← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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- [00:00]
BetterHelp User
When I found out I was going to be a parent, I immediately felt a lot of anxiety and worry. So I went on to BetterHelp to try to look for a therapist to help me with that.
- [00:09]
Megan Lewis
My relationship with my family and with my boyfriend and with myself were suffering.
- [00:14]
Bart Ehrman
I really needed help.
- [00:15]
Megan Lewis
I was ruminating a lot. Really getting those thoughts out to a therapist and getting feedback was just life changing.
- [00:23]
Bart Ehrman
Discover what BetterHelp online therapy can do for you and visit betterhelp.com today.
- [00:32]
Megan Lewis
The Sermon on the Mount is probably one of the best known speeches of Jesus. And if you've spent any time in a church service, then the odds are that you've heard at least part of it. It includes the Beatitudes, blessed are the meek and that kind of thing, the Lord's Prayer, and a whole host of teachings that are held sacred by Christians the world over. But did the writer of Matthew just fabricate the whole thing? Today, Dr. Bart Ehrman joins me to talk about this amazing sermon. Whether anything like it exists elsewhere in the New Testament and whether Jesus is likely to have uttered a word of it. 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. Hello everybody. Welcome back to Misquoting Jesus. Today we are talking about the Sermon on the Mount. Before that. Bart, how are you doing today?
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Bart Ehrman
Yeah, a bit frenzied today, but you know, that's kind of my life these days. It's like, huh, you know, yeah, how am I going to do that today? I don't know. Hope it happens.
- [01:53]
Megan Lewis
But occasionally think to myself, when the children are grown, I'll have so much time to get all of the things done. And then I talk to you and I realize actually there is never enough time to get everything done that you want to do.
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Bart Ehrman
Well. You know, I'm reading actually a very good book by Oliver Berkman. It's called Meditation for Mortals, which starts off by saying, look, the best way to deal with things is to realize it really is infinite. The demands on your time, they literally are infinite. And so once you realize that, you kind of give up on the idea you're going to get it all done. You are not going to get it all done. And you kind of, but it's kind of, it's freeing actually to think that it's just right now I feel more Trapped than free. So good.
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Megan Lewis
Definitely something I need to work on.
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Bart Ehrman
Yeah, well, but you know, every now and then I think, you know. Yeah, well, you sure are busy. But you know, at least you're not Megan. Wow. Actually you got pretty good. Yeah, pretty good.
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Megan Lewis
Yes. Busy. Definitely busy. Now, today, as I said, we're talking about the Sermon on the Mount. We will also have some outsmart BART questions right at the very end. And we've got some news from the Biblical Studies Academy which is I think pretty awesome. But Sermon on the Mount is where we're starting. And like I said in my introduction, I think it's probably one of the most well known passages from the New Testament. Well, series of pastures is quite long. What do you think it is or why do you think it is that it's so compelling and memorable to people?
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Bart Ehrman
Well, you know, I'll tell you, I, I, I would say not only is it the most famous sermon of Jesus in the New Testament, I, it's, it's got to be the most famous sermon of all time. I mean, period, not of Jesus, but I mean of all time. I mean, what, you know, if you have to talk about like a sermon, of course, you know, today there are others that we think of, more recent ones, but in terms of world history. So the sermon just for background Sermon on the Mount's found only in the Gospel of Matthew. It's Matthew chapters five, six and seven. It's virtually the first thing that Jesus does in his public ministry in Matthew. But when we say that it's found only in Matthew, what we mean is that this entire sermon as a unit is found only in Matthew. Many of the sayings in the Sermon on the Mount are also found in the Gospel of Luke, but they're not gathered together in a single place the way they are in Matthew. And it's not a sermon the way that people are accustomed to sermons where you sort of have a beginning, a middle and an end. It's not a coherent piece. It's, as you were saying, it has lots of different sayings of different kinds put together. We'll talk about the, probably the Beatitudes and the antithesis, but there are a lot of kind of short little parabolic sayings and one liners and things. And so it's a combination of disparate teachings of Jesus put in one place found only in Matthew.
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Megan Lewis
So if it is a combination of disparate teachings, then do historians think that the sermon actually took place or something like it took place and was then elaborated on by the writer of Matthew?
