← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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- [00:01]
Megan Lewis
The risk of wildfire affects all of us and protecting communities is everyone's priority. At Pacific Power, we may implement a Public Safety power shutoff or PSPs, which
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Bart Ehrman
temporarily turns off power in areas where dry vegetation, low humidity and high winds meet. We understand the impact and difficulty of an outage.
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Megan Lewis
This step is taken to protect our
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Bart Ehrman
neighbors, our communities, and the places we call home. Learn more about psps@pacificpower.net wildfire.
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Megan Lewis
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. The Passion narrative is central to the message of Christianity and features heavily in the Gospels with Jesus even predicting and walking somewhat willingly to his own death. But how far do these accounts reflect what Jesus may actually have said? And how do scholars try and distinguish between the actual teachings of Jesus and words put in his mouth by later authors? Before we get to that though, Bart, hello. How are you doing this week?
- [01:19]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, I'm doing well. I'm at a point now in my I'm doing work on my next book which is going to be about Jesus ethics and how Jesus ethics were different from what you could find more broadly in the Greek and Roman worlds. I've been reading widely in Greek and Roman moral philosophy, but now I've decided, okay, I need to get serious about this book instead of just reading stuff now I'm like figuring out what I really need to read and make notes on and really start thinking about the book instead of just a pleasure reading about moral philosophy. It's a good stage to be in for me. Right. How are you doing?
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Megan Lewis
Yeah, okay. Everything's ticking along really nicely actually. I don't have any research going on for myself at the moment, but I'm trying to plan out my next book project which is going to involve a bunch of Akkadian translations. So I'm starting just to write down the sources that I need to track down and remind myself exactly how Akkadian works.
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Bart Ehrman
Is it gonna be a book of translated text? Is the book of year translations of texts?
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Megan Lewis
Yeah. So I want to try and do kind of like a fairy tale edition of some of the Sume Akkadian mythologies, because you get them retold, you get the Greek myths and the Roman myths retold so many times in so many different ways. And I thought it would be nice to try and start adding Mesopotamian myth into that mix as well, because it's some really interesting stuff.
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Bart Ehrman
Yeah. Okay, good. No, you know, translating stuff is so difficult for publication. I had no idea until I did it. Oh, my God, this is hard.
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Megan Lewis
Good thing is, I'll publish it myself.
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Bart Ehrman
So there you go. Yeah.
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Megan Lewis
Yeah.
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Bart Ehrman
But still, it's. We should have a session on that, actually, about translation, because I'm really. I mean, it's harder than you would think. Okay, well, good on you. Okay, good.
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Megan Lewis
Yeah, I'm excited. But we should talk about Jesus, which I know is new and different for us. We don't talk about Jesus an awful lot. But to start out in general, why do you think scholars of history find it difficult to know what the historical Jesus really said?
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Bart Ehrman
Yeah, well, this relates to a lot of things we've talked about on the podcast, but it's important to summarize them. When you start talking about did Jesus say this particular thing or not this, you really need to bear in mind what the issues are, which in part are that you have these gospels that are earliest sources. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. You might have sayings of Jesus and other sources that might go back to him, like in the Gospel of Thomas. But basically our database are the gospels of the New Testament. But they have differences among them. They report these sayings differently. Sometimes they'll be the same saying reported in different ways. And maybe Jesus said the same thing in different ways, but it seems more likely that what's happening and people remember the way it's said differently and they put it differently, or the author wants to stress one way of putting it or another way of putting it. And there's some things that he reported saying in the Gospels. We have pretty good reasons for thinking he didn't really say that. You have to figure out which is which. Is there anything that he actually said? And if so, what makes you think so? It isn't just a matter of saying, well, Jesus said this and then quoting a verse. I tell this to my students all the time. I say, look, we're going to now talk about the message of Jesus and I'll spend a couple weeks doing it. And I'll spend actually a week explaining the problems and how you get around the problems and how scholars go about doing this. And then I'll do two weeks talking about his teaching. Then some student will say, yeah, but in John 14:6, it says, you know, quote a verse from John and like, it hasn't sunk in. You can't just quote a verse. You have to figure out, is it plausible that that's something he said or not based on your criteria. So it's hard. Yeah.
