Is the New Testament Actually Filled with Forgeries?

Summary

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Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman

Episode: Is the New Testament Actually Filled with Forgeries?

Date: January 16, 2024
Host: Megan Lewis
Guest: Dr. Bart Ehrman

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Dr. Bart Ehrman and Megan Lewis revisit the provocative question of forgery in the New Testament, focusing on the extent to which the New Testament contains forged or falsely attributed writings. They discuss scholarly definitions, key examples, why forgery was common, how identifying forged works impacts modern interpretation and doctrine, and the insights such forgeries give into early Christian disputes.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining Forgeries and Scholarly Terms

• Forgery: "A claim about an author. An author writes something and claims to be somebody. If they actually are not that somebody. If they claim to be somebody famous and they're not that person, that's what we're calling a forgery."
  — Bart Ehrman [05:41]

• Pseudepigraphy: Preferred scholarly term meaning “inscribed with a lie,” denoting texts where the author claims a false identity. Used to avoid the negative connotations of “forgery.”
  — Bart Ehrman [06:49]

• Orthonymity: The rare situation where a book is correctly attributed—the claimed author actually wrote the text.
  — Bart Ehrman [06:49]

"Scholars prefer to call them pseudepigrapha... nobody knows what it means, so that's why it doesn't sound offensive."
— Bart Ehrman [06:49]

2. Scope: How Much of the New Testament is Forged?

• Out of 27 books in the New Testament, Bart Ehrman argues only 8 are “orthonymous” (actually written by the claimed author):

  • The "undisputed Paulines" (Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, Philemon) — “almost everyone” agrees were written by Paul.
  • Revelation, by "someone named John" (not the disciple John, but it is honestly attributed).
    — Bart Ehrman [09:34]

• The remaining 19 books are either forged (the author claims a false identity) or falsely attributed later by tradition.

3. Why So Many Forgeries and Misattributions?

• Motivation: “They think they've got an important message... and they're somebody that nobody's ever heard of... so they claim to be somebody famous so that their book will be read.”
  — Bart Ehrman [11:11]

• Common Practice: Forgery was a widespread literary device in the ancient world—especially in religious writing to boost a work’s authority.
  — Bart Ehrman [12:37]

• False Attribution: Often happened for practical reasons—a work was anonymous, so church authorities attached an apostolic name (e.g., Gospels of Matthew, John) to enhance its authority.
  — Bart Ehrman [12:45]

4. Impact: What If Forgeries Are Removed from the New Testament?

• Removing forged books would have “serious” implications on theology and practice.
  — Bart Ehrman [13:54]

  • Example:
    • Ephesians — Promotes the idea that Christians already have heavenly rewards ("That's the opposite of what Paul himself thought." [15:01]).
    • 2 Thessalonians — Introduces the prophecy about the Antichrist in the rebuilt Jerusalem Temple, fueling certain end-times beliefs in modern fundamentalism (and is used to justify specific political stances).
      — Bart Ehrman [15:43]

• Some of the most controversial moral and social claims cited today (e.g., the alleged Pauline commandment for women’s subordination in 1 Timothy; the justification of slavery) are from these forged epistles.
  — Bart Ehrman [16:18]

“It's one of the main reasons that people today still widely call Paul a misogynist—because of a book that he didn't write.”
— Bart Ehrman [17:28]

5. What Do Forgeries and Counter-Forgeries Reveal About Early Christians?

• Forged texts often reflect intense theological disputes between early Christian groups, as anonymous or pseudonymous writers would try to promote their view as apostolic.
  — Bart Ehrman [21:36]

• Counter-Forgeries:

  • A term Ehrman adopts to describe forgeries written to refute previous forged writings.
  • Example: 2 Thessalonians critiques forgeries supposedly written "as if by us," but is itself, according to Ehrman, a forgery—making it a “counter-forgery.”
    — Bart Ehrman [18:30], [21:36]

“They're forgeries that are countering the views of other forgeries. And I thought, man, that is cool.”
— Bart Ehrman [20:53]

• Epistle of James: Likely a forgery countering the message understood from Ephesians or distorted Paulines, pushing for salvation by works alongside faith.
  — Bart Ehrman [21:43]

6. How Did Such Contradictory Books All Get Into the Bible?

• Early authorities and later readers often failed to notice or did not care about contradictions, assuming all texts in the canon were harmonious because they were read as one book, “between two covers.”
  — Bart Ehrman [26:40]

“If you've got books that people tell you are authoritative, then you simply assume that they're basically on the same page... it rubs off most of their differences.”
— Bart Ehrman [27:28]

• Early canon compilers may have deliberately embraced diversity, or just prioritized texts widely considered authoritative despite disagreements.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Pervasiveness of Forgery:
  “Most of the New Testament is not written by people who are claimed as the authors.”
  — Bart Ehrman [39:05]