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Bart Ehrman
Well, you know, there are all sorts of complications about that because the. And for one thing, you know, Matthew is generally thought to be writing sometime near the end of the first century, usually dated around 80 or 85 of the common era. The. The Gospel of Matthew, it's written in Greek by somebody who did not live in Israel. And so it's being written, you know, what, 50, 55 years after the event took place, if it did take place in a different language by somebody who wasn't there. And so one big question is, how could. How could this author possibly know what Jesus said on that one occasion? My students say, well, you know, it's a pretty memorable sermon, and say, okay, so let's say, did you, you know, I'll ask my students, did you listen to, you know, to Trump's inaugural address? Oh, yeah, yeah, I listen to that. Okay, write it down for me. What?
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Megan Lewis
No mistakes.
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Bart Ehrman
I have no idea. I remember, like, a couple of the themes. Yes, right. And that was, you know, that was a few months ago. So what if you're writing 55 years later in a different part of the country and you weren't even there? Like, how. How are you possibly going to get. How are you. How are you supposed to get it? And so there's. So there's that. There's. There's another issue of, like, who. Who possibly would have recorded it? One of my. One of my favorite scenes from the Life of Brian is the Sermon on the Mount scene. It's the only scene in the Life of Brian where Jesus himself actually appears and he's giving a sermon, and he's giving the Sermon on the Mount, and people are gathered there and the came kind of is on him and kind of moves back and back and back down the Mount until you're kind of far away where most of the hearers are and nobody can hear him. And that's why you get things like, blessed are the cheese makers, you know, or blessed are the Greeks. What did he say? You can't hear. And so which Greek. Which. Yeah, which Greek is that? And. And so, you know, how is this supposed to actually work? He's talking to the multitudes in Aramaic. And this is in, you know, it's in Galilee where almost nobody had an education. And so who's, like, who's writing this thing down or repeating it? And so those are, like, two of the big problems with thinking about, you know, how. How this could have happened as it's narrated. And then there's the further question about, like, whether any of the Sayings, you know, it seems unlikely that the entire sermon was something Jesus said at one time, in one place. Are sayings in this thing that are actually things that Jesus said. And that's, that's kind of another question.
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Megan Lewis
Well, let's go to that then. What are some of the sayings that people think might have gone back to Jesus? And are they the same sayings that we see also preserved in Luke?
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Bart Ehrman
So, you know, the, when dealing with the Sermon on the Mount, scholars deal with these teachings of Jesus the way they teach, with the way they deal with everything involving the life of Jesus. They, they recognize that we have all sorts of sayings attributed to Jesus that he did not say. People who doubt that, who say, well, that's not possible, just need to read the sayings of Jesus not in the New Testament. And we have records of those sayings of Jesus and people don't think he said those. So people are definitely making up sayings of Jesus and putting them on his lips. And there are good reasons for thinking that's already happening right away in the first century, just that people misrepresent what you say or what I say. People misrepresented what Jesus said. There were people, they, they did this kind of thing. And so you have, you have to treat every saying in the Sermon on the Mount as something that was possibly said by Jesus. But how do you know? Well, you see, if the, you see, if this saying is, is the kind of thing he said, he says elsewhere in some source that's unrelated, like do you have independent sources that are not relying on each other that repeat similar teachings of Jesus? Is this the kind of thing that somebody in the first century, a Jew in first century in Israel, would have said? Or is it something that doesn't make any sense in a first century Jewish context? Is it the kind of saying that the author himself would be likely to have invented because it's the sort of thing he'd like Jesus to have said? You ask those kinds of questions in order to come away with what in here probably goes back to Jesus and what can't we be sure of? And there's some of both. I mean, the Lord's Prayer is, is found in this text. And there are, there are reasons for thinking that this sounds pretty similar to things Jesus said or can be shown to have probably shown to be said, have said elsewhere. So the Lord's Prayer, the, the golden rule that you should do to other people the way you want them to. To do to you. There are so, yeah, there are a lot of things in here that certainly look like the. They are authentic to Jesus, whether or not they're in one coherent sermon or not.
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Megan Lewis
So where do the Beatitudes fall in this scale of likelihoods? This is the Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. So I guess actually two questions for that. Why are all of these people who are unfortunate in the mortal physical realm being blessed? And than the first question that I said earlier, these things that the historians think are likely to have been original to Jesus.
