← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
Did Jesus Suffer During His Crucifixion? (Depends Which Gospel You Read!)
00:34:17
Loading summary
Transcript51 lines
- [00:00]
Megan Lewis
Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you
- [00:14]
Bart Ehrman
to Mint Mobile today.
- [00:15]
Megan Lewis
I'm told it's super easy to do@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month Required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com in the Gospels, Jesus suffering is on a bit of a sliding scale from sweating blood to calmly accepting his fate. What did Jesus actually think about his own suffering? And is it even possible to answer that question from the evidence we have today, we're talking about whether Jesus wanted to suffer. We also have our bonus segment at the end, which this week is Barth's Books, where Barth is going to tell us about a biblical book he thinks we should know. Welcome to the Misquoting Jesus podcast with Bart Ehrman. Bart, before we get into the scholarly response for whether Jesus wanted to suffer, when you were an evangelical, was there a sense that choosing hardship for your faith, like going on missions or proselytizing to strangers, was something to be admired, something like a spiritual badge of courage?
- [01:19]
Bart Ehrman
Oh, absolutely, yeah. No, I knew people who sort of wanted to out compete each other in the commitment that they would have to Christ and would do so by, yeah, taking on all sorts of difficult tasks. But the idea, I think was generally that Christ had given everything for them and they wanted to give everything for him. And it meant taking on, you know, not having a luxurious life. It meant doing things that were difficult in, in terms of helping other people. Often that helping the other people thing meant, you know, actually evangelizing, maybe going to some, some country in West Africa and becoming a missionary there and, but sometimes it involved doing more kind of working to do the world good apart from trying to convert people. But it often did entail doing things that most people would not consider doing because they wanted to get a good job and have a happy life.
- [02:31]
Megan Lewis
Is there a sense that if you personally disliked the thing that you were doing, so if you really hated talking to strangers but you went out and you proselytized anyway, was there a sense that that was somehow more holy, more spiritual, better than if you were a very outgoing person and didn't really find this a challenge?
- [02:53]
Bart Ehrman
Now that's a good question. I, I Suppose it depend a lot from one person to the next. My sense is that most people would, who, who would do something they really didn't want to do would just have to kind of grind it out because they thought it was the right thing to do. But it wasn't so much because they thought that it would, it would demonstrate even superior holiness. And, you know, these are all people. And so as human beings, they usually didn't stick at it, try out some other way to do it. And so I, you know, I, I had, I, I had friends who started off doing very difficult things and who ended up having kind of regular old lives in the end.
- [03:36]
Megan Lewis
Now, I said in my introduction that Jesus suffering is portrayed on a bit of a sliding scale. So would you mind just telling us a little bit about the different ways in which the writers of the Gospels portrayed his suffering?
- [03:52]
Bart Ehrman
So his personal suffering, a lot of it is underplayed. In the Gospels. Jesus leaves his home and takes up an itinerate preaching ministry with his, with 12 disciples that he chooses. And the Gospels don't really emphasize very much that, you know, that would have meant they'd have to beg for a living or had to have, you know, somebody support them, or they, they, they probably went without food a good bit of time and wouldn't have places to stay a good bit of the time. You do have passages like where Jesus says that foxes of lairs and birds have nests but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head. Where it does sound like, you know, that that's a cognizance of his being unrooted from a family and home. His disciples tell him they've left everything to follow him. They've left home and spouses and families and, and he reassures them that if they do that, that they will get heavily rewarded in this life with other homes and parents and families and things and the life to come, eternal life. And so there, even though it's a hardship, it's being portrayed as actually, you get more, you get more benefits from doing it this way. And so I'd say the Gospels are not really, they're not emphatic about how hard this is to take on a itinerant career. In part, that may be because the Gospels, especially in Mark, it doesn't look like his ministry is that some months maybe.
- [05:25]
Megan Lewis
What about when we get to the crucifixion and everything surrounding that? How do the writers portray the, the physical or the emotional toll that, that, that took on Jesus?
