← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
Gospel Discrepancies: Why Matthew and Luke Tell Different Christmas Stories
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Megan Lewis
When you picture the story of Jesus birth, you might think of Mary and Joseph traveling to Bethlehem, a stable shepherds and some wise men. But have you ever wondered which details come from which gospel and why the accounts differ? Today I'm joined by renowned biblical scholar, Dr. Bart Ehrman.
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Dr. Bart Ehrman
Hello. Hey Megan, how you doing?
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Megan Lewis
I'm good, thank you. To explore questions like were Mary and Joseph from Nazareth or Bethlehem? Did they flee to Egypt after Jesus birth or go straight home? And can these accounts be reconciled into one story? Let's dive in.
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Podcast Narrator
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.
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Megan Lewis
Bart, hello. How are you today?
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Dr. Bart Ehrman
Yeah, yeah, I'm doing well. So we're recording this a couple weeks ahead of time and I'm off tomorrow to my annual meeting of the Society of Biblical literature, which is 10,000 biblical scholars, literally 10,000 biblical scholars who are experts in this, that or the other thing about the Bible, getting together and reading papers and talking to each other and seeing old friends and so, yeah, exciting. How are you doing?
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Megan Lewis
I'm good. And one of these days I'm going to join you at SBA because conferences are always fun. I've never been to sba. I usually do American School of Overseas research. But Society of Biblical. It just sounds like a fun time.
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Dr. Bart Ehrman
It is. It. Well, it can be. It can be also frustrating. But they have this big book display. They take an entire ballroom and every time I go through there I get depressed, both because look at all these books that like, you know, I should have read and all these other books that like should never have been written between the two of them. But anyway, it's a good time. It's really great. To see old colleagues, old friends and former students is basically what I do.
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Megan Lewis
Absolutely. And I know there's a smattering of Assyriologists that go as well. So Really, I just need to get myself over there.
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Dr. Bart Ehrman
Yes.
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Megan Lewis
So today we are going to be talking about the discrepancies between Matthew and Luke and what they report for their Christmas stories. So, everyone, that's the main bulk of the episode. Later, we're also going to be talking about Bart's new course, the Dark side of Christmas, because this is the last chance to sign up before the recording takes place. And finally, Bart's going to answer some listeners questions. So please do stick around for all of that. But before we get to the extras, our main event. Bart, what was your early experience with the Christmas story? Were you aware that it was this kind of amalgamation of Luke and Matthew?
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Dr. Bart Ehrman
Well, no, definitely not. You know, I was raised in the Episcopal Church, and we always had a kind of a Christmas service. It was actually my favorite service of the year, the midnight Mass service that was. It was midnight Eucharist with candlelights, you know, at the end and stuff. It was fantastic, I thought. And like everyone else, I just assumed that there was a Christmas story in the Gospels. And even when I started reading the Gospels, I realized there's not one in Mark or John, but there are these two in Matthew and Luke. And it probably never much occurred to me that there might be actual differences among them. I just thought, you know, I probably noticed there were some differences. I just assumed Matthew's telling part of the story and Luke's telling another part of the story, and they're both, you know, telling what happened. And so it wasn't until later, probably when I was in graduate school, when I started seriously studying them and realizing that they're not just like different episodes in each one, you know, like one has the shepherds and one has the wise men kind of thing, but that they actually. There are things about them that are very difficult to reconcile. And now, you know, now I think, probably impossible to reconcile.
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Megan Lewis
Why do you think people are often so unaware that the Christmas story they're familiar with actually contains elements from two different texts?
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Dr. Bart Ehrman
Well, you know, it's part of a bigger problem, I would say, for maybe for believing Christians, it's not a problem, but it's a reality that when we get our New Testament, we have these 27 books between two covers. And, you know, you throw in the Old Testament, it's one book. And so you think of the 66 books of the Bible as a single book with a single author, because that's usually what a book is. You pick up a book, even if it's a collection of short stories, usually it's the Same author. You're used to reading a book as an. An entity, and you're not used to reading it as, like, an anthology of texts. And that's what the Bible is. It's an anthology of texts. And so Matthew's giving his version of his understanding of Jesus. And Luke, who doesn't know Matthew, my judgment, writes his version. And Mark has his version, John has his version. Those are the four Gospels. They're not the same thing. They're not by the same author. They're by different authors living in different places at different times, who've heard different stories and have different views about what really matters about the story and what really happened. And so when you have it like that and you read each one individually as its own account, instead of assuming that it's basically the same as the other, that's when you start realizing that there are historical problems here. Again, it may not be something that, like, shatters anybody's faith, but they're certainly different stories. And there are places where I don't think you can reconcile them.
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Megan Lewis
Do you think that we can say that both stories follow the same basic outline at least, or are they just completely different?
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Dr. Bart Ehrman
Yeah, I mean, basic outline. It depends what we mean by basic outline. You know, people say, well, they both have the same gist. Well, what's the gist? I mean, so in very broad terms, both accounts agree on what most people would consider to be the key theological points, which are that that Jesus was born of a virgin named Mary who was betrothed to somebody named Joseph, that he was born in Bethlehem, even though he actually came from Nazareth, you know, and that it was a big event that got announced to outsiders who came to revere him, and it fulfilled scripture. And you have angels involved, angels communicating to one or the other, either to Mary or Joseph. And so there are aspects of this that are very similar in very broadest terms between the two.
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Megan Lewis
Do both stories have the star? Because I liked the star when I was a child.
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Dr. Bart Ehrman
You like the star?
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Megan Lewis
Yes.
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Dr. Bart Ehrman
The star is a big deal with kids. Right. They like the star. And at unc, we have a, you know, a planetarium. And when I first moved to UNC, to Chapel Hill in 1988, my kids were young, and I took them to the planetarium because they always had a thing on the star of Bethlehem. And they always tried to give an astronomical explanation what this was. You know, was it a supernova? Was it a comet? You know, you come up with these explanations. Yeah, so people love that stuff. No, it's not in both gospels. It's only in the Gospel of Matthew and it's important in Matthew because it is what leads the magi, the wise men, to try and find Jesus. They are led and they become an integral part of the story in Matthew.
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Megan Lewis
Thank you. We are going to take a very brief break, but then we'll be back to look at some more of the differences between Matthew and Luke and explore why they're there. Exactly. So stick with us.
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Podcast Narrator
What makes the Gospel of Matthew truly extraordinary? While many know it for the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes,
- [07:52]
Megan Lewis
and the
- [07:53]
Podcast Narrator
Lord's Prayer, there's much more to this first Gospel than meets the eye. Hidden within its pages is a literary genius that often goes unnoticed even by avid readers. In the Genius of the Gospel of Matthew, join New Testament professor and scholar Dr. Bart Ehrman as he reveals the intricate details and scholarly insights that make this gospel so unique. Across eight engaging lectures, you'll explore how Matthew reshaped the Gospel of Mark, the surprising ways he used the Old Testament, and the complex relationship between its Jewish roots and anti Jewish interpretations. This course examines the controversies, mysteries and profound teachings that have shaped Christian faith, thought and history. Ready to uncover the hidden genius of Matthew's gospel? Visit barterman.com Matthew to learn more or sign up today. Use discount code MJ Podcast at checkout for a special offer.
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Megan Lewis
And we're back. We are talking about the differences between the narrative, the biblical Christmas narrative in Mark and Luke. And I want to mention quickly before we go any further, that next week's episode is going to be focusing just on the question of Bethlehem and Nazareth. What is going on there? Why are people moving between the two? Where was Jesus actually born? So we're going to just touch on that very briefly today. We're going to explore some of the other differences today instead. So when we're looking at the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, what is the earliest difference in the narrative that we can see between them?
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Dr. Bart Ehrman
Well, it depends what you mean by difference. I mean, if you mean like something in one, not in the other, it happens right off the bat. Because Matthew's Gospel, the first 18 verses, are actually a genealogy of Jesus. Trying to show the genealogical line of Jesus. And it goes from the father of the Jews, Abraham, down to the great king of the Jews, King David, and from there down to the Babylonian defeat where Judea was destroyed by the Babylonians and leaders were taken off to exile down to Jesus. And it's set up to show that Jesus really is descended from Abraham. He's already descended from David, and he's the predicted Messiah. So it starts like that. Luke doesn't start that way. Luke actually has a genealogy, but it's in chapter three a little bit strange because it's when Jesus is a 30 year old that he gives his genealogy, which is not what you would expect. It's not only in a different place, but it's a different genealogy. For one thing, this doesn't make it a contradictory thing, this particular thing, but it doesn't just go back to David and then Abraham. It goes all the way back to Adam, as in Adam and Eve. That's quite a genealogy when you think about it. For Luke, I had an aunt who was a genealogist before they could use computers for these things. And she traced my line back to the Mayflower flower. But Luke, man, he doesn't go back to the Mayflower. He goes back to the first human being, Adam. That's a genealogy, man. That's good. And so he traces his all the way back to Adam. There are lots of differences between Matthews and Luke's, but the one really big difference that matters is that the family line from David down to Joseph is different. Like Joseph has a different father and a different grandfather and different great great grandpa. And all the way back, people try to reconcile that by saying, well, one of Luke is actually giving Mary's genealogy and Matthew's giving Joseph's genealogy. But it's not true. You just read them, they're both traced down to Joseph's father. So you start off with that.
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Megan Lewis
So we have that. We have the star. How about the journeying aspect of it? We always think about Mary and Joseph kind of traveling from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Do both stories have that same activity?
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Dr. Bart Ehrman
Well, they don't. This will be something we do focus on more next time. But if you were just reading Matthew, you're ignoring anything else you've ever heard. You haven't heard this story before. You've never read Luke, you haven't read anything. You've just got Matthew's gospel and you're reading it to see what it has to say, which is a good way to read a book, to let it say what it says. And when you read it, it's clear that the hometown of Joseph and Mary is Bethlehem. They don't travel there from Nazareth. That's where they live. And they're still there a couple years later, apparently, or close to a couple years later. And when they leave it, they go down to egyp. And when they come back, they want to come back to Bethlehem. But they can't because of a king that was there. And so then they resettle in Nazareth. In Luke, they start out in Nazareth. They're from Nazareth. They have to go to Bethlehem to register for a census. And so they. They're just there for a little while until Mary gives birth right away. Then about, you know, a month and a half later, they go back to Nazareth. So the journey, the journey like, you know, from Nazareth to Bethlehem, everybody imagines, you know, Mary's riding on a donkey or something. And. And that's not in the story. They make a trip from Nazareth to Bethleh him. Only in Luke.
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Megan Lewis
How about the visitors when. When Jesus has been born? Do both stories talk about shepherds and magi, or is that kind of a difference as well?
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Dr. Bart Ehrman
Well, this is a difference. It's not a contradiction, obviously. But Matthew's account has the wise men coming to visit Jesus. They've been following a star. They're magi, or sometimes translated wise men who live in the eastern part of the world. And they've seen a star that tells them that the king of the Jews is to be born. And so they follow, and it leads them to Jerusalem. And they go into Jerusalem and make inquiries and find out where's the king of the Jews supposed to be born. And they find out he's supposed to be born in Bethlehem from Jewish scholars there. And so they go to Bethlehem and the star leads them there. So that's the wise men following a star. And they worship Jesus and give him these gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. By the way, we're not told that there are three wise men. We're not told how many wise men there were. But there's plural wise men, magi. And we're told they three gifts. And so people assume, well, you got three gifts, you got three wise men. So, you know, it's not like you're in your bridal shower when you get, you know, three, you know, three sets of whatever it's like. So they had to be three of them. So Luke does not have the wise men following a star. Luke has Jesus being born and then an angel appearing to shepherds in the fields and tells them that they're to come and worship Jesus. And they come and worship Jesus. It's a very interesting difference, by the way, to illustrate one of the different emphases between Matthew and Luke, because Matthew's trying to celebrate just how important Jesus is. And he's a. These people from the east, these wise men come to worship him. And they're not called kings, but, you know, they've got gold and frankincense and myrrh. And he's being honored and revered and worshiped by these people who seem to be rich and. And well placed. Luke has these lowly shepherds who are. Any ancient reader would read this and no, these are illiterate country people who are not, you know, are very low on the social ladder. So. But Luke, in Luke's gospel, Luke wants to emphasize the importance of Jesus ministry for the poor and the outcast. And that's who these people are who right away come and worship him.
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Megan Lewis
We've covered a couple of the differences that I've picked out. What other differences are there in the birth stories?
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Dr. Bart Ehrman
Well, they kind of go up and down the line. I mean, when you read Luke, you know, Luke's story is much longer than Matthew's in part because most of his first chapter deals with the birth of John the Baptist, which you might not expect, but there's a long sequence story about how John the Baptist came into the world. And in Luke's Gospel, John the Baptist and Jesus are relatives. It's because John the Baptist's mother's named Elizabeth. And we're not told that she's Mary's sister or cousin or anything like that, as people assume. It just says that she's some kind of rel. She's much older than Mary. Mary's portrayed as a young woman and Elizabeth is beyond the age of childbearing. It's set up in a way to show that John the Baptist is Jesus forerunner already from birth. This is Luke's emphasis. He's trying to stress that John the Baptist is the one who came in order to prepare the way for Jesus. So much so that this really great episode I love when Mary gets pregnant six months after Elizabeth does. She goes to visit a relative and knocks on her door. Elizabeth answers the door and the baby inside of her, John the Baptist leaps for joy because the mother of the Messiah has come to visitors because she's just barely pregnant, but the other one is six months pregnant. And so this is showing, you know, John the Baptist is revering Jesus even while they're both in the womb. It's a great, great story. So anyway, that's another, like a big difference because you go through chapter one's a long chapter in Luke and a lot of that is about the birth of John the Baptist.