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Bart Ehrman
Yeah. So the Sermon on the Mount begins with these Beatitudes. And one of the interesting things about the Beatitudes where Jesus says, blessed are. So beatas beatus in Latin means blessed. And so they get that from the Latin version. So blessed are. And it's all these people who are not having a good life. You know, they. You know, so they're, they're, you know, there are things about their lives that are unfortunate, but Jesus says that they are the ones who are blessed. And one of the interesting things about this is that Luke also has the Beatitudes, and they are similar to those in Matthew, but they are also significantly different. So, for example, Jesus says, blessed are the. In Matthew, Jesus says, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Luke has the same thing, but he says, blessed are you poor. Huh? That's different. You know, not being. Being. Yeah. Being impoverished is different from, like, physically not having any funds is different from being, you know, humble or meek or mild or humble in spirit, not being proud. Jesus in Matthew says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Luke says. Luke's Jesus says, blessed are you who hunger and thirst. Wow. And so you immediately have a question. Did Jesus say both things? Did he say one or the other? If he said one or the other, which did he say? And what they both have in common is that those who are having a difficult time now, or who have no power now, or who are being oppressed now, who are suffering in some way now, they are the ones who are blessed. And one reason for thinking that that is something that Jesus may well have said, something like that is what he may well have said has to do with an overall construction of what we think Jesus was actually doing in his ministry we've talked about on the podcast before, that Jesus is usually understood by scholars today to have predicted that the end was coming soon and that people who are suffering now are going to be rewarded when the kingdom of God comes and that people who are prominent now, who are rich and famous and influential, they're obviously on the, you know, they're not on God's side now because God, God has relinquished control of this world for the time being to forces of evil. And that's why the world is such a horrible place. So people prospering now are on the side of the evil forces that are making everybody suffer. So why are these people blessed? You know, you don't think that being hungry or thirsty is blessed, but it's because you're the ones who are going to get this kingdom that's coming. And so the Beatitudes are to be set, I think, within what a scholar would call an apocalyptic context. The context that very soon God is going to change the created order, to destroy everything opposed to him and to reward the people who have sided with Him.
- [14:34]
Megan Lewis
Thank you, but we're going to take a very brief break. We'll be right back.
- [14:39]
BetterHelp User
When I found out I was going to be a parent, I immediately felt a lot of anxiety and worry. So I went on to BetterHelp to try to look for a therapist to help me with that.
- [14:48]
Megan Lewis
My relationship with my family and with my boyfriend and with myself were suffering. I really needed help. I was ruminating a lot. Really getting those thoughts out to a therapist and getting feedback was just life changing.
- [15:03]
Bart Ehrman
Discover what BetterHelp online therapy can do for you. Visit betterhelp.com today.
- [15:18]
BetterHelp User
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- [16:56]
Megan Lewis
Welcome back, everybody. Before the break, we were talking about the Beatitudes and whether or not the Sermon on the Mount is based on an historical event. We're going to keep going now looking at some of the more important sayings and whether these are in line with what we would expect Jesus to have said during his lifetime. So we've looked at the Beatitudes and the Lord's Prayer, but what are some of the most important sayings outside of those two sections that are found in the Sermon of the Mount?
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Bart Ehrman
Well, you know, a lot of them are memorable. People may not know that they actually come from the Sermon on the Mount, but they're like sayings of Jesus, you know, that people just kind of know, you know, judge not lest you be judged. You know, things like that. Are these like one liners that are powerful and really important that are in there? One part that's very important for the Sermon on the Mount is important because it's important to Matthew's entire Gospel. And it's a passage that almost nobody pays any attention to because it says something contrary to what they would want. Readers of the Sermon on the Mount tend to be Christians, and so they tend not to really take on what Jesus says very early on, right after the Beatitudes, where he says he's telling, telling the crowds, don't think that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets. In other words, the, the teaching, the law of Moses. Don't think that I've come to abolish. I've come to fulfill it. Not one jot. Not one tittle. So not one, not one little letter, not even a stroke of a letter is going to pass away from the law before all of it is fulfilled. And then he goes on to say that his followers have to keep the law. It's not just that he's going to fulfill it, but his followers have to keep the law. Even better than the scribes and the Pharisees. He says, and if you don't, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven. You've got to keep the law better than the Jewish leaders who are insisting you keep the law strictly. Yes, you do. So people read that, and they don't, you know, they pass over it, they don't notice it, or they try to come up with some explanation for it. But, you know, I think so. I don't know if Jesus actually said that, but Matthew's Sermon on the Mount certainly says it, and Matthew means it. And so what happens right after that is Jesus starts explaining what he means. And this is where you get this passage called the antithesis. The. An antithesis is a contrary statement. It's a contrary statement. And so you say this thing and then you give the contrary statement. The contrary statement does not have to be a contradiction. It's not that you're going to contradict something. It's that you're. You're saying this, but you're saying that. So that's when you start getting these antitheses.
