non Christian, non Jewish source from the first hundred years. There's not. The first time he's mentioned in any Greek or Roman source is in the year 112 and so 80 years or so after his death. And it's just a passing reference. Now I want to say that when, when I say that the reason people get upset with me is because they think, well, you're saying Jesus didn't ex. So no, that's the last thing I'm saying. Jesus certainly existed. The evidence is so overwhelming. Of course he existed, but that doesn't bother. Then why didn't people talk about him? Well for the same reason they didn't talk about 99.999 of everyone else. We don't have records. It isn't that this is distinctive of Jesus. This is the way ancient history works. So, but, but if you want to know what he said and did you know the Greek and Roman sources don't help the Jewish sources. We do. We only have one source from the first century that mentions Jesus, written by Josephus, a Jewish historian of the time who wrote a 20 volume work called the Antiquities of the Jews which deals with the history of the Jewish people from Adam up to his own day. He was writing at the end of the first century and he does have two references to Jesus. He mentions a couple things about Jesus, but he doesn't identify what it was that Jesus was actually preaching.
- [10:10]
A
Okay, so we don't have any non Christian sources within the first century CE that Discuss his teachings. What do we have in terms of Christian sources? Is it just the canonical New Testament books or is there something non canonical that can help here?
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B
Well, you certainly have non canonical gospels, but they're after the first century. They're extremely interested. Many of us have devoted years of our lives to studying them and they're worth studying. But books like the Gospel of Thomas, which gives you 114 sayings of Jesus and the Gospel of Peter and the Gnostic Gospels as they're sometimes called, these are very, very interesting texts and we have to take them seriously as potential sources. We take everything seriously as a potential source. But when you analyze these texts, with the possible exception of the Gospel of Thomas, none of them provide us information that is, that can, that almost anyone could think of as historically reliable. So you get the non canonical texts like that. Within the New Testament we have 27 books. Four of them are gospels. The other books say very, very little about what Jesus actually taught. Paul tells us more than any anything. If you take all of Paul's letters, 13 letters claimed to be written by Paul in the New Testament, I have my students do this sometimes. I have them read through all of Paul's letters and list everything Jesus is said to have said where Pa actually not that not when Paul says something sounds something kind of like Jesus said, but when Paul actually quotes something Jesus said and said, you know, Jesus said kind of thing. There are basically Paul tells us what Jesus said at the, at the Last Supper. He tells us Jesus taught that people should not get divorced and he should and he, he and he quotes Jesus to say that you should pay your preacher. That's it. Wow. That's it. So, and he tells us more than anyone else. So, so basically you have the four Gospels and it's not for religious reasons, you know, it's not for religious reasons. It's not because, you know, as a gung ho Christian I know the Gospel is reliable. So they're the ones we turn to. It's not that for historical reasons. There are earliest sources, there are most extensive accounts of Jesus teachings and his actions and you know, and they, they have to be taken seriously as accounts that can, can provide historical information for us.
- [12:32]
A
We're going to take a brief break now. When we come back, we're going to be talking about why the, the Gospels are not necessarily the most reliable things but how we can still use them. So as I said when we started our interview, huge announcement and many congratulations today. Bart's book Love Thy Stranger has just been released. Bart can you, can you tell us how you feel?
- [12:57]
B
Well, to quote Lewis Carroll, oh, frab. Just day kalu kale. That's in Jabberwocky, when one of the poems I've memor. Yeah, no, it's great. It's great. The day, you know, the day the book comes out is fantastic. And, but it's, you know, the proof of the puddings in the tasting and we'll see what happens. I, I think that of my books that I've written, I, I always say, I'll say this, I probably said this before. Every time I write a book, I say, yeah, that's the best book I've ever read.
- [13:31]
A
This is my favorite.
- [13:32]
B
This is the best book. And this time, of course I, I say that, but I honestly do think that in terms of importance for our current day and for our situ, the situations we find ourselves in and with the culture wars going on and the, and the, the various things happening in our world right now, the way we're heading this book is the most important I've ever written.
