← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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- [00:00]
Travis Proctor
Protegera las comunidades de los incendios forestales
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Bart Ehrman
significros extienda empacific power la interruption del.
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Megan Lewis
In the modern Western world, monotheism is the rule rather than the exception. Not so in the ancient world where many cultures worshipped whole pantheons of gods, each one responsible for specific areas of the mortal experience. How does the one God of Israel compare to this myriad of deities? And can an understanding of how ancient Mediterranean cultures thought about and interacted with the divine help us to understand the God presented to us in the Bible? Here to help us navigate all of this, Dr. Bart Ehrman. Welcome to Ms. Quoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. The only show where a six time New York Times best selling author and world renowned Bible scholar uncovers the many fascinating little known facts about the New Testament, the historical Jesus and the rise of Christianity. I'm your host Megan Lewis. Lets begin. Hello everybody and welcome back to Misquoting Jesus. As I said in my introduction, today we're going to be looking at the different gods in the surrounding area of the ancient Mediterranean and how the one God of Israel compares to them. We also have some reminders about upcoming events including a new course and the AMA with Dan McClellan before that. Bart, how are you? How is the blog going?
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Bart Ehrman
Oh, the blog's going great. So yeah, people know I post, you know, five or six times a week for 13 years, but we recently announced that we surpassed $3 million.
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Megan Lewis
That's amazing.
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Bart Ehrman
To charities. And so it's, people pay a small membership fee but there are enough people, it grows and so 3 million, man, that's a, yeah, that's some serious change. So but we try, you know, we try to keep growing. The only way it grow for people to join up and it's a small fee but they get a lot out of it. So it's. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's, it's good. So how. So you're, you're involved in the digital world also. How's Digital Hammurabi going?
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Megan Lewis
Yeah, very well, thank you. Very well. We have recently just had a new logo done which is exciting because Digital Hammurabi started as effectively a hobby and I sketched out the logo and it worked for, for a very long time. But we've actually had a professional illustrator do one and it looks so much better. I'm very excited. And this week we have a friend of mine, she was at Hopkins with me, an Egyptologist called Dr. Jill Waller. She's going to start teaching a course on the daily life of Egyptian religion which I'M really, really excited about, actually. Egyptian religion is one of those things. It's absolutely fascinating, but I haven't really ever had time to sit down and properly look at it. So I'm looking forward to listening to those lectures.
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Bart Ehrman
Wow. I should, too. I mean, I get asked about it all the time. It's like, yeah, it is fascinating stuff. So. Wow. Okay, good. That sounds fantastic.
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Megan Lewis
No, it's going to be good. And amazingly, talking about other cultures, other religions, other gods, we are looking at how the one God of Israel that I think a lot of people are probably very familiar with compares to deities in other areas of the ancient Mediterranean. So to begin, I was wondering if you've ever asked your own students to compare the God that we see in the Bible to gods of other similar cultures.
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Bart Ehrman
Well, yeah, you know, the first, first day of class for me in my, in my New Testament classes, I talk about the pagan. Pagan religions. So by pagan, in that context, it's not a negative thing. We're not saying something derogatory. It's just a way of referring to the polytheistic religions of the world, which were all the religions of the world, basically, for the most part. And to see why is it that people were religious and how they understood things. Because in antiquity, the idea that you'd think there was only one God was kind of ridiculous. I mean, it's kind of like saying, you know, there's only one city in the world, or, you know, you can worship one God. It's like saying you can have only one friend. It made no sense to people, even though that's, that's what Jews and Christians ended up saying. But, yeah, we talk, we talk about this a good bit in the my, in my courses.
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Megan Lewis
So do you think it's possible to make any broad statements about the, the characteristics of deities in the ancient world? How did they behave? What were they like?
