← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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A
Hey guys, I found the only gift that dad wants this Father's Day Gold Belly. Gold Belly ships the most iconic foods from the best restaurants across the country straight to his door for free. Let him relax and enjoy. Award winning barbecue from Texas, Epic deep dish pizza from Chicago or colossal pastrami sandwiches from New York. Make dad feel like an absolute legend this Father's Day. And go to goldbelly.com to get 20% off your first order with promo code DAD. That's goldbelly.com code DADDY. If I said that Jesus and the Gospels provide us with guidance for how we should be living our lives, I would probably get pretty emphatic agreement from any Christian within hearing distance. People of non Christian faith traditions or those with no religious belief at all might have a somewhat different response. Today, with the help of my guest, Dr. Amy Jill Levine, we'll be exploring how non Christians can actually find value in the gospels. Welcome to Ms. Quoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman, the only show where a six time New York Times best selling author and world renowned Bible scholar uncovers the many fascinating little known facts about the New Testament, the historical Jesus and the rise of Christianity. I'm your host, Megan Lewis. Let's begin. Dr. Levine, thank you so much for joining us here on Misquoting Jesus. It's lovely to have you.
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B
I'm delighted to be with you and
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A
those who have been with us for a while will probably be familiar with you. You've done several events with Bart in the past, but maybe for those who are new listeners, I've just got a little bit of an introduction, so. Dr. Levine is the Rabbi Stanley M. Kessler Distinguished professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Hartford International University for Religion and Peace. She is also University professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies and Mary Jane Worthen professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt. Professor Levine has been awarded grants from the Mellon foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies. In addition to receiving three audiences with Pope Francis in spring 2019, she was the first Jew to teach New Testament at Rome's Pontifical Biblical Institute. She's given close to 1000 lectures on the Bible, Christian Jewish relations and religion, gender and sexuality across the globe. Her books include the Misunderstood the Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus, Short Stories by Jesus, the Enigmatic Parables of a controversial Rabbi, a selection of fantastic children's books. And today she's joining me to talk about her most recent book, Jesus for Everyone, not just for Christians. AJ Again, thank you for joining me.
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B
My pleasure.
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A
Now I really Love the title of the book, which again is Jesus for Everyone, not just Christians. What prompted you to write on this particular topic?
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B
Yeah, well, the original topic that was suggested by my editor was write a book called Jesus for Atheists and make this palatable so people who were not happy about all that supernatural stuff like the incarnation, the resurrection, walking on water, raising the dead. It's not just that there's some ethical material here. And the more I started working on that, the more I thought, I don't want a whole chapter on the atheist, non atheist debate. I just, I want to lock the atheist apologists and the Christian apologists in a room together and let them duke it out. Because I don't find that terribly helpful. I thought, no, this is actually a book for everybody. And in your introduction, you correctly said, non Christians can get some sense of ethical responsibility from the New Testament. Well, so can Christians if they read the text with the sense of here's what I'm supposed to do, and not simply with the sense of here's what Jesus did for me. So I got back in touch with the editor and I said, how about instead of Jesus for atheists, it's like Jesus for everyone? And that actually flew, which meant the whole chapter on atheists went away. And I got to talk about the Jesus who I understand from my historical perspective. But even though I'm an historian, I look at Jesus, think, my gosh, this guy was smart. So I find out in reading stories told by him, like the parables, or reading stories told about him by the gospel writers, like the controversy stories and the healing narratives, that I actually become a better person. I become a better Jew because I'm better informed about debates that happened in my own tradition. And I become a better person because Jesus is really good about raising questions that I think we ought to ask for people who think, including one of my editors, oh, Jesus solves everything by sunset. And if you just read the Gospels, everything would be perfect in your life. Well, no, that's a false promise, and I think it's bad theology. But I do think even if it doesn't give us the right answers all the time, or even any answers, the New Testament helps us raise the right questions. And if we think about those right questions, we're better prepared to deal with the issues when they pop up in our own lives.
