← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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A
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B
Hello everyone and welcome back to Misquoting Jesus. Christmas is almost here and today we're taking you back to the world. Just before Jesus was born, what was happening politically, culturally and religiously in first century Palestine? And how does that knowledge help us understand Jesus better? To help us explore the fascinating world of one B.C. we're joined by Dr. Jodi Magnus, a world renowned expert in ancient Judaism and archaeology.
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A
Hello.
- [00:56]
B
Hi Jody. Everybody, stay tuned for an enlightening conversation about the historical backdrop of the Christmas story. 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 everybody, as always, I'm Megan Lewis and as we record this, Bart is on a cruise in Antarctica. It's all right for some, I'm not jealous, even a little bit. His absence is definitely your gain though as I'm thrilled to introduce Dr. Jodi Magnus, an archaeologist and scholar who is an expert on the history and archeology of ancient Judaism, including the very world of first century Palestine. Jodi, thank you for joining us today.
- [01:52]
A
Thank you for having me.
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B
Absolutely. Can you help us before we really get into it, paint the picture of what first century Palestine was like politically in the years leading up to Jesus birth. Who was in charge and how did the Roman occupation shape life in the region?
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A
Well, that's a really big question.
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B
I bet you could fill an entire lecture series with that.
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A
Actually you could. So I'll try and encapsulate it for you, which is that I'm going to use B, C and AD just because most listeners will be more comfortable with that. It's not a theological statement on my part. We can talk about the terminology later. Anyway, until the year 63 BC. Oh, here we go again with terminology. So I'm going to use the term Ancient Palestine. You could also call this territory the Land of Israel. You could call it Judea, at least at a certain point in time. I'm going to use the term Palestine in the British Mandatory sense to refer to the territory of modern day State of Israel, the Palestinian territories and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which means that I'm using the term Palestine in the sort of British Mandatory sense of the word in the territory that the British Mandate after World War I defined as Palestine. So just to kind of get that out of the way, before 63 B.C. this geographical region, which I'm now referring to as Ancient Palestine, was under the rule of an independent Jewish dynasty that was descended from the Maccabees, the same group that we celebrate with the modern holiday of Hanukkah. And then in 63 BC, the Romans came in and took over the territory. So they took over the Hasmonean kingdom and they ruled this territory in various ways. Now the territory that had been the Hasmonean kingdom becomes part of a larger Roman province called Syria. The province of Syria. But the actual territory that had been ruled by the Hasmoneans, which is just a part of the Roman province of Syria, was then administered by the Romans in various ways. And eventually, and this is of course, what's interesting and relevant to your listeners, in 40 BC, the Romans appointed a man named Herod, who we sometimes refer to as Herod the Great, to rule the territory of what they come to call Judea, which is sort of the Jewish parts of the territory, mostly as client king on their behalf. And so from 40 BC till 4 BC in the year 4 BC Herod died, this territory was part of the kingdom of Herod the Great. And then when Herod died in 4 BC, his kingdom was split among three of his sons. And by the way, all of his sons were named Herod. I always like to tell my students, do you know what George Foreman's sons are named? And. Yeah, they're all named George. Well, Herod's sons were all named Herod. Herod's kingdom was divided among three of his sons, all of whom were named Herod. And it sort of divided up between the three of them. Each of the three parts of the kingdom then have their own history afterwards, because the three sons ruled for various periods of time. And what happened when each of them either died or was removed from rule differs, Right? So then things kind of get complicated after 4 BC so one of the sons, Herod Archelaus, ruled the Jewish heart of the kingdom, the territory of around Jerusalem. Samaria, Idumea, kind of the real central Jewish area and Samaritan area. And he only ruled for 10 years. He was removed by the Roman after 10 years and then was replaced by eventually by these sort of low ranking Roman governors who are titled prefects and later titled procurators. Another son, Herod Antipas, who got the territory of Galilee and Perea. Perea is on the eastern side of the Jordan river and the Dead Sea. He ruled until 39 BC, when he was removed from rule by the Romans. And the third son, Herod Philip, who got the far northern territories that like the area of the Golan today, all the way up in the north, territories extending into Syria, that was largely a non Jewish area, mostly Gentile. He ruled until his death in 34, 3334. And his territory then was placed under the jurisdiction of the province of Syria, which was administered by a high ranking Roman official titled Legate. So it gets kind of complicated. It gets even more complicated, by the way, because eventually, by the time we get to around 37, 39 AD, we get one of Herod the Great's successors, a grandson of his whose name is Herod Agrippa I, who was actually a Jewish prince on his mother's side of the family. His grandmother had been one of Herod's wives, had been a Hasmonean princess. Right. She'd been one of the descendants of the Maccabees. So he then becomes a ruler of some of the territories that Herod's sons had been given. And eventually all of those territories were united under his rule. So there's like a kind of a little bit of a resurgence or rebirth of the kingdom of Herod the Great under the rule of his grandson, Herod Agrippa I, until he died in the year 44 AD. And after he died, then what the Romans do is they basically go back and they place mostly the Jewish parts of the territory under the administration of these kind of low ranking governors who now have the title of the procurator. So all of this to say the question is a big question. It's very complicated. It's hard to kind of encapsulate, in brief, but to show that politically this is what's going on. The Romans administered the different areas within their empire, which was a huge empire, in different ways. And within this, the territory that we're interested in was also divided up and administered in different ways. And with changing administrations or changing forms of administration over the course of time.
