Loading summary
Transcript78 lines
- [00:00]
Megan Lewis
A BetterHelp ad therapy isn't just for times of major challenge. It's a valuable tool for anyone wanting to improve their well being. It can help you develop healthy coping skills, set boundaries and Support personal growth. BetterHelp makes it easy to get matched online with a fully licensed therapist right from your phone. No commuting, no waiting rooms, and you can switch therapists at any time. Sign up@betterhelp.com and get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com Good morning everyone. Welcome back to Misquoting Jesus. One of the most appealing concepts in Christianity is the escape of eternal damnation through the power of Jesus Christ. But who gets saved and what roles individuals play in their own salvation is something that has been the subject of discussion, debate and controversy. Today we're going to be talking about one of the earliest controversies and asking why, if Jesus died for our sins and conquered hell, Christian theology continues to preach hellfire and damnation. Stay tuned for all of that and so much more.
- [01:08]
Podcast Announcer
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.
- [01:29]
Megan Lewis
Early Christian texts describe the horrors of hell and Christ's descent and subsequent liberation of the damned. Why then is hell still an ever present threat for many Christians and how does that reflect upon the power of Jesus? If Jesus is all powerful and vanquished hell, then why are sinners still threatened with torment? We'll be getting to that in a couple of minutes, but before we do, Bart, good morning. How are you today?
- [01:53]
Bart Ehrman
Good morning. Yeah. Okay. The cheery topic for us. It's something I've been writing about lately and so I'm glad to glad to be dealing with this. How are you doing?
- [02:00]
Megan Lewis
Good, good. A little bit of a whirlwind, but very good. Thank you.
- [02:04]
Bart Ehrman
Normally, Megan, we start with you asking me some kind of question and we were chatting ahead of the episode just now and I realized I want to ask you a question. You're telling me you run this enterprise, Digital Hammurabi with your husband Josh Bullen, and you told me that he started teaching Hebrew to people as part of Digital Hammurabi and that you all are starting to have other courses that people can take of ancient languages. I'm amazed. Tell me about this.
- [02:32]
Megan Lewis
Well, it started because I have taught a few courses for community college out in Washington State Acadian language and Sumerian language, which have been very well received. People seem to enjoy them. And we semi regularly have had people asking, how can I take classes with you guys? Do you teach Hebrew or anything else? Do you know where I can take like Hittite language classes? And it occurred to me that given we both have this training and Josh has taught Hebrew, Sumerian and Akkadian for several years each and we have a very good network, I would say, of either graduate students or recently graduated students who have these specialties in ancient languages, that it would be a good idea to start offering some kind of langu courses for people who are interested and want to learn more but don't want to go through the whole university process because that's quite long and drawn out. So to kind of test out the theory, we decided that Josh should start out teaching Introduction to Hebrew, which his first class was last night. And it went really, really well. He has 25 students signed up, which is the maximum that we were prepared to take for the first one. People have been really, really interested in it. And then in a couple of weeks time we've got our friend Dr. Jill Waller, who's an Egyptologist, she's going to start teaching Middle Egyptian. And this summer's kind of our test case. So if the summer goes well, I think we're going to start adding more languages and then extending the difficulty level. So do like intro and then advanced classes as well.
- [04:07]
Bart Ehrman
Do people pay for this?
- [04:08]
Megan Lewis
Yes, at the moment we've started out at $150 per class and the way we're trying to do it is give the tutors as much of that as we can. So we're giving them 80% of all tuition fees. Taking a little bit to cover things like overheads. We have to obviously pay for an extended zoom license and advertising and all that kind of thing. So at the moment$150. And the Hebrew class is 10 weeks, hour and a half classes each week. And then Middle Egyptian, Jill's running that for six weeks, but it's two one hour classes every week.
- [04:43]
Bart Ehrman
We're giving this to me, the particular class is an hour and a half, but the core. Are they paying for the course? $150?
- [04:49]
Megan Lewis
Yes.
- [04:49]
Bart Ehrman
The whole course for how many weeks?
- [04:52]
Megan Lewis
10 or six, depending on what class.
- [04:54]
Bart Ehrman
That's $5 an hour. That's fantastic. Are you kidding me? Wow.
- [04:59]
Megan Lewis
Because we're hoping to get volume.
- [05:01]
Bart Ehrman
No, no, I get it. But you can do volume remotely and this is a great idea. So those of you out there who have been, you know, wanting to learn Middle Egyptian. This is your chance. Oh, my God. Really? I need to take some of these hieroglyphs and everything.
- [05:14]
Megan Lewis
It's going to be great.
- [05:15]
Bart Ehrman
Weirdly, I used to teach Hebrew. I mean, I was. It was really a mistake to ask me to teach Hebrew because of my Hebrew, but. But I did and, man, that's fantastic. Wow. Okay, congratulations. I'm. I, yeah. People, this would be a good one to spread the word on.