- [05:05]
Bart Ehrman
Well, yeah, I think absolutely the, the. There's a big debate among scholars whether you want to even talk about something like paganism, you know, because it sounds like there's this thing and ancient religions. There were lots of things, whether you're talking about the time of ancient Israel where there were different religions in different parts of that, that world or anywhere throughout the world. There were lots of different religions which had similarities in many ways. And in the time of the New Testament, Greek and Roman religions, lots and lots of them, hundreds of them, thousands of them, but they had similarities. And, you know, the, the kind of. The, One of the obvious similarities among them all is that they, they worshiped many gods and that there wasn't just one God that you're supposed to worship. And the gods were worshiped because the gods could provide things for people that they couldn't provide for themselves. This, this world is very hard. Most people are living on the edge. And especially in antiquity where there's no technology developed really that we would think of as technology, no science, no modern medicine, no irrigation methods, most part. I mean, it's just like, and people are isolated and you need, you need help just to survive. And the gods were, were powerful creatures who were often interested in humans and able to help or to hurt them. And so that would be common, I would say, among all the, all the ancient polytheistic religions.
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Megan Lewis
What kinds of responsibilities were the gods kind of assigned by the, the humans who worshiped them?
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Bart Ehrman
Yeah, well, I think, I think the humans would say that, you know, they kind of inherited the, the assignments the, the humans did. But they found out that, you know, you've got these gods who are responsible for different things. And in most, in most of these religions throughout the world at every time, there would be gods who were related to different places and gods who related to different functions. And often those things overlapped. And so there'd be gods, you know, a certain mountain would have a God, a forest would have a God, a stream would have a God. Cities had their gods, but also functions. So you have gods of war, gods of love, gods who make sure the crops grow, who make sure the rain comes, gods of healing, gods who. So, you know, gods of everything, gods of childbirth, God. So gods of who can deal with the things that make life possible. You know, if the crops don't grow, you're not going to eat. If it doesn't rain, you're not going to have any crops. If you die in childbirth, that's it. And you know, and so there, there are things the gods have power over that we do not. And so that's, that's why they get worshiped.
- [07:58]
Megan Lewis
So what did this worship entail? If gods provide this kind of protection or assistance, what did they expect in return?
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Bart Ehrman
So, you know, in, in modern, modern religions, we have kind of a set notion of what it means to be a religious person. In ancient languages, they didn't actually have a word for religion. And, and interestingly, you know, they didn't have a word for politics either. We, we think of religion and politics as separate entities usually, but there actually didn't even have words for these things in these ancient languages. And so worshiping the gods was, tended to be More of an activity than a belief. So that these, these religions, whether in ancient Israel or in the time of the New Testament, the religions of the world focused on how do you honor and respect the gods and how do you communicate with them, how do they communicate with you, and how do you satisfy them so that they'll. They'll help you? And that almost always involved acts of. Of worship that scholars would call cultic acts. But when we say cult in this context, it doesn't mean what people often mean about, you know, having some wild leaders making you drink the Kool Aid. It's not that kind of thing. A cult. Cult, we use the word cult gets used in English, In English in other ways, too. Like agriculture means the care of the fields, and so the cultus de oram in ancient Greece, cultus de orum is the care of the gods. So how do you take care of the gods? Well, you give them what they want. What do they want? Basically, they want some attention, kind of like me. Give me some attention here. And so the way you give God's attention, give them attention. Two main ways really, in most religions, by prayer and by offerings. So prayer makes sense to people today who are Jews or Christians or Muslims. You pray to, you know, you pray to God, you, you. Even in the monotheistic religions, you thank God for what he's done. You praise him for how great he is. You ask him for things that you need. You pray for other people. You know, you have these various kinds of ways that you communicate with God and God's. In the, in ancient Israelite culture and in ancient Christian culture, the broader cultures had the same thing. They wanted people to pray to them. They also wanted people to make them offerings. Where, you know, people most often think of sacrifices, you know, animal sacrifices. And these were important for almost all the religions where you would sacrifice an animal in honor of a God to a God. And the parts that the God would want usually be the, the fat and the bones. You would. The skin, you would burn those parts and then you'd have a. You know, you'd eat the rest. And so these were festive occasions. But it wasn't just animals in these various religions. It was all you could offer gods, lots of things. You could offer them flowers, you could offer them little pieces of food. You need to eat a meal, and you throw a little bit of. You put a little bit of wine on the altar to, to give to the God, you know, or you, you offer incense. So whatever you're offering to the God is an act, a Gesture of acknowledgment. And they, they like that.