- [05:38]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, it's interesting. They don't emphasize it very much, you know, in part because, you know, clearly they don't want Jesus screaming when he's being nailed to the cross or, or anything like that. Most of the Gospels are rather, they just kind of skip over it when, when, you know, when Mel Gibson's movie came out some years ago, the, the Passion of the Christ, he somewhat famously or infamously portrayed what it would be like to go. To be crucified and to be flogged. And the flogging scene in the Passion of Christ is just horrific, awful. They just, they just shred, literally shred his back. And while he's tied to a stake and he, and he falls down, but he gets up for more and they're taking all these cruel weapons of torture to him. And the thing that struck me most about that is that it's so in contrast with the gospels, where in the Gospels all it says was, you know, and they flogged him. That's basically it. So they, they, they don't go into the kind of depth, the gory details that Mel Gibson does in his film. And, you know, when he's crucified, they just stay, you know, and they crucified him. They don't, they don't give us any information about it or how hard, how painful it is. The most striking account is actually in the Gospel of Luke where in, in Mark's gospel, Jesus is clearly suffering and he's silent the whole time. He doesn't say anything. And he's. And it's, it's pretty grim, but there's no, there's no description of the actual pain he's going through. When you get to Luke, it's clear he's not feeling any pain at all. I mean, he, he has a conversation on the way to the crucifixion with some women by standing by the side of the road. And when he's being nailed to the cross, he prays that God will forgive these people. And he's hanging on the cross, he has an intelligent conversation with the person being crucified with him on side. And, and at the end he calmly prays, father, into your hands I commit my spirit. There's no pain and agony here. So the scholars for a long time have talked about Luke's account as a passionless passion narrative. And so, but, so he's taking to an extreme what you get in the other gospels where they just, they don't emphasize the pain.
- [08:06]
Megan Lewis
So what you're saying is my introduction is entirely wrong. And there was no sliding scale. Jesus is just calm and chill.
- [08:15]
Bart Ehrman
No, because. So there is. Okay, so right, there is a sliding scale because he is in. He's in emotional agony in the Garden of Gethsemane in Matthew and Mark, where there. He says. In mat. In Mark, he says, my. My soul is painful unto my. My soul is troubled unto death. You know, and. And Mark himself says that he was deeply disturbed and that he's in agony. And so you get those descriptions of emotional agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. And in Matthew, Mark, Jesus prays three times that the couple will be removed from him. He doesn't want to go through with it. And so it's again, interesting that Luke gets rid of all that. He gets rid of the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane completely. And so instead of, you know, falling to his face to beg God to let him off the hook, he. He kneels inst of doing it three times. He does it once. Mark leaves out. Luke leaves out the bit where Jesus says, my soul is troubled unto death. You know, he leaves out all of that. So in Luke, even in the Garden of Gethsemane, it's not a big, big deal. But the. In the others it is. But it's, It's. It's the emotional strain of knowing that he's going to be crucified. There isn't really descriptions of the pain itself.
- [09:36]
Megan Lewis
I see. So does he ever say anything about suffering? Not just in. In the. The time he's in Jerusalem, but through the ministry as it's depicted in the Gospels? Does he have any thoughts about suffering in general? Is it seen as a beneficial thing somehow?
- [09:55]
Bart Ehrman
Are you talking about his own suffering or the suffering generally?
- [09:58]
Megan Lewis
Anyone's suffering?
- [09:59]
Bart Ehrman
Okay, well, let me begin with his suffering, because he does. He does repeatedly say that he's going to go to Jerusalem, he's going to be rejected by the Jewish leaders, and he's going to be crucified. And so he predicts this three times explicitly in Mark's Gospel. These are called the Passion predictions. Matthew as well, three times. Luke, he does it three times, does it four times. And even in John, he predicts it's going to happen. And so he does predict this. And he talks about laying down his life and giving his life as a ransom for many in both Matthew and Mark. And so he does anticipate his death, and he anticipates it as an act of salvation. And so you have him at the Last Supper where he says. He breaks the bread and says, this is my body given for you, or takes the cup and says, this is the new covenant in my blood. And so he clearly sees his own approaching passion, his suffering and his death as bringing salvation. And so that's. He sees that as a good thing, but he doesn't minimize that it's going to involve crucifixion. He tells his disciples that if they want to follow him, they also have to suffer. They have to take up their cross and follow him repeatedly in the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the disciples don't understand what he's talking about. They assume he's going to be bringing in the great kingdom. They're going to be rulers in the kingdom. They're going to have it all at their feet. It's going to be great. And Jesus keeps saying, no, you don't get this. You have to suffer. If you're going to follow me, you have to take up your cross. And so it's not about greatness, it's about service. And service is demanding, and service can be painful, and so it's going to be painful. So he. He does assure them of all that, but it's always with the proviso that once you go through that in this life, then you're going to have glorious afterlife. And so it's. It's really more intense suffering now for unbelievable glory later. And so it's a kind of incentive.