- [05:29]
Megan Lewis
Yeah, I'm not very good on advertising, but it's. It's something that will have to, I think, ramp up, I think, if we decide to do it more extensively. But if people are interested, you can go to the website digitalhammerabi.com and just sign up for the mailing list. And I'm sending all of the course information out through there.
- [05:44]
Bart Ehrman
Excellent.
- [05:45]
Megan Lewis
Okay, great.
- [05:45]
Bart Ehrman
Thank you. Thanks.
- [05:46]
Megan Lewis
Of course. That's my absolute pleasure. So onto our delightfully depressing. Depressing is probably not the right word.
- [05:52]
Bart Ehrman
Well, it's uplifting because Jesus takes people out of hell.
- [05:55]
Megan Lewis
That's true. It's very true. So this, this is an uplifting episode about hell and dampfire and hellfire and torment and all that kind of thing. So my first question that you did point out is probably not the best one to start with is what is a catapult? And this is a Greek word. And yes, I'm going to just let you go with it. What is it and why is it interesting?
- [06:17]
Bart Ehrman
I wrote a book on katabasis that came out last year and I was going to call. I wanted to call it katabasis. My publisher said, no, you're not.
- [06:24]
Megan Lewis
Absolutely not.
- [06:25]
Bart Ehrman
And most scholars don't even know what the word means. So the katapasis, it is a Greek word. It means going down. Going down. And it's a technical word that was, I suppose, invented by classicists. It was invented and the word was there. But classicists used the term katabasis to refer to a kind of story that was common in many cultures of the ancient world in which somebody would go down to the underworld and see what it was like. A living person would go down and often be given some kind of guided tour of the realms of the dead to see what it was like, then come back and report on it. You get visits to the dead in a wide range of cultures, as I've said. But the book I wrote is called Journeys to Heaven and Hell. It's an academic book, although some, you know, lay people are reading it. Some. But it's about this idea of journeys down to the underworld that are in the Greek, starting with Homer and in the Roman, including Virgil, and in the Jewish tradition and in the Christian tradition. My main interest is these Christian stories of people being given guided tours of heaven and hell that we have in early Christian writing, including one that almost made it into the New Testament, the Apocalypse of Peter, that was nearly included in the New Testament instead of the Apocalypse of John. They were very popular stories through the Middle Ages. And so Katabasis refers to this. And the reason I studied Greek and Roman and Jewish examples is because I wanted to put the Christian ones in context. And we have a number of examples within early Christian texts of people going down to hell or of Christ himself, stories of Christ going down to hell and bringing people out of hell. And so that's what my book is about. So that's what Katabasis is. And I wanted to call the book Catabasis because I wanted people to know, yeah, this will be a hard, hard going book. This is a serious book.
- [08:20]
Megan Lewis
It is an excellent book. I read it in preparation for recording today. Now, if we're looking at the context in which the Christian Catabases occur, were the kind of Greek and Roman examples, are they primarily literary? Are they used for some kind of moralistic teaching? What function do they serve?
- [08:39]
Bart Ehrman
So part of my book is trying to explain how different ones of these downward journeys functioned in their literary historical contexts. Part of these stories, sometimes they're meant to describe what it's like down there. Just that, you know. And so like in the Odyssey of Homer, homer, in book 10 of the Odyssey, Odysseus himself is told to go down to the underworld to get some instruction about how he can get back home. He's on a 10 year journey trying to get home desperately, there's a prophet in Hades who can tell him. And so Odysseus goes down, he finds the route down into Hades and he, he meets people there, including his mother who's recently died, and famous people who fought with him in the Trojan War and his prophet Tiresias. So part of it is you're learning what it's like and you learn what the Greek conception, at least for Homer, what the Greek conception of Hades was like, which is, it's not pleasant. There were no tortures, but everybody went there, no matter who they were, and everybody was treated the same. It didn't matter whether you were a hero or a coward, it didn't matter whether you're righteous or a sinner. Everybody is this kind of bodiless existence where they're like shadows. They're called shadows and they have no strength. They can't speak. There's nothing going on down there. And it's just like people exist down there in this realm. And part of the point of that is you should prolong your life, you know, because this is what it's going to be for the rest of eternity and for everyone. For the Odyssey, it's functioning in a literary way because it's trying to show contrary to the other book, the Iliad, Homer's Iliad. The point of the Iliad in large part is the importance of heroic action and to be willing to die on the battlefield for glory. And the Odyssey in some ways kind of undoes that, where it says, actually it's better not to die on the battlefield. It's better to prolong your life and to enjoy your family and your home. And so it's a different take on it. So this catabasis in the Odyssey functions that way. And each katabasis, whether it's in Virgil or whether it's a Jewish one or a Christian one, has both of these things going on to show you what it's like in order to teach you something about life, about how you ought to be living.