- [11:29]
Megan Lewis
And how did, how did the gods, generally speaking, and I'm aware that this is huge, huge question, how did they view humanity? Are we talking about, like, benevolent creatures? Are they going to smite you? What kind of relationship would we expect there?
- [11:46]
Bart Ehrman
Well, yes, and yes. And so, you know, in, in some cultures, you've got, you've got lots of different gods with lots of different functions. And they, since you have a God of, of, you know, a God who controls the weather, for example, the God of the weather can be kind to you or can be ticked off at you and you want the one and not the other. If the God is kind to you, it's because you've been doing the right things. If the God is ticked off, then the weather can get very bad and it could lead to suffering and death. And so if the God, if the weather isn't going well, then you want to appease the God through, say, a sacrifice and through prayers. So it's not that gods were typically seen in these historic periods in both the ancient near east and in Greek and Roman, the Greek and Roman worlds, they were typically seen kind of like humans. You know, they got emotions and they do good things and they do bad things. They're conceived of as superhumans in most of these cultures, but they, and so as a result, they rarely are inherently good or inherently bad. And in some, in some of the, lots of these cultures in the, in the New Testament period, there are gradations of divinity, just like there are some humans who are more beautiful and more intelligent and stronger than the rest of us, the gods as well, you know. And so, and they're, they're. So there are levels of divinity and you have to figure out which level to go for when you're, when you're trying to pray or do a sacrifice.
- [13:34]
Megan Lewis
So if they're very broadly conceived of as being like humans, just supercharged, did they also have similar human, like, relationships among the pantheon?
- [13:47]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, yeah. I mean, gods would be married, for example, and gods would commit adultery, for example.
- [13:55]
Megan Lewis
I'll get you Zeus.
- [13:59]
Bart Ehrman
They would fight each other and they would. And so they are perceived as superhumans in most of these cultures. I'm saying most of these cultures because some places, like we mentioned Egypt earlier, has a different construction of how the deities work, where some, so it's kind of Egypt ends up being kind of an exception to a lot of these things. But, but generally throughout the ancient near east and throughout Greek and Roman world, yeah, the gods are perceived as as humans with emotions and with reactions and with interactions among as well as with humans.
- [14:34]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. We are going to take a very brief break and when we come back we're going to be looking at how the God of Israel compares to these polytheistic deities.
- [14:42]
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- [15:36]
Travis Proctor
Hi everyone, I'm Travis Proctor. I'd like to announce an online course titled Demons and Ghosts in the Bible. The course consists of 26 lectures that guide you through significant stories of demons and ghosts in biblical texts and related writings. These lectures explore topics like the figure of Satan, demonic possession and exorcism, spirits of prophecy, ghost and magic, and the origins of the Holy Ghost. Many of these concepts form key parts of Jewish and Christian thought and practice, and they make for some entertaining reading as well. I spent the better part of the last decade researching, writing and teaching about demons, angels, and ghosts. My first book, Demonic Bodies and the Dark Ecologies of Early Christian Culture, examined how ideas regarding the bodies of demons were important for things like early Christian ritual beliefs and embodiment. My time as a college professor, I've shared these insights with my students in the classroom. This is an important opportunity for you to step into that classroom and experience the same lessons that I share with my students. We'll answer questions like who's the serpent that's in the Garden of Eden? Where did the idea of Satan come from? What's going on with stories of demonic possession and exorcism in the life of Jesus? What are fallen angels and how do they relate to demons and Satan? Does the Bible include stories of ghosts and hauntings and much more? In this class, we analyze these questions from an historical academic perspective so that you can learn how to approach the Bible like a scholar. This course helps you rediscover familiar texts of the Bible, understanding them in a new light, as well as encounter some new demon and ghost stories sure to entertain or enlighten. This is a great opportunity to learn about demons and ghosts in the Bible. I hope you'll join me.