- [13:59]
A
Written.
- [14:01]
B
I don't take a stand on political issues in the book. I don't take a stand on particular social agendas or anything like that. But the book is directly relevant to things that are happening around our world right now and things that we're experiencing. And it's the only book like that I've ever written, so I'm really. Of course it's a historical book too. I mean, it's dealing with history, but it's laying out the teachings of Jesus and they turn out to be relevant in really important ways.
- [14:26]
A
And audience, if you have purchased the book or you're going to, you can also get a free bonus set of resources that will help you dive deeper into it, including a two lesson love thy stranger companion course taught by Bart and a mystery bonus pack. You can just purchase the book and then sign up for these additional resources@lovethystranger.com okay, congratulations again, Bart. Now we're going to get back into what Jesus actually said and how we know what he said. And I mentioned before the break that we were going to be looking at why the Gospels are not the world's most reliable resources. We've spoken before about the canonical Gospels being ancient biographies. Can you remind us why this means that we can't simply assume that Jesus teachings within them are historically accurate?
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B
Well, so it, you know, the fact that they're like other biographies, I, I think that's a fact. I mean, there, there are various ways to classify the genres of the Gospel, the genre of the Gospels. But most scholars for the last 30 or 40 years have thought they're like ancient be, which is the Greek word biography. They're biographies in a sense they're different from other biographies, but every biography is different from one another. That in itself does not mean they're unreliable, of course, but we do know how biographers worked in the ancient world and we, because it was quite different then writing a biography from writing a biography today. You know, if I write a biography of Megan Lewis, I've, I've got, you know, I'll do my research and I'll know, I'll find out the data and the, the dates and the names and I, and I'll have written resources. I'll have, and, and in this case, you know, we'll have video resources and audio resources and all sorts of resources. And if you're writing a biography of Thomas Jefferson, you know, a lot of people have done that. So you start off by reading theirs and then you go to the library and you start finding original documents and you just, you read massively in the literary remains. The Gospel writers did not have massive literary remains to check and biographers generally didn't. Most biographers had to rely on word of mouth stories and earlier written records when they existed. But they tell us biographers, not just biographers, but historians. The historian Thucydides, I mean going way back, tell explicitly explains how it is that he and other historians can record speeches that were delivered when they weren't there to hear them them and maybe decades earlier, how did they record it? And he just says, look, we don't know whether we know what they actually said. We know the kind of knowing who they were. We know the kind of thing they would have said probably, but there's no way to check it. And so the Gospels are like that. They're like, you know, ancient histories or ancient biographies where these, you know, whoever, whoever wrote the Gospel of Luke was not there to hear Jesus say anything. Matthew was not there for the Sermon on the Mount. And so that's the reality of ancient biographies. And ergo, it's the reality of the Gospels too.
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A
So if the Gospels don't contain the historical Jesus exact words, and they almost certainly don't, then how can scholars be sure that they still contain his actual teachings?