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Megan Lewis
Can you give us some examples of the antitheses?
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Bart Ehrman
Yeah. Well, again, this is a section I'd say that a lot of people misunderstand for a reason. I'll talk about in a minute. But it's when Jesus quotes a law of Moses and then gives his interpretation of it. And so the law of Moses, so he says, you've heard it said, you shall not murder. So that's one of the ten Commandments. Don't murder. But I say to you, don't even get angry with a person. Anyone who gets angry will be, you know, cast. Cast into Gehenna. You know, they'll suffer by. They'll be punished by God by getting angry. And then. And then he says, you've heard it said, don't commit adultery. I say to you, don't even lust after a woman in your heart. And so. And so not. So he. He's stating the law and then he's giving his interpretation. A lot of people think, well, so he's contradicting the law. No, he's not contradicting the law. He's making harder, but he's not actually making harder. I'll tell you what he's doing is in each of these antitheses, what he does is he takes the law that Moses gave and he said, following it literally is not the ultimate thing. He doesn't say, don't follow it. So that's why I said, it's not a Contradiction. It's not that he says, Moses says, you know, thou shalt not murder. And I say, you should murder. You know, it's not the opposite. What it is is taking the very heart of the law, intention behind the law, and showing that that's what God has in mind. You know, murder, well, it disrupts a community, obviously, and it, it completely destroys another person's life. You destroy another person, literally. But when you get angry with somebody, you also create tension in the community. And you, you, you. You make them nothing, you know, like you are attacking them for their being. And that's not right. The, the. The whole point of, of this is that if you get angry at somebody, it's going to lead to murder. So the point is just not to lead to murder, not do the murder. Actually don't even get angry, you know, and you, you run off with your neighbor's spouse. Well, yeah, that's bad. Don't do that. But don't even want to do that. You know, nip it in the bud. And so what he's doing is he's taking the line, trying to get to the heart of it. Not so you are no longer following Moses, but you're following Moses in the way Moses really meant you to. And so what this means is then these antitheses, it's not that Jesus is saying, look, you can't follow Moses. You got to follow me. He's saying, you are to follow Moses by following him the way that I say you should. So it's intensifying. It's intensifying the law by getting to its very heart.
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Megan Lewis
So can you give us another example of these antitheses and maybe then talk about how Christians misunderstand or misinterpret what's going on here?
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Bart Ehrman
Yeah, well, you know, one that's very famous is where Jesus says that, you've heard it said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, turn the other cheek, you know, so you're supposed to, like, love your enemies. You're supposed to turn the other cheek. And people say, so Jesus is getting rid of, of this horrible law of the Old Testament, eye for an eye, a tooth for tooth. And that's a complete misreading. In the Old Testament, in the law of Moses, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth was a call for justice, that the punishment was not to exceed the crime. You know, so if somebody knocks out your tooth, you're not allowed to lop off their head. It's an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. And so it's a commensurate punishment. And so that's a way of showing mercy where you, you only do what is just. And Jesus extends it. Yeah, actually if you follow the real intent of that, then turn the other cheek when somebody slaps you. And that's, and so, so it's, I think that's, that's misunderstood because again, he's getting to the heart of the law. But you know, I, I, in my experience, most people who inter read these antitheses, most Christians who have, have an explanation for them that I think is not right. My students frequently have this interpretation and what they say is, look, Jesus makes it. Jesus says, you can't only murder. You can't get angry, not commit adultery, can't even have lust, can't even have, you know, justice. You've got to like turn the other cheek all the time. That's impossible. How can you possibly command people not to get angry or not to lust or, you know, and so it's impossible. And they go on to say the reason is Jesus is showing that following the law is literally impossible so that you'll realize that you need to believe in him for salvation, that only the death and resurrection of Jesus can save you because you can't follow the law. And so that's the interpretation that I had when I was an evangelical Christian because it kind of made sense of things. But I think it's dead wrong. Matthew gives no indication that he thinks that you can't do these things. You can refrain from anger. You don't have to desire to run off with your, I mean, you might want to run off with your neighbor's spouse, but you don't have to like, plan to do it, you know, and you don't have to, you know, you can avoid, you can actually do what God wants. I think throughout Matthew, Jesus is telling people you need to do what God wants. And God wants you to live in loving ways toward others. That means not only not murdering, don't get angry at the guy, just try to understand his situation and you know, and be compassionate for other people and, and be merciful and you know, and love your enemies. And you say, well, I can't do that. Well, I don't know if you can or not, but I think Jesus meant that you're supposed to.