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A
So is it fair to say that this book is about how to use the New Testament to guide your own questioning rather than as a template for or an instruction manual for how you should be living?
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B
It's partially a guide to, say, how to use the New Testament, but it's also a guide to suggest how the New Testament can use us. What's that interaction that we have between the self and the text? How can we enter into that text and see ourselves as someone, for example, in need of healing? Or how do we look at the narratives about slavery? And I have an entire chapter about stories regarding enslaved individuals. How does that help us deal with the legacy of slavery in our own lives, whether it's in the United States dealing with antebellum slavery or contemporary concerns dealing with sex trafficking? How do we read those stories and let them work on us rather than just say, oh, that was then and this is now, and it's really quite irrelevant?
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A
I did actually want to ask you about that. My husband does a lot of work on. On slavery in the Old Testament in the ancient Near East. So it's kind of unusually a big topic of conversation in our household and something that is always a bit of a sticking point for me. How are we to deal with instances where Jesus either condones or does not explicitly condemn practices like slavery that today we find immoral and unethical? Obviously, just kind of dismissing it as, oh, it was a different time is unsatisfactory. So how do you try and wrestle with those?
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B
Right. Thank you for the way you phrase the question. Because I like the idea of wrestling with the text. That's traditionally, what is the word Israel means etymologically? Probably doesn't. But that's okay. When I enter into the text, I'm going to wrestle with it. And if I think the text is leading me in a particular direction and I don't want to be led in that direction, then I have to figure out some way of wrestling with that text. For people who are theologically inclined, that is not anti religious. It's not anti theological. Jesus himself wrestles with some of the things that God says to him, like, gee, I'm really not. I'm not thrilled about dying. You know, as we're more precisely, let this cup pass for me so we can wrestle with the text, or my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? As long as we're still in relationship with the text, the wrestling is a good thing. I think we begin by raising, or at least I begin by raising multiple perspectives on this. For some people, particularly people who are directly impacted by that legacy of slavery, they the idea of being a slave to God. Moses is a slave to God, Paul is a slave to God. You know, we're supposed to be good and faithful servants, which really says slaves. That metaphor no longer works at all, cannot be used. And then we have the image of taking a razor blade and saying, I don't like this particular text. I'm going to cut it out for other people. And I give quotes where people have said this in print. The idea of thinking of oneself as enslaved to God is ultimately freeing. And the metaphor does work, because if we only have God as our master, then no human master, no human concern rules over us, whether it's an individual person or the concern for money or power or fame or, you know, whatever. And it becomes freeing because it suggests that we are not the center of the universe, that we are here to serve others, that we can actually give up our will to someone else. And if we're, you know, running a Fortune 500 or we're the CEO of a wonderful corporation and. And we've had privilege all our lives, that enslavement metaphor may actually be quite helpful. So already we have different takeaways from this material. What I'm also interested in is taking away some of the Christian apologetic that I've heard in classrooms or in doing Bible studies in churches. I'm in churches probably more than most Christians are in churches, talking about some of the parables dealing with enslaved individuals or dealing with actual enslaved individuals in the text. Like the fellow who gets his ear cut off in Gethsemane to say, oh, well, you know, Christians mention slavery, so they're making slaves human as opposed to everybody else. No, ancient literature mentions slaves a lot. Christianity does. Nothing new here. Or when Paul says in Christ Jesus, there's neither slave nor free. That's Galatians 3. 28. Just to take the cue from another passage in the New Testament that that means that Christians were the first to liberate slaves. Well, no, not exactly. Paul also says in First Corinthians, just enslave people. You know, stay in. Remain in the state in which you're called, because the end of the world's coming. It didn't. And now what do we do? We actually know that there were people in antiquity who did not think slavery was natural or normal and did not keep slaves, including a couple of different Jewish groups. So Jesus could have said something, Paul could have said something. They don't, but they have other passages that might lead us to that ultimate sense of let's do away with slavery. I mean, you can check this with your partner, but if you go back to what the church would call the Old Testament, the slave laws, Change. So you read the slave laws in Leviticus and you read the slave laws in Deuteronomy, a later text. So by the time you get to Deuteronomy, it's pretty much impossible for an