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Megan Lewis
What are those criteria, then, to distinguish between his actual teachings and what people want him to have said? How do you dec. Well, you actually
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Bart Ehrman
decide pretty much the same way you decide on any historical source. You know, we have reports of people's speeches that go way back before. You have video recordings and audio recordings and stenographers. You know, you've got people. And so for everybody in the ancient world, if you have record of what they talked about, you need to figure out how plausible it is. The ancient historians tell us this, by the way, and this isn't something scholars are making up. When Thucydides wrote his account of the Greeks, you know, they're in a battle or something, and you have a general standing up and giving a speech. And Thucydides says, look, reality is, you know, we don't have any way of knowing what he actually said. And he said, you know, historians have to imagine what would have been appropriate for the occasion. And then, you know, they put the speech on the person's lips. And so that's certainly what happened with Jesus. I mean, when you get the Sermon on the Mount is three chapters long, word after word after word, saying after saying after saying, written, you know, 50 years later, but in a different language by somebody who wasn't there. So, you know, what are the chances? And so you got to figure out ways to do it. And so what. What scholars do with. With Jesus is what they do with anything else. It's kind of common sense, really, even though scholars have crystallized these into criteria that they talk about. But the basic idea is that you look to see if you've got sources that are independent of each other, who haven't borrowed from each other, that report either the same sayings or similar enough sayings that you've got a lot of sources that report Jesus saying this kind of thing. Then it's more likely that's the kind of thing he said, or maybe even the thing that he said. Also, you know that these gospels are produced by people who are believers, who are firmly committed to the faith that Jesus was the son of God, who came to save the world by dying for their sins and being raised from the dead. And that they want to portray him in a very positive light. And when they do that, they portray him in the light that they understand him in. And so their portraits of Jesus end up looking a lot like their own views of Jesus. If you've got sayings of Jesus that coincide directly with what Christians would have wanted to say about have him say. It's hard to know whether he said something like that. He may have, and maybe that's why Christians have that belief. But it's also possible that Christ Christians later wanted him to say things that they, you know, which is their theology years later. And so what scholars do is they look for sayings that are not like what Christians would want to say. And it's not that they think, well, those are the only ones we, you know, we can say Jesus said. But it's like if you really wanted to know things he said, he certainly said this one, because this is not something somebody would put on his lips, you know, so it gives you kind of a core to give a sense for the kinds of things he was saying. You look for sayings of Jesus that would not make sense in a first century context. Everybody agrees that Jesus was ministering in the 20s or around then, near the end of the 20s of the common era in Israel. And so if you have things on his lips that sound like some Greek philosopher from three centuries later, it's probably not the kind of thing that a Jew in rural Galilee would have been saying in the 20s. And so those are the three major things.
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Megan Lewis
Can you give some examples of sayings that you don't think are authentic to Jesus?
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Bart Ehrman
Well, yeah, I mean, so one kind of thing would be comparing what our last Gospel John says in relationship to Matthew, Mark and Luke, our earlier gospels. And so as the listeners will know that Matthew, Mark and Luke are called the synoptic gospels. That means they can be seen together because they report so many of the same events and sayings of Jesus that somebody's copying somebody. And lots of ways they're similar. They're really different too, those three gospels. They're really different from each other, but there are lots of commonalities. So those are the synoptic gospels when it comes to the sayings of Jesus, the things he talks about and the things he says in those gospels. There's a lot of coherence there among those three that are our earliest gospels. And they, as we've talked about before, are basing their information on sources that they have about Jesus, sayings and deeds. And so not just these gospels, but the sources they're relying on report him talking about certain things in certain ways. The Gospel of John is very different. The sayings of Jesus in John are hugely different from what you get in Matthew, Mark and Luke. So in just one example is that Jesus in the Gospel of John, and only in the Gospel of John, spends a considerable amount of time talking about how he is a divine being who has come down from heaven in order to reveal the truth that will bring salvation. And he makes divine claims for himself. He claims to be God. I and the Father are one, before Abraham was. I am. If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. These are very bold claims. So the striking thing is none of those claims is found in Matthew, Mark or Luke, and apparently in none of their sources. So I don't think Jesus said these things. If Jesus was going around calling himself God and you wanted to write a gospel about him, wouldn't you want to like mention that part?