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Megan Lewis
So before the break, we were looking at the nature and the roles that pagan gods held in ancient societies. We're going to keep going and start to look at how the God of Israel compares to all of this. So was the relationship between the God of Israel and the Jewish people, the Israelite people, similar to that of pagan deities and their own worshipers?
- [17:36]
Bart Ehrman
Well, in terms of the worship practices, it was pretty similar where in ancient Israel, as you know, as you find in the Torah, in the Hebrew Bible and the laws of Moses, God expects his people to worship him and lays out specific ways of doing so. And so there are a number of the laws in the Torah are cultic in nature, some of them dealing directly with sacrifices, what kinds of sacrifices to make, on what occasions, how to do them, but also things that the God of Israel expects of his people in terms of, you know, honoring. Taking a Sabbath day, for example, which is a day of rest. But you do that because God took a day of rest when he created the world. And so there are, there are various kinds of rituals and practices laid out in the Torah that, that in rough, in rough terms seemed very similar to what you find in other ancient Near Eastern cultures and religions. When you come to the New Testament, things change precisely because Christians think that Christ was the ultimate sacrifice. And so Christians do not do animal sacrifices to their God because the perfect sacrifice has been made. But Christians kind of substitute for that. They talk about their lives being the sacrifice to God or, you know, things that they do being sacrificial for the sake of God. And so there's sacrifice in that sense. But in terms of the prayers, so far as we can tell, prayer is, you know, it just, there's some kind of natural things you do when you pray. And they're very similar among various religions with some differences. I mean, what develops in the Christian tradition, for example, is prayers. One form of prayer is a confession for sins where you confess that you've done things wrong, you know, you've hurt some other person. And that doesn't happen as much in non Jewish Christian religions, but you get confession, for example, in The Psalms, Psalm 51, for example, you get it in the Hebrew tradition, it's picked up In Christianity, because both Judaism and Christianity, one major exception, not a complete exception, but one pretty big exception, is that in both Judaism and Christianity, the divine being expects you to behave in certain ways toward other people. And ethics is a. Is a big deal. A lot of the laws of the Old Testament are laws about how to behave toward fellow Israelites. And if you don't behave well, God gets angry. And you get that throughout the prophets. God's always ticked off in Amos or Isaiah because people are being oppressive rather than loving. And that's not a big deal in pagan religions. In the Greek and Roman religions, most of the gods don't really care much how you behave. They don't care if you're sleeping with your neighbor's wife. They just want to be worshiped. And I think that's true throughout most of history in the ancient near east and in the Greek and Roman worlds.
- [20:59]
Megan Lewis
In my introduction, I was talking about, through the questions we've been talking about the one God of Israel, which I think is. Is suitable for what we're talking about, but I think it's also a little bit misleading. Could you talk about whether or not ancient Israel would be considered monotheistic?
- [21:19]
Bart Ehrman
Well, yeah, it depends how ancient you mean. But when we talk about ancient Israel, we're usually talking about during the, what we'd call the Old Testament period or the Hebrew Bible period, and for the vast majority of that period. So suppose, just for the kind of sake of ease, you say something like, you know, from the, from around the 18th century, the alleged time of Abraham, the father of the Jews, down to, you know, to what? Well, to the end of the Hebrew Bible period, which would be the second century before Christ BCE, before the Common Era. So if you take those 1600 years, most of that period, Israelites were not monotheistic. In other words, monotheism technically means a belief that there's only one God. There's one God, there's no other God. And to many people's surprise, you don't find that in much of the Hebrew Bible. I think the first time that starts showing up is actually in, in the second part of Isaiah. Second, Isaiah is a, is a book that was clearly written after the Babylonian captivity. So 6th century, in the 6th century. And it is not necessarily representative of what everybody thought in the sixth century bce but in I, in second Isaiah, God declares, I alone am God and there is no other. And I think that's the first time you really have it stated. Up until then, the idea was that the God of Israel is the only one to be worshiped, that the assumption is there are other gods, but you're not supposed to worship those other gods. The God of Israel is the one who created the world, and he's the one who's chosen us as his people. He's the only one we worship. So scholars call that henotheism or henotheism. It's h e n o theism. Hen in Greek is another word for one. But instead of monotheistic believing there is only one God, henotheism is the belief that there are lots of other gods. Sure of whatever. We're only worshiping this one.
