← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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- [00:00]
Bart Ehrman
When I found out I was going
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GoFundMe User
to be a parent, I immediately felt
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Bart Ehrman
a lot of anxiety and worry.
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GoFundMe User
So I went on to BetterHelp to try to look for a therapist to help me with that.
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Megan Lewis
My relationship with my family and with my boyfriend and with myself were suffering. I really needed help. I was ruminating a lot.
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GoFundMe Narrator
Really getting those thoughts out to a therapist and getting feedback was just life changing.
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Podcast Announcer
Discover what BetterHelp online therapy can do for you and visit betterhelp.com today.
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Megan Lewis
Has Christianity been a net positive or negative for humanity? If you wander into an online debate between an atheist and a Christian apologist, you may hear an enthusiastic discussion on just this topic with the Christian arguing that Jesus teachings led to the development of charity hospitals and orphanages, among many other things. Are these claims actually correct though? Today, Dr. Bart Ehrman and I continue our discussion on the influence of Jesus ethical teachings on the Western world. Diving into just that question.
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Podcast Announcer
Welcome to Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman, the only show where a six time New York Times best selling author and world renowned Bible scholar uncovers the many fascinating little known facts about the New Testament, the historical Jesus and the rise of Christianity. I'm your host Megan Lewis. Let's begin.
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Megan Lewis
Hello everyone. Welcome back to Misquoting Jesus. We are continuing today to talk about Jesus impact on the ethics and morals of the Western world. We're also going to be talking about some blog news. We've got some listeners questions and as always we have Bart. Bart, how are you today?
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Bart Ehrman
Yeah, doing pretty well. We're, you know I'm now that I finished this other book, I'm, I'm starting in on the next one as one does and I'm getting it's kind of thing where I'm rereading stuff that I've read like years and years ago that I've always really liked and get to read some more about how, how we got the New Testament, how we why did we get these 27 books? And for some reason I don't know why, but since I was like 18 years old this has been a really fascinating question to me. And so a lot, virtually every book I write, I enjoy writing. I'm interested. But there's some things that like go way back for me and this is one of them. So I'm, yeah. So I'm probably spending most of the rest of summer reading about this kind of thing.
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Megan Lewis
Well, I look forward to talking about it as you continue your research and writing.
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Bart Ehrman
Yeah. So when, so like do you, do you have time to do like Any reading in your field?
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Megan Lewis
Generally, not really. I try to. I do try to. And I'm toying with the idea of setting up a Digital Hammurabi book club through our patron as a way primarily to force myself to actually make time to sit and read. Because if I've got someone or a group of people holding me accountable, it's much more likely to get done. But I have so many books on the shelves downstairs that I just. I really want to dive into. And they're fascinating. And I've kind of. When you're researching a particular topic for people who've not done a lot of academic research, you don't necessarily read a book from start to finish. You go and you find the relevant things for what you're looking at at that moment in time. So I've done a bit of that here and there as I'm researching for interviews with guests on Digital Hammurabi or if I'm preparing for a course or a lecture or something, I'll do bits of research that are relevant. But I have so many books that I want to just sit down and actually go through in their entirety. So the answer is not as much as I would like, but I am trying very hard to get back into it.
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Bart Ehrman
All right, good. Okay. Do your best.
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Megan Lewis
I will. I will. We'll see how it goes. Now, last week we started our conversation on how Jesus teachings redirected the moral trajectory of the Western world. And we were looking at kind of like the soup of moral and ethical ideas that was presence at the time. Jesus was alive and teaching and doing his thing. So just to catch everyone up, Bart, would you explain what Jesus major innovation, ethical, moral innovation was that was such a departure from what had been thought?
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Bart Ehrman
Well, you know, there are a lot of things, obviously, but I would say what my book is about. The book's called Love Thy Stranger. The book is about what I think is one of the very top major ones, which was that Jesus taught that altruism was not to be shown only to your. Your. You know, to your family and your friends and your neighbors. That, that doing good for other people was really supposed to be directed toward those who are in particular need. He's. He's getting that from. From the Hebrew prophets of the. From the Old Testament prophets. But for him, anybody in need is, Is. Should be an object of our altruism. And so we should be concerned about people, even if they're strangers to us, even if they'. We're supposed to treat them well in ways that are in their best Interest rather than our best interests. And this ends up, as we'll be exploring today, ends up making a big difference in our former civilization.
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Megan Lewis
Now, we talked quite a lot last time about exactly who a stranger is in this context of love thy stranger. I wanted to ask about how the concept of love plays into the discussion. If you've got a call to serve others. But the instruction is framed throughout the New Testament in the language of, of loving your neighbor. What does this mean?