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B
Excellent. Thank you so much. For people who might not Be familiar with the concept. A client kingdom is still under the overall control of the Romans, but the local authority, the local administration would have been one of the multiple Herod's kings.
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A
That's right. And I should also mention before I go on, that none of Herod's sons inherited the title King. Herod was the one who had the title king, but his sons, the three sons who got the different parts of his former kingdom, did not get that title. They had a lesser title. So there's that. But you're absolutely right, as client king of Rome, he was client king of Rome. Right. So Herod was given the title King by the Romans and therefore he was responsible to them. Right. He was beholden to them, even though in many ways he acted with a great deal of autonomy.
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B
Right.
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A
But he still was beholden to the Romans.
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B
Okay, so that gives us a very thorough kind of top down overview of the political situation. If we dig into the daily life of people in first century Palestine, what kinds of work were they doing? What was like family like life like, and how did people typically spend their days?
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A
I would just start out by mentioning that in that world in general, I mean, it was just the ancient Mediterranean world and near east in general, the majority of the population, so maybe like 80% or maybe even more of the population is what we would today consider to be poor. And you know, then you had this kind of upper echelon with a real, real top elite, like maybe the 1% at the top. And then somewhere in between those, you had a relatively small segment of society who were more prosperous, you know, merchants or whatever, but not like the super elite at the very top. So in a way it's almost like an inversion of what we're used to today in the sense that the vast majority of the population was poor, rather than, let's say, what we would consider to be middle class. There was no middle class in that, you know, in that world, but that's the way that society worked. Now within that poorer segment of society, it's also important for me to qualify that although these people were poor by standards that we would consider today, they weren't necessarily completely impoverished or destitute. So the majority of them worked, had maybe village houses or you know, some kind of houses or dwellings, but they lived just above subsistence level.
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B
Right.
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A
So there were people who were completely destitute. But most of the people who we would consider poor were poor by today's standards, but they were poor because they, they didn't have a cushion, they didn't have an economic cushion. And that means if you're living just above subsistence level, that a bad year, whether it's your crops fail or, you know, you don't have work or whatever, basically you don't have disposable income is what it is, or a lot of disposable income. And so you're kind of living just above subsistence level. Now, what did most of those people do? So, you know, some of them were, again, talking about that large segment of the population. Some of them were farmers, especially if they lived out in the countryside. Some of them worked in crafts. Some of them were fishermen. If we think about the Gospel accounts, right, you had people who were merchants or tradesmen. You know, there was a diversity of economic activities in that world, just as there are today. And one of the things that people have to realize about Herod that's so important, Herod, the great Herod, is kind of infamous in history because of the massacre, the story of the massacre of the innocents in Matthew that I know we're going to return to. So he kind of gets this lasting infamy from that story. But in archaeological circles, Herod is famous because he's the single greatest builder in the history of the country. No individual left a lasting imprint on the landscape of the country, more of an imprint than Herod did. So he had building activities all over his kingdom. And by the way, he also sponsored buildings outside of his kingdom and inside of his kingdom. You know, I mentioned, for example, his reconstruction of the second temple in Jerusalem, which was a massive project. The harbor at Caesarea Maritima with also the city founded there. So he had massive building projects. And these building projects were economic stimulants. I mean, we think we talk today about infrastructure, the infrastructure stimulus to the economy. So that's. That's exactly what Herod's building projects did. People sometimes think, oh, these were built with slaves. It's not actually the case. These were skilled laborers, skilled workmen who were employed in these projects. So the projects actually created. Generated jobs, created employment, put money into people's pockets that they could spend and help support them, and then also created an influx of money, whether it's through the harbor at Caesarea now you have all sorts of produce going in and out with the ships there, or whether it's all the pilgrims who are going to Jerusalem to the temple and spending money on food and lodging and whatever else, and paying for sacrificial animals. So this was a huge economic stimulus. And if we think about the first century and especially the reign of Herod the Great. And those building projects were so huge, we know this for sure. For example, we have archeological evidence of this with the temple in Jerusalem, that these projects continued for decades, even long after the death of Herod. So if we're thinking about what this picture looks like, you have to think about how Herod's building projects were a crucial part of the economic picture.
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B
That gives us a fantastic picture of, I think, largely what a lot of the men were doing. How about women? I assume they probably weren't employed on these building projects. What would their day to day have looked like?
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A
Yeah, you know, it's a little bit harder to say. I mean, typically in these traditional households, women would not necessarily have been employed outside of the house. Now, I want to qualify that and say that depending on the particular family and the economic status of the family, that presumably women were working outside the house. They may have been, you know, attending to as vendors, you know, selling fruits and, you know, other goods and things like that. I mean, I'm not sure women were not necessarily employed in building activities. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't. I mean, there are actually parts of the world today where you can go and you can see women in India today, for example, you can see women employed at construction sites. Of course, they're all the, you know, the lower caste, right, the lower class, but they're employed in building sites. And I worked in Cyprus on archaeological excavations where women, you know, local women were employed as laborers on the excavations. So I'm, you know, I'm not actually sure that we can blanket rule out the possibility that women were not participating in those sorts of activities, especially again, women in the lower social levels, you know, or the economic levels. But, you know, traditionally women's activities were mostly limited to the area of the household, taking care of and raising children, cooking, spinning wool and making clothing and you know, stuff like that. So for sure, you know, those sorts of activities were traditionally female or women activities, but I'm not sure that we have to limit it to that. And then if you get to the very upper echelons, you know, women sometimes did play roles at the uppermost echelons. And here I think of the last Hasmonean ruler, Salome, you know, Shlom Tiana Malka, Salome Alexandra, who was a Hasmonean queen and actually is the only female to have served the only woman to have served as queen in the Hasmonean dynasty. So, although, yes, we can make some, you know, broad generalizations about the kind of activities or work that women had I think we have to look at it as women, having had the possibility that women had roles in other aspects of daily life.
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B
Excellent, thank you. Now, if you're living paycheck to paycheck, as it were, that obviously is not going to free up a lot of time or resources for things like education. Were most people literates? Do they have, like, very basic understanding of literacy or any kind of education, or was it really something that was reserved for those upper echelon individuals?
- [15:39]
A
Right, so this again is one of those questions that scholars disagree about, like so much else. And if you ask different scholars, you get different answers. Right? So what percentage, let's say, of the population was, I don't know, educated or literate? And here we have to distinguish between functional literacy and real literacy, too, and also have to distinguish with languages. So the common everyday language that was spoken among Jews in the country at this point was Aramaic, which is a language that is related to and similar to Hebrew, but different. I always like to compare it to like Italian and Spanish or maybe Portuguese and Spanish. It's like that they're related languages, and if you know one, you can recognize some parts of the other, but it's not exactly the same language. The everyday language of the Jews in this country at this time was Aramaic, but also Greek was used, and Greek was used particularly among the upper classes because it was the language of administration in the Roman East. So when you see Greek being used, it usually is an indicator of somebody who's coming from an elite kind of a context. So if we talk about literacy, we have to first of all deal with the languages, but also then. So how many people actually were multilingual or spoke more than just, let's say, the, the basic Aramaic, and then how many actually could read? And if we're talking about reading, you know, what are they reading? So, for example, if you're going to be reading or studying, let's say if we talk about the Dead Sea Scrolls, which we haven't gotten to, but if we talk about the Dead Sea Scrolls. So most of the Dead Sea Scrolls are in Hebrew, and a large proportion, a significant proportion of them are copies of books of the Hebrew Bible. So, you know, if we think about these collections of literature, at least, you know, Jewish religious works at this time, most of them are going to be in Hebrew. There are some in Aramaic, but mostly in Hebrew. So then you're having a whole other level of difficulty because you not only have to be able to read, but you have to also be able to read Hebrew. And somebody who's an Aramaic speaker isn't necessarily. Even if they could recognize the letters, isn't necessarily going to be able to read and understand Hebrew any more than if, you know, I only know English. I can open up something in Spanish, but I can't understand what it says even if I recognize the letters. The literacy question is a complicated question, right? It's almost impossible to answer because we don't have written records that tell us this. My personal opinion is that real literacy, what we would consider to be real literacy, was very limited. And the reason is because, you know, like you just said in your question, you had to have the spare time, the means, the disposable income, to be able to devote your time to studying, to learn how to read and also learn maybe that language if it's Hebrew, right? And that's a luxury that I think most of the population did not have. And, you know, again, to make an assumption, but I think it's a pretty good assumption what real literacy there was was probably limited almost entirely to men rather than to women, you know, so I think we're. We're basically talking about people who were among the upper echelons of society who would have been literate in the way. The ways that we consider this goes to one of the big debates about Jesus, by the way, and how literate was he, his knowledge of the Torah, right. The five books of Moses, was that based on only having it read orally, or was he able to actually read? And so that's a whole nother level of question that I can't answer. My opinion is that probably he was like most other Jews, would have learned more orally, having it read to him and been taught, you know, or heard it read in, let's say, a quote, unquote, synagogue setting, you know, something like that, rather than sitting and reading this, by the way. I know I'm going on. But it also, you know, raises the whole question of the Dead Sea scrolls found at Qumran, where the remains of over a thousand different scrolls have been found. And there's again, a huge difference of opinion among scholars about what that says regarding the level of literacy within the Qumran community or the Essene sect, you know, whatever you want to call them. So does that mean that most of the people who joined the sect were literate and able to actually read those scrolls, most of which, again, are in Hebrew? Or was it a relatively small number of members who then would read these aloud to other members? And again, like in a synagogue setting, you have this read to you. And then people give their explanations and interpretations, so we don't really know. My opinion, again, is that the true literacy was relatively limited and mainly to what we would consider to be the upper classes.
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B
Thank you so much. I want to take a very brief break from our discussion to tell people about a special opportunity to learn even more from you. Earlier in the year, Jodi created a fantastic four lecture course called Archeology in the Time of How Recent Discoveries have Enlightened the Gospels. Could you just take a brief couple of minutes and just tell us about that course, Jodi?
- [20:37]
A
Yeah, thank you for asking. I did four lectures for that course. Two of them focus on Jerusalem and two of them are not on Jerusalem and basically focusing on the time of Jesus. One is a lecture about Jerusalem in the time of Jesus, and we go through some of the sites that are associated with the final days and hours of Jesus in Jerusalem and also look at the Temple and the Temple Mount as rebuilt by Herod. There's the sort of second part of the Jerusalem thing is about the death and burials of Jesus and his brother James and what literary and archaeological evidence we have for that. And looking at that evidence within the context of how Jews in that period disposed of their dead. And then there's a lecture on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls. So could go on and on about that. And then there's a lecture about Galilee in the time of Jesus and what evidence do we have for what basically Jewish villages looked like in Galilee at this time? You know, you're asking questions about what was kind of the daily life like of people, what was their setting? That lecture kind of goes into that,
- [21:47]
B
and it's definitely a great place to go if this kind of topic is interesting to you. If you're enjoying the conversation we're having, I am cramming a lot of questions into what will probably end up being an hour. This is again, for our long lectures.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So definitely a good place for a lot more detail. Sorry.
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A
I'll just add that the advantage of the lectures, of course, is that they're illustrated with slides. So it helps, you know, looking at the slides, at the visuals, to be able to understand better what it is that we're talking about.
- [22:15]
B
Absolutely. Especially when you're talking about archaeological excavations and artifacts and all that kind of thing. If people are interested, you can learn more@bartehrman.com TimeOfJesus and you can use the usual podcast code, that's MJ podcast, for a special discount. So absolutely everyone take A look at that. And now we're going to get back into our absolute myriad of questions. So before we had that brief break, you gave a fantastic, very concise description of what the world looked like kind of in the time leading up to Jesus birth. So if we go to one year before he was born, there's no Christianity. I'm assuming most people in the region were probably Jewish. How would their religious beliefs have shaped their daily lives?
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A
Yeah, let me just say, by the way, that, you know, in my first year seminar, which is for first year undergraduate students, one of the assignments that I give the students is to write an essay arguing whether Jesus was Christian or not. So there is no Christianity in 1 BC but one could reasonably argue that even at the time of the death of Jesus, there was not yet Christianity. But that's a whole other conversation. Right, okay. How would Judaism have shaped their lives? Well, you know, so this goes to the definition of a Jew who is a Jew in antiquity, not the question of who is a Jew today, which is a little bit different. But 2,000 years ago, the definition of a Jew is somebody who is from Judea. Judea being roughly the geographical region around Jerusalem.
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B
Right.
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A
That territory, it originally was the Kingdom of Judah, the biblical Kingdom of Judah before 586 BC. And by the time we get to the time of Jesus, its territory is now called Judea. And the inhabitants of that territory are Judeans. And of course, just like we're in America and we're Americans. Okay? So by definition, if you were from Judea, you were a Judean. Now, in Greek, the word Judean is Judeos, which is also the same word for Jew. Today we actually distinguish between the geographical territory that somebody comes from a certain place, Judea, So they're Judean versus the religion of that person, which today we call a Jew. Right. So we make that distinction in English, but there was no distinction 2000 years ago in Greek. In Greek, if you were a Judean, you were also a Jew. It combines both the geographical and the religious aspects. And this is because in antiquity, pretty much every people, every territory had their own religious traditions, their own native gods, who they worshiped. So the God of the Judeans, Jews, the Judeoi, was the God of Israel. And so by definition, if you were from Judea, you were expected to worship. By definition, you worship the God of Israel as your national God, and therefore lived according to the laws that he had given his people in the five books of Moses. And so by definition, as a Judean Jew, therefore, observing those laws would have shaped your everyday life. Now, laws, by the way, are, of course, something that are subject to interpretation. So the interesting thing is how 2,000 years ago, the people of Judea, these Judean Jews, interpreted the laws in the five books of Moses and observed those laws. So over time, right, Interpretations of laws change and times change. So basically, as a Judean, then the observance of these laws would have affected pretty much every aspect of their everyday life, because the laws in the five books of Moses pretty much affect every aspect of everyday life, whether it's your diet, whether it's your clothing, whether it's what kind of sacrifices you offer to the God of Israel and how you worship the God of Israel. So pretty much every aspect of everyday life, in some ways, some aspects of everyday life were just like everybody else in the ancient world. But there were things that distinguished that the God of Israel expected his people to do and according to those laws. And so, for example, let's take the food, you know, the dietary restrictions, right? So there are restrictions on what you eat. So Jews, of course, Jews, Judeans, did not eat pork. There are also other things, by the way, that they didn't eat. They would not wear clothing that had two different materials in the same piece of clothing. You couldn't, like, put cotton and wool in, you know, sew them together or wear them together or knit them together. So, you know, there were things that distinguished the Judeans from everybody else. But, you know, all the other ancient peoples had their own customs and their own gods and their own expectations. You know, broadly speaking, they're part of a very big picture and in many ways pretty much similar to everybody else around them, but distinguished in certain aspects by the observance of those laws. You know, I know that you were going to ask this, but so I'll just get to this. So, of course, laws can be interpreted and are interpreted differently. We can see that in our own country now with the Supreme Court changing the interpretation of laws, past laws, you know, so laws can get changed, can get reinterpreted over time. And one of the things that happens in the time of Jesus, around the time of Jesus already, beginning before, is that you begin to get the development of different groups in Jewish society who disagree on certain points of interpretation and practice of laws. And that leads to the formation of groups that we refer to as sects. And mostly people are familiar with the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Essenes, and I would add Jesus movement to that. They're all Judean Jewish. They're all Groups that worship the God of Israel and go to the temple to participate in the sacrificial cult. Although the Essenes eventually, apparently not. But anyway, they all recognize that as something that you have to do. And what distinguishes them, however, are disagreements about the interpretation and practice of specific points of law. And although we tend to think of these groups as being religious sects, they're not only they were also involved in politics. And we know that is especially true of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, who sided with different political parties within Judea. So anyway, that is all to say, therefore, that, yes, obviously observing the laws in the five books of Moses and the Torah would have affected pretty much every aspect of daily life. But I also don't want to exaggerate and make it seem like these people were so different from everybody else around them. In fact, the ancient Jews were far more like everybody else around them than they were different from them.
