← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
Loading summary
Transcript53 lines
- [00:01]
McDonald's Advertiser
You may think you know McDonald's drinks, but you don't know them like this. From fruity refreshers like the Strawberry Watermelon Refresher and the Mango Pineapple Refresher with popping Boba to crafted sodas like the Sprite Berry Blast with berry flavored Sprite topped with cold foam. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire six? All new drinks are here. Try them all now at McDonald's. Refreshers contain caffeine.
- [00:31]
Megan Lewis
Calling Jesus the Messiah isn't exactly a controversial thing in modern Christianity. You'll hear it during church services, any kind of Bible study, and very often during prayer. But this wasn't the case during Jesus own lifetime. Why would it have been so controversial for Jesus to be called Messiah? Was it a title that he himself claimed? And how would its use have affected the reputation of early Christians? Join us this week on Misquoting Jesus to find out. Welcome to Ms. Quoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman, the only show where a six time New York Times best selling author and world renowned Bible scholar uncovers the many fascinating little known facts about the New Testament, the historical Jesus and the rise of Christianity. I'm your host, Megan Lewis. Let's begin. Welcome back to Misquoting Jesus. Today we're talking about Jesus the Messiah. Not a controversial title in this day and age, but one that would have caused significant upset in Jesus own lifetime. We'll be exploring all of that in today's episode, but before we get there. Bart, how are you doing?
- [01:39]
Bart Ehrman
Yes, I'm doing a. Okay, thanks. Yeah, how you doing?
- [01:43]
Megan Lewis
Yeah, okay. Still going, still ticking along. And we were talking before we started recording about the general busyness of our respective lives. And you said that you had a very interesting New Year's resolution this year. So I thought you could share it.
- [01:58]
Bart Ehrman
I actually have a bunch of resolutions. Over half of them have to do with being too busy because I had kind of a miserable year last year in terms of peace of mind. So in addition to my resolution, I gave myself a motto for the year. And my motto for the year is why be happy when you can be busy? It's just, you know, I know so many people like this, but we try to cram so much into our lives that you end up kind of wondering what the point is. I mean, I half the time I don't remember what I did yesterday. So why was I in such a hurry to do it? Doesn't make any sense. You know, I'm one of these people like who rushes through to get done something. I've Got to get done. Because I get to the next thing, I get to the next thing and I rush through that to get to the next thing. It's like you, you know, this is like, what's the point? And so I'm really trying to slow down this year and to enjoy things rather than just accomplish things. So, yeah. How about you? You're as busy as I am. How are you dealing with this?
- [02:56]
Megan Lewis
I'm trying honestly to do the same thing because I have the same tendency. I like ticking things off my to do list and I like achieving and accomplishing things and feeling like I've been productive. And productivity is quite difficult with many small children in the house, as you will know. So I'm trying really hard, especially during things like children's bath times and bedtime routines, which you don't think is going to take that long, but it takes a very long time to get them all like bathed and in pajamas and into bed. I'm just, I'm trying very hard to tell myself there is nothing more important for you to be doing right now. So stop panicking that it's taking longer than you think it should.
- [03:37]
Bart Ehrman
The trick is, and it's a very hard trick to pull off, it takes a lot of self training, but to enjoy the thing you're doing while you're doing it instead of wishing it were over with. Because if you enjoy it while you're doing it, then you know that brings joy into your life. Otherwise. I had a correspondence this week with a guy that is finishing his PhD at Harvard who I'm going to be doing a debate with, actually on my. Not a debate, but like a back and forth. He's an expert on Islam and the Quran. And so we're going to do a thing for my courses where we're going to give lectures on the Quran versus the New Testament, on stuff. And he's telling me he's trying to finish his dissertation and he said, man, it's hard. I've got two kids and I'm working. I said, yeah, boy, I remember that. I had two young kids, kids. And I was working. I was teaching at Rutgers and I was writing my dissertations. Like, oh my God, this is hard. But the thing is, once you get into that pattern, I mean, you probably got in this pattern too. You were graduate students and you're like, you're working like crazy. And then it sets the pattern for your life.
- [04:31]
Megan Lewis
Everything has a deadline, even if it actually doesn't. You're like, I have to get this done because there are so many other things that just. Yeah, it's a lot. I understand. And I appreciate your. Your motto for the year.
- [04:41]
Bart Ehrman
Okay. Yeah. Right.
- [04:44]
Megan Lewis
We should talk about messiahs and Jesus and all of that associated topic. I wanted to start by asking what the word messiah meant in antiquity.