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Bart Ehrman
So it's a, it's a very important point and it turns out being kind of a thing people don't think much of. But you know, the word love in English is, is a wide ranging term. You can love all sorts of things, but you love them in different ways. You know, you love your children different differently from the way you love your spouse. You love your spouse differently from the way you love your boss. And you love your boss differently from the way a book and you, you love, you know, and you love. Whatever you love can mean a lot of different things. It can mean desire, it can mean passion, it can be fondness, it can be friendship, it can mean sexual passion. It can mean, you can mean all sorts of different things. And to understand what it means, you have to understand what it means in a particular context. That was true of ancient languages as well. And all ancient languages have a variety of words for a variety of things. The word love in Greek, widely in Greek words that get translated into English as love are. There are various kinds of words. There's, there's a word eros, for example, that use widely in Greek for love. And it tends to mean kind of a passionate love, not just sexual passion, but it can be sexual passion. But if you're passionate for something, that's eros. Another word is philia, which is, which means something more like friendly love. Like when you really have good chemistry with somebody, you connect with somebody and you, you, you, you treat them well because you really like them. That's philia. And so it's not eros. And then there's another word, stergo which means, usually used for parents with respect to children and family relationships. That kind of love within, within Greek speaking, the Greek speaking world, the word that became the dominant word in Christianity is never used. So it's the word agape, A G, A P, E. They had the verbal form of it. Agapao is a verb that was used going back to Aristotle and Plato and so forth. And it could mean kind of like a fondness for something. But in the Greek translation of the, of The Old Testament, they start using this term, agapao, and they. They invent this word agape, which is the noun for love. And it's the noun that is almost everywhere in the New Testament. What it means is. Is somewhat different. All these terms overlap, obviously, but. But agape is the kind of love where you. You do something in somebody else's best interest. It's an active love, love. And this is the kind of love that God. God commands. And so in. When in the Old Testament, in the Greek Old Testament, God says, love your neighbor as yourself. It's. It's this verb agape and agapao. And in the New Testament, the command to love is using this term, agape. It's an important point because people confuse love always as an emotion, but agape is not an emotion. Agape is when you treat somebody well, whatever you think of them, you may not like them, you may certainly not have an emotional love for them, but you treat them well. That. That's what is meant by this term, agape. And it's the standard word on Jesus lips in the New Testament. And in the rest of the New Testament,
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Megan Lewis
there are. I'm sure people will be familiar with the idea that I didn't mean to love specifically this person and not necessarily in this way. We kind of touched on this last week. How early in Christian writing do we see this debate starting of exactly what Jesus meant and who he was referring to?
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Bart Ehrman
Well, it starts right away. It goes all the way back in our earliest writings. And it's. It's important because if Jesus is commanding people to love, it's important to understand what kind of love it is and to whom it's to be directed. Because the thing is, you know, if you think of love as an emotion, then a command to love makes no sense. You can't command somebody to have an emotion. You know, it's like commanding somebody to like broccoli. They either like it or they don't like it. It isn't like something you can order.
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Megan Lewis
I wish I could command someone to like broccoli. That would make my life so much easier.
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Bart Ehrman
I know, but instead, you have to command them to eat the broccoli. You can command them to do something, but you can't command them to feel something. And so in the Bible, these commands to love are not commands for feelings, they're commands for action. And Jesus, Jesus himself appears to have taught that you're supposed to treat others well. And it's everybody. It isn't just your family, friends, neighbors. It's it's everyone. And so, I mean, for example, when. Well, there's this famous parable in, in the Gospel of Luke where Jesus is explaining to somebody that, you know, love your neighbors yourself is the most important ethical thing we can do. And somebody wants to justify himself, it says. And that probably means because, like, he wants to show that he's okay, he says, well, yeah, but when I'm supposed to love my neighbor, who's my neighbor, you know, because if it's just the guy next door, he's fine, but if it's someone else, maybe not. And then Jesus tells Parable of the Good Samaritan, which is a parable about somebody helping out a needy person who was his enemy. It's this Jewish man who's beat up and left by the side of the road, half dead, who is ignored by a priest in the temple in Jerusalem and by a priest's assistant, a Levite in the temple of Jerusalem. They just leave him by the side of the road, don't even go to see how he's doing. And it's a hated Samaritan who comes up to him, a Samaritan who's understood to be the enemy of the Jews, kind of a somebody practices a false religion and there's political tension between them. And he's the one who helps this person. And Jesus says, that's what it means to love your neighbor. It means helping people who are your enemies. And so. So it starts early on, starts. It goes all the way back to Jesus.
- [11:43]
Megan Lewis
We are going to take a very brief break and then be back to look at the practicalities of exactly how loving your neighbor worked and the impact that had on the development of morals in our world.
- [11:55]
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Podcast Announcer
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- [14:05]
Megan Lewis
So if we had people already during Jesus ministry questioning or arguing exactly what this means and who it refers to, by the time Christianity is kind of an established significant force in the religious canvas of the ancient world, how had these debates changed and shifted? Were they still being engaged in or had people kind of come to an agreement of this is what he meant?