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Megan Lewis
It seems relatively important to keep in your details.
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Bart Ehrman
Yeah, you'd want that little detail in there and you don't have it. Which means that none of these authors and none of those sources even had any idea he said such things. That makes me think he didn't say them. John's the latest one. And so these things are not multiply attested in different sources that are independent of one another. And they don't pass this criterion that if it's just like what a Christian would want to say about him, then so it's, it's so much like what Christians were saying about him at the time that it looks like they put it on his lips.
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Megan Lewis
So if we look now at the Passion narrative in the Gospels, before the crucifixion and, and the arrest and, and all that kind of thing, Jesus predicts that he has to go to Jerusalem to be rejected and killed. And it seems in the Gospels that that is almost the goal of his ministry. Do you think that is probably what he had in mind?
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Bart Ehrman
Right. So this is the big question, and it's a really important one. Scholars for a long time have recognized that the Gospels, all four gospels are setting up the passion narrative in Jesus ministry. So the word passion comes from a Greek word and it means the suffering narrative. So his narrative, you could define passion narrative differently, but basically he goes to Jerusalem the last week of his life and he's there for a week before he gets crucified. And so that last week is the big deal. And even our earliest Gospel Mark scholars have long called it a Passion narrative with a long introduction. And the idea is that the first 10 chapters of Mark, Jesus is doing his public ministry. But the whole point of this thing, it's going toward the passion. This is what matters to these Gospel writers. And in Mark's gospel, our first gospel, Jesus makes three specific passion predictions, chapter 832, 932 and 1031 following something like that. No, 831, 931 did. Okay, whatever it is. So it's right there. And he specifically predicts that he's going to go to Jerusalem, be rejected and be killed and then be raised from the dead. And he also anticipates this in other places in the Gospel of Mark in his ministry where he hints that's going to happen. These three places he does it explicitly. And then at the Last Supper, you know, the night he's arrested, he takes the bread and the cup of wine and says, this is my body that's given for you. And this is the cup of the new covenant, my blood that's given for you. He is predicting he's going to die and he knows he's going to die. The same with the other gospels. Matthew has these predictions as well. Luke adds an additional one throughout the Gospel of John. Jesus constantly talking about himself as having to die. He's the shepherd who has to lay down his life for the sheep and that kind of thing. So it's clear in the gospels that that is an emphasis of these gospels. And so the question is, did Jesus really predict it or not? Was Jesus anticipating from the get go that he was going to die? Did he want to die? Did he go to Jerusalem to die? Did he tell his disciples ahead of time this was going to happen? Or is that part of the Christian story about Jesus that is theologically extremely valuable but is not historically correct?
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Megan Lewis
So what then are some of the arguments in favor of thinking that these predictions actually do go back to statements made by the historical Jesus?
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Bart Ehrman
The main thing in their favor is that they are multiply attested and independent sources. Mark is the source for Matthew and Luke, but you get them in Mark and you get them in John. And I don't think John used Matthew, Mark and Luke. There's a movement afoot now, not completely spearheaded by my friend Mark Goodacre, but he's one of the ones we're going to talk about at my Bible conference. He's one of the people who's arguing now that John did know Matthew, Mark and Luke. And if that's the case, then it's not multiply tested in independent sources. They're all dependent on each other. But the fact they show up so much I think would be the main argument that, well, you know, maybe Jesus did know he was going to die. That would be different from the way, by the way, from saying that he was planning to die. That he's planning to die in the Gospels is another thing. But that's also, that's multiply attested. He's planning to die. That's the point.
- [14:16]
Megan Lewis
What arguments can be made for doubting that actually Jesus did make these kinds of predictions.