- [10:56]
Megan Lewis
So what is the earliest example we see of this from Christianity?
- [11:00]
Bart Ehrman
The earliest actual example we have is this book I mentioned, the Apocalypse of Peter, which was the reason I decided to write my book in the first place. I got really interested in this text. I'd known about it for many years, but. But I got increasingly interested in it, especially in relationship to another one called the Apocalypse of Paul. So just a couple words about both of those. The Apocalypse of Peter is the first one we have, and in it, Peter is given a guided tour of heaven and hell by Jesus himself. Jesus shows him what the fates are like, both for those, for the damned and for the saved. Peter wants to know when the end of the world is going to come, and Jesus shows him what the afterlife is going to be. One kind of broad feature about this story is interesting is that the descriptions of hell are really quite moving and powerful and graphic and lurid. He goes into great detail to describe the various punishments of various kinds of sinners in hell in graphic detail. His description of heaven is very brief and kind of to the point. People are blessed forever and boy, sure smells good up here. And it's nice, you know, nice weather and there's not much to say. And I guess it's because if you. If you have any imagination and you want to describe eternal torment Boy, there's lots of options available to you. But if it's eternal joy, I mean, you know, how many ways are there to describe bliss? I mean, people are blissful. I mean, they're happy. Blessed be the happy forever. Okay, great. So that's interesting. The Apocalypse of Paul I'm mentioning is because it's several centuries later, 5th century or so, and use the Apocalypse of Peter. And it's historically important because it apparently was known to Dante. So the Divine Comedy, Dante knew the Apocalypse of Paul. And that's one way of saying that this is a very long trajectory of these things. It basically goes from the 2nd century Apocalypse Peter up to Dante. I don't cover Dante in my book, just briefly, but I do the early ones.
- [13:04]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. We are going to take a very brief break and then we'll be back with more information about early Christian catabasis. But also what exactly the Harrowing of Hell is. It's the title of today's episode and I don't know. So Bar's going to tell us.
- [13:17]
Podcast Announcer
Most people know many of the stories of Genesis, the Creation, Adam and Eve, Noah and the Flood, the stories about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. But do you know what scholars say about those accounts, what archaeology, science and history can reveal about them, what their significance could be, even if they aren't literally true? Enter Bible scholar Bart Ehrman's captivating online course in the Beginning, History, Legend and Myth in Genesis. In six enlightening lessons, you'll journey through questions like did Genesis borrow its stories from other cultures? Are these accounts historical or legendary? And who were the real authors behind the Pentateuch? Whether you approach Genesis as a believer, a skeptic, or simply a seeker of knowledge, this course will challenge your understanding of these ancient narratives. It's a unique opportunity to navigate the complexities of the Bible's most famous book. Don't miss out on this intellectual adventure. Visit barterman.com Genesis to learn more or sign up today and be sure to use discount code mjpodcast for a special discount.
- [14:29]
Megan Lewis
So as I mentioned before our break, the episode is called the Harrowing of Hell. What is that?
- [14:37]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, well, harrowing is not a word we use very much, except for, like, you have a harrowing experience. And it isn't quite the same thing with this. The harrowing of Hell is the traditional way of referring to the idea that Jesus, between the time of his death and his resurrection, went down to the underworld to Hades. The issue that arose for early Christians was that Jesus died on a Friday afternoon and he Got raised from the dead on a Sunday morning. And where was he in the meantime? Was he just kind of lying non existent in the grave? Did he go to heaven for a while? And early Christians started reasoning that he was human, he was fully human, and to be fully human he had to go to the realm of the dead like humans do. Since he hadn't been raised yet, people were not in heaven yet. And so where did he go? He went to Hades. And so what was he doing there? And the harrowing of hell is the idea that he takes people out of hell and then can introduce them to heaven. He takes them to heaven. It's a very interesting topic. I devoted an entire chapter to it in my book, as you know, because in a sense it's a catabasis, because it's a narration of somebody going down to the realm of the dead and doing something there. But there were multiple Christian traditions about what Jesus was doing and what the effect was. In very broad terms, the herring of hell can cover a range of ideas. But either is going down there to preach to the dead, the salvation that he's just brought, or he's going down there to show the power of God over death and the devil. And so he's either going down there to manifest power by destroying hell and the devil, or he's going down there to preach. And the question is for both the preaching and the power, whether it involves only some people down there or everybody down there. Is Jesus going down to preach to the patriarchs of Israel, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? They can't be in heaven because Jesus hasn't died yet. They're down in Hades. Does he go down there and tell them that he's come now and he can deliver them if they'll repent and follow him? Or is it all of the righteous of Israel or is it all of the righteous Jews and Gentiles that he preaches to? Does he preach to everybody? Righteous are unrighteous and everybody's given a chance, Everybody's given a chance. Can everybody go to heaven then? I mean, who would refuse? And so there's that. Or if it's power, is it limited power in order to intervene for the righteous? Or is it absolute power where he just destroys hell and takes everybody back to heaven? These are issues that were debated in early Christianity. And you have, you have different catabases, different accounts of Jesus journey to the underworld to map out one of those views or another.
