← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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Welcome to Ms. Quoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman.
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The only show where a six time
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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.
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I'm your host, Megan Lewis. Let's begin
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to welcome all of you to this special edition of the Misquoting Jesus Podcast with me, Bart Ehrman. Today we have a special episode where I will not be interviewed. I will be doing the interviewing. I'm going to be interviewing my colleague at UNC Chapel Hill, Hugo Mendez. The topic we're going to be discussing you is whether the Gospel of John in the New Testament should be considered a forgery or not. Before we get to the topic, Hugo's an expert on this. He's writing a book that deals with John as well as first, second and third John, the three epistles later in the New Testament where he's dealing with the issue of who wrote them and can they be considered forgeries. In this episode, we won't be dealing with one second and third John. In some ways his, his views of those are even more interesting than his views of John. But I want to stick with John because the Gospel of John is the one that I think most people read sometimes in my classes at Chapel Hill, when I mentioned first John, my students have no clue and they open to John chapter one. So probably do an episode later on about three Johannine epistles. But now we're going to stick with the Gospel of John. First, let me introduce, introduce Hugo. I've known Hugo for a good bit of time, probably since about 2015 or 16. He came to UNC doing a a postdoctorate here in our Department of Religious Studies. After his postdoctorate we decided we wanted to hire him and boy, that was a good move. Hugo has been an assistant professor here with us since 2018. He came to us from Yale Divinity School. He had been a lecturer at Yale for a couple years and did a postdoc there at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. That's an interesting institute. We won't talk about it here, but it, he actually, even though he was at the Institute of Sacred Music, he was studying the New Testament at the, at the graduate level. He had a PhD prior to going to Yale from University of Georgia, but the PhD was not in New Testament early Christianity. The PhD was in linguistics. Hugo is one of these people who knows a wide range of languages and understands languages from a linguistic point of view. Just for your interest, among his languages that he knows are Greek, Ancient Greek, Latin, Armenian, Optic, Old Church, Slavonic and Sanskrit and some Semitic languages, Aramaic, Hebrew and Acadian. In terms of his modern languages, his native languages are both English and Spanish. But he, he also like, like, you know, a lot of scholars also reads French, German and Italian. I would add those up. I don't think my mathematical abilities are quite at that level. But it's a lot of languages he's got. And he retooled to become a New Testament scholar, and he's become a superb New Testament scholar and scholar of early Christianity. Hugo's first book came out just a couple months ago from Oxford University Press, and it's called the Cult of Stephen in Jerusalem. Inventing a Patron Martyr. And so it's about a New Testament figure, but it's really about Jerusalem and Late Antiquity and their, their worship of Stephen and his martyr cult. Hugo's written also a number of articles and he teaches principally in New Testament and Early Christianity at unc. And the current book he's working on is a book on the Gospel and Letters of John. Hugo has an unusual thesis that is going to make a difference for scholars who work in this field and is very interesting as well to people who are not scholars for reasons you're going to be going to be seeing. So, Hugo, welcome to the podcast.
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A
Thanks for having me, Bart.
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B
Yeah, my pleasure. So we're going to be talking about, you know, of your many interests and expertises. We will not be talking about Aramaic or Acadian here. We'll be talking about the Gospel of John.
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A
Very relieved.
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B
All right, well, I won't ask you to, you know, parse any verbs or anything here. All right. So the Gospel of John, it's probably the most beloved gospel by, by readers today, I'd say. And most people assume is written by John. And by that people mean, almost always mean, John, the son of zebedee. Jesus had 12 disciples in the New Testament, and he had an inner circle of three. Peter, James, and John. And John is often thought of as being the one that Jesus really kind of favored, even though Peter is the One who's most prominent, the Gospels. People assume that this gospel was written by John the son of Zebedee. And that's what we're going to be, largely what we're going to be talking about. I'd like to start just by asking why people think that. I mean, the gospel, it doesn't start out by saying, you know, this is John writing here, and I want you to know what I think about Jesus. It starts off with his prologue. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the author never identifies himself. So why. Why people thought it was written by John the son of Zebedee?
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A
Yeah. In that respect, it's very similar to the other gospels we have in the New Testament. Right. None of which have a name on them. They're all four anonymous. In the case of John, though, John has a very specific way of constructing its author. If you can go through Mark, you can go through Matthew, you can go through Luke, and you'll hardly find a hint of the author, certainly not in Mark and Matthew. And so Christians over the centuries had to essentially determine, speculate, and come to some sort of consensus over who wrote these texts. It seems that actually happened rather quickly in the second century. In the case of John, the author constructs himself in a very particular way. You know, right in the beginning, you mentioned the prologue of the Gospel, that introductory section, verses 1 through 18. In verse 14, the author positions himself among the eyewitnesses to Jesus life. So you have this very famous verse, verse in the prologue, where the narrator says, and the word became flesh, the Logos became flesh. So this, you know, supernatural celestial entity that he's identified with Jesus implicitly in the prologue, he says, finally became flesh, became a human being. And it says, and dwelled among us, and we have seen his glory. That us and we connection is really critical for the author. He positions himself as someone among the people with whom who knew Jesus, who interacted with Jesus and says that he saw Jesus. So right at the beginning, you have this kind of sense that the author is one of, is situated among, speaks perhaps on behalf of a larger group of eyewitnesses. His identity in the gospel, though, is really not quite clear. You wouldn't know necessarily from that verse whether you have multiple authors present, whether you really just have a single author. But what happens progressively through the text is one character begins to surface. He first appears in chapter 13, and it's a figure who's known as the disciple whom Jesus loved. This is the only way the Text speaks of this character, the disciple whom Jesus loved, or the other disciple.
