← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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- [00:00]
A
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B
when I say reincarnation, your first thought probably isn't Christianity, but believe it or not, reincarnation was a theological concept for some early Christians. How does what early Christians taught about reincarnation differ from what we as modern people understand it to be? Was it a common idea? Or did those who espoused it receive pushback and censorship from their fellow Christians? And why isn't reincarnation still a Christian concept? Stay tuned for all of that and so much more. 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. Many people in the modern Western world view reincarnation as a belief predominantly from Eastern religions, especially Buddhism and Hinduism. Today we're going to be talking about ideas of reincarnation in early Christianity and Origin of Alexandria, one of the concept's main proponents in the Christian world. Before we get into that though, Bart, how are you doing today?
- [01:47]
A
Yeah, I'm doing all right. When this airs, we will have finished our new insights into the New Testament conference and we're moving on now to other things. So this online course thing, the courses on Christian origins is going great guns and it's very exciting. So I'm doing pretty well. Very pumped about the conference. How are you doing?
- [02:07]
B
Yeah, I am okay, thank you. I am currently battling a cat who wishes to headbutt the microphone, which is adorable but not very helpful for recording purposes. But no, I'm good. I'm good. And you're finishing up organizing one conference. I'm about to start organizing another. We're just starting to contact speakers and things for our third hit points in history, Archaeo Gaming Conference, which happens in March, April time. So yeah, we're starting to ramp up organization stuff now.
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A
Wow. Okay. Yeah, no conferences. Yeah. Okay.
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B
They take a lot of work. People are. I didn't realize at least, but they take a lot. Yeah, but reincarnation, is this something that you have really talked about or thought about a lot before. Now, is this something that comes up a lot when you're talking and teaching about early Christianity?
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A
Yeah, it does. And it came up the other day, actually, but not because of my teaching. I was actually watching one of my favorite movies, Bull Durham, when I moved to Durham, North Carolina. I had just seen Bull Durham, which is, you know, this Kevin Costner movie, and Susan Sarandon. And it's my favorite baseball movie of all time. It's great, it's a great movie. But. But in this Annie who Susan's random place is going on. She's always going on these kind of her ideas about things. And she starts telling Crash Davis, which is the figure that Kevin Costner plays, about her reincarnation states, you know, and she starts talking about what famous people she had. And he just kind of said, finally he says, why is that whenever anybody's reincarnated, it's always from somebody who is famous? Why? Why not just like just some average person? Because surely most people who are average be like, nobody ever heard of, why is everybody somebody famous? And it's. It is one of those kind of typical responses that people have. But, you know, yeah, no reincarnate people. People subscribe to it and I, I hear about all the time and I have dealt with it actually on an academic level.
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B
So why do you think reincarnation and early Christianity is an important thing to talk about?
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A
Well, the views of the afterlife in early Christianity are one of its most distinctive features. The place I talk about reincarnation is in my book Heaven and Hell, where I'm trying to explain different views early Christians had about the afterlife. And this was one of the views. I know Christians today, not many, but I know some Christians who still believe in some form of reincarnation. And as we're going to see, this actually is a widespread view at some time, times and places. Never the majority view, but it's fairly widely held at some times in Christianity. Oddly enough, in the ancient world.
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B
Was reincarnation a common view or was it somewhat unusual in the Greek and
- [04:48]
A
Roman worlds that I focus on? So the kind of the foundation of our culture, it was never the prevalent view at all, but it had been around for a long time by the time Jesus came along. I think the person normally attributed with first really kind of pushing it as on intellectual grounds was the Greek philosopher Pythagoras. I mean, we're talking before Socrates, so we're talking like 500 years or so before Jesus. And then you have Greek philosophers who state it. And it's actually in Plato. There's. In Plato's largest book, the Republic, in book 10, he has a figure who comes back from the dead to explain what he's seen. And he describes how people get rewarded or punished. Then they come back to have a second shot at it, then a third shot, and it just goes on like that. And even in Roman circles, where you might not expect it as much because they aren't quite as philosophically oriented, but Virgil in the Aeneid has an account of reincarnation in his description of the afterlife. And so it was very much in the air in various different kinds of groups, but it was never the majority of you. Most pagans, people who were polytheists, didn't believe in any afterlife. They thought that you died in the end of the story. And those who did believe in some kind of ongoing existence tended to think that everybody went to Hades and they didn't. There wasn't much to do down there, but they didn't come back. And Jews didn't believe in reincarnation, by and large, and a few did, but. So, yeah, it was never a majority view.