- [17:24]
Megan Lewis
Seems like a lot of variation possible with an awful lot of theological implications in there.
- [17:29]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, absolutely. I Mean, it's a basic question that actually is found in the New Testament, although many people don't realize this, but in the New Testament there are passages that claim that Christ's death and resurrection were so powerful that everybody will be saved. The Apostle Paul says this in a couple places, but there are other places that obviously are the opposite, that, you know, you have to repent and believe in Christ in order to be saved. And if you don't, you're going to be in hell forever. So which, you know, which is it? That was the debate in early Christianity. These cadaves reflect the debate.
- [18:02]
Megan Lewis
Now we don't really have time to go into all of the different nuances and all of the different texts that kind of deal with this. So I was wondering if we could talk a little bit about the Gospel of Nicodemus, which is one of the ones that gets into this a bit. What is this gospel and what does it describe?
- [18:16]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, no, this is a great gospel that people don't know. It used to be really kind of hard to get a translation of it in English, So most people don't know it, haven't read it. I included in this book that I did with my colleague Zlakoplasia, that is called the Other Gospels. So I translated it. It's in both Latin and Greek versions. I think I translated the Greek version of it so people can see what it is. It was the most popular account of Jesus harrowing of hell throughout the Middle Ages. Hundreds of manuscripts of this in both Greek and Latin. The Gospel of Nicodemus is called that because it's allegedly an account by Nicodemus, the figure who shows up in the Gospel of John, a Jewish teacher to whom Jesus says, you must be born again. That guy in chapter three of John. This is an account allegedly that he wrote down of an account given of what Jesus did between his death and his resurrection. I need to say the Gospel of Nicodemus actually begins with the trial and the death of Jesus. That part is called the Acts of Pilate, which is very interesting on its own, but that originally circulated this alternative account of Jesus trial before Pilate told from Pilate's perspective. But then in about the 6th century, somebody added this harrowing of hell narrative. And what it is is Jesus dies on the cross and he goes down to hell. And it's a description of what happens. And it's a fascinating description in part because before he shows up, Satan is down there with hell and hell is personified. In other words, hell is this being who can speak and Hell starts telling Satan that he's really ticked off at Satan because he allowed Jesus to be crucified. Why did you have Jesus get crucified? And he said, why not? I mean, of course, you know, it's, you know, I wanted to kill the Son of God. He says, yes, but he's going to come down here. He's going to destroy us. Oh, he's not going to destroy us. No, he's a man. I heard him praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was so upset about it. You know, he's just a human. He's fine. And hell says, you know. You know, just recently there's a guy named Lazarus who got taken out of me. Somebody up there took him out. I think that was Jesus who did that. I think he's got more powerful, more powerful than we. We have. And Satan says, no, he does. And then all of a sudden they hear this voice says, open up the gates. And, you know, J comes in and Hades says, go out there and stop him. And of course, Jesus just runs right over the devil. And he comes in and the prophets down in Hades see that he's coming. They see a light that's coming into Hades and Adam and the prophet Isaiah and John the Baptist say, okay, it's happening now, as we predicted. And Jesus comes and he takes people out. One of the issues of this gospel that I deal with in my book is because there are so many Latin and Greek manuscripts of it, there are variations on what happens in the oldest version of it. Jesus shuts down the place, he takes everyone out and everyone is taken up to heaven. But then in later versions of it, Christian scribes couldn't handle this universalism that everybody gets saved. No, everybody can't get saved. What about the sinners? And so they started changing the text. So they didn't say that everybody got saved and only the righteous got saved, or there are variations of that.
- [21:37]
Megan Lewis
So it seems like the Gospel of Nicodemus is representing both the extreme power of Christ in that he can completely destroy hell, but also the kind of extreme of salvation in that everybody is saved, there's no one left afterwards.
- [21:49]
Bart Ehrman
In the original text, yes, the text most people are familiar with, he only takes the righteous because the later version became the more popular one.
- [21:56]
Megan Lewis
So if we think about the original version and this idea of universal forgiveness, was that a dominant theological concept when it was written?