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Bart Ehrman
So this is a more complicated question in some ways because. Well, for a variety of reasons that we'll see. One thing is the Gospels themselves, the Gospel writers are intent on focusing on the Passion. And so for Jesus to predict the Passion fits perfectly well with their agendas, if you see what I mean. And so it doesn't pass this criterion that like nobody would want to say that about Jesus. It's exactly what somebody would want to say about Jesus. Especially if anybody who knows that Jesus got crucified and believes that he's the Son of God would say, well, you know, he knew about it, he wasn't caught by surprise one day. And so, you know, you could imagine really good reasons for somebody to come up with him predicting what did happen to him. So there's that, that's not necessarily strong evidence against it, but it's, it's worth, you know, thinking about like is this something likely that somebody would, would have made up? But there's actually a bigger issue I think which has to do with whether these predictions fit comfortably into what we do know about what Jesus mission was based on our historical study. And a lot of scholars for a very long time said actually this is not what Jesus ministry was about. If you go back and reconstruct it based on your historical criteria.
- [15:41]
Megan Lewis
So it, this would be Jesus being an apocalyptic prophet and preaching the end of the world rather than his personal imminent demise.
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Bart Ehrman
When you actually look at our earliest sources, Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus message is quite clear. I said earlier that he doesn't go around talking about how he's God. He doesn't, he doesn't talk about himself much. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, he almost says nothing directly about himself. He can infer some things, but he's not talking about himself as the way to salvation. When his first words are reported are in our earliest Gospel, Mark. And Mark tries to summarize Jesus message in his very first statement that Jesus makes, which is in Mark 1:16, first thing he says is the time has been fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus is not preaching about himself, he's preaching about this coming kingdom of God, a kingdom where it'll be utopian existence where God's people will be rewarded for their faithfulness, and everyone else will be destroyed. And Jesus is trying to get people to repent because this end is coming right away. And a number of his parables, a number of his sayings are about how it's coming soon. You need to get ready. That's why he tells people to sell everything to give to the poor to get ready for it. His disciples have to leave everything because the moment's urgent. You've got to get onto this because it's going to happen soon. And so that's what his public ministry is about. Knowing that that's what his public ministry is about can have a radical effect on how you understand his passion predictions.
- [17:19]
Megan Lewis
So if that is the narrative of his ministry, what role do these passion predictions play in that narrative?
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Bart Ehrman
So there are several historical things that I think almost everybody would agree with about Jesus. Everybody who's a serious critical scholar would pretty well agree that Jesus had this ministry up in Galilee. He appears to be preaching about the coming kingdom. That seems to be his mission. But Galilee is the northern part of Israel, and Jerusalem was in the southern part in Judea. And in Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus doesn't spend any time in Jerusalem until the very end, unlike John, where he's going back and forth the whole time. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, he makes a trip his last week to Jerusalem, and it's for a Passover feast. And so the Passover feast was and is this annual festival that commemorates the exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt under Moses, when God saved them from their slavery and then made them his people. And so the major, major event, the key event in all of Israelite history is this exodus, and the Passover feast commemorates it. And so people would come from around the world to celebrate. Jews would come from around the world to celebr the Passover feast in Jerusalem. And Jesus this year, whatever year it was, the year 30 or 33, whenever it was, went with his disciples to Jerusalem. And that's when he got arrested and put on trial according to the gospels, and then was crucified. And so the question is, why did he go to Jerusalem in the passion predictions? He's going because he has to die, and he knows it and wants them to know it. But then when you look at what he's doing in his ministry, that doesn't really coincide with what he's talking about in his ministry. And so you have to ask, well, are there some other reasons for him to go? And I think what most. I don't know what most scholars would say, I haven't had a show of hands, but I'll do a vote next. If his ministry is trying to tell people to prepare, like they repent and they repair for this coming kingdom, then it would make sense for him to go to Jerusalem during a Passover feast, because that's when there are going to be more Jews present in Jerusalem than any time in the year. And if he's trying to get people to repent, he's going to go there to preach repentance. He's trying to get a big crowd now because he's been up in Galilee, in these rural areas where nobody's around. Of course, in the Gospels, there are thousands and thousands and thousands following around everywhere. But that doesn't make any sense. There's no way that was happening. But in Jerusalem there will be thousands of people. And so I think he's taking his message there because he wants to preach his message. I don't think he's going there to die.
- [19:54]
Megan Lewis
So if Jesus isn't actually predicting his own death, if it doesn't fit in with the ministry that he's preaching around Galilee and goes to Jerusalem to preach, is it possible that the predictions that occur within Jerusalem are maybe closer reflections of what happened, but are a result of Jesus realizing maybe he just crossed enough lines that he may be headed for a death sentence? And he's commenting on that rather than talking about the resurrection, Right?
- [20:23]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah. So with the scenario that I just painted, what ends up happening is he goes to Jerusalem. And in all the gospels, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, he goes into the temple and comes to think that this is a corrupt institution. And he starts declaring that when God destroys his enemies, he's going to destroy the Jewish leaders and the temple. And this is what leads to his death in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, our earliest sources. So. So it's not clear to me that Jesus was intending to do this so that they would kill him. I think it happened. I think he did predict that the temple was going to be destroyed. We have other Jewish prophets who are saying that. And there's nothing supernatural about recognizing that the Romans are eventually going to get fed up with you and destroy your temple. But he did offend the authorities, and it did lead to his death, because it took a while. I mean, he did this right when he got there, and he would have gotten there a week early. Pilgrims went to Jerusalem a week before Passover to make sacrifices, to purify themselves, to prepare for the Passover meal itself. So he would have been there a week early. And according to all of our records, he did do this thing in the temple. He did get people upset. And over the course of the week, he's preaching and maybe he's getting more followers. People are paying attention more. At the end of the week, he gets arrested, and there's a very, very short trial, and boom, he's on the cross. One question is, I don't think it's plausible that Jesus is spending his ministry saying, I'm going to go to Jerusalem and die. I think that his ministry wasn't about that. It was about getting people to repent for the coming kingdom. But once he's in Jerusalem and he realizes that the crowds are not listening to him really the way he'd wanted to, he's like, nobody's coming over. But the authorities are getting a little bit ticked off and a little bit worried that there are some people listening. And this sounds kind of like a radical message that God's going to destroy the temple. That sounds like violence. And maybe they just, you know, I think they think this could turn into a problem. And so their whole goal is not to make sure there's no problem, because if there's a problem, the Romans are going to crack down on them. They don't want that. So I think it's plausible that Jesus may have expected that he had gotten in trouble. And he may have said, look, you know, this is not going to end well. He's arrested after he eats the Passover meal and taken off the next morning. He's tried and put on the cross. You know, he may have said something to his disciples like that, I think I'm going to be arrested. And that may have been what blew it up into the than his many passion predictions. So there may be a historical root in that sense, but I don't think he was going around saying he's going to die and be raised from the dead. And this was all part of the plan of God.
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Megan Lewis
So I want to end by asking a question about the relationship between history and theological beliefs. So say that you're right and that historically, Jesus never actually made an explicit prediction of his death or made any claims about what his death would do in terms of saving souls and all that kind of thing. Does that mean, theologically speaking, then, that the Christian message is wrong? And does that mean that his death was not then a sacrifice for sins?
- [23:24]
Bart Ehrman
So that's an interesting question. So, you know, it has to do with the relationship of history and Christian belief. The Christian belief is that Jesus is the son of God and As such, you know, he has insight into the future, into his own life. He knows who he is. And that may or may not coincide with the historical realities. Suppose it does not coincide with historical realities. Suppose Jesus really was a person who was an apocalyptic preacher, like other apocalyptic preachers who predicted that God was going to soon enter into history and destroy his enemies and bring salvation to his followers, and that Jesus thought it was going to happen soon. There are plenty of other people who thought that before him, and there are people who still think that sort of thing today. And so it's not an implausible understanding of who Jesus was, especially since that's the. That's the message in the earliest sources. So if he wasn't somebody who's going around saying he's God and that he had to die and it was going to be raised from the dead, but he's telling people, you need to repent because the kingdom's coming soon, does that mean that when he is arrested and killed, that therefore he's not, you know, he's not really the Son of God? And like, it was just a. It was a mistrial or a miscarriage of justice or a mistake or whatever, that therefore he didn't really die for the sins of the world? Well, that actually doesn't follow. The theological judgment of whether Jesus is the Son of God or not is not contingent on whether the Gospels accurately report his words. And I have a number of my colleagues who teach New Testament would say, look, Jesus didn't predict he was going to die, but they would still say his death is what brings salvation to us. So it doesn't mean that he doesn't have to know it historically for it to work theologically. You know, as a historian, I have no access to what happens in the divine realm, just in the human realm. And I don't think it's plausible in the human realm that Jesus was predicting this, that he was going to die for the sins of the world. But that wouldn't stop anybody from saying, well, yes, but he really did die for the sins of the world, whether he said it or not. And so I don't think this is like a death blow to Christianity at all, because, as I said, a lot of critical scholars don't think the Passion predictions are reliable, but they think Jesus is the one who manifests God in his death. So, yeah, I don't think it's necessarily a contradiction.