- [04:55]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, well, it's a great way to start this conversation because most people have no clue. My students, you know, in Chapel Hill, who are bright students, most of them are raised in Christian homes. If I ask them, you know, who's the Messiah supposed to be? One idea they typically have is, well, the Messiah's God come to earth, or the Messiah is someone who's supposed to come and die for the sins of the world and be raised from the dead. That's who the Messiah is supposed to be. And, you know, actually, no, both of those are wrong. The word messiah in English is actually a. It comes to us from the Hebrew. The word mashiach in Hebrew is the word that means anointed, one who's been anointed with oil. And it was a term used for, especially for kings of Israel who during their coronation ceremony would have oil poured on their head as part of the ceremony. Just as today a president gets sworn in, puts his hand on the Bible and swears the oath of office. And it's a ritual that he goes through. Well, the ritual in ancient Israel is having oil poured on the head. This person was called the anointed one of God, the Mashiach. And so for as long as Israel had a king, they were known as the Messiah, the Mashiach. And when there was no longer a king in Israel because the nation was destroyed, some Jewish thinkers thought there'd be a future Mashiach, a future king. And so the Messiah was not supposed to be God. It wasn't supposed to be somebody who died for the sins of the world. It was supposed to be the future king of Israel, who, like King David, would drive out the enemy and set up Israel as a sovereign state and would rule with justice. And so that's what the term Messiah meant. And I should add that in English, we use the word Christ for Jesus. Jesus the Messiah. Christ is the Greek translation of the word Mashiach. So that Mashiach in Greek, Messiah in Hebrew is the same word as Christ in Greek.
- [06:50]
Megan Lewis
Now, something that we have talked about before and raising children in an American, British speaking household, words have different meanings to different people. Did messiah mashiach mean different things to different Jewish groups in antiquity or was it a relatively coherence word?
- [07:08]
Bart Ehrman
Well, it was coherent in the Sense that it meant God's favored one, who had favored one. It broadly meant that. But what ended up happening, as I said, is that when Israel got destroyed, Judah got destroyed, there was no longer a king. And so they're expecting a future person who would be ruling the people of God. And over time, there were different expectations that arose about what kind of person that would be. It was still somebody who was God's favored one. But there are some groups that we know about who thought, for example, that the Messiah wouldn't be a human who becomes a great king, but would be like a cosmic judge of the earth who came to overthrow Israel's enemies and set up a kingdom in Israel. And so sometimes they would call this person the Son of man based on Daniel chapter seven, or they'd have different titles for this one. But it was understood to be a messianic figure who would bring in the kingdom, rather than a political figure, a military figure. We know from the Dead Sea Scrolls that some Jewish groups thought that the future ruler of Israel, who would rule it with power, would be a future priest who understood God's law and ruled the nation by the correct interpretation of the law of Moses, and that he would be a powerful figure. What all of these have in common is that the Messiah is a future figure who will be a figure of grandeur and power, who will wipe out the enemy and rule over the people of Israel.
- [08:35]
Megan Lewis
So then, do we know of any Jewish groups that thought that this future Messiah would die for the sins of others and then be raised from the dead?
- [08:42]
Bart Ehrman
Well, that's the thing is that, you know, in Christian thinking, it's just the assumption, of course, that's what the Messiah is supposed to do. And we have no Jewish authors on record or any Jewish traditions recorded prior to Christianity that come out and say that's what the Messiah is going to be. In fact, there's no indication that anyone thought that's what the Messiah was going to be. In fact, in some ways, that's the opposite of the Messiah, because the Messiah is supposed to destroy the enemy and set up a kingdom. He's not supposed to be destroyed by the enemy, so he's not supposed to be killed. And there's no tradition of a Messiah rising from the dead before Christianity. And so what ends up happening is, as we'll expound on this throughout our talk here, but what ends up happening is that for reasons we'll see, the followers of Jesus thought that he was the Messiah. And after his death, they knew that he died, and they believed he got raised from the dead. And so it was kind of a natural equation. Well, he's the Messiah. The Messiah died and was raised from the dead. So the Messiah is supposed to die and rise from the dead. And so that became the way they defined Messiah. But it was an innovation. It was a Christian innovation because this wasn't what. What any Jews on record or at all thought that the Messiah was supposed to be.
- [09:55]
Megan Lewis
So was this something that was placed upon Jesus after his death, or did his followers believe he was the Messiah while he was still alive?