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B
Do any of these ancient concepts of reincarnation differ substantially from what we might understand the word to mean today?
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A
The basic concept is similar, which is that you're living now and you lived before this, and when you die, you'll come back as a different person. Most of them also think that how you live now will determine how you come back then. Some of these views that we saw written evidence of in Greek sources, for example, maintain that you could come back as a human being in really good circumstances if you've been good in this life, and really horrible circumstances if you've been bad in this life. But, you know, you can also come back as some other kind of animal. And, you know, if you're not really a good person, you might come back as a slug or a cockroach, you know, or you can come back as a plant, you know, you may end up being a toadstool next time around. And so in most of these systems, the idea is that you're going to get a chance for the next life. And so what you do in this life is going to affect what happens in your next life. In almost all these systems, it's an incentive to live properly, to live a good life. Not a life where she's all about pleasure. Not good in that sense, but good in the sense that you're doing good and being a good person.
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B
Thank you. We are going to Take a brief break, but when we come back, we'll be looking at specifically Christian ideas of reincarnation. Think you've got Jesus parables all figured out? Think again. These aren't just simplistic, moralistic tales. They're some of the most enigmatic and provocative teachings in all of scripture. But if you're only seeing them through a modern lens, you're missing half the story. Rediscover these stories as they were originally understood in their historical and cultural context with New Testament and Jewish studies scholar Dr. Amy Jill Levine. In her intriguing course, the Parables of Jewish Insights into Gospel Ethics, Humor and Provocation, you'll explore the teachings of Jesus, examining the social, ethical and economic implications that are often overlooked to today. If you're ready to dive into the real meaning behind the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, and more, this four lecture series will take you deeper than you've ever gone before. Visit barterman.comparables that's P A R A B L E S to learn more or sign up today. And don't forget to use discount code mjpodcast for a special offer. So if reincarnation was maybe not a common idea in the ancient world, but did definitely exist, did any Christian, early Christian groups or thinkers believe in it? And do you also see competing ideas about reincarnation within early Christianity?
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A
So if we're talking about earliest Christianity, that would be the period of the New Testament. And in that period, basically the New Testament are the books we have. But oddly, one would not expect this. But there are some passages in the New Testament that can be taken to support the idea of reincarnation. For people who know their Bibles, these are fairly familiar passages, but you just don't think about them this way. When Jesus shows up on the scene, King Herod wants to know who he is and other people want to know who he is. And Jesus knows people are wondering who he is. And so he asks his disciples, who do people say that I am? Well, some people say that you're Elijah come back from the dead. And some people say you're the John the Baptist. This is after John the Baptist was dead. So wait, how does that work? Exactly? So these would be Jews thinking that he's Elijah means Elijah has come back to life as Jesus. Well, that's reincarnation. That's a passage in another passage in the Gospel of John, which was written later. But the Jewish leaders come up to John the Baptist and they say, who are you? And he denies that he's Elijah. So Again, you have this idea, Elijah's coming back again or something. But in some ways, the most interesting one is in the Gospel of John, a passage that I studied for decades before this had ever been pointed out to me. There's a man in chapter nine of John who was born blind that Jesus is going to heal. And the disciples see the man and they ask Jesus, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be blind. Wait a second. How could this man have sinned so that he was born blind? He'd have to be. Have to have sinned before he was born. So the question presupposes reincarnation. So those are three passages anyway, that it's not that they had a full fledged understanding of reincarnation, but it does show that people were kind of thinking that someone might come back as someone else.
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B
Do we see any maybe Christian sects or groups who kind of take this reincarnation idea and really embrace it?
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A
Well, there are, and we don't have a lot of groups, but the one we know best, this is a group mentioned in Irenaeus. So Irenaeus is this church father writing around 180 or 185. So, you know, about a century after most of the New Testament was written. He was the bishop of the Church of Gaul in Lyon, which is France. Lyon, France is where he. France was called Gaul then he was the bishop of Gaul, prolific writer. We have five books of his attacking heretics, and the books together are called Against Heresies. He talks about one group in particular that believes in reincarnation. They're called the Carpocrations. They're called Carpocrations because the guy who founded this sect was named Carpocrates. And so apparently Carpocrates taught, or his followers anyway, taught that this world is an evil place and that we are trapped here because we are actually spiritual beings who are trapped in our bodies and we have to escape our bodies so that we can have salvation. And so Irenaeus is painting Carpocrates and his followers, the Carpocrations as Gnostic Christians who believe that the material world is evil and that needs to be escaped. But Carpocrates had a particular slant on this, which was that in order to be liberated from your body, your body has to have every possible human experience before you can be liberated from it. And Irenaeus interpreted this in sexual terms, that the carpal creations are saying you have to have every conceivable sexual experience before you can escape your body. And irony says that they're actually, you know, practicing this and kind of engaging in this during their worship services as part of the ritual. Because, you know, look, the goal of salvation is to get out of your body. So, you know, you got to experience everything. So, okay, here's the list. Like, oh my God. So the thing is, you know, we, we don't know if that's right. We kind of doubt, in fact, we really doubt that that's right. But it's what irony was imagining these people were saying anyway. And may. Maybe he was right. Maybe.
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B
Thank you. Now, who was Origen of Alexandria and how does he enter into this reincarnation conversation?
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A
Yeah, Origen is the key figure. We've talked about Origen a little bit before on the podcast. The short story is that Origen was the most important and historically significant theologian of Christianity for the first 300 years of Christianity. He was an incredibly intellectual Christian. He was from Alexandria, Egypt. He grew up in the church there. His father had been martyred and he became a church leader there of sorts. He wasn't like a bishop of the church. He was an intellectual who was involved in educating Christians in Christian philosophy. And so he was a philosopher and a theologian and an extremely prolific author. Wrote thousands of things and we don't, we don't have nearly everything that he wrote. And a lot of what we've written, he's written so much. We have a lot of. It's not even translated into English. You have to read Latin and Greek to read a lot of it because just so much, nobody's got around to translating this. He was the first Christian that we know of who tried to organize Christian thought into a systematic understanding of what the faith was all about. We have a kind of a precis of this in. He's got a four volume book we have called On First Principles where he lays out major aspects of his theological system. So that's who he was. He was living in the early, mainly in the early to mid third century. He was especially riding around the 220s, 230s, 240s. He was martyred, ended up being arrested during a persecution in the year 251 and died of the torture that he underwent then. So that's who he is, basically a very major early Christian theologian before the Council of Nicaea, before any of that.
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B
So what did he teach about reincarnation?