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Megan Lewis
Do we see these antitheses, these sections relating specifically to the law in Luke or is this part of the sermon that is solely in Matthew?
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Bart Ehrman
Well, many of these principles are, are also in Luke. And it's very interesting to read Luke in comparison with Matthew on, on these various points, because in some ways Luke is, how do I say this? Luke. Luke seems to be taking these teachings of Jesus and implementing them more for what we would think of as important social practices. So that in Luke, Jesus. Jesus is less concerned kind of with your, with like, your inner being, your. Your personal humility and your, you know, and your, Your desire for righteousness. And he's more concerned about, like, feeding the poor and helping the hungry and taking care of those who are oppressed. And so Luke has these similar kinds of things with what you get throughout the Sermon on the Mount. And this is one of the things that creates problems for scholars then is, does one of these more closely reflect what Jesus himself had in mind or not?
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Megan Lewis
So what's the conclusion? Or is there even a conclusion that historians have tentatively agreed on about that?
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Bart Ehrman
Well, yeah, it depends which historian you talk to. My, My view is that Luke is. Luke is closer to the historical Jesus on many of these points. That Jesus, Jesus, I think, shared the view that He. He would have found in the writings of the Hebrew prophets of the Christian in the Old Testament who emphasized the. That to be true followers of God, you. You cannot be exploiting the poor. You cannot be, you cannot be turning your back when people are hungry. You can't be getting rich on the backs of others. You, you have to, you need to be focused on loving others as yourself. And Matthew has this as well, of course, when he says things like that you should that do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. And, and other sayings in the Sermon on the Mount and outside the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew has that. But Luke even stressed more strongly, I think, kind of what we might call a social agenda to help those in need. And I think that probably is the version that probably goes closer to Jesus own teachings.
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Megan Lewis
So can you give an example of a way that Matthew maybe reframes one of these teachings to better suit his purpose as opposed to aligning more closely with what the historical Jesus might have said?
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Bart Ehrman
Well, I, you know, I was saying a minute ago that in these antitheses, he's trying to show how you really ought to follow the law of Moses. And I pointed out that at the beginning in chapter five, 1720, he says you have to follow the law better than even, you know, you have to go to the very heart of the law and keep it better than scribes and Pharisees. One thing I haven't mentioned is that this entire Sermon seems to be modeled on trying to show that Jesus himself is a kind of new Moses. I think we may have talked about some of this when we had an episode on Matthew, but just to refresh people's memories or if they haven't heard this, you know, Matthew begins his gospel. The first parts of his gospel clearly seems to show that Jesus is like Moses. I mean, you know, he's born in this, this, this kind of difficult situation. He has to be kind of hidden from view. The king is out to kill him. He. He ends up in egyp, goes through the water of baptism like Moses went through the Red Sea. These are all, these are all stories that are paralleled on the book of Exodus. And Jesus goes, Jesus goes through the waters of baptism and then he goes into the wilderness for 40 days to be tempted by the devil, just as Moses and the people of Israel escaped Israel through the Red sea and are 40 years in the wilderness being tested. And then when that's over, Moses goes. Or even before the 40 years, Moses goes up on the mountain to give the law and Jesus goes up on the mount to give his sermon on the mount. And so the whole thing is set up to reflect Jesus as the new Moses who is not giving you a choice between the old Moses and this new Moses, but showing that this new Moses has the correct interpretation of the original Moses. But I think that's why you get these passages like Matthew 5, 17, 20, saying you've got to keep the law better than scribes and Pharisees, because it's Matthew's own emphasis that Matthew's trying to teach his readers in his own community that it's. That it's important not to neglect the commands of God found in Scripture. And that if you're a follower of Jesus, that does not mean that you're free from following what God tells you to do in the Bible. And so that's his emphasis. So I'm not sure that Matthew, that Jesus himself said things like, you know, you have to keep the law better than the scribes and Pharisees. I'm not sure if he said that or not. It's certainly what Matthew wanted him to
- [31:10]
Megan Lewis
say is that patterning of or mapping of Jesus life onto the pattern set by Moses. The primary reason why all of these sayings are collected together by the author of Matthew instead of being scattered throughout the the Gospel, as Luke does.
