← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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Writings attributed to the Apostle Paul make up a large swathe of the New Testament and have been of fundamental importance in the development of Christian theology. However, there are some serious questions over whether Paul actually wrote everything attributed to him. I've got New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman with me.
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A
Hello. Hey Megan, glad to be with you for this one.
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B
It's gonna be fun. And Bart is going to uncover what scholars believe to be the actual authentic letters of Paul. Stay tuned for all of that and so much more. 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 Bart. We're talking about Paul today and I know we've done a few episodes on Paul and we've kind of worked around this topic, but we've not really addressed it head on. I wanted to open by asking, this is obviously a really important topic given how influential Paul's letters have been. How have the disputed authorships of Paul's writings come up in your own life?
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A
I'm amazed we haven't dealt with this one head on, because this is one of the fundamental things. I mean, when I was growing up, I just assumed that all the letters that say they were written by Paul were written by Paul. And even when I started started my studies at the graduate level, I, I still thought that gradually it kind of eroded away. And it's one of the things that made me start thinking more seriously about some of the critical problems of the New Testament. You know, it's not the sort of thing that should ever make somebody like leave the faith or anything. It's just like, I mean, it shouldn't sometimes does, I suppose, but it didn't for me. It just I came to realize, wow, these particular letters, they don't look like they were probably written by Paul. And it took a long time for me to accept that, but once I did, I realized it was absolutely true and the evidence is overwhelming and just it's reality. And it's better to believe in reality than in non reality.
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B
Usually. Yes, I think so.
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A
Yeah, usually.
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B
Yeah, usually. I said a little while ago that this is like a really important issue. Why do you think it's an important thing to talk about?
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A
Well, I think for all sorts of reasons. For people who think that the Bible is the inspired word of God, then it would matter if you have later authors who were writing books claiming to be Paul, knowing full well that they were not Paul. And how does that affect the way you understand the books? We may be getting into that more later. But my major view about that is that the truth claims of a book is independent about the truth claims about the author. In other words, somebody could claim to be Einstein and say that E equals mt square, and they may not be Einstein, but still E does equal MC squared, if you see what I mean. So it's an issue. But for historians like me, who are not reading books like first Timothy or two Timothy directly for faith reasons, it's important because if we're trying to figure out what happened in earliest Christianity, we need to know when certain books were written so that we can understand when their perspectives started to emerge, so that we can actually write a history of what was believed, when and what was happening, when and who is doing what when. And so for historical reasons, it's really important to know that. And the third thing is, and maybe the most important thing for most scholars is that if Paul didn't write six of the 13 books attributed to him, then if you're trying to establish Paul's own theology, you can't use those books. Or if you use them, you need to come up with some kind of clever way to think that they're applicable. Because if they're not written by Paul, they don't necessarily represent Paul's views. And so that's why scholars today, even scholars who are evangelical Christians who are writing for major journals in the field or writing major monographs for university presses, if they're evangelical Christians and they kind of think, actually Paul probably did write Ephesians, but when they write their books, they tend to say, I'm going to just stick here to the undisputed letters, by which they mean the seven that just about everybody agrees he wrote.
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B
So to give everyone A bit of background, make sure we're all on the same page. Who is Paul and what do we know about him as an historical figure?
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A
Right. So I've always said and still say that I think Paul is the most important figure in the history of Christianity, except for Jesus, historically, period, certainly the most important person in the New Testament. We have information about him from his own hand, which is we take to be reliable. And we have information about him in the Book of Acts, which is an account of the spread of Christianity in the first 30 years of the church. And the main figure in that account is Paul, who occupies most of the material in the final 2/3 of the Book of Acts. And so we can put together who he was pretty well. He was Jewish. He grew up outside of Israel. His native language was Greek. He was well educated. He started out as a very committed Jew who was zealous for the Jewish law, who identified with the Pharisaic ways of understanding the Jewish law. And when he first heard about Christianity, you heard that there were people, Jews, saying that Jesus, the crucified Jesus, was the Messiah. He found it highly offensive and even blasphemous. And he somehow, we don't know how, but he violently then persecuted the church. And what he himself says, and what Acts says is that he had some kind of revelatory experience where he had a vision of Jesus that convinced him that Jesus had been raised from the dead. And once he became convinced of that, it changed everything because he came to think Jesus was the Messiah and he became a major advocate for Christianity. So the reason I say that he's the major figure in the New Testament is because not only do you have the Book of acts, you've got 13 of the 27 books claim to be written by Paul. Another book, the Book of Hebrews, got into the New Testament because church fathers wrongly thought Paul wrote it. Another book, the Book of Acts, is written about him, basically. And so 15 of the 27 books are about him. And the theology that later became the standard theology of Christianity is absolutely rooted in the teachings of Paul on one level or another. And he's the most important missionary we know about from the early church, is converting more people than anyone. So just about up and down the line, whether you're talking about the books of the New Testament or the theology or the spread of Christianity, Paul is the key figure in the New Testament.