- [10:04]
Bart Ehrman
Right. So this is kind of an interesting point that I realized way back in graduate school. Not because of I realized it, but because I read a really kind of amazing piece of scholarship by Yale New Testament scholar named Nils Dahl, who pointed out that even if the disciples of Jesus knew that he died, believed he got raised from the dead, that never would have made them think, therefore he's the Messiah. Because there is no expectation that the Messiah was going to die and be raised from the dead. And so the idea that he got raised, oh, so he must be the Messiah doesn't make any sense unless there is an idea that he was the Messiah before he died. If they thought that he was the Messiah before he died, and then it turns out he didn't do what the Messiah is supposed to do at all. He did the opposite. He got crucified by the enemy, tortured to death publicly instead of overthrowing them, he's just squashed. You know, how do you explain he gets raised from, oh, my God, we were right. But we misunderstood what the Messiah is. And so they came to think that the Messiah is the person not who had just conquered the Romans, but who would conquer all of the evil forces in the world, including sin, and bring about salvation. So that became the Christian definition. And once they have that as the definition, then what they start doing is they start looking back in the Hebrew Bible and they start finding passages that talk about somebody suffering and then being vindicated by God. And they say those passages are about the Messiah. And so that's part of why you end up with conflicts between Jews and Christians in the ancient world. Because Christians are saying, look at this Passage, Isaiah, chapter 53, the Messiah has to die, be raised from the dead. And Jews are saying, wait, that's not even talking about the Messiah. And so you have these conflicts over Scripture because Christians are assuming that Jesus is the Messiah and therefore the Messiah has to suffer and die.
- [11:55]
Megan Lewis
Are there any of the passages that Christians, early Christians, and current Christians use to point to the Messiah as suffering and dying. Do any of them actually relate to the Messiah, or are they all things that are being taken out of context?
- [12:09]
Bart Ehrman
Well, it depends whether you ask the Christian or the Jew. So I'll tell you. I think I probably mentioned this before on the podcast. It is virtually impossible for a Christian to read Isaiah chapter 53 and not think it's talking about Jesus. You just can't do it because it is so ingrained in the thought that Isaiah 53 is talking about a future Messiah who is going to suffer and die and be raised from the dead that it's virtually impossible for a Christian to think otherwise. But if you just read Isaiah 53, this is in the second part of the book of Isaiah, obviously, and in that part of Isaiah, the author is talking about a person called the servant of the Lord who suffers for the sake of people's sins. So there are four passages. They're called the four songs of the suffering servant in this part of Isaiah. And it's writt during a time when Judah had been destroyed, the king had been taken off the throne, there's no longer a king, and the leaders of Judah are in exile to Babylon. And the author of this part of Isaiah, starting in Isaiah chapter 40, says that God is going to bring them back from exile, that they have suffered now for the sins of their forebears, and because they suffered for their sins, God's now going to reward them and bring them back from exile back to Israel. And the suffering servant then occurs in these four passages. When you read these passages about the suffering servant, the word Messiah never occurs, period. And it's not about a future suffering Messiah. When it talks about the suffering of the servant in these passages, including Isaiah 53, the suffering is in the past, the vindication is in the future. So this is not predicting somebody's going to suffer. It's talking about somebody who has suffered. It's pretty clear if you actually just read these passages, which nobody does apparently. But if you just read the passage, I didn't for years and years. I just assumed. But you just read these passages, the author actually tells you who the servant is. He identifies him twice by name. The servant is not a Future Messiah. Chapter 49, verse 3. Isaiah says, this is God speaking, and he speaks of you, my servant, O Israel. Whoa. What? How can it be Israel? Well, the leaders of the people have suffered for the sins of the people, and now they're going to be restored. And so it's an image, it's a metaphor. It's not talking about A future person who God's going to send into the world to die for the sins of the world.
- [14:45]
Megan Lewis
Why would, when we're thinking about the disciples of Jesus and their identification of him as the Messiah and their understanding of what a Messiah is going to do, what. Why would that understanding shift so radically after Jesus death?
- [15:00]
Bart Ehrman
Well, so I think there has to be some idea among the disciples that Jesus is going to be the Messiah while he's alive. They're convinced that he is one who's unusual among them. He is a distinctive being. He's a great religious teacher. They think that in some way he's been sent by God. And they think that he's the one, possibly the one who's going to bring about salvation from the enemy. And so they're expecting him to be a messiah. You know, since they're Jews living in the first century, they're in the 20s of the common era if they think he's the Messiah. They meant what Jews meant when they said he's the Messiah, which meant for most Jews, it meant this political figure. He's the one who's going to rouse the troops to drive out the Romans and set up God's kingdom. You know, God's going to bring the kingdom back and he's going to use this Messiah to do it. So Jesus is the one. And so they're expecting Jesus probably to rouse the troops. And it may be what the thing in Jerusalem is all about, that they go to Jerusalem at the end of Jesus life. And it may be the disciples are thinking, okay, this is the time we have all these people in Jerusalem for the Passover, and Jesus is going to get them together and it's going to start a rebellion and it's going to be, you know, we're going to drive the Romans out of here and Jesus will be the king. There are good reasons for thinking, you know, that's not just speculation. They're actually sayings of Jesus in the gospels that show that this is the kind of thing they were thinking. But it didn't happen. And so, as you say, what happened to change it all? Well, what happened is Jesus was captured, he was put on trial, and he was unceremoniously crucified. So they knew he wasn't the Messiah. Well, boy, we got that one wrong. And it must have been huge. Hugely disappointed. It must have just ripped them apart that they were wrong and that Jesus was not a messiah. But then they came to think he got raised from the dead. The only way to get raised from the dead is If God raises you from the dead, he doesn't do that for everybody. And so Jesus clearly is the one that God has favored. And if that's the case, they start thinking backwards then, well, he's been raised from the dead. Shows that he's the one favored by God. But if that's the case, well, he really is the one anointed by God. But then why did he die? I mean, because the Messiah is not supposed to die. And they start thinking, you know, the Messiah had to die for the sins of others, didn't die for his own sins. Jesus didn't do anything wrong, so why would God have him die? And so the Messiah had to die and the Messiah had to be raised. And oh my God, we completely misunderstood this. And everyone else has too. And so they go out to try and preach to Jews that we've misunderstood what the Messiah is. It's actually somebody who has to die for the sins of the world. And that's how Christianity begins.