- [17:39]
B
Okay, so one of, so one of the, how do I give the background? This is a complicated thing. You know, I teach an entire semester course on this, so I'm trying to figure out how to do this one in 30 seconds. But but like other biographies, if you have two different biographies of a person from the ancient world, they'll often be in tension with each other. They'll say things differently from each other, and sometimes they'll contradict each other. You get that with the gospels. The gospel writers sometimes are at odds with each other. And so when you start like that, it's if Jesus says one thing in one gospel and a completely different thing in another gospel, if it's a contradiction. I'll give you one example. In Mark's Gospel, when Jesus tells he's sending out 70 of his followers to go out, or maybe it's 12, he's sending out his apostles. Sorry, he's sending out his apostles in order to preach the message of the gospel of the coming kingdom. And he tells them, don't take a backpack, don't take extra sandals. Don't take any money, but take a staff. You got to walk with your staff. Matthew has exactly the same episode exactly. Jesus giving them instructions. Don't take a backpack. Don't take extra sandals. Don't take any money. And in Matthew, he says, and don't take a staff. It's like the exact same saying, but he adds the negative. Don't take it instead of do take it. It's not both, right? It's either one or the other. Well, when you have stuff like that, then you know, they can't. Both cannot be accurate. So this is one of the reasons for knowing they can't all be accurate, because you have contradictions like this. But if you want to know which. Which is more likely what Jesus said. Well, to begin with, you have to come up with some reason for thinking he said anything at all. Like, this is some kind of historical thing. If you come, we'll talk about that in a second. But. But if you have some reason for thinking he said one or the other, then you want to look at both of them and you want to see which one was earlier. In this case, we're pretty sure that Matthew copied Mark and made changes in it. So Matthew is. Has Mark in front of him. So if he has something opposite, what Mark said means he changed it because he's. He's relying on Mark. And so Mark is earlier. But you also look and see, does one of these have, like, other things they want to emphasize about Jesus like that, you know, and the way they say this is precisely what this person wanted to emphasize about Jesus, you know, so that it looks like this person had a reason to change something. The other one didn't have any reason to put it the way he did, particularly, I mean, thought that's what Jesus said. And so in this case by Matthew saying, don't even take a staff, that emphasizes the point that you've got to be completely reliant upon God. So you can see why somebody would want to say that in the early church, but how you have to be completely reliant on God. So, like, you had a negative here, but it's less likely that somebody would say, yeah, well, you know, you do need a staff. And so, so they're, they're kind of common sense rules like that that people, the historians follow to try to figure out which is which.
- [20:51]
A
Could you give us an example of maybe one of Jesus theological or ethical teachings that scholars are pretty sure are accurate to his historical message?
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B
So the way we decide this is we, we take, you know, we take every saying of Jesus. We've got both, you know, in the Gospels, outside the gospels, take every saying, and we apply certain ways of figuring out is this thing probably reliable historically or not. And as it turns out, you might think off the cuff, yeah, there's no way to know. How would you know? And it might seem like that, but there actually are criteria that you can use that are not distinctive to Jesus. They're just how historians try and figure out what Thomas Jefferson said or Abraham Lincoln or whoever. They're common sense things. I mean, for example, if you've got, if you got sayings of Jesus that are recorded in different gospels that did not depend upon each other. For example, I said Matthew got this particular story from Mark. Well, so you don't have two independent sources for this story. You've got one source, Mark, that Matthew's copied and changed. But if you've got sayings of Jesus that are found in sources that did not rely upon each other, and it's not that the saying is the word for word the same, but it's basically, it's the same kind of thing. So it's independently attested in multiple sources. Well, that increases the probability that it's something Jesus said. Because if you found in just one source, you might think, well, the guy just made it up, right? But if you got it independently reported and they didn't rely on each other, okay, so that adds some probability. If you've got a saying of Jesus that runs contrary to what his followers would have wanted to put on his lips, that would more likely be something he said. Because you, you know, in other words, we, we, we know for a fact that people are putting sayings of Jesus on His lips. If you don't believe that, read some of the Gnostic gospels sometime. Read the Gospel of Philip and tell me if you think Jesus really said this. There's no way he said most of these things, but they're so, so why do people report Jesus saying things that he probably didn't? Because they want Jesus as the authority for the point of view that they want to advance. And so they put, they, you know, people frequently put things on Jesus lips and it started happening early on. What if you've got something that comes from Jesus that would not have been something that one of his followers would have wanted to put on his lips? Well, the reason you have that is because it's something he actually said. And, and so, you know, and so, so when you do that kind of thing and you look for all these independent sources, you, you look for things that look dissimilar. You're not saying, look, you are not saying that Jesus taught only the things that are contrary to what the Christians thought. You're not. It's not that, okay, it's not that you're saying, well, if, if he's. If Jesus is said to teach something that the Christians believe, well, therefore he did not say it. No, it's not like that. But if you want to show things that absolutely he must have said, it seems like he must have said, then you look for those things that are not like what they put on his lips.
- [24:07]
A
So based on all of this, what can we say with relative certainty that Jesus was actually teaching what was his message?
- [24:18]
B
So you look at our earliest gospels, you look for independent attestation. You look for things that followers probably wouldn't have wanted to say when they were writing these things. And so you get things, for example, independently and our, if you just. Our earliest sources are Matthew, Mark and Luke, and Matthew. And Luke did use Mark for a number of their stories, but they have lots of stuff not in Mark. And sometimes Matthew and Luke will have the same thing not in Mark, in which case, maybe they had this. They seem to have a similar source, but they also got a lot. Matthew has a lot of stuff on his own. Luke has a lot of stuff his own. Mark has some of his stuff on his own. And so you look at these independent things. When you look at these three earliest gospels, the dominant message is that God's kingdom is soon to arrive and that people need to get ready for it. They need to prepare for the coming kingdom because there's going to be a day of judgment. And if you're not ready for it, you're going to be destroyed. If you're on God's side on this coming day of judgment, then you will be rewarded. You'll be brought into this glorious paradise forever. And so people need to repent of the bad things they've done. They need to turn back to God, and they'll enter into this kingdom. And Jesus teaches this is coming soon. He indicates that his disciples, some of his disciples, will still be alive when it happens, and that his own generation will still be there when it happens. It seems unlikely that somebody living in a later generation would put that on Jesus lips, if you see what I mean. After the disciples died, you're not likely to put on his lips something that says, yeah, some of you won't die. So there are things like that that show you that he probably did teach this about the, about the coming kingdom. And so that's. I think that is his overarching message.
- [26:02]
A
What about his, his ethical or moral teachings? How does altruism play into this? When people turn to healthcare for weight loss, they're looking for real support. That's why more people are choosing orderlymeds.com Orderly Meds connects you with real doctors and access to proven GLP1 medications like semaglutide and Tirzepatide. No guessing, just a more supportive experience. And all shipped directly to your door in discreet packaging. Do your research, ask questions, then visit orderlymeds.com podcast for an exclusive offer. That's orderlymeds.com podcast. Individual results may vary. Not medical advice, eligibility required. See cite for details.
- [26:39]
B
It plays directly into it. I think that, you know, it is for a long, long time now. Many people who don't even believe in Jesus would say that he's a great moral teacher. You know, that he. He was a great teacher of ethics. And some people would classify him as the greatest moral teacher ever. Now, whatever you think about that, it is true that he taught a high standard of morality. But what people tend not to recognize, that I didn't recognize for years, was that this teaching of how to live is directly tied into this idea that the kingdom of God is coming soon. Because Jesus believed that you had to behave the way God wanted you to in order to enter this kingdom. And much of Jesus teachings is about ethics, about how you're supposed to behave. And the teaching is rooted in Jewish teaching. It's rooted in the Torah, the, The law of Moses that you. And so it's definitely rooted in that. But Jesus had a distinctive understanding of what the. What the. The. What the Torah was saying about how you need to behave to one another. The Torah itself says you need to love your neighbor as yourself. Leviticus 19:18. Jesus absolutely thought that was the core teaching about ethics in the Torah, loving your neighbor as yourself. What he said that was different from others who were recorded talking about this kind of thing, which is lots of people. What he said is that your neighbor is not just simply the woman who lives next door. And it's not just your family and your friends and your local community. It's anybody who's in need. Anyone who's in need, anyone who needs anything. If they're hungry, if they're homeless, if they're suffering from the ravages of war, if they're lonely, you should do something to help them. That's what it means to love your neighbor. And it doesn't apply only to those who are socially and biologically close to you. It applies to everybody. It even applies to your enemies. You should love anyone who's in need, which doesn't mean to feel, you know, have a good feeling towards them or to, you know, to, you know, it's not liking them really well or anything like. It's not an emotion. It's how you treat others. And that was Jesus. Jesus said, do that and you will enter into the kingdom.
- [29:05]
A
How does all of this relate to the moral conscience of the West?
- [29:10]
B
Well, it relates really quite deeply, I think, you know, so Jesus. I'll tell you, I think the, the one teaching of Jesus that should be in everybody's conscience in the west is his teaching about the sheep and the goats, where, where the, the people. The day of judgment has come. The Judge is sitting on the throne, and all the nations of the earth are in front of him. And the people who have ignored those in need, whether they're highly religious, whether they're Jews, whether they're followers of Jesus, whether they believe in Jesus, it doesn't matter. Whoever out there who is not taking care of those in need is sent off to be destroyed. Those who have cared for others, who fed the hungry, given something to drink to the thirsty, who visited the lonely, who taking care of those who are in need, they are brought into paradise. They're brought into God's kingdom. That's the core of Jesus teachings. And after his death, his followers continued to follow him and came to believe that he had died for the sins of the world. They considered him to be the Lord of all, and they taught his ethics. They didn't, they didn't actually teach the kind of, the most radical form of Jesus ethics, which were, you're supposed to love others so much that you can't give up. You go to the, you, you get killed for others, you know, anybody needs you to, you'd go die for them. They didn't, they didn't go that far usually. And they didn't, they didn't sell everything they have and give to the poor. They didn't do that so much. But some did. But, but they did take on board this idea that to be a moral person and to live the way God wants you to means helping those who are in need, whether they're related to you or not. And this was not part of the Greek and Roman world. This was not part of moral ethics that you get in Plato or Aristotle or the great Greek philosophers of Jesus day. And it's not actually in Judaism. In Judaism, yes, you're supposed to love your neighbors yourself, even if they're a stranger. If they're an Israelite, stranger danger. Jesus agreed with that. And Jesus was completely Jewish in all of this. And it may be that other Jews taught the same thing Jesus did about this, but Jesus was quite, quite emphatic. It's those who are in need that became the moral discourse of the west as soon as Christianity took over the Empire. Preachers preach this from the pulpit all the time. They insist that this is how, what it means to behave. So much so that with centuries of that idea flow, you know, basically being preached and preached and talked about, it's just become common sense to us that when there's a disaster, we, we provide disaster relief. There are people hungry in our community. We volunteer the soup kitchen. I mean, not everybody does that obviously, but we feel like we ought to help others who are complete strangers to us. And that's, that's, that comes from the ethical teachings of Jesus that I think we can establish with reliability. These are the things he taught.
- [32:10]
A
Those are all the questions I had for you today. Bart, is there anything that you want to cover before we finish?
- [32:16]
B
Well, in my, in my book, I, I deal with that. I deal with all of that and I show how, what kind of interesting implications there are for things like charitable giving and, and on the interpersonal level, how this teaching of somebody in need can involve forgiving somebody who feels really badly about hurting you. You. Forgiveness is really tied closely into all of this. And so it's basically about forgiveness, charitable giving and, and Jesus form of altruism, his, his understanding of what it means to love another. So yeah, so I hope people, I hope people can take A look at the book. But more than that, I hope people can, like, pay attention. This is a good thing to. To love others.
- [32:58]
A
Absolutely. Thank you. All right, we are going to be moving on to today's bonus segment, which is Listeners Q A. And we are starting off with the letter of Jude, which I have to say I am not familiar with. And the question wants to know if you think the letter of Jude is pseudepigraphical.
- [33:16]
B
Well, it's one of the shortest books in the New Testament. And Megan, during our break here, when we take a couple minutes to get a cup of tea, you can read Jude.
- [33:23]
A
Just read the whole thing.
- [33:25]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah. No, it is. I'm telling you, it's a short one. And it's a. It's a. It's a really interesting short one for a lot of reasons. Is it sued epigraphic? They're asking this. The. The person who wrote it claims to be Jude the. And it's the. He's talking. He's claiming to be the brother of Jesus, Jesus own brother. Is it pseudepigraphic, which means, was it really written by Jude, Jesus brother? Or is it somebody claiming to be Jude, Jesus brother? And it's the latter. I want. Am absolutely sure Jesus brother Jude did not write this book. Jesus brother Jude, like other people growing up in Nazareth in the twenties of the common era, this little hamlet in the middle of rural Galilee where there were not schools, could not write Greek. He couldn't write, probably couldn't. Almost certainly couldn't read. And so, no, this was not written by Jude. I have a discussion of this in my book. Book Forged for people who want to. Want to kind of get more of the logic behind thinking that in fact it is a forgery in the sense that somebody claiming to be someone that they're not knowing full well that they're not and wanting to fool the readers into thinking they are. And if you want a full discussion where I actually dig down into why somebody did this with Jude, my book Forgery Encounter Forgery goes at some length on this one.
