← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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- [00:00]
Bart Ehrman
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- [00:31]
Megan Lewis
Hello everyone. Welcome back to Misquoting Jesus. One of the things that surprised me, I think the most when I moved to the United States and started paying closer attention to US Politics is how much American politicians talk about their personal religious convictions. For a country that was apparently founded on the separation of church and state, US Politics seems to be pretty deeply enmeshed with Christianity. Now, Louisiana classrooms are required by state law to display the Ten Commandments, which definitely seems to be blurring that line just a little bit. Today we're going to be talking about the separation of church and state, what that actually means, and whether it's a concept ancient Christians would have recognized. Stay tuned for all of that and so much more. Welcome to Misquoting 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. It's commonly said that one of the founding principles of the United States of America is the separation of church and state. A recent law passed by the Louisiana state government requires all classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. Proponents of this call it educational. Opponents call it blatantly unconstitutional. We're going to be exploring that in today's episode. But before we get to all of that, Bart, hello. How are you doing today?
- [02:00]
Bart Ehrman
Yep, doing all right. I'm broadcasting from my flat in London. We're over here for the summer and so. Yeah, how are you doing?
- [02:10]
Megan Lewis
Pretty well, thank you. Summer is in full swing, so that means children are going to swimming classes and summer camps and all kinds of things which involve me driving more than I usually do. But they are having a good time. I wanted to ask you, Chris mentioned that he's had a lot of very positive comments on the podcast about your Greek cruise that you recently embarked on. Can you tell us how that went?
- [02:34]
Bart Ehrman
It was great. We went to a number of the Greek islands and as it turns out, weirdly, it was not a cruise. So it was a, it was a land tour started in Athens and we took a ferry to Andras and then went to Naxos where we take ferries between islands. And so we went to five islands, but then we'd stay in hotels on the, on the islands. And so it was about, I guess it was about a 10 day trip. It was absolutely spectacular because, you know, the scenery is fantastic. Of course, these Greek islands are quite famous. A lot of them have serious archaeological sites on them. And so this is more like an educational tour. There was a bit of lying on the beach, which was a bit of highlight, but there's also a lot of archaeological sites in various places. So these are the Cyclades islands. And so with a lot of Cyclades art and that kind of thing, Cycladic art and that kind of thing. So yeah, it's fantastic. Really good.
- [03:29]
Megan Lewis
That sounds wonderful. I am very jealous.
- [03:31]
Bart Ehrman
Well, you know, the thing is, it was a really interesting group of people because it's, it's people who are, you know, listen to our podcast or on my blog. And it was kind of a self selecting group. The conversations were fantastic and these were really extraordinarily interesting people. You know, I love that kind of thing. So, as you know, I'm going to do one at the end of the summer too. Not to Greece, but elsewhere. So they're fun.
- [03:53]
Megan Lewis
Well, I'm glad that you had a good time. We should move on to this whole church and state business before we get kind of into some of the details. Why do you think this is an important topic to be discussing?
- [04:05]
Bart Ehrman
Well, you know, it's been very important to me in my life since I began teaching. For my college education and for my graduate work, it was always in Christian contexts. I went to Moody Bible Institute, private school, went to private liberal arts college, Wheaton College, went to Princeton Theological Seminary for both a master's and a PhD. My entire 12 years after high school was in religious settings. But they're not financed by the state. When I first started teaching, I started teaching at Rutgers University, which is a state university of New Jersey. And then I've spent most of my career at a state university, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. And there it matters because my salary and the institution are supported by state funds. And so we are necessarily limited in what we can do when it comes to religion because of the separation of church and state in this country. And so I was very cognizant right when I started teaching, even though I'd always been in Christian context, I was Very cognizant that this is a different thing and needs to be taken quite seriously. And so the professors in universities who are teaching religion by my reading of the Constitution, are not allowed to try and proselytize, they're not allowed to try and convert somebody to some position or another because the state is religion neutral is the way I read the constitution. And so it's very different from a Christian college, for example, where you promote your faith and you try and encourage students to accept your faith positions.
- [05:38]
Megan Lewis
So I did actually look very briefly on the state website or the government websites and it said that the First Amendment has two clauses related to this topic, what they call the establishment clause, which prevents the government from establishing a state sponsored church. So in the UK we have the Church of England, which is, I guess state sponsored. I'd never really thought about it that way, but it is. And the free exercise clause which protects a citizen's right to practice religion as they choose, as long as it doesn't kind of go against public, public morals or what they call a compelling government interest. We'll get into the modern circumstances a little bit more in a bit. But I wanted to ask, were either of these things concepts that ancient people would have recognized?
- [06:19]
Bart Ehrman
Oh, definitely not for the most part. It's actually an interesting question with respect to Christianity in a way that's somewhat surprising. Generally throughout the ancient world and in most of the modern world today, including England, the UK generally, it has been acknowledged that church and state are compatible and that in fact in the period I study in ancient, the Roman ancient world, the Roman world in antiquity, it was simply understood that the gods are the ones who had made the Roman state great. That's why they had become an empire, is because they were supported by the gods. And in return the state supported the worship of the gods. And it was a two way street. As long as the state was right before the gods, as far as they encouraged the worship of the gods and the gods would continue to support the state. And as long as the gods supported the state, the state would worship the gods. And so it was very integrated. So much so that in the ancient world there's actually no distinct words that differentiate between religion and politics in Greek or Latin or these. Because they didn't have this concept that we have that you've got this phenomenon, religion, that's this thing distinct from the rest of society. Religion, what we think of as religion is simply part of being a part of the social order. And so they absolutely didn't distinguish the two, let alone Try to separate the two.
- [07:47]
Megan Lewis
So you mentioned that Christianity was a bit of an exception to this. Could you talk about that for a moment?
- [07:52]
Bart Ehrman
It's extremely interesting what happens because the early Christians start to get persecuted. To begin with, the Christians are mainly being persecuted just on the grassroots level, on the ground level. The next door neighbor gets really ticked off at you for not worshiping the gods properly and throws a rock at your house or something, or badmouths you, you or makes fun of you. Or maybe the mob gets upset because there's an earthquake and they think the Christians are at fault because they're not worshiping the gods and they attack. But eventually the imperial authorities become involved. The first really sort of imperial persecution of Christians is not until the second half of the third century. So about 240, 250 years after Jesus death. It's the first time you get any kind of official imperial persecution of Christians. But Christians early on, even before this big imperial thing, they start saying, look, we have the right to worship our God, you worship your gods, we worship our God, and we should have the right to do that. The state should not tell us what to do religiously. They don't tell anybody else what to do. To my knowledge, this is the first time anybody came up with the idea of a separation of church and state. The early Christian apologists, the ones who are trying to defend Christianity and urging the authorities to back off the persecutions, they wanted there to be a separation between the governing authorities and individual religious preferences. And by and large, you know, the Roman government had always basically allowed people to worship the way they wanted to. But the Christians were a problem because they weren't Jews who were kind of given an exception clause from worshiping the Roman and Greek gods. There were Gentiles, but they didn't worship the gods. And this became a problem. So the interesting thing is the Christians were urging a separation of church and state until Constantine converted, he became a Christian, and then Christians were no longer interested in the separation of church and state because the state now was for the Christians. And so they went back on it and it did not become an issue again until the Enlightenment. It's not really until the 18th century that European thinkers began to say that it's better to have a separation of church and state. That was one of the founding principles then of the US I was actually
- [10:10]
Megan Lewis
going to ask when that switch occurred, if Christians started out saying, actually no, you shouldn't be telling us who or what to worship. The feeling I get is quite a different one. Living in modern America. Was this something that was spoken about when you were an evangelical Christian?
- [10:26]
Bart Ehrman
When I was an evangelical, we simply accepted that the state cannot establish a religion. You know, we thought that, you know, everybody else was going to hell, but, you know, that's their problem. It's not the state's problem. And so we were not in favor. I don't think we were. I don't recall being in favor of the state intervening and trying to establish a particular religious order. Probably, you know, when I was evangelical in the mid-70s, 1970s, I suppose one reason we weren't in favor of that is because we had no idea they'd ever establish evangelical Christianity as a state religion. And so it'd be some other kind of Christianity that we, we thought was heretical if they, we didn't even think about going there. And it's not really until you start getting movements like the Moral Majority that you start getting in the 80s that you start getting people kind of pushing for there to be more allowance for religion, but even supportive religion by the government.
- [11:22]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. We are going to take a very brief break and then we're going to be back because I want to hear more about the Moral Majority. I'm not entirely sure what it is, so please stay tuned. Have you ever wondered where the New Testament Gospels really came from? Were the books actually written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? As everyone seems to say, the answers to these questions may surprise you. In fact, what you discover may challenge everything you thought you knew about the Gospels. If you're ready to learn the historical truth, then you won't want to miss Bart Ehrman's free webinar. Did Matthew, Mark, Luke and John actually write Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? In this 50 minute talk with Q and A, you'll learn answers to some of the most intriguing questions surrounding the Gospel's authorship. Such as why did early Christians say the Gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? If they're anonymous, what's the best evidence that the Gospels were written by the apostles? Were the apostles of Jesus educated well enough to write, write books? And last, if the apostles did not write the Gospels, who did? And where did they get their information? Don't miss your chance to uncover the truth behind the Gospels. Sign up now for free lifetime access to Did Matthew, Mark, Luke and John actually write Matthew, Mark, Luke and John@Barterman.com Authors thank you. So, Bart, right before we finished, you mentioned the Moral Majority. I don't know what that is. Could you please educate me?
- [13:01]
Bart Ehrman
Well, at the time, we all wondered what they thought they were. So the Moral Majority was a movement that started in the 1980s among evangelical Christians. One of the key figures in it was Jerry Falwell. The Christian leaders had grown a little bit fed up with being marginalized the evangelicals, because they realized there are a lot of us in the country here, and a lot of evangelicals are not particularly interested in politics. But, you know, if we got interested in politics, there's enough of us that we could probably push through some of the agendas that we believe in. They coined this phrase, the Moral Majority, as opposed to the immoral rest of humanity, who were apparently in the minority, which wasn't true, but that's what they said. And so they called themselves the Moral Majority. And it ended up being a very important movement for lots of political reasons. They started pushing for Christian social agendas. The Christian social agenda started changing, interestingly, so that a lot of things that are now standard Christian evangelical agendas simply weren't a big deal in the 70s, but now, you know, they're a huge deal, including everything from second Amendment rights to abortion to whatever. The other thing we got influential, though, is that the Moral Majority realized that their view of the end times, of what was going to happen at the end of times, had implications for the geopolitical order in particular, because in standard evangelical thought that goes Back to the 1800s, it was believed that the nation of Israel had to be reconstituted as a sovereign nation and had to actually take over all of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount and that the Temple had to be rebuilt. The Moral Majority started pushing this as a political agenda, trying to get America to be more pro Israel. And the Israeli politicians realized that this was a gold mine for them. Starting with Menachem Begin, they realized, you know, there are a lot more American evangelicals than there are American Jews. Why are we focusing on getting American Jews to help us out financially and such? If we go after the American evangelicals, it's a gold mine. And they did. Starting with Menachem Beginning. Netanyahu, in his early years, he would attend evangelical prayer meetings in Washington and tell these evangelical leaders that he and they were on the same side. They all believed that prophecies were now coming true. Israel needed to be protected against its enemies so that the end could come. I mean, he's saying all these things at prayer breakfast to evangelical, and they take the message abroad. And so that's one reason, one very important reason, why evangelical Christians in particular are very big supporters of the state of Israel. I'm not saying Anything for. Against the support for the state of Israel. So I'm not taking a stand on that. But I am saying that prior to this, this was not a huge political agenda among evangelicals.
- [15:56]
Megan Lewis
That's really interesting. And how does this moral majority kind of fit into the idea of keeping personal religion out of institutes of education? Is this like a keep it out unless you agree with us? Or what are their views on this?
- [16:15]
Bart Ehrman
These issues are very complicated because the Constitution does say that you can't establish a religion and you can't force or deny somebody from engaging in their religious practices. But what happens if somebody wants to pray in school? What if a teacher wants to pray in school? That's their religious prerogative, isn't it? But then how about the children in the classroom? Are they being forced to pray? What about Jews who are having to hear a prayer in the name of Jesus? And so these conflicts start arising as people interpret the establishment clause, especially in different ways. You know, so it's developed over the years, and as the evangelical community has become politically much stronger over the years and continues to be much stronger, then the kinds of social issues that evangelicals have been drawn to are pushed as being completely legitimate constitutionally. And so there are debates about how far can you go? Do you have to forbid prayer in school? Can you allow prayer in school? What about at a football game? You know, can you say a prayer before a football game with a team? So there are things about prayer. There are also issues that relate to religion that are affecting broader issues, including, for example, you know, the abortion issue, where everybody, evangelicals strongly argue that the Bible condemns abortion, and so they're against it. They can't require that everybody become a Christian, but they can pass legislation that does not allow people to get an abortion. So it's having an effect. And many Christians would be quite happy to make Christianity the national religion and to make the United States a Christian country. They often falsely claim that it started out as a Christian country, as if Thomas Jefferson was an evangelical Christian, oh, my God, was he ever not? But they do argue that the founding fathers were Bible believers and so forth.
- [18:09]
Megan Lewis
So that kind of leads me quite nicely into another question that I have, which is, even if. If we grant that maybe falsely, the founding fathers were evangelical Christians, let's say they were, does this supposed foundational role, this foundational importance of Christianity or biblical texts necessitates that importance be continued and carried through into modern society?
- [18:34]
Bart Ehrman
Well, there'd be no reason that it would have to. I mean, if the founding Fathers happened to be Buddhist, there'd be no reason to think that the country has to become Buddhist. The point of the establishment clause is that these leader of state cannot tell others what kind of religion they need to practice. And they're also not allowed to force somebody to discontinue their practices. But it gets sticky because if you don't allow prayer, for example, in school, or you're not allowed disallowing a religious practice, so that's why it gets common. But the personal beliefs of the founding Fathers is not written into the Constitution as something that is supposed to be continued on. If it were, then evangelicals wouldn't have a chance because these founding Fathers, they were not evangelical Christians as a rule. I mean, most of them were deists. Thomas Jefferson, you know, he made his Bible, he cut out all the miracles of Jesus. So the Jefferson Bible, people can still buy it. It doesn't have Jesus miracles. He didn't believe in miracles.
- [19:30]
Megan Lewis
Jefferson, could you explain what a deist is? For those who haven't heard the term?
- [19:34]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, I'm sorry, a deist. So people tend to differentiate between theism and deism. Theism is kind of a traditional belief in Judaism and Christianity that there's a God who created this world and continues to be active in the world, answering prayer, intervening when needed and so forth. That's a theism, a God who's very active in the world, a deist. In the 18th century, deism was the view that, that there was some kind of God who started the whole thing, but he's removed from human activities and he's not involved with the world. And so there may be a God out there, but he's not answering your prayers and not active.
- [20:09]
Megan Lewis
Excellent, thank you. Now, the law that I mentioned, the Louisiana law, requires that all state schools, all classrooms within state schools, have the Ten Commandments displayed. And they mandate what size font it has to be. And the Commandments themselves have to be the focal point of the display. Now, like I said in the introduction, proponents of this law say it's not a religious requirement, but it serves an historical purpose because they say the Ten Commandments are foundational documents of our state and national government. What are your views on this as a university professor? Do you think this is a reasonable argument to be making, or do you think that they're trying to push a religious agenda, screening it with an argument of historicism?
- [20:51]
Bart Ehrman
Well, they're clearly pushing a political agenda. And again, I'm not saying that I'm for it or against it, but it is clearly A political agenda that is rooted in religious beliefs. How could it not be religious beliefs? Let me just give you an example. Most people today who say they believe in the Ten Commandments do not know what they are. I ask my students, you know, do you think you have to follow the Jewish law? And they'll always say, no, no, we don't have to follow the Jewish law because we're Christian. We just follow the Ten Commandments. I said, okay, fine. Have you ever had a job on a Saturday? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I work on Saturdays, so. Well, you know, that's a dick against the Ten Commandments. You're not supposed to work on the Sabbath. Oh, really? Yeah. So you follow the Nine Commandments. I want to tell you an anecdote because there's actually a very funny story about this involving Stephen Colbert. So in 2006, there was a movement to put the Ten Commandments in all the courtrooms of the country. This was a. As legislation being proposed by a representative, a congressional representative from Georgia named Lynn Westmoreland, who wanted to have a plaque with the Ten Commandments in every courtroom in the country. And so Colbert, back when he did the Colbert Report, interviewed him, and it looked like it was a serious interview. Colbert said, so why do you want the Ten Commandments in every courtroom? And he says, well, because they're foundational for this country. They're the very center of what we are as a people, you know, and they give us our. Our moral fabric. And. And Colbert. But why in the courtrooms? And Westmoreland says, well, I can't think of any other building, any other public building where the Ten Commandments would be more relevant. Colbert says, let's think about that. There's no other building in which the Ten Commandments might be relevant, like a church, for example. But then he says, okay, so really, you think they're that important? They're the foundation of our morality in this country? And Westmoreland says, yes, so. So then Kilbert says, okay, list them for me. And he's on tv, and he knows, you shall not kill, murder. You shall not commit adultery. And he remembers part of one of the others. That's it. The people who want the Ten Commandments are not, because they insist on following them, although they may believe they do, although they don't count Sabbath for some reason. And so they may be completely honest about it, but most people don't know. And to say they're the foundation of our country is simply wrong. It's not a foundation founding document of our country. We have Other, we have the Bill of Rights, we have the Constitution, we have. We have other things that are the founding documents.
- [23:27]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. And I have to say, I don't think I could list all 10 Commandments.
- [23:31]
Bart Ehrman
But you're not insisting that he put
- [23:33]
Megan Lewis
up insisting that we, we display them in public buildings.
- [23:36]
Bart Ehrman
So.
- [23:38]
Megan Lewis
Well, how do different interpretations of these commandments kind of play into this argument? Is there a lot of discussion about how we should interpret or translate them, or are people generally in accord?
- [23:51]
Bart Ehrman
I'll tell you, this is part of the irony is that the people who want to say these are foundational documents and so they're part of our history, they don't know the history of the Ten Commandments. When you just look at the Ten Commandments, many of them actually don't mean at all what people think they mean. I mean, for one thing, thou shalt not kill certainly doesn't mean you can't kill anybody, because right after this, God tells the Israelites to go kill all the Canaanites. It tells them to do it. And so it doesn't mean that. And so what does it mean? Thou shalt not commit adultery. If you look at the context of this in the Hebrew Bible, the problem with adultery is that you are stealing somebody else's property. The adultery is that you can't take somebody else's wife. It has to do with wives, and wives are property. And you can see that in the Ten Commandments, when you're not supposed to covet your neighbor's house, his donkey, his ox, or his wife. Great. So the wife is right up there with the donkeys. She's owned by the husband. Historians of the Hebrew Bible, which you know better than I do, they tried to historically understand things like this. They don't simply assume that they mean what people have always said they mean, because the Ten Commandments don't. So I. My guess is that if you grilled anybody who wants the Ten Commandments in the classrooms, they really probably they can't recite them to you, but almost certainly they don't know what they originally meant.
- [25:16]
Megan Lewis
So if many of the people arguing that the Ten Commandments should be displayed and that they're foundational documents of the United States, but aren't familiar with what they actually say. Is this argument more about control and a display of Christian supremacy than anything else?
- [25:33]
Bart Ehrman
Well, of course, you know, you could argue that it would be Jewish supremacy. Nobody argues that because the people supporting this, by and large, are evangelical Christians. And I think it's quite clear. I mean, I see it really, as quite a cynical move on their part. It's just a way of getting in to the system. You know, you kind of. You put a little chink in the armor and you get in there. Okay, so now we got the Ten Commandments. I think we should have the Sermon on the Mount in every classroom in the country because it's a foundational document. And I think we should have the Nicene Creed, because the Nicene Creed is, you know, it's very essential to human life, you know, and you just kind of go through the list and pretty soon, you know, you're a Christian country. And I actually think it's okay if people want this to be a Christian country. I don't think it's okay if we let them do it. It's okay if people want this to be a Jewish country. They want to be a Buddha. You can want anything you want. But, you know, we do have a constitution, and the constitution does not allow us to establish a religion. My reading of the constitution is that it doesn't allow the state to promote one religion or another. It's religious free. Religion free. And I think that. That the state should be religion free when it's not religion free. You lead exactly to the problem that led to the establishment clause in the first place. One reason a lot of people came to this country in the first place is because they were being persecuted for their religious beliefs. They were persecuted for their religious beliefs because the places they came from had a state religion. If you have a state religion, you know, then you're not free anymore. And so. But I think it's a real mistake, and I think it's hypocritical because, you know, these people actually don't even know what they're talking about. It's a symbol for them. It's a symbol of their progress making this country a Christian nation. I don't see it as some kind of secular move to get a foundational document put in the classrooms.
- [27:26]
Megan Lewis
Thank you very much. We are going to take a brief break, but we will be back with news on upcoming events and a good selection of listeners questions. So please make sure you select. Stay tuned.
- [27:39]
Bart Ehrman
This is Bart's weekly update where we get to catch up on all the latest about Dr. Ehrman's book releases, speaking engagements, ehrmanblog.org happenings, and online course launches.
- [27:53]
Megan Lewis
So, Bart, you've been working on a book for a while because books take a while. How is it going? How are you doing?
- [28:00]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, not well. So it's going fine. Me too. So Look, I'll tell you. For years, 20 years, I've had this policy of how I write my books for a general audience, which is I spend about two years doing all the research, taking the notes, making outlines and figuring out exactly what's going to be in it. I get everything in place and then I set aside two weeks and I just write the thing. Two weeks, Boom. You know, it's a miserable two weeks. I'm not a good person to be around, but I get it out of the way and it's done. And this time I said, you know, why do I do that to myself? It's such a miserable two weeks. Like, I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to take my time and write it, you know, here and there and I'll do, you know, I'll spend four hours a day maybe. So that was the way I'm doing. Oh my God, this is a mistake. All it does is it drags out the agony. What's the point? For me, the only painful part of writing a book is it's not coming up with the idea, not figuring out how I want to approach it, not doing the reading, not doing the research, not none of that. What's the painful part? The hard part is the writing. It's so stressful to try and compose something. And I had to write the first time and do it in two weeks because now I had planned to have the draft done before I came over to do this tour in Greece and life got in the way. I wasn't able to do it. And so I've got half of a chapter and the conclusion to write. It's just hanging over me. And now I'm trying to edit the thing. It's like I did it like months ago. I was like, oh, God. Yeah. So I am very sorry you asked. And now, because that's brought to mind what I have to do tonight, I
- [29:34]
Megan Lewis
will not ask again until it's done.
- [29:38]
Bart Ehrman
But I'll tell you, it's a very interesting. I mean, it's a great, great topic. So that part's good, but it's just the process.
- [29:44]
Megan Lewis
I am looking forward to reading it, but I am sorry that it's quite, quite so stressful for you at the moment. Before we, we move on to listeners questions, there's a course coming up on July 20th and 21st which is the Parables of Jesus. If people are interested, they can go to bartehrman.com Parables to buy access to that and find out a bit more. Could you just Give us a quick refresher on what this is.
- [30:08]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, well, this is a bright light on the horizon. This is something to look forward to.
- [30:12]
Megan Lewis
Better than the book.
- [30:13]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, I know. That's why I'm saying, man. Okay, source of hope. This course, I'm not doing the course. I'll be emceeing it or whatever. I'll be, you know, involved with it. But it's being done by Amy Jill Levine. And if anybody knows anything about New Testament studies and like popular lecturers, Amy Jill's at the top of the list. She is fantastic. She's a strange bird in a lot of ways, one of which is that she's a practicing Jew who has a PhD in New Testament studies and spent most of her career teaching Christian ministers in seminary as a practicing Jew. But she, she is so bright and so insightful and so this is going to be a two day course. There'll be four lectures with Q and A at the end of each one. And Amy Jill will be talking about the parables and showing how, you know, our common understandings of like the parable of the Good Samaritan or the prodigal son, etc. How we really are not understanding these in their own historical context. She's very witty and cle. Clever and thought provoking and a dynamic lecture. So I'm really looking forward to this. So people listening to this. Yeah, this is one I think you should consider looking up. So if you just look it up on my site, you'll, you'll see what it's going to be all about.
- [31:23]
Megan Lewis
I have to say I've interviewed Amy Drill before. She is fascinating and a very, very engaging speaker. And I feel like the parables are one of those sections of the New Testament that like, you hear a lot in church and they're explained a lot and you kind of, you get the meaning. Meaning. So I think having someone explain how actually we don't get the meaning and there's a lot of context that goes into this is a really, really valuable and fascinating thing. So I'm, I'm definitely going to try and, and be there to listen to all of the interesting things that she has to say.
- [31:53]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, no, I told. She wrote a book on parables that is terrific and I, I learned a lot from it. I mean, you know, I've been studying the parable since I was, you know, 17 and she's the real deal. So this will be good.
- [32:06]
Megan Lewis
So if people are interested again, that's recording live on July 20th and 21st. You can buy access to the course@barturman.com parables and you'll have recordings available to you for like your whole lifetime if you can't make the live recording. So please do check that out. We are going now to do some listeners questions.
- [32:31]
Bart Ehrman
Now it's time for questions from welcome listeners where Bart answers real questions submitted by misquoting Jesus fans. If you'd like to submit a question for future segments, please visit barterman.com Ask Bart
- [32:48]
Megan Lewis
Alright Bart, as always, excellent questions. We have very intelligent listeners who sent us wonderful things to talk about. So first, ignoring the political debate, what are your thoughts on the historical or theological implications of Louisiana mandating the use of the King James Bible rather than one of the newer or presumably better translations for their mandatory Ten Commandments posters?
- [33:12]
Bart Ehrman
Well, it's not surprising, I guess. When I was an evangelical, we didn't use the King James. When I was studying, you know, studying the Bible, we used more modern translation. And the problem with the King James is there are lots of problems with the King James. The value of the King James, it's the most beautiful translation into English ever done in my opinion, if you just are interested in kind of the literary value of it. And so that part's good. And so, you know, I generally prefer a modern translation for a number of reasons. When it comes to the Ten Commandments, one reason would be that the English language has changed somewhat over the years and sometimes somebody will say something and you're not quite sure why, what in the King James English, it won't be quite clear what it means. Although when it comes to the Ten Commandments, it's not that complicated. You know, I don't really quite understand why the King James. I guess they didn't want to pick another translation because there are debates about which ones are the best. If you go back to the King James, you know, you kind of go back to the, the one that stands at the foundation of most of the modern ones.
- [34:13]
Megan Lewis
Thank you very much. We have a question about sin. How do you think sins are forgiven according to the Bible? The Lacedadian Lutheran Church believes that sins are forgiven by one member of the church saying to another, believe all sins forgiven in Jesus name and blood. They believe that if you die with sin on your conscience without having being forgiven by another member of that church, then you will go to hell. The listener says they are interested in hearing your thoughts on this.
- [34:41]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, well that's not in the Bible. That's just made up. The Bible has different views about how sins can be dealt with before God. Sins are widely known in the Bible. To separate. Separate somebody from God to be an act of disobedience that brings a punishment. It's why people die physically because they've committed sins according to different parts of the Bible. It's why you're separated from God throughout the Bible. And sins have to be dealt with before one can be in a restored relationship with God. We did a podcast, I think, on this, about two of the major ways in the Bible that sins are dealt with. One is God simply forgives sins. If you repent, you say you're sorry, you realize you've done something wrong, you regret it, you feel some remorse, you want to change your ways, and you confess your sins to God and he forgives you. You know, the way you would forgive a child, if your child did something wrong and she said you're sorry, you'd just forgive her. The other way is through atonement, where there needs to be a price paid, so there's a penalty. The penalty has to be paid. The penalty cannot be foregone. It needs to be paid. And in the Christian tradition, Christ is the one who pays the penalty for our sins. In that system, that way of understanding things, faith in Christ is what brings about the atonement for you. So in one case God forgives, and the other there's an atonement. So that's it. You are not required to have some human being pronounce forgiveness. Historically, within Christianity, when a priest or a pastor pronounces forgiveness, they're not doing the forgiveness. They're pronouncing God's forgiveness as God's representative. They're not actually doing the forgiving. Yeah. So that's a biblical view.
- [36:26]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. The next is looking at finances, actually saying it takes a lot of food and money to support a preacher and 12 disciples. Has anyone calculated how Jesus supported himself during his ministry? And could his. His traveling around, including his final trip to Jerusalem, be more due to the need for daily sustenance than a desire to spread the gospel?
- [36:47]
Bart Ehrman
Gospel. There is scholarship on this kind of question, and a lot of people have posed it. The New Testament itself gives some hints in places. There are several places that talk about the disciples having a money bag with money in it. In the Gospel of Luke, chapter eight, we're told that a group of women actually supported Jesus and his disciples out of their private means, including Mary Magdalene. But two others, Joanna, Susanna, and the group, so they may be supported by followers. Many scholars have thought that they begged for their food and that they were like other itinerant philosophers and such in the ancient world who since they had no revenue, they had to ask other people for their sustenance and they received it. I have recently come to wonder whether I've never seen a discussion of this, but surely somebody's discussed. Some scholars talked about it. But I've started wondering about Jesus and his disciples as foragers, as people who are foraging because you have passages in the Gospels where you know, the disciples are going through grain fields and eating the wheat or whatever the grain is eating the grain. And you know, there were rules in Judaism that periodically Jewish farmers had to leave their, leave their fields with the crops intact so that poor people could gather them. I've wondered if some of it might have been kind of foraging or maybe a combination of foraging and begging.
- [38:10]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. The next person asks, I know you've mentioned in the past that the name Jesus was relatively common during this time period. Is there any evidence for other traveling teachers or people with similar claims to the biblical Jesus sharing his name and doing similar work?