- [17:41]
Megan Lewis
Did the kind of invention of the suffering Messiah occur around the same time, or does that the suffering punishment component come in later?
- [17:50]
Bart Ehrman
So I think what happens is there was nobody expecting the Messiah to die and suffer and die and be raised. Jesus. Since the disciples are convinced that Jesus is the Messiah, some of them are convinced he's the Messiah. He dies, they believe he gets raised, and that's when the connection gets makes. Oh, so he's a suffering Messiah. Whoa. Who would have thought that? And so that's why one of the reasons Paul calls it a great mystery, he says it's the foolishness of God, it's the weakness of God. In other words, it's not what anybody would have expected. And even, you know, 20, 30 years in Paul's day, most people are saying, no, that's nuts. And Paul's saying, yes, it's nuts. It's nuts because it's God's way, not our way. And that God's foolishness is stronger than human wisdom and God's weakness is stronger than human strength. And so that's a way of showing that, in fact, yeah, I know it's not what you would have expected, but this is how God's doing it.
- [18:43]
Megan Lewis
How do we then start to find out how Jesus viewed himself? Does he ever self identify as a Messiah in any of the Gospels?
- [18:52]
Bart Ehrman
So it's interesting to read the Gospels with that question in mind. Our first gospel is Mark, and in Mark's Gospel, it's very interesting that nobody knows who Jesus is the entire time we've talked about this. On the podcast before. And nobody gets Jesus. His family doesn't get him. His townspeople don't get him. His disciples don't get him. The Jewish leaders don't get him. Only about halfway through the gospel that anybody realizes that he could be the Messiah. And it's Peter in chapter eight who realizes that Jesus is the Messiah. But he misunderstands because Jesus then says, yes, and I must go to Jerusalem and be, you know, be killed. Peter says, what? No, no, no, I just said, you're the Messiah. So the whole thing is built on the idea that, you know, this is like a surprise to everybody. And nobody gets it throughout this gospel. And Jesus actually doesn't self identify as a Messiah in Mark's gospel until at the end, he's put on trial before the Jewish high priest and the Sanhedrin, the Jewish council. And the high priest puts him under oath and says, are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus says, I am. That's the one place in Mark. It's interesting because when you read the Gospel of John, which is our last gospel, unlike Mark, where nobody gets it through the whole thing and it doesn't really come out clearly until the end in John, in chapter one, Peter, the guy who didn't get it in Mark, in chapter one, Peter sees Jesus and says, you're the Messiah. Oh, wow. And so it's a bit of a difference between Mark and John on this one. But so in the Gospels, Jesus does accept the title of Messiah, and in different Gospels, he does use it of himself.
- [20:35]
Megan Lewis
But rarely are there reasons to think that when Jesus is using this title, he is being portrayed as having an understanding of a suffering Messiah. Or does he seem to be anticipating that he will lead a military revolution?