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Bart Ehrman
Well, it's a really good question, and I think the answer is basically yes, because there's no. When you read the Sermon on the Mount, when you read from section to section and sometimes even verse to verse, there's no, no link. You know, it's just like boom, boom, boom, boom. And so it looks like a collection of materials. Luke does have them scattered throughout his gospel. He doesn't have all of them. He has some of them. He does have a sermon of Jesus. The kind of interesting and ironically is a sermon on the plane. Not the airplane, but the plane, like the flat place as opposed to the Sermon on the Mount. That's interesting. And it has many of these sayings in it. But one question that scholars have has to do with where these sayings actually come from. We've talked some about the Q source in here before and there are some people who think that Matthew, that Luke got his sayings of Jesus from Matthew. I don't think so. And one reason for not thinking so is because these sayings are so nicely put together in the Sermon on the Mount. Why would Luke take those and scatter them kind of willy nilly throughout his, his account? You know, why, why? It's a great sermon. And so the fact that they're in Luke and in Matthew probably shows they got it both gotten from a common source. And what's happened is that Matthew decided to organize these into one big sermon. Matthew, by the way, Matthew. Matthew's interesting for another reason. The Gospel of Mark actually that Matthew's partly based on has very few ethical teachings of Jesus. Jesus has teachings in chapter four of Mark and in chapter 13 of Mark. Matthew has extended discourses, sermons of Jesus. And as it turns out, he's got five of them. There are five passages in Matthew that have extended sermons in them. The Sermon on the Mount is the first. The reason that's interesting is because if Jesus is the new Moses, there are five books of Moses. Now you get five, five, you know, sermons of Jesus. And so, you know, is Matthew doing that intentionally? It's, it's kind of hard to imagine. It's not intentional. But yeah, so, but so I think Matthew's gathered these together to make them a sermon. And Luke doesn't know anything about a big sermon like this.
- [33:53]
Megan Lewis
What does Luke have in the Sermon on the plane then? I'm curious.
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Bart Ehrman
Oh, well, he has many of these same sayings actually. You know, I mean, and so, you know, so. But not in the same sequence, not in the same order. But so, you know, Luke has Beatitudes, as I said before, and he has the Lord's prayers I said before. These are all in altered forms and they're not, they're not put together but also just a lot of these, a lot of these sayings about, you know, about, about how you ought to live. They're almost all about how you ought to live.
- [34:24]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. We are about out of time for, for the sermon. I have one final question before we move on. In the Beatitudes, do historians think that Jesus was referring only to cheesemakers or to any manufacturers of dairy products?
- [34:40]
Bart Ehrman
Yes, I think we can generalize this that, that probably manufacturers of dairy products is what he has in mind and yeah, so they're going to, they're going to inherit the earth or something. I don't know. They're gonna. Yeah, good on them a good time.
- [34:56]
Megan Lewis
We need to work in Derry.
- [34:58]
Bart Ehrman
For those of those who don't know what Megan's referring to, watch the Life of Brian.
- [35:04]
Megan Lewis
You will be doing yourself a favor. It is my all time favorite film. Thank you Bart very much. We've got some brief news on some events that have been taking place, news on how Dr. Travis Proctor's course is going and then we have have some outsmart bot questions.
- [35:23]
Bart Ehrman
Welcome to our upcoming highlights and events segment where we catch up on bart's courses, community updates and all the latest news from the Biblical Studies Academy and beyond.
