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- [00:00]
Bart Ehrman
Look at him eating whatever he wants, never gaining a pound.
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Megan Lewis
Well, I'm stuck with the boring special and can't lose an ounce.
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Bart Ehrman
How's your lunch man? Amazing. Yours? So good. Oh, I'm so happy for you. Cool buddy.
- [00:14]
Megan Lewis
Weight loss isn't fair, but Mochi Health is the affordable GLP1 source that can fix your frustration with food.
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Bart Ehrman
So same time next week? No. Definitely.
- [00:24]
Megan Lewis
And your friends learn more@joinmochi.com Mochi members have access to licensed physicians and nutritionists. Results may vary. Mary is known in the canonical Gospels as the Virgin Mother of Jesus. But what else did early Christian writings say about her? Dr. Bart Ehrman joins me today to talk about the Proto Gospel of James and what it says about the mother of Jesus. 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. Hey friends, I have a quick reminder for you. Our biggest event of the year. New insights into the New Testament is coming up at the end of this month from September 26th to 28th where our theme is going to be the Historical Jesus. We'll be hearing the latest insights from 13 Jesus scholars including Elaine Pagels, Mark Goodacre, Paula Friedrichson, and of course Bart Ehrman. And for all of September, we've got something special just for Misquoting Jesus listeners. When you grab an elite pass to Nint through the link bart ehrman.com mjconference you'll get our very first merch ever created for the show, a custom misquoting Jesus coffee mug. Look how pretty it is. Now you can't buy this mug on our Etsy store or anywhere else. It's just exclusively available through this promotion. It is our gift to you for joining us at this incredible three day event with the top scholars in the field. All you have to do is sign up for an elite nint pass in September and it is only available when you register through Bart erman.com for forward/mjconference. Thanks and I hope to see you there. Welcome back everybody to Misquoting Jesus. And today we are talking about the Proto Gospel of James. We also have some listeners questions at the end so be sure to stick around for those. But before all of that wonderful stuff, how are you doing today?
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Bart Ehrman
Yeah, I'm doing pretty well today. My classes are going well. I'm enjoying teaching and it's one of those moments where I'm actually getting everything done without with some margin. So that's good. How about you?
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Megan Lewis
That's amazing. I'm very jealous.
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Bart Ehrman
As I got to say, you're busier than I am. How's it going for you?
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Megan Lewis
No good, though. Good. I was mentioning before we started recording, we joined a homeschool co op for my 7 year old. So he's being taught by me in the house, but also having classes with other people and other children. And while other people are teaching him, I get to sit down and do my own research, which doesn't really happen over the summer. Let's be honest. I feel like every academic in the world makes this fantastic list of things that will get done over the summer. And some of them do and most of them don't. So I'm, I'm finally like making inroads onto that particular list. I'm planning a course on Mesopotamian religion. Yes. Which is going to be wonderful. I love religion. It's. It's fascinating. And also a homeschool course on archaeology, which will be interesting. I've not, I've not done that for a while, but I think it'll be fun.
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Bart Ehrman
Yeah, sounds great. Wow. Okay, good.
- [03:50]
Megan Lewis
Yes. All kinds of stuff. Before we get into the proto gospel of James, I have. I don't know, is it an icebreaker? It just like a fun question. Who knows? It's a mystery. But what is your favorite, the favorite popular book that you have written and which book would you recommend for someone to start with of yours?
- [04:07]
Bart Ehrman
Oh, God, yeah. You know, I get asked this sometimes and you know it. And you know, it's, it's like your children, right? Like your books are like.
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Megan Lewis
I love children.
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Bart Ehrman
You love them all, man. And it's like they're different, but you love them all. And, and, and you know, even so. All right, so, you know, my best selling popular book is Misquoting Jesus, which. After which this thing is named. And I think that it's the most surprising of my books. I'm really, you know, I'm really happy with that because it's about this technical area of Greek manuscripts and studying Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. And it's by far the best selling book I have. Who would have thought? But, but, you know, and so to that extent, it, you know, it's my, it's my favorite book. It really kind of made my career in some ways. But in terms of like, the book that I think is maybe the most useful of my books is the one that came after that, which is Jesus interrupted, which is kind of we've talked about before. But it gives kind of a broad sketch of what, what biblical scholars say about the New Testament broadly about what, you know, the historical problems, the critical problems, the, the issue of different points of view, contradictions, authors claiming to be somebody they're not. You know, like it has chapters on, on major issues that critical scholars deal with. And so I think for people who want to kind of get the overview of what's really going on, that's the book. And people want to be kind of shocked into a realization that the Bible ain't what you thought it was. Misquoting Jesus.
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Megan Lewis
Excellent, thank you. Now for the Proto's Gospel of James, starting with the basics. Do we know when and where this was written?