- [20:52]
Bart Ehrman
So this is one place where it's really important to differentiate between what the Gospels say about Jesus and what we can establish as the historical Jesus. So the historical Jesus is something that we have to figure out based on our gospel sources. And so we don't know, you know, we don't know what the gospel sources. We don't have accurate information from the Gospels about what Jesus actually said and did. So we have to infer it based on things that we can establish of him having probably said, okay, so I'm setting that up. We need to spend, like, several episodes trying to show that. That you can't just take the gospel. If the gospel says Jesus says something, doesn't necessarily mean that he really said it. And the big task of historians since the 18th century has been to figure out which things he's recorded as saying did he really say? Okay, so with that as a preface, let me just say that I think that there's good reason for thinking that Jesus did consider himself a future Messiah, and he did not think about himself as somebody who was going to suffer and die as the Messiah. The Gospels absolutely portray him as someone who's talking about the future suffering of the Messiah. But I don't think historically. That's right. I think what's historically the case is that Jesus really expected to be made the King of Israel, that he thought he would be the Messiah in the traditional sense. The way he worked it out, though, was in an apocalyptic way. The apocalyptic way. What I mean by that is that Jesus, as an apocalypticist, thought that the world was controlled by powers of evil now, and they're opposed to God, that God has allotted a certain amount of time for these forces of evil to be in control. The time is almost up, and God's going to intervene. He's going to enter into history and destroy the forces of evil and bring earth back to the paradise that it was supposed to be, where there'll be no more pain or misery or suffering. There'll be a kingdom now ruled not by these rotten kingdoms that are in charge now, but a kingdom ruled by God through his Messiah. And this kingdom is going to be brought by this cosmic figure, the Son of Man, who's going to come from heaven and destroy everything opposed to God and then set up God's kingdom. Jesus appears to have thought all of that, but he also appears to have thought that when the Son of Man set up the kingdom, there has to be a human who rules it. And the Son of Man is going to make Jesus the king of the kingdom. One reason for thinking that is that there are sayings of Jesus that I think he almost certainly said in the Gospels that indicate this one of them. I think there's kind of an interesting argument for why this is something Jesus almost certainly said. There's a saying in Matthew and Luke where Jesus is talking to the disciples and he talks about, you know, when the Son of Man comes, he says to the 12 disciples, during his lifetime, you 12 will be seated on 12 thrones ruling the tribes of Israel in the future kingdom. So the 12 will each be ruling part of the kingdom of the twelve tribes of Israel in the coming kingdom. And the assumption Jesus seems to have is that you are my 12, and that, in other words, you'll be serving under me, the king in the coming kingdom. So the reason, I think Jesus must have said that is that. That's not the kind of saying somebody would make up about Jesus after his death for a reason people might not think of. But it's this. He's talking to the 12, including Judas Iscariot. He's saying that you 12 will be on thrones ruling the 12 tribes of Israel after Jesus death. Everybody knew that Jesus was betrayed by one of the twelve. Judas Iscariot. There's no way after his death, somebody's going to make up a saying that, oh, yeah, Judas, you're going to be ruling one of the tribes of Israel. No. So this saying almost certainly goes back to Jesus, which means he really did teach his disciples that they would be ruling under him, which means that he would be the king, which he'd be the Messiah. And so I think Jesus really expected to be the king, the future king of Israel appointed by the Son of Man. And because that expectation was known to his disciples, it's what ends up getting Jesus killed. You know, people think about Jesus death as well. You know, the Pharisees were ticked off at him, and so they had him killed. And it's not that at all. He's killed for calling himself the future king. When he's crucified, the placard over his head is, this is the king of the Jews. Ha ha ha. In other words, making fun of his claim and the trial. Are you the King of the Jews? You say I am. Well, it's all about him being the king of the Jews, and that's what he claimed, and that's why he ended up being crucified. So I think Jesus thought he was going to be the future Messiah.
- [25:35]
Megan Lewis
Interesting. Thank you. So if he thought he was the Messiah and therefore the future king, did he also think he was the Son of God?
- [25:44]
Bart Ehrman
Ah, right. So these titles are really tricky because they're so misunderstood by everybody, and it's understandable they're misunderstood. Everyone misunderstands these things. I used to completely misunderstand them. I wrote this book called How Jesus Became God. And I had to explain how some of these titles work because it's completely, you know, Messiah is not the only one my students misunderstand. You know, it's not that Messiah's God or the one I used to sell offer. So two other titles people misunderstand are Son of Man and Son of God. And when we hear that Jesus is both Son of Man and Son of God, just naturally we think, well, that means that he's both human and divine. Right, Son of Man. So He's a human Son of God, so he's divine. And that is what theologians in early Christianity ended up saying about these titles. But these titles were not floating around in Greek circles where these theologians came out of. They were coming from Jewish circles. And so what you have to ask is in the first century, say in the 20s, when Jesus was living, what does the term Son of Man mean? And what does the term Son of God mean? Son of man, ironically, does not refer to a human. It refers to this cosmic figure who's coming to judge the earth based on Daniel Chapter seven, where Daniel talks about one like a son of man. In other words, one in kind of human form. And so the Son of Man is this divine cosmic figure who's judging the earth. So just as the Son of Man is actually a divine figure, Son of God in Judaism at the time is a human figure. The term Son of God is frequently used of the king of Israel throughout the Old Testament. The king of Israel is the Son of God. One place you can see this most clearly is when David is being promised by God that he'll always have a descendant on the throne. This is in 2 Samuel 7, where David is told by the prophet speaking God's word that David's son will be God's son. I will be a father to him, and he will be a son to me. So the Son of God is used frequently of the king of Israel in the Old Testament and of other figures. And the thing that ties these various figures together as being son of God is that these are the representatives of God on earth who mediate his will. And so God's up in heaven and he's in charge of the earth. But if he's going to work here on earth, he's got to work through somebody. And so, for example, he works through the king, the Son of God, or Sometimes in Hosea 11:1, the nation of Israel is called the Son of God because Israel is the one through whom God works his will. So out of Egypt have I called my Son. Sometimes angels are called the sons of God because they're the ones who come down to earth and do what God wants them to do down here. And so Son of God does not necessarily mean that a person is God. It means that it's a person or an angel or some subservient being to God who is being used by God to mediate his will. So did Jesus think he was the Son of God? Yes. I mean, he thought that he was the one through whom God was speaking. But that does not mean that he thought that he like pre existed and was with God in the beginning and created the universe. It doesn't mean that it later comes to mean that. But it's not what Jesus would have meant if he took the title Son of God or what anyone else would have taken meant by saying that they were the Son of God.
- [29:08]
Megan Lewis
Excellent. Thank you so much. We are going to wrap up there, take a quick break and we'll be back with a weekly update Editor Please put in our weekly update transition
- [29:22]
Bart Ehrman
if you're interested in the Gospels of the New Testament, the book of Genesis, the resurrection of Jesus, the historicity of the Exodus, or anything else connected with the Bible, you should check out my online courses where I cover all these topics and more. If you'd like to learn about the courses, check them out@barturman.com youm can receive a discount on any of your purchases simply by entering the code mjpodcast.
- [29:57]
Podcast Producer
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.
- [30:11]
Megan Lewis
We are back. Thank you everybody for waiting for us. Now we are going to be talking very briefly about a couple of lectures that Bart has coming up called Did Peter Hate Paul? This is going to be March 30th. It's a live lecture, free to attend, and you can sign up@bartehrman.com PeterandPaul Bart, what is this about?
- [30:34]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, so this is going to be fun. So as you said, these are free. So you know, every now and then I do these free courses just so we can spread knowledge a little bit and people can see the kinds of things we do. And this one, Did Peter Hate Paul? That might sound kind of surprising to some people. To other people it won't sound surprising at all because they're just as in the New Testament, even today, there are people who think different things about Peter and Paul in the Book of Acts. In the New Testament, Peter and Paul are the two major figures. Peter's Jesus disciple who's become the leader of the church. Paul is the great convert who becomes a great missionary and they agree on everything. You have that portrayal in the New Testament that Peter and Paul are kind of working together in tandem for everything. But you also get suggestions in the New Testament that Peter and Paul were at odds with each other. And you especially get that in one of Paul's own letters, the letter to the Galatians, where it looks like they had a Knock down, drag out argument about something rather significant. And Paul never indicates that they reconciled. And so throughout early Christianity, you had these two different strains. Some saying that, you know, they were completely simpatico and this other strain saying they were at each other's throats. And we have clear indications of these they're at each other's throats thing. And if so, what was it about? And even people who think they were at each other's throats don't really understand what it was about. In my experience. Most people don't really quite get it. They misconstrue it. These two lectures are going to be about how that happens. You have these two strains of tradition and what each one really is all about. And can we say anything historically about which side's probably right?
- [32:04]
Megan Lewis
Excellent. Thank you very much. We don't have anything from Peter saying how he felt about Paul, do we?
- [32:11]
Bart Ehrman
Well, we don't have anything for Peter. One of the things I'm going to be arguing in this lecture, though is we have a lot of books that claim to be written by Peter. And the interesting thing is the two that are in the New Testament, first and Second Peter. I'll be talking about whether I think Peter probably wrote them or not. But they show Peter and Paul completely together. But ones outside the New Testament show that Peter's really ticked off at Paul, calls him my enemy. So, yeah, that'll be part of the lectures.
- [32:38]
Megan Lewis
Strong words from Paul there. Well, okay, so if that sounds interesting to anybody listening again, you can sign up at bartiman.com forward/peterandpaul. And they are happening on March 30th and I assume they will be available to view for people who can't make the live recording date. Is that correct?
- [32:57]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, we're gonna. We'll be recording it live. There'll be a Q and A after the two lectures. Then anybody who wants it can get it. All they have to do is sign up. They need to sign up to come to the live and it'll be free. And if they can't come, they can still sign up and get. And we'll send them. Send them the recordings.
- [33:13]
Megan Lewis
Excellent. Thank you very much. We are going to go over to some listeners questions now.