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Megan Lewis
How can we get, or how can scholars begin to understand how the God of Israel interacted with and related to or was thought to interact with and relate to other deities in, in the region?
- [23:55]
Bart Ehrman
So the first thing to stress is that within the religion of Israel, the God, the God of Israel is the only one to be worshiped, but there are these other gods. And so you get that by the way, all the way back in the, in the Ten Commandments in Exodus chapter 20, virtually the first thing that Moses hears from God on the Mount Sina, he's getting the law is, you shall have no other gods before me. Well, that presupposes there are other gods. I mean, and he doesn't say, you know, you got to realize I'm the only God. No, you, you are not supposed to put any other gods ahead of me. And some people think, by the way, that later in the Torah it suggests there's only one God. Deuteronomy, chapter 6. Hero Israel. The Lord, our God. The Lord is one. Well, see, there you got monotheism. No, actually that verse is really difficult to translate and people aren't really quite sure what it means. But it's clear that even in Deuteronomy there are other gods, but this is the one for Israel. Since God is the only one to be worshiped within a system where there are other gods, it means that God is the God of Israel is superior to the other gods, and he expects his own people to worship him. And he demonstrates his superiority by conquering the other gods or being more powerful than the other gods. The reason to worship only one God, the only reason to worship only one God is because that one God is more powerful than all the others. And a good bit of the Hebrew Bible that talks about other gods, such as BAAL or Asherah or these other gods are seen as other gods, but they're gods of other peoples and they're not as powerful as The God of Israel.
- [25:47]
Megan Lewis
Does the, the, the power of the God of, the God of Israel extend to being responsible for all of the, the spheres of influence that other deities have? So instead of needing a whole pantheon to pray to for different problems, you can just pray to the one.
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Bart Ehrman
Yeah, that's the. I think this is why pagans found first Israelite religion, then Judaism, then Christianity. They found it weird because there are so many needs that, that we have as human beings that it just makes sense that you have different deities for them. I mean, you've got, you know, just in human life, you have humans who have to have different functions. In our life, you got to have your electrician, you got to have your plumber, you got to have your builder, you got to have your car repair guy. You gotta, like, you know, the, like, you know, you need different people for these. And so the idea, it just, it's another kind of transference onto the divine realm that of course there are gods who all do all these different things. And the idea that you got one God who does it all just seemed really weird to outsiders. So much for the, you know, they ridiculed these religions, the, you know, Israelites and Jewish and Christian religions. But the idea was that this God is all powerful, that this God is all knowing, this God is all loving. This God is the one creator. And since he created this existence, he has sovereignty over this existence. And so this one God is the God who's in charge. And so that's why you can appeal to just the one which Jews and Christians thought was what made perfect sense. That's the only thing that's sensible for them.
- [27:29]
Megan Lewis
Would you say that this power differential is the main difference between the God of Israel and the pagan deities?
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Bart Ehrman
You know, the, you know, at the heart of it, to put things in, like the, in the very simplest terms, the reason you worship the gods, the reason anybody worships gods, is because of their power. We can't provide what we need to survive, let alone thrive, and we need help, and the gods can provide it. And so in most ancient religions, there was a wide range of tolerance about which God you worshiped. In the Hebrew Bible, you know, if you, if you worship baal, that doesn't mean that's the only God you can worship. You can also have your Asherah or your Astarte or your, you know, you pick your divine, your L or your, you know, you pick your, you pick your divine being and you can, you can worship as many as you want because all the gods are helpful. They're all Gods, they all deserve to be worshiped. And none of them insist, look, I'm the only one, you know, because that would be ridiculous. And so there was, there was kind of a generosity among the, the gods and among these religions where you don't have religions insