← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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B
Welcome to Ms. Quoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. The only show where a six time New York Times best selling author and world renowned Bible scholar uncovers the many fascinating little known facts about the New Testament, the historical Jesus and the rise of Christianity. I'm your host Megan Lewis. Let's begin. Hello everyone and welcome back to Misquoting Jesus. The last time Bart and I recorded we spoke about Jesus mother Mary. But what about Joseph? What role does he play in the story of Jesus birth and what other stories about him developed in Christianity's early days? Do the non canonical gospels tell us anything that the New Testament doesn't? And why does he have such a secondary role in Christianity? Before we get to that though, Bart, hello. How are you doing today?
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A
I'm doing well. So while we're recording this, I'm looking forward to Christmas when it's playing. We've just finished Christmas December 26th is for me is always kind of like somewhere between kind of anti climax letdown and a relief. It's funny how we a lot rides on holidays and I think it's one reason that so many people find Christmas a difficult holiday instead of a time of joy is because there's so much pressure put on the day that, that it can lead to very difficult things. And obviously families get together sometimes when they don't want to, but in my case we've spent Christmas for many years at Sarah's mom's house in Woodbridge, which is in Suffolk in England. You know, it's always great, we really enjoy it, but it can be fraught for some people. How about you? You looking forward to the day? I am, I am.
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B
I enjoy Christmas Day very much and I really enjoy the day after Christmas in the uk. As you will know, Bart is Boxing Day and it's our family kind of a continuation of Christmas. We kind of get up late and have a nice breakfast together. We will usually have like old family friends coming over or at least we did when I was a child. Obviously I don't live at home with my parents anymore, but I have very, very fond memories of Boxing Day and trying to Recreate that for our children. Just having a nice relaxed day that they can play with their presence and have good food and spend time together.
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A
And most Americans don't know about Boxing Day and those who hear it think that there's some kind of athletic contest going on that was traditionally give me. I've heard a number of stories about this but just, I think I've got the right one, but I probably don't that certain people who were the servants would be given box lunches that day. Is that right?
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B
Yeah. So it's very, very classist. But it was the day where servants typically would be given the day off and be given a box of food and maybe gifts to take home and enjoy with their families because obviously they've spent Christmas Day preparing Christmas for the family that they work for. So. So Boxing Day is, is the day where those who are in service to others get their day off. It doesn't, I was going to say doesn't really happen anymore, but I'm sure for families with servants maybe it is still a thing. I don't know. We don't, we don't have, I don't
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A
know too many families are servants in England anymore. But yeah, it was, it was the thing.
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B
But yeah, it's a day off, it's a holiday still in the uk but today we are talking about Joseph and you of course just did a course on the 10th of December, a two part course talking about this. So if you enjoy this and you would like more information and more details, then you can go and watch the course. The details are@bartehrman.com Joseph and you can use MJ Podcast for your discount code, but on not quite such a detailed level. We're going to be chatting about him today and I wanted to start by asking if all of the gospels talk about Joseph, Mary's husband or if he only appears in a couple of them.
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A
Yeah, I mean he appears in one way or another. He's not named in all the gospels, but he is referenced in all four gospels and consistently named Joseph. The reason that matters, it wouldn't matter for normal Bible readers because they just, well, the Bible says his name is Joseph. His name is Joseph.
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B
Right.
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A
But for historical scholars who are trying to figure out like the past and how you use the Bible as a historical source, it really helps if you have various independent sources giving the same datum. And so if you had like three gospels that said his name was Joseph and the other saying it was Samuel, then, then you might wonder and you think, well that seems Unlikely, right? Well, no, it's not unlikely because the names of Jesus disciples vary. The Gospels all say he had 12, but what were their names? So you can get varies of names, but in this case Joseph is always the name and it looks like the father was Joseph.
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B
Do historians assume that he actually existed? And if they do, then what can we say about the historical figure?