- [33:21]
Podcast Producer
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
- [33:39]
Megan Lewis
okay, as ever, a fantastic mix of questions from our wonderful listeners. And if you are interested in asking Bart a Question. You can go to the website. There is a link there. Question one. I understand that the content of the Q source is derived from shared passages of Matthew and Luke. Are there passages in Matthew but not in Luke or vice versa that scholars argue may have originated with Q because of the similarities to other sayings from Q?
- [34:04]
Bart Ehrman
Ah, this is a good question. So for those who don't quite understand it, Q is this source that scholars hypothesize once existed that was used by both Matthew and Luke. When you have the situation where you've got Matthew, Mark and Luke, and sometimes all three have the same story, and it's usually thought Matthew and Luke got it from Mark, but then you have stuff in Matthew and Luke that's not in Mark, like the Lord's Prayer or the Beatitudes, and they tend to be sayings almost entirely, but not entirely sayings. But since they agree word for word, either Luke got it from Matthew or Matthew got it from Luke, there are reasons for thinking neither one of those is right. And so if that's not right, they must have got it from a common source. And so they call this common source Q. Q is the source for Matthew and Luke's material that's not found in Mark. A strict definition of Q is just that it's when Matthew and Luke have stuff that is word for word the same, but not in Mark by definition, that if you accept all these assumptions, that would be Q. And so this questioner is asking a very good question because so when Matthew and Luke both took stuff from Mark, sometimes Matthew took something from Mark that Luke did not take from Mark, and sometimes Luke took something from Mark, something that Matthew did not take from Mark. Okay, but you can tell that's the case because you've got Mark. And so you can see what Mark has. You can see, but you don't have Q. And so is it possible that Matthew took stuff from Q that Luke did not, and that Luke took stuff from Q that Matthew did not. And what do scholars think about that? Well, I mean, as a scholar, I'll say, sure, why not? Yes. But then the question is, well, how do you know? And that's what this question is. How would you know? And some scholars do argue these things. They'll take, for example, a parable or a saying of Jesus that sounds like other sayings or parables of Jesus in Q. So maybe it came from Q. The way they do this, I'm not going to get way down into the weeds now. But the way that you have to argue that is when Matthew takes over stuff from Mark or Q. He often puts his own spin on it, like maybe it'll be a grammatical feature, like he'll phrase something in a certain way, or he'll use one of his favorite terms, or like he'll modify it slightly the way he just modifies Mark to do that with Q as well. And Luke will do the same thing. So if you've got a saying that's in Matthew, that like these other Q sayings, and there are no indications of Matthew's kinds of changes in it, scholars call those no redactional elements of Matthew in it, then the argument is that would increase the likelihood it came from Q and that Luke simply didn't take it over and vice versa. So it's completely possible, and I'll add to this that when I was in graduate school, the consensus was Q did not have a have a passion narrative, because you don't have passion narrative materials about Jesus, death and resurrection in Matthew. And Luke not founded Mark. And so Q didn't have a passion narrative. And I've always thought that's nuts. How do you know that? If suppose Q had a passion narrative and Matthew took it over and Luke did not, you just wouldn't know. It's an excellent question and you could devote a book to it. And actually, there probably are people who have.
- [37:21]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. To what extent did Greco Roman religions, traditions and philosophies influence the development of Christian theological constructs?
- [37:30]
Bart Ehrman
Well, to a great deal, I'd say. I mean, even within the New Testament, just to give you one example, in Greek and Roman religions you have stories, myths about people who are semi divine. A father will be a God and the mother will be immortal. And you have ways of telling stories about these people. They're miraculously born, they're vunderkind. When they're young, they end up doing miracles. They can heal people and they can like raise the dead and the end of their lives, they ascend to heaven. And, you know, so you get. You get these stories and they clearly influence the Gospels in ways. The Gospel of Luke, which people often say is like the most gentile of our gospels, has more of these features than the other two. It just kind of lines up just in broad terms with these kinds of things. And so you get that so early on you have influence, I think, of Greek and Roman traditions on the Christians. Most Christians, by the time the Gospels are being written, are not from Jewish stock. They were raised with Greek and Roman myth and Greek and Roman ways of understanding things. Another way, for example, is In Greek and Roman understandings, when the body dies, the soul lives on. And that's not the view within Judaism. It's not the view Jesus had or the view that the Old Testament has. In Jewish thinking, the soul cannot exist apart from the body, but in the Greek thinking, it did exist apart from the body. And so that becomes the standard Christian doctrine, that you die and your soul goes to heaven or hell. That's a Greek idea that first expressed most forcefully by Plato. It's not a Jewish idea. And so it's Greek influence later. What ends up happening is that the philosophical debate within Greek philosophy come to influence Christian theology. And so the debates that you start having, serious theological debates in the 4th and 5th centuries are almost entirely informed by Greek metaphysical categories of understanding, like the world and the divine realm and so forth.