- [22:04]
Bart Ehrman
It was a much debated concept in terms of the history of this idea of universalism. There are hints of it in the New Testament as I've said things like where Paul says that Christ is like Adam, and just as in Adam all die, in Christ, all live, he says that, well, it means all is all. I mean, everybody sins. And according to Paul, then everybody gets saved. And Christ is not less powerful than Adam, and God's salvation is not. He's not weaker than the damnation. And so you get hints of that in the New Testament. And over time, people kind of wrestle with it. Most Christians most of the time have thought that there's going to be judgment and sinners are going to be punished forever. That's what most Christians have thought. In the third century, there was a very famous theologian that we've mentioned before, named Origen, who maintained that it can't be that way because God says that he will submit everything under Christ's feet and that all things will be in submission to God. And Paul says in Philippians that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and every knee will bow to worship him. And so Origen said eventually everybody has to be saved. And so Origen's way of doing it was. He said that the age we live in now, the world we live in now, is one of many, many, many, many. And many people today get saved. And those who are recalcitrant come back. They have another chance. And some will get saved then, and then some won't. It goes on like that for a long time. And after, you know, about 100,000 ages, finally everybody gets it, Everybody gets saved. So Origen's doctrine was widespread, but it came to be condemned as a heresy that everybody will be saved. People just couldn't handle it, that idea. And that's why then you have these different traditions of a book like the Gospel of Nicodemus.
- [23:57]
Megan Lewis
So why do academics think the forgiveness of everybody, this universal salvation, was so difficult for orthodox Christians to accept?
- [24:07]
Bart Ehrman
You have explicit discussions of it in some church fathers, including, for example, St. Augustine, who was next to the Apostle Paul, the most important theological figure throughout the history of Christianity. And he took on Origen on this and he said that it can't be right because Origen thought that every conscious being would be saved, including the devil. And for people like Augustine, that's like today, when somebody says, well, everybody will get saved. But not Hitler. Hitler definitely not. Well, the definitely not for Augustine applied to the devil. And if you say that there's an exception there, then you start thinking, actually people who side with the devil aren't going to be saved. And they found it offensive. And for Origen, it was all about the sovereignty of God. Is God all powerful or not? And does God get his way or not? And God's will is that people will worship him. And so he's going to get his way, and he's not going to force people. He's going to give them time and they'll finally agree. Finally, everybody will agree. Oh, God, I was wrong. Yeah. So universal salvation has always been on the margins since the third or fourth century. But there have been people who, you know, Christians and Christian groups who thought, you know, actually, yes, all will be saved.
- [25:22]
Megan Lewis
For people who disagree with this idea don't find it very comfortable. How have they gone about reconciling the contradiction between Christ's presumably ultimate power and ability to save every soul, but also the continued suffering of the damned?
- [25:39]
Bart Ehrman
Right. This is a major tension in Christian theology and has been for a very, very, very long time. Forever. Basically. It's related to the balance between the love of God and the justice of God. How can God be loving and how can he be just? If he's loving, he wants everybody to be saved and to be happy. If he's just, he has to punish sin. And the idea developed fairly early on that people have some. Some ability to choose. And of course, you know, later you get ideas of predestination and things which create other problems for themselves. But early on, you didn't have this idea of predestination. The idea is that people have to choose and people have to freely accept God. But if people freely reject God, he's got no choice because he's got to be just. And since God, logic behind it was that since God is eternal, his justice has to be eternal. In these katabases and in other kinds of literature, you get people wrestling with this. What about people who want to repent once they're in hell? Is it too late? And most people say, yeah, it's too late, you had your chance. And other people, other kinds of catabases, including the Apocalypse of Peter. In the original version of the Apocalypse of Peter, Jesus finally listens to the pleas of Peter and the apostles and the angels and lets everybody out again. In later manuscripts that got changed because people thought, look, you know, you rejected God, he's rejected you. He's eternal, punishment's eternal.
- [27:06]
Megan Lewis
Do we see this idea of individual choice represented at all in later versions of the Gospel of Nicodemus?
- [27:12]
Bart Ehrman
The two versions that I mentioned where Jesus goes down and preaches versus Jesus goes down and asserts his power are very interesting because in both of them there's a universal possibility in some strains of each tradition, you know, if Jesus is down there preaching and he's saying, you know, he's preaching that he's brought death and resurrection, in some traditions, people can still reject him. They reject him and they stay down there. In other versions, he explains to them that, look, if you believe in me, you'll have bliss forever. Or you can stay down here, what do you want? You know, and then everybody by their free will decide to accept him. So that makes a lot of sense. The power version is like people who get saved don't have a choice. And this isn't about people's decision. This is about God. God is sovereign. It's not a matter of people deciding or not. It's God manifesting his power either to save some or to save everyone. And people don't have a choice in it.
- [28:11]
Megan Lewis
Did the message of universal forgiveness get carried through at all to any areas of modern Christianity, or does it just die out?