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A
I think historians assume that in one way or another Jesus father existed. I think since he's named Joseph and there's no like alternative, there's no reason to think it wasn't Joseph. You know, a lot of times when you get a, like a datum about Jesus in the Gospels, it's one you might question because it seems like it's fulfilling some kind of like purpose. Like, it's like a storyteller might want to insist, you know, that he walked on water, you know, because that would, that would highlight something about him that would be significant for the storyteller. But it doesn't really look like the name Joseph is going to give a lot of purchase. It was a popular name at the time, as was Jesus and James. And a lot of these other people have well known names. And so I think scholars assume there was a Joseph, that he was the father of Jesus. And there are other things in the Gospels that are fairly consistently reported about Joseph that I think can give us some information about him.
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B
So both Matthew and Luke give a genealogy of Joseph, but they are not the same thing. So how do we explain those differences? Obviously the name is the same, so that's fine. But the different genealogies must be doing something different.
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A
The genealogies are really interesting. I'm going to be, I deal with this at greater length in my, in that course that I did and in other places I've talked about it and many people might know this, but if you, if you actually just look at the two genealogies, they're different genealogies. And Matthew's genealogy, it actually starts with the father of the Jews and it goes from father and son. So Abraham was the father of Isaac is the father of Jacob and so forth. And you get on down until you get to another person named Jacob who's the father of Joseph. You know, you get the lineage going down to Joseph and then the lineage breaks because in Matthew, Jesus is not Joseph's son. And so the genealogy is tracing it all the way down to Joseph. And then Jesus is born to Mary. And I think the assumption there in Matthew is maybe Joseph adopts Jesus or something. It doesn't say. But in some way. It's a little bit odd, though, because it's giving a genealogy. It's trying to show that Jesus is related to both King David and to Abraham and all these other Jewish folk in between. But it's showing that he's related to people that he's not related to. In other words, he's not in the genealogical line. So it's a little bit strange, but, you know, what are you going to do? I mean, his mother's a virgin. So Matthew has that. Luke also has a genealogy of Jesus, but there instead of going from father to son, it goes from son to father. And so it traces it the other way. And so Jesus is supposedly the son of Joseph, and Joseph is the son of so and so and so and so and so and so. And it goes all the way back. And in this case, it goes beyond Abraham. He goes back to Adam, Adam and Eve. And so it's a really big genealogy. But there again, Jesus isn't related to it. Both of them give a genealogy of Joseph. Many people have tried to reconcile their differences, but the reality is they both go back to Joseph explicitly in order to show Jesus genealogical line. The problem is that Joseph has a different father in the two genealogies and a different grandfather and a different great grandfather. They're different. It's a different line all the way back to King David. One of the accounts traces the Davidic line through King Solomon, David's son, Solomon, and the other traces it through Nathan, his other son, one of his other sons. And so they're different genealogies. And so you wonder why you have two genealogies, neither of which relates to Jesus and that are different. And ultimately, I think they're both trying to say that Jesus is related to the Davidic line and that qualifies him then to be the son of David, which qualifies him to be the Messiah.
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B
Is there anything specific in the differences that speak to the purposes of Matthew and Luke in writing the names that they did? Obviously, they're both indicating relationships to very important figures in Jewish history. King David, Adam. Why would they have chosen different lines of descent?
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A
So the different lines of descent go from David down, and I'm not sure that there's any particular reason that one of them chose David's son, Solomon, and the other chose David's son. I think the normal assumption is that they're not making these genealogies up. They've inherited genealogies from the tradition and that any tradition that wants to trace Jesus back to David has to have some kind of genealogy. And there are lots of options because David had several sons. The people who are making up this genealogy are simply coming up with names. In both genealogies, most of the names are previous to David, and those are coming from the Old Testament, especially The book of 1 Chronicles. You have nine chapters of genealogy. But after David, they're kind of on their own. And so they trace it back to a different son, I don't think, for any particular reason. But then they just have to come up with a bunch of names. And let me say, people listening to this, and a lot of students tell me that, you know, they've always heard that Jews kept, you know, genealogical records of their ancestry. I think the reason people think that is because of First Chronicles and because of Matthew and Luke, in reality, Jews were not keeping their genealogical lines any more than we are. I mean, today you can go to ancestors.com or something and get it, but you can't really get the names. But you can do research and get the names. But most Jews in the Jesus day had no idea what their great grandfather's name was. And they're like, it happen. It's certainly not the great, great, great grandfather. And so these are made up genealogies in order to show Jesus relationship, in Matthew's case to Abraham, the father of the Jews, and in Luke's case to Adam, the father of the human race. And they're both trying to say something by that. But as you said, they're both genealogies of Joseph, not genealogies of Jesus.