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Bart Ehrman
Well, there continued to be interpretations of the meaning of his words because people, many people have trouble believing he could really mean it. When he said, when he told me what he really meant, you know, in this passage where we talked about last time, where this person wants to know how he can attain eternal life and Jesus says that if he wants treasures in heaven, he has to sell everything and give to the poor. You know, he believes Jesus. He walks away. His disciples don't believe. His disciples say, what? How, what? You mean a rich man can't get into heaven? And Jesus says it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter into the kingdom of heaven. And Peter is like, what? Then it's impossible? Jesus? Yeah, it's impossible. He said, but you know, God, God, God can make, can make it happen. But Peter says, well, how about us, though? You know, we've left everything. You know, we left our families, we left our, our wives, our children, our Homes, our, our jobs to follow you. And Jesus says, affirms him, and he says that's what you need to do. Anyone who does that will acquire a hundred times as many houses and mothers and fathers and, you know, and, and things here and eternal life. So he affirms doing this, but it ends up being a problematic passage because it sounds, sounds, wow, those disciples are really committed, right man, they're devoted and they've given up everything. That's what it means neighbor, give up everything. But when you think about it in an ancient context, these 12 men were they, they had to be the heads of their households and they were the only ones who made incomes. And so when they left their families, it means they left their family without any money, without any income. That's not good. I mean, how are these people supposed to survive? I mean, it's not, it's, I mean, I don't think it's good. I mean. And so, so because of the radical nature of this, these issues end up getting debated. We mentioned last second century church Father Clement of Alexandria, who said Jesus could not have met it. What Jesus really meant was don't be attached to your possessions, you know, you can have them, just don't be too attached to them. Which becomes then the standard view. So the radical nature of Jesus teachings ends up getting softened because otherwise it'd be chaos otherwise. But the basic idea that you should do, you should behave well towards those who are in need becomes a fundamental Christian teaching. And it becomes a standard idea that we need to help the needy, the poor, the hungry, the homeless. That, that needs to be our focus of attention. Not on, not just on our helping our communities and like building buildings for our communities or not be helping just our family and friends. We need to help those in need. And that's what ends up making the revolutionary difference.
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Megan Lewis
How did this call to care for others outside of your immediate community impact? Let's start early. The Roman Empire, how did people start responding to this? And do we see kind of a shift in public consciousness, public behavior towards people who need help?
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Bart Ehrman
You know, throughout the Christian tradition in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th centuries, church fathers repeatedly emphasize that it's important to help those in need. And churches start taking collections already in the first century. Paul is behind a collection that's going to go to the saints in Jerusalem who are needy, the Christians in Jerusalem during a time of real hardship. And so Christians start developing this idea of contributing to those who are in need. And we have discussions of this in church fathers of the second, the third and the fourth centuries. This is unlike anything in the Greek and Roman worlds. They don't. You people are not going around collecting money for, you know, the, the destitute in the Greek and Roman worlds. But it becomes a Christian thing. And there are debates about how to do it, there are debates about how extreme to be about it. But there, there are certainly some people who think Jesus really meant it, that he had to give up everything, the people had to give up everything. And others who thought, no, it just means you need to be generous, but either way you're being generous toward the needy. You might think that, you know, Christians are saying this to show off how moral they are to contrast themselves with those rank pagans and that, you know, that really, you know, they're not serious people aren't really giving, selling, giving away this much. But we actually have some indications from pagan authors that Christians are doing this, the most famous of which is at the end of the 4th century. There was a, an emperor Julian the Apostate he's called. He was a nephew of Constantine who ended up becoming the emperor about 30 years, about 25 years after Constantine died. And he had be. He had gone back to become a pagan. Julian had. And he tried to convert the empire back to paganism because he could see it's moving decisively towards Christianity. And one of the things he says in one of his surviving letters is that pagans need to be more like these Christians who are helping people out the whole time. Why aren't we doing that? You know, and so, and so this is a pagan who's like complaining because Christians are doing it and pagans aren't. So that's, that's one indication, one of many indications that had become a widespread thing.
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Megan Lewis
Is this the development of what we would understand today as, as charity, Charitable giving.
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Bart Ehrman
Yeah. So in, in Greek and Roman antiquity, rich people were expected to give their money away, not just to friends and family, but also the rich people were the ones who supported the cities. And so like, if somebody were a, were, were chosen to be the mayor, you know, or the treasurer of the city, they were required to pay for it. They had to, they had to fund out and some, a lot of money sometimes. And, and we have records of people going bankrupt because they had to do it. And, but your money then went to municipal projects like building buildings that were needed or building an aqueduct. Aqueduct or, or putting on a gladiatorial show or that, you know, you had to do things. When Christians started taking over the empire, they said that the not give to the municipality or just to those close to them, they should give to the needy. And so the funds get redirected. And so it moves away from this idea of supporting the, the city to supporting the needy. And so it becomes alms, giving, giving alms for the poor. And that becomes a major emphasis within Christianity. And the other emphasis is that everybody can give something. You know, you may not be able to give a lot, but you can give something to help someone out, you know, even if it just means letting them sleep on your floor at night because they're homeless or just giving them, sharing a meal with them, or if you have any extra money, giving it to, for the almsgiving. And so this becomes the kind of regular motif within Christianity. Everyone can give something and people need to give as much as they can, and it's to go to those who are in need.
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Megan Lewis
How do we see this influence the development of things like hospitals and orphanages? That's less giving financially, but still caring for people who need care.
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Bart Ehrman
Yeah, in some ways it's both, I guess. I'll tell you, I had no idea about this until five or six years ago. I really didn't realize how significant this idea of giving was for the development of Christianity and for institutions that we're just accustomed to today. I, you know, frankly, I had no idea. But Christians, Christians invented public hospitals in the West. They didn't exist in the Greek and Roman worlds. The, in the Greek and Roman worlds, there, there certainly were physicians. We have writings, lots of writings by physicians. But physicians were for rich people who would hire them privately. Most people couldn't afford that. But they, they had care in their homes. And so people, just simple nursing will often help somebody who's sick. And, and, and so what ends up happening, this is thoroughly documented and not really a disputed thing, as it turns out, even though I didn't know about it. In the middle of the 4th century or so, there were. Christian communities started forming that were monastic communities where monks, men's starting out with men, would come together in community and isolate themselves from the rest of the world and to practice their holiness. And so, you know, there'd be lots of prayers and there'd be rules and regulations and worship and work and, but they would be, they'd be isolated from society at large, which meant that if they, they'd come from a rich family, they no longer had access to private doctors and they didn't have access to family care because they'd shunned their families to be in these monasteries. Monasteries in the 4th century. Started developing kind of sick, sick rooms, sick areas to where professionals could take care of the sick within the monastery. And then in the middle of the 4th century, they started expanding these to build, building for other people who are sick. And this is the beginning of public hospitals in the Western world. It started with monasteries in the 4th century. We can actually date and place where this happened. And so once that, you know, once Christians started realizing we need to take care of those in need and the church is growing, so they start having funds. They start realizing, you know, we have this problem with, they've always had this problem of widows. The, the main breadwinner has died and the widow can't go get a job. There weren't jobs. So how, how do they get supported? Well, they start providing places, you know, support for widows. And what about orphans? They start building orphanages. What about people who are desperately poor? You start building poor houses. What about the elderly? They start building elderly homes. All of these things are taken for granted today by us. And every one of them is a Christian invention. In the West.
- [24:36]
Megan Lewis
That's, I didn't have any idea actually that all of those different things were, were innovations of, of Christianity.
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Bart Ehrman
Who knew?
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Megan Lewis
We don't see anything similar in, in the ancient world.
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Bart Ehrman
Well, so, you know, there may be things like that in, in Eastern countries, you know, in, I don't know, that didn't influence. So for example, some people. Well, what about Buddhists? You know, they're doing a lot of good things and. Yeah, absolutely. Other religions in the East. Yes, that's right. But these are not things that influence Christianity. Christianity. These developments can be shown to be historically internal to Christianity and they were not found in the Greek and Roman worlds until Christianity came along. And so even the idea of having private charities to help disaster relief, Christian invention, governmental assistance to those in need, you start getting that already with Constantine. You don't get much with Constantine at all.
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GoFundMe User
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Bart Ehrman
But toward the end of the 4th century, governments start intervening somewhat for those who are, who have needs. The government starts contributing in, in isolated times and places, it just, it becomes kind of the standard thought that of course, if you've got funds, you should help those in need. And this is not, this is you. When you read Aristotle, he. Or you read Seneca or you read any of these ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, they do not say you need to take care of the destitute. The ancient Greek and Roman philosophers agreed that money could be a problem, but it wasn't a problem for us the way it is for us, for ancient moral Philosophers. The problem with money is it could hurt somebody's personal character. Right. It could make them greedy and miserly and mean spirited. You know, they're not pleasant to be around. That's not good. And so the problem with wealth in the ancient world was for the wealthy. They didn't have a problem with the fact that somebody else is starving to death over here or if they did, they didn't ever talk about it. It and they never. And they certainly. And they actually talk about not giving them money. Whereas Christianity comes along, it's just the opposite. The problem is not the wealthy. For the wealthy you have, the problem is wealth distribution. You have these poor people who are starving to death and you're living like a king. That's not right. If you're a follower of Jesus,
- [26:53]
Megan Lewis
would you say then that on the whole Christianity was more of a positive than negative development developments for human history?