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Bart Ehrman
Yeah, kind of. So the, so the proto go, it's called the first. Let me give you the Proto Gospel. I mean it's called a Proto Gospel because it's actually dealing with events prior to the Gospels, mainly with events prior to the Gospels as we'll talk about. So it's a proto Gospel and that's not the title that the author gave it. We don't know what title the author gave it. What scholars call it the Protevangelium Jacobi because they like using Latin terms when English terms are perfectly fine. But Proto Evangelium Jacobi means the Proto Gospel of James and that's the title that was in the first edition of this thing, published edition in the 16th century. It comes from that. It had been around for a long time and now it seems pretty clear that it was composed sometime probably at the end of the second Christian century. So maybe 80, 90, 100 years after our New Testament Gospels. We, we know that because it is referred to by Origen, a church father from the early third century and there are other references to it by other authors. And so it's probably the late second century or so. And we don't, we don't know where it was written. It was somewhere in the Greek speaking East. This becomes an important feature of it. It's written in Greek and it came to be widely accepted in the Greek part of the empire. The Eastern part of the, I mean, yeah, the eastern part of the Roman Empire and it came to be rejected in the western part, but so somewhere in the Greek east, but we don't know where.
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Megan Lewis
Do we know how it was received by early Christians broadly? Was it popular? Was it like a fringe document?
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Bart Ehrman
Well, you know, the thing that makes it interesting to early Christians is what Makes it interesting to people today. Of course, many of our listeners will not know about it and won't know really what it is. Maybe not even heard about it. But it was, it was very famous throughout the Middle Ages and in some, some respects was as influential on Christian thinking as the New Testament gospels. In some respects because it's really, it's more about Mary, the mother of Jesus and who she was and why she's the, why she was chosen to be the one who would have the son of God and what her life was like, what made her so holy and you know, and all those kinds of issues. And those became very prominent issues. So much so that if you, if you go today, if you go to churches in say in Greece or someplace in the Greek speaking ancient world, like churches from the Middle Ages, there'll be art scenes that are on the walls or up above. And when I take tour, people on tours, they look at them and say, I don't know what that is, what's that about? And I said, well, yeah, that's from the proto Gospel of James because they put the artwork up around the, on this. And so it, so it was, it was, it was, it was very influential. And early on it appears to have been accepted not as a book of scripture, but as an informative account that was accurate about, about Mary and her relationship with Joseph and how she gave birth to Jesus.
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Megan Lewis
So what kinds of things does it tell us about Jesus parents before he was born?
- [09:10]
Bart Ehrman
Well, one of the reasons it's such a fascinating account is because it's, it portrays Jesus parents in a way different from what you would surmise probably from the New Testament and in particular Mary. The focus is on Mary and her birth and her upbringing. And so Mary in this gospel is not like what people might imagine today, which would be someone growing up in a kind of a poor setting up in Nazareth in a small town and living somewhat in poverty and an unknown person from that kind of background. In this text, Mary's father is a guy named Joachim who is the wealthiest man in Israel. He's massively wealthy and lives in Jerusalem and his wife Anna is a very prominent person. And so these are high level elites from royal blood who are in Jerusalem. They've gotten on in years a little bit and they don't have a child. And so they both are very upset about this because they have the idea that people who are righteous have lots of children. And Joakim looks it up and turns out that every righteous person in the Bible has children. And so he's saying, what am I, a sinner? And so he's very upset and he goes off in order to fast for 40 days and 40 nights off in the wilderness and refuses to. So he leaves home to do this, refuses to go near Anna until God will hear his prayer. And meanwhile Anna's back praying that she'll have a child. And so it's one of these things, it's kind of like in these Old Testament stories where you have the woman who for one reason or another cannot get pregnant. And then God works a miracle. And so that's what happens here. So God works a miracle and allows her to be pregnant. It's a little bit, it's ambiguous in this text whether she had gotten pregnant earlier by Joachim, her husband, or whether God miraculously got her pregnant. She's not a virgin. She is definitely not a virgin. They've been trying to have a baby for a very long time. But so that's the basic background, is that the parents of Mary are upper class, wealthy elite folk.
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Megan Lewis
What do we know about Mary's life then? She's born to these incredibly wealthy people. What happens to her? What does she do before she marries Joseph?
- [11:51]
Bart Ehrman
Well, this is the most interesting part of the story in many ways, as we're going to see. There's some very, very interesting, rather strange parts later as well. But in this account, she promises God, Anna the mother promises God that if God will provide her with a child, this child would be dedicated to God, whether it's a boy or a girl, completely dedicated to God. And you don't know in the narrative what that's going to entail until the child's born. And so she becomes pregnant. She gives birth and it's a girl, named her Mary. And at six months, Mary is able to walk. So she walks seven steps as a six month year old and then, and then she turns one, they have a big party and all the, all the wealthy elite come together for a birthday party. Then the next year, second year birthday, big birthday party. And the second year, Joachim says, okay, we need to fulfill our vow. We said that she'd be dedicated to the Lord, so we need to take her to the temple to be raised in the temple. And Anna, the mother doesn't want to do it yet. Anna has, after between six months and this point, Anna had built in Mary's bedroom, made Mary's bedroom a kind of sanctuary, a kind of a holy sanctum. And Mary does not leave the sanctum. She has, she has like women, pure women coming in and raising her, dealing with her. And so she has no outside influences at all, doesn't run around with other kids, doesn't have any outside influences. And now she's 2, but she says, no, not yet. So they wait till she's three years old, and then they take her to the temple, and she's handed over to the priests in the Jerusalem Temple to be raised in the temple. So she has no external, no sinful influences at all. She's in the sanctuary of God. And. And so for her life until. Until she's 12 years old. And, you know, and it's a miraculous thing. She gets fed every night by an angel. An angel comes down from heaven and feeds her. And so she has no contact with human beings other than the. The priests in the temple. And it goes like that until she's 12 years old. And then things are going to have to change.