Israelite to enslave another Israelite. You can keep someone in debt, bondage, but that's a, that has to be just for a limited time. So ideally, the biblical tradition should have gone slavery, okay, slavery, not okay for fellow Israelites. It should have been slavery, not okay for anybody. That would have been the next step. But they don't go there. So what we can do is go back and find hints in the text of looking at things. Otherwise, even if Jesus was not an abolitionist, and I don't think he was, he wasn't a feminist either. But that doesn't stop people who are interested in the rights of non patriarchal systems to go back and find in the words of Jesus something that's helpful even to the idea of do to others as you would have them do to you. Sermon on the Mount. Well, I would not want someone to enslave me. Maybe I might not want someone to enslave anybody else. So there are hints there, but the text isn't perfect. That's okay. That's our job to come in and wrestle with the text and find those various hints, whether in the Gospels or elsewhere in the biblical tradition, the biblical tradition being the Old Testament that Jesus thought was scripture and saying here are some other cues that we have and because those passages are there, they should force us to wrestle with them rather than simply say that was then and this is now, that all that slavery stuff, that's now too. As long as some people are controlling other people in an exploitative way. I'm sorry I'm preaching, but I really care about this stuff.
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A
The whole point of this is to, to get your opinion and your perspective and try and help people kind of grapple with these kinds of issues. So you please go ahead and preach away.
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B
I just want people to pay more attention to the Gospels than I think they're doing.
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A
Yes. So in the introduction to the book you make an excellent point, one that I think is probably quite often missed, that the Gospels can and do and maybe should mean different things to different people and even different things to the same person at different points in their life. And that is okay and preferable really than having this static view of it. What role do you think reader response has in kind of interpreting and understanding the Gospels? For a modern reader, the best way
- [11:43]
B
of approaching a biblical text and I got this idea from a biblical scholar named Mark Allen Powell, who recently retired from the Lutheran Seminary in Ohio. Mark is a literary critic, and he said, when you pick up a biblical text, the first question you ask is, what does this text mean to me? And you don't have to be an historian, and you don't have to know Greek and Hebrew, and you do not have taken a bunch of courses in Bible wherever. But it's that initial interaction with the text. And after that, if you figure out what the text means to you, or whether you want to wrestle with it or not, or whether you're comforted by it or not, or whether you're just confused by it, one ought to take a number of additional steps, like, what has this text meant to other people? So one might want to read an annotated Bible or get a commentary. Yes, you can look online, but, you know, God help you. You wind up with something that's sane rather than a little on the wacko side. You might want to ask your neighbor, what does this text mean to you? If you go to a church or synagogue, you might want to ask the other people in the congregation or whoever's leading the congregation, or the religious educator, do you have any resources for this? What does this text mean to you? And ideally, in those conversations, your initial impression becomes either corrected, enriched, or modified in some way. And then the following year, you can ask the same question, and you may wind up getting different concerns. So by the time I'm sitting down to write a chapter on anything, I've got notes upon notes upon notes, because every time I teach a class, I'm retranslating from the Greek, and my translations frequently differ from year to year. And I think, why did I do it this way rather than that way? I read new commentaries or new articles, so I have new insights to bring in. And my students ask questions that I've never considered. You know, I may have gone over Mark 20 or 30 times, and each time I look at it, I'm seeing something new. Every time I look at historical Jesus material, so parables, for example, controversy stories, I'm seeing something new because I've got a broader range from which to draw. I have been writing children's books. That's also true. Get. Get them early, get them interested, avoid the anti Semitism. But if we read a text 1 verse 6, and we read the same text 1 verse 60, and we get the same message, I think something has gone dreadfully wrong. And it hasn't gone wrong with the text. So if we Think of parables as sweet little children's stories. We're missing the point. If we think that the only thing that's important about Jesus is that quote, he died for our sins, we're missing the point. Because if that were the case, we just start with the cross. We don't need all that stuff beforehand. So let's engage with the text and let's engage as, not only as children, but let's engage as mature adults for whom issues of health care and economics and gender and sexuality and family values and politics and the legacy of slavery and so on, those are things that are important in our own lives. How might the text help us sort those concerns?
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A
You mentioned several issues, several topics that you go through in the book. How do you deal with something, something like healthcare, which is not maybe explicitly addressed. Like Jesus doesn't stand up and say Medicaid for everyone. How do you use the GOSP to try and think about and illuminate questions surrounding that kind of thing?
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B
Yeah. So in terms of health care, we have lots of figures in the gospels who are disabled in some way and are in need of health care. Disability would include Peter's mother in law who has a fever, a couple of people who are unable to see, people can neither hear nor speak, people who cannot walk, people who behave aberrantly in Antiquities would be called demon possession. In some parts of the world, this is still called demon possession. So clearly the text is interested in healthcare. So what do we learn? We learn a number of things. First of all, it's interested in healthcare, and Jesus is interested in healthcare. And it seems to me if people want to model their lives after Jesus, they ought to be interested in healthcare. And if he's going to spend some time dealing with people who are in need of medical services, then I think his followers might want to do the same thing. We find, and this to me is, I mean, the metaphor is touching, but I think that actually works. Jesus heals people with skin disease. The Greek term is leprosy. And this is where you get the idea of leprosy. Probably not Hansen's disease, probably something like eczema or seborrhea or psoriasis, where you have flare ups and then they go away. And what Jesus does with these people and with others who might be part of what might be considered an ick factor, like I don't want to touch you because that looks icky. He actually reaches out and touches people. And that physical contact is so important, particularly if you feel like God has abandoned you. If you feel that you look disgusting or ugly to someone else. And he reaches out, actually touches. I think that's great. He's willing to deal with people both individually and as groups. So we have a sense of, here's the concern that his followers ought to share on the other side, which I think is great because I've been caught in like, you know, hospital administrative red tape. When we have people who are in need of healing or who are seeking healing for others, we have those stories to talk about the importance of persistence. So we can look at the Syrophoenician woman in Mark, chapter 7 of the Canaanite Lady. In Matthew 15, it's the same story. She's got a demon possessed daughter. Jesus is not interested in providing the healing, whether he's exhausted and needs downtime, which is the Markan story, or whether the time for healing Gentiles is not yet. So lady, you know, wait at the back of the line if you get a healing at all. That's Matthew. And what we see from this woman is enormous persistence. So even though Jesus doesn't want to deal with her, makes it clear to her that he doesn't want to deal with her, and finally basically insults her, you know, it's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs. Okay, dogs is really Kunai's puppies. But to call a woman a little bitch is not much better than to call her a bitch. He's insulted her. And instead of taking that insult and saying, well, you want to call me a bitch? Well, you know, and then say something even worse to him, or saying, fine, you know, I'm not worthy. I'm nothing. I'm a non human animal. I'm just going to walk out. She stays the course and she absorbs the insult and she says, look, even if you want to call me a bitch, those puppies under the table still get the crumbs. I am entitled. I am a human being and I have dignity. And in Mark, Jesus responds, because of your word, because of your saying, let it be done for you. This is actually a convention. In antiquity, it's the convention of the meek king, where somebody who's like, low down on the social scale needs something from someone in power and the person in power doesn't want to deal. And through a very, very clever word, the person lower on the social skill manages to get what is needed and the person up on top manages to show some humility. So we have these stories about staying the course, don't insult, remain persistent. In the gospel of Matthew, which is actually a slightly longer story than the one in Mark, which is weird because Matthew usually condenses that. This stuff, Jesus says it's because of your faith. But whether it's because of your word or because of your faith, there's faith not only in Jesus that he can do this, but faith in herself that she can cut through that red tape and do something. The other thing we find out about this stuff is that free health care is a miracle, such as when Jesus heals somebody, the crowd usually gives glory to God. Somebody's going to complain, because somebody always does. How do we make those miracles happen today? And what do we learn about the caregivers whose faith Jesus notices? What do we learn about the persistence of the Canaanite lady or the woman who's got some sort of vaginal or uterine bleeding? What do we learn about care for children? Parents continue to bring their kids to Jesus, whether to heal or to exercise or to bless. What do we learn about the system that has to be dealing with disabled people? Because somebody's got to be feeding them. Somebody's got to be providing for them. That's why they're still alive. The more you look at this, the more important healthcare becomes.
