← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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A
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B
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 scholarly 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.
- [01:16]
C
Hello everybody and welcome back to Misquoting Jesus. Today we are talking about the problem of evil, which is a problem that Christians have been dealing with for a while. If God is all powerful, all knowing and benevolent, then why does evil and suffering exist? Surely an all powerful benevolent deity would eliminate suffering and remove evil. Obviously that is not happening given the presence of evil and suffering in the world. So what exactly is going on there? Before we get into that though, Bart, good morning. How are you today?
- [01:47]
D
Yeah, I'm doing. I'm doing fine. It kind of seems weird saying that given that we're going to be talking about evil. I got to say I'm almost every morning I wake up when I'm feeling pretty good about life and think about the world and I think, oh my God, I don't know how I can possibly feel good about anything. What a mess we're all in. But yes, on the personal level I'm doing just fine and I wish everybody were. I hope you are. How are you doing?
- [02:15]
C
No, I am doing very well at the moment and I feel similarly. I struggle to listen to the news some days and I feel very privileged that that's my struggle rather than living through the things that I'm hearing about. But no, life is good here. It is ticking along as it should be. Everyone is happy and healthy.
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D
Life's a weird thing because even when life is just about as good as you could hope for. People still get depressed and stressed and anxious and miserable. And it's a weird phenomenon, but it's absolutely true. It's not that, you know, like, if you get. You end up getting everything you ever wanted, and then, like, you know, you're happy, then it doesn't seem to ever happen. As far as I can tell, people have, like, everything they ever wanted or could want. Want, like, still, you know, it's not good for them individually. And it doesn't seem like it should be that way, but I know it is.
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C
It absolutely does seem to be. And what does the New Testament say about evil and suffering? Is there a biblical explanation for why God doesn't just, like, wave a hand and take it all away?
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D
Well, in the New Testament, he's going to. So that's. That's a source of hope, I think, for people. But, you know, the New Testament, you know, it's rooted in an ancient world, and it's not rooted in our world. And in our world, you know, it's not just that different things are happening now. It's not just that. What I mean is that we have different ways of conceptualizing things from the way ancient people did. Many of the ways that you find in the New Testament for explaining why there's evil still resound with people today, still makes sense to people today. But there are things today that are different. You know, like when you first mentioned this a second ago, there's a kind of a philosophical problem today that we put in terms that most ancient people, especially writers of the New Testament, wouldn't have thought of it quite like this. And our way of doing it is to talk about this phenomenon that philosophers call theodicy. Theodicy is the technical term for why there's evil. Theodicy literally means the righteousness of God or how God can be on the right side of things if things are so miserable here. And so the way it worked out in the Enlightenment was that there are these three statements that you yourself made just a second ago. Not in a syllogistic way, but in the syllogistic way. The way it works is in the Enlightenment, people said, look, how can this possible? You've got these three statements. Each of these statements looks like it's true on its own merits. But when you put the three together, there's a contradiction. So how does that work? And so the three statements are, God is all powerful. Okay? So if God's all powerful, it means he can do whatever he wants. He's not Bound by anything else. He's all powerful. Okay, first statement. Okay. In Christian tradition, Jewish tradition, yeah, that's true. God is loving. Well, of course. God wants the best for people, and he loves people, and he wants the best for them. And so he doesn't want them to experience needless pain and suffering. God is all powerful. God is all loving. And third statement, there is suffering. And the issue is, how do you reconcile those things? Because if God is all powerful, he could stop suffering if he wants to. And God's loving, so he doesn't want people to suffer. And yet there is suffering. And so the problem with the Odyssey is, how do you explain all three things? My initial point in all this was that ancient people didn't do that kind of syllogism thing, you know, where you get these three for them. It wasn't really a logical problem. It was more of a problem like, oh, my God, why is our. Why are things so miserable? That's, of course, usually how it is today too. But thinking people do have this logical problem of theodicy.
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C
So if. If this is a problem, if that syllogism is something that people have been wrestling with for hundreds of years, how do people try and explain it?
- [06:11]
D
Well, so the solutions that people typically have today are not ones that you would find in the Bible the way some people explain it today. So, for example, one way to get around this problem is to say that one of the three statements actually is not true. There are people who say that God's not all powerful. There's some things God can't do. This is, interestingly, the view that was put forth by Rabbi Kushner in his book When Bad Things Happen to Good People, where he said that God's hands are tied. He wants to be able to help you, but he can't. But he's on your side. And weirdly to me, from my reading, Rabbi Kushner used the Book of Job to back up his view that God can't do everything. You're free to think that, but I don't think that's in Job. Boy, that's not how I read the Book of Job anyway. So you could deny that he's all powerful. You could deny that he's all loving. It isn't just love. It's justice. For example, or maybe God's not good. You know, people suggest that, you know, why not? And so you could deny that, or you could deny that they're suffering. There's not really suffering. People might think they suffer. They don't really suffer. Generally, people who say that are people who are not really suffering very much, in my opinion. So you could deny one of those three things. If you don't deny one of those three things, what you do is you try and figure out how they can all be true at once. And that's when people start appealing to the New Testament.
- [07:35]
C
So how. How do people try and argue for all of three of those statements being true?
- [07:40]
D
Well, there are lots of traditional answers. And so I actually wrote a book on this called God's Problem. And the subtitle was how the Bible Doesn't Answer our most pressing question, why we Suffer. So I go through the biblical answers to why they're suffering. Again, these people aren't working with the kind of three categories, but they're wondering if we're the people of God, like in the Old Testament, if we're the people of God, God's chosen us. Why is there so much pain and misery for us? You know, I can see why some schmuck's suffering, but why am I suffering? I'm trying. I'm doing my best here, God, you know, and I got really interested in this years ago when I was teaching a class at Rutgers that was on the called the Problem of Suffering in the Biblical Traditions. I was asked to teach the class. When I was asked to teach it, I thought, that's a great, great class. Because my view then and still is now, that almost all the biblical authors are wrestling why it is God's chosen ones suffer. If there is chosen ones, why do they suffer? And my view then and still is now, they have different answers in the Old Testament and the New Testament. But like one common answer you get in both Old and New Testament, and this is something people today think is the reason people suffer. If God's all powerful, God's all loving, but they suffer is because they've done something wrong and God's punishing them. And so, I mean, this is very, very common, of course, but it's throughout the Hebrew Bible, man. You read the prophets of Scripture, and this is every page. It's like Israel, you've sinned, you're going to be punished, or you are being punished. You need to repent and turn back to God, otherwise it's going to get worse. And it's sin, punishment, and then repentance kind of model. And you certainly get that in the New Testament. The apostle Paul tells his readers in Corinth that the reason some of the people in the congregation have gotten sick and others have died is because God's done it to them. God's made them sick and God's killed them because they haven't been observing the Lord's Supper properly. Or in the book of Acts, Ananias and Sapphira lied to the disciples about all the money they made from their property they sold. And so God kills them. So you certainly get that in the New Testament.
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C
So what do you think about those kinds of explanations? Do they seem like they hold true? Do they hold water essentially?
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D
Well, you know, obviously I think everybody would agree that many times when you do something wrong, you pay a price for it. Sometimes on the rather banal level, you know, if you party too hard on Friday night, you're going to have a bad hangover on Saturday morning. And so that's true. But even beyond that, you know, we do awful things sometimes and they do come back to haunt us. But as a theological explanation for why people suffer, I think this is really problematic. When I wrote my book God's Problem, my publisher sent me on a book tour and I was going around the country giving talks on it and stuff. And I think I was in Minnesota and I was on a radio program with a guy who was a local pastor, and he wasn't like a fundamentalist pastor or anything. He was a fairly moderate, midstream Protestant pastor, but a smart guy, really smart guy. Interesting. And he told me that a couple weeks earlier he had been in a parishioner's home as a single woman whose 16 year old child had died, got killed in a car accident. And he was talking to her and trying to help her deal with her grief. And she said to him at one point, well, Pastor, I know why my daughter died. And he said, really? Oh, why? She said, well, I told God that I would quit smoking and I promised him and I didn't do it. And so that's why he took my daughter. The pastor said, man, oh God, what do you even say to somebody like that? Really? You think God killed your daughter because you broke your promise to him? You know, it doesn't work that way, you know, but people for some reason find solace in the idea that they have an explanation for something that has no explanation. You know, that I've sinned and so God's punishing me or punishing somebody else to punish me is. Boy, I think that's a really bad theology myself. But you do get it in the Bible a lot. A lot in the Old Testament and in the New Testament as well.
- [12:03]
C
I was going to ask actually, where do you see this in the New Testament? I'm familiar with it turning up in the Old Testament, but how about the New Testament?
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D
Well, in these passages where, you know, people get sick and die because, you know, God kills Ananias and Sapphira or, you know, in the Book of Revelation, it's everywhere. It's the wrath of God. People have sinned against God, and so he sends punishments to people who have sinned. And it isn't just like, you know, unbelievers. It's even Christians who behave badly, you know, who eat something they're not supposed to eat. God horribly punishes them. And, you know, one passage in Revelation, one of the most horrific, one of the plagues that God sends to the earth is scorpions who come against the earth that have these flying scorpions that can sting people. And these people are in horrible, horrible torment for five months, and they can't escape even by dying. And God does this to them because they're sinners and. Oh, my God. Really? So it's. Yeah, it's a prominent teaching throughout the Bible that if you sin, God is just. And God wants you to change your ways, and so he will punish you. And when you suffered enough, you'll finally realize you need to turn back to God.
- [13:22]
C
So if the New Testament explains, and the Old Testament explains a lot of suffering in terms of we're being punished because we did something wrong, how does the devil and demons, or how do the devil and demons play into this worldview? Does their particular evil serve some overall purpose in God's plan, or is this more of a chaotic element in the mixture?
- [13:46]
D
It's a complicated thing because in some ways, the idea of a devil and demons emerges out of this view that I just explained and the problems with this view. So the view is that you sin and God punishes you for it, and that's why you're suffering. There came points in the history of ancient Israel where a lot of people were saying, you know, we're doing our best to follow God and we're still suffering as a result. And these other people, you talk about somebody not following God. These people are just moral wretches and they're having a good life, and I'm trying to keep the Torah and my life is horrible, and how can that be? And eventually it got to a point where the nation itself was having such turmoil, not just on the individual level, but the country was having such problem with economic problems and social problems and military problems, and it was really bad. Where some Jewish thinkers started thinking, you know, God isn't punishing us for our sins. Jews were being persecuted for keeping the law. About 200 years before Jesus, when they were being controlled by the Syrians, there was a Syrian monarch who made it illegal to keep the Torah. And so you were forced to eat pork. Families could not circumcise their baby boys. And if a woman had a boy circumcised, they would, according to the writings we have from the time the Book of the Maccabees. First Maccabees, the Syrians would murder the child and hang it around the woman's neck for having it circumcised for keeping the law. And people start saying, man, we are not being punished by God, we're being punished for following God. And that's when they started developing the idea that there are forces of evil in the world that are opposed to God. And for some reason, God has allowed them to control the world. And since they hate God and they're against God, they hate us because we're on God's side. That developed the apocalyptic view, the view that there are two forces in the world, the forces of evil and the forces of good, and they're doing battle. God has temporarily given power to the forces of evil for some unknown reason, but it's gotten just as bad as it's going to get. And he's going to intervene and destroy these powers and then bring in a good kingdom where there'll be no more suffering. You start getting that in the Old Testament only in its last book, the Book of Daniel, in a full fledged form in the Book of Daniel. And then it becomes a dominant view in Israel. And it's the view that Jesus and his followers had.
- [16:24]
C
If one of the views is that there is evil because either God is punishing someone or has permitted evil forces to gain the upper hand for a specific period of time, are there other views that explain why evil exists and why suffering occurs?
- [16:42]
D
Yeah, there are a number of others that people still have. I think people still have both of those. You know, you sin, God punishes you, or the devil's doing it, you know, and so God's going to make it all right. You know, you'll go to heaven and it'll be all right in the end. But there are others. I mean, a prominent view in the New Testament is that God uses suffering to bring about good and that it's only through suffering that good can arise. That's at the heart of the Christian message. The Christian message is that Jesus suffers so as to bring salvation and that salvation comes through suffering. This is a view you get in the Hebrew Bible as well, not in quite as stark of terms, but even in the Old Testament you have all sorts of stories where something really bad happens that leads to something really good that can lead to salvation. I mean one of the key examples is in the book of Genesis where Joseph, one of the twelve sons of, of Israel, Jacob is sold into slavery by his brothers. His father's told that he's been murdered by, killed by an animal and that he actually sold into slavery and he goes down to Egypt as a slave, but God's on his side and he raises them up and eventually over time he becomes Pharaoh's right hand man. So that when the children of Israel are facing a famine in Israel, they come down to Egypt and it turns out their brothers the right hand man of Pharaoh. And so it saves them, saves them starvation. And so good comes out of something bad. And it's explicitly stated, Joseph himself says to his brothers as grown ups, they're afraid he's going to take it out on them. And he says, look, you meant it to me as evil, but God meant for it as good. And so something good can come out of something evil. And so in the New Testament, when you get to the Gospel of Mark, for example, when Jesus dies, just in Mark's gospel, as we've talked about on here before, in Mark's gospel, when Jesus is going to his cross in Mark, he appears to be in shock and he doesn't say anything and he's just nailed to the cross and he's dying on the cross. And his last words were my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And so it's somebody in complete despair feeling forsaken of God. But then after he dies, the second he dies, the curtain in the temple rips in half, which is the curtain that separates God from the people. Jesus death has brought access to God and so salvation has come through this horrible thing that Jesus didn't know why it was happening to him. And so I think Mark's telling his audience, look, you're suffering horrible persecution now you Christians, but God works behind the scenes and so something good can come out of it.
- [19:23]
C
Do you see ever in ancient writings the idea or the question of why can't God create these good things without imposing suffering beforehand? Or is that something that develops later in Christian thought?