- [28:18]
Bart Ehrman
No, it hasn't died out. And in fact, it's made a resurgence today. That I think is a very, very hopeful sign within Christianity. Many, many people realize that the idea of God torturing people, ordering torture for people, allowing torture for people for eternity is a little bit obscene. I mean, it's very obscene. I mean, somebody dies when they're 30, and so they've been cognizant for about 20 years of what they're doing. They messed up a bunch of times and and then God tortures them for 30 trillion years when that's only the beginning. People are saying, look, it just doesn't make sense. Somebody came up with this. This isn't what this is. Can't be right. And including, interestingly, a number of evangelical Christians, Bible believing, evangelical Christians are starting to question the existence of hell and in fact come out and say they don't believe in eternal conscious torment. I have this other book, just called Heaven and Hell A History of the Afterlife, where I explained that, and I devote a chapter to this idea of universal salvation and talk a little bit about the modern period, because there, even Christian apologists, evangelical Christian apologists are saying they don't believe in hell. And there are different ways of doing it. There's an interesting book by four evangelicals, evangelical Christians called Four Views of Hell by four different evangelical Bible believing Christian theologians, one of whom believes that there is eternal torment forever. One who believes in kind of a purgatory, that you kind of pay for your sins for a while, then God let you go. And they have various views. Some people think that, you know, you're just annihilated at one point rather than tortured. And others think you go to heaven eventually. So it's still around, and it seems to be growing as people are getting sensible about, you know, what it means to call God a worse monster than him, killer, that he would torture people forever. So it's still around. Absolutely.
- [30:10]
Megan Lewis
So why do you think that this movement, this shift towards a more universal forgiveness concept is a good thing?
- [30:17]
Bart Ehrman
Well, I'm not a Christian anymore myself. When I was a Christian, I was a very fervent starting out as a Christian. When I was an evangelical, I had a very fervent belief in both heaven and hell, and it motivated me to be evangelistic. That's why I wanted to save my family and my friends and, and to get them to convert because I was afraid of their etern damnation. And now that I'm not a Christian, I realize the emotional agony that that causes some people, the fear of hell. I get emails every week from people asking me how they can deal with this because they're. They're in agony. They're just an emotional agony asking me what, how do I deal with this? Because I'm leaving. I feel like I'm leaving the faith. These are people who tend to be thinking they're leaving the faith and they're afraid they're going to go to hell if they do. And, and it's so deeply rooted in them. It's an emotional struggle. And, you know, life's hard enough without worrying about, like, being tormented forever. And I think that this universalist strain within Christianity is really useful because it just tells people that God is not a monster and God is not going to torture you forever, even if you get it wrong. I mean, God isn't like he's not like that and that God is a God of love. And I just think that that's such a more healthy perspective than some kind of medieval, you know, down there with iron, you know, iron rods, red hot iron rods being thrust in your eyes for eternity. It's so much more helpful for people to live their lives in a healthy way, recognizing that if there is a God, he's loving and he's not out to torture you.
- [31:50]
Megan Lewis
Effy. Definitely a much more positive message, I think, for everybody. Yes, thank you, Bart, very much. And we are going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with some news of upcoming events.
- [32:03]
Bart Ehrman
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.
- [32:18]
Megan Lewis
So we have another course coming up, looking at the parables of Jesus, taught by Dr. A.J. levine. Tell us about that, Bart.
- [32:26]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, you know, we do these online courses. They started out just being me doing things, and which has been great fun. I'm going to keep doing these things. But we thought, you know, why not get other people to do things, especially things that I either can't do or don't want to do. And for example, we had Jodi Magnus do a thing on the archeology of Israel in the days of Jesus, which is something I just couldn't do. I could do a course on the parables, but it's never been my long suit. And I thought, why not get Amy Jill Levine to do this? Amy Jill is. She's about my age and she's, she had a long teaching career. She's a very, very interesting person. If anybody came to the New Insights into the New Testament conference, they know about AJ she goes by AJ She's Jewish, born and raised and practicing Jewish, and a New Testament scholar. Did her Ph.D. in New Testament at Duke University and writing on the Gospel of Matthew. She is like one of the top New Testament scholars in the world. And she's fascinating to listen to because she's got this amazing personality. She's very vibrant and witty and funny.
- [33:30]
Megan Lewis
She's a really engaging speaker.
- [33:31]
Bart Ehrman
She's so engaging, and so everybody loves her. And one of her fields of expertise are the parables of Jesus, and she's written a book on it. And so she's going to do this course for us. And I asked her, would you like to do that? And she said, yeah, yeah. And so she's all excited about it. So it's going to be this course. She'll do lectures online. There'll be extended Q and A sessions connected with it. She's going to pick out some of the major. She'll talk about parables generally, like how they function and what they are and try and show how sometimes how witty some of them are and how clever, but what kind of lessons they actually are trying to teach and to unpack them in ways that people probably wouldn't be aware of because they haven't, you know, they're not experts on them the way she is. This is going to be a really exciting course. Yeah. So I'm glad she agreed to do it. People are going to be really lucky to come to this one.