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B
Why would they include genealogies of Joseph if he is not in either of these books related to Jesus? Does that suggest that maybe they think he was kind of his father? What's going on there?
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A
That's a very good point. And I'm going to be pursuing. I pursue that in, in my course, because if Jesus was the son of Joseph, then it would make sense to have these genealogies. But Matthew and Luke both think that he wasn't the son of Joseph. They both have to have the genealogy because they're trying to show that he goes back to David, son of David, and it goes back, you know, to Abraham, father of Jews, or going back to Adam, the father of the human race. So he's either, you know, he's the savior of the Jews in Matthew, he's the savior of Gentiles as well in Luke. And so that's why it goes back to Adam. They can't trace the genealogy of Mary because in the ancient world, women didn't have, you know, the genealogical lines, it's patrilinear, it goes through the father. So they can't do a genealogy of Mary. I'll say that one way people try to reconcile the difference between these two is by saying that Luke's genealogy is Mary's genealogy and that Matthew's is Joseph's genealogy. Which kind of makes sense until you look at the genealogies and it's quite clear they are both Joseph's genealogy. They want to trace these genealogical lines because they want to show Jesus could be the savior of the human race. He could be the savior, the son of David, and he is for them. But it creates a problem because they also want to say that he's born of a virgin. So you've got Joseph's genealogical line unrelated. And it could be that originally these were genealogical lines of Joseph, the father of Jesus.
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B
So is there anything in the New Testament that suggests that Joseph was actually viewed as Jesus real father before the virgin birth became mainstream and widespread?
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A
Yeah, so this is what my course is. I spent two lectures on this, so I'm going to give the 32nd version here. It is interesting not only about the genealogy, but also that there are places where Joseph is called Jesus Father in the story of Jesus in the temple as a 12 year old, he's left behind by the caravan. Three days later. They search around, they find him in the temple and his mother finds him in the temple speaking to the Jewish teachers. And she's very upset and she says, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking all over for you. Okay, well that's kind of interesting. In the Gospel of John, Joseph is mentioned twice and is called the father of Jesus. He's the father. One of the really interesting stories is in Mark's Gospel. For one thing, there's no virgin birth. Another thing is already in chapter three, you do have an account of Jesus mother. Jesus mother and his brothers come to take him out of the public view because he's gathering these crowds and they think he's doing strange things and they think he's gone out of his mind. And that's what it says. His mother and his brothers came to take him out of the public because they thought that he ecstatic is the term, but he's standing outside of him. So it means they think he's gone out of his mind. That's strange. If his mother knew that she was a virgin and that he was the son of God, she would expect him to be doing miracles and to have crowds around him.
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B
Somewhat odd behavior. Yeah.
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A
But in Mark, there's no virgin birth story. And so the assumption there seems to be that he has brothers, he has sisters, and that his mother is still alive at that point, but there's no reference to his father there. But the assumption is that she doesn't know about the virgin birth because otherwise she wouldn't think he's crazy.
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B
So we don't have anything else really about Joseph in the New Testament. Do you see anything developing? Are there stories that develop after the New Testament?
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A
There are some. Joseph ends up not being the main figure in apocryphal stories about Jesus. There are some stories that are pretty interesting. In a podcast a few weeks ago, Christopher Freilingus and I were talking about the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which is an account of Jesus activities as a young boy between the years 5 and 12. And Joseph appears in a number of those stories as kind of the disciplinarian in the family. He's portrayed as a carpenter in the family, as he is in the New Testament as well. It's called a carpenter, although that's a term we should talk about in a second. And he, on several occasions he upbraids Jesus for doing things that are mischievous and not right. Early on, Jesus is by a stream and he's taking some of the mud and he's making sparrows, makes 12 sparrows out of this mud. And Jewish man walks by and really it's the day of the Sabbath and Jesus breaking the Sabbath. So he goes off and tells Jo of your sons breaking the Sabbath and Satan, Joseph comes, what are you doing? You're not supposed to be working on the Sabbath. And so you have that kind of episode and where Jesus has this confrontation with him. And later Joseph decides that Jesus needs to have some learning because obviously that would help. And so he sends them off to teachers. And Joseph is involved in some of those stories that are very. They're kind of interesting anecdotes. And so you sometimes do get apocryphal accounts of him.
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B
Are there any other stories about Joseph that give us more information?
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A
There's one account that is not well known even among people who study the non canonical gospels. It's not very well known because it wasn't popular through the Middle Ages or down till today. It's not in Greek or Latin. It's a book called the History of Joseph the Carpenter. And it's an apocryphal story that's found in only three ancient manuscripts. One is in Arabic and two of them are in Coptic, the ancient Egyptian language. It's an account of Jesus talking to his apostles about his father. And it's a lengthy account where he describes a couple things, including his own birth and what happened at his birth with Joseph and Mary. And he's describing this in the first person. So the book is written in the third person about something Jesus is saying. So he's not writing this, he's preaching this thing to his disciples. And he describes Joseph and Mary and how he himself was born. And it goes from that to the death of Joseph. And he gives a detailed description of Joseph's death. And in this account, Joseph lives to be 111 years old. And Jesus is at his deathbed and he won't promise his father eternal life at the time. And he ends up promising that he will protect him. And. And after Joseph dies, he preserves the body from deterioration. And so it's Jesus own account of his father. So this is the history of Joseph the carpenter. If anyone's interested in this, they can find it in this book that my colleague Zlakoplasia and I produced called the Other Gospels. And Zoco did a translation of this out of the Coptic. So it's not very widely known. It's a pretty interesting story.
- [18:30]
B
You said a couple of answers ago that we should talk about Joseph as a carpenter. So what's going on with that?
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A
Yeah, okay. So, you know, people tend to think that Jesus was a carpenter, and they don't realize that there's only one verse in the New Testament that says that, and it may not say that. And so it's in Mark, chapter six. In Mark, chapter six, Jesus goes to his hometown, to Nazareth, and he starts teaching in the synagogue. And people in the synagogue are kind of looking around saying, where do you get all this wisdom from? These are people who grew up with. And they're kind of wondering what. How do you get so smart? And they say, isn't this the carpenter? And isn't his. Like, isn't his mother here and her brothers and sisters and names the brothers? And so where to get all this wisdom from? All right, so a couple things to be said. So he's called. Jesus is called a carpenter there. But there's a textual variant. In other words, there are some manuscripts that read it differently. In some manuscripts, it doesn't say that he's. That he's the carpenter, but that he's the son of the carpenter. And that's what you also find in the Gospel of Matthew, that he's the son of the carpenter. And so it's not clear whether Mark originally called Jesus a carpenter or called his father a carpenter. Matthew calls his father a carpenter. And it would make sense if that was the case, that his eldest son would be a carpenter. But it's not clear that the word means carpenter. So the word Mark uses is tectone and it doesn't necessarily mean carpenter. A tectone is somebody who works with their hands, somebody who makes things. And so it's a word that could be used for say somebody who carves stone, a stone smith or who works with metal. A metalsmith. A blacksmith could be somebody who works with wood, which would be a carpenter. If it does refer to somebody who works with wood, it's not referring to somebody who makes fine cabinetry in that context. It would be somebody who's making like gates and yokes and kind of rough hewn things. So whether Jesus is called the Tectone or the Father, in either case, in Matthew it's the Father. If Joseph is a Tectone, he may be a carpenter. The other thing about that though is to point out that in Roman elite authors, elite authors among the Romans who talk about various kinds of professions, Tectone is understood to be a very lower class kind of profession. It's not a respectable job for the elite. And it'd be like, I guess it'd be kind of like a Harvard professor saying something about the construction workers outside his window. Know, be more like a construction worker kind of level. So we're not talking about like a, a businessman making, making fine cabinets. That makes sense that Joseph would have been, been doing something like that.