- [19:38]
D
Well, I'll tell you, in some ways it's at the very heart of the Bible because at least as Christians read the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, the reason they're suffering in the world is because of Adam and Eve and that God did create it as a place that would be good without suffering. But humans messed it up. So you know, it's not God's fault, it's human's fault. And it's not that God's punishing you, it's that you is. The way the Christians read this story is that sin came into the world at that point and sin is what leads to the suffering. But God didn't create the sin, humans did. So the idea that it has to be that way continues to be a line that many people find acceptable today. Some years ago I used to have public debates with people who wanted to Christians who wanted to talk about why they're suffering in the world. And I would get that view expressed a lot. One time I had a debate with some of our listeners will know Dinesh d', Souza, who's mainly known as a political figure, but he was for a time a president of a Christian college, Christian University in New York City, and he himself is a Christian. And he wanted to debate me on the issue of suffering. He had a really interesting argument for why there has to be suffering. Like I said, God had to create a world with suffering in it. And then I didn't buy this argument for a second. But until he brought this one up, I have to admit I hadn't thought of that one. And so his argument was that we now know from science that the only conditions that can lead to life on this planet involve shifting tectonic plates. Plates have to shift so that you get the kind of conditions that create the possibilities of life emerging out of non life. And one problem with shifting tectonic plates is it leads to earthquakes and volcanoes and tsunamis. And so, you know, if you're going to have life on Earth, I'm sorry, that's what you got to have. You've got to have the tectonic plates. And so it's one of these arguments that God couldn't have done it differently. And I thought, man, that is wrong on so many levels. For one thing, why are you telling God what he can't do? And who's putting this restriction on God? Exactly. If God is almighty, you know, apart from the fact that Dinesh at the point, the president of an evangelical seminary, is admitting that Adam and Eve didn't exist and that life came about from, you know, from evolution. Apart from all of that, are you telling me that God is unable to create a world without shifting tectonic plates and still have life on it? God's hands are tied by the possibilities of life involving tectonic plates. What I said, this is the, this is man. I don't, I do not buy this. I'd be amazed if somebody really buys this. I don't know. But it is this idea God has to do it. And so people do think about your question, you know, is it possible that God could have done it some other way? And I think most people say he did it a different way and he's going to return it to the other way, but it has to be that way now because of sin.
- [22:44]
C
So you just gave us one more recent explanation for the problem of suffering. Are there any others that differ substantially from what we see in ancient writings?
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D
Well, you know, I think that there's been a kind of a modification of ancient views in the modern world. But today a lot of people have the idea that suffering is transient now and that in the end God will make it right. This is a kind of a development of the apocalyptic view. The apocalyptic view is that God would intervene and destroy everything and make the world back into the paradise that he originally created. And so people say, well, it's not that it's going to be, you know, utopia here on earth, but when you die, your soul go to heaven. And so if somebody has a horrible life now, God will make it up to them later. This is a source of comfort for many people and again, I find it a little bit mind boggling that it's a source of comfort for people because it seems to say that it's okay for God to allow suffering now if he'll make it up later. You know, when you try to put it in like an analogy of some kind, it's. Suppose I decided to allow my 10 year old son to starve for a couple months. I wouldn't allow him to have any food or I didn't help him when he didn't have any food. I just kind of. But then I gave him a really good meal afterwards. Does that make up for it? I mean, does that mean it was okay for me to allow him to starve for all that time? Well, no, that'd be horrible. But you're saying God does that? One of the worst cases I've experienced of this is another debate I had. I have to admit I, you know, I try not to get upset during debates because I realize, you know, different people have different views and, but when it comes to the topic of suffering, I have to admit I just really get upset with people and get, get pretty angry because they come with these simple views. And sometimes they're, they seem like smart people, but they come with these simple views that just drive me nuts. And one of them was about a year, a couple of years ago maybe I had a debate on a, like, on a podcast with a Muslim apologist, somebody who's trying to defend Islam, which I have no problem with people being Muslims at all, any more than people being Jews or Christians or Buddhists or anything else. But this guy, oh my God. So I'm having this discussion with him and I say, look, you know, there's a child who starves to death every eight seconds. How do you explain that if you believe that your God is all powerful and loves people? And he said, well, you have a young girl who starves to death. Okay, but you know, that's just now she'll have eternal life with God in heaven. I said, okay, now you're Muslim. What if this girl is not Muslim? Will she have eternal life in heaven? Suppose you have a 12 year old girl who's starving to death who doesn't believe in Allah. Will she go to heaven? Oh, no, she won't go to heaven. Well, what will happen to her? Well, she'll be punished in fire forever. Oh, so your solution to the problem of suffering is that she's going to starve to death now and the result is that she will be tormented eternally in fire? I'm sorry, that's just how it works. Look, that is not a solution to the problem of suffering. It's almost as if people's brains go dead when they have to deal with a difficult problem like this. How you can be a person of faith. And I'm not denying that people can be people of faith, you know, absolutely. But I'm saying that these simple solutions to drive me crazy.
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C
What other simple solutions to this problem have you come across?
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D
I start going balmy when people start trying to explain the Holocaust to me in light of God. I had another radio debate. This was with a well known philosopher, an Oxford philosopher named Richard Swinburne, who, you know, he's an Oxford philosopher. So I mean, he's a really smart guy, he's a famous philosopher. This one really upset me because he was trying to explain how you could have a holocaust and you know, that it's still okay to have, you know, with an all powerful God. And it's because I really don't want to misstate this and I'm, I apologize if I, I do misstate it. People can listen to this and see if this is what he said some years ago. Now, this is how I remember him saying it, that events like the Holocaust can help us all understand how fragile this world is. And it can provide us with a sense of nobility, that understanding the world as it is and that can make us more noble creatures. Realizing how much people have suffered. I wanted to reach through my microphone and grab this guy. I. What, you mean 6 million Jews have to die so that you can feel more noble? That's the answer. What is wrong with people? I mean, I just. Anyway, yeah, so I get upset with that kind of thing about justifying the Holocaust because it makes us better people. And you get this in other guises too. People say, well, when we recognize suffering, then, you know, we can become better people. Or, you know, the. Without suffering, if there wasn't suffering in the world, we wouldn't appreciate the good. Now, that's a common argument. Do you mean that a million people have to starve to death so that I can feel good about things, so that I can experience good. Look, if everybody had my life, I'd have no problem with suffering. I mean, I have suffering. I mean, we all suffer, but, you know, my life's fantastic. If everybody had my life, that'd be fine. But why are eight children starving to death every second? I mean, so people have to starve to death so I can feel good about myself. Yeah, these things I don't, I don't buy.
- [28:17]
C
Something that I hear semi regularly is that God has to allow for suffering because he has to allow for humanity to have free will. How does that play into some of the explanations that you come across?
- [28:32]
D
Yeah, no, it's a very common explanation. And it absolutely. This one makes sense, of course, and there's a lot of sense to be said about this one. If I have free will and you have free will, we both have free will. You know, you can pop me in the nose and just punch me out if you want to because you have free will. So, you know. And I suffer because you got free will. Of course, that makes a lot of sense, and you can absolutely exaggerate that to the grotesque extremes of the Holocaust. The Nazis in this understanding, had free will. Several things to say about that in the Christian tradition. The entire tradition is built around the idea found in the New Testament that God intervenes to help people who are in need. That means that God restrains free will. If somebody is being tortured, God can stop the torturer. And in the New Testament, he often does intervene. The coming of Jesus was an intervention of God. And God answers prayer. Why doesn't God answer prayers of the people who are starving to death right now? Oh, he does answer them, but he just, you know, they come up with something. Well, he's just saying, no. What kind of answer is that? And so if God does intervene, why doesn't he intervene with horrible suffering? So there's that. The other thing is that when people say that there has to be free will, you know, they think that that's based in the Bible. And I get it, because people do choose to do things in the Bible. And so we, in our terms, that would be free will, but they don't have a philosophical category of free will. And when people today say, you have to have free will, what they mean is you can't be like a computer that's programmed. You know, if you're programmed like a computer or a robot, then you can't freely love. You can't freely love one another. You can't freely love God, and God wants us to freely love. And so you can't do that without free will. So there has to be suffering. That's the argument. You know, I absolutely get the argument. I used to believe it for years and years, but there are problems. One problem is when somebody tells me that you've got to suffer because of free will. I asked them, do you think you'll have free will in heaven? And they say, well, yeah, sure, of course I have free will. Do you think there will be suffering in heaven? Well, no, there won't be any suffering in heaven. So you're saying that in fact, you can have free will without suffering? Yeah, I am saying that. So why don't we have free will without suffering? Well, because we have free will. Okay? Can't have it both ways. So I don't think it answers all the things. And it certainly doesn't answer why people get killed by tsunamis. There was a tsunami that killed 300,000 people. It wasn't somebody chose to have a tsunami. When I bring that one up, people say, yeah, but they chose to live near the coast, you know, so it's their fault. What are you even thinking? What are you thinking? I'll tell you my view of this because I know, I mean, Megan, you've said before that you identify as a Christian. My wife identifies as a Christian. You both are way smarter than me. And I get all. And so this is not a matter of smarts, but if somebody is a person of faith, I think they have to have some kind of explanation. And I personally think, as somebody who no longer believes because of this issue, I Personally believe that if I were still a Christian, what I would say is, I don't know, but I still believe that's what I would say instead of, oh, well, you know, I promised God I wouldn't stop smoking. Coming up with something. Sometimes you just can't come up with something. And you should just say, I don't know. Because otherwise my opinion, you're really just not using your head.
- [32:06]
C
The I don't know position is kind of where I have landed. When you were a Christian, how did you deal with this problem?
- [32:14]
D
When I was an evangelical, I had the simple answers about free will and sin in the world. As I became somebody who didn't subscribe to the infallibility of the Bible anymore, I really wrestled with it and I ended up with a kind of, I don't know, answer. But my really was kind of rooted in apocalyptic views. I really thought, you know, there are powers of evil in the world. And I don't know why they're here, but look, there's a lot of evil in this world. I mean, look, look what happens internationally now. Look what's happening on our front door when the homelessness and hunger. And look what happens. I mean, just look at the horrible things that people have to go through. Birth defects and horrible accidents and, and diseases. And it's like, oh, God, the suffering all around us. I thought, you know, there are powers of evil in the world and evil, it just isn't like bad things. There, there, something's causing this. But that I, I thought, you know, in the end, I don't know. I don't, you know, I don't believe that there's going to be a utopia brought in or something, or the kingdom of God will arrive. And I don't believe it's just that you die and your soul goes to heaven. I think that somehow good is going to prevail. That's what I thought. You know, ultimately good will prevail. So I held onto that. I held onto that for many years until I just couldn't hold on to it anymore. And I came to think, I don't think good will prevail. So, you know, I try to let good prevail in my life and I revere people who do the best to make good prevail in other people's lives. This last week I was. There was a fundraising event for my local Urban Ministries of Durham, which it's not a religious organization. It deals with hunger and homelessness and does fantastic work. And these volunteers of these places, you know, who put in hours and hours just helping the homeless and the hungry and trying to get people into permanent housing and people trying to get people jobs. And they're just doing it out of the goodness of their heart. You know, I don't think the good in the end is going to triumph, but I think there's a lot of good out there. And man, I think it's amazing what some people will do for others. And I absolutely think that even though we can't have an answer to why there's suffering in the world, you know, there's no way we're going to come up with like the answer. Even though I will say after this podcast, I'm going to get about 50,000 emails with people telling me the answer. But I don't think we can have the answer. But I do think we can have the response. And the response is we need to help people, and not just our friends and family whom we definitely need to help, but people we don't know. We need to help people. And that's the response. And I think we can do that. Even if we can't come up with an answer.
- [34:52]
C
I think that is the perfect place to end our conversation. I know it's been a bit of a heavy one. Thank you everyone for sticking with us. Bart, thank you for sharing that and thank you for such a perfect final thought. We are going to take a very quick ad break and then we'll be back with Bart's Weekly Update.
- [35:10]
B
Most people know many of the stories of Genesis. The Creation, Adam and Eve, Noah and the Flood, the stories about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. But do you know what scholars say about those accounts? What archaeology, science and history can reveal about them, what their significance could be, even if they aren't literally true? Enter Bible scholar Bart Ehrman's captivating online course in the History, Legend and Myth in Genesis. In six enlightened lessons, you'll journey through questions like Did Genesis borrow its stories from other cultures? Are these accounts historical or legendary? And who were the real authors behind the Pentateuch? Whether you approach Genesis as a believer, a skeptic, or simply a seeker of knowledge, this course will challenge your understanding of these ancient narratives. It's a unique opportunity to navigate the complexities of the Bible's most famous book. Don't miss out on this intellectual adventure. Visit barterman.com Genesis to learn more or sign up today and be sure to use discount code mjpodcast for a special discount.
- [36:23]
A
This is Bart's weekly Update, where we
- [36:26]
D
get to catch up on all the
- [36:28]
A
latest about Dr. Ehrman's book releases speaking engaged urbanblog.org happenings and online course launches.
- [36:38]
C
So. But it's quite a long way off. But you and I were talking about this before Christmas. You are involved in an academic type cruise thing. What's that about?
- [36:49]
D
Yeah, so this is the opposite of suffering. This is like the good life, which does happen. You know, for years and years I've done like tours and cruises where I give lectures and I'm going to be doing one that's this summer. I haven't done one, you know, since COVID started. So it's been like four years since I've done one and I've been asked to do one. And this one is. Yeah, this one's going to be good. This is a cruise on a small boat that's an ecologically, like, it's just. This boat just got constructed in Finland and it's, it's ecologically sound. And we're doing, doing a cruise to the cities of Western Europe. And so we're going to, we're going to start in Amsterdam and we're going to go down the coast of Western Europe and go and end up in Lisbon. And I'll be lecturing on the sea in the biblical tradition. And so we'll be on the high seas. We're going to some of my favorite places. You know, we're going to Amsterdam and Bruges. Bruges is Amsterdam. The Rijksmuseum we will be going to. And these museums are fantastic on route, but Bruges is this medieval city that is just absolutely spectacular. And we're going to go to pilgrimage sites, Christian pilgrimages sites. We're going to visit the Normandy beaches, which is a different kind of thing that I've never been to. It'll be a 10 day cruise and I'm going to be giving lectures. Turns out the sea, which we will be on is an important issue in the Bible. And starting from, from Genesis onward through the Gospel, the sea is a big deal. And I'll be lecturing about that. And it'll be a small group. We don't know how large it'll be, but we're not talking a huge group. It's a small ship. The ship actually can accommodate 190 people. We're not going to have 190 people on it. It'll be just us and another small, I think a group from Washington, Lee University. And they'll have a lecturer dealing with art history and I'll be lecturing about the Bible and basically spending my time for 10 days just hanging out with people on a cruise. And so anybody who wants to come to this thing should check it out.
- [38:48]
C
It sounds delightful.
- [38:50]
D
It's going to be good. It's always fun for me because it's a, you know, it's a chance to get away from the library and the books and the issues that I'm dealing with in my daily life and seeing people, you know, and getting to know people and over a course of 10 days talking and, and usually about things that we're all mutually interested in. And so it's good.
- [39:08]
C
Wonderful. Thank you for sharing that.
- [39:10]
B
So if that does sound interesting to
- [39:12]
C
you, then there is a link in the description with more information and we'll probably talk more about it as it gets close to the time so that we can not cover all of the topics, but maybe talk about a couple of the things that you'll be going over on the cruise.
- [39:25]
D
Great.
- [39:26]
C
Perfect. Okay, we are going to do some listeners questions.
- [39:33]
A
Now it's time for questions from listeners where Bart answers real questions submitted by misquoting Jesus fans. If you'd like to submit a question for future segments, Please visit bart erman.com Ask Bart
- [39:51]
C
so first up, in Matthew 16, 13, 20, Jesus asks his disciples two questions. The first question is about the people's beliefs regarding the Son of Man. And the second question is about the disciples beliefs regarding Jesus. How are these two questions related As a line of questioning towards a rhetorical point? Is Jesus implying in the first question that he is the Son of man? Are the Son of Man and the Messiah the same figure in the minds of Jesus, his disciples, the author of the Gospel and the Gospel's intended audience?
- [40:25]
D
Good. Thank you. There are entire books written on these questions.
- [40:29]
C
We can do it in one minute or less. It's fine.
- [40:31]
D
One minute or less. Yeah, no problem. It's always very, very important when you're thinking about a question like this to differentiate between what you're asking about the Gospel of Matthew and its literary portrayal of Jesus, what it's trying to say about Jesus and the historical Jesus, what Jesus himself really said and did. I'll talk about Matthew. Matthew's Gospel definitely sees Jesus as both the Son of Man and the Messiah. So do the other gospels. In Mark's Gospel, sometimes Jesus will say something about what I'm going to do and Matthew will have the same saying that he's getting from Mark and he'll translate it into what the Son of man is going to do. Because for these Gospel writers, Jesus is the Son of Man. The reason this issue is complicated is because Jesus speaks about the Son of Man in a variety of ways in the Gospels. And sometimes he doesn't seem even in the Gospels, to be talking about himself. And there's a question about what the Son of Man even means on the lips of Jesus. Not just historically, but I mean, in these Gospels. Some scholars think that it just means person. It's like the Queen says, we are not amused. Jesus says, the Son of Man is going to Jerusalem. You know, it's a way of using a first person pronoun. Other people think that he's referring to the Book of Daniel, a reference to the Son of Man, who is a cosmic judge of the earth. Other people think that he's talking about humanity in general. So there are various views about all of these things. With respect to Matthew, Matthew means the two questions to mean the same thing. If he says, who is the Son of Man? He means, who am I? Then he says, well, who do you say that I am? He means the same thing. So the difference is what do the outsiders say? What do the insiders say? But the Son of Man in Matthew is Jesus.
- [42:22]
C
Thank you very much. Second question, for those who want to delve deeper into New Testament studies. Aside from your own work, where would you suggest people go for more information? And on top of that, where would you suggest people start if they are interested in studying biblical academics formally?
- [42:39]
D
Yeah, it kind of depends what level somebody wants to come at it in. I mean, you know, the. The very first and basic thing I think is for somebody who wants to know more about the Bible is to get a really good reference Bible. I really like the HarperCollins Study Bible and the Oxford Annotated Bible. These are Bibles that give a translation in the New Revised Standard Version. Before each book, there'll be a description of the book, when it was written, what it's about, who it's to, etc. Etc. And at the bottom of each page, they'll give notes explaining the important difficulties, like a passage, it's hard to explain. Verse is difficult to understand. They'll give you a note explaining it. That's absolutely the first step to take that I would recommend. I recommend reading books by authors that are reputable historical scholars. One way to start doing that is simply to get a good textbook on the New Testament. I have a textbook that's been around for over 25 years. It's just coming out in my eighth edition. And this person says, you know, apart from your work and. Yeah, right, exactly. So at the end of each chapter of this book, I have a chapter on Matthew. At the end of the chapter I list other books written on Matthew by other scholars. And I do that for chapter after chapter after chapter about everything. And so that would be a good place to go if you want a really good reference tool. It's unfortunately dated now because it was done like 20 years ago, but it's more than that 30 years ago. The Anchor Bible Dictionary is a six volume work that has articles on just about everything you'll be interested in in the Bible by scholars who are giving you scholarship about it, but at a level you can probably understand. Okay. With bibliography at the end. So those are three things I would
- [44:23]
C
suggest if people want to try and get a career in academics. Biblical academics. How do you start that process?
- [44:31]
D
Yeah, well, you have to go to graduate school. If you don't go to graduate school, you just need to read extensively. But it's very, very hard to get trained in this field without formal training. For one thing, you need the ancient languages. Most New Testament scholars learn Greek and Hebrew and usually other ancient languages like Latin or Aramaic or Coptic or Syri. And without formal training, it's really hard to learn these languages and it's really hard to learn them correctly. You know, a little Greek is a dangerous thing, as we used to say. You know, you think you got it, you don't got it, and you need help. Basically we all need help. If you're interested in pursuing it academically, if you're a student, then the thing to do is to go to a college and get a degree and to take classes that would be of some relevance maybe in ancient history and Biblical studies, maybe take some Greek in college. You then go to a master's program where you definitely will be taking languages and preparatory work and then end up doing a PhD. I mean you got to do a Master's and a PhD. It is many years of work and it is hard work and it is full time work and there's no guarantee of a job afterwards. So I'm not advising it. But if it's like the something you just can't live without, like this is the only thing you can do, you should definitely go for.
- [45:51]
C
Has largely been understood today that the book of Revelation has an anti Roman subtext which would have been clear to the earliest readers. When Nicene Christianity became established under Constantine. Was he oblivious to this subtext or did he just not have the power to overrule the bishops at the time?
- [46:09]
D
Well, I don't think Constantine ever read the book of Revelation. So I doubt if he knew what was in it. And at that time it wasn't. It wasn't widely considered part of the Bible. It had difficulty getting into Scripture. And one of the reasons that it did get in is because some theologians found it useful in the controversies that raged during Constantine's day after his conversion about whether Christ was fully equal with God or not. Some people thought that the book of Revelation could be used to argue that Jesus was in fact fully equal with God. And so that's one of the reasons it got into Scripture. Its anti Roman bias was affirmed by many people who saw that the persecutors of Christians were Romans. Constantine put an end to that, and so in some ways he could be seen as a savior figure from those that are being condemned in the book of Revelation. Eventually the issues concerning Rome disappeared as Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire, and revelation then came to be interpreted in a completely different way later.
- [47:15]
C
Thank you. Final question. I don't dispute the veracity that Jesus existed, but as the Gospels were written well after Jesus death, and as Jesus often spoke in parables, is it in any way possible that the life of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels is intended to be understood as a parable?
- [47:34]
D
Well, we don't know what any author's actual intentions are. The only way to know what an intention is is to get into somebody's brain and see if that person knows. Sometimes people don't know their own intentions, but strictly speaking, you can't know somebody's intention. And so you have to base it on the kind of likelihood of things. We have other books written by religious figures and by other famous figures, political figures and military figures and educators and things from the ancient world. And in virtually every instance that we can isolate of a book written like that about a historical figure, it's not meant as a parable, it's meant as a historical account. The history may not be very good, there might be misinformation in it, there might be lots of legends in it, but the intention is to inform somebody about the person's life. The Gospels are probably to be understood as the Greek word for this is bio, which is the word behind biography. A biography is the writing of somebody's life. Bio is the description that's used for kind of ancient biographies. They're different from modern biographies in many ways, but they're still intended to describe what happened in a person's life. And there's really no reason that I can think of to suspect that the writers of the Gospels had A different purpose than others, which is to describe Jesus life. They had their reasons for doing it different from other biographies, but I think they're really trying to describe his life, whether they're accurate or not.
- [49:07]
C
Thank you so much, Bart. Audience, as ever, thank you for sending in all of your questions. Now, before we finish for the week, would you mind just summarizing what we spoke about?
- [49:17]
D
Yeah. So we were talking about the problem of evil and the problem of suffering that are in the world. Some people differentiate between the problem of evil and the problem of suffering, but many people see them as obviously very closely related. The initial question was, what does the New Testament say about these things? What I said was that the New Testament has a similar view to much of the Old Testament as well, that there are various explanations for why they're suffering that you can find. Many of these explanations are still found among people today. And we got off from that into whether any of these explanations are satisfying to explain what's really happening in the world. And my view is that it's a very big issue and that I think people need to wrestle with it rather than assume that there are simple answers.
- [50:03]
C
Bart, thank you so much. Audience, thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don't miss future episodes. Remember that you can use the code mjpodcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.barterman.com. misquoting Jesus will be back next week. Bart, what are we talking about next time?
- [50:24]
D
Yeah, so next week we're dealing with this question of forgery in the ancient world where people write claiming to be authors that they're not, like they. They claim to be a famous person when they're not. And in the modern world, we call that forgery. How often did that happen in the New Testament? How many of these books in the New Testament? The 27 books. How many of these books actually go under the name of the people who wrote them? There'll be some surprises there. So that's next week.
- [50:48]
C
Thank you, Bart. Thank you, audience, and goodbye.
- [50:54]
B
This has been an episode of Misquoting Jesus with Bart Egg. 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 Barterman's YouTube channel, so you don't miss out. From Bart Erman and myself, Megan Lewis, thank you for joining us.