- [34:44]
A
Thank you very much. In First Thessalonians 5, 3, what is Paul referring to when he predicts that people would say peace and safety and that a sudden destruction would then come. Is there an historical precedent to the peace and safety mention, or is it simply specific to the Bible?
- [35:04]
B
Well, I think it's common to our experience. Oh, yeah, man, this is gonna be a great day. Kabam. It's like, oh, my God, God, really? So like, you. You think things are Peace, you know, peaceful and secure. No, they're not. But it does take on religious connotations within early Christianity, rooted in Jesus teachings that the end was coming soon and you had to get ready for it because you weren't going to be, there wasn't going to be any warning, you know, other than what he's saying. This is the warning. You're not going to have any of the signs it's going to hit. And Paul thought the same thing.
- [35:39]
A
Thing.
- [35:39]
B
He thought that people should not delay turning back to God. People should not promise to be a better person later. You don't know when it's going to come. And first, Thessalonians 5 is about how it's going to come suddenly and unexpectedly. So you should not, you should not delay in changing your, who you are and, and, and your commitment to God and your fellow human being.
- [36:05]
A
What is the significance of the phrase brood of vipers?
- [36:11]
B
You brood of vipers? Yeah. So. So both, both John and Jesus in the New Testament have enemies among Jewish teachers. And they, they're called. John the Baptist calls them this, I guess in the Gospel of Matthew, I think it is where he calls the Pharisees brood of vipers. So they're venom, you know, and you know, they think that they're like the, you know, the, the carefree, happy bunnies jumping around, you know, enjoying, you know, doing the right things. No, no, they're snakes and they're going to, and they're going to bite you. And so this becomes a metaphor, this is a, this has been a long time metaphor of people who may seem to be harmless, but in fact have a venomous bite. This continued on with, in Christianity, by the way. There was a later church father, one of the most sort of vivid and forceful church fathers named Epiphanius, who was witty but also like really went for people. And he, he wrote an entire book called the Panarion. The word Panarion is, it's an attack on heretics, on false Christian teachers. And Panarion means medicine chest, because he is providing the antidote that you need for the venomous bites of these heretics. So, so the brood of vipers that gets applied to the Pharisees in the New Testament, John and Jesus goes after them as well, is picked up then later as well.
- [37:47]
A
The teaching of the historical Jesus was that the end was near and you should turn around, adhere to the law and care for your fellow Jews. But when Paul joined the Jesus sect just a few years after Jesus death, he was kind of giving a completely different teaching. Now you should believe in Jesus as a person. He paid the redemptive price. How did this significant switch in teaching come about so swiftly? And who made the switch?
- [38:12]
B
Well, it's a great question. And earlier when you asked me what was what I thought was my most significant online course, I said the great divides, the Paul and Jesus, the great divide course. And that's what the. The course is about, is just this question. This is one of the key issues. Jesus believed that if you did what God wanted you to do, not just Jews, by the way, I think Je Gentiles as well. He thought Gentiles would enter into God's kingdom if they took care of those in need. That's not what the early Christians said, even before Paul. This is the reason for the by the way, one of the main reasons for thinking that Jesus really did tell this parable of the sheep and the goats. Because people either are brought into the kingdom or sent to destruction based on how they behaved toward other people, not based on whether they believe in Jesus. That's not something that Christians would make Jesus say later. They all thought that you had to believe in Jesus. And so this is something Jesus really said. Paul is most famous for having advanced this idea. You've got to believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus to have salvation. It's not probably what it's not. It's not what Jesus taught. Paul, though, did not invent it himself. This is not Paul's innovation. Paul was persecuting Christians before he became a Christian precisely for saying this. So it started out before Paul. My view is it started out right away after Jesus death. Once his followers came to think he got raised from the dead, his disciples, some of them started realizing it didn't make any sense that God's chosen one was crucified because he was God's chosen one. Surely God would bless him him. And going to a cross is not blessing. And so why did God allow that? Or rather, why did God make it happen? It must have been to be a sacrifice. Christ had to sacrifice himself for us. I think right away the early followers of Jesus started talking in terms of an atonement, that Jesus death was an atonement. Paul picked up that ball and ran with it. But he didn't. He's not the one who, you know, he was not the one who started talking it.