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B
So how would that inform our understanding of Jesus? Kind of socio economical background and, and his class status and the opportunities that he would have had based on that lifestyle?
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A
Yeah, the tradition consistently throughout the New Testament is that Jesus comes from Nazareth. There wasn't much to Nazareth at the time. Archaeologists have dug it up, they know what it was like and there wasn't much there. There were no public buildings. There were rough hewn houses made out of stone. They probably used straw or cow manure to insulate them. Maybe like one room shacks that everybody would live and sleep in. And if Joseph was a carpenter, it would mean they would have had, probably would have had a kind of a farm plot to grow their own food. And then on a kind of a barter system, he would have worked for somebody in exchange for some, you know, eggs or something, I don't know, kind of a barter thing. But this is a very low socioeconomic class. People like that would have been uneducated, they would never have gone to school. They would be living a hand to mouth existence very close to the poverty line or probably in poverty. And if Jesus had a large family as Mark indicates, mark names four brothers and sisters, plural. So even though they're two or three sisters you have plus Jesus, you'd have eight kids. So it's a family of 10. And they're basically trying to survive. And so Joseph probably would mainly be raising vegetables and things and doing exchange work, working with wood.
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B
Why don't we see Joseph really coming into Jesus life after the birth narratives take place?
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A
It's a much debated question. Because in the gospels, Mary shows up. So after the birth narratives, after chapters one and two, Mary shows up on occasions all the way to his death. In the Gospel of John, she shows up in his public ministry in Mark chapter six, and in Mark chapter three. And so Mary's around, but Joseph isn't named. The usual explanation for this is that Joseph had died by the time Jesus was engaged in his public ministry. We don't know when that would have been. Life expectancy was not good generally for people at this time, especially for day laborers and lower class folk in rural areas, work to survive was hard. There wasn't a lot of food and there just weren't opportunities for longevity. And so life expectancy would be short. And typically men would marry when they were older than women. Women were normally married in this context when they started menstruating because then they could have children. And the idea is that you need to have a lot of children. You especially want male children because they can help more around the farm and do things to earn some kind of revenue. And as I said, I mean, it looks like according to mark, there'd be five boys and at least two girls. And so it's a family of nine or 10 probably, you know, so that's kind of the situation they're in. And if Joseph was older when he married Mary, then, you know, he would have died sooner. Men tend to die sooner anyway. So likely if Jesus starts his ministry sometimes as a young adult, then Joseph was probably dead already. This is part of what lies behind the idea that Joseph was an old man, is that, you know, it's more typical that way. The older men would marry.
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B
Would this explain why Jesus entrusts Mary to John when he's on the cross? Because she doesn't have a husband to take care of her?
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A
Yeah, you know, in, in this context, throughout the Roman world generally, but also in Judaism, women were understood to not just be kind of helped out by the males in their life, but more or less to belong to the man. And so a girl who's born, when a child is born, it's a girl, she's the father's property, and he determines what she can and cannot do. He calls the shots. He does for the boys too. But it's especially true for the women because as the women get older and older, the teenagers and into their twenties, the father is in charge of this person and has the say over her life. And when the woman gets married, if she gets married, say at 13 or 14, then the father hands her over to the husband who now is her master and often just called master. So the males are very important in the lives of the females because females don't have lives outside their home. So in the Gospel of John, when Jesus is being crucified, he, I guess if Joseph had died, Jesus as the oldest son would have care of Mary because she needs to have a male in charge. And then Jesus is dying, and so he hands her off to this disciple of his at the foot of the cross and says, behold your son. And so the son is now to be the son of this mother and he's to take care of her.
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B
So final question before we start to wrap up for today. Mary, I'd said in the beginning, is definitely, I think, the more famous of Jesus mortal parents is did Joseph have really any importance in early Christianity or is this more of a shift away from him that we see in more modern times?
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A
No, I think in early Christianity he was important as well. Not as important as Mary. Mary's especially important because she's the virgin mother. So she's the one responsible for Jesus birth. Joseph had nothing to do with it. And in our earliest traditions, in Matthew and Luke, when Joseph finds out that she's pregnant, he's not just surprised, he's kind of, you know, he's really upset. He tries to divorce her and then he finds out from God that it's okay that she's been impregnated by the Holy Spirit. So he doesn't really play a large role in Jesus birth. He doesn't play a large role in his ministry. He doesn't play any role in his ministry. Whereas Mary is the virgin, and so she's the one that most attention is paid to. But over time, Joseph continues to have kind of secondary importance. He shows up in these apocryphal gospels sometimes and people start thinking about him and you start getting stories about him in something like the Proto Gospel of James, where he's an important figure. In this other gospel, this proto Gospel of James, he played more of a role. And over time people started saying that, well, since he's so closely involved with Jesus, he too was a saint, and so he takes on sainthood. And that means, as we said in a previous episode, that means that since he's a saint, he must have been celibate. And if he was celibate, then you have to explain who these sons of Joseph are or these brothers of Jesus are. And so it leads to all sorts of speculation. But in terms of kind of Christian piety, Joseph is nowhere near as important figure as Mary, who becomes called the mother of God. By the 5th century, that becomes a title. It becomes a controversial title for Mary being called the mother of God. But if she gives birth to Jesus and Jesus is God, she's the mother of God. And Joseph doesn't inherit titles like that or take on the kind of elevated status that Mary does, even though he continues to be an important figure. The irony of all that is, is that possibly historically, he was a far more important figure. Because if it's right, that the New Testament suggests in places that he was literally Jesus Father, well, that makes him a pretty important person for the history of the universe.
- [29:11]
B
Absolutely. I have to say, talking about this puts me in mind of the vicar of Dibley. I don't know if you're familiar, it's a TV show. Was a TV show the late 90s, early 2000s, following a vicar, a priest in the UK, in the Anglican Church in a small rural parish. And at one of the Christmas specials, they put on a nativity play and choose a local couple to be Mary and Joseph. And the woman in question is very pregnant and does actually go on to give birth during their nativity play. And she's. She's not the sharpest tool in the box. And then does go on to ask, ask the vicar if her child is Jesus, given that she gave birth during the Nativity. But there's a beautiful scene during rehearsals where the husband is instructed to act as if his wife had. Had become pregnant by someone else. And they have like an honest to God fight about it. And it's. It's a hilarious, hilarious show. I love Vicar of Dibley, but yes, this kind of called that all to mind. Sorry, little bit of attention.
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A
No, that's good, that's good. Yeah, put it on the list. Okay, good.
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B
We are going to take a very quick break and then we'll be back with Barth's Weekly Update have you ever wondered where the New Testament Gospels really came from? Were the books actually written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? As everyone seems to say, the answers to these questions may surprise you. In fact, what you discover may challenge everything you thought you knew about the Gospels. If you're ready to learn the historical truth, then you won't want to Ms. Bart Ehrman's free webinar. Did Matthew, Mark, Luke and John actually write Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? In this 50 minute talk with Q and A, you'll learn answers to some of the most intriguing questions surrounding the Gospel's authorship. Such why did early Christians say the Gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? If they're anonymous, what's the best evidence that the Gospels were written by the apostles? Were the apostles of Jesus educated well enough to write books? And last, if the apostles did not write the Gospels, who did? And where did they get their information? Don't miss your chance to uncover the truth behind the Gospels. Sign up now for free lifetime access to Did Matthew, Mark, Luke and John actually write? Write Matthew, Mark, Luke and john@barterman.com Authors thank you.
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A
This is bart's Weekly Update, where we get to catch up on all the latest about Dr. Ehrman's book releases, speaking engagements, ehrmanblog.org happenings, and online course launches.
- [31:59]
B
Bart, what is going on in your worlds this week?
- [32:02]
A
Well, so when, when this is playing will be December 26th, as we've indicated, and our class is finished up before Christmas. Now I have a research leave for this semester, and so this is the beginning of my research leave and I'm really excited about it because it's very, very hard for academics to write books while they're teaching. The thing is, it's not just teaching. University teaching is very different from teaching, say, a high school or an elementary school or middle school. And those teachers, man, they're teaching all the time and your hat's off to them. Just unbelievable what our children teachers do for them. It's fantastic. And university teaching is very different, especially at a research university like I'm at, where in addition to being in the classroom, you're supervising students and you're advising students and you're helping PhD students and master's students and you've got all sorts of administrative responsibilities and meetings and oh my God, it's like, it's a lot like, it's just the teaching in the classroom is the tip of the iceberg. And so but when you have an academic leave, as I'm having this Term, all of that gets knocked off. And so you actually are free to do your research, which is one of the reasons you're hired. I'll be working on this next book I'm dealing with on Jesus ethics and interested in trying to finish the research soon and maybe. Maybe get the thing written before I have to go back and teach. That's the goal. It's very exciting. Very exciting time.
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B
That sounds wonderful. I am very jealous. I would like someone to give me some research leave. It's not going to happen because that involves small children being not small children, I suspect.
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A
I was going to say that I would authorize you to take six months off, but it won't do any good.
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B
I appreciate the authorization, though.
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A
The kids will not authorize you. Yeah, okay, okay. It'll happen. It'll happen.
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B
It will, it will. But no, that sounds wonderful. And I'm looking forward to talking more about the book that you're working on. I know we've spoken about it in bits and pieces here and there, but I'd like to.
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A
Well, it's changed significantly since we. Oh, since we spoke, like. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So.
- [34:10]
B
Oh, that's exciting.
- [34:11]
A
Well, I think it's changed. It's changed my head. I'm not sure if my agent or my publisher is going to agree that it's changed, but I think it has.
- [34:21]
B
Okay. Well, we have another round of Outsmart Bart. It's been a few weeks, so we have two different audience members have sent in a selection of three questions to try and stump Bart.
- [34:34]
A
Dr. Ehrman has written six New York Times best selling books and holds a PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary. It's not often you'll see him made a fool, but he. It doesn't hurt to try. It's time for Outsmart Bart.
- [34:54]
B
Okay. Are you ready?
- [34:56]
A
I hope.
- [34:58]
B
Question 1. In the martyrdom of Polycarp, how does the Smyrnian bishop request to be fixed to the pyre?
- [35:05]
A
The martyrdom of Polycarp is one of the writings of the Apostolic Fathers. Polycarp is a bishop of the city of Smyrna and is an important figure historically. He's an important figure in early second century Christianity. We know more about him than almost any other Christian at the time. In this account, he faces his martyrdom. And the martyrdom account is filled with legendary details, in part showing how closely his death reflects the death of Jesus. And the account claims to be written by an eyewitness, but many of us think that in fact, it's not. It was written some decades later. He was probably martyred. Martyrdom was maybe martyred in the 150s, like 155 or something like that. But the account claims to be an eyewitness account, but it almost certainly was not. I think in the account, Polycarp, they're ready to, like, tie him to the stake, and he says, leave me unbound. He's trying to show that he has the fortitude to suffer this death. Being burned to death without flinching because Christ is on his side. That's what happens. What happens next is really interesting because the flames don't touch his body, they envelop his body, and then instead of smelling like reeking flesh, like burning flesh, a smell of perfume comes out of it. And they decide they can't kill him that way. So finally, an executioner goes up and stabs him in the side and he bleeds so much it puts out the fire. And a dove comes out of his side and flies up to heaven. Whoa. But he doesn't want to be fixed to this day, because he wants to show his fortitude.
- [36:44]
B
Fantastic. Thank you. Second question. In his letter to the Smyrnian Congregation, the Apostolic Father Ignatius of Antioch calls certain opponents those who hold heretical opinions about the grace of Jesus Christ. What are the heretical opinions?