• On Misogyny and Pauline Forgeries:
  “It's one of the main reasons that people today still widely call Paul a misogynist—because of a book that he didn't write.”
  — Bart Ehrman [17:28]

• On Early Christian Disagreements:
  “Authors of the New Testament themselves are at odds on major issues and are arguing points that are different from the issues that others argue.”
  — Bart Ehrman [24:39]

• On Critiquing Religion:
  “What I prefer to do is to try and talk to people, try and get them to think about what they're thinking and saying... I just don't think it's that useful to be belittling people for what they believe.”
  — Bart Ehrman [34:49–37:56]

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Important Timestamps

• Defining Forgery, Pseudepigraphy, Orthonymity: [05:41]–[08:33]
• Orthonymous NT books laid out: [09:34]
• Why so much forgery in the NT: [11:11]–[12:37]
• How removing forgeries changes Christian doctrine: [13:54]–[16:10]
• Slavery, women, and controversial texts: [16:18]–[17:59]
• Counter-forgeries and theological debate: [18:30]–[24:20]
• Why contradictory books were retained: [26:33]–[27:28]
• Ehrman’s closing summary on forgery in the NT: [39:05]

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Tone & Language

• Dr. Ehrman is patient, scholarly yet approachable, often expressing surprise at how few people realize the true extent of pseudepigraphy in the New Testament. He is careful not to antagonize believers, framing his conclusions as those of the academic mainstream while welcoming open and respectful dialogue.
• Megan Lewis plays an engaged and thoughtful host, asking clarifying questions and keeping the discussion accessible.

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Summary

This episode pulls back the curtain on the New Testament's authorship, demonstrating both how and why pseudonymous and falsely attributed works became part of Christian Scripture. The prevalence of forgery and misattribution dramatically impacts key Christian doctrines and beliefs, including contemporary concerns like gender roles and eschatology. Forged writings also provide a unique window into the theological battles and diversity of opinion among early Christians. Dr. Ehrman maintains that understanding these complexities is not just about debunking but broadening insight—and invites listeners to engage critically and empathetically with the ancient texts at the heart of Christian tradition.

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Transcript

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[Megan Lewis]

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. Lets begin.

Hello everybody and welcome back to Misquoting Jesus. We've spoken about forgeries in early Christian writings before and today we're revisiting the subject. But don't worry, we're not going to cover old ground. In previous episodes we've talked about why an ancient author might want to forge a document, how we know if it is a forgery, and how a forger might try and avoid detection. This week we're focusing solely on the New Testaments. Exactly how much of it is made up of forged writings? Does the New Testament change at all if we remove that forged material? And what can these forgeries tell us about early Christian debates and disputes? Before we get into that though, Bart, hello. How are you doing?

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, I'm doing well. As you know, we're recording this just pretty new into the new year and I'm still, still in London. Since classes are over and Christmas is over, I'm able to get back to my routine which is right now, first thing in the morning when I get up, I read some Greek, ancient Greek and I've been reading Plato's Euthyphro and we, you know, we ought to do a session on this kind of thing. It's a really interesting thing. I'm not sure you want to hear this, but you're going to where Plato tries to show in this thing where Socrates is in this dialogue with somebody and as always he's showing that the person doesn't know what he's talking about. But he deals with this, a number of issues that are really relevant for Christians. You know, he's a pagan. In this dialogue, this person, Euthyphro thinks he knows what it means to be pious, to be righteous before the gods and he Says it's by doing the things that the gods love. And Socrates says, well, is something good because the gods love it or do the gods love it because it's good? That's a big difference. And it's a really good question. And the whole dialogue is trying to show, deal with that kind of issue. But the point is, you know, you have Christians to say that you know it's right because God says so. But then, well, does God say so because it's right? Or if God says anything, is it right? And some people would say, yeah, anything he says would be right. And other people say, well, no, of course. I mean, he likes what's right. And so, you know, I really enjoy reading the ancient Greek. I really love Plato for decades and decades. But, but it's nice to get back into this routine and you know, it's not, not the way most people get up and have their first cup of coffee. So how are you doing? Do you read a Sumerian when you up?

[Megan Lewis]

Well, I was going to say you and Josh, the more I get to know you, the more you two have in common. Because when he gets up, he gets his coffee, he drives into work, he goes in very early, usually leaves the house around five. And when he gets in, he spends half an hour drinking his coffee and reading Acadian.

[Bart Ehrman]

Okay, that works.

[Megan Lewis]

So he's actually dubbed this the year of Acadian. So he's getting back into Acadian and that kind of thing. So I typically do not start my morning with Acadian. I usually started with a cup of tea and a very quick shower before all of the children kind of descend.

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, well, that's it. If you can get in anytime before the kids get up. You know, as a parent, and I know that's, that's how I started getting up early is just because man needed some time.