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B
And that's the one that people generally call the beloved disciple, which is kind of a shorthand way of saying it.
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A
Yeah, so we'll probably use beloved disciple from here on out and Right. The beloved disciple first appears in chapter 13 when Jesus is having his final supper, his last supper. Right. With his disciples. He'll show up in other scenes that take place over the course of the next few days of Jesus's life, death, resurrection, in the narrative. And that's the figure that's going to become not only a central interest of the book's narrative, he's going to keep popping up in very prominent roles. But the text is also going to imply that this figure is in fact the singular author of the text, who, if you will, is penning the text perhaps on behalf of or condensing the eyewitness testimony of more figures.
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B
Okay, so you get this beloved disciple figure showing up, I guess, chapter 13. So well over halfway through the Gospel. So not in the earlier bit, but I guess after Jesus is already sort of into the Passion narrative already and he's a prominent figure there. Where in the Gospel does it say, does the, the authority who's talking about the beloved disciple identify himself as the beloved disciple?
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Yeah, so there are two verses that are really important for that particular identification. The first is 1935. So this occurs at the crucifixion. I might just pull it up for just a quick second. But in 1935, the author is describing the scene of the crucifixion. He's made it very clear in the passage that there are a group of women that are present that includes Jesus own mother, that includes other women followers of Jesus. And he places one male disciple there, which is the disciple whom Jesus loved. He says, you know, earlier, Jesus says that all his disciples will abandon him, but the beloved disciple has stayed with Jesus to the end and he's standing under the cross. It's within that scene that the author describes a supernatural, unexpected event. Jesus has his side pierced by a spear. But blood and water rush out in something that you wouldn't expect to see. That the water rushing out of the figure, it ties into this idea that Jesus has this special living water of the Spirit within him in the gospel. But because this is a very unusual detail, the author, almost kind of self conscious about that, really tries to stress the credibility of the detail he's just given. And so in 1935 we read in, he who saw this has borne witness his Testimony is true and he knows that he tells the truth. So that you may believe the verse is given in the third person. It's possible that this is a figure who is merely, if you will, the source for this detail for whoever's writing. But it seems to be kind of a little closer than that. A few different details would lead you to believe this and led ancient Christians to believe this. One of them, first of all is the fact that if the book is supposed to be written from a WE perspective of those who saw Jesus, then you'd imagine the beloved disciple is one of those figures. The fact that the narrator can say that this person knows that he tells the truth gives you the impression this is someone who is still alive. He speaks right in the present about this. You get the strong sense when he's saying that he knows that he tells the truth. That since the narrator knows the interior states of this person's mind, it seems rather fitting that this person might be the narrator himself. And then there are kind of two other pieces to it. The rest of that verse has that you may also believe the person has testified that you may believe he's saying that the testimony of this figure is given for the readers. That it has been given to the readers contextualizes the disciples testimony in the production of the gospel. It really is the disciple speaking to, so to speak, the readers of the gospel. And the entire point that this is so that the reader may believe actually fits with what you find in 2031 when the narrator states his own purpose in writing. A few chapters later, the narrator will say that these things have been written so that you may believe, thus aligning what the disciple has done with what the narrator claims his book does. So 1935 is really critical for knitting the two together, the character of the beloved disciple and the narrator of the book into one.
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B
Can you just say, why wouldn't it be just that the narrator is agreeing with the source that he has, that the beloved disciples saw this and he's telling the truth. He knows he's telling the truth. As opposed to saying like, I saw this.
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Yeah, I think it's that, you know, extra piece, for instance, you know, he's testifying that you may believe. I think that kind of addressed to the readers, it's suggesting that. I think the author is much more clearly to be identified with this character. I think it's knitting the two together more closely. That's not necessarily, you know, it's not impossible to imagine other options. I just think that's where the text is Sort of, I think, really hinting the reader towards, in very subtle ways. And it gets borne out in the reception history. Right. So you can then read the next several centuries of Christian thought on this. And the reception history is quite clear that the figure who wrote this gospel is in fact the disciple whom Jesus loved.
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B
I was just going to say, I mean, you put a lot of weight on the reception history, I mean, because, for example, the traditional history says that Mark was the disciple of secretary of Peter. And so that's just as strong. And do you think the fact that people over 100 years later started saying that is good evidence?
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Yeah, I don't think necessarily. It was over 100 years later for the case of the Gospel of John. And I'm definitely.