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Megan Lewis
Are there other differences between the actual birth experience? That's kind of a weird way of phrasing it between the actual like what we would consider the Christmas story.
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Dr. Bart Ehrman
Yeah, well, a couple things to say. I mean, one is that the Christmas story we, you know, that people celebrate every year. There are a lot of add ons. Not in either of the accounts. There's nothing about Jesus being born in a, like in a stable per se, like some kind of structure. There's no donkey and sheep and whatever else you've got there. Around the Nativity. In Mary, she just gives birth and the wise men come and they, they find them in a house in Bethlehem. And it might be up to two years later, for reasons we'll be talking about the next episode. But it's, it's clear the wise men have been following the star for a long time in Luke because they're, they don't live there. They're traveling. They try to stop at the inn and there's no room in the inn. And so they find another place and they. She gives birth somewhere not in a house. We're not told though that it's a stable. What we're told is they lay him in a manger. Jesus when he's born. My students for some reason think that he's born in a manger. So a manger is like a trough to feed the animals. And I don't think this is not that Mary's like laying in the manger and then gives birth in the manger. They have to find like a cradle and they don't have one, so they put him in a manger. So we're not told though what it is. In early Christian tradition, it was believed to be a cave, that they were in a cave someplace where they kept animals. But, you know, now we have the stable for some reason. So those are different between Matthew and Luke and differences between both of them and what people celebrate in the Christmas story today.
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Megan Lewis
So you already mentioned at the beginning of the episode that in Luke's account, Mary, Joseph and Jesus go back to Nazareth a month or two after he's been born. And that doesn't happen in Matthew's account. What happens after Jesus birth in Matthew?
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Dr. Bart Ehrman
Well, so we don't know what happens right after his birth. It's pretty abruptly reported in Matthew. He says the birth of Jesus happened like this. And then it is, it says that Mary had become pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Joseph was going to divorce her, but then he learned in a dream that the child was, was from the Holy Spirit. And so she gives birth. And then you have the account of these wise men coming. And the thing about these wise men is they. They stop in Jerusalem first, because for some reason the star leads them to Jerusalem and then apparently disappears or stops moving. And so they have to ask, well, where's the king of the Jews to be born? And they find out from these scholars, as I said, that he's being born in Bethlehem. Then they head out for Bethlehem and the star reappears and takes him to Bethlehem and stops over the house that Jesus is in. And so they worship him. We're not told that he's like a newborn at that point. What we're told is that when Herod decides to kill the children in Bethlehem in order to make sure he kills Jesus, that he had found out from the wise men when the star appeared. And based on that, we're told that he had every child, every boy, two years and under in Bethlehem, slaughtered. So that suggests that Jesus in this story is not just a newborn at the time, but that he's, you know, been around some months or a couple years up to a couple years, because Herod's making sure he gets him killed. And so he's not just killing the newborns. So they're still in a house. There's no travel. They're in a house. When they find out that Herod is going to come after the child, from another dream to Joseph, they escape and they go down to Egypt.
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Megan Lewis
Do these differences, are they contradictory, or do you think they can be reconciled into a single narrative?
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Dr. Bart Ehrman
Well, a lot of them can be reconciled. I mean, you know, you have this business of the wise men versus the shepherds, you know, that could just be two people telling different parts of the story. There are other things that you could imagine as telling two parts of the story, but they're more problematic when you start looking closely, which is what very few people do. You know, at unc, when I'm teaching my undergraduate class on the New Testament, I give them an exercise. And I don't tell them what to expect. You know, I don't tell them what results to find. I just tell them, do this exercise. And the exercise is to list everything that happens in Matthew's birth story. This happens, then this, and this, and this and this. Pay close attention to when it happens and where it happens, and then do the same thing with Luke. Just ignore what you just did with Matthew and just make the list for Luke, and then compare your two lists and see what's different, what's similar. And, you know, are there any differences that cannot be explained away? And there are some. And one of the big ones for me is the One we're going to be talking about next time, about if it's right, if Matthew's right, that they're still in Bethlehem, you know, up to a couple years later, some months later, and then they go down to Egypt. How can Luke be right that they're just kind of traveling in there for a weekend to register for census and they go back, you know, six weeks later? So there are differences like that that are difficult to explain. But when somebody's telling stories about an event, they'll often tell different aspects of the same story. It doesn't mean they're wrong just because they tell different aspects. And so that part is absolutely right. But the problem will be that there are things that are contradictory. I mentioned. The genealogies is one thing. This travel narrative is going to be another thing. The flight to Egypt is going to be another thing. So we'll talk about a little bit more of that next time.
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Megan Lewis
Do these differences serve specific purposes in terms of delivering the messages that each of the authors is trying to get across with their gospels?
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Dr. Bart Ehrman
Yeah, no, I think absolutely. Luke has a different agenda from Matthew. They have lots of similar agendas as well. You know, they both want to emphasize that Jesus mother was a virgin, it was Mary, you know, and the fulfilled scripture. You know, they want to both are trying to emphasize that. But the way they tell their stories are stressing very different things. Matthew's account is celebrating Jesus as the king of the Jews already at his birth and that he's being recognized by foreign dignitaries, if you want to call magi dignitaries. But the point of it is that in Matthew's Gospel, these are non Jews who are coming from different lands to worship Jesus. They find out from the Jewish scholars in Jerusalem where the king of the Jews is to be born, and then they go and worship Jesus. The wise men go to worship. The scripture scholars. The Jewish scripture scholars who know where he's supposed to be born do not go. And so this is Matthew's kind of subtle way of saying that it's going to be the non Jews who recognize that Jesus is the king of the Jews. The Jewish scholars who know don't go. The pagans who don't know do go. And so like he's trying to make a comment about that's going to be a big issue for his entire gospel. You know, that's one thing that Matthew's teaching that you don't get in Luke because Luke doesn't have that story.
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Megan Lewis
How about Luke? How does his Christmas story kind of feed into what he's trying to convey.
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Dr. Bart Ehrman
Of course, there are a lot of things in Luke as well. One that I mentioned is the thing about John the Baptist trying to stress far more than Matthew does that Jesus and John the Baptist were completely on the same page where they both realize in Luke's Gospel that Jesus is the Messiah and John is the forerunner. The reason Luke is trying to emphasize this is because there were people who thought that John the Baptist was the special one sent from God. And we have evidence, evidence even within the New Testament later, years and years later, of groups of followers of John the Baptist in competition with the groups of the followers of Jesus. And the followers of John the Baptist could say, well, look, you know, Jesus was his follower. John baptized Jesus, so he was the leader and Jesus was the follower. Jesus was his disciple. And so John the Baptist is the one who really matters. Luke and other Christians are trying to say, no, no, Jesus is the one who matters. John was important, but he was the forerunner. He's the one who came before. And Luke's telling us in this very graph way that John the Baptist's birth was also according to scripture and God's will. And it all happened as planned, but it was precisely because Jesus was greater and you needed somebody to come first. And so that's, that's the emphasis of, of Luke. And there are other emphases. I mean, Matthew goes out of his way point after point after point to emphasize this fulfilled scripture. So he's born in Bethlehem because Micah, chapter 5, verse 2. He's born of a virgin because of Isaiah, chapter 7, verse 14, goes to Egypt because of Hosea, chapter 11. And at every point he says this was to fulfill what spoken of by the prophet. And so that happens repeatedly in the birth narrative in Matthew to stress this whole thing. So according to plan, according to God's plan in Scripture, Luke probably wouldn't disagree with that. But he doesn't say anything about it. He doesn't say why he's born of Bethlehem or why he's born of a virgin or for him, that isn't the key point for Matthew, it is the key point.
- [25:03]
Megan Lewis
What would early Christians have made of these differences? Would they have been aware of them? Would it have made them question the validity of one or other of the Gospels?
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Dr. Bart Ehrman
Probably not. I mean, the thing is, Matthew and Luke were written in different areas. We don't actually know who the authors were and we don't know where they were. But there's nothing to suggest they're in the same town or something. They're different parts of the world. I think whoever wrote Matthew didn't know Luke, and whoever wrote Luke didn't know Matthew, and they didn't know each other personally, and they didn't know each other's books. And so whoever's reading Luke's gospel in the early years wouldn't even know there's this other gospel out there, and vice versa. It's only later when people realize that there are several gospels and they're probably. In fact, they realize there are lots of gospels and they decide which ones are we going to accept as authoritative. They decide on both Matthew and Luke. But that point, when you say that they're authoritative, it means they're both equally authoritative. And if you know they're both equally authoritative, then the way you read them is naturally to reconcile them. You just assume they're saying that they're of course, got different emphases. And you see that and you know, Matthew's emphasizing this, Luke's emphasizing that. But it doesn't really occur to you that they might actually contradict each other, because these are understood to be authoritative texts that in some sense are representing what God wanted to communicate to people. It's a similar problem that we've had ever since we've had modern books where you put them between two covers. If you got Matthew and Luke and you consider them both scripture, then normally you simply assume that they can be reconciled. And you don't really give it much thought. If you do give it much thought, you try to figure out ways to reconcile things. And we do have evidence of that happening all the way back in the center 2nd century of people reconciling Matthew and Luke on these points and all four gospels on a variety of points. And that's. People still do that today, people who simply just assume the Bible is God's word. And so of course, there aren't contradictions in it. And so if something looks like a contradiction, you try and explain it away.
- [26:56]
Megan Lewis
Are the attempts at reconciliation along the same lines now as they were back then?
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Dr. Bart Ehrman
Yeah, pretty much. I mean, you figure out some way to make the two accounts reconcile. You know, if you work hard enough at it, you can come up with some really kind of amazing ways to try to do that. And it usually involves like saying that this author knew this other thing but just doesn't talk about it. Which works in the case of the wise men and with the shepherds. You know, Matthew didn't know about the shepherds, maybe, or Luke didn't know about the wise maybe. But at other times it gets really really hard. As we'll talk about next time, there's this thing about in Matthew that Joseph and Mary and Jesus go down to Egypt. You know, we're talking like over 400 miles. They make a trip and presumably they didn't, you know, get on a train. Yeah, I guess they had to walk there. And how long does it take to walk? It's like 450 miles between Bethlehem and Cairo, for example. So how long does that take? And then they're down there until Herod dies, and then they don't come back until later. So, I mean, how long are we talking about here? Just, you know, so probably, I don't know, years or something. And Luke has them go right back to Nazareth. So you could say, well, yeah, okay, well, Luke just, you know, he knew they went to Egypt, you know, but he's just saying, well, they went back to Nazareth. Of course they went to Nazareth. Okay. But you're just, you know, you're putting something into Luke that's not there in order to reconcile to something else rather than just seeing what Luke has to say. So it can be a problem sometimes.
- [28:22]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. But those are all of the questions I have for today. Is there anything that you want to add about the discrepancies between Luke and Matthew before we move on?
- [28:30]
Dr. Bart Ehrman
Well, the one thing I'll say is that knowing these discrepancies is important not only for people who want to know kind of historically, can we know anything or not? Do we have accounts that can reliably tell us about how Jesus was born? And the discrepancies on one level show that these accounts can't both be right in their details. And that should make you wonder about, well, then how are these people dealing with the stories then? You know, in other words, they make you realize that these authors are not just recording some kind of descriptive history. You know, they're not being objective observers of what actually happened, happened. And if that's the case, if you're going to be reading them for what they want you to know, you're going to be reading them for what kind of literary motifs they have, because they're stories. If they're not flat out history, objective history, then they're stories. So you got to read them like stories. That's one thing. So there's the historical thing, but the other thing is that realizing that they're different from each other in ways that can't be reconciled drives you to consider what each one's agenda is, because it's not the same agenda. And when I first realized this as a graduate student. At first I was a little bit terrified of the idea there could be contradictions. But then I realized it just means that Matthew's actually emphasizing something that Luke is not. And the meaning of Matthew just exploded then for me, because I could see, oh my God, he's saying this. And you can't say, no, he can't be saying that because Luke's saying this. No, no, it doesn't work like that. I'm trying to see what Matthew has to say because I know that he's got his own story because he's got discrepancies with his other story. And I'm reading Luke for what Luke has to say and it just opens up interpretation rather than shuts it down. When you try to reconcile everything, you shut it down. You're not letting each author say what they want to say. You're making them say what some other author had to say. And that just is not a good way to read something is to assume that this author is saying something other than what he's saying. And so for me, the discrepancies are valuable for interpreting the Bible. They're not like an impediment.
- [30:23]
Megan Lewis
But thank you so much. We are going to take a very brief break but then we will be back with upcoming highlights and events. And finally some listeners questions.
- [30:34]
Podcast Host
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.
- [30:49]
Megan Lewis
So we've spoken about the Dark side of Christmas, the course that you're teaching on December 7th a couple of times before. This is really your last chance to sign up for it. Audience if you're interested in because I believe it's happening this weekend, it is two lessons and a Q and A session for the grand prize of $24.95. You can use your NJ podcast discount code also. But are you excited?
- [31:13]
Dr. Bart Ehrman
I'm really excited because I've talked about these Christmas stories for like most of my adult life and I've never talked about what I'm going to be talking about in these lectures right now. We just haven't covered the kinds of issues I'm going to be talking about about. What I'll be talking about though is predicated on some of the stuff we're doing we've just now been doing. These differences between the stories are useful for understanding them. But what this, this two lecture course will be, it'd be two 50 minute lectures and then I'll have a Q and A. At the end, I'll be talking about how Matthew, Luke, both have rather dark sides to them that are right there in the text. So I'm not trying to, like, make them sound dark. What I'm saying is that in the midst of all this joy and peace and. And salvation that's going on in these texts, you have a dark side that people just don't even think about. But when you think about Herod killing these children to fulfill Scripture, what's that all about? Why does Matthew want you to think that coming of Jesus, it's not just that he was coming in order to deal with the problem of sin and salvation, but he's actually. So he's not just responding to the suffering in the world. His coming is creating suffering for all these people who are killed and their parents. And you get the same thing with Luke, with these travels they're doing. And it's like this pregnant woman traveling for all this. Why would Luke do that? And if it's a story and not just an objective description. And so I'm going to be dealing into this and dealing with what strikes me as not as just disturbing, but actually a profound understanding of these texts. These authors actually have a profundity that people don't credit them with, even people who believe these stories, because they don't realize how deeply and entrenched in the issues of suffering the infancy narratives are.
- [32:54]
Megan Lewis
So if people are interested in taking maybe a deeper dive, a more profound dive into the Christmas story, you can go to bart ehrman.com darkside and again, the discount code is MJ podcast. All right, that was a bit serious. So we are going to have a little bit of a change of pace and go to some listeners questions.
- [33:17]
Podcast Host
Now it's time for questions from listeners where Bart answers real questions submitted by misquoting Jesus fans. If you'd like to submit a question for future segments, Please visit bart erman.com Ask Bart
- [33:35]
Megan Lewis
all right, Bart, are you ready?
- [33:37]
Dr. Bart Ehrman
Yes, I think so. Let's do it.
- [33:41]
Megan Lewis
First up, Greco Roman and Egyptian cults have rights or practices which have similar Christian counterparts. How did the Christian fathers explain these similarities? Were they perceived as demonic imitations of Christian rites?
- [33:57]
Dr. Bart Ehrman
Good question. There were a variety of explanations among early church fathers who recognized that there are similarities. I would say less in the cults than in the myths that you have in antiquity. Myths about people being born supernaturally and being able to heal the sick and raise the dead. And there were practices too, though the sacred meals eaten in some of the mystery religions that seem like the Eucharist. And so you get these similarities. And so how do you explain them? If you sort of sat around and thought what the options might be, those would be the options that occurred. For example, the one you mentioned, you could say, well, what's going on is you've got these demonic forces that are trying to imitate Christianity in advance. But you could also argue the other way. You could argue, for example, this was argued by Justin Martyr, this second century apologist, that Christ is the word of God who kind of infuses like he brings reason into the world. He's the word that makes the world make sense. And that some other people before Jesus had a portion of that, like some of the philosophers, like Socrates, is almost like he had some access to the true meaning of the world because he had part of this word in him. And so these are actually foreshadowings of what's going to happen with Jesus. They're not evil, demonically inspired. They're more like divinely inspired foreshadowings. So you explained it in some way where Christianity is the kind of the superior way of doing it. But it's either because these other things are evil or they're, or they're foreshadowing what's going to happen.
- [35:30]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. And this next question is primarily regarding the Hebrew Bible, but the question says it applies to the New Testament as well. Why is the number 40 so prevalent throughout its various books?
- [35:42]
Dr. Bart Ehrman
You know, I'm not quite sure why they land on 40. It usually just means a long time or a big number. Seven is a little bit easier to explain because you get seven signs of the zodiac. You get seven days of the week and you get seven, like seven. You can explain seven, but it's a little bit harder with 40. But it is, it absolutely is. It's a key thing. It rains 40 days and 40 nights with Noah, they're in the wilderness for 40 years. Under Moses, Jesus comes along and he's tempting the wilderness for 40 days. It's this 40, 40, 40 thing. So I don't, I don't have an explanation for why that particular number, except it's a nice round number that means, means like a lot of time.