- [38:26]
Bart Ehrman
Some similarities, but nothing precise. The one that's the most interesting is recounted in the writings of Josephus, who's a first century historian, Jewish historian. He lived in Israel at the time and was born a few years after Jesus. He writes an account of the history of the Jewish people from Adam and Eve up to his own day. 20 volumes called the Antiquities of the Jews. He has a six volume work on the war of the Jews against the Romans that he himself was personally involved in intimately. And in the Jewish war. He mentions another person named Jesus, Jesus of Ananias, who like Jesus of Nazareth, has an apocalyptic message about the coming destruction that is imminent. It's a different kind of thing because in this case the Romans laid siege to Jerusalem during the uprising and they basically were trying to starve it to death before they conquered it. They were using their catapults and throwing things into the city and there's starvation in the city. It's very, very, very bad. But Josephus reports that there was this person named Jesus of Ananias who is proclaiming that he has a proclamation from God that the city is soon going to be destroyed and people need to turn themselves over to the Romans. And he was a Persona non grata among the Jewish authorities who had him arrested and and beaten, but they let him go. He eventually got killed by a rock coming from a catapult and nailed him on the head and killed him. But he has a similar message about the the imminent end of Israel and his Name's Jesus, and Josephus tells us more about him than he tells us about Jesus of Nazareth, interestingly. So. So there's that. There's that.
- [40:04]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. Why do evangelical Christians who believe in sola scriptura celebrate Christmas and Easter and annually when neither are mentioned in the entirety of the New Testament?
- [40:14]
Bart Ehrman
Well, Christmas and Easter are mentioned in the New Testament. Jesus is born and Jesus is raised from the dead. And so they are mentioned in that sense. The celebrations aren't mentioned, but almost nothing that the Christians do today mentioned in the Bible. And the Bible doesn't mention anything about sitting in pews, in church or using hymnal or reading the New Testament. And so, I mean, so Christians who believe in sola scriptura are not saying that the only thing they will do will be the things that are in the Bible. If they were saying that, that would be interesting. There's a very interesting book. I don't know if you've heard of this one, Megan. It's called A Year of Living Biblically. It's by a guy named Filer, I think, Bruce Feiler, who decided to take the Torah seriously for a year and to do only the things that are in the Torah. It's a very funny book because, I mean, he tells it with a sense of humor, but he really tried it. And he explains what the complications are of trying to do it is very funny. A Year of Living Biblically. So people can check that one out.
- [41:20]
Megan Lewis
Okay, final question for the day. Has any scholar ever tried to solve the difference between the Synoptics and John by postulating that they are literally portraying two different historical individuals named Jesus? Is it possible that all other historical figures are actually conflated into one Jesus when there are multiples?
- [41:39]
Bart Ehrman
I don't know if any scholar has tried that, because, I mean, scholars all recognize that that would be a feudal indebted ever. You know, if there are different Jesus, if they're describing different people named Jesus, not the same person, that means that two different people walked on the water, fed the 5,000, rode into Jerusalem, had somebody named Barabbas put up instead of himself. His caresser by Pontius Pilate was put on trial, was opposed by the Jewish people, was crucified, and the third day was raised from the dead. I mean, he's just like, John is very different. So I'll be the first to say John is really different from the Synoptics, but it's not because he's talking about a different. A different person. It can't be a different person. He's doing all the same stuff, but the stories themselves about the person are different. I think it'd be a futile exercise to try to argue that in fact there are different Jesuses floating around that have been amalgamated into this one person in the sense that there'd be like literally different people named Jesus doing these things.
- [42:36]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. We are all done with the listeners questions. So Bart, before we finish for the week, would you mind just summarizing what we spoke about?
- [42:44]
Bart Ehrman
You know, we normally don't talk about current events on the podcast, but this is an important one and relevant to what we do that the legislation in Louisiana to have the Ten Commandments displayed in every classroom in Louisiana. And we were talking about the implications of that, what the implications are in terms of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and what really is going on within evangelical Christianity, that this is something that, that they are passionate about about at least some of them are in Louisiana. And so it's kind of a relevance of the understanding the Bible for our current social and political situation.
- [43:18]
Megan Lewis
Thank you so 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 don't miss future episodes. Remember that you can use the code mjpodcast for a discount on all of Barth's courses over at www.bartehrman.com. misquoting Jesus will be back next week, but what are we talking about next week, next time?
- [43:38]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, well, we're talking about the Apostle Peter and whether Peter wrote anything. We've got two books in the New Testament, first and Second Peter. Did he write those? Why not? But also we have a lot of books outside the New Testament that also claim to be written by Peter, a gospel, three apocalypses, and so forth. Was Peter writing at all? That's what we'll be talking about.
- [43:58]
Megan Lewis
Remember to 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 so you don't miss out. From Bart Ehrman and myself, Megan Lewis, thank you for joining us.