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B
Hold on a second. When was John first named as John?
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A
Irenaeus, I think, is the one who gives us our earliest indication. And so then if you place the authorship of the gospel turn of the second century, whatever. Exactly. That might mean for you. That could mean early second century. That could mean.
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B
You mean Gospel John was written around the turn of the.
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Yeah, that's right around. Yeah. I'm not thinking over a century. I'm thinking a shorter period of time.
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B
Okay.
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And I think Irenaeus, you think, is
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written around the year 100 then.
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A
Yeah. And that's a rough target. Right. I think with all our gospels, these are always rough targets. My sense is that, you know, Papias does know the Gospel of John and he's writing, I think, in the.
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B
He doesn't name it as John. He doesn't name it as John.
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A
Not in the pieces of Papias that survive.
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B
Right. But we're. So I'm asking, when is the first name John? And Papias may have called it John. He made it, called it Fred. I don't know. Is there a reason to think he named it John?
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A
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a clear reason to think that Papias. Yeah. Named it John. I'm wondering, are we getting sidetracked here a bit?
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B
Okay. But I just want to be clear about this. The first time it's actually named as John is. Is irenaeus usually dated 180 or 185?
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That's right.
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So that would be 80 or 85 years later. So I just wanted to be clear that the reception history doesn't start like, you know, the year after it was
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written, but it doesn't also start with Irenaeus. Right. I mean, I think he is something that has become something in Christian thought.
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I don't know if that's true or not. I mean, I don't know, but. Okay. I mean, we don't.
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A
That's of course, the name John. Right. We have one other thing to consider, which is John, chapter 21. So, you know, John obviously has 21 chapters in our modern Bibles. One thing that scholars have appreciated through the last century is that there is something unusual about chapter 21 that suggests that it was probably added later to the Gospel. What's important about that chapter? It's still the majority opinion among scholars. You know, you'll hear some contrary voices on this, but it's still the majority opinion and it's one that I agree with and I think you agree with.
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B
Could you explain? Because people aren't going to understand why we're lopping off the last chapter here.
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Yeah, that's fine.
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Yeah. Why don't we take off the last chapter of John?
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Yes. So if you read the. If you read chapter 20 of John, you'll get all the way to the end. You know, all the appearances of Jesus after his resurrection to his disciples, and you get a verse that feels at first glance like a very fitting conclusion to the book, where it'll note that there are many other signs that Jesus did in his life, but these are written so that you might believe that Jesus is the son of God, et cetera. What's interesting about that is that it reads a lot like the endings of other ancient books. It's a fitting place to conclude the book. In fact, it's so fitting, it's exactly where the book ends. Again, a chapter later, if you read the end of chapter 21, the point is made again that there are lots of other things that could be contained in this book but are not. What follows in between those two seemingly redundant endings is a new passage of material that describes another appearance of Jesus that for various reasons, because of its location between those two endings, because of the fact that it's at the end of the book, which is an easy place to potentially interpolate a text with additional material to actually insert new text is what I mean by interpolation, and also just little features of that passage itself, scholars tend to think that this was probably added later. What's significant about chapter 21, whoever added this piece, is that they seem to have read the Gospel of John also, in the sense that the disciple whom Jesus loved is probably the author here. So what you get in, you know, chapter 2124 to 25, is that at the end of this passage that has Featured Peter and the beloved disciple with Jesus. You read the verses. This is the disciple who is bearing witness to these things and who has written these things. And we know that his testimony is true. And there are many other things which Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written. I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that were written. It's an unusual verse where whoever is writing chapter 21, who I think is not the author, and most scholars would agree is probably not the author here of the original section of the gospel. He sort of takes first of all language from three different places. If you look at that verse closely, it's essentially a bricolage of language from 114. We have seen his glory, that piece, language from 1935 and language from 2031. He's combined pronouns too, in a gospel that refers to the disciple whom Jesus loved and the third person singular, who also has this third person plural, we. The author has combined both of those. At the end. He's also drawn in himself as an eye. But I think in this bundle that again, ultimately makes the point that the disciple whom Jesus loved is the disciple who has written this text and trying very clearly to identify himself as the writer of the gospel.
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B
Okay, so not himself, but the beloved disciple.
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A
No, I mean, I think the idea here is that he is saying in third person and first person ways, he's kind of drawing together all these pronouns to identify himself as the author.