- [36:21]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. In my first reading of the Gospels, as an atheist, I noticed in Luke that Herod locked John up. Then the story of Jesus, baptism takes place with no mention of John performing the baptism. So in the book of Luke, did someone else baptize Jesus?
- [36:36]
Dr. Bart Ehrman
No, I don't think so. Luke has a lot of backward looks in his. Both the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts has a lot of backward looks, but Mark and Matthew explicitly say that John baptized Jesus in Luke. Luke, Jesus is baptized during the baptism of John, but there's no reference to John doing it. And when you get to the Gospel of John, there's no reference to Jesus actually being baptized per se. You have a reference to John the Baptist seeing the dove come upon him, but you don't have any reference to him actually being baptized. So if you arrange these things chronologically, as time goes on, there's less and less of an emphasis on John the Baptist. This is coinciding with what I said earlier, that Luke, probably our third Gospel, tries to stress that John the Baptist is subordinate to Jesus. Well, Christians, you know, having these conflicts with people who are following John the Baptist began emphasizing that John the Baptist wasn't nearly as big of a deal in Jesus life. And so that's why in Luke's Gospel, I think it implies that John baptized him, but he doesn't say it. And John doesn't even have the baptism scene itself. And so that's. That's a way of distancing Jesus from John, I think.
- [37:42]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. Now, final question. What were the views of first century Christians and Jews of suicide? Today, all churches say suicide is an unforgivable sin. Is this something that goes back to the earlier Christians as well?
- [37:55]
Dr. Bart Ehrman
The answer is no, not to the earliest Christians. Throughout the Bible, there are people who commit suicide and they are never condemned for it. Saul, King Saul, for example, fell on his sword in one of the stories about his death. So you have various accounts of people. Judas is a famous one, when I hanged himself in the Gospel of Matthew, but he's not condemned for it. People over the centuries started thinking that suicide was the unforgivable sin. The logic being that you can't repent of it because you're dead. But none of that is in the Bible and it's not in early Christianity. There's a earliest Christianity. There's a really interesting book by James Tabor, who's been on the podcast and is on my blog a number of times. He wrote this with a friend of his, Arthur Droze, and it's called A Noble Death. And it traces the understanding of suicide through the ancient world, including the Bible, but also in Greek and Roman circles where it was not understood to be, you know, something that was evil or wrong or sinful. They make the argument that it first came to be seen as a major sin under St. Augustine in the early 5th century that he was the one who labeled it a horrible sin. And ever since then, that's what people have assumed is in the Bible, but it's not. And it wasn't a view at all. The view in most of the ancient world was that they had different grounds for this view, but the basic view was you should not take your life unless there's a really good reason for it. If there's really a good reason and there's the right time for it, then yes, it's okay, you can do that. But, you know, generally you shouldn't. I'm not that you generally could or you could only do it once, but I mean, you can't do it unless there's, like, suitable circumstances. But if the circumstances are suitable, then yes, of course it's. You can do that. So the idea that's a sin, let alone unforgivable sin, is a much later thing, centuries after the New Testament.
- [39:48]
Megan Lewis
Thank you and audience, thank you so much for sending in your questions. If you have a question for Bart, you can go to bartehrman.com Ask Bart and submit them there. Now, Bart, before we finish for the week, would you mind summarizing what we spoke about today?
- [40:03]
Dr. Bart Ehrman
Well, today we've been focusing on Matthew and Luke's stories of the birth of Jesus. We've been kind of interested in the literary side of it. You know, you've got these two stories. How do they stack up against each other? What are the similarities between them? What are the differences? And if there are differences, can they be reconciled? We'll be dealing more with that next time. But also, what's the distinctive emphases that you can find in each of these books? I tried to stress that knowing what each one is trying to emphasize is really important because if you make Matthew sound just like Luke, and Luke just sound like Matthew by putting the two together, just crash them together, you probably don't understand either one. So that you do that by seeing what each one is trying to emphasize.
- [40:44]
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, you can use the code mjpodcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses, including the Dark side of Christmas over at www.bartehrman.com. misquoting Jesus will be back next week. But what are we talking about next time?
- [41:06]
Dr. Bart Ehrman
We are in the Christmas season, I guess, and we're thinking about the Christmas story. And we alluded to one of the really important episodes of the Christmas Story, which has to do with how is it that Jesus was born in Bethlehem if he's from Nazareth in that one, we're going to be talking more depth about that, about whether it's just a flat out discrepancy that you cannot reconcile or not. And if it is, why is it there?
- [41:29]
Megan Lewis
Perfect. Thank you all and goodbye.
- [41:34]
Podcast Narrator
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.