- [39:28]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. This question says, I feel a little annoyed every time I come across the word hell in the Gospels and see in the footnote that it translates Gehenna, knowing that it had far different connotations for apocalyptic Judaism than the endless torture for the fundamentalist Christian hell. Can scholars not agree on a better rendering? And how would you translate it in a short word or phrase?
- [39:49]
Bart Ehrman
I would translate it Gehenna. Gehenna is a valley. It's the valley of the sons of Hinnom outside of Jerusalem. And when it's used in the Gospels, it's used the way you can find it through other places in the Bible, the Hebrew Bible, as a place that was desecrated. And that was the most horrible place on earth because it's where pagans practiced human sacrifice. They would sacrifice children there, allegedly. So when Jesus says, you'll be cast into Gehenna if you don't behave, you're going to be cast into Gehenna. What he means is your corpse will be defiled and you will be thrown into this horrible, God awful place that was a horror for many people in the ancient world not to be given a proper burial. Well attested throughout numerous cultures that when you died, you wanted to have an honorable burial. And Jesus is saying, you're not just going to be like, you know, thrown into a trash heap, you're going to be thrown into Gehenna. Oh my God, that's as bad as it gets. When you translate it. Hell, you think about like, you know, the devil and demons, like poking hot irons into your eyes and stuff. And that's not what this is talking about at all. So it's a complete, complete mistranslation, I think, to call it hell just as in the Old Testament, to translate sheol as hell is a mistranslation. Our ideas of hell developed long after these books were written.
- [41:13]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. Final question. The census in Luke has always been odd, as having people all go to their ancestral home would seem to defeat the purpose of a government census. However, I've thought maybe this idea comes from reading the census from the Torah where it would list the number of people by their tribe and ancestry. Could the author of Luke possibly have used this for a template as to how a census worked since the Gospel authors seem to have some familiarity with Old Testament literature?
- [41:40]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, I mean, it's possible. I mean, Luke's census is a little bit strange because it says that during the reign of Caesar Augustus there was a census for the entire world, which I suppose must mean the entire Roman Empire. And so everybody's going to register for the census. There were censuses done in the Roman world. They were not that uncommon in ancient Israel. Those censuses that the questioner is asking about were done in order to decide how many military age men there were. You have to figure out what your troop strength is, and that was one of the reasons for doing them in the Roman world as well. You wanted to know how many people could serve in the armies proportionately to the population. Also for tax purposes. In the Roman world, you wanted to know what the population density was so that you could figure out how to do the appropriate taxes. But neither really makes sense for people going to their ancestral homes, because the idea of a census is to know how many people are in a particular place, not where their ancestors were a thousand years ago. And so it doesn't make sense. So Luke may have something like the Old Testament in mind, but it's usually thought, especially since he's dating this to the time of Quirinius, governor of Syria, who was later known to have done a census, that he's actually probably being more influenced by what's going on with censuses in his own day. In the Roman world, there never was an empire wide census at any time. It wouldn't make any sense. And there are other problems with the census, but I think he's probably being influenced by stuff in his own day.
- [43:14]
Megan Lewis
Thank you, Bart. Before we finish for the week, would you mind just summarizing what we spoke about today?
- [43:20]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah. So we've been talking about the term Messiah. It's a term that people frequently think of today when they think about Jesus. And the question is, historically, where did it come from? What did the term Messiah actually mean historically? And what would it have meant in Jesus Day. Was there anyone among Jews who thought that the Messiah would be somebody who would be crucified and raised from the dead? Apparently no. But the followers of Jesus came to think that. They came to think that probably because they thought he might be the Messiah before he died, and after he died, they realized he'd been raised from the dead. And that made them change their definition of Messiah away from being a future leader of the people who would overthrow the enemy and set up God's kingdom to a person who would die for the sins of the world and to be raised from the dead.
- [44:06]
Megan Lewis
Thank you, Bart Audience thank you all for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don't miss future episodes. Remember, you can use the code mjpodcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.bartehrman.com and that his upcoming two lecture series on March 30th did Peter hate Paul? Is free. You can attend and register@bartiman.com PeterandPaul misquoting Jesus will be back next week, but what are we talking about next time?
- [44:36]
Bart Ehrman
So next time we're talking about a topic that's distantly related to the course I'm going to be doing. Did Peter Hate Paul? We're going to do a podcast on what do we know about Peter? What kind of sources of information do we have? And like, do we have anything he wrote and that kind of thing? So it's going to be about basic information about the disciple Peter.
- [44:55]
Megan Lewis
Wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you all and goodbye. This has been an episode of Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. We'll be back with a new episode next Tuesday, so please be sure to subscribe to our show for free on your favorite podcast listening app or on Bart Ehrman's YouTube channel so you don't miss out From Bart Ehrman and myself, Megan Lewis. Thank you for joining us.