[Megan Lewis]

When they were very, very small, I would sleep as late as I could, which isn't terribly late when you have small babies. But now they're reliably sleeping in until 7. I need that hour and a half just to wake up and be a grown up and have just 20 minutes to myself before someone needs me to change a diaper or make breakfast or something similar.

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, okay, good, good routine. Okay.

[Megan Lewis]

So how is, how is London? How has the rest of your break been?

[Bart Ehrman]

Well, it's wet and dreary and for some reason, you know, Londoners think it's a good idea for the sun to be out for only eight hours a day at this time of year. But you Know, it's so hard to complain about London. I mean, London of London's just quite amazing. I've gone to the theater a few times and. And, you know, seeing family and stuff. So, yeah, it's all great.

[Megan Lewis]

My mother lives on the Isle of Skye, and they don't quite get eight hours a day at the moment.

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, that's way up.

[Megan Lewis]

Yeah. It's dark very early, and it's. The weather they have around this time of year is very. It's Scottish bleak, dreary, lots and lots of rain. So even when the sun is up, it's not always visible. So she. She has a lot of darkness at the moment.

[Bart Ehrman]

Yes. Okay. And that can affect people. I mean, it really. It really can. So. Okay.

[Megan Lewis]

Yeah, we should. We should get into forgery, though. And for those who missed our last conversation, which was I think a year or so ago, could you just tell us why forgery in the New Testament is an important topic?

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, so I think we'll, you know, we'll probably want to be defining terms in a minute. But just so people understand, at the outset, when we're talking about forger, we're not talking about somebody who's, like, making up stories or, you know, fabricating events or ideas or something. It's a claim about an author. An author writes something and claims to be somebody. If they actually are not that somebody. If they claim to be somebody famous and they're not that person, that's what we're calling a forgery. So it has to do with who the author is. And the reason it matters for the New Testament is because there are lots of books in the New Testament that go under an author's name that the author almost certainly didn't write. And there are a lot of debated cases, too, but there are some that are apart from strong evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics. And conservative theologians would say, no, no, no. They all were written by the people who claim to be the authors. But historical scholars haven't thought that for a long time.

[Megan Lewis]

So you. You mentioned we should absolutely define terms so everyone knows what we're talking about when we use specific words. You've covered forgery. We've got also pseudepigraphy and orthonomy. Could you just explain what those two are, please?

[Bart Ehrman]

So I'll start with orthonomy, because it's one of my favorite words that nobody knows. You know, a book is orthonomous. If it's. I mean, we. We have orthodontics. Orthodontics is when they set your Teeth straight. So orthos means straight or right. And orthonomous writing is one where the person who claims to be writing it is the person who wrote it. So, like, if I sign my book, Bart Ehrman. That's by me. If I sign one of my books, Stephen King that's a forgery. Scholars, for a very long time, especially New Testament scholars, have been reluctant to call books in the New Testament or even other books forgeries because it's such a loaded term in modern parlance. Most New Testament scholars call that phenomenon pseudepigraphy. What most people would call forgery, they call pseudepigraphy. They do that for a couple reasons. One is it doesn't sound offensive. Another is that nobody knows what it means, so that's why it doesn't sound offensive. But if people were actually told what it means, they probably would be offended. Pseudepigraphy means it's a book that's inscribed with a lie, meaning the author's claiming to be somebody that he's not. So our word for that is forgery. But scholars prefer to call them pseudepigrapha because, for the reasons I mentioned, so that they are synonyms on certain levels. But it's possible for books to be circulated under the name of somebody who did not write them without the author making that claim. And if the author makes the claim, then it's a forgery. If you have a book that, like, the author's not claiming to be somebody, like, he writes anonymously, and then somebody else says, oh, yeah, that gospel was written by Matthew, and no, the author doesn't claim. So then if it's wrong, then it's not the author's fault. So you wouldn't call that a forgery. You would call that a false attribution.

[Megan Lewis]

And all four of the canonical gospels are pseudepigraphic, I believe.

[Bart Ehrman]

Well, they're pseudepigraphic by that understanding that they're pseudepigraphic because they have a name over them that is not probably the name of the person who wrote them, according to most historical scholarship. And we, you know, we've talked about that before on here about the four Gospels, and we've talked. I've got a course on it on Matthew, Mark, Luke and John that we advertise sometimes here on the blog, where I try to explain why they probably were not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. But since the authors don't claim to be Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, they're not forgeries in the sense I'm Using it, you could call them pseudepigrapha, but only because they circulate under a false name, which is what pseudepigrapha means, lying name or false name. But it's not the author's fault. It's just somebody later said they were written by these people.

[Megan Lewis]

Thank you. Now, in your book Forgery and Counter Forgery, you write that only 8 of the 27 books of the New Testament are autonomous. So they were written by the person who claims to have written them. What are those books?