- [37:02]
A
So let me see. I think in the Smyrnians, the heretical opinions are docetic understanding of Jesus, that he was divine but not human.
- [37:10]
B
The answer given by the question is that they failed to acknowledge that the Eucharist was the flesh of Christ.
- [37:17]
A
That's right.
- [37:17]
B
But I don't know the source material well enough.
- [37:19]
A
Yeah, yeah, no, that's right. The docetic view. So that's spelled D O C E T I C. Docetic comes from the Greek word doce, which means to seem or to appear. And Docetus said that Jesus wasn't really a flesh and blood human being. He's so divine that he can't be human. And one of the implications of that is that when you take the Eucharist, you're not consuming the real flesh and blood of Jesus because he didn't have flesh and blood. So this is one of the earliest accounts we have of somebody who's attacking Docetus, Ignatius. So this is the letters of part of Ignatius, the writings of Ignatius, who, like Polycarp, is one of the writers in the Apostolic Fathers. And Ignatius wrote a letter to the Smyrnians when Polycarp was the bishop there, and he wrote a separate letter to Polycarp. And we have both of those letters These letters are sent around the year 110. Later, Polycarp himself writes a letter that we have, and then we have the martyrdom of Polycarp. That's why I said that we have so much about Polycarp as opposed to most other people at the time. So this is a letter written about 1:10. But it's one of the very earliest attempts to show that Jesus had to be a flesh and blood human being.
- [38:31]
B
Thank you. I'm going to say that it's two out of two. In how many books of the New Testament is Pilate mentioned?
- [38:39]
A
Oh, he's definitely mentioned in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Yeah, no, this is a really good question because I should definitely know the answer to this. And I think he's mentioned in Acts and it seems like he might be mentioned in something like one Timothy. I'm going to say six.
- [38:58]
B
Yeah. First Timothy six, 13.
- [39:00]
A
Oh, my God.
- [39:02]
B
Okay, congratulations.
- [39:05]
A
Okay. Cancel my neurologist appointment.
- [39:09]
B
I knew the answers to none of those questions, so.
- [39:11]
A
Okay. All right.
- [39:13]
B
Definitely doing better than I would have done. Thank you, everybody for sending in your questions. They are, as always, fascinating and challenging. Before we finish for the week, Bart, would you mind just summarizing what we talked about?
- [39:25]
A
We were talking about Joseph in the New Testament, the husband of Mary to whom Jesus is born, which is how Matthew puts it, because Matthew thinks that Jesus was born of the virgin, that Joseph didn't get Mary pregnant. And Luke says the same thing, that Matthew and Luke both have the virgin birth. They tell the stories in different ways. Joseph is a figure in those accounts, and he's named in those accounts. He's also referred to in Mark and in the Gospel of John, but otherwise he's not a major figure in the New Testament. He's not a major figure actually in the New Testament outside of the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke. And so we were talking about what we can say about this figure, Joseph. Is it possible that he actually was the father of Jesus? And apart from that, what can we say about him? I mean, if he was, was he a carpenter? And what would that entail at that time? And what would his relationship to Mary have been as a married couple and as a father of his family? And so basically we're exploring what Joseph. Historically, Joseph would be a very important figure because whether he's actually Jesus father or his stepfather, it's a significant role. And so people don't know much about him. And we talked also about some of the apocryphal tales told about him.
- [40:36]
B
Audience, thank you all for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don't miss future episodes. Remember, you can use the code njpodcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.bartmond. that code is also good if you want to hear more about today's topic. You can get access to Bart's two part course at www.bartehrman.com Joseph misquoting Jesus will be back next week, but what are we talking about next time?
- [41:05]
A
Next time we're talking about whether the disciple John John the son of Zebedee, could have written the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John is attributed to John the disciple, and we're going to be talking about whether there's actual evidence in the gospel or outside the gospel, whether that could be historically right or not.
- [41:23]
B
Thank you so much. Thank you all for listening 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 Erman's YouTube channel so you don't miss out. From Bart Herman and myself, Megan Lewis, thank you for joining us.