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A
Thank you. That is really fascinating. That's amazing. Thank you. Sorry.
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B
I think it's fascinating, too. It's great.
- [19:27]
A
No, it's wonderful. I love it. Think you've got Jesus parables all figured out? Think again. These aren't just simplistic, moralistic tales. They're some of the most enigmatic and provocative teachings in all of scripture. But if you're only seeing them through a modern lens, you're missing half the story. Rediscover these stories as they were originally understood in their historical and cultural context with New Testament and Jewish studies scholar Dr. Amy Jill Levine. In her intriguing course, the Parables of Jewish Insights into Gospel Ethics, Humor and Provocation, you'll explore the teachings of Jesus, examining the social, ethical and economic implications that are often overlooked today. If you're ready to dive into the real meaning behind the good scene, Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, and more, this four lecture series will take you deeper than you've ever gone before. Visit barterman.comparables that's P A R A B L E S to learn more or sign up today. And don't forget to use discount code mjpodcast for a special offer. So something that you've spoken about very briefly in saying that Jesus wasn't a feminist, didn't have feminist expressions but has been or can be co opted by people with, with those viewpoints. People kind of shape Jesus and his message around their own pre existing values. So feminists see a feminist Jesus, people who go by the prosperity gospel see a prosperity gospel Jesus. So if two people on opposite sides of a debate, both see Jesus as being on their side and advocating for the things that they themselves advocate, do you think it's possible for them to have a product conversation?
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B
I think it depends upon those two individuals. I'm not a fan of the prosperity gospel. I think it provides false promises. And I don't think Jesus, you know, came to earth in order to teach us how to get rich. At least monetarily rich, spiritually rich, maybe rich in terms of how do you prepare for the, in breaking of the kingdom of God? Absolutely. But rich in terms of multi million dollars? I don't think so. So how do you have that? Well, I have. So it's simply a matter of saying what are the verses that speak to you, how do you find this message in the text? And then responding, here are the verses that speak to me. Now let's have a conversation. How do we put these two disjunctive views together? Similarly, just Bible scholars will disagree. So there are people who do not think that Jesus was eschatological. He wasn't expecting the end of the world. That's all metaphor. He's just trying to teach us how to live today and kind of, you know, good ethical ethics, whatever. And I think Jesus was expecting the end of the world to break in. You know, that the son of man coming on the clouds, gathering his elect, and there's a final judgment and there's a general resurrection and everything is the messianic age where there's peace on earth. I think he expected that. But I can talk to people who don't think that's the case and we can still share our views about Jesus. I think that's how the world works. People who in the United States, people who voted for Harris versus people who voted for Trump, can they have a conversation? Gosh, I, I wish they would to figure out, well, what's the end game here? Is the end game peace on earth, or is the end game more money in my bank account? Is the end game love your neighbor, or is the end game love only some of your neighbors and the other ones really aren't your neighbors, so let's deport them and then look at some of the differences that we might see. Mr. Trump actually came up with a viable plan. I mean, it needed tweaks for peace in the Middle East. So what do we see and how do we understand that? So if Americans can ideally have a conversation about politics, I think people who read the Bible should be able to have a conversation about Jesus. And in a way that's uplifting and productive, rather than, as is often the case, we're coming up now to the Society of Biblical Literature meetings rather than making biblical studies a blood sport, so that whoever has the best argument does so by eviscerating everybody else. And I'm not interested in doing that. This is my basic perspective. I got this from my mother, who was my first spiritual director. My mother said, everybody is in the image and likeness of God. And I said, then my aunt, who I absolutely despised, and she said, yes, even. Even your aunt. So you take the person who disagrees with you and you say, image and likeness of God. All right, now we can have a conversation. I'm sorry, I'm preaching. I don't mean to sound. That's perfect.