- [27:00]
Bart Ehrman
Ah, I get that question a lot and I'll expound on my answer here, but normally I say, yeah, no way to know. How could you say? I mean, so, so it's a, I deal with this in my book, the last couple of chapters. I, I have to get into this. Did Christianity make the world a better place or not? And the reason it's complicated is because every, every everything in culture is complicated and everything complicated in culture because culture is made up of people and people are complicated. So many Christians that I know that I grew up with thought that Christianity brought a civilizing influence onto the, into the Roman world. That they were a bunch of pagans, they didn't have any morals, they didn't have any values, they had these crazy religions and Christ Christianity improved everything. It turned the world into monotheism. It, it emphasized the need for loving one another, it brought ethics into the world, etc. And many people I know still think that, that Christianity was a civilizing force. Many atheists and agnostics I know think the opposite. They think that Christianity has done a world of harm to the world and that the world would be better off without it. Both side can make a case, but I think both, if you make a case for either side, you're not being very nuanced or understanding kind of the broader complexities of the situation.
- [28:37]
Megan Lewis
So what arguments do you hear for being bad then?
- [28:40]
Bart Ehrman
Well, you know, look, it's pretty easy to make the argument. The people will point out that when the Christians started taking over the empire, they, they destroyed a good bit of Greek and Roman culture. We don't have most art or architecture or literature from The Greek and Roman worlds. Books of major philosophers gone, major poets gone. Statues, I mean, you know, I mean, artwork just gone, gone, gone. Before Christianity, Jews, of course, were unusual in the ancient world. They were made up maybe 7% of the Roman population. They were known to be different from everyone else and they were sometimes mocked, but they were not attacked for being Jews. Sometimes in Israel, Israel was attacked for, for political reasons, even in right after the days of Jesus, but as a political issue, wasn't a religious issue. It was only when Christianity came along that there was religious opposition to Jews for being Jewish. And that ends up leading some very nasty things, starting with Constantine, who starts passing legislation against Jews and heightening with Theodosius I at the end of the 4th century with increased legislation against Jews and going in into the Middle Ages with very nasty things, with pogroms and very, very awful things that are because of. Within Christianity, because Christians were rejecting Jews for rejecting Jesus. That can be demonstrated. So this is the argument somebody would make without Christians, you don't have the Crusades going in and trying to slaughter the Muslims and trying to take over the promised land by force. You don't have the Inquisitions where heretics and false believers are tortured or threatened, threatened to be tortured. You don't have, you know, you just kind of go down the line and you start seeing all these things that happened in the name of Christ. And, and some people say, look, you know, yeah, that's not really Christianity, though. And my view is, well, yes, it is Christianity. It may not be conforming with the teachings of Jesus, but these are Christians doing this in the name of Christ. This is what Christianity became. And so if you're asking, did Christianity create any harm in the world, yes, and it still does. I mean, it was used to justify slavery. It's still used to justify racism. It's still used to persecute people and to kill people who are of the wrong color or the wrong ethnicity or to oppress people who are of the wrong, the wrong gender or who have the wrong sexual orientation, who's like, like it is used in highly oppressive ways. And so if you think those oppressive ways are good for the world, okay. But, you know, a lot of us think those things are not good. And so that would be, you know, if somebody wanted to make the case, as many have, that would be the case that Christianity's not done a lot of good for the world.
- [31:51]
Megan Lewis
How do people then try and answer that and say, actually, no, here's all the great stuff, it's done.