- [12:19]
Megan Lewis
Is there ever a sense that the suffering is a necessary prerequisite because suffering itself is required? Or is it more that the things that they have to do and achieve and accomplish in order to get to that endpoint will necessitate suffering? Am I making that?
- [12:44]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, yeah, you are. Yeah. And it's, you know, I think as with all things connected with the historical Jesus, it's important to understand his views of suffering in the broader context of his message. The core of his message from beginning to end in our earliest gospels is that the time of the powers of evil are almost over and that the pain and misery of this world is soon to be brought to an end, and that God's kingdom is soon to arrive, and that the horrible things happening now are going to be terminated and God is going to bring in a paradise existence, that people need to prepare for this. And because that's his overall view, it's an apocalyptic view, that there are powers of evil in this world that are for some reason running the affairs now, and they're running the governments and running, just running society now and individually creating havoc in people's lives. These powers are in control now, but they're very soon going to be taken out of power and destroyed. And so with that, the idea of Jesus ministry and his teachings. His teachings are designed to get people to turn away from these powers of evil, to turn back to God before it's too late. His ministry is serving to show people what it's going to be like in this glorious kingdom. So this is the logic behind the Gospels portraying his miracles. It's not just he's helping people to show that he's the son of God. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, he explicitly refuses to do miracles to prove he's the Son of God. The Pharisees ask him, prove it to us, show us that you're the Messiah. And he says, I'm not going to show you anything. I'm not going to give you any signs. They're not going to be any demonstrations of who I am. But he does all these miracles. Why does he do the miracles? Well, the Gospels themselves tell us it's because it's showing the kingdom of God is near. In the kingdom there won't be any more demons. And so Jesus casts out demons now to show what the kingdom is like as it's starting to break in. In the kingdom of God there'll be no illness, so Jesus heals the ill, knowledge heals the paralytics. He gives sight to the blind. He, he, he does all of these great miracles. There'll be no hunger in the kingdom, so Jesus feeds the 5,000 with a few loaves of bread to show what it's going to be like in the kingdom. There'll be no natural disasters in the kingdom so Jesus can calm the storm. Now there'll be no death in the kingdom, so Jesus can dead. Now all of these things are embodiments of human suffering in the here and now. And Jesus miracles in the Gospels are meant to show that there's going to be a different world coming very soon to get and you need to get ready for it. And it's going to be the world preached by Jesus where there's none of this going on. And so if you just turn your life to God now, even if that brings suffering now, you'll get into this kingdom where there'll be no suffering at all. So in some ways you could say that his entire ministry was, was focusing on this big issue of people suffering in this world.
- [15:47]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. We are going to take a very brief break. I have, I believe you have an announcement to share and then we will be back momentarily to talk more about Jesus suffering. So Bart, take it away.
- [15:59]
Bart Ehrman
Yes, well, so yeah, so this time I, I have the announcement and it involves my host, Megan Lewis. This is the, this is the last quick reminder that you can get her course that she has recorded it at a special launch price. So Megan, the course is called before the Bible, Ancient Civilizations that Shaped Israel and the Bible, it's a four lecture course and you've recorded it, right, so people can, people can buy it and start watching it now, is that right?
- [16:30]
Megan Lewis
Absolutely, yep. They can go watch all of it and enjoy themselves, I hope.
- [16:36]
Bart Ehrman
Well, so it sounds like it's about, it's about like civilizations that were before Israel that actually in a way you, I think people think about Israel as being like its self contained unit, that it just. This is the, these are the people of God. They have this independent history from the rest of the world at the time. But this course sounds like you're correcting that. Is that, is that right?
- [16:54]
Megan Lewis
Yes, there's a very much the sense that nothing exists in a vacuum. And when you look at the development of Israel as a nation, there's an awful lot of political turmoil in the Mediterranean and in the near east in general. And all of this impacts quite substantially the people who were living in the smaller kingdoms like Israel at the time. So the course is actually going to be, we start a little bit earlier than that and look at things like the formation of writing, the world's first cities, Mesopotamian civilization in general, so that people get a bit of an idea of the cultural background that Israel was, was existing in and forming within. And then as we get further through the course, we look more specifically at how the Mesopotamian kingdoms and the literary tradition especially that already existed, how that really impacted the, the state of Israel and the, the creation of the Old Testament.