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A
So in his day, Origen was understood to be a leading spokesperson for the proto Orthodox group or the Orthodox Christians. He was opposed to gnostics. He's opposed to people who believed he had to keep the Jewish law. He was Christians he's opposed to, groups that later came or during his day were declared heretical. He did have what were considered the orthodox views of the time, but he was trying to figure out things that were on the margins of the majority Christian beliefs as he understood them. So Christians agreed that there's one God. They agreed that Jesus was his son. God had created the world. Jesus was the son who became incarnate, who became a human, who died for the sins of the world, was physically raised from the dead. Origin knew all of these things. He agreed to a lot of things, but there's so many things that need to be explained that are not just kind of the central teachings. And so a lot of his theologizing was about these other kinds of themes. And one of the themes that he was really interested in was the question of how it is that God could be sovereign over the entire world. Like God could be Lord, he could be almighty, and that he could have a world where some people could perennially disobey him. Because if God's will is to save the world, then eventually everybody has to agree with him. Because God certainly want his will is to save the world. Well, how can that happen? Because people die in their sins. And so Origen developed the idea that people here on earth, the spirits of people, actually go way back. He believed in the pre existence of the soul. In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth and he created the angels, he created millions of souls. And these souls sole function was to worship God. You know, that's why God created them, so they would worship him, they'd live in eternal bliss worshiping him. But there was a fall. Much like people think about the fall of Satan today, that he used to be an angel who became an evil figure. These other souls kind of followed suit and they all fell from the divine realm and they became humans. And the goal of these humans is to return back to the bliss of worshiping God forever. But most people don't get it. In this life, most people don't turn back to God, they die. Well, God doesn't give up on them. And so what ends up happening in Origen's understanding of things is that this world we live in now, this age we live in now, is one age, but there will be thousands and thousands of ages. And everyone will come back. Everyone will come back until they recognize the truth of God and they turn to God and then are saved. So God's patient, He's got infinite amounts of time. There'd be need to be, there could be Infinite number of ages, eventually everybody's going to get it. And so until you get it, you get reincarnated. And so reincarnation happens and happens and happens until in the end everybody gets saved.
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B
How widely accepted were these ideas? I knew you said that he was a member of the Proto Orthodoxy, which is what developed into what we would recognize as modern Christianity. We obviously don't have reincarnation, generally speaking. So was this something that was accepted by the rest of the Proto Orthodoxy or not so much.
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A
It wasn't accepted by the rest of the Proto Orthodox community, but it was accepted by a lot of people, including some famous theologians of the 4th and 5th centuries who continued to subscribe to these views. Actually, the end of the third and into the fifth centuries and some were famous. There's a group of theologians who are called the Cappadocian Church fathers in the 4th century, and they helped develop what ends up becoming the doctrine of the Trinity. And one of them, named Gregory of Nyssa, was a very strong advocate of Origen's views and maintained that in fact reincarnation is right. This became a very big issue over time. It ends up getting rejected, vehemently rejected. It ends up being rejected because when Origen said everyone's going to get saved, he meant everyone, including the devil. And that was too much for people later, like St. Augustine, man, he was all over that. So Origen ended up being declared a heretic over a century after his death. But during his day it was a plausible view because there weren't, you know, smart views, made sense and made sense of a lot of things and a lot of people accepted, including theologians.
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B
Did people have other problems with this view of reincarnation apart from the devil being saved, or was that really the sticking point?
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A
Well, that was the major sticking point. I mean, it's kind of like if you're a presidential candidate and you've got a hundred really good points, but like there's one thing they can stick you on. You know, it's just like that one thing is like just it derails you. And so it's kind of like that with some theologians. You know, they've got like everything is just really quite amazing. They have this one view, they oh my God, no. So is mainly that, but also I think the idea of the pre existence of the soul was considered to be problematic. It's a related thing. But you know, if we pre exist, I mean really, I mean, and there are biblical passages that would suggest that in fact everything came into existence at one time, that God created Adam and Eve and that he breathed the soul into Adam. And it's not that there were souls waiting around to come down here. And so they could point to biblical passages about the pre existence of the soul, but especially the idea of the devil. I mean, it's like today when people, people say, I think we've mentioned this earlier on a podcast, people say they believe, well, everyone will be saved because God is merciful. But then they'll say, well, except Hitler. You know, it's like there are some people who are really too evil. And it's like that with the devil. It's like, no, not the devil. But since the logic of the system requires the devil to be saved, then the whole system has to be abandoned.
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B
When did Christian theologians stop arguing the reincarnation as a Christian doctrine? Is this something that just died with Origen of Alexandria?
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A
No, it didn't, because as I said, people continued. There were followers of his who continued believing, most significantly Gregory of Nyssa. And interestingly, Gregory of Nyssa had a sister who was a famous theologian, Melania the Younger. And she also believed in reincarnation. We have a dialogue between Gregory and his sister, who is his kind of his mentor. She was a brilliant, brilliant woman who is a Christian theologian where she explains why reincarnation probably is the right understanding of things. And people like that could cite biblical passages. When Paul says about Jesus in Philippians chapter two, that at the end of time every knee shall bow to Jesus and every tongue shall confess that Jesus is Lord. Origen and Gregory and Melania said, every means every. It means every tongue. So every creature will confess Jesus and so everyone will be saved eventually. And so that it held on for a while. But in the 4th century there developed a controversy called the Origenist controversy. It's debate over Origen and his status that many of the main theologians, including Jerome, were involved in. This controversy involves features like this. And after this Origen is controversy, Origen ends up being declared a heretic. And after that, if people subscribe to ideas of reincarnation, then they have to, you know, they have to go in hiding, basically. So it exists on the margins and still does down till today.
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B
Have there been any modern attempts that you know of to reintroduce reincarnation to Christianity? Or is it, like you said, just something that remains a marginal thing?
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A
Well, it's definitely a marginal thing, but as I said, I do know Christians who subscribe to it. You know, people might correct me on this in the comments to this, because I actually haven't looked into this, but there may be some small denominations that, groups of churches that subscribe to this and talk about it. But the mainline churches, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, have all reject that. The more traditional idea has become prominent that a person lives once, you know, the Book of Hebrews says it's given but once for a person to live. And after this, the judgment. And so people tend to subscribe more to that idea that you've got one chance and that when you die, your chance is over, and then you face judgment, and so no reincarnation. I will say, though, that there is a not so much move toward reincarnation, although some people are moving that way. But the bigger move is toward some other kinds of universalism. Because in a way, Origen's doctrine of reincarnation was a way of expressing how God's power ultimately will dominate, that you cannot stop God. You might try, you might resist, but you can't. And in the end, you too will be convinced. And in origins, God's not forcing you to agree. Just over time, you know, after a few million ages, you're going to realize you're wrong because you are wrong. And so God's being merciful. But this modern universalist movement is really a lot more about that. It's not just for God to say, look, okay, you've died, now time's up. Boom, you know, okay, heaven or hell, you know, why don't you give more chances? Why not after death? Or why isn't God merciful? Why does he torture you for trillions of years for 20 years of sin? You know, it just doesn't make any sense. And so people are moving toward more of a universalist model. Even evangelical Christians, many I know, evangelical thinkers, apologists, theologians who are moving in that direction. But reincarnation tends not to be the way of doing it. And it may be because it just has that kind of fuzzy, New Agey feeling to people that it's like, you know, this isn't serious theology. This is like, you know, people who are into crystals are into reincarnations. I don't know. You know, theologians tend not to move that direction.
- [24:59]
B
Thank you very much. That is all I have for you this week. We're going to take a brief break, but then we will be back with some news on upcoming events. Very exciting course coming up. And then a Bart's Soapbox.
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A
This is Bart's weekly Update, where we get to catch up on all the latest about Dr. Ehrman's book releases, speaking engagements, ehrmanblog.org happenings and online course launches.
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B
Okay. Today we are announcing a Synoptic Gospels course which will be taught by none other than Dr. Mark Goodacre. This is going to be 16 lessons and is starting I think next week. So the week of October 7th and going through the middle of December. So actually not next week but the following week. This is for $249 you can sign up for a 14 day free trial as a special introductory offer. And I'm going to let you talk a little bit about this, Bart, because you're launching a brand new Biblical Studies Academy, which sounds amazing and I definitely think you're better qualified to talk about that than I am.
- [26:02]
A
Yeah, no, this is a really good development. When I started doing these courses online that we now call the, we just call them courses in Christian origins. Cco. The original idea, you know, like I do a couple lectures, you know, we call that a course where then I started doing these eight lectures things on a weekend, Saturday, Sunday, I'd give eight lectures. And we're, we're going to continue doing those because those are, they're great fun for me. People really appreciated these things. And so our company has grown. We're moving into new models and not giving up the old models because the old models are fantastic. But this new model is this Biblical Studies Academy and this will be university level courses spread out over a semester. So the first one we're doing is kind of a truncated one because we wanted to get one in in the fall. And so it's going to be eight weeks. It'll be like a university course for outsiders. There'll be reading that you can do. There'll be two lectures a week with Mark Goodacre, who is, by the way, one of the leading scholars in the world on the Synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. He's going to give so two lectures a week with Q and A and reading that you can do and quizzes if you want to take them. And you can take this course. And it's taking. He teaches at Duke University, which as you probably know is like ranked as one of the top universities in the English speaking world. And he's the guy I teach, one of the guys who teaches New Testament there. And so this will be like taking a course at Duke University. What can I say? I mean, so we're going to start doing this. We're going to have a course going like this. We're going to be doing probably three courses like this a year. Most of them are going to be longer. And so this one we Wanted to get in in the fall. And so we're starting it after a conference. People should look into this because this is going to be great. It's, it's present cutting edge scholarship on Matthew, Mark and Luke, on every issue connected with them in one course by one person who's not me. And so you'll get a different perspective from things you might have learned from me, but also one that is by a top scholar in the world. I'm very, very excited about this Biblical Studies academy. And I'm really excited Mark agreed to do this first course on the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke.
- [28:06]
B
And really, it sounds like a fantastic place to start a more advanced dive into New Testament studies. I mean, the Synoptic Gospels are. I don't want to say they're it, but they're pretty foundational.
- [28:19]
A
They're hugely foundational. And I've done eight lecture courses on Matthew and Mark. I'm going to be doing another one on Luke. Those are great, great fun. This is going to be very different. You know, it's one reason to have someone else doing it because it'll be a different perspective. Mark and I disagree on some key things. For one thing, Mark Goodacre doesn't believe in the Q source. He spent a good lot of his career trying to show that there was no Q so that Matthew and Luke were not dependent on some other lost source. And I'm a big believer in Q. He's a big disbeliever in Q, and so you'll be hearing that side of it. But also he's just like, he's like, unbelievably knowledgeable about these books. So it's a good one to start with. It's the first three books of the New Testament.
- [28:57]
B
Absolutely. And people can learn more@bart ehrman.com MML MML For Matthew, Mark and Luke. So that's pretty easy to remember. And you can always use the code mjpodcast when you check out for an additional discount on your first month. So go take a look. See if it's something that you think you'll be interested in. We are going to go now to Soapbox, so just stick with us.
- [29:23]
A
Take cover. Fundamentalist Christians and mythicists. It's time for Bart Gets on His Soapbox, the segment where Bart exposes the belief systems and social constructs that frustrate him most.
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B
So, Bart, it's been a while since your last soapbox. We've kind of added in some additional bonus features. What are you Soapboxing about today?
- [29:47]
A
Yeah. Well, this one is less of a rant and more of a kind of a puzzlement for me. Probably will turn into rant. Knowing me, I'm always confused by people who are highly intelligent people who use certain kinds of rationality in their lives, and they apply that rationality to everything except their religion. And I don't understand it. I mean, I understand that religion is a matter of faith, you know, so I get that. But there's still things that you're asked to believe that you ought to have reasons for believing. It seems to me they ought to be rational reasons for believing rather than irrational reasons for believing. So, again, I don't want this to be a rant, but I'll just give you an example. This is kind of what made me think of it a few weeks ago. I was talking with somebody who, in his career, he's a prosecuting attorney, so he's a lawyer. And we were talking about religion and faith issues, and we're talking about the Christianity. And he was a Christian, so of course, no problem at all. But he said that he thought that he had, you know, he had good proof that Jesus did miracles. I said, oh, I was interested, because I'm interested in this topic. I said, well, what's the proof? He says, well, I know miracles happen, so, okay, how do you know that? And he says that he was. He was in a church some years ago that had wheelchairs hanging on the wall. They're like a huge wall with a huge number of wheelchairs. And these were put there by people who had been lame, who were unable to walk, who were healed and able to walk. And so it convinced him that, in fact, these people had been healed. I was puzzled. I said, what? I mean, did you talk to any of these people who put the wheelchairs on the wall? No, no, no. But they were hanging on the wall, and they hang there because they'd been lame. The heel. That's. Well, how do you know that? How do you know that's why the wheelchairs are there? Well, that's what they told us, that this chair. Well, did anybod. Any of these things happen? No, I mean, how do you know they're telling the truth? I'm not saying they're lying, but how do you know it's not just like a story floating around? He says, well, because these wheelchairs were hanging on the wall. I say, I get this, but, like, if you're in a court of law and somebody says something, you just believe it because they say it. I mean, like somebody says this happened, there's surely criteria for deciding how things happen in a court of law. Why do you do that in a court of law? But not. See, I'm starting to rant. I mean, it's like, why is this evidence that these people were actually healed? And then I told them a story. You know, when I was an evangelical Christian, I believe these things happened almost always on hearsay. And sometimes I saw miracles happen. I saw a guy who was virtually blind healed. I did. I mean, I did. I was 19. And the next week he wasn't healed anymore. So, like, this is not evidence. So I'm not saying that people have to have evidence for, you know, their faith. I mean, faith is not a matter of evidence per se. But if you're claiming you have evidence, shouldn't the evidence be the kinds of evidence that you accept in other situations? Because it's not evidence otherwise. It's faith. And faith is fine if you want to believe these people got healed. That's fine if you want to believe that. But don't tell me you have evidence for it. So anyway, I don't know. Something about that just kind of gets me a little bit upset. I'm happy for people to believe what they want as long as they're not hurting somebody through their faith. I think that it's good to have reasons for what you think, even if it's just personal experience. It's just what you personally think, and there's like no hard evidence against it. Okay. But to think that you really are being rational and claiming evidence for why you believe something when in fact it's not evidence at all, I don't think that's good. I don't think it's good for us to behave that way when it comes to religion, but not behave that way in every other part of our lives.
- [33:11]
B
I would agree. You need some kind of criteria.
- [33:15]
A
You know, why this instead of that? If you believe one thing, it means you're choosing not to believe other things. So how are you. Is it because you're raised that way? Well, then just say, well, as I was raised that way. Okay, but then do you believe everything you thought when you were four? So anyway, yeah, I mean, I know I'm a bit of a rationalist, but it does seem to me, you know, and I'm not opposed to people having faith just because they really just. This is how they resonate with the world. And I. I get that. But even then, you can still be rational.
- [33:44]
B
Well, thank you for sharing those thoughts. I'm sure. That the commenters will have some things to say about it.
- [33:49]
A
They will always do.
- [33:52]
B
A lot of people just generally come on and say that they agree with you and they appreciate what you're doing. So.
- [33:56]
A
All right. Well, that's good, too. But they should have reasons to agree with me. I tell my students, disagreeing with me is not the point. That's in fact contrary to the point. You're supposed to come up with reasons yourself. Okay, now, before we finish for the
- [34:14]
B
week, would you mind just summarizing what we talked about?
- [34:16]
A
Well, we're talking about this interesting idea of reincarnation. I mean, do people come back again? There are arguments against that, of course, in the modern world, you know, rational arguments against it. There are people who absolutely believe it, who are completely rational people otherwise. And some people believe in reincarnation. Most people don't. But the question we were dealing with is, was this idea around in early Christianity? And one might not expect there to have been, but there was. And there were Christians, including Christian theologians, who fervently believed in reincarnation. And it became a debating point in the third and fourth and then fifth centuries. And so there probably always have been Christians who believe in reincarnation, but it never was the majority view. People sometimes tell me they think that reincarnation used to be the majority view of Christianity. It was not. Definitely was not, but it was a minority view. That's worth knowing about.
- [35:09]
B
Thank you so much, Bart. AUDIENCE thank you all 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 njpodcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses and Mark Goodacre's upcoming course over at www.barterman.com. misquoting Jesus will be back next week. Bart, what are we talking about next time?
- [35:32]
A
We're talking about one of the most interesting apocryphal works that I'd say most Christians have never heard of these days called the Acts of Pilate. It's an alternative account of what happened at the trial of Jesus before Pontius Pilate that is linked closely to Pilate's own views. We're going to talk about that one next time.
- [35:55]
B
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.