- [35:39]
Megan Lewis
All right, to start with we have some Biblical Studies Academy community announcements. We just finished a month long celebration in the Biblical Studies Academy for reaching 1000 members which is a lot of people who really, really love learning about the Bible and the New Testament and early Christianity. So I'm very glad that people have found their community there. The celebration included the announcement of new courses being available in the Biblical Studies Academy. A live Ask me Anything with Dr. Dan McLellan, a webinar recorded by Bart on Early Christian Gnosticism. The webinar and Dr. McLellan's AMA are both available now on replay. So you can go, you can sign up and you can watch the recordings even if you can't participate live. So if you would like to see those and learn more about other exciting news in the Biblical Studies Academy community, you can visit bart ehrmangott.com BSA and just a quick note that we've just begun recording Travis Proctor's semester long course Demons and Ghosts in the Bible. I interviewed him a few weeks ago. Fascinating interview, absolutely amazing course. Travis has just finished two really great lectures on fallen angels in Paul and his next two lectures are titled the Chief Demon Satan in and out of the Bible and the Emergence of Satan in Ancient Judaism which is a really, really interesting topic. Actually I have not done A lot of work on it, but I remember in, in my Hebrew grammar classes starting to get a little bit of information about that and being really quite surprised about what's going on there. We've only just begun this series, so if you would like to catch up with the recordings and join in live, you can still register@bartiman.com demons and ghosts. And as always, you can use the code njpodcast for a discount on that. Bart, any comments on Demons and Angels?
- [37:28]
Bart Ehrman
Well, I'll tell you, Travis is a really good teacher and he's a, he's a bright guy. I, you know, he was my student, he was my PhD student at Chapel Hill and I got to know him when he was in college already and then kind of saw him all the way through his master's degree, his PhD degree. And I was thinking when I was listening to your interview with him, I really liked it because I mean, part of it though I was just struck by, I think of all the PhD students I've had over the years. I've had a lot. I think Travis thinks like me more than anyone and talks like me. And I'm not saying that's a good thing, but I was just saying, you know, when you got asked, when you could ask him a question, I could just see the way his brain was working. Man, that is just exactly how I would do it. Like I, it's very rare actually for that, for that to happen. And the thing is like he knows all this stuff. I don't know. I had to, I actually wrote him a note, an email a few weeks ago saying yeah, Travis, what about this? Something about, you know, demons or ghosts or something. He said, oh yeah, yeah. And he just like, he knew it off the top of his head. So it's, it's a great course. I hope people can, can, can get to it because it's pretty interesting stuff and I would never be able to teach it.
- [38:32]
Megan Lewis
So that's the beauty of having a whole community of academics to come and help out when we need it. Yeah. Okay, we have some Outsmart Bart questions now. Stay tuned.
- [38:46]
Bart Ehrman
Dr. Ehrman has written six New York Times best selling books and holds a PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary. It's not often you'll see him made a fool, but it doesn't hurt to try. It's time for Outsmart Bart.
- [39:07]
Megan Lewis
Alright Bart, we're doing it a little, little bit differently this time. We have three questions on the New Testament and then I have three questions on something else and the final three are mostly for comic relief. But someone sent them in, and I. I think. I think they're good. So we're gonna go with it. Okay, first, three New Testament questions. The angel Gabriel in Luke's Gospel is dedicated, is depicted as telling people not to be afraid, and says they come before God's presence. Which angel in the Christian Old Testament also makes very similar statements? And the hint is that the text is also. Also in the Deutero canon. Pronouncing that wrong, I'm sure.
- [39:56]
Bart Ehrman
I don't know. Raphael.
- [39:58]
Megan Lewis
Yes.
- [39:59]
Bart Ehrman
Whoa. Congratulations. Travis Procker would know.
- [40:09]
Megan Lewis
Saved these to Travis. Okay. Second, the term holy city appears six times in the New Testament, four times in Revelation, and twice in one gospel. Which gospel and which scenes?
- [40:30]
Bart Ehrman
I would guess Luke, Matthew. Holy city in Matthew.
- [40:38]
Megan Lewis
Matthew 4, 5, and 27, 53.
- [40:42]
Bart Ehrman
4, 5, and 20.
- [40:45]
Megan Lewis
So it says.
- [40:47]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, 4, 5 is the temptation when the devil takes him to the top of the temple. And 27 is the destruction of Jerusalem. Yeah. Okay. That's interesting. Yeah. Well, okay, that makes sense. It'd be Matthew. Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah.
- [41:02]
Megan Lewis
All right, finally, New Testament question. Mark's Gospel begins with the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. In Mark, when is the last mention of Jesus being either the Christ or the Son of God?
- [41:17]
Bart Ehrman
Well, I will. I'll point out a complication of this question that many people would not know, probably even the questioner, which is that that phrase son of God in chapter 1, verse 1 is a textual variant and may not be original in my book, Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. I argue that that phrase son of God was added by later scribes. It brackets what happens at the crucifixion when the centurion says, truly, this man was the son of God. And so I assume that's the last one. Is that the last one?
- [41:51]
Megan Lewis
Absolutely. Two out of three.
- [41:52]
Bart Ehrman
So it's interesting because son of God is a major theme in Mark's Gospel, that Jesus is the Son of God, and yet it hardly ever appears. It appears at the. After the. After that one. One thing. It appears at the baptism. You're my beloved Son, in whom I'm well pleased. It appears at the transfiguration in chapter nine, right in the middle. And it appears at the end with the centurion. And so it begins. It's at the very beginning, the very middle, and the very end. And so Mark is not. It's not like he's using it all the time. He uses it judiciously to show that that really is kind of the point of this thing.
- [42:29]
Megan Lewis
Thank you very Much. And questioners, thank you for sending your questions in. We have, like I said, three very quick comic relief questions here in Gary Haven mas first volume of his magnum opus, which is on the resurrection. He mentions a lot of names and references a lot of scholars. So I would like you to try and give me the three most mentioned
- [42:50]
Bart Ehrman
names of other scholars.
- [42:55]
Megan Lewis
One is a scholar. The other two are New Testament figures, Biblical figures.
- [43:02]
Bart Ehrman
Bart Ehrman, Jesus and Peter.
- [43:07]
Megan Lewis
Close. Jesus is mentioned 6371. Bart Ehrman is mentioned 750 and God is mentioned 713.
- [43:16]
Bart Ehrman
Oh, God counts as a figure. Okay, yeah, sorry, I might have guessed that one. Have I known that's one of the options.
- [43:22]
Megan Lewis
Okay, so the follow up question, which is the comic payoff, is this evidence that Barth should replace the Holy Spirit in the Trinity?
- [43:31]
Bart Ehrman
I think Gary Habermas definitely thinks that. For those who don't know, Gary is a, is an apologist who's written a very large account trying to prove that Jesus was raised from the dead. The principal thesis is that Jesus was raised from the dead. The secondary thesis is that Bart Ehrman doesn't know what he's talking about.
- [43:56]
Megan Lewis
Well, you're very, very famous, so you know.
- [43:58]
Bart Ehrman
No, Gary, Gary and I have only met maybe once or twice and he's a really nice guy. We get, you know, we got a long crate. It's just we, we don't agree on this.
- [44:05]
Megan Lewis
Yes. Clashing of ideologies. Now, Bart, before we finish for the week, would you mind just summarizing what we spoke about today?
- [44:16]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, as soon as I remember, we just spoke.
- [44:19]
Megan Lewis
It was a long time ago.
- [44:20]
Bart Ehrman
Oh yeah, Sermon on the Mount. Okay, yeah, I can do that. Well, today we're talking about the, certainly the most important sermon of Jesus in the Gospels and the most important sermon, the most important sermon of the New Testament and probably of all time, the Sermon on the Mount. And we're talking about, you know, is it something Jesus really delivered in the form that we have it? Are there sayings in it that he possibly said what? And what does that all mean? And it turns out that many parts of the Sermon on the Mount, even some of the more familiar parts, were probably means something different from what many readers would assume. And so it's an important, very important passage in three chapters of Matthew and definitely worth, worth people reading and contemplating because there's a lot of very, very interesting and, and thoughtful material in it.
- [45:07]
Megan Lewis
But thank you very much, audience. Thank you all for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please subscribe to the podcast to make sure you 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 misquoting Jesus will be back next week, but what are we talking about next time?
- [45:29]
Bart Ehrman
Well, it's a, it's a very different kind of topic. I'm not sure I've ever talked about it before, but in Second Corinthians, Paul talks about taking a, taking a journey up to heaven, having a seeing things up in heaven. And we're going to talk about, well, like, what do you see? So maybe a short episode. Maybe I'll say, well, I don't know, but we'll, we're going to talk about that. It's actually a very important topic for understanding a lot of Paul's thinking.
- [45:56]
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 to our show for free on your favorite podcast listening app or on Bart Erman's YouTube channel so you don't miss out. From Bart Erman and myself, Megan Lewis, thank you for joining us.