- [40:22]
A
And final question for today, we're going to Revelation as I promised. In Revelation 11:18, it says the time has come for judging the dead and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and your people who revere your name, both great and small, and for destroying those who destroy the Earth. What does this mean? And does it really refer to climate change?
- [40:43]
B
No, it does not. Destroy the Earth means those who've wreaked havoc over the planet, which means they've hurt people. And, and so it's not. It's not. You know, look, in the ancient world, people had no concept of climate change, period. In the, in the way. In the way we do very seriously do now. So despite that, in my book Armageddon, which my, my more recent popular book where I talk about the Book of Revelation, most of my book, Armageddon is trying to explain what, what the Book of Revelation is really about, about, as opposed to what people typically say it's about. And I point out in the book the relevance of understanding Revelation for climate change issues, because it has been relevant. The Bible's been relevant for climate change discussions. It's interesting how people have taken the Bible. Some people take the Book of, of Revelation to indicate that it doesn't matter what we do to the environment because Jesus is coming back soon anyway, so why worry? In fact, this is a very common view among evangelical Christians. It's well documented. There have been polls taken of evangelical Christians that many of them think, look, the end's coming soon. It doesn't. We can do anything we want to the planet. There are other Christians, including now, especially with younger evangelicals, very hopeful move, where they're saying, no, God gave us as stewards of this planet. And when God comes to intervene and on Earth, it's not that he's going to destroy the planet, the planet's still going to be here. He's going to bring a kingdom to this planet. But if God created this world and he cherishes this world, we should take care of this world. And so it's interesting, the Book of Revelation has been used, and I think correctly, to show that, that this author would be against the idea of wreaking havoc on our own planet. But this verse itself is not talking about that. I don't think this verse is talking about how people have destroyed, you know, destroyed the earth, not in terms of carbon emissions, but in terms of doing violence to people.
- [43:00]
A
Thank you very much. Now, Bart, before we finish for the week, could you remind us what we spoke about today?
- [43:07]
B
Well, we were talking about how. How is it that scholars can speak confidently about what Jesus actually said and did. Did in this case especially what he said? There are large controversies among scholars, there are differences among scholars, but most agree that you can get back to what some of the core teachings of Jesus. And it absolutely looks like one of his core teachings, if not the core teaching had to do with how you're supposed to take care of other people who are in need. You're supposed to love them. Not in a in an emotional sense, although we do that too. But what you're supposed to help them and that that is a core teaching of Jesus that I think we can establish as historically reliable audience.
- [43:46]
A
Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don't miss future episodes. Remember that you can use the code MJ podcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.bartehrman.com. misquoting Jesus will be back next week and we are going to be having an audience Q and A extravaganza focusing on Easter topics. So Jesus, death and resurrection, mainly. Bart doesn't know what I'm asking him. He's not going to. It's going to be a delightful surprise for everyone.
- [44:17]
B
Right. Well, I I may urge you to cut that that answer out, but I don't think my the editor ever video editor ever does that. Just leave the dumb answers.
- [44:27]
A
Okay, make sure you join us then. Thank you all and goodbye. This has been an episode of Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. We'll be back with a new episode next Tuesday, so please be sure to subscribe to our show for free on your favorite podcast listening app or on Bart Ehrman's YouTube channel so you don't miss out. From Bart Ehrman and myself, Megan Lewis, thank you for joining us.