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B
Oh, God, I thought you're going a different direction because he says this disciple wrote it. And we believe he's true. It's true. That seems to different. Differentiate himself from the person who wrote it. I thought you were going to say that this is. I mean, if you think 21 of that did pretty quickly after the rest of the gospel, early in the second century, say, that would be. That'd be an argument for reception history, showing that the author of 21 thought that the rest of it had been written by the beloved disciple. You're not saying that. You're saying that you think. You think the Same person wrote 21
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A
who wrote the rest of it, not in real life. I mean, I don't think the same person, chapter 21 has the same author as 1 through 20. What I think is that the author of chapter 21 wanted to position himself inhabit, if you will, the voice of the Author of chapters 1 through 20. That author of chapters 1 through 20 speaks in a we and identifies himself with a person in the narrative, it would seem in 1935. And so what the author of chapter 21 does is he ties all these threads together in the ultimate conclusion of his extra chapter. He makes it very clear that it's the disciple whom Jesus loved who has written these things up to and including his section of the book. Right. He adds the we voice that confirms that this is true. The we is not exclusive of the disciple whom Jesus loved. The disciple whom Jesus loved is part of that we. He's one of the eyewitnesses of Jesus. But for strategic reasons, the author has decided to slip back into that we to bring together the testimony of all these eyewitnesses. And then he ends up with the I at the end.
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B
So he says he wrote it, we believe it, and I whatever. But he's including the we and the I in the he, or he's including the he and the we.
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A
He's a careful reader of the gospel. And again, he has to deal with a narrator who's already spoken in the we in the gospel, but who is also certainly for the author of 21. The author of 21 thinks that the author is identifying himself with a particular character in the text. And so he's balancing the we, plural, singular disciple, together and uniting them in the one verse.
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B
Okay, okay. So that. That explains why you think the author's trying to make you think that the beloved disciple, whoever the author really was, you think he's. He's making an implicit claim to be the beloved disciple. Is that fair?
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Yes.
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B
Okay, so how do we get from that to John the son of Zebedee?
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A
You know, obviously, that's where the gospel leaves you, right. Either in chapters one through 20, or with chapter 21 being a little more explicit here now on the disciple has written these things. All that you've gotten from all that is that Jesus had a disciple whom he loved who seems to be within the mass of eyewitnesses, within this we, the person who has penned this gospel. And what's left then is for Christians to try to make sense of and try to identify who this disciple is. You know, the. The gospel leaves several clues potentially. You know, it builds, certainly, a characterization of this gospel, of this pardon, this figure. It claims that he's a disciple of Jesus. It positions him as a very intimate, close disciple of Jesus. In fact, the most intimate disciple of Jesus. So in chapter 13, Jesus has the Last supper scene, right, with his disciples, which in John has a different emphasis on Jesus starts washing their feet. You know, there are other aspects of that story in John, but what Jesus does at the Last Supper is he's he's reclining at table. And according to the narrator, the disciple whom Jesus loved is reclining on the bosom of Jesus. He's so close to Jesus that he's literally lying on Jesus. And this actually very symbolic position for the gospel that really shows the intimacy and closeness of the two. And the story says Peter at one point has a question to ask Jesus. He has to ask the question through the beloved disciple. He has to ask. Ask the disciple to ask Jesus a question. And this is Peter, the most prominent disciple of Jesus according to the other right synoptic gospels in the New Testament. So the text is very clearly positioning him as an inner disciple of Jesus. I think ancient Christians looked at that and they quickly did a round of arithmetic. They said that this is apparently a disciple of Jesus. We know that Jesus had 12 disciples, and it seems that it's probably the 12 at play. Jesus will say in the final farewell speech that he gives his disciples at the Last Supper that he has chosen them, which echoes the language earlier in the Gospel that he had chosen 12. He's called a disciple. That would fit that too. And so now you're looking for someone in that group of disciples who is the most intimate to Jesus. The synoptics say that Jesus had three intimate disciples, Peter, James, and John. It can't be Peter because Peter and the beloved disciple appear in the same scenes. That leaves James and John. James, according to the book of Acts elsewhere in the New Testament, died not long after Jesus's own death. So he's probably not this figure. It leaves John standing. And that kind of quick arithmetic, I think, occurred very quickly, very universally for Christians who then, you know, already in the second century, we're going to find indications that they identify the disciple whom Jesus loved with John the son of Zebedee, the disciple of Jesus in particular.
- [25:32]
B
Okay, well, I, you know, I completely agree with that logic. I mean, I don't agree that we know that it was earlier in the second century. You and I can, we can arm wrestle about that one over drinks sometime, but because I just until Iron Age, we don't know, in my, my opinion. But apart from all that, do you think the author then is making the implicit claim to be John the son of Zebedee, or do you think this is an induction that the early Christians make?
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A
I think it's more likely an inference of early Christians. I think that the otherwise kind of anonymity of the text, the implicit ways that the author is trying to construct himself in a way, but not make a direct claim. I think that he's more subtle than a single target. And I think that's kind of the power of this. You know, when you think about ancient forgeries, ancient pseudepigrapha, you know, texts that claim to be written by people, they're not in those sorts of texts, sometimes a little ambiguity is your friend. It ensures that a reader who might be skeptical of a direct claim might tolerate your book for a more implicit one. And so we, we find this, that, you know, some books that we would count as forgeries, in fact, you know, don't outrightly state who they're by. They actually just leave a little note, leave a little ambiguity, weave something in and keep themselves alive for another day. Yeah.
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B
Okay, good. Okay, good. So in either event, whether he. He intends you to think this is John the son of Zebedee, who's not mentioned, and I guess that would be one reason not to mention John the son of Zebedee in, in the gospel, right? Am I right? John doesn't occur in the gospel.
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A
Yeah. John the son of Zebedee or the, you know, sons of Zebedee is actually all that appears. And it appears in chapter 21, which, again, yeah, okay.
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B
But apart from whether he wants you to make a specific identification with one of the disciples, in your judgment, this guy's claiming to be one of Jesus, the author is claiming to be one of Jesus closest disciples. Who really knows the scoop.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Now just now use the term forgery, and many people listening to this or watching this will. Will understand about that. But let's. Let's talk about it for a second. Could you just explain what you mean by the term forgery? Because it doesn't sound good.
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A
Yeah. And it's fair to say that many ancient people would not have found it to be good. I think someone I know has written a book on that. But when I'm using the term forgery here. So first of all, I think it's fair to say our field has a nomenclature issue. I think that the way we define the terms we use are a little not entirely clear. And part of it is that the practice we're talking about is one that appeared in lots of different forms. Right. And took lots of different shapes. So when I'm using the term forgery, I'm referring to an author who presents himself as someone other than who he is. That might take the form of him actually putting a pseudonym on his text of actually taking on a false name. But this could also be done more implicitly. An author can also go ahead and at least imply that he is someone other than who he is and a particular kind of person while falling short of directly identifying himself. And so you see this kind of, you know, happen in different texts. Right. A great example is the wisdom of Solomon. You know, this forgery that now forms part of the Catholic Bible. It's a text that never has a name on it. It never claims directly to be written by Solomon in its actual text. But what you do get in the text, in, you know, one of the later chapters, is the author subtly saying that I am a king in Israel and that God commanded his temple to be built. And it leads you to the inference that it's Solomon and that's where the reception history took it.
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B
And you get the same thing actually in the Hebrew Bible. Right. The book of Ecclesiastes.
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A
That's right.
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B
The wealthiest man, the wisest man, king in Jerusalem who's ever lived. That kind of things like that.
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A
And who said, in order, many proverbs, but you never hear Solomon said. And again, that ambiguity. Yeah.
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B
If you've got a case where, for example, outside the New Testament, you have the book of Third Corinthians, which claims to be written by Paul, Paul certainly did not write Third Corinthians. And so you would. You'd call that a forgery. But you're saying that even if you've got a book that. Where somebody's kind of hinting, he's giving a clear indication without giving his name, but he's giving a clear indication of someone other than who he really is, that's also would count as a forgery. It doesn't have to be somebody actually naming himself. So if you're claiming to be the closest disciple of Jesus without saying, yeah, my name's John, that still would be considered a forgery.
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A
Yeah. So he's. He's maybe not given us a name, maybe not pointed to a particular target, but he's constructed himself in a very different way. He's again presented himself as the most intimate disciple of Jesus who was really there in the room for all of these events, who's an eyewitness to the life of Jesus. And that, I think, is a different cast than the actual author of this text.
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B
Yeah. Okay. So, you know, New Testament scholars frequently talk about this as pseudepigraphy, and they get really nervous when you say forgery.
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A
Yeah, sure.
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B
So what's your take on that?
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A
I think it's ridiculous. I mean, I'll say this. There's a serious nomenclature issue, but pseudepigraphy is a Flawed term. It's one that I think tends to limit the options of what we can imagine. For one thing, because the same people who argue for pseudepigraphy, the very word pseudepigraphy, first of all really has in mind titles and direct authorial ascriptions and attributions, which is not the case for some of this literature.
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B
Why does it mean refer to a title? Just explain for people.
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A
Yeah, just epigraph. In the word pseudepigraphy, you have epigraph, which is essentially the title of a work, but it's all about direct labels.
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B
Would be the, like, you know, the thing on top of the writing epigraph or something, and a pseudo would be. So an epigraph that's a lie is basically something like that. Yeah. Okay, so whoever wrote this book didn't put a title, the Gospel according to John, on it.
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A
Yeah. So, yeah. So if a work didn't have a title, if it doesn't have a direct name expressed even, I mean, it's not a good candidate for this pseudepigraphy the way that scholars use it. Pseudepigrapha. Right. Also include works that were misattributed the way we use the term. And so that has nothing to do with authors. So that already starts to muddy the picture.
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B
In other words, if you say something like the book of Hebrews was written by Paul, it's not the author claiming that, it's you claiming it. And so it's not an authorial intent, it's not the author making a false claim, it's somebody falsely saying that somebody else wrote it. Right?
- [32:12]
A
Yeah. So the term already starts to be used for things that it's not all meant to be used for. And then I think the final issue with the term is I think it's deliberatively deliberately opaque. I mean, I really think it's a way that scholars in our field talk about things. I'm surrounded by very well educated people at the university, and when I use pseudepigraphon, nobody knows what I'm talking about. Everyone knows what I'm talking about when I use the word forgery. Now, I'm not saying forgery is necessarily the best term for this, but I think that's a conversation to have. It's just. I don't think pseudepigrapha is the best term for this.
- [32:44]
B
But so just to be clear, when you, when you talk about forgery, you really just. You're not talking about an author making up stories about Jesus or, or Changing stories about Jesus or it's not about the content, it's about what the author, who the author is claiming to be. It's a specific thing. The author's claiming to be somebody that he's not. And in this case, the author would be claiming to be one of Jesus closest. Implicitly claiming, implicitly claiming to be one of Jesus closest disciples. Is that.
- [33:13]
A
Yeah, it's about a false authorial claim. I mean, you know, an author who has accurately represented himself can lie, invent, exaggerate. There's no necessary tie between have you represented yourself clearly as an author? And what contents do you present? You know, by the same token, someone who writes under a pen name, a pseudonym, you know, who's built a forgery or constructed forgery, could include accurate information in it. The question of historicity is a different question than what's the authorial claim made in the text.
- [33:44]
B
Most people would think that if somebody's claiming to be someone other than they are, that they're lying about it. If I wrote a horror novel and signed it Stephen King and send it into a publisher, I mean, I'd get in trouble. And if, if it succeeded and they found out actually Stephen King didn't write this, Barman wrote it, boy, I, I'd be in real trouble. So does it have that kind of negative connotation? Is it lying? Is it. How do you deal with this? This is in the Bible, for one thing. This is.
- [34:11]
A
Well, we can, we can at least say it's deceptive for sure, you know, especially if it's again, intended to produce a certain kind of reception from readers. If readers are meant to take it a certain way, then that's a, that's a thing, you know, in terms of kind of moral judgments. I mean, that's all the ambiguities and subjectivities of ethics and morals. I think it's very clear though, how ancient people thought about this. When people were caught in the actual. These are not positive responses. People saw the practice as problematically as we do today. One thing that a lot of scholars in our field are prone to say is that, well, this practice is so widespread that it must have been widely culturally accepted. And I don't think that's true at all. I think all that tells us is it was very widespread. And in the ancient world you don't have as many ways and, you know, to be able to determine the authorship of things as carefully and accurately as, I don't know, centuries of scholars working very closely with the text in the kind of debate that again, academia fosters.
- [35:16]
B
Yeah, I mean, this claim has always befuddled. Not always, but it's befuddled me for many years where people say that, well, it was so common, it must have been an accepted practice. And I'm always thinking, well, you know, adultery is very common. Cheating on your taxes is very common. There are all sorts of things that are very common. That doesn't mean they're socially accepted. Yeah, what a crazy argument that is. Okay, but so it's a deceptive practice. So what makes you think that the author is not who he says he is though? Why do you think this author is not one of Jesus closest disciples?
- [35:47]
A
And this is where actually then the authorial claim in historicity comes back into some sort of relationship. Right. The author has claimed that he is an eyewitness the life of Jesus, that he has spent time walking with seeing Jesus. The problem is what he describes in his text. He presents Jesus teaching at length. The Gospel of John is full of very long discourses, long teaching sections in which Jesus articulates his views. And the views that Jesus articulates in the Gospel of John repeatedly, regularly, emphatically, are not the teachings that he presents in the synoptic gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke. So in this gospel, Jesus claims regularly to be a pre existent being come down from heaven, a celestial being. He presents himself as a divine being. None of these things appear clearly in the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke. But even more than that, the message that Jesus brings in term to humans, right, the promise he extends to humans is that they can be born of spiritual. Now he claims that through their being born as spirit, they can receive Jesus dwelling within them. Abiding in them is the term that's used, but it's a form of spiritual indwelling. And they will indwell Jesus. He claims that through this indwelling they will also be able to access celestial realms. They will be with him, and they will be in such a position that the Father indwells them. They will indwell the Father. He claims that they can possess eternal life and immortality. Now, when the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke are very clear, that eternal life is a gift one receives at the end of time, John presents Jesus as claiming, emphatically, repeatedly, that eternal life is something, immortality is something you possess now. And ultimately all of this kind of culminates in this idea that humans will also be exalted into a divine glory. Jesus will say that the glory that he has as the only Son of the Father, Father he has given to humans in chapter 17, he will, in chapter 10, imply the idea that humans undergo or experience something like deification. He will say that those to whom the word of God comes are gods. There's an entire image of human exaltation and transformation in this book that, you know, you can start to try to coordinate this with Mark, Matthew and Luke and you're going to come up empty. Jesus is teaching a very coherent, very sophisticated, complex theology that may fit very well with Alexandrian Jewish speculations, maybe the thought of Paul and later Pauline interpreters, imitators, trends in 2nd century Christianity, but it's not going to fit into the lifetime of Jesus and certainly Jesus's own teachings. If these were such important emphases in Jesus teachings, one would wonder why they're not in Mark, Matthew and Luke.
- [38:58]
B
Right. So if Jesus is going around calling himself God or a divine, you think they, they might want to mention that part? It's rather important. Yeah. So when you said this ties into the authorship question. So are you saying that the author is claiming special authority for Jesus having taught these things? Because, you know, I was, I'm one of the closest disciples and I know he taught these things.