- [17:55]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, well, because I think most people think of the Old Testament as something that's kind of just emerged on its own and that, you know, I mean, so. But it's closely related to other literature and tied into the history and.
- [18:07]
Megan Lewis
Yeah, absolutely. There's a, there's a huge kind of sense of interconnectivity when you start to look at the literature of the region. And I mean I talked about it in the New Insights into the Hebrew Bible Conference, Just, just looking at the Book of Genesis, there are so many cross cultural references and so much borrowing of pre existing literary traditions and then reworking them to do something else. And it's absolutely fascinating. And just looking at how the Old Testament is reacting against and responding to what's already in existence, what's already circulating is absolutely fascinating.
- [18:47]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, well, look, if you take, you know, if you don't put something in its own context, even the Bible, if you don't put it in its context, you're taking it out of context. You take it out of context, you ain't going to understand it. And so this is, this sounds like a really important course to me. So just a reminder, the special launch pricing ends on June 20, so there's just a few more days to get it at its discounted price. Anyone who wants to check it out can go to barterman.com before the Bible. And as always, if you use the code MJ podcast at checkout, you'll get even an additional discount. So. Well, thanks for doing this, Megan. This is going to be great.
- [19:31]
Megan Lewis
It was so much fun. I really enjoyed it.
- [19:33]
Bart Ehrman
Okay, y' all sign up and yeah,
- [19:37]
Megan Lewis
let me know what you think. Feedback is always welcome. Before we get back, one more breaking announcement that came together after we recorded this episode. I'm really excited to announce our first ever live event. It's called the Biblical studies symposium, or BSS. And it's happening November 21st in downtown Denver. BSS is an intimate one day gathering where eight leading scholars tackle the biggest questions about how the Bible came to be capped by a live debate featuring Bart. Seats are limited to 75 and they're going to go fast. You can also get special early bird pricing through July 11th. You can learn more at bart erman.com BSS as one final note, if you can't make it to Denver, then virtual passes are available as well. Again, you can visit barterman.com BSS to sign up. We should get to or get back to Jesus and suffering. Is there ever a sense that Jesus is welcoming his own suffering because of the, the end result?
- [20:50]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, I think, in fact that's, I think that's the message you get in the Gospels. It's not that he. It's not that he wants to suffer. He, you know, whatever, whatever the gospel writers think about his, his divinity, they certainly think of him as a human who has human emotions. And he, he at points is, in Matthew and Mark especially, he's terrified of the suffering. But he, he. He wants to do it in the sense that he knows that this is God's will and that he has to do it. And so, so he does it. And so he. The gospels repeatedly emphasize that he's. This is the point of his coming. And so in the Gospels, this is g. This is what Jesus says. This is what he. This is why he's here. He's here to do his ministry, but he's especially here because he needs to die. And he needs to die in a painful way. And he needs to die because that will. That will bring salvation to everyone else.
- [21:50]
Megan Lewis
Do any of the Gospels ever show him as being resistant to his suffering or his death or somehow trying to avoid it?
- [22:00]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah.
- [22:01]
Megan Lewis
So
- [22:03]
Bart Ehrman
he embraces it throughout. I mean, beginning from the very beginning. He embraces it. I mean, just one example, by the way, of him embracing very early in the Gospels, the first thing before he even starts his ministry in Matthew, Mark, Luke, he goes into the wilderness and is tempted by the devil. And so Matthew and Luke, you get these three temptations of the devil. The, the. The one that's most interesting for this purposes here is that the devil tells him, takes him to a high mountain and shows him the kingdoms of the earth. And he says, bow down to me and I'll give you all of this. So I'll. I'll give you power over the entire earth if you just bow down and worship me. And Jesus says that the scripture says you should worship. Worship the Lord your God and serve him only. So he refuses the temptation. But the temptation is subtle. Yes, it's that God, that the devil, the devil actually can do it. The devil can give him power over the world because the devil's in charge here now. But if Jesus bows down and worships him and gets the power of the earth, that would mean he doesn't have to be crucified to get it. This is a temptation to avoid the crucifixion. And so starting at the very beginning, you see that Jesus is being tempted to avoid it, but he refuses the temptation. And he. The. The only time that he's really shown resistant is in the Garden of Gethsemane scene where he. He prays fervently, especially in Matthew and Mark, that God will remove this cup from him. And so I, I mentioned earlier Mel Gibson's film Passion of the Christ, which some people, like, some people found objectionable. My. One of my favorite films is. Is Jesus Christ Superstar, which has. Or the play has a fantastic Gethsemane scene. It just, it's so moving and gripping the way it plays out in the Gethsemane scene there. And I think it's true to the Gospels that Jesus really, really is in agony and wants it to be. And even in Mark and Mark and Matthew doesn't seem to understand, why do I have to do this? I mean, he knows why, but he's just like, why, you know, and that's that's the one place that he's resistant. Otherwise he just goes through with it.
- [24:17]
Megan Lewis
You mentioned at the beginning of the interview that this is all very much wrapped up in Jesus own apocalyptic beliefs. Do we know what other apocalyptic thinkers of the time, what their opinion on suffering was?
- [24:33]
Bart Ehrman
I think apocalypticism itself came about within Jewish circles. It came about about 200 years before Jesus ministry. And I think it arose precisely because of the problem that the people of Israel were suffering so intensely and had been for decades. Not decades, centuries. They're always being wiped out by foreign powers who want to control that part of the world because of the access to the Mediterranean and because it's the only way really to take over Egypt is to go through where Israel is. And so if you want control of that region, you've got to take out Israel. And so from the Assyrians to the Babylonians to the Persians to the Greek to the Syrians to the Egyptians, I mean, you just kind of go down the list. And Romans and like, they're always wiping them out. And there, there are financial, there are economic problems, there are, you know, there's drought, there's famine, there's whatever. And, and Jewish thinkers got to a point where they thought, you know, everyone says this is because we're suffering because God's punishing us for not keeping his law. But really this doesn't seem to me. This doesn't seem to us we're suffering because of God. They started to think there must be powers opposed to God that are enforcing the suffering to bring this suffering on God's people. And the apocalyptic message that started
- [25:50]
Megan Lewis
about
- [25:50]
Bart Ehrman
200 years before Jesus was a message that said, that's right, there are powers of evil in the world, but God's going to destroy them soon and you will be glorified as God wanted. So in some ways, the entire apocalypse message was about why there's suffering in the world. Jesus embraced that message. John the Baptist before him embraced the message. The Essenes who produced the Dead Sea Scrolls embrace that message. Most, lots and lots of Jews embrace that message. And so it was Jesus, Jesus own message, but he had a specific take on it. And his gospels are trying to show that in his life he starts seeing what the kingdom of God's going to be like. And so that's part of the significance of Jesus.
- [26:29]
Megan Lewis
Do you think that the way Jesus is portrayed as relating to suffering within the Gospels can actually be taken to go back to the historical Jesus, or do you think that it's been colored by the intentions of the Authors I
- [26:49]
Bart Ehrman
certainly think that Jesus was an apocalypticist who thought that God was going to bring salvation from these evil powers in the world. I think that was his core message, that the kingdom of God was soon to arrive. And I think he believed that he was going to be the king of this kingdom. Those were the grounds for crucifying him. Because the Romans found out that he was calling himself the King of the Jews. He obviously wasn't ruling. Now that meant he was going to be the King of the Jews, which meant that he had to conquer the Romans to become the king of the Jews. That's why they crucified him. But I think Jesus honestly thought he was going to be the King of the Jews. And I don't think that his intention was to be crucified. I think he saw himself as somebody who was proclaiming this message like John the Baptist before him, so people could repent. When this kingdom came, Jesus anticipated there'd be some kind of cosmic power, a cosmic force, one like a son of man, a cosmic judge who was going to come from heaven to destroy these powers of evil and establish God's kingdom here. And he himself, Jesus would be the King and his 12 disciples would be ruling under him. When he went to Jerusalem the last week of his life, I think he went there because he had been spending his ministry however long it was up in the rural areas of Galilee where there were not very many people and most people were living a hand to mouth existence and couldn't take, you know, a day off to go follow around Jesus. And so they. So I think he decided he wanted to go where the, where he could reach a large population. Passover, the Passover feast, annual feast in Jerusalem was the time the biggest swell of the Savior visitors, Jewish visitors from around the world would come in. The city was 12 to many times its size during that time. I think Jesus went there because he wanted to proclaim this message to as many Jews as he could and that's the time to do it. And he was not planning on getting arrested and tried and crucified. So the gospels, of course writing later, the Gospel writers believed that it was all part of God's plan and that since Jesus was the son of God, he knew the plan and so this, this was his plan as well, to go get crucified. I don't think the historical Jesus had that in mind at all. I think that he thought that he was going to, that the destruction was going to come, the kingdom would arrive and he'd be made the king. I think the crucifixion wasn't. Wasn't part of the plan.
- [29:23]
Megan Lewis
So while the historical Jesus may have welcomed suffering, immediate suffering, on the grounds that eventually the kingdom of Jesus, the kingdom of Jesus, the kingdom of God would come and, and the suffering would end, he was not anticipating or welcoming his own crucifixion and death as necessary for the entrance of that kingdom.
- [29:46]
Bart Ehrman
I don't think so. I mean, I think in the Gospels, of course, he predicts it repeatedly. The Gospels are all about it happening and that the gospels sometimes have been called passion narratives with long introductions. I mean, it's all about the passion narrative and everything else is just preliminary to that. But I don't think that's historically the situation. I think Jesus, like John the Baptist, like the Essenes, like others, thought there was some kind of savior figure going to come to wipe out God's enemies and not that he himself was going to suffer. He knew he was suffering in the present because he was living in a world controlled by powers of evil. But it wasn't that he had to be crucified for the sake of others. When his later followers came to think he got raised from. From the dead, they concluded he must have known about this all along. And that's when they came up with the idea that he planned it. But I don't think it was part of the plan.
- [30:39]
Megan Lewis
Thank you very much, Bart. That was. Those were all of the questions that I had for today. Is there anything that you would like to add before we move on?
- [30:48]
Bart Ehrman
Only that I think it's important to emphasize that Jesus really did think this world was a world of suffering and that to follow him, it meant to suffer. It did not. It did not mean becoming billionaires. You know, it did not mean becoming powerful and important. He stressed the opposite, that it meant to serve others even as their slaves. That's so contrary to the way people think that of course they don't believe he meant it. But I think he meant it. And for me that's an irony because the people who. Most of the. Many of the people who are most gung ho in outwardly proclaiming their faith in Jesus, also think that he. That if you do that, you're going to have a really great life. And I don't think Jesus had that idea at all. I think it's completely contrary to his idea.
- [31:37]
Megan Lewis
Thank you very much, Bart. That is all for today's interview. We are going to be moving on to this week's bonus segment, which is Barth's books. Barth, what book? Are you recommending for us this week?
- [31:48]
Bart Ehrman
Well, I'm going to recommend another reference book because I think, you know, several of the things I've recommended have been reference books because I think if somebody's really interested in this kind of material, it just helps to have things you can go to that are, that are reliable. And one of the books I think is the best book is the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. It's gone through multiple editions. The newest edition is probably crazy expensive, but an older edition is really, really. I have an older edition that's still really great, especially for the Christian, early Christianity. And it has short articles on like, just anything like you're interested in docetism, you know, whatever, you know, just pick Josephus, anything connected with Christianity, names of the apostles, you know, you can look them up, see what you find out about them. So the most recent edition had been added by Elizabeth Livingstone. It started by a man named Cross. They're both English people, Brits who. It's fantastic. My professor, Bruce Metzger used to say that if he had only one book to put on his desk, that that was the only access he would have to it would be this book, the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. And it really is terrific.
- [33:06]
Megan Lewis
Thank you so much. Bart, before we finish for the week, could you remind us what we spoke about today?
- [33:12]
Bart Ehrman
Well, we're talking about Jesus view of suffering, especially focused on his view of his own suffering and what the Gospels say about his suffering, what they don't say about it, and how important was to the central aspects of his message about the kingdom of God coming. And so it really is a central aspect of Jesus teachings and of the Gospels. And it's a teaching that I think people overlook because of their own, their own perspectives on life today. But if you're going to understand Jesus in the Gospels, I think you've got to understand what his view of suffering was.
- [33:43]
Megan Lewis
Audience thank you all for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don't miss future episodes. Remember that you can use the Code MJ podcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.bartehrman.com Ms. Quoting Jesus will be back next week. But what are we talking about next time?
- [34:03]
Bart Ehrman
Well, we have kind of an ironic topic. Next time we're going to be talking about, we're going to be talking about myths that atheists believe. Many atheists will think that's a contradiction. We're the ones who don't believe in myths. Yeah, I think you do. We'll see.
- [34:19]
Megan Lewis
Thank you all and goodbye. This has been an episode of Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. We'll be back with a new episode next Tuesday, so please be sure to subscribe. 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.