- [14:09]
Megan Lewis
What happens when she turns 12?
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Bart Ehrman
Well, the text doesn't come out and say it, but what happens is she's going to get her period pret. And the priests are worried. Now, they don't explain why, but they say, you know, we can't keep her here because she's 12 now. And the problem is that in Jewish tradition, there are a number of ways that a person can become impure. Being impure is not a matter of sinning or doing a transgression or doing anything wrong. It's that there are certain things that make somebody impure, and they need a purification ritual. And so, for example, somebody who touches a cadaver, a corpse, is ritually impure and has to go through a ritual before they can go into the temple before God. Or if a man has a semen emission, he's impure. He needs to have a ritual to be purified. If a woman has her period, she becomes ritually impure. So they can't have impurity in the temple. The temple is the house of God. There can't be impurity there. And so they have to figure out what to do with her. So she's 12 years old. What are they going to do with her? They're going to marry her off. And so in the ancient world generally, and in Judaism, women would get married as soon as they were of childbearing age. Men tended to get married later in life when they had resources to support a family. But women would be married 12, 13 or so, 14. And so they need to find a husband for her. And so what the chief priest does is he's instructed to kind of a divine instruction to gather together all the widowers in Israel. And so they send out heralds who call all widowers to come to the temple. And they're supposed to, each of them bring a staff. And so all the widowers come, including a guy named Joseph. And Joseph comes down from Galilee. He's an old man. He's got.
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Megan Lewis
Got.
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Bart Ehrman
He's got grown children, grown boys, men now. And he's there, and they're all there. They brought their staffs, and the priest collects the staffs from all the widowers in Israel, takes them into the temple and says that God will give a sign about whom God has chosen to be the husband of Mary. And so the next day, the people, all the men come back. He hands each one their staff, and they're looking for some kind of sign. The last one to be given a staff is Joseph. And all the other things are just staffs out of Joseph's staff. When he hands him Joseph's staff, a dove comes out of the top of the staff, flies around and lands on Joseph's head.
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Megan Lewis
It's a pretty good sign as far as signs go.
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Bart Ehrman
I think we know what the sign is. Okay, Joseph, you're the guy. And Joseph says, no, I've got grown men. I'll be the laughingstock of this year. Are you kidding me? I'm an old geezer. She's like. She's a. She's not even a teenager yet. What? He says, sorry, God's chosen. You gotta do it. And so. Oh, my God. And so he agrees to be her protector, but he's not going to be. He's not going to marry her. He's not going to. They're not going to have a wedding ceremony, and they're not going to have sex. They're going to be. And so he bring. He brings her. Brings him her to his house, and then he tells her, okay, Mary, I've got a business trip. I'm going now. And he leaves, apparently, for several years. And so he comes back and she's 16. So I don't know how this is supposed to work. But anyway, the point is, you know, he's not even around to have sex with her, so there's no way he's having sex with her. So. So that's. That's how we get Joseph and Mary together. In this particular text, which, you know, in the New Testament, we're not told how they get together. You know, we're just told that they're betrothed. But in the. Here, here you get the backstory, so that's why it's a proto Gospel. It's the backstory.
- [18:01]
Megan Lewis
And what a backstory. Do we know why widowers specifically were called for this selection ceremony?
- [18:10]
Bart Ehrman
I think it's because you didn't want the young men who wanted to have sex and so you got the old geezers who'd already had their fill. So like, you know, they're not. It's kind of a strange idea, but apparently that's the idea and so they're really looking for somebody to mature to protect her. And Joseph, you know, I don't know if the author meant it to seem weird, but he's so Joseph is a carpenter in this account, but he's not like a low class carpenter the way probably somebody in Nazareth would have been at his time. Somebody who would just be the local guy who could fix your gate, you know, or make a door frame for you. Something like that, that you just kind of something he would do part of the time. In this case he actually appears to be like a major business owner and so he has be comparable to like a rich owner of a construction company or something. And he goes off on a building project somewhere else and doesn't come back then for, for several years. Um, and so yeah, so they picked the widowers I think because of that. And he just happens to be the one.