- [31:59]
Bart Ehrman
So again, you Know, it's easy to be kind of on one side or the other. A lot of people I know aren't on one side or the other, but the other. But, you know, both sides make good points. And so the other side is also very. Has a lot to say. I think we today have more or less built into most of us in the west. Not all of us, obviously, but most of us have built into us the idea that we ought to help people who are in need. Need. And so when, when something horrible happens in some foreign country to people we don't know, we send disaster relief. We have people who volunteer to help strangers. Tons of money goes to, to helping those in need. We, many people support governmental policies to help those who are poor and homeless. We have public hospitals. They wouldn't exist. I mean, they, you know, they might have come into existence for some other reason, but they, they didn't. Christians are the ones who invented them. Orphanages, poor people's homes, homes for, for the elderly who can't take care of themselves and don't have any family to help them. You know, famine relief projects to provide housing for people just go down the list of things that have been provided. These are Christian inventions. And so they're all rooted ultimately in the teachings of Jesus. It's not that most people are literally following the teachings of Jesus. I know, I don't think. I, I don't personally know anyone who truly follows the teachings of Jesus. I know some who come close, but there's the ones I know who've come close are Greek Orthodox monks living in monasteries in the middle of nowhere. You know, most people I know have a house and, you know, some TV sets and some iPhones and car too, and, you know, and can eat out. And, you know, well, that's not selling everything and giving to the poor. And, you know, that's not giving everything. That's not being willing to be crucified with Christ that's trying to, you know, living a pretty good life now, which I'm not against. I'm for it. I mean, I haven't sold everything either. But I'm just saying they're not following what Jesus actually taught. But many, many people, whether they are Christian or not, think that the basic heart of Jesus teaching actually is valuable and needs still to be implemented, which is that when we see somebody in need, we should try to help them. And almost all of us could do more. Maybe many people feel guilty about it, some don't give a damn. But that sentiment is not rooted in the, the human DNA that we got from, you know, from prehistoric times. This was not found in Greek and Roman culture before Christianity. This is a. This feeling we have to help others comes from Christianity. And I think that part of it is very good. And so for me, the question isn't so much, you know, which one is right, that the, that Christianity produced so much harm in the world and should be gotten rid of, or that Christianity produced so much good in the world and so should be supported. It's not which side is wrong. The better question is whether either one of them, you know, it's not. Yeah, it's not which is wrong, it's right. It's like which one is neither wrong or right. They're. They're both right and they're both wrong. And so it's really something in the middle. Middle. I think. I think Christianity has done a ton of good and it's done a ton of bad. I think the world. I think the world would be a better place if people did try to follow Jesus teachings more, including the Christians, by the way. I think it would be a better place because the basic teachings of Christian, of Jesus are fine. Help people in need.
- [35:50]
Megan Lewis
If we can't say, if we can't answer the question, was it net positive, net negative, do you think we can at least say that Christianity has gone some way towards making the Western world a more moral place?
- [36:06]
Bart Ehrman
Well, of course, it depends on what you what. What's considered to be a higher form of morality, the one that I was born into and raised with says that if somebody is suffering from want, that it is my human obligation to assist them. Them. It seems very strange to me that our cultural roots did not teach that. This was not taught in the Greek and Roman worlds. You will not find a book on a chapter on this in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. You won't find letters about this by Seneca or by Cicero. You won't find discussions of it. But in Epicurus or Epictetus, these are not things that they were interested in.
- [36:53]
GoFundMe User
In.
- [36:53]
Bart Ehrman
They were the central things that much of the Hebrew Bible was interested in. And because of that, there were central things that Jesus was interested in. And for Jesus, it wasn't just within the community, it's throughout the whole world. I inherited that sense of morality. I consider it, of course, I consider it to be the best morality. Everybody thinks the morality they support is the best morality, otherwise they take somebody else's morality. Right? And so, I mean, if you thought somebody else had a better view of ethics, you adopt their ethics but, but this is the morality that I'm born with. And I think that ultimately this morality does come from the teachings of Jesus, who got it from Judaism, but he, he transformed it in the way that's made the difference in the Western world because it was his followers that took over the Western world. And so I, you know, I'm reluctant to, I, I do not, I mean, I'm joking about my morality being better than anyone else. I really, because I don't make those judgments. I do not think that I'm more moral than somebody in, you know, in Nepal or someplace who's not a Christian at all. But for me, this is what it means to live as a human, to not only to try and be a happy person, be content with my life, and to do the best I can in my life for myself, but also for others, for family and friends, but also for those in need. And I think that that sentiment that I have came from the teachings of Jesus ultimately, historically. Bots.
- [38:17]
Megan Lewis
Thank you very much. I'm sure we'll touch on this topic again as we get closer to your book publication date. We are going to go to some upcoming events and then we have a whole host of listeners questions.
- [38:31]
Podcast Host
Welcome to our upcoming highlights and event segment where we catch up on bart's courses, community updates and all the latest news from the Biblical Studies Academy and beyond.
- [38:48]
Megan Lewis
But how is your blog going?
- [38:51]
Bart Ehrman
Ah, my blog, yeah, my blog is going, man, this thing, it's over 13 years now. Every week, five posts a week.
- [38:57]
Megan Lewis
I can't believe you've managed that consistently for 13. I wouldn't be able to manage that for two weeks.
- [39:03]
Bart Ehrman
Well, I can barely. Every week is like, oh my God, how am I going to do this? So, but, but I do want people to know, you know, a lot of people watch this podcast who are not on the blog and what we do here, you know, we have those interviews for 30, 40 minutes and then. But I post five times a week on topics like this and you know, it's pretty interesting stuff. I just think if people are interested in what we're doing here, they should at least look at the blog and check it out. Because I, I mean, just this last week, just this last week, I, I did a post on, on the one passage in the New Testament that is most explicit that women need to be subject to the authority of men. Then, okay, so like, what's that about? Did Paul really write that? I had another one on who is the suffering servant in the book of Isaiah? Is Isaiah 53 predicting that Jesus is going that, that. That Jesus is going to be crucified. So I had a blog post on the. Then I had another blog post on just this past week on what the. The passage in the New Testament. The one verse in the New Testament that led to. In the middle of the 1970s, 1980s, started compelling evangelicals to be major advocates for the state of Israel. That's interesting. What is that verse? And what. And why is it there another. And another post on this weird passage in Genesis, chapter six where these, these angelic beings look down on women and think they're beautiful and come down and have sex with them and it leads to the Noah's flood. It's like, what. So all of these things, like every. So, like, okay, so I say it's a pain doing these things, but it's so much fun too because, like, this is really interesting stuff. And so, so I would just encourage people to look at the blog. It's just.
- [40:40]
Megan Lewis
And, and talking about charity. Bart, as we have been.
- [40:44]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [40:45]
Megan Lewis
What does the, what does the blog do?
- [40:47]
Bart Ehrman
Well, that's it. I mean, this, for me, it's a charitable enterprise. There's a small membership fee. People can join at various levels and get more and more perks or fewer and fewer perks, whatever they want, but it's not a lot. It's like 29.95, $29 and 95 for a year. It's like at the lowest level. Oh, my God. But we take all these monies and we give them to charities, mainly dealing with hunger, homelessness and, and disaster relief. And so just over the last three years, we've raised one. We've raised one and a half million dollars in these three years. And so I really encourage people to look at it and think about joining because it does. It does a world of good for very little money. And you get so much stuff that, you know, we don't take any overhead out. Like, I don't get a dime of this stuff. It's like. And so, so I would really recommend people check it out.
- [41:40]
Megan Lewis
Absolutely. Definitely. Go take a look. And there are some free posts. If you're not sure whether you want to commit to a paid account, there are free posts you can take a look at. And I think like the first paragraph of every blog post you can look at without, without paying. So you can kind of go and get a feel for, for what's in there. But it's, it's a great thing and I highly recommend it.
- [41:59]
Bart Ehrman
So it's, it's www.ermenblog.org and just go there. Check it out. You can see.
- [42:08]
Megan Lewis
Okay, we have some listeners questions Bart.
- [42:14]
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.
- [42:33]
Megan Lewis
Okay, this first one is a good one and actually had me thinking about my own answer for my own field, but I'm really interested to hear yours. Are there any writings that are alluded to or assumed to have existed that you wish we had access to, both from a scholarly perspective and out of of personal curiosity?
- [42:53]
Bart Ehrman
Oh, yes. Not just the book of Jasher. Hebrew Bible. Well, you know, as I, as I said, I think last time, Luke, the Gospel of Luke begins by Luke saying that many people had written accounts of the life of Jesus. I'd like a few of those, thank you. Paul mentioned some of the letters that he wrote that we don't have have. I'd love to have that. It looks like Matthew and Luke used a source. They don't mention it, but they use it named that we call Q. Boy, that'd be nice if that one would turn up. There are, there are dozens of writings that are talked about by church fathers that we would just, you know, we would love to get any one of them. Sometimes they show up. So, you know, back, I don't know what it was. About 10 years ago, more than 20 years ago, the Gospel of Judas showed up. We knew there was a gospel connect with Judas Iscariot and we had some sense of what was in it. And then it showed up. Oh my God, that was big. And so there are lots of gospels that we've heard about that we don't have and, and writings of other apostles and such. And so yes, the answer is yes, there's definitely stuff out there and we don't know if it's still out there, but there probably will be discoveries of things that we'll be very glad to get.
- [44:16]
Megan Lewis
How early do we see the church or the bishop in Rome asserting their faith as normative for the whole Christian world? And how widely was this assertion ever accepted outside of the Latin Church?
- [44:32]
Bart Ehrman
So the first ascriptions of authority to the Bishop of Rome don't come from the Bishop of Rome himself. They come from outsiders who say that the Roman Church is the central church in early Christianity. Some of the major urban areas had large churches such as Rome and, and Antioch and Ephesus, eventually Alexandria, Egypt. And there were some kind of tensions, you know, between which one is the most influential? For what might seem obvious reasons, Rome became the central church. It's the. Rome is the largest city in the empire. Probably had the largest church in the empire. A lot more money there than anywhere else in the empire. Some people think there's administrative trickle down from the empire being located in Rome into the church itself. And so Rome becomes the, becomes the center of the Catholic Church. Catholic means the universal church. And so it becomes the Roman Catholic Church. The first time we start getting anybody talking about the centrality of Rome is toward the end of the second century. The church, Father Irenaeus makes comments to that effect. But it's really it, you know, it doesn't become that Rome is the church until later, probably the fourth century or so. And the head of that church, the bishop of the church is called the Papa, the father of the church. Papa. And that becomes the Pope. Pope. There are, there are, there are writings by Eusebius and other church fathers that describe the actual lineage of the bishop. You know, first it's Peter, then it's so and so and so and so and so and so. You go on down. But these lists appear to be made up. We don't really have good, good records for the earliest bishops.