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A
It is absolutely perfect. And I like that very much. I think that a lot of, myself included, a lot of people could benefit from viewing people that they vehemently disagree with in a more charitable, understanding light and seek to understand and have dialogue rather than merely say, this is wrong and makes me uncomfortable. I don't like it.
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B
Yeah, well, at least find out the reasons why somebody came to the conclusion, and you can determine those are bad reasons. So your conclusion doesn't work. And you can say, sounds like I don't agree with you on this. Or you can say, oh, now I see how you get it. Okay, that's not as loopy as I originally thought, and that's good to know. Or I never thought about that. Maybe now I need to tweak a little bit of my own view. I mean, and that's helpful as opposed to living in these silos where we only listen to people who agree with us. So in writing the book, I looked at people whose theology I do not agree with. I looked at people whose economic views I do not agree with, people whose views on gender and sexuality I do not agree with. Because I think it's important to take those considerations into my own work. And if I do not agree with someone, I will try to treat that person's view as fairly as possible, but also say, and here's why I do not agree. And I'm not agreeing on historical grounds. So it's not a question of theology, you know, whether Jesus is God or not. That's all bracketed If I'm talking about Jesus for everyone, then I need to be on a page where everyone can be able to participate. So I bracket theological claims. They may be entirely true, they may be entirely wrong. But again, what's the practical message that we get out of this material? And I do not think the ultimate practical message is, oh, just let things go on the way they are and God will come in and fix it. Don't think that's what the Gospels are saying.
- [25:37]
A
Something that has come across very strongly in our conversation and came across when I was reading the book is the polyvalency or multivalency. Never sure which one that is. Of understanding's way of understanding the Scriptures, which is quite at odds with how a lot of branches of Christianity teach the quote unquote, right way of understanding Scripture. Do you think Jesus would have recognized a right or correct way of understanding Scripture, or do you think he would have welcomed this kind of debate and conversation viewpoint?
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B
I think Jesus was expecting the end of the world to come during his lifetime. So scriptural debates were going to be less of an issue unless it comes to what the church comes to call the Old Testament. Side note. So Jews don't have a super well developed sense of heaven and hell because the more the church in the second, third centuries and so on talked about salvation and damnation, the more the synagogue said, yeah, let's talk about sanctification in this world and we'll let God worry about the before and the after. But there is one beautiful midrash, a Jewish story about what's, what's heaven like? So it's a story about what's heaven. It's a giant seminar room and you get all these books on the table and God participates in, God plays fair. So you get to have a seminar with God and you get to argue with God. If you don't like God's re, I mean, to me, that's heaven. I think that's fabulous, you know, and a good cup of coffee on the side. So you mentioned all these branches of Christianity. That's precisely the problem. Because every time you have a disagreement about the Bible, you have another branch of Christianity. And that tree has so many branches. Like, you know, I'm wondering how the trunk actually manages to stand up at this point as opposed to saying, well, you read it this way and I read it that way. So what might be good is if Christians, instead of founding, you know, new denominations over each particular text that they read, might actually have a conversation within the congregation. I think Jesus thought there was a particular way of doing things in certain cases. So in the Sermon on the Mount, when he says, don't be angry, which is actually adding to the law, making the law more. I think he meant that when he says to the law, don't commit adultery, he adds on, yet don't think about it. I think he meant that. So I don't think we need to noodle about that now. We can noodle about what murder consists of and is capital punishment the same thing? And can you go to war? And all that, that. But I would take him seriously about expanding the law when it comes to parables. So stories told by Jesus rather than stories told about Jesus. I actually think that the parables were designed to get people talking with each other because parables are multivalent. Polyvalent. They come up with. You can have multiple interpretations and churches over the centuries have. That's what makes literature alive. Anytime one tells a story, there's always going to be slippage between what one intends and what one person hears. That's just the way stories work. That's the way communication works. But I have a sense that Jesus told these stories. And then, you know, Peter would look at Andrew and say, do you get that? Then they talk to one of the Marys, because they're all named Mary. What do you get out of this? So they become an opportunity for conversation. I think that's helpful in terms of parables and this book. I get to look at parables I didn't get to look at in my parables book. So that made me happy because I had all these extra notes that I wanted to talk about, like the dishonest steward or the, you know, that friend at midnight. Nobody wants a friend who's going to hawk you, you know, midnight saying, I need two loves bread. Oh, come on, you know, wait till morning. We don't have explanations for those. So Mark says that Jesus explained the parables to his disciples in private. Well, that means that people on the outsiders have to be wrestling with them. The disciples and Mark are not the brightest students in the seminar, so that it might be a good thing that we don't have those explanations. And I also think that Jesus might have explained parables differently because different people need different messages. So if we hear, I mean, something as simple as the prodigal son, parents are going to hear that parable in a different way than kids. Kids are going to hear that parable is something like the parable of the widow and the judge. People who have been caught in court cases and can't get a Just hearing are going to hear that parable different than somebody who might actually be a judge who's responsible for coming up with a verdict. So how do we step into those parables and figure out what might they be saying to us? What questions might they be raising in a parable where. And this is one I get to talk about in this new book, rather than the other one, which is a horrible parable sometimes called the Wicked Tenets. A landowner has leased out a plot of land to a group of people. It's time for the harvest. He sends an enslaved person. The enslaved people in the parables are kind of like, and you may have to be my age to remember this, the old Star Trek, where they beam down onto a planet and there'd be an ensign, and within the first 15 minutes, the Ensign is either assimilated, lasered, has rocks fall on him or her and dies. Right. So the enslaved people are kind of like those ensigns in the. They're disposable people. Yeah. Is that such a good idea? And why is this person more important than that? So the tenants don't want to give the produce to the landowner, the lord of the vineyard, so they beat up the enslaved people and then they kill the enslaved people. And. And then finally the landowner thinks, well, I'll send my son, because, you know, they're not going to do anything to miss my kid. And they kill the kid and they toss the body out of the vineyard. And then Jesus asks, you know, what should be done? Well, you know, so the landowner comes in, destroys the people who were doing all this, kills them all, and then leases out the vineyard to somebody else. And the story is told slightly differently as we go to the different gospels. The church has always read this, or almost always read this fairly consistently as God sends prophets to Israel, and God finally sent to Israel God's son, and the Jews killed God's son, and now the vineyard has to be given to the church. And I can see where they get that allegory. But what does this tell us, particularly in times of war? You try something and people die. Well, it's just an enslaved person. Who cares? But what happens if we imagine that person who's being sent as our own child? And would we do that? And why is it that people who engage in work continue to do the same thing over and over again and all it does is kill more people and engage in more destruction so that the end, everything is destroyed and then they're just going to do it again? And instead of continuing these ongoing missions that are not working. And we can think of spots in the world today where this is happening. And it's just getting worse. And it's just getting worse. And can't we look at that parable and say, people have died here. It's enough. And it's not just enslaved individuals who were nameless people in a crowd. These are our kids who are being killed. And why is it the enslaved individuals can't work with the tenants because they're both not in positions of privilege. Why is it that they can't work together to come out with some sort of truce? So the parable opens up multiple perspectives. What could have been done instead of. And I can picture Jesus telling this parable, thinking, okay, people, when is enough enough? When can you finally lay down your arms? When can you finally give back what in fact you owe? Might you have a conversation with the landowner and the tenants and the landowner never talk to each other? Might you actually have a conversation face to face, recognizing the image of God in all of you and then work to something that's more helpful? It's kind of like unions talking to management or employees talking to bosses. You can actually accomplish something there where everybody winds up getting something. That's fair.
- [32:43]
A
Thank you. My final question, and you've answered this in various ways as we've gone along, but I haven't asked it explicitly and I think it would be helpful. What value do you see, do you think there is in considering and engaging with the teachings of a religion that you don't follow?
- [33:01]
B
When I was a kid and I asked my parents if I could go to religious education class with my friends to catechism because everybody went to public school. And then I went off to Hebrew school two days a week, and my friends went off to the Catholic Church the other two days a week. My mother's comment was, go. You might learn something. It's good to know about other people's religions. I mean, I think that's helpful.
- [33:18]
A
I like your mother very much.
- [33:20]
B
My mother was fabulous. She was 44 when I was born. So I'm one of those, you know, a child conceived to elderly Jewish parents. It's a happy accident. The text is also my text, so it's not like I'm engaging with any other religion, like as if I were engaging with Buddhism or Hinduism or Jainism or something like that. But the New Testament is a Jewish text for the most part. It's written about Jews like Jesus. It's written by Jews like Paul and probably mat the authors of Matthew and John. We can debate the others. I think that John, who wrote the book of Revelation is certainly coming out of a Jewish context or writing within a Jewish context. That's part of my history as well. I also think it's fabulous world literature. So sometimes I have like Christ envy. Like this is a really good passage. I wish we could talk about this in the synagogue a little bit more. More. I find that in studying the words of Jesus and studying the Gospels, it actually makes me a better Jew because it is yet another reflection on my own tradition. As would be for example, studying the Dead Sea Scrolls or studying the writings of Josephus or Philo. It's just the New Testament just is to me much more interesting because I like narrative. And what happens is I can see things because I wasn't raised as a Christian that my Christian friends don't see. Because if one is raised in tradition, it becomes very familiar. And because it's so familiar, we don't even have ask the questions we should be asking. So I as an outsider can come in and say what exactly does this mean? Or if a text is going to use, if a New Testament text is going to quote from Isaiah or Hosea or the Psalms, well, what else does Isaiah say? What else does the Psalm say? What's the verse before and after? And how does that add richness to the New Testament quotation? It's a very Jewish way of reading. But since the people who are putting these texts together are substantially Jews, I think they might be doing that. And if I can make people who are Christian have a better sense of who Jesus is and see if I, I can show Christians how more profound Jesus is than they think he is. Which is weird, but I think it's a good thing. So I can actually help Christians be better Christians. And I can do so without having to have some sort of anti Jewish front load. And it's so common. I point this out in the book too. In order to make Jesus look good, particularly on the social justice register, then the easiest way to do it is to make Judaism look really, really bad. So that Jesus because becomes the only Jew who cares about things like women's rights and health care. Let's get the context right and then we can put Jesus within it and then appreciate him in his own context. And from what we learn there, we can pick up those gems and move them to the 21st century.
- [35:47]
A
Well, thank you so much for your fascinating answers and for taking time to come and talk with me. It's to going been wonderful for those who are interested the book, again is Jesus for everyone, not just Christians. And if you've been intrigued by anything that AJ has said, she has a course on the Parables over on Bart's website. That's bart erman.com forward/parables. It's a fantastic course. I have watched all the lectures. Highly recommended. If you have kind of got a taste for AJ's lecture style today, I think you'd definitely appreciate it. So take a look at that. Definitely pick up the book. I have read it. It is wonderful. Aj, thank you so much.
- [36:25]
B
I like talking about this. Thank you for giving me the opportunity.
- [36:29]
A
Of course. Ms. Quoting Jesus will be back next week, everybody. Bart is going to be returning, so join us then. This has been an episode of Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. We'll be back with a new episode next Tuesday, so please be sure to subscribe to our show for free on your favorite podcast listening app or on Bart Ehrman's YouTube channel so you don't miss out from Bart Ehrman and myself, Megan Lewis. Thank you for joining us.