- [28:53]
B
Thank you very much. Now, you mentioned the temple in Jerusalem, obviously playing a central role in Jewish life. Could you explain a little bit about how the sacrificial system worked and how often people would have gone to the temple?
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A
Right. In antiquity, people in general in the ancient world did not really think that the gods dwelled among them. I mean, the gods live among you. They lived in different places. So celestial deities, like the God of Israel, dwelled up in the heavens. You think of the Olympian deities in Greece, on top of Mount Olympus, Some gods dwelled underground. They're chthonic deities. And if you wanted to interact with those gods or with a God, you had to entice them to come to you from wherever it was that they were. And the way to do that was to offer them something good, meaning usually a sacrifice. And the best kind of thing that you could offer them was meat. Because, you know, meat was rarely consumed in antiquity. It was very precious, very expensive. So if you want to lure. Attract the God to come to you, offer them a nice. Tell my students a nice barbecue and, you know, and bring them to you. And then once you have the God there, once you've enticed the God to come to you by burning a nice piece of chunk of meat on an altar, you build a nice house for the God next to the altar, which is a temple, and you keep the God there by continuing to feed the God and do other good things, bathe the God, clothe them in nice clothing, and so on and so forth. That's the way the Jerusalem temple operated, just like all other ancient temples operated. And one of the things, by the way, that distinguishes ancient Judaism from other ancient religions is that most Jews came to believe, generally came to be believed, that there could be only one temple dedicated to the God of Israel, and that had to be in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount. I'm hesitating because that wasn't actually true. There were other temples dedicated to the God of Israel outside of Jerusalem. But basically, okay, we'll go with that view. And that means that if you want to worship the God of Israel and you want to interact with him, you really have no alternative but to go to Jerusalem and participate in the sacrifices, offer, you know, sacrifices to the God of Israel there. And so that would have been the focal point for Jews in that period. Now, how often Jews would have gone, most Jews would have gone to the temple. That's again, very hard to say. Presumably, Jews within a certain geographical region sent first fruits and tithes to the Jerusalem Temple, you know, agricultural produce and stuff like that, as required by biblical law. There was also a Temple tax that adult men paid to the temple to help pay for the sacrifices offered there and for the maintenance of the temple. So there's participation, even if it's indirectly. There were. There are, in Judaism, three pilgrimage holidays to the Jerusalem Temple when pilgrims were expected to go to Jerusalem, to the temple. But that doesn't mean that every Jew went to the temple on every one of those holidays. It's sort of like the way the. I think a little bit maybe analogous to the Hajj in Islam today, you know, going to Mecca, where that's not a pilgrimage that necessarily every person makes, certainly not every year and not even necessarily in their lifetime. So how many Jews went, you know, how often they went to the temple? I'm pretty sure many did not go to the temple necessarily every year. And so, you know, the alternative. We're not even an alternative, but part of the whole system then, is that even if you aren't going to the temple, you are still offering sacrifices through, you know, the Temple tax. You're still giving your tithes and supporting the temple cult.
- [32:27]
B
Thank you. So we've got a good idea of the political landscape, the kind of daily life of people and now their religious activities. If we look at the Gospels, it seems like there's a heightened expectation for the coming of the Messiah. When Jesus is appearing on the scene, does it feel like that is an accurate historical depiction? And if it is, how would that have kind of shaped the worlds into which Jesus was born and then his eventual identification as the Messiah?
- [32:56]
A
Right. Let me Clarify before I answer that and say that in Judaism in this period, the Messiah was not divine. The Messiah was not a divine figure, was not a God. The Messiah was a king, well, typically understood to be a king who would be descended from David, from the line of David. That wasn't necessarily always the case, but comes to be considered that, and it's only beginning with Jesus really, that we see the merging of this expectation of a royal Messiah descended from David with a divine figure, right, Becoming a God. But that was not originally what was expected. And so in the context that we're talking about these messianic expectations, which really were, I don't know if I should say, widespread among the Jewish population, but certainly we do have evidence of messianic activity and messianic groups other than Jesus in the Jewish population at this time. Part of this is this sort of coming about, for sure, in resistance to Rome, to Roman rule, the desire to re. Establish Jewish independence, right, under a legitimate king, a king who would be descended from David. And there was, at least in some sectors, also an expectation that this messianic figure would be somebody who was militant, Right? It was kind of a militant expectation that the achievement of or re. Establishment of Jewish independence would come about with. With violence, right? With actual war and with actual fighting. And that's something that we actually see happens not too long afterwards in the early. Well, the first part of the second century A.D. when there's a second Jewish revolt against Rome, the Bar Kokhba revolt, led by a messianic figure, Bar Kochba, who is one of these militant figures. Right. And so we have different groups that are looking forward to ultimately, I think, an overthrow of Roman rule, right? The end of Roman rule in one way or another, some through violent means and others not necessarily through violent means. But this is all kind of also connected with the idea that this establishment of this Messiah, you know, messianic rule under a descendant of David would also be part of a larger eschatological scenario, meaning an end of Days scenario, which would culminate with the establishment of God's kingdom on earth, because that's really the whole. This goes into apocalyptic expectations, right? You go back to the Book of Daniel. So this idea that you have a messianic figure emerge, you have a period of turmoil and war, and then ultimately the overthrow of the current world order leading up to the establishment of God's kingdom on earth. So there were. There were certainly different groups, Jewish groups that were looking forward to this with, you know, again, with some differences between them, but that's kind of the big picture.
- [35:48]
B
Thank you very much. Now we're going to have just a little bit of fun. Briefly, before we go on to more serious questions, you kind of referred to the title in the beginning of our discussion, and we've obviously titled the, the episode 1 BC the World Jesus Entered. Because traditionally, or at least before we move to BCE CE dating, people think of it as one year before Christ. Though, of course, actual dating is a little, little more complicated. Could you just help clarify how scholars determine when Jesus was likely born and why the BC AD dating system doesn't quite line up with the historical evidence?
- [36:24]
A
Yeah. So first, as you mentioned, the terminology that's commonly used is BC&AD. Right. So BC before Christ and AD Anno Domini in Latin in the year of our Lord. By the way, there is no year zero. So I'm glad you didn't use the zero in your title as an alternative. Sometimes people prefer to use BCE and CE instead of B, C and AD because they're religiously more neutral. So BCE would be before the common era or before the Christian era, and CE would be the common era or the Christian era. So you can use them interchangeably, depending on what you prefer. So the system that 1 BC marks the birth of Jesus or whatever, that's something that's actually worked out much later in time, much, you know, centuries after the time of Jesus. And now if we go back and we look at the various sources that we have to try and determine when Jesus was born. So there are various hints.
- [37:21]
B
Right?
- [37:21]
A
So if we take seriously the story of the massacre of the innocents in the Gospel of Matthew, where Herod reportedly orders all boys ages 2 and under in the area of Bethlehem to be put to death, if that's true, if that story has any truth to it. And by the way, we don't know that it's true. But if that story has any truth to it, then it means that Jesus had to have been born before Herod died. And Herod died in the year 4 BC, so automatically, then that would push us before 4 BC. And then there's all sorts of other things. Like for example, well, Jesus is thought to have died when he was about 33 years old. So then we kind of count our way backwards. That's based on the Gospel of Luke and on other indications. There's the whole thing with the census, you know, of Quirinius. There's also the thing with the star of Bethlehem and astronomical calculations. Anyway, there's a whole bunch of calculations that go into trying to figure out when Jesus was born. I think, you know, majority of scholars probably put it somewhere between 6 and 4 BC. 4 BC being again the cutoff because that's when Herod the Great died. So he apparently was born sometime before, maybe even shortly before, but sometime before the death of Herod.
- [38:36]
B
Thank you. And this is why we decided to go with 1bc because titling the episode is 6 to 4 BCE, maybe not the most catchy thing that we could have done. Now, moving on to archaeology, because that's amazing and that's obviously what you do and that's why we're here. With your background in archaeology, how does it help us better understand the lives of ordinary people in 1st century Palestine beyond what we read in things like the Gospels?
- [39:06]
A
Oh, well, absolutely. So this is the big value of archaeology, right? I mean, I do a lot of work with TV documentaries on various aspects of the time of Jesus, consulting and also sometimes even appearing in these documentaries. And you know, a lot of these TV documentaries focus over and over again on the same thing. The Holy Grail, the Shroud of Turin. I'm actually going to be working with one on the Shroud of Turin. I can't. Anyway, you know, those kinds of things. And I think it's because people are fascinated by trying to see whether we have some physical object, an artifact that we can connect with Jesus as an individual. And what I always try to explain is we don't have anything like that. The Holy Grail, forget it. The shrouded Uran, forget it. For various reasons anyway. But people want an actual physical artifact that they can identify. So like for example, let's take the Holy Grail. So why don't we have the Holy Grail? Well, you know, maybe we have found the Holy Grail. Maybe archaeologists excavated a cup either in pieces or the whole thing, a cup in excavation somewhere that was the cup that Jesus drank out of at the Last Supper. How would we know that that is the Holy Grail unless you have it on?
- [40:15]
B
Didn't have those little like wine charm things are common today that says Jesus, right?
- [40:20]
A
Exactly. Well, it would have to have an authentic ancient inscription on it that says this is the cup that Jesus drank out of at the last. I mean, right, so it's kind of like that. And it's not surprising that Jesus. That we don't have that kind of thing. And why? Why not? Because generally speaking, members of the lower classes, and I include Jesus in that group, did not leave identifiable remains in the archaeological record. That meaning that we don't have Remains that we can associate with that person as an individual. This is as opposed to the elite, the upper classes, the wealthy people who sometimes built monuments that have their name on them, or monuments that other, you know, ancient historians describe for us. You know, they've left inscriptions and stuff like that. We don't have anything like that with the lower classes. Even if we find an artifact that has the name Jesus on it and there we get into a whole controversy with the so called James Ossuary. But even if we have an artifact like that, the names of these individuals are so common. I mean, Jesus, you know, practically every fourth man in Jerusalem in that period was named Jesus or some variant of that name. It's impossible to say that it's the very same individual who we know from the Gospel accounts.
- [41:32]
B
Right?
- [41:33]
A
There's no way to be able to say, yes, we have an actual artifact that we can definitely associate with Jesus. So archaeology does not give us that, but it can give us information about the world of Jesus. We can reconstruct the world of Jesus with a very high degree of accuracy. We know what the temple looked like in the time of Jesus. We know what Galilean villages looked like in the time of Jesus. We know about everyday life of people in the time of Jesus. Because we can excavate village houses doesn't mean it's the house that Jesus lived in. But we have village houses like that. So we know what life was like. We know what kind of dishes they ate off of, we know what kind of food they prepared. I mean, we have a whole bunch of information about that. So that is really the value of archaeology. Right? It can give us a glimpse into that world, even if we don't have a specific physical object that we can associate with that individual.
- [42:31]
B
Have there been any recent discoveries that have either surprised you or changed how we understand this time period?
- [42:37]
A
Yeah, well, I actually think, you know, the Dead Sea Scrolls have been called the most important archaeological discovery of the 20th century in terms of the 21st century. For my money, one of the most, if not the most important discovery so far is the tomb of King Herod the greatest, which was discovered in 2007 by the late Israeli archaeologist Ehud Netzer. And the reason why that's so important is because, you know, we have a lot of things that Herod built, right? I mentioned Caesarea, I mentioned the second temple. But this site, Herodium, which is where he was buried and where his tomb is located, and it's very close to Bethlehem, is the only site that Herod named after himself. And the reason is because he prepared it as an everlasting memorial to himself. And therefore his tomb at Herodium tells us about Herod directly and about how he wanted to be remembered. So it gives us a great deal of insight. And this is important because we have no literary sources that are direct about Herod. Most of our information about Herod comes from the ancient Jewish historian Josephus, who was born about 40 years after Herod died, so he never met Herod, and who draws on information from other sources, some of them we know, and many of them are lost and tends to present Herod in a pretty negative light. So I think the discovery of Herod's tomb at Herodium is incredibly important. I actually also think that it ties in with the story of the Massacre of the Innocents and with messianic expectations. But that's a whole other story that I don't have time to go into. It's really complicated. But I really think that that's a spectacularly important archaeological discovery.
- [44:17]
B
Thank you. Now, with tomorrow being Christmas, I want to ask a couple of questions related to the Nativity story. Based on what we know from archaeology and history. What might a typical village like Bethlehem or Nazareth have been like around the time of Jesus birth?
- [44:33]
A
Yeah, you know, Bethlehem and Nazareth are really interesting because I'm not sure how typical they are in the sense that we have very little in the way of archaeological remains of houses from the time of Jesus in either of those places. And of course, they figure so large right in the story of the life of Jesus. So there's actually a whole debate about whether there really was a Nazareth. So the archaeological evidence that we have from both Bethlehem and Nazareth suggests that both were really teeny villages or even what we might call a little hamlet, maybe a little cluster of houses. I'm not sure we would call them typical villages in that sense. I think most villages, I don't even want to say most, but many villages would have been a little larger than those would have been. But nevertheless, I mean, the picture is pretty much the same. It's just a matter of the size or how many houses you have. So what you. These, you know, kind of clusters of houses that typically would have, you know, one or more rooms and some sort of an enclosed courtyard associated with them where working activities, cooking and stuff like that would have been done. You might have had animals also stabled in those areas. And then imagining in places like Bethlehem and Nazareth, you know, everyday life, being working in the fields, crafts. If we think about, you know, the tradition that Jesus father was, you know, some sort of a tecton, usually translated carpenter, but probably more like workmen or something like that. Craftsman. And in the area of the Sea of Galilee, of course, fishing or like that. So, I mean, that's, that's pretty much what we have to imagine. I mentioned earlier India, and it's because I love to go to India, because to me, going to the villages there helps me understand what life in a village is like, even if it's not exactly the same. But, you know, this kind of a traditional lifestyle. And so if you would look at a traditional village there, and they've been developing rapidly in the last 10 to 20 years, but a traditional VI there, that is about as close for me as I've ever come to trying to visualize what life was like in, in the world of Jesus.
- [46:32]
B
Presumably in a. In hamlets that small, there wouldn't have been any kind of like communal buildings. There wouldn't have been obviously temples, just a few small houses.
- [46:41]
A
That's correct. Actually, I think most of these villages did not necessarily have a communal building. In some of the larger ones, we do find communal buildings. And west, what people often call a synagogue, which is basically just a room in which Jews would gather together, usually for having the law, right, the five books of Moses read and explained to them. And that would be a room that is characterized by having benches going around the inside of it to accommodate an assembly. Sometimes in proximity to a building like that, you might have a communal ritual bath, a mikveh, where members of that community could immerse before, let's say, producing tithes that were going to the temple or maybe making pilgrimage to the temple themselves. But yes, in a hamlet like that, you wouldn't necessarily even have those kind of communal buildings.