- [39:21]
A
Yeah, I think the author is an author who is aware that the Jesus he's presenting is not the Jesus that is represented in other gospels. And that anxiety means that he has to double down on his own credibility as someone who is entering into, I think, a crowded field of gospel writing already by his era. I think there's some congestion there and he needs to find some way to justify. Yeah, the teachings of Jesus are different. And then also, you know, kind of this other point, the narratives in the Gospel of John are also different from those we find in the synoptics.
- [39:55]
B
Yeah. Okay, so let me get clear on kind of a pretty basic point. I mean, you think the author's being deceptive. And when he claims to be the closest disciple of one of the closest disciples of Jesus, do you think he's being deceptive in his delivery of Jesus teachings? Does he know that this is stuff that Jesus didn't really teach?
- [40:14]
A
Yes, I think that the author of the Gospel is somebody who, at the very least, I mean, this is where we enter into the very dangerous ground of trying to perhaps enter into an ancient author's mind. Right, but I think that the Jesus of the Gospel of John has resonances with the Jesus of the synoptics. Right. He uses a lot of the same motifs, images, shepherd. Right. You know, I mean, he'll draw on some of the same imagery. He'll talk of a kingdom. He'll talk of things like that. But what Jesus does in John is in effect he reinterprets all of these things. You know, where Mark, Matthew and Luke are thinking, or certainly Mark is thinking of a kingdom here on earth. Jesus will say, my kingdom is not of this world. He will say that no one enters or sees the kingdom of God as flesh. One has to be born of spirit to even see the kingdom of God. He's transforming kingdom, he's transforming different aspects of Jesus's teaching in the synoptics. So I think what the author had in mind is that I think he views himself as someone who is trying to set the record straight on what did Jesus mean when he talked about the kingdom, when he talked about eternal life, when he talked about any of the other things that he talks about in the Gospels. And so what he does is he constructs a Jesus that essentially says it more directly in the author's own theological terms, but in ways evocative of the synoptic Jesus. The idea then is that as a reader, you have access through an eyewitness, purportedly to some of the things that Jesus said at times the synoptics did not record. John is going to, if not pioneer, then certainly align itself with a lot of the strategies you're going to find in apocryphal gospels throughout the second century. So, for instance, private speeches and discourses, you know, if you look at the Gospel of Judas, right, Jesus having secret conversations with Judas. Gospel of Mary, Jesus having secret conversations with Mary. The Gospel of John has secret conversations, or at least, you know, private conversations is probably the better term with Nicodemus, with other figures in the book. He'll have this extended speech on the night of the Last Supper. You've read nowhere else that will give you, in essence, as you said, the scoop. What did Jesus really say at other times?
- [42:35]
B
It is a remarkable thing, John. You have things like, as you're saying, Nicodemus and the, and the Samaritan woman. This is a one on one conversation that Jesus has with this other person and the. And John records it word for word. He wasn't there. And so, but, but it's not, you know, at first you said that you thought it was deceptive what he was recording as Jesus teaching, but then it sounded like you had a more kind of a sympathetic reading of it that he, he's kind of interpreting in a new way the teachings of Jesus rather than he's just making stuff up.
- [43:04]
A
Well, I think he's definitely inventing things. Okay. Yeah, I mean, invention is all there, and invention is deceptive. Yeah. In this case, though, I think that what the author imagines he's probably doing is giving you new invented material that becomes then the hermeneutical key, the interpretive key for everything. You might read elsewhere Jesus tradition, so that, you know, you might read another Gospel. The Gospels are all out there. You can't not run into them. Except that the next time you'll read Mark, you'll either think that maybe Jesus didn't quite say it this way, maybe Jesus didn't quite say this, or maybe we've misinterpreted this. It kind of builds a certain way of encountering the other Gospels.
- [43:49]
B
No, that's a really interesting point. I'm not sure I've thought about it like that, but it's absolutely right, because scholars of hermeneutics and. And of reader response and such talk about how sometimes a book will be providing guidance for reading other books. And so, like, reading instructions kind of is how it's used sometimes. And so if you've got four Gospels together and John kind of climaxes it, then you read the other three in light of what you already know from John. And that's exactly what people do, right?
- [44:19]
A
That's right.
- [44:20]
B
They read Matthew, Mark, and Luke as if Jesus is claiming to be God, and you ask them to find a place where he actually says it, and they kind of fumble around, but it's because they're reading it through the lens of John. That's a really. It's a really interesting point. We need to bring this to a close pretty quickly, but I want to ask kind of a tangential question, which is this view will seem fairly radical to a lot of people, and evangelical Christians just. They ain't going to go for it. Is this kind of view that a Christian can have? I mean, the author of John is lying about his identity. He's deceiving people about what Jesus actually taught, and it's in the New Testament. And can a Christian have this view? If you don't want to answer that, you don't need to.
- [44:58]
A
But it's. You're talking to the. The Catholic me now?
- [45:02]
B
Well, no. Well, the deal is. I mean, I know you're Catholic, but when I say stuff like that, they just say, well, it's because you're an atheist.