[Bart Ehrman]

It's a little bit shocking when you add it up. For a number of years, I talked about pseudepigraphy in the New Testament and never bothered to add it up. When you do, you say, wait a Second, there are 27 books in the New Testament. How many of them do we know written by the person who claims to be the author? Well, in the New Testament, there are 13 letters that claim to be written by Paul, and scholars are pretty sure that seven of them actually were written by Paul. So much so this is so widespread among scholarship that very commonly scholars will just talk about the undisputed Pauline letters and what they mean by that is it's undisputed who wrote them. It's a little bit of a stretch, of course, because scholars debate everything, and so nothing is undisputed technically. But basically everybody agrees that Romans 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians 1, Thessalonians, and Philemon were written by Paul and the others, either possibly not, or probably not, or almost certainly not. So you get those seven. The other book, interestingly, is the last book of the New Testament, the book of Revelation, which claims to be written by somebody named John. And almost everybody thinks, yeah, somebody named John wrote it. It's wrong to say probably that John the son of Zebedee wrote it, that the disciple of Jesus wrote it. But it doesn't claim to be written by John the son of Zebedee. It's just some guy named John. And it was a very common. So that's usually counted as an orthonomous work as well.

[Megan Lewis]

So that leaves 19 books that are either forged or falsely attributed. Why is so much of the New Testament in that category?

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, good question. So the actual forgeries, the things I would call forgeries, where people say they're somebody when they're not. When you have authors claiming to be Paul writing Ephesians and Colossians and second Thessalonians, when they almost certainly were not Paul. And by the way, there are reasons for this this isn't just kind of crazy stuff that scholars throw out there. They're actually very, very detailed studies of all these. And if anybody wants to see a really detailed study, my book that you mentioned earlier, Forgery and Counter Forgery, goes through each one of these individually and shows why it looks like it wasn't written by that person. Those people who are claiming to be Paul or the people claiming to be Peter or the person claiming to be James or Jude, these ones that claim somebody who probably did not write them almost certainly are doing this because they think they've got an important message to convey and they're somebody that nobody's ever heard of. And so nobody will read their book, but it's an important message. And so they claim to be somebody famous so that their book will be read. In all these cases, they were terrifically successful because today billions of people are convinced. And so it's a very effective ploy. Whereas people who wrote books in their own names that nobody ever heard of, they. They didn't get copied or read. So that's why probably have so many forgeries. And, and as we said in our other episode, this was a common practice in the ancient world. It's not like this is unusual in the New Testament. This is a common practice.

[Megan Lewis]

So what's the other books that have been miss or falsely attributed to a specific author? Why? Why does that happen?

[Bart Ehrman]

Well, you know, it happens for a similar reason. Suppose you've got a bunch of gospels in the second century, which you do have. There are a number of gospels floating around about Jesus life. And there were some of them that church fathers didn't like church leaders thought were heretical or just not very good or, you know, whatever. But there were others that they said these are really authoritative, and they're the ones that, you know, we should use for understanding who Jesus was. But, you know, they're anonymous. And if you have an authority for Jesus, you want the authority to be an author who knew what he was talking about. And so they get attributed to two of the disciples, Matthew and John, who. And to two of the companions of apostles, Peter, the companion of Peter, and Luke, the companion of Paul. So false attributions are almost always to increase the authority of the writing so that it'll be read and considered authoritative.

[Megan Lewis]

So if we take the New Testament and we remove all of the books that academics have determined of forgeries or misattributions, like, what does that do? How does that change the message of the New Testament?

[Bart Ehrman]

Wow. Yeah. Okay. Hey, well, you know, if you take out the false attributions, if you just get rid of them. The thing is, you wouldn't get rid of the false attributions. You would still say, like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. If somebody convinces you, you know, this Matthew really was not written by the tax collector who is a follower of Jesus. And suppose you become convinced of that, you wouldn't get rid of it. You would just say, huh, okay, well, you know, it's called something wrong. But if somebody says, you know, this book of Ephesians is somebody who's saying that he's Paul, but he's not, he's lying about it, then you might say, man, I don't know if I want lies in the New Testament. And you might get rid of it. If you got rid of Ephesians, it would change things. For all of these books, I'll just pick two of Paul's books, Ephesians and Second Thessalonians. For Ephesians, Ephesians is a book that emphasizes that people have already experienced a kind of heavenly existence here on earth because they've accepted Christ and that they're already living a heavenly existence. To some. Some extent, you have the rewards of heaven now already. That's the opposite of what Paul himself thought. But it's a view that. That's widely held among people today, that we're already enjoying God's grace. And so it's manifest to us in these wonderful ways today because of how glorious my life is now, and that that can find support in Ephesians where they won't. Won't find support in Paul, who believes that this age is an age of suffering for those who are on God's side. With Second Thessalonians, that's an interesting one, because in a concrete way, 2 Thessalonians is the one book of the New Testament that says that before Jesus comes back, the Antichrist figure has to go into the Temple of God and declare that he is God. And that will happen before the end. This is the verse that fundamentalists use to say that the Temple in Jerusalem has to be rebuilt. And so this has fueled the interest of fundamentalist Christians in Israel taking over the Temple Mount and destroying the Dome of the Rock and building the Temple again so that Jesus can come back. That would be serious. But it's all based on this verse in Second Thessalonians that claims to be written by Paul, but is not.

[Megan Lewis]

Would the removal of the books have an impact on more moral debates that we see among. Among Christians today?

[Bart Ehrman]

Among moral debates it's interesting because some of these books are fairly emphatic about issues about like how slaves ought to obey their masters rather than masters. You should free your slaves. And so some of these books, like, you know, Ephesians, have been used to justify slavery. One book that I think in particular has been problematic for the modern situation among Christians and probably west culture more broadly until recently is 1 Timothy. In 1 Timothy, chapter 2, there's this rather infamous passage where the author claiming to be Paul, even though he's almost certainly not, tells women that they are to be quiet and not to exercise any authority over a man and that men are to rule the roost, not just in church and not just at home, but like everywhere, because. Especially in a married relationship, because Adam was created first, Eve was this kind of an afterthought. And she was created to help the man. She's not created to rule the man. And she's the reason that so many problems are in the world now because she's the one who got tempted and ate the fruit and then gave her husband to eat. And so this is what happens when you let women exercise authority over men. They get deceived by the devil and they lead them into sin. And so you can't have that. So women have to be subject to men. Yeah, that's not good. But that's, you know, that's. It's in one of these books that is not really written by Paul, that claims to be by Paul, and it's one of the main reasons that people today still widely call Paul a misogynist because of a book that he didn't write. So. Yeah, so matters for that too.

[Megan Lewis]

Paul's had his name tarnished a little bit by some of these forgeries, I feel.

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, by lots of things. Mainly by his accusations that he's. He was misogynist and anti Semite, anti Semitic, and he's not either, actually.

[Megan Lewis]

Now, before we finish, I wanted to get into a little bit about how these books can be used to better understand early debates and disputes among Christians. We have another term to define before we get to that, though. What are counter forgeries?

[Bart Ehrman]

Counter forgeries. That's a term that I use. I don't know of anybody else who's ever used it in English. There's a German scholar who wrote a major book on forgery in the ancient world named last name was Walter Speier, who wrote a book that deal gives this term Gegen Ferschung, which is a. Means counter forgery. And he doesn't quite mean by it, what I do, I kind of came up with this idea. The reason I came up with it actually was because of my reading of Second Thessalonians. And so let me explain the situation. Second Thessalonians is really interesting for a lot of reasons. It's one of these books. People don't read much and they don't pay much attention to it, but it's really pretty interesting. There are very good reasons for thinking Paul did not write it. One reason being that it clearly is dependent on First Thessalonians. It has, like, verses that are virtually the same between 1st and 2nd Thessalonians. And you think, okay, that shows Paul wrote it, right? Well, not exactly. Because in Paul's writings, we never have verses repeated between books. But beyond that, when the book does say something that Paul doesn't talk about in First Thessalonians, when it deals with the topic but doesn't use his words, it presents the opposite point of view, especially about this question, is Jesus coming back soon or not? In First Thessalonians, Paul's whole emphasis, you can find this in all five of the chapters of First Thessalonians is you need to be ready. Jesus is coming back anytime now. You don't want to be caught unawares. You've got to be watchful. Because he's going to come like a thief in the night, you know, when you're not expecting it, and whammo, it's going to happen in an unexpected way. He says that throughout First Thessalonians, especially chapters four and five, when you get to Second Thessalonians, allegedly Paul, sometimes using the same verses, says, don't be deceived by a letter, as if from us, that the end is going to be coming soon. Because first these things have to take place. And then he gives this list of things that have to take place, including this Antichrist figure going into the temple. And so it's saying the opposite of what First Thessalonians says. So it doesn't look like Paul wrote this. Why do you have these verses? Because they're the same. Because the author who's writing it wants you to think it's Paul and what sounds more like Paul than Paul's writings. And so you quote Paul. So that's a very interesting book. But the thing about counter forgery is in second Thessalonians 2, 2, this author says that they're not supposed to be deceived by a letter, as if from us. In other words, he's saying, don't be fooled by a Forgery out there claiming this. Because now I'm going to tell you the truth. But if Second Thessalonians is a forgery, then it's countering another forgery. And so what I call counter forgery, I found a bunch of these things that are. They're forgeries that are countering the views of other forgeries. And I thought, man, that is cool. And I started finding a bunch of these. So my book, Forgery and Counter Forgery, which is a. It's a scholarly book, but it deals with these counter forgeries throughout early Christianity.

[Megan Lewis]

Are there other forgeries that can give some insight into what early Christians were arguing about amongst the themselves?

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, well, you know, here's another counter forgery in the New Testament, the book of James. Whoever wrote James does not come out and claim that he is the brother of Jesus, but he's always been taken to be the brother of Jesus. And when I analyze this in my book, I show that he. He wants you to think that he's the brother of Jesus. There are pretty clear indications in the book itself, if you analyze it closely, that he's the brother of Jesus. One is, I'll just give, in case people are wondering, he writes to people throughout the world, to the twelve tribes of Israel, which is just a way of saying the people of God. And so he's writing this to be a letter that circulates around the world, and he claims to be somebody named James. Well, James is a very common name in the ancient world. If you want people to know who you are and you're writing to people who don't even know you, you normally explain who you are. And so, like, people would explain, I'm this person, I'm James, this person, you know, or I'm James, the son of Joseph or something like that. But if he just leaves it out there, he's James, then they're almost certainly thinking, oh, yeah, it's got to be that James, because who else wouldn't identify himself? So it's that James. Okay? So I think he is clearly trying to claim to be James, the brother of Jesus, but it's a counter forgery. Because this gets a little down in the weeds. I won't get very far down, but I mentioned Ephesians earlier, and one of the things that Ephesians argues, the book of Ephesians argues, is that a person is made right with God not by doing good works, but by faith. Only by faith. And that sounds like Paul. And people say, yeah, that's what Paul says. Right. And when you actually analyze Ephesians. It's not what Paul says. When Paul says a person is justified by faith and not by works, he says not by works of the law, by which he means you're not made right with God by keeping the Jewish law. Ephesians isn't talking about the Jewish law. Ephesians is talking about being a good person and doing good things for people. You can't be saved that way. And he's almost always taken as opposing Paul because there are clear passages in James where he's taken something that he thinks Paul wrote and attacking it. So he's attacking something that Paul actually didn't say, because what he's saying is that you're not just. You're justified not by doing good deeds. And Paul's talking about doing good, the Jewish law. But Ephesians does talk about not being saved by doing good deeds. And so it looks like James is attacking something like Ephesians or maybe Ephesians itself, which is a forgery and James is a forgery. So James is a counter forgery. You get all that kind of complicated.

[Megan Lewis]

Does the inclusion of these, some specific forgeries in the New Testament by the church fathers give insight as well into the kind of religion that early Christians were trying to form as opposed to what we now would consider to be heretical beliefs?

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, a lot of these pseudepigrapha in the New Testament, a lot of the books that I would call forgeries or falsely attributed books are attacking various other forms of Christianity. And it's very interesting to see this work out in some ways. That broad idea that the New Testament authors are attacking other forms of Christianity. In some ways, that idea goes all the way back into Christian scholarship. But what scholars have realized over the last 150 years is that authors of the New Testament themselves are at odds on major issues and are arguing points that are different from the issues that others argue. Just to give you one example, I've mentioned both Matthew and Paul. Paul insists that followers of Jesus do not have to follow the law. And so if somebody's a Gentile, they don't have to convert to Judaism, they don't have to get circumcised, they don't have to keep kosher, they don't observe the Sabbath, they don't have to keep the Jewish law. Read Matthew sometime and see what that says. Matthew says you have to keep the law better than the scribes and the Pharisees. Your righteousness has to be more than theirs, or you won't get into the kingdom of heaven. Not one letter, not one part of a letter will pass away before all the law is accomplished. And you have to keep it all. Later, in Matthew, the author says that you are to do everything the Pharisees tell you to do. This is chapter 23, verse 2. So the Pharisees have, you know, kind of these strict interpretations of the Torah, the law. You have to do those. Jesus says the problem with the Pharisees is that they don't do what they say they should do. What they say to do is write. Would Paul say that? I don't think so. And so I think just about all of these books have some kind of issue that they're really finding important precisely because other Christians disagree with them on it.

[Megan Lewis]

If they're finding these issues to be important, why include other books that directly contradict them?

[Bart Ehrman]

Right. This is a really good question, and I get asked this a lot. If Matthew and Paul don't agree, why'd they include both of them? Well, okay, good. Well, first of all, who's the they? The they are the people in the ancient world who thought that they were both important books. Today, there are 2 billion people, at least, who think they are important books. How many of those 2 billion have read Matthew and read Paul and thought that they're at odds with each other? Like, precisely. Almost. You know what? 01%. Just a few scholars who, like, pay attention to these things. People just don't notice this kind of thing. If you've got books that people tell you are authoritative, then you simply assume that they're basically on the same page. And that's especially the case when you put them between two covers, because then it's one book, not 27 books. So you just assume if everything's between two covers, that it's all the same. And in the ancient world, they didn't have the two covers, but they had collections of books. And if you have a collection of the Gospels and collection of Paul, you just assume they're the same. The other thing that happens is that when church fathers decide which books are going to be in the New Testament, even when they realized that they're different from each other, they also realized that if you put them together and think about them as one book by one author, they're all written by God. They're not written by different authors. If you think that, then it takes the edges off of each one, because you have to read Matthew in light of Paul and Paul in light of Matthew. When Matthew is writing, he wasn't planning on you comparing him to Paul and like, you know, doing that, you're planning. He's planning reading Matthew. When Paul was writing before Matthew, he wasn't planning on you comparing his writings to somebody else later. But once you put them in the same canon, then you more or less are forced to interpret them in light of each other and it rubs off most of their differences.

[Megan Lewis]

Thank you very much. This was a very interesting discussion. We're going to take a very quick break, and then we'll be back with Barth's weekly update.

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[Podcast Host/Announcer]

This is Bart's weekly update, where we get to catch up on all the latest about Dr. Earl book releases, speaking engagements, ehrmanblog.org happenings and online course launches.

[Megan Lewis]

Bart, you have a new course coming up. What's the topic?

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, this is going to be a lot of fun. I've talked about Matthew several times, as it turns out, just by serendipity in our discussion. And this is going to be a course on the Gospel of Matthew. It's going to be an eight lecture course, lectures of 40, 50 minutes, something like that. Eight lectures over two days just on the Gospel of Matthew. I'm calling it the genius of what scholars say about our first gospel. First in this sense doesn't mean first chronologically because it probably wasn't our first to be written, but it is the first in the New Testament. Throughout periods of history, it's been the favorite gospel in the New Testament because it has so much material in it that's found only there. For example, the Sermon on the Mount only in Matthew, the Lord's Prayer, the form that people recite in the New Testament, only in Matthew, the Beatitudes, a bunch of the parables, a bunch of episodes that people know about the visit of the wise men to Jesus, only Matthew. And so you get all this material in Matthew, and it's very easy to misread Matthew. Most people don't pay close attention to what he's actually saying, in part for the reason I mentioned earlier that when you put all these books into one canon, you read them all in light of each other. But if you read Matthew just on its own terms, just you want to see what this author has to say, it can be quite startling sometimes, what he's saying. And so there's a lot of stuff in here that I think is misunderstood because they don't understand the historical context. And a lot of it is misunderstood because they're assuming that Matthew's saying the same thing that, say, John is. But I'll be trying to show that that's not the case. So anyway, this will be eight lectures. I'm excited about this one because Matthew, this is really a great gospel and it's very, very interesting in lots of ways people wouldn't expect.

[Megan Lewis]

Could you give us an example of one of the things that people often misunderstand from Matthew?

[Bart Ehrman]

Well, one thing is what I was saying earlier is that people just assume that Matthew thinks that, of course, you don't have to keep the Jewish law. He can't be saying that. But when you start looking at what he says when he talks about the Jewish law, he never gets rid of it. He says, you have to do it and have to do it even more. And so if the Jewish law says, don't murder, Jesus said, but I say to you, don't get angry with somebody else. And so Jesus is not getting rid of the law. He's not saying the law says, don't murder, but I say, go ahead and murder. No, it's not that he intensifies it. He intensifies it so much, you're not even supposed to get angry at somebody. And so then the natural response is, well, he can't mean that. Right? Yeah. Okay, we're going to see whether he means it or not. And if he does mean it, how could he possibly mean it that you can't get angry? Well, he's intensifying the law. He's not getting rid of it. And the way Christians have typically gotten around that is by saying what Jesus is doing is showing that the law is impossible. To keep. So that if it's impossible to keep, you need Jesus, because otherwise you're damned. You know, I can see why people would say that, but it's not what Matthew says. Matthew does not assume it's impossible. It's going to take me a while to develop that. So saying it in, you know, two minutes probably doesn't convince anybody. But if you come to the course, I'm going to be dealing with this kind of thing, trying to understand Matthew on its own terms instead of, you know, putting theological views on him that he didn't have or trying to assume that he means something that some other author of the New Testament means.

[Megan Lewis]

And with an eight lecture course, I suspect you'll have an awful lot more time to actually fully develop that thought. Yeah, so that is the genius of what scholars say about the first gospel. For those who are interested, the live recordings will be taking place on the 3rd and 4th of February. Those are again, eight lectures. The full price is $59.95. That includes attendance of the live lectures, question and answer participation, and then lifetime access to the course after they've been recorded. There is, however, an early bird pricing of $49.95 that's available until January 28th. And on top of that, you can use the MJ podcast code for an additional discount. So if this is something that you're interested in, I recommend purchasing that before January 28th and use your code to get the best price possible. We are going to have a brief break and then Bart's going to be on his soapbox.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

Take cover. Fundamentalist Christians and mythicists. It's time for Bart Gets on His Soapbox, the segment where Bart exposes the belief systems and social constructs that frustrate him most.

[Megan Lewis]

Okay, but what are you on your soapbox about this week?