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B
Now, you've mentioned Hebrews, Timothy and Ephesians. What other writings have been attributed to Paul?
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A
So we have these 13 books, and the ones that Scholars call the undisputed letters. Are there seven of them? You know, I probably should caution that when you say something's undisputed, nothing's undisputed. Go to the Internet, somebody's going to dispute something all the time. But the seven that people label as, like, most everyone's sure Paul wrote These are Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Galatians, 1st Thessalonians, Philippians, and Philemon. Those seven, there are six others that are disputed Pauline letters, which means it's not that people are disputing the contents per se, they're disputing whether Paul wrote them. Even though they explicitly claim to be written by Paul, three of them are still somewhat debated among scholars, but not a huge amount. Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians. Those are a little bit more in dispute than the other three. First Timothy, two Timothy and Titus, which almost all, just not all scholars, but the vast majority of critical scholars agree Paul actually did not write. Hebrews is an exception. Because Hebrews is anonymous, it doesn't claim an author.
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B
So are all of these, or were all of these attributions made based on the text themselves naming Paul as their author?
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A
Like today, if somebody writes you a letter and they sign their name, you assume that's the person writing the letter. When letters were put in circulation allegedly by Paul, like when the book of Ephesians started circulating, it claims to be written by Paul. And so people just assumed this is Paul's letter. And on the surface, it certainly sounds like something Paul would say in many ways. And there were no serious disputes about these letters early on because everybody just assumed that Paul had written them. A lot of people, by the way, might be thinking, well, if this letter was sent to the Ephesians and it wasn't by Paul, wouldn't they, like, know this letter is, like, showing up 20 years after he's dead or something? Wouldn't they know that? And the answer to that is that these letters that claimed to be written to the Ephesians or to the Colossians or to Timothy were not sent to those people. They're put in circulation by people claiming that they had been sent to the Ephesians and to Timothy and so forth. And so you write a letter, you claim to be Paul, you say you're sending it to Timothy, but then it shows up and you find it and you show it to your church, and they say, oh, this is a letter of Paul. And so it wasn't really sent to. These people allegedly have sent to any more than it was written by the person allegedly writing it.
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B
What is it about the disputed letters that makes them disputed? What kind of triggers a scholar's skepticism?
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You know, these are issues that have been debated since the 18th century. Until then, nobody really doubted anything like that. But as scholarship started developing and scholars started taking an interest in establishing what actually happened in history, not just what rumors were out there, what stories were out there, and not just about early Christianity, but generally, as historians started developing historical methods, people took those historical methods to the New Testament. And it was widely recognized that in the ancient world there are lots of books that claim to be written by people who did not write them. That is absolutely not disputed. We have evidence from the ancient world where even authors complain about books being circulated in their names that they didn't write. That's absolutely the case. But then you have to ask, well, okay, you have to consider ever writing then. If you have a book that claims to be written by, you know, John, did John write the book? Or Paul or Peter or whatever. So with the Pauline letters, there are really solid reasons for thinking that Paul did write letters. And, you know, we don't need to get into all that now, but there are really good reasons for thinking Paul did write letters. And we do have a number of letters that go under his name, both in the New Testament and outside the New Testament. And so you have to decide which ones probably went back to him. We have seven letters that seem to cohere really well in terms of their theology, their writing style, their vocabulary, and their assumed historical situation, which is easily put in Paul's days, say in the 50s and the 60s of the common Era. And so if you've got these seven that kind of cohere, like, there's not much reason to doubt any one of these, the seven that I listed, then you can take the others and compare them to these seven. And so you take the book of Ephesians, and you see, does this have the same writing style? Does this have the same vocabulary? Does this have the same theological points of view? Are there any, like, major contradictions in perspective between this book and the other books? Does this seem to presuppose the same historical context, the same historical situation as was in Paul's day? And so what you do is you mount an argument, and some will say, yes, this is one of Paul's letters. Some will say, no, it's not one of Paul's letters. And early on, the people who said, no, it's not were very much in the minority but over time, as the evidence started to accumulate and people started digging and digging, pretty soon people were saying, yeah. Most people are saying, yeah, actually, probably not.
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Thank you. We are going to take a very brief break, but please stick with us and we'll be back soon to talk about the theological implications of disputed Pauline authorship and what his missing letters may have contained. Were the early Christian apostles as unified as they seemed? What if Peter and Paul, the two towering figures of early Christianity, were actually bitter rivals? The truth might surprise you. In the free course. Did Peter hate Paul? Join New Testament scholar Dr. Bart Ehrman as he unpacks one of the most intriguing debates in Christian history. While the book of Acts paints a picture of harmony between all the apostles, other early Christian writings suggest there was deep seated conflict. Did Peter truly resent Paul for his radical teachings? Why do Paul's letters hint at a heated dispute that remains unresolved? In this course, you'll explore these questions and more, diving into lesser known texts and uncovering the evidence behind this historical mystery. Ready to discover the hidden tensions that shaped early Christianity? Visit barterman.com peterandpaul to sign up now for free access. And as a bonus, you'll receive lifetime access to the course, including lectures, Q and A sessions and more. A $30 value. Again, simply visit barterman.com peterandpaul and it's yours at no charge. Welcome back. We're talking about the writings of the Apostle Paul, specifically what he actually authored and what he didn't. Before the break, Barthes talked about what writings have been attributed to Paul and which of those attributions have been disputed. Now we're moving on to the good stuff. Barthes, going to walk us through why a particular letter is disputed. And we'll be getting into the theological implications that this disputed authorship raises. So, Barthes, can you give us an example of why a specific letter has disputed authorship?
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A
Yeah, well, you know, I mentioned Ephesians earlier, so I can use that one. There are scholars, some good scholars, who continue to think Paul wrote Ephesians. I would say the majority of crit scholars think that he did not write it. And the reasons are multiple. And it's, it's one of these things that, that's a cumulative argument. You know, arguments have some weight, some have more weight, some have more weight. But in this particular case, it seems like everything with any weight at all points in the same direction. And so to start with, people, of course, as I pointed out, think about in terms of vocabulary and writing style. If you're reading a book by Mark Twain, and somebody has somehow slipped in two pages from James Joyce on the same topic, and you're reading through Mark Twain and all of a sudden you're hitting this other stuff. You say, whoa, wait a second, this is really different. It's that kind of thing only. I mean, it's not that extreme. But the writing style is different in Ephesians, some book, very important vocabulary differences. And people then will say, well, yeah, but people write different letters and people write differently in different occasions. So it's not a problem with having different vocabulary and style.
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B
And.
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And as a rule, that's. That's absolutely right. So what you have to do is you have to look very carefully. You look at things that people aren't thinking about very much when they write. For example, in Greek, you have participles and you have infinitives. And there are ways to make. Use these various forms of speech. And people don't really sit around thinking a lot about how they use their participles or how they use their infinitives. It's just, you know, you write the way you write, but you look at that kind of thing and you realize, wait a second, this is different here. Or some people write in short sentences, some write long sentences, some write. Can write in both. But when you read, compare Ephesians, it isn't just that the sentences are so much longer, which they are, but the complexity of the sentences is much more. I mean, it's. They're really complex, where there are different levels called levels of subordination, where you get like a clause in the clause that's explaining that clause and clause explaining that clause, and it kind of goes on like that. And some people write like that and some don't. Ephesians does have problems with vocabulary and writing style. That itself wouldn't be enough to change anybody's mind, probably, but it would make people suspicious. But there. There are other things, including some of the key theological points of Ephesians that look like Paul. But then when you start digging deeper, actually this is not what Paul says. In fact, it's contrary to what Paul says. I'll just give you two quick examples. Paul in his letters, like in Romans and in Galatians, these two undisputed letters, is very outspoken that the works of the law are not what can bring salvation. In other words, keeping the Jewish law, being circumcised, keeping kosher, observing Sabbath. The works of the law cannot bring salvation, only faith can. Faith in Christ. Okay, so when you get to Ephesians, there's this whole section in chapter two that is all about how a person is saved by faith, not by works. And that sounds like Galatians and Romans. Until you look carefully. He's not talking about the Jewish law anymore. This author is talking about doing good things. In other words, you're not saved by being a good person. You know, you help an old lady across the street. You know, you help the neighbor out when they're in trouble or whatever. That's not what Paul's. Paul has no problem with you doing good works. He's saying, if you're Gentile, you should not be circumcised. So it sounds like Paul, but when you look at it, it's actually talking about a completely different thing. As if somebody living, like, at a different time is thinking, you know, well, okay, it worked. Yeah, you can't do any works. An even more important one probably is that Paul insisted that people who were believers and had been baptized had died with Christ. They died to their old life. They had died to the power of sin. In control of this world. They're created anew. So they have died with Christ, but they have not been raised with Christ. The resurrection is going to happen at the end of this age. And Paul is emphatic. We have died. We have not yet been raised. He emphasizes this in Romans chapter 6 in 1 Corinthians 15. It's his entire point. We have not yet had the resurrection. Yet. When you get to Ephesians, the author says, we have already been raised with Christ and are ruling in the heavenly places. It's just the opposite of what Paul says about the same topic. There's a lot more to it. But every one of these things that you look at points in the same direction. And after a while, man, it starts accumulating. You say, I. I really don't think Paul wrote this thing.
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B
So what theological implications for early Christianity, modern Christianity, whichever strikes you, if the letter to the Ephesians isn't authentic, if we just take that out of the New Testament, how does that impact people's belief systems?
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Well, you know, some scholars, not so much today, I don't think, but it used to be maybe 40, 50 years ago. Really thought of Ephesians as the core of Paul's writings. There's a book by FF Bruce, who is a very famous English New Testament scholar. He's British, British New Testament scholar who wrote a book called Apostle of the Heart Set Free. I used to use it in my classes at Rutgers because I thought it was a really fine explanation of an older style of scholarship. And then, you know, to show why that kind of scholarship doesn't really work anymore. Because he thought that Ephesians was actually the heart and soul of Paul's letters and that it incorporated Paul's theology as a kind of. This was like a refined way of putting it. And now people don't think so. So if Ephesians is not actually by Paul, then Paul doesn't talk about people being raised already with Christ. Paul doesn't talk about how good works, doing good things is not what's going to bring you salvation. So the whole thing. So there's that, you know, that would affect theology, but also you have a kind of a problem with the forgery itself, that Ephesians is a book that emphasizes importance of truth and speaking the truth and always being truthful. It's an emphasis you get throughout the book. If you look up the word truth in Greek, it's aletheia. You'll see it, like, repeatedly as an emphasis of this author. But when he wrote the book, he claimed to be somebody he was not. And in the ancient world, that kind of book was called a pseudepigraphon, a writing that's inscribed with a lie. And so it creates this curious situation that the person who is emphasizing the truth thought that it was worthwhile lying about his identity. I'm just saying that's how the ancient people considered these sorts of things. And that's what we would think today. If somebody, you know, if somebody forges a book in my name and, you know, publish it claiming to be Bart Ehrman, then I, you know, I wouldn't like that. And I would say they're being deceitful and. And they would be. And that's what they thought in the ancient world as well. Yeah. So I think. I think it matters a lot.
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B
Theologically, it's definitely a bit of a challenge. How about for the other disputed Pauline letters? Do they have substantial theological points that would change how Christianity works if they were removed?
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A
Yeah, I would say so. I mean, let me give you two examples. One is the book of 2 Thessalonians, which is very interesting because it's a lot like one Thessalonians. Like their verses, they're virtually the same. Wow, that's interesting. Paul must have written both of them. Except when you read Paul's letters, he never says the same verse is the same between two letters. And this one is interesting because whenever it sounds a lot like Paul, it's stuff taken almost directly from first Thessalonians. But the stuff that isn't in Thessalonians is not like Paul, including its major point. The major point of First Thessalonians is Paul's telling the Thessalonians that they need to be prepared because Jesus is coming back soon. It's going to be sudden. It'll be unexpected. You need to be ready, be ready for it. Could happen anytime. 2 Thessalonians is written to counter the view that Jesus is returning at any time. And it's showing that, in fact, things have to happen first before it takes place. You'll know whether it's going to take place because these other signs will precede it. And so was Jesus supposed to come back right away or not? Well, it depends which one of these books you read. So that's kind of an important thing. The second thing that's even of greater relevance for modern churches is that One Timothy is one of those books that the vast majority of critical scholars say, yeah, Paul probably didn't write it. Or more emphatically, Paul did not write it. First Timothy is the book that has this passage that tells women that they're not allowed to speak in church and that they are to be silent because men are to have priority. And when women teach men, it leads to problems going back to Adam and Eve. Eve deceived Adam, and that's why he ate the fruit that brought sin into the world. And so Eve was deceived by the devil, and then she deceived the man. And that's what happens when women speak. And so women cannot teach. And so this is First Timothy 2, 11:15. You know, it's used today. It's one of the major reasons that women can't be pastors of some churches or priests, let alone popes, because. Because women get deceived. Well, Paul didn't write that letter, so you can't really appeal to Paul, because if you actually look at Paul's writings and you see what he has to say about women, it's a very different story indeed.
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B
That definitely changes an awful lot in the religious landscape. I'm going to shift gears slightly. I wanted to ask you. We obviously don't have all of the letters that Paul wrote because that's simply not possible. We don't know how many there were, and we don't really know how many are missing. But do any of his existing letters hint at what the missing ones might have contained, or are they all just standalone features?
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A
It's a very interesting question because there are a couple of indications in the book of First Corinthians in the New Testament, we have both first and Second Corinthians. But in 1 Corinthians, Paul refers to a letter that he earlier wrote to the Corinthians. That would have to be half Corinthians or something.
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B
So first is second, second is third, and then we've got a first Corinthians floating around somewhere.
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A
Yeah, yeah, Corinthians 1 or something. I don't know. And in 2 Corinthians, he mentions letters that he wrote. Second Corinthians itself is widely thought to be made up of at least two different letters of Paul's sent to the Corinthians that were scissored and spliced together. And some of us, this isn't my idea, but a lot of scholars think that there are actually up to five different Pauline letters that have been cut and pasted together to make up what's now Second Corinthians. There's really good evidence for that, at least for the two letters. And the five, I think, is pretty convincing too. So. So those would all be lost letters. When you read Philippians, there's been an exchange of letters between Paul and the Philippians that he refers to. You have that kind of thing in terms of like, how often did that happen? I think man, Paul must have written a ton of letters because these first and Second Corinthians themselves. Suppose two Corinthians is two letters. So that's three letters we know, plus a fourth that he talks about. That's just one church in a short period of time. Paul ministered for 30 years at least. And he had, I don't know how many churches, A couple dozen churches at least. And so if he ministers for 30 years and has a couple of dozen churches, and even if he just writes them twice a year, you know, do the math. You know, you're talking hundreds and hundreds of letters, and we have seven.
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B
Better than nothing, but maybe not as many as we would like. So if there are canonical New Testament texts that are not written by Paul, are there non canonical texts that maybe were written by Paul?
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A
It's a great question. The answer appears to be no. We do have letters claiming to be written by Paul from outside the New Testament, non canonical letters, including by, for example, Third Corinthians, which is a great letter. Paul certainly didn't write it. A letter to the Laodiceans, an exchange of letters between Paul and the greatest philosopher of his day, Seneca, the Roman philosopher Seneca, an exchange back and forth between them. And we know about letters that he allegedly wrote to the Alexandrians, for example. So we have these other letters, and we apply the same criteria to them that we apply to all the others to try and figure out whether they cohere with writing style, vocabulary, theology, situation. And none of them even comes close. But if there were, boy, people ask me, what would you like to find? You know, which, if you had to pick a document you'd like to find, what would it be? Well, having somewhere with Paul's letters would be nice. Boy, that would be really good. And you wonder why they didn't keep them, by the way. My guess is, you know, they just thought they were like mail and they read them and then they threw them away. They didn't realize these would become part of the New Testament, but we sure wish they had kept more.
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B
That would be finding a cache somewhere like the Dead Sea Scrolls of Paul's letters locked up in a jar somewhere. That would be amazing.
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A
It'd be amazing. And it'd be much disputed because, of course, you can predict which side various scholars would fall on, depending on their. Well, the religious preferences, for one thing. Especially if these letters said something they didn't like. Oh, no, that couldn't have been written by Paul even if it fit in.
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B
Now, my final question. If we have disputed Pauline letters in the New Testament canon, we have disputed Pauline letters out of the New Testament canon. What was the criteria when the canon was being assembled for including some letters and not others?
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A
So the same criteria were applied to Paul's letters as to the Gospels and to everything else. Basically, church fathers who accepted the authority of these writings and considered them scripture said that they had to go back to Paul himself. So they had to be ancient and they had to be authentic. And they assumed that these 13 were authentic and that Hebrews was authentic. If they had a piece of writing that claimed to be written by Paul that supported a view that they found to be a false teaching, a heresy, then they argued on those grounds that Paul did not write it. And so that would be a problem with Third Corinthians, and not so much because it embraces a heresy, but it's opposing a heresy from much later. And there were letters that were heretical letters claiming to be written by Paul, so they kicked those out. A letter had to be an ancient one going back to Paul's day. It had to be written by Paul himself. It had to be orthodox, and it had to be widely recognized by virtually everybody that it was acceptable as scripture. So it couldn't be just like a local favorite or something like that. And you know, the church fathers with Paul's letters and with others, they didn't have our modern methods of evaluation or our methods of data analysis and things. And so they didn't have scientific ways of going about establishing authorship the way we do. But they made decisions and they decided these really go back to Paul and they then became the heart of the New Testament in some ways.
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B
But thank you so much. Paul is and the authorship of his letters is such a fascinating topic. We've I think done a decent job in 30 minutes, but we're going to have to leave it here. I'm sure we will be revisiting this in the future, but we're going to switch over to some highlights and upcoming events and then we have some listeners questions coming up too. So please stay with us.
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A
Welcome to our upcoming highlights and events segment where we catch up on Barth's courses, community updates and all the latest news from the Biblical Studies Academy and beyond.
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B
So this is the last reminder because it's actually being recorded on November 9th and 10th, Barth has a new course coming out. It's about the Acts of the Apostles and that is eight lessons for $59.95. You can as always get your discount using the code mjpodcast. Registration is at bart erman.com actscourse or alternative is you can get the course for free included inside of the new BSA community and you can sign up for a free 14 day trial membership at Bart ehrman.com BSA but I wanted to ask you why Acts? Why are you focusing on Acts this time around?
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A
Well, you know, we've done a couple of the Gospels and I'm going to do all the Gospels in one of these weekend courses. But I thought it would make a lot of sense to move on to the book of Acts at this point because it's different from the Gospels, want a different kind of course. And Acts, it's our only account of early Christianity for the first 300 years. Basically this is our one account about what the apostles were doing after Jesus death and how they were spreading Christianity. And Paul, as I said before, is a key figure. The key figure really in the book of Acts. Two thirds of the book is mainly about Paul. And so if you want to know about Paul, this key figure, well, you've got to look at Acts. And there are two aspects of Acts that are really critical that I'll be looking at. One is just how it works as a narrative account because it has all sorts of themes and perspectives that it's trying to promote that. You might not think if you're just reading it might just sound like a nuts and bolts account of this happened, this happened, that happened, that happened. And man, it's not that at all. It is driven by certain theological views and certain historical views that are shaping how this person's telling the story. So that's really interesting. To understand the book, you've got to see how it works. But the other thing is it is a historical account. It claims to be and you have to figure out how historical is it, is it historically accurate mainly or totally or not much or you know, sometimes or what is it and how do you decide? So we'll be. I'll be explaining how scholars go about dealing with that issue, including who wrote it and when he wrote it and all those things. But the main focus is going to be on how it works as a text in ways that you wouldn't expect. That's why we're calling it the Genius of Acts, because it's actually quite brilliant in ways, but also then how its historical claims stack up against what we can, we can get from other sources.
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B
Thank you and people. You can join Bart and myself. The live recording, as I said, is Saturday and Sunday, November 9th and 10th. That's this coming Saturday and Sunday. You can find more information at barturman.com forward/actscourse. If you can't join us live, you will always have access to the recordings. Also, they stay up. You can listen to them literally whenever you want throughout your entire life. So, so highly recommended. We are going to switch over to our Listeners Questions segment now and it's one of my favorite parts.
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A
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 askbars
- [32:45]
B
okay, we're opening with a question related to what we've been talking about. We're looking at authorship and the question says the Gospel of Mark doesn't say it's written by Mark. Are there any texts in the New Testament that we have evidence to say came into direct contact with one or more of the apostles? Either they read it, it was read to them, or they provided part of the text. If so, what is the evidence and can we trust it?
- [33:09]
A
So that's a good question. If this person means one of the apostles, meaning like one of the disciples of Jesus. Yeah. So here's the situation. This directly relates to what we were just talking about. We have these 27 books in the New Testament, all of them, except, I guess, for Hebrews in the traditional title, actually has a name of an apostle associated with it, whether it's Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Mark and Luke are not disciples of Jesus. They're thought to be companions of Peter and Paul, respectively. But then, you know, you get the letters of Paul and you get letter of James, you get the letters of Peter, letters of John, etc. So you have 27 of those. Of those, the only ones that we're pretty sure were written by the people who are named as their authors in the texts are the seven undisputed letters of Paul and the book of Revelation written by somebody named John. It doesn't say which John, doesn't say the disciple John, but he called himself John. His name is probably John. So that's only eight letters out of the 27. The other 19. We don't have evidence, like historical evidence to suggest that these authors actually knew any of the apostles. Paul certainly knew some of the disciples because he tells us that he visited them and he tells us about a conflict he had with Peter. And he definitely knew James, the brother of Jesus, who was not one of the disciples. So our only connection really to the disciples direct connection is through Paul.
- [34:39]
B
Thank you. Is the person Cornelius, the centurion and his conversion story historical?
- [34:46]
A
Okay, so this will be something I'll be dealing with in my course on the Book of Acts. The Cornelius story in the Book of Acts occurs in chapter 10 and then is recounted by Peter in chapter 11. This is right after Paul converts in chapter 9. Paul has been persecuting the Christians. Then he has a vision of Jesus. He converts. And Paul throughout this book is going to be the missionary to the Gentiles, taking the Gospel to Gentiles and insisting that they don't have to be Jews in order to be following the Jewish Messiah. You can follow Jesus without being Jewish. And one of the clever things that the author does, the author of Acts does, is after Paul converts, but before he starts his mission, he has this episode involving Peter, who is summoned to the house of a pagan Roman centurion, Cornelius. Peter is told by God that these pagans can convert without keeping kosher. They don't have to follow the law. And Peter has a vision that shows this. And then he goes down and Cornelius converts and his whole household converts. And all these pagans convert and the Spirit comes upon them. And then Peter goes off and tells the apostles, gentiles can be converted without having to follow the law. And so God has shown it to Peter before Paul starts preaching it in the book of Acts. And the reason that's significant is because in Paul's own writings, it's clear that Peter and Paul had serious and hot debates and arguments about whether Gentiles were on the same standing as Jews in the church. And so Acts looks like it's trying to ameliorate that problem, to solve that problem by showing actually Peter was the first one who came up with this, and God told Peter. And so it sets up Paul's mission. I don't think it happened. No, I don't think it happened.
- [36:38]
B
I was going to say, put this
- [36:38]
A
being a mystery fiction, then I think so. I mean, it's very hard because when Axe reports an account that nobody else mentions, then you have to evaluate the plausibility of the account in light of the plausibility of accounts that Axe narrates that we do have outside attestation for. And you have to see how generally Acts is reliable. And when you see how generally is reliable, it gives you some purchase on whether he's reliable or not. And stuff you can't check. So the stuff you can check helps you kind of gauge the stuff you can't check. There's no reference to a Cornelius or anything like that anywhere else. And nothing that's associated with Peter otherwise suggests that he had a vision like this or anything. So I think it's probably. I'm not sure if the author of Acts made it up, but somebody came up with a story to explain how this understanding that gentiles could convert without following the law came about without it just being Paul's invention.
- [37:34]
B
Thank you. What was Jesus position on divorce? And if someone remarries after the divorce, are they committing adultery?
- [37:42]
A
Yeah. Well, it depends which gospel you read. This is one of those notorious things that there are these statements by Jesus about divorce where he'll say in one place, he'll say that, you know, divorce is not allowed if you divorce is committing adultery. But then sometimes they'll say, except in the case of unfaithfulness, you know, and so that accept clause clause provides an exception, but you don't always find the except clause. You get these statements in all three of our synoptics. Matthew, Mark and Luke. They're different when you compare them with each other. It's kind of hard. It is hard to reconcile the three. This person is asking about Jesus himself. My sense is that Jesus himself had the view that pretty much Paul had, which is, you should not get a divorce. Part of it is because Jesus, like Paul, really thought the end was coming soon. Paul insists that since the end is coming soon, you should not change your social status. You know, if you're married, don't get divorced. Why put your energy into that, into that. Or if you're not married, don't get married. You know, if you're a slave, don't try to become free. I think that tenor of things matches with what we find in Jesus as well. My suspicion is that Jesus didn't think you should get a divorce.
- [38:51]
B
Thank you. What is the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, and why is it considered the unforgivable sin? Sin?
- [38:58]
A
Yeah. Well, it's not what everybody thinks it is. It's not. Everybody thinks it's the same thing. Like, historically, there have been, you know, roughly 963 solutions to what the unforgivable sin is. Because everybody wants to know. Because, man, I don't want to commit that one like some of the others. Okay, but not that one. It has ranged from, you know, just pick your thing. It's ranged from everything from disbelief in Christ to masturbation to adultery to, you know, you just pick something. Usually they're sexual sins for some reason. So. So the passage where Jesus talks about this, the first time he talks about it is in the Gospel of Mark. And you get it as well in Matthew and Luke, who basically take Mark's story and adjust it. In some ways, the situation in Mark's Gospel is that Jesus has been healing people and casting out demons. And his opponents among the Jews claim that he's been doing this by the power of Beelzebub, the devil, that the devil is empowering him to cast out demons, because who else would have control over the demons other than their master Beelzebub? So that's how Jesus is doing it. And that's when Jesus says that, look, any sin will be forgiven. Anything you sin against God, anything you you sin against, say against me. But if you sin against the Spirit, it's an unforgivable sin. What he means is what he is doing is through the power of the Spirit. If you deny the Spirit's work in Jesus life, and if you say that's actually the devil, you can't be forgiven because you've actually rejected the power of God that's manifest here on earth. You've rejected it. Well, how can you be forgiven for rejecting the only thing that can save you? And so it's that it's attributing to Jesus the power of the devil.
- [40:41]
B
Excellent. Thank you. Final question for the Day. What was the reason for the cleansing of the temple? Today? It's usually given an anti capitalism or anti commercialism spin. Was that it or was it a rejection of the temple cult as a whole?
- [40:55]
A
It's an excellent question. And I have changed my mind on this issue within the last couple of years, as it turns out. You know, it wasn't that I was thinking about it in capitalist terms, although many people do, but I was thinking that the problem with the temple is that it had become corrupt and that Jesus was upset by the fact that people were using it as a business enterprise. Again, I'm not just thinking capitalist terms here, but the idea was that the temple was to be a house of prayer and that it's now become kind of a marketplace and that the people are neglecting what the point of this is. And I think there is something still to that. But I have started to think that in fact it's deeper than that. And it's what this person suggested as a second alternative. Think that Jesus was opposed to the cult of the temple, the worship in the temple. He predicted that the temple would be destroyed. The God was so angry with it that he would destroy it. The temple event where he turns over some tables of the money changers and drives out people who are selling the sacrificial animals. I don't think that was a huge event that shut down the temple the way it's portrayed in the gospels. But I do think Jesus probably did something like that in protest. And I think altogether it adds up to a view that what God really wanted was not your sacrifices. The temple cult is not what put you in a right standing with God. And Jesus had an alternative message and he thought that the emphasis on the temple cult was getting in the way of true obedience to God by loving one another, caring for others, taking care of the needy, and that that's what God really was interested in. So I think the temple cleansing, as they call it, really was probably another indication of Jesus opposition to the Temple as a cultic apparatus. That's problematic because of course it's in the Torah. Torah, I mean, you know, the Torah, you know, has that, but it's not unprecedented. The members of the Dead Sea Scrolls community also were completely against the temple and the cult of practices there.
- [42:59]
B
Bart. Thank you so much for your answers, listeners. As always, thank you for your questions. If you have a question for Bart, you can submit it over@barturman.com Ask Bart. I can't promise we'll get to it soon, but we will do our best. Now, Bart, before we finish for the week, would you mind just summarising what we spoke about today? Today?
- [43:17]
A
Well, we're dealing with this very important issue of whether Paul wrote the letters that are attributed to him in the New Testament. He certainly did not write letters that are found outside the New Testament that claim to be written by him. And for a couple hundred years now, more than that, scholars have come to think that some of the letters in the New Testament were not written by Paul. And so we tried to deal with those issues, like how would we know that? What kind of scholarship would be involved, involved in deciding that? And what would be the implications for anybody, whether they're a believer in the Bible or a Christian or not? What would be the implications if, in fact these six letters that are considered disputed were not actually written by Paul?
- [43:55]
B
Audience, thank you so much 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 mjpodcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.bartleman.com. that includes the Acts of the Apostles course that is being recorded this weekend. Misquoting Jesus will be back next week. But what are we talking about next time?
- [44:18]
A
Next time we have a big one, probably the most important discovery of a Christian text probably in my lifetime, the Gospel of Judas, which was first published in 2006 and discovered earlier than that. We're going to talk about what this book is. It's a gospel closely connected with Judas Iscariot, which itself is a is a hot issue.
- [44:40]
B
It's going to be fun. Please join us then. 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 channel so you don't miss out. From Bart Herman and myself, Megan Lewis. Thank you for joining us.