- [19:13]
Megan Lewis
Excellent. Thank you. We're going to take a very brief break. I've got a reminder about our upcoming conference and then a very exciting announcement about our fundraising for charity Water. And after that we will get right back into our conversation. So first, like I said, there's a quick reminder that you only have two more weeks to book your ticket for, for the new Insights into the New Testament conference. We've got 13 world renowned new Testament scholars delivering presentations on the historical Jesus. All of the presentation titles are on the website and they look really, really interesting. I definitely encourage you to go and take a look at those. And remember, as you heard at the onset of this episode, if you sign up for an elite past with the link I'm about to give you, we will also send you a misquoting Jesus mug. Tada. Which very pretty. We will even pay for shipping, which is not bad. And you can sign up for the conference@barturman.com mjconference and I think it was mentioned at the beginning of the episode but the mug is not available elsewhere. You can't like buy it on the Etsy store. It's just, just for people doing this promotion for the conference. Now our major announcement which is very exciting. But before that, did you know that 703 million people lack access to clean water worldwide. Imagine turning on your tap and finding only muddy water, or even worse, absolutely nothing at all. Or walking for hours daily to collect dirty water in heavy jerry cans, often unsafe and carrying diseases. This is the battle that Charity Water is fighting, and we are very proud supporters of their mission. In December 2024, we committed to donating $1 for every course sold and 50 cents for every biblical studies renewal. And I'm very excited to share that as we recorded this episode in early September. Just nine months after announcing our pledge, we've hit a major milestone of $10,000 in funds to be donated to Charity Water. This is a really significant number because, well, first, that's the amount needed to fund a single water project. And they asked us to hold on to the funds until we reached this amount. So now we can finally send in from here. We expect to find out soon, hopefully within a couple of months where in the world our funds will be used and what sort of water project they'll be building. And we'll definitely be keeping you all up to date on that. But for now, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who listens to the show and supports us by signing up for our events and courses. It really does make a difference. Every dollar pledged brings 1,100 liters of clean water to communities in need. On behalf of and on behalf of Bart, myself, and our entire team, we are so grateful for your support. If you would like to learn more about our pledge to Charity Water or donate directly to them, you can go to bartehrman.com charity water. I have to say, $10,000 in nine months is really nothing to be sniffed at. That's fantastic.
- [22:13]
Bart Ehrman
It's good. It's good. Yeah. Good. That's so important. So important. So, so much illness, so much death from just not having clean water that we take for granted. But, yeah, that's a big issue.
- [22:24]
Megan Lewis
Yeah. So thank you all very, very much. And now we will get onto the rest of our interview. As we saw kind of in the first half of this episode, the Prote Gospel of James spends an awful lot of time, gives a lot of space to talking about Mary. Why do scholars think she was a figure of such interest for the writer?
- [22:47]
Bart Ehrman
Ah, yeah, well, you know, yeah, that's a good question. But, you know, as time goes on within the Christian tradition, people, of course, are focusing on God and Christ as the way to God. But then how, you know, Christ coming into the world became like this big mystery. I mean, for Many early Christians, the incarnation was far more important than, than say, Easter, the resurrection, because this is, this is God becoming a human being. And it raised all sorts of questions like, you know, how did it happen? And okay, you got Mary and Joseph, but what, you know, and you have these brief references to, to her in the Gospels about, you know, the angel Gabriel comes to her in Luke and announces that she'll bear a son. And in Matthew, Joseph learns that she's going to bear a son. But like, there's, there's not much information about it and people are just curious, you know, who was she and why is it? Why you know, why her? And as time goes on, of course, you know, if within the Christian tradition the way to get to God is through Christ. Well, how do you get to Christ? If the Son leads you to the Father, who leads you to the Son? And so the Mother becomes important as a way of accessing the Son, who then reaches the Father. And so Mary became very important for liturgical reasons, cultic reasons, reasons of worship. But there wasn't much information about her in the, in the New Testament. And so people wanted to learn more about her. And so stories, stories were circulating.
- [24:21]
Megan Lewis
We'll get to kind of the, the second half of the Gospel in a couple of minutes. But I wanted to ask, and you didn't mention it in, in your summary, but when you read the Gospel, there's an awful lot of weaving and it's, it's this whole thing, thing, Mary's weaving, which was very confusing for me because didn't a lot of women weave? Wasn't that like a common thing to be doing? Why is it so notable that she, she's weaving this stuff? All this stuff.
- [24:50]
Bart Ehrman
Okay, so this is actually part of a much bigger issue that I, I hinted at but didn't say anything about. I probably need to say about now, which is this, part of the reason for this Gospel is that there were accusations being leveled against Jesus and his background by pagans who were opposed to Christianity in the second century. We know about this because we have some pagan writings, but we also have Christian responses to pagan writings, including a very important book by the Church, Father Origen, who wrote a book to counter an attack on Christianity by a Greek philosopher named Celsus, spelled with a C, Celsus. And Celsus charged Jesus with being a poor, low level, you know, bumpkin off from the, from the rural countryside with no, no credentials. His, his father was a poor carpenter who was living a hand to mouth existence. His mother was a poor woman who had to weave in order to like earn a few pennies to, you know, so they could eat. And, and Jesus was himself as lower class. How could this be the Son of God? You know, if you're going to be a son of God coming into the world, you'd be, you know, like the emperor or something. You're not going to be like that. So you have these attacks on Christians family and background and heritage. And so that's why in this Gospel, Mary's parents are actually of royal blood and are the richest human beings in the land. And, but, and, and so it explains a lot of the things that this gospel is doing. It's actually countering attacks by pagan intellectuals against Christianity in a subtle way. Instead of directly attacking, it's just explaining, oh yeah, the wealth and everything. So the thing with the weaving is she's not, she's not weaving clothes as most women would, would have to do to, to clothe their families. What happens is I mentioned that Joseph went away for a long time and the priests in the temple decide that they need a curtain, they need a curtain to separate the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple. So it has to be a very fine piece of work and it has to be done by women who are virgins, who are pure and who aren't going to taint the weaving with any impurity. And so they go out and they find a group of virgins who are highly dedicated to God, including Mary. And they kind of draw lots to decide who's going to weave which parts and what colors. And she gets the purple and the violet, which are like the special colors, like these are royal colors. And so she's responsible for weaving that part of the curtain in the temple. So that's what the weaving is. It's really showing. Look, she was not like a lower class poor people just trying to clothe their family. She actually woven this magnificent structure in the temple along with other women.
- [27:53]
Megan Lewis
Excellent. Thank you. That definitely clears it up for me and leads very nicely into my next question, which is one of virginity and conception. So what does the Proto Gospel of James have to say about the conception of Jesus? What goes on there?
- [28:09]
Bart Ehrman
Okay, so you know, it, it is consistent with the New Testament report that, that Mary, especially in Luke, that Mary, that an angel comes to Mary and announces to her that she's going to conceive. And, and, and so you have that narrative, her confusion and everything. And, and she, she is, she does conceive through the Holy Spirit and Joseph then comes home and she's 16 now as he's praying, pregnant. So he's got the 16 year old pregnant girl, he hasn't touched her, he's been off. And so of course he thinks oh, oh my God, really, why, why did you do this? And he upgrades her and she said, no, I didn't. Well how can you be pregnant? And she says, I don't know how I can be pregnant, but I am. I haven't touched a man though. And it's not clear why she doesn't know how she got pregnant because she's just talked with the angel, you know, before, but, but she doesn't know. So there's a, in the, in the Hebrew Bible there's a passage that, that deals with what to do with somebody, a woman who gets pregnant apart from her, her spouse and they're not married, but they're betrothed and so she can't have sex with other people. And it's a kind of a ritual where it's in Numbers chapter five where a woman has to drink this kind of mixture just. And if, if she really had an affair, then she miscarries. But so both Joseph and Mary in this account drink, go to the temple, they drink this thing, they don't have any side effects. And so they realize that she really is still a virgin. And so Joseph accepts it, the Jewish priests accept it, everybody accepts. Yes, in fact she is completely pure. She not only has never. Well, so in this text she's not only not committed adultery, she's also like, she's never had sex. That's another point, by the way, in which this is subtly refuting charges against Mary in these pagan, pagan intellectuals. Because one of the charges that you find in this writing of Celsus is that yes, Joseph did not get married pregnant, she got pregnant by a Roman soldier who, that she had an affair with. And so this is trying to show. No, no, no, no, that's not how it happened at all. It was God, God got her pregnant.
- [30:28]
Megan Lewis
So does the gospel then moving forward, portray her as being a perpetual virgin?
- [30:35]
Bart Ehrman
Ah, okay, so this is one of the most interesting things of this gospel is that it has a more elaborate view of what it means for Mary to be a virgin in the New Testament. In both Matthew and Luke are the only two books in the New Testament where you get Mary being a virgin. In both of those accounts she conceives as a virgin, so she, she becomes pregnant without having had sex. So that's a virginal conception. This text goes a step farther. In this case she actually gives Birth as a virgin. And you say, what's the difference? It is different. A virginal conception would be that she conceives without sex, but a virginal birth is that if she gives birth and her hymen is still intact, she is still a virgin. And so the way to check with whether a woman has ever had sex would be to check her hymen to see if it's broken or not. And, you know, it's not a perfect test, but that's how they. How they would do it. And so in this gospel, there's a story. There's a story which is probably its most famous and remarkable story about how it shows that, in fact, she wasn't just a virgin when she conceived, she was a virgin afterwards. Words.
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Megan Lewis
Why is that important?
- [32:04]
Bart Ehrman
Right? Why is it important? It's going to be part of a broader picture of, of. Of Mary's purity. And so. So maybe, maybe first I should say why? How do they know? How do they know? So, so. So let me just tell you the narrative because. And then we can explain why. Like it matters. But I mean, the. So they. They've got to go to Bethlehem. So they're Joseph's and Nazareth. They're up in Nazareth. They've got to go to Bethlehem because in this text, everybody from Bethlehem has to go register for a tax or a census. And so Joseph's family's from Bethlehem, so they have to go to Bethlehem. But before they get to Bethlehem, Mary's fully pregnant and she goes into labor. And she says, get me off this donkey. I'm going into labor. And Joseph's like, ah, we're in a wilderness era. What am we going to do? He finds a cave and he. He leads her to a cave and he says, okay, keep calm. I'm going to go find a midwife. So he runs off the baby in.
- [33:00]
Megan Lewis
Somehow just don't have a baby yet.
- [33:03]
Bart Ehrman
I do not. I'll be back as soon as I. So he runs off and it turns out this woman's walking down a hill. And he says, are you a midwife? And she says, yes. Okay, come on. And she. She said, the delivery you got to attend to. Oh, is it your wife? No, it's Mary. She. We're not married. And she's a virgin. She's a virgin. No, I'm telling you, she's a virgin. But she's giving. You gotta come. So they go and they go. They go up to the cave and the cave is shining this bright light. They can't see anything. And it's Bright light. And then as they're looking, the light dissipates, and they can see in the cave. And there's Mary, and there's a baby Jesus who's walking. Who walks over to Mary in order to be nursed. And the midwife says, well, a miracle. So the midwife runs off to find a friend of hers named Salome, who's another midwife. And she says, there's a virgin that just gave birth in a cave. And. And Salome says, no, I don't believe it. No, I'm selling you. It's a miracle. And Salome says, I'm not gonna believe she's a virgin unless I give her an internal exam. And so. Okay. And so they go back to the cave, and the first unnamed midwife says to Mary, okay, Mary, brace yourself. There's some controversy here. And the midwife gives an internal exam and realizes, oh, my God, she is a virgin. And as a result of that, because she doubted, her hand starts catching on fire. And she has to pray to God to heal her, because she didn't mean anything. She just wanted to find out God, God and God. She's instructed by God to pick up the infant, and she does, and her hand is healed. So it's Jesus first miracle. So the point of that is that she wasn't just a virgin when she conceived. She was virgin after she gave birth. All right, you want to know about the significance of that? So within the Christian tradition, the virginity of Mary became a bit of an obsession in some circles. And the idea developed over time that first, the idea in the New Testament, she conceives as a virgin. When you get to the proto Gospel, she's still a virgin after giving birth. There develops the idea that she was a perpetual virgin, that she never had sex to the day of her death. And then. And that's why in some traditions, she herself is taken up to heaven at the end. There are two different traditions about this. But she's taken directly up into heaven because she's sinless. And so she. So this is playing with the idea that in some sense, sex is sinful. Going back to kind of understandings of the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve and sin coming into the world. And so she is sinless not ever having performed sex and had sex. And so. So you have the virginal conception, the virginal birth, and then the perpetual virginity. And the other thing is the Immaculate Conception, which isn't related to any of that. Well, it is related to that, but different.
- [36:19]
Megan Lewis
Excellent. Thank you.
- [36:21]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, but you want to know what the Immaculate Conception is. I do.
- [36:23]
Megan Lewis
That's my next question.
- [36:29]
Bart Ehrman
Right. So later in the tradition, the idea developed that Mary herself was uniquely born, which he is in the proto Gospel. But the uniqueness later develops that she was born without a sin nature, that when Anna and Joachim conceived a child, they had sex and they conceived a child, but that child was protected by God by not being given the sin nature that every other human gets. From later on, it comes to be that the man passes along the sin nature through his semen. And so the child is inherently has a sin nature, but God made it so that Mary did not have a sin nature. That's the Immaculate Conception. The Immaculate Conception is not the virgin birth or the virginal conception, it's the conception of Mary. So she didn't have a sin nature. And the reason she didn't have. Didn't. Couldn't have a sin nature was because if she had a sin nature, she'd pass it on to Jesus. And so she doesn't have a sin nature because of her Immaculate Conception. And so when she gives birth as a virgin, Jesus doesn't have a sin nature either.
- [37:39]
Megan Lewis
I see. Thank you. That does explain the difference quite nicely. Now we're about out of time, but I wanted to make sure we didn't miss anything. Is. Does the Gospel end with Salome, the midnight midwife, picking up Jesus, or there anything else?
- [37:59]
Bart Ehrman
Well, so it kind of goes on from there. And it's. So it has. It's debated whether this is a single unified text or whether there are several texts that have been strung together. Because you have the account of Mary's birth and upbringing, which is a section. Then you have the account of Mary and Joseph and Jesus being born, which is a section. And it's not clear those two tie together very well. And then there's a final section which is after the midwife thing, and they all, you know, she born of a virgin. It shifts then to a completely different thing where Mary gets out is not in the picture at all, but it's about the death of John the Baptist's Father Zacharias, who's the high priest in the temple. And there's like several chapters about how Herod is out to kill the child Jesus, but the. But Mary's relative Elizabeth also has given birth to a child and she's afraid that Herod's going to kill her child. And so she. There's a thing about her escape narrative. And then the father John the Baptist being murdered by Herod's soldiers. So. So it ends with that. And then the very final bit is that the author himself explains that he is James. And it's clearly meant to mean James, the brother of Jesus. And part of the re. Part of the reason I said earlier that this gospel was successful in the eastern part of the empire, but not in the western part of the empire. But partly it has to do with how James is related to Jesus in
- [39:37]
Megan Lewis
this text because he's a stepbrother or I guess adopted brother.
- [39:43]
Bart Ehrman
So Joe. Okay, so I said earlier, Joseph was a, he's a widower, but he has grown sons. James is one of those sons. And so that would make, that would make Jesus and James and the other brothers stepbrothers. So what's going on here is the author's trying to explain how it is Jesus could have brothers. Because in the New Testament, in Mark 6 John 7, you have brothers named and James is one of them. He has four brothers named and several sisters who are unnamed in Mark. And the apostle Paul knows James, the brother of Jesus. And so Jesus is known to have brothers. But how could he have brothers? You know, and so because the doctrine developed later on the third, fourth centuries, that Mary remained a virgin her entire life, as I said, so how could they have brothers? And so this early idea, the early idea was that Joseph was an old man who had. Had grown children. So they're stepbrothers, they're not actual brothers. That view ended up getting into trouble in the 4th century because there were church fathers who were ascetics who insisted that Christians lead holy saintly lives, including not having sex. Having sex was being connected with sin and saints then were separated from sex. But then who are these brothers? And well, okay, Mary never had sex. Yeah. But if Joseph had children from a previous marriage, he's also a saint, he couldn't have had sex. So this idea that James is a stepbrother is the reason that the text ended up not succeeding in the West. And what happens is people like Jerome, the church father Jerome ended up arguing James and the other are not Jesus stepbrothers, they're his cousins. Joseph also never had sex.
- [41:37]
Megan Lewis
Excellent.
- [41:38]
Bart Ehrman
And so, so there it is. So that's why. So this gospel was very, is widely read in the eastern part, Greek speaking part of the empire. It was not read in the western part of the empire, but other gospels kind of like it took its place.
- [41:53]
Megan Lewis
Excellent. Thank you very much, Bart. That is about all we have time for. We're going to take a very quick break and we'll be back soon. So Barthes can answer some listeners questions. How well do we really know the gospels that shaped Christianity? The New Testament books have made Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the cornerstones of our understanding of Jesus. But how reliable are they as historical documents in the unknown? Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? Join Bible scholar Dr. Bart Ehrman as he takes you on an illuminating journey through these ancient texts. Across eight captivating lectures, you'll explore the origins, authorship, and historical accuracy of the Gospels in an online course. Are these accounts based on eyewitness testimony, or are they a mix of history, myth, and legend? What do historians see that most readers miss? This course is an opportunity to dive deep into the stories that have defined a faith, questioning their origins and understanding their impact. Ready to uncover the truth behind the Gospels? Visit barterman.com gospels to learn more or sign up today. Use discount code MJ Podcast at checkout for a special offer. All right, we have, as always, some excellent listeners questions. Bart, are you ready?
- [43:18]
Bart Ehrman
Yes. I think we'll see.
- [43:21]
Megan Lewis
First up, your explanation of the disciples seeing the risen Jesus is that 1 in 8 people see someone who's dead is quite a common phenomenon. What are your thoughts about Thomas and the others touching him and Jesus sharing food with them in a physical, bodily way? Do you think this is just apocryphal?
- [43:39]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, I do think it's apocryphal. I mean, I'm, when I, so, you know, I. It's a little bit more complicated than, you know, one out of eight people see a deceased loved one. That's absolutely part of the picture, an important part of the picture. People see things and they, people see people who aren't there. And it's not a sign of any kind of mental disorder or, you know, or anything like that. It just, it happens. And so the idea that you had people who said they saw Jesus is not. Doesn't require a miracle. I think people probably did think they saw Jesus. And if you're a Christian, you'd say, well, they did see Jesus. If you're not, you'd say, well, you know, people see things and they, they mistaken identities or they saw something that they thought was Jesus. And my whole point is it's, that's not that weird really. It happens all the, all the time. What about these stories about them touching Jesus? You know, in these, in these one out of eight things, this is some, this is when somebody sees like a deceased loved one, like your grandmother shows up in your, in your bedroom, you know, three weeks after her funeral. And in a number of those, they hug and they talk and they confuse. And so it's. It's not just seeing somebody in. In these experiences. Often it is touching one another. I think that these stories, though, of Thomas touching him and Jesus eating fish and that you get in the Gospels, I think these are meant to show that he really was raised from the dead, that this is not some kind of phantasm. He wasn't a ghost. He was actually. His body came back to life. And so I think these stories are meant to counter claims that he wasn't really bodily raised from the dead, but like, if some kind of spiritual resurrection. So I think those are later developments. I don't think that's how. I don't think they were original to the story.
- [45:24]
Megan Lewis
Excellent. Thank you. Next question is about Paul and the role of women in the church. In episodes about Paul's views on women, you point out how First Corinthians 11 contradicts the interpolated view that women should not speak in church. But how should passages from that chapter such as Christ is the head of every man and the man is the head of the woman, and neither was man created for the sake of woman, but woman for the sake of man be understood in relation to the question of the subordination of women and misogyny?
- [45:55]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, I know it's a big question. I do. In my undergraduate classes for years, I would have a debate where students would debate the question, were Paul's views of women oppressive? And this chapter 11 of First Corinthians is a real problem because he absolutely says those things, that man is the head of the woman, as Christ is the head of man and God is the head of Christ. And so it's definitely a hierarchy. One way some people try to deal with that, so that women aren't being suppressed, oppressed by. By men, is to point out that Christ is not being oppressed by God, that God's the head of Christ, but it's not that he's oppressing him, it's the. It's just the sequence. It's the order of the universe, basically. And so it definitely. Paul thought that women were in some sense subordinate to men, but it didn't mean that they couldn't be active in the churches and be leaders in the churches and to speak in the churches and to, you know, he names one woman who's an apostle, another who's a deacon, and women are. So women are church leaders, but when it comes to the household relationships, he has a pretty traditional view that, you know, the man's the head of the household.
- [47:13]
Megan Lewis
Next question is about the growth of Judaism within the ancient world. You have often talked about the growth of Christianity. Short answer, slow exponential growth. What can we say to explain the growth of Judaism from at most some tens of thousands at the beginning of the Babylonian exile to being not only dominant in Judea and the Galilee, but also a diaspora known and present in many parts of the Roman Empire, with, for example, a large part of the population in Alexandria and Paul finding synagogues wherever he went.
- [47:46]
Bart Ehrman
Right. I don't think that the growth of Judaism was extraordinary within terms of population growth. I'm not an expert on, on ancient Judaism demographics, but the reality is that Jews grew mainly by having large families. And they, they were not, they did not grow by converting people. That's the big difference. Some people would convert to Judaism, but it was pretty rare. And it was not an issue for Jews were not evangelistic the way Christians were, in part for a couple reasons. One is Jews felt that this, you know, they were the chosen people because of their descent from Abraham. It was an ethnicity that was carried on through birth. And so you were born into the Jewish tradition. So if other people wanted to join the tradition, they could in various ways, they, they could absolutely convert. But not a lot of, a lot of Gentiles converted. And so that's different from Christianity, which maintained that people were right with God not because of their, their lineage or because of their ethnicity or their culture. They were right with God because of their faith in Christ and their baptism. So, so it's a whole, it's a different phenomenon. But Judaism did grow. I mean, by the time of, of early Christianity, the normal estimates are that in the population of about 60 million in the Roman Empire, maybe 7% or so were Jewish. So 4% of the empire. But that's, you know, it didn't grow beyond, didn't grow much more beyond that at all. It's just that, you know, if you've got, if you got that many Jews, if you got, you know, 4 million Jews, they've got to be someplace. And so they happen to be spread throughout.
- [49:28]
Megan Lewis
Final question for today on Jesus message. Jesus clearly preached a message that was sincerely opposed to the normal thinking of the day. The idea that we should be servants and not to be served. How do you think that Jesus reached these conclusions about how humanity should treat each other given the time he grew up in. And are there other contemporary figures that preach the same message?
- [49:53]
Bart Ehrman
So this is the topic of this book that I've got coming out in March. The idea that loving your Neighbor that Jesus inherited from the Jewish tradition. It's in Leviticus 19:18, love your neighbor as yourself, that Jesus universalized it into Love anybody who is a human, and especially those who are in need. His basis for that would have been prophets of Scripture and the writings of scripture that emphasize helping out those in need. But he does universalize it in ways that you don't find very often, if at all, in the Hebrew Bible. I think what I argue in my book is the reason he universalizes it is partly because of his apocalyptic understanding of God and the world where he believed that there's going to be a day of judgment coming and the righteous would be rewarded, the unrighteous would be punished, and it didn't matter whether you were Jew or Gentile, if you had done what God wanted you to do, then you would enter into this future kingdom. You get that for example, in the parable, the sheep and the goats, where the sheep who are brought into the kingdom, they're surprised because Jesus says, you did all these things for me. And they said, we don't even know you. What do you mean we did these things for you? They're Gentiles, but they've lived lives of love towards one another. And that's what the God of Israel wants, and so he rewards them. And so since the salvation is going to be worldwide, it's not going to just involve Jews. That means that your love of neighbor is not just love of the tribe, you know, the love of the family, the love of the nation, it's love of everybody. And so he universalizes it. And that's, that's how we acquire our ethics today. And we're talking about this water project we're having. This money is going to people we don't know. You know, we. They're not, they're not our neighbors or our friends or our families. And you know that probably a lot of these people we wouldn't like if we knew them. I mean, I don't. We know. We don't know that we have, but we help them. Why? Because they're in need. And that is a major emphasis of Jesus. And I think it's because Christianity took over the world that this teaching of Jesus has now become common sense for many of us today, even those people who aren't Christian. This is just like how our culture now works.
- [52:13]
Megan Lewis
Thank you very much, audience, for sending in your questions. Bart, thank you for your answers. Now, before we listen. Before we listen. No, before we finish for the week, could you please just remind us what we spoke about today?
- [52:26]
Bart Ehrman
Well, we're talking about this fascinating gospel that did not make it into the New Testament, the Proto Gospel of James, which is about what happens mainly before Jesus is born with Mary, why Mary was chosen, and who was she, and why was she so righteous and sinless. And so this story is about Mary. And so a fascinating book that was probably the most influential gospel in the history of Christianity outside of the canonical four audience.
- [52:53]
Megan Lewis
Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don't miss future episodes. Remember that you can use the code mjpodcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.bartehrman.com. and if you are interested in attending the New Insights into the New Testament Conference, you can go to bartehrman.com mjconference for more information and tickets. Misquoting Jesus will be back next week, but what are we going to be talking about next time?
- [53:24]
Bart Ehrman
Next time we're switching gears rather significantly to ask why would an atheist want to study the Bible? Or maybe why should atheists study the Bible? That that's the topic.
- [53:37]
Megan Lewis
Join us then. Thank you all and goodbye. This has been an episode of misconduct quoting 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.