- [45:09]
A
Yeah, sure.
- [45:10]
B
No, I used to think this when I was a Christian. They don't believe me. People listening to this podcast often don't know. You know, there are Christian scholars out there doing this kind of thing or committed church people who have these views. But people wonder, well, how's that possible? How can you possibly think that John is deceiving us? How can you think that and be a Christian? I mean, it's in the Bible.
- [45:29]
A
Yeah. I mean, what's always interesting about that move, right is it never seems to be concerned about every other time the biblical text tells you there's something off about. I mean, you know, I mean, Christians can reverence King David and David is not a figure who is someone who comes across very well in the biblical tradition. Adultery, murder, all these sorts of things. Right. You know, when I teach this to my students, I teach forgery and pseudepigraphy. Every time we do the intro to New Testament class, what I do in that classroom is I talk about the fundamentalist modernist controversy I go to a hundred some odd years ago when in American society a lot of these conclusions of biblical scholars from Europe were filtering into American seminaries, schools, churches, when Darwinian evolution was coming to the forefront of national attention and geology and all kind of everything that's come from the scientific revolution. Right. And there were different ways that Christians responded in this period. You know, there were Christian churches that were more open to these sorts of new ideas and were interested in finding theological responses to them. One thinks of more mainline denominations, Lutherans, Episcopalians, and then there are denominations that moved in fundamentalist directions that doubled down on the inerrancy of scripture, the accuracy of scripture, that cleaned house and seminaries that redid their landscape. I tell them the history of the Catholic Church, which was very resistant to this scholarship until Vatican ii, which allowed Catholic scholars to consider these things in a new way. I remind my students that, you know, in the end there have been different responses by Christians to this. If the question is, is this troubling and difficult, of course it is. I mean, I mean it is, right? I mean, you don't have to be comfortable with it, you just have to be comfortable with the logic of it. You know, the problem of forgery. You know, from there you have a lot of, I think theological calculations to make. And I think the key that I want from my students is for them to recognize you have to make them. You know, you've probably already grown up with years and years of, you know, hearing messages in your churches of, you know, potentially if you don't believe the world was created in six days, you are not a true Christian. But there's a history behind why certain churches insist on that. And there are churches that disagree with that. And you need to position yourself within that larger debate and take agency in that debate. Right. Decide what you think works. The thing I think you can't do is close your eyes to what these issues are.
- [48:12]
B
Yeah, well, I mean, I think Christianity is dead if it refuses to accept logic and knowledge and information and data, you know, and if you just reject it out of hand. And unlike you, I went to, you know, I have a Master's of divinity degree from a Protestant theological seminary. And of course, the things you're doing in your book is. Are different in many ways from one standard biblical scholarship and a lot of your conclusion. But the basic view of things like the author of John was the Beloved Disciple. He wanted you to think he was John the son of Zebedee. He was not John the son of Zebedee. And his reports of what Jesus said and did are not what Jesus really said and did. That was taught to Presbyterian ministers when I was in seminary. I mean, so the Presbyterian, my friends, they all learned that stuff. They quickly forgot it when they got congregations because they didn't want to make too many waves. The basic lines of historical scholarship is developed by Christians, not by atheists. And so people who think this is the dividing line between faith and non faith have, in a way, they've been convinced by the fundamentalists. Right. They've been convinced that if you don't believe the Bible literally, then you can't be a Christian, which is historical nonsense.
- [49:23]
A
Yeah. They've let a few people in the early 20th century set the terms for how we do this with all the data that we have today.
- [49:31]
B
Yeah, yeah. It's a really fascinating topic and I think everybody's going to be impressed with both the subtleties of it and the large implications of it. So you got these kind of subtle details that lead to rather significant conclusions. We're going to move on to the John epistles down the road at some point because people aren't familiar with those as much. But it turns out you've got a theory about those that are really. That's really quite striking.
- [49:57]
A
Yeah. And if any of your listeners definitely want to at least understand a little bit more of, kind of my point of view, I have an article, did the Johannine Community Exist? Did the Johannine Community Exist? It's an open access article, so anyone can pull it up. It's not behind those academic library firewalls, but it was published in the Journal of For the Study of the New Testament. And I think it gives, at the very least also bibliography for some of the things I'M not the only person to raise questions, certainly not the first person to raise questions about the authorship of John.
- [50:28]
B
No. Yeah. Okay, great. Well, thanks, Hugo. I really appreciate it. I've enjoyed it very much. And thank you all in the audience for tuning in to the podcast. We will be back again next week with my being on the hot seat, being interviewed by Megan, and it'll be an episode released next Tuesday. Thanks so much. This has been an episode of Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. We'll be back with a new episode next Tuesday.
- [50:58]
A
So please be sure to subscribe to our show for free on your favorite
- [51:02]
B
podcast listening app or on Bart Ehrman's YouTube channel so you don't miss out. From Bart Ehrman and myself, Megan Lewis,
- [51:09]
A
thank you for joining us.