- [34:17]
Megan Lewis
I think it's going to be a lot of fun. And for those who are interested, that is four lectures. The recording will be live on July 20th and 21st, but as ever, if you sign up, you will get lifetime access to the recordings after the event has finished. The early bird price is $34.95. That is available until June 29th. After that the price will be $39.95. You can register at Bart ehrman.com parables that is spelled P A R A B L E S and you can also use the MJ podcast code to get an additional discount, which is never a bad thing. So we'll have more information about that for you next week as well. And we are going to now go to our listeners Questions
- [35:05]
Bart Ehrman
now it's time for questions from listeners where Bart answers real questions submitted by misquoting Jesus fans. If you'd like to submit a question for future segments, Please visit bart erman.com Ask Bart
- [35:22]
Megan Lewis
Bart, are you ready for some listening questions?
- [35:25]
Bart Ehrman
I hope so.
- [35:26]
Megan Lewis
We have some good ones. We always have some good ones. I always say that, but it's always true. So first up is about the genealogies. In Matthew and Luke. The listener says one of their purposes is to show that Jesus is a descendant of David. However, I don't think this is as impressive as Christians seem to think it is. In fact, after 20 or more generations, it's a mathematical certainty. And you could show that any pair of people on earth are less than 20th cousins. In a conservative estimate, in an isolated population like the Hebrews, it would be even lower. So is this something that scholars have ever really considered?
- [36:01]
Bart Ehrman
Oh, well, it's something I've considered. I mean, I think in Jesus day, probably everybody living in Israel was a descendant of David. But this genealogy is patrilinear. In other words, it's father. You're not getting the mothers in there. Once you get the mothers in there, then it goes everywhere. But it's not the same as being able to trace father to son to son to son to son. And so the point of this is that he's a direct patrilinear descendant, except that he's not. This is the other problem is that Joseph is. But Joseph was not his father. And so in terms of bloodline, he's related to Mary. Jesus is he's Mary's child, but he's not Joseph's child. So both genealogies go down to Joseph, but Joseph's not related to Jesus. And so that's the problem. The other problem, of course, is that what this person doesn't mention is that in the genealogies Joseph has a different father and a different grandfather and different great grandfather. So there are different genealogies too. So there are problems. He's absolutely right. I mean, everybody was related to David, but the issue is that it's a patrilineal lineage.
- [37:07]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. Next question. Were there any early Christian sects that considered the Virgin Mary divine and worthy of worship in place of the Holy Spirit?
- [37:17]
Bart Ehrman
No, none that I know of. Mary begins to be an important figure in the early second century. Of course, she's important in the New Testament because she's the mother of Jesus who was a virgin when she gave birth. But outside of the birth narratives, Mary is never really mentioned as an important figure. She shows up a couple times, but she's never like a central figure at all in the New Testament. She's never mentioned outside the Gospels at all. And so she wasn't a major figure in, so far as we can tell, in first century Christianity. In the early second century, we start getting gospels that deal with her at greater length. The proto Gospel of James is the first one that we have, which is a second, early second century gospel. And that does celebrate her, but it doesn't elevate her to the position of a divinity at all. And so what happens is over time, she becomes more and more important. The kind of, the simple way to look at this is that in the Christian tradition, to access God the Father, you go through the Son, and to get to the Son, you go through the mother. Protestants have trouble with this idea of Mary. You know, why do you need an intercessor? But you know, they have an intercessor, they've got Jesus. Why do you need Jesus? Why can't you go to God? Well, you just can't. Well, okay, I'm just saying. So Mary doesn't become a divine figure until later, till after that, and she never becomes a substance. I don't know, there may have been some sects, but I don't know of any that elevated her into the Trinity or anything. But. So she was always seen as a mortal, even though she had this kind of. She was kind of a super mortal in a way.
- [38:54]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. Next up, how many worlds did the Christian God create according to the Bible? Was it two? Earth and life and then heaven or the afterlife? Or three, do we have paradise or Eden? Ordinary earth and then heaven? Are they all the same? And who created hell?
- [39:11]
Bart Ehrman
Okay, first I thought this question was going to ask about worlds like, you know, how many planets or something. But it sounds, sounds like so, well, God created everything. In the book of Genesis, you know, he creates one world. This is it. And the idea that, at least in most of the Hebrew authors, is that this world consists of several parts. So in the book of Genesis, if people would read that carefully, they'd see that kind of an interesting thing is God does not invent water, doesn't create water. Water is there to begin with. And so what happens is God takes the water and divides it and puts a firm substance between water above and the water below. And the firm substance is called the firmament. So the sky that holds the water from above and the earth holds the water from down below. And so one interesting feature of this way of conceptualizing it is that when the flood comes of Noah, what's happened is that this division of the waters disappears and the waters start coming down from above, but they also start coming up from below and it's returning to the pre creation state, the chaotic state that God solved by putting a firmament in there. So already there in Genesis chapter one, you've got the above world and you've got the below world. Throughout ancient mythology, the gods lived up high, they lived above us. And the realm of the dead was down below us. And ancient Israelites had basically that understanding of a three storied universe. And so it's all part of the same creation. It's not that he creates different worlds, it's that heaven is up above. That's why, for example, it looks like that's why the Tower of Babel is a problem, or they building this tower. God gets nervous, you know, and so he confuses their languages so that they can't get up there, you know, and you. And when Elijah goes to heaven, what happened? He goes up there, right? It's a. So there actually is an up. And so they don't have any conception of the universe or the solar system or anything like that. They're like, this is the world and it has different parts to it.