[Bart Ehrman]

I think, you know, on a number of occasions I've talked about how I get a lot of flack from, especially from evangelicals and fundamentalists. And I understand that because the kinds of things that I say are contrary to what many of them believe. And I get that. I'm also, though, get a lot of flack from people on the other side. And I get a lot of people who comment either, well, either on my blog or in personal emails about how they can't understand why I don't really just go out and try and trash Christianity because in their view, it's just complete nonsense. I understand why people might think that any, any particular religion is nonsense in the technical sense, that it doesn't make sense to them it is nonsense, but usually they mean it's something more derogatory than that. And why don't you just attack it, you know, and just go after it and just say, and come out and say what nonsense it is. The reason, reason I find that difficult is because I think all of us are fundamentally wrong about lots of things. And that in, you know, 100 years, probably many of the things that we just take for granted as being right will be thought of as being nonsense. Moreover, I know. So, you know, the fact that, you know, calling Christianity is nonsense is like, well, what's the point of that? You know, you could call just about anything nonsense because you don't think it makes sense to you. But then people say, yeah, but you know, just literally, logically doesn't make any sense. And the reason I get, I don't like that is because I know people who are way smarter than you and me and the people asking this question who are believing Christians. I know scientists, I know literary scholars, I know historians. Pick your kind of person who are really brilliant who subscribe to the Christian message. And so I just think that it doesn't really help things to call something you disagree with nonsense. It's a non starter. What I prefer to do is to try and talk to people, try and get them to think about what they're thinking and saying. The one kind of Christianity that I really am opposed to is the kind of hardcore fundamentalism that does harm to people because of its stances on, especially on social issues and political issues, where I think they can do a lot of harm and have done a lot of harm and do a lot of harm. Plus they mislead people so they don't have to think. You know, with fundamentalist Christianity, often it's just a matter of accepting some authority's word for it rather than thinking through the issues critically and carefully yourself. So I am against that. I don't think I would call it nonsense though, because it makes a lot of sense. When you're in that closed system, as I was for a long time, fundamentalism makes sense within its own reality. It's not internally incoherent any more than any other system is. And so I wouldn't call it nonsense in that way. You grant the assumptions and it makes a lot of sense. So anyway, I get a little bit upset with people who have a completely dismissive view of people they disagree with religiously. And I know a lot of people think that's weird because people think that I'm dismissive of people who are religious. But I. I don't see it that way myself. When I have Christian students, I just try and get them to be smart about their. Their Christian faith. I don't try to have them get rid of it. And I don't call it nonsense. It's a different sense from the one that I have. And I think my sense is better, of course, otherwise I'd have other sense. I just don't think it's that useful to be belittling people for what they believe rather than trying to engage with them and trying to understand what they think and trying to help them, you know, think something else. Or maybe you yourself should start thinking something. So I had a friend in graduate school who used to say, I believe in the right to convert people, and I believe in the right to be converted. And I think, well, okay, that's pretty good. That's kind of how I think.

[Megan Lewis]

I like that. If you're going to go out and evangelize, then you also need to be prepared to be evangelized, too, and maybe change your mind at some point.

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah.

[Megan Lewis]

Well, thank you for sharing that. Now, before we finish for the week, would you mind just summarizing what we spoke about today?

[Bart Ehrman]

Well, we were talking about this kind of startling phenomenon that most of the New Testament is not written by people who are claimed as the authors. In some instances, there are authors who actually claim to be a famous person when they know full well they're not that person. Whoever wrote second Peter, it almost certainly wasn't Peter. Whoever wrote one Timothy was almost certainly not Paul claiming to be Paul. And so you have that. And that's what modern people would call forgery. When somebody claims to be a famous person, they're not when they're writing. Other books are attributed to people who probably did not write them or almost certainly didn't write them. So, you know, the four Gospels, for example, the Book of Acts, they're claimed for somebody that the person himself doesn't make the claim. So that's a startling phenomenon. And we were talking about why that's significant. Partly because there are, you know, a lot of books in the New Testament that are like that, and partly because some of the things set out in these books have become very important within Christian circles historically and still today. And it's worth knowing who actually said these things.

[Megan Lewis]

Bart, thank you so much. Audience, thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. And if you did, please subscribe to the podcast and make sure you don't miss future episodes. Remember that you can use the code njpodcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.barterman.com. and if you are interested in his Gospel of Matthew courses, you can access [e-mail] Matthew. And again, you can use the code mjpodcast for a discount on that also. So Misquoting Jesus will be back next week, but what are we talking about next time?

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, actually, it relates to my soapbox just now. We're going to be talking about my experience within fundamentalism, but I'm going to be talking about some of the positive sides of that. Being a fundamentalist, actually, in some ways, weirdly, I guess in people's views made a big difference for who I am now and for my life.

[Megan Lewis]

Thank you everybody, and goodbye.

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.