- [47:29]
B
Thank you. What are some misconceptions about the Nativity story that archaeology or historical research might be able to correct?
- [47:37]
A
Well, actually, I think here the problem is not archaeology, but your nativity story. Because there isn't a nativity story, right. There are two different nativity stories. And it's very interesting that only two out of four of the canonical gospels have a story about the birth of Jesus.
- [47:53]
B
Right.
- [47:54]
A
The others start when he's already full blown adult, basically. And those of course are the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. And I also have my students do this. Right. If you do a careful reading of those two birth narratives side by side, you see that they vary dramatically from each other. They're very different from each other. And the way that Christmas is celebrated now is kind of like A merging of elements of those two nativity stories put together. It's actually hard for me to answer your question because there is not a nativity story. There are two different, Very quite different, actually, birth narratives. And then there's the way that Christmas is celebrated today, which is kind of a mishmash of the two that are put together. I do think, for me, what's really interesting is that both of those birth narratives in Matthew and Luke, both authors, despite the differences, go to great pains to bring his genealogy in as part of the story. And that's why you have the birth narratives, right, to trace his lineage back to David. Because only in that way could Jesus be a legitimate messiah. Right. If he's descended from David, if he's born in Bethlehem. So you have to, first of all, place his birth in Bethlehem, not Nazareth. If he's from Nazareth, he can't be related to David. So, okay, so if he's born in Bethlehem and then you have his genealogy, you can then say, yes, he is a legitimate messiah because he's descended from David. So that really is the point of those birth narratives. And then all the rest of it is kind of, you know, the story around that. Yeah, but it's all intended to kind of connect him to Bethlehem and David. That's what it's about.
- [49:32]
B
And presumably, while Bethlehem is useful for that kind of theological, religious coloring, if Bethlehem was a tiny hamlet with no large buildings, I'm assuming there probably wasn't an inn for anyone to be turned away from.
- [49:47]
A
That's probably true. But, you know, if we think about it in. It's possible. You could argue. I'm just off the top of my head. I mean, you could argue that somebody put them up at their house, that somebody had a spare room, and they, you know. So I'm not even sure. I mean, we could go there. I'm not going to argue that it's not historical. But if you want to argue that it is historical, then you could get around that by saying, yeah, somebody had, you know, a spare or an empty, you know, building or something, an empty barn or whatever, and, you know, they paid. And then it gets depicted in the Gospel accounts as an inn. But you're right, I would not expect a hamlet, at least not what we have archeologically, to have an inn where travelers are being put up as they go through. Yeah.
- [50:31]
B
Thank you. I have one last question. And again, as this episode is going to air on Christmas Eve, and as a lot of people around the world are reflecting on the nativity story, what do you think is the most important takeaway about the historical world that Jesus entered?
- [50:45]
A
Well, one of the things that my students always remark on by the time we get to the end of the semester is how this part of the world has been mired in violence and atrocities and all sorts of stuff like that as far back as we go.
- [51:05]
B
Right?
- [51:05]
A
So we're 2,000 years ago. The names have changed, the peoples have changed, but unfortunately we still see a picture today in the Middle east where there's a lot of violence and divisions. My message would be like, I'm sure everybody else would agree that we would love to see peace in this region. This is of course the message of Jesus. Right? We want to see peace for everyone. And let's hope that, you know, the New Year brings that to everyone.
- [51:33]
B
Thank you, Jody. Again, thank you so much for taking us on this journey back to 1 BC and for helping us better understand the world that Jesus entered. I want to take a brief moment to remind the audience means that this month, that's December 2024, we're running a buy one give one special offer on Bart ehrman.com so if you purchase any course this month, you can give one of equal or lesser value to a friend for free. Fantastic idea. Spread the joy of education. Help other people learn about the ancient world. Maybe even help them learn about archaeology with Jody. If you're looking for a last minute gift idea, this could definitely be it. If you just go to bartiman.com and make a purchase, you'll be emailed the code for this, the free gift course. For those of you who do want to dive deeper into the world Jesus entered. Again, don't forget to check out Jody's course, which is Archeology in the Time of Jesus at www.bartehrman.com Time of Jesus. And as always, be sure to use the Code MJ podcast for a special discount at the checkout, which you can use along with the Buy one Give one offer. Jodi, thank you again so much for joining me today.
- [52:41]
A
Thank you for having me and happy holidays everybody.
- [52:45]
B
Absolutely. 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. Misquoting Jesus will be back next week, though Bart will not. Instead, I will be joined by New Testament scholar John Christopher Edwards for a special New Year's Eve episode. John is a devout Christian, but also a serious Bible scholar, and we're going to be digging into that in the episode which is called the Scholar and the Savior, Bridging Belief and Critical Study. Thank you all again and goodbye. This has been an episode of Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. We'll be back with a new episode next Tuesday, so please be sure to subscribe to our show for free on your favorite podcast listening app or on Bart Ehrman's YouTube channel so you don't miss out. From Bart Ehrman and myself, Megan Lewis, thank you for joining us.