- [41:12]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. Final episode. On an episode of the podcast, Bart mentioned that when Jesus said the greatest commandment was to love your neighbors, that he was including neighbors, non Jews, which is was a new concept to Judaism. If this is the case, why then does Jesus berate and initially ignore the gentile woman in Matthew 15:21-28? Does this show a change of heart on having been sent only for the people of Israel? Or is this a story that was probably inserted later in time?
- [41:41]
Bart Ehrman
So I wouldn't say that Jesus is the only one who said love Gentiles. I do think that he thought that love your neighbor as yourself, that he interpreted that differently from Leviticus. In Leviticus 19, it is crystal clear if you read it in its context, it's talking about love your fellow Israelite. And Jesus is saying that love extends beyond the borders of Israel and that it applies to Gentiles. But I don't think he's the only one who's saying that. It's a very good question, though, because in Matthew 25, you have this Gentile woman come up to Jesus. It's in the book of Matthew. It's not 25, it's in the book of Matthew. This Gentile woman comes up to Jesus. She's a Syrophoenician woman. So she's from the area of Syria Phoenicia, and she's a Gentile. And she wants Jesus to heal her daughter who has a demon in her. And Jesus refuses and says that, you know, he's come for the. For the Israelites. And he says, you know, the food is for the children at the table, not for the dogs below. So I mean, basically she's. He's saying, I'm not going to help you because you're one of the dogs below. You know, I'm just here to feed the children. And she says, well, the dog. Even the dogs get the crumbs off the table. And he thinks that's a good reply. And so he says, okay. So then he heals the daughter. It actually doesn't put him in a very good light, frankly. He's calling this woman a dog and he's saying he's not going to help her. And he just happens to because he thinks she has clever witticism. You know, it's not. It doesn't put him in a very good light. But the issue in Matthew is just within the Gospel of Matthew. The point of Matthew is that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah who came to save the Jewish people, but they reject him in Matthew. And because they reject him, then the message goes to the entire world. It goes to the Gentiles as well. And this story is trying to illustrate that, that he comes for the Jews and Gentiles are going to get the byproduct, but they're not the target. And so that's Matthew's point. The question this person's asking, though, is about the historical Jesus. If Jesus thought that love your neighbor meant apply to the Gentile, then why does he do this with the Syrophoenician woman? My sense is that this is not an episode that actually happened. I don't think this did happen. Whenever we're talking about the gospels, it's very tricky because you have to ask, are you asking what this author of this gospel is trying to say about Jesus, or are you using the gospel to find out what Jesus himself really said and did? Those are two different questions and it's really hard to keep them separate in most people's minds. So I don't think the historical Jesus would have called this woman a dog, but I think it makes sense that Matthew did because of the way he was trying structure what Jesus mission was all about.
- [44:19]
Megan Lewis
Thank you very much. Thank you audience, for all of your questions. And now, Bart, before we finish for the week, would you mind just summarizing what we spoke about today?
- [44:27]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah. Well, we're talking about this interesting concept of people being given tours of heaven and hell, which you find throughout the early early Christian literature, all the way up through Dante, of people giving tours of heaven and hell. And we dealt with a specific aspect of it. Jesus own journey to hell or to Hades according to early traditions, including one, the Gospel of Nicodemus, a very interesting gospel that describes Jesus going down and saving people in hell. And all the questions, is he saving some people, all people? Is it by preaching to them so they convert? Is it by just manifesting the power of God down there? So these are questions involved with this idea of what was Jesus doing between his death and his resurrection, but also dealing seriously with the question of who gets saved. Do you have to be a believer in Jesus, us in this life in order to be saved or not?
- [45:20]
Megan Lewis
Thank you so much Bart for taking the time to share your knowledge with us. Audience, thank you all for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. And if you did, please subscribe to the podcast so 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. that includes the upcoming course on parables by A.J. levine. And the course code. Code is still valid and the website or the web address for that is www.bartehrman.com. parables P A R A B L E S. You can really tell when I forget to script things, can't you? Thank you. You're kind. Misquoting. Jesus will be back next week. But what are we talking about next time?
- [46:05]
Bart Ehrman
Next time? We're dealing with a fundamental issue. Did Paul change Jesus message? People tend to think of Paul and Jesus on the same page. Naturally they were. They we'll talk about it.
- [46:16]
Megan Lewis
Thank you all and goodbye.
- [46:21]
Podcast Announcer
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.