- [25:43]
Megan Lewis
Thank you very much, and thank you for answering all of my questions. That was really, really interesting. We're going to take a brief break and then we'll be back with some more news of the upcoming conference and some more listeners questions. Have you ever wondered where the New Testament Gospels really came from? Were the books actually written by 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 Ms. 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 and A, you'll learn answers to some of the most intriguing questions surrounding the Gospel 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 chances 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. And we're back and we have some more information about the conference. So BART online conference, New Insights in the New Testament. On September 23rd and 24th, we are going to talk briefly about two more of the presenters we have have Mark Goodacre and Jenny Knust. So Mark is going to talk about how empty was the tomb, examining the burial and resurrection stories in the context of ancient tombs, which sounds really interesting just by the title alone.
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Bart Ehrman
Yeah. So Mark Goodaker, I mentioned him in our discussion just now. I've known Mark for a really long time. I knew back when he was teaching the University of Birmingham, back whenever, I mean he was like in England. And so I've known him for 30 years or something and he, but he moved to Duke, Duke, you know, my crosstown rival. And yeah, so I was advocating for his hire and so he came to Duke. He's a delightful guy and he's really smart. He is like one of the world experts on the synoptic Gospels and he's passionate about knowing what is the source or what was there a Q source. Did John know the other gospels? Did Thomas know that all the four gospels and that kind of thing. This talk he's doing, I'm going to be really interested in what he says for a long time. I've argued that it's really not plausible that Jesus got buried on the day of his crucifixion. If you know how Romans treated crucified victims, they didn't let them off the cross, they let them decompose on the cross as part of the punishment. But in the early Christian tradition there is, you know, that he got buried by Joseph of Arimathea and then the third day the tomb was empty. Well, that empty tomb itself is a very interesting story. It's not found in the writings of Paul, it is in the gospels. And it sounds like what Mark's going to do is kind of compare it to other empty tomb stories that we get in the ancient world. And so just to kind of see what that says about it as a literary feature within the Gospels and possibly as it's, as a historical feature, what actually happened or not.
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Megan Lewis
Fantastic. And Jenny canust her talk is the women taken into how readers reshaped the Gospel of John.
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Bart Ehrman
So Jenny's another good friend of mine who also got hired at Duke and so she's a Duke as well. She's one of the leading scholars of the manuscripts of the New Testament in the country. A textual critic. She co wrote a book with a fellow named Tommy Wasserman on the story of Jesus and the woman taken in adultery, how it got dealt with and interpreted and how it influenced things throughout the history of Christianity. This is a major book. It's probably the most important book ever written on this passage. And so she's the real expert on that. She'll be dealing with that in this talk. And turns out, you know, she's also written a couple books on issues dealing with sexuality and gender in early Christianity. And the story of the woman taking an adultery is a really nice crossover if you're interested in both manuscripts and kind of issues of sexuality and gender because of, you know, the whole, the content of the story. So this is going to be a great talk. This is going to be like one of those things. Oh my God. I want, I want to hear what she says about this one.
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Megan Lewis
Fantastic. Thank you. And if any of that sounds interesting, you can go to www.ntconference.org there's information about all of the speakers, biographies, their conference paper titles. So you can take a look for yourself and just be generally excited because all of them sound absolutely fascinating. And the cost is $59.95. That's for 10 lectures over two days. And I believe you get access to them afterwards as well so you can re watch them, absorb all the amazing information and just have a good time. We are going to move now to some listeners questions.
- [30:59]
Bart Ehrman
Now it's time for question 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 ehrman.com Ask Bart.
- [31:17]
Megan Lewis
Okay, Bart. Question one. The act of the apostles is called the Book of Acts by some Christians. Is this to legitimize the New Testament by making it sound like some of the earlier Hebrew Bible books? So you've got the book of Jonah, the book of Genesis, the book of Exodus. Does calling it the book of Acts kind of lend some kind of authority to it that maybe wouldn't be there otherwise?
- [31:38]
Bart Ehrman
I've never thought about it that way. I don't know if that's the motive. What I've always thought is that people are just kind of, you know, going the simple route. Instead of saying the act of the apostles, they just say Acts. Well, they'll say the Book of Acts. I do that all the time. It's not to legitimate it because, you know, the book of Genesis is also not called the book of Genesis. You see what I mean? That's not the title of the book. And so I think sometimes people refer to books without necessarily giving the known title. The known title of the book of Acts is Acts of the Apostles. And that's a bit of a misnomer because really most of the apostles never show up. I mean, as a group, they do it in the first couple chapters, but you don't hear anything about these other apostles. You hear about Peter and John, James, and then Paul with the rest. Forget it. And so it really might be better called something like the Acts of Peter and Paul. I don't know. But yeah, Peter and Paul and friends. Yeah. So they. But they. Yeah, I don't think it's anything to give it authority. It's not my. I would guess not.
- [32:39]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. How do biblical scholars think the historical Jesus talked about sin? Does Jesus view of sin differ from Paul's view? And if so, in what ways?
- [32:50]
Bart Ehrman
Boy, that's a good question. And that would take a long. It'd take a long time to answer it sufficiently. Jesus, I think, had a fairly kind of a common understanding of sin as disobedience against God and violating the will of God. And he thought that even people who were highly religious who were doing their best to follow God in many ways got it wrong. And he would have understood that to be a sin. He thought that a person needed to repent of their sins. And if they did, then God would forgive them. That's a view Paul doesn't have. As it turns out, Paul doesn't say anything about people being forgiven for their sins once they repent. Repentance and forgiveness are not big issues for Paul. What's a big issue for Paul is the idea that Christ's death brings an atonement for sins. So it's not that God just says, okay, I forgive you. It's that somebody has to pay a price. And Christ pays the price. So that's not forgiveness, that's atonement. The other thing I'll say though, is that Paul has a very complicated view of sin. Jesus has a fairly straightforward understanding that makes sense to most of us. Paul says a number of things about sin that are not straightforward at all. And one of the ways he imagines sin is completely unlike anything in Jesus or even in most people's imagination. Paul thinks of sin not just as an act of disobedience, but in another sense. It's actually a cosmic power that's in the world, a kind of demonic force that is trying to capture people and enslave them and force them to do things against God. And so this is a power that we can't resist. It's more powerful than us, and it controls all of us. And the only way to escape from this power of sin is to be baptized into Christ. Those are baptized into Christ can escape the power of sin. And so that's why, another reason you need to be a follower of Jesus, you need to believe and be baptized. Otherwise you're just stuck under this power of sin and you're going to be condemned for it. That's something. You don't find anything like that in Jesus.
- [34:50]
Megan Lewis
No, those are very different views. Wow, okay. How did Jesus resurrection differ from other people in the Bible who were raised from the dead? So how did the apostles tell Jesus story to make it understood differently from other stories of people returning like Lazarus?
- [35:06]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, these other stories are not called resurrections. Resurrection has a kind of a technical meaning in the first century context within Judaism. Some people do come back to life after they've died, but when that happens, they die again. So when Lazarus gets raised from the dead, he's not taken up to heaven to live forever, you know, and 20 years later, or in the Gospel of John, soon after he dies again. Same with the daughter of Jairus or people in the Old Testament. When they come back from the dead, they die again. So it's resuscitation. A resurrection isn't just a resuscitation. Or a near death experience, as we would probably think of it. It's not that the body does come back to life, but the body is made immortal. A resurrection involves the body receiving immortality, so it can never die again. And that's what happens to Jesus in the Gospels. So it's very different from just a resuscitation or near death experience. And so Jesus goes up to heaven and he's still alive today. And that wouldn't be true of these others.
- [36:10]
Megan Lewis
Final question. You've said in your opinion that Jesus taught that the way to salvation was to keep Jewish law. Based on this, why do Christians not keep Jewish law?
- [36:20]
Bart Ehrman
Well, the men don't want to get circumcised if they're not. They're starters.
- [36:25]
Megan Lewis
Can't say I blame them.
- [36:28]
Bart Ehrman
Well, I mean, that's being facetious, but it has an element of truth in it. If the early followers of Jesus were his disciples, then after his belief in his resurrection started his brother James. And these were all Jews. And they of course knew that the Jewish law was given to the Jewish people by the Jewish God to be part of the covenant of God, to be within the covenantal community, you had to keep the law. And so keeping the law was important. And Jesus didn't change that. I mean, it was still the law. When God said how you're supposed to behave, he didn't change his mind later. So they continued to think that this was important. And that meant when somebody like Peter or James would convert somebody, the assumption was that person would continue keeping the law and they converted to gentile. Well, great. You believe in Jesus, you've got to join the people of God. And that means getting circumcised and keeping kosher and observing the Sabbath and observing the festivals and things. You have to become Jewish. So when Paul came along three years later after Jesus death, Paul had, he describes it as revelation that he had, where he realized that in fact, since it's Christ's death that makes a person right with God. That would be true for anybody who accepts his death, not just Jews. And so Paul came to think and realized that in fact keeping the Jewish law is not part of what God requires for gentil. Paul never talks about whether God wants Jews to follow. I think he probably thought Jews should keep the law. But sometimes he himself broke the law, as he says, and others could break the law because it isn't what really matters for ultimate salvation. For Paul, the whole spread of Christianity in some ways was contingent on this view. Because if Christianity had spread as a Jewish cult. Very few people would have joined it because people just weren't interested in becoming Jewish, but they were interested in finding salvation. So Paul preached a gospel apart from the law, and that's what convinced most people. By the end of the first century, most people were not Jewish in the church and after that, and very few Jews converted after that. And so from the beginning of Christianity, from the days of Paul, it was thought that the Jewish law is not applicable to Gentiles. They don't have to keep it anymore. So that helped and it spread and it became a characteristic of Christianity that they claimed to be followers following the God of the Jews, the God who gave the law, and they said the law didn't apply to them.
- [38:55]
Megan Lewis
Thank you very much. But before we finish for the week, would you mind summarizing what we talked about?
- [39:01]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, we were talking today about whether Jesus actually predicted that he was going to die and that he had to die. You find this prediction throughout the Gospels in the Passion predictions, where he explicitly says he has to go to Jerusalem so he would be rejected and killed and raised from the dead. Scholars have long doubted whether Jesus actually said that or if their words put on his lips later by followers of Jesus who knew that he did die and assumed that he wasn't caught by surprise. And so I was arguing there are good reasons for thinking in fact Jesus did not say these things and that these Passion predictions are later sayings put on his lips.
- [39:38]
Megan Lewis
Thank you very much, 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. Codes Remember that you can use the code njpodcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.bartehrman.com. and if you are interested in the new insights in the New Testament Conference, then tickets and more information can be found at www.ntconference.org. misquoting Jesus will be back next week. Bart, what are we talking about Next
- [40:07]
Bart Ehrman
time we're going to talk about the Gospel of Luke and the genius of the Gospel of Luke. It is a brilliant gospel in ways people don't know because they just kind of read it quickly or they read it while they read Matthew and Mark. But when you put it over against Matthew and Mark and see what the differences are, they're really quite stark and in ways that you wouldn't expect. And so that we're going to talk about that.
- [40:28]
Megan Lewis
Hope you can all join us then. Thank you so much 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 Barterman's YouTube channel so you don't miss out. From Bart Erman and myself, Megan Lewis, thank you for joining us.