- [46:17]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. In Mark 11, the priests challenging Jesus identity seem to be afraid to speak badly of John, John the Baptist in front of the crowd. Does this tell us that John was much more popular than Jesus in his time? And how could that be if John recognized Jesus as the Messiah?
- [46:35]
Bart Ehrman
Okay, well there's a lot going on in this question and one thing behind it that may not be obvious is that you have to decide did this episode really happen? If it did really happen, you know, what does that say about John the Baptist's relationship to Jesus? And if it really happened and you say something about the relationship, what did it really happen? That John understood himself to be the forerunner of Jesus. You know, and so you have all these kind of historical complexities. I think what the story shows is that it was, that in Christian circles it was understood that John the Baptist was a prominent figure. It seems pretty clear that there were, that John had a, a more extensive reputation in some circles than Jesus had even after their deaths. Josephus, the 1st century Jewish historian, devotes more space to talking about John the Baptist than he does to talking about Jesus and he doesn't connect the two at all. So I think what's going on here is I, I don't think, I don't think there are good grounds for thinking this, this confrontation actually happened. But what the story presupposes is that the Jewish authorities recognize that John the Baptist was sent from God. And they can't say they thought that and they can't deny it either. And so Jesus has set a kind of a trap for them. But I don't think that since, since I don't think the episode probably happened, I don't think it tells us anything about their, their relative relation to each other historically.
- [48:14]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. And last question. At what age do scholars estimate this disciples to be during their time with Jesus? I saw a video claiming they were teenagers, but that seemed strange considering Jesus is usually thought to be in his 30s during his ministry.
- [48:30]
Bart Ehrman
Well, the answer is we don't know. And if a video tells you they're teenagers, the person's making it up. There's no sort, you know, this is not the kind of information we have. All of our, anything that comes close to historical information about the disciples of Jesus is, is in the gospels themselves. And so anything else is either a later legend or something that somebody's making up now. So, so let me, but let me say a couple things about it. One is that the, the, the day, the age of Jesus is complicated itself. Only Luke gives us any hint. Luke doesn't give us a hint. Luke says that Jesus was about 30 when he was baptized by John. But the other gospels don't tell us. There's a passage in John that seems to suggest he was closer to 50. So I don't know, but we don't, we don't really know. Jesus must have been an adult. We, we think pretty sure he would have been an adult. What about his disciples? The disciples talk about having left their families, their wives. For example, Peter has a mother in law in the New Testament. Most Jewish men, like most men throughout the world at the time, married relatively late in their 30s, early 30s. Most women got married around the year 13 or so, age 13 or so. And so the assumption of the gospel seems to be that these are adult men, but we are not told their age. And you know, presumably they had a variety of ages. I would be surprised if any of them was a teenager. The only one for whom there are legends to suggest he was very young is, is John. And it's because John was thought to have been an old man when he wrote his gospel and that he wrote his gospel toward the end of the first century. And so he couldn't have been more than a teenager. But that's, that's also guesswork. So the basic stories we don't know, but the assumption seems to be that they were adults.
- [50:27]
Megan Lewis
Thank you very much. Now, Bart, before we finish for the week, would you mind summarizing what we spoke about today?
- [50:33]
Bart Ehrman
Well, we're talking about whether Christianity did more good in the world or more harm. And it's pretty easy to list all the harms that have come in because of the Christian church. You can't really put the blame on that, on Jesus necessarily, but it happened. There's also a lot of good that has come out of the the Christian tradition, including inventions of hospitals and orphanages and old persons homes and so forth. And those can be traced directly back to the teachings of Jesus. And so we're trying to evaluate what, what, you know, the moral quality of Christianity, not just what ethics they promoted, but what kind of moral good and bad they did.
- [51:15]
Megan Lewis
Audience, thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don't miss future episodes. Remember that you can use the Code MJ podcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.bartehrman.com. misquoting Jesus will be back next Week Bart, what are you talking about next time?
- [51:35]
Bart Ehrman
Well, next time we're going to deal with something I just just referred to as as having posted a blog post on, which is who was the suffering servant? So you have this passage in Isaiah 53 that Christians read is referring to the crucifixion of Jesus. You people should read Isaiah 53. You will not be able to read it without thinking Jesus. And we're going to talk about whether Isaiah 53 is talking about Jesus or not.
- [51:58]
Megan Lewis
Thank you all and goodbye.
- [52:06]
Podcast Announcer
This has been an episode of Misquoting
- [52:08]
Megan Lewis
Jesus with Bart Ehrman. We'll be back with a new episode next Tuesday, so please be sure to
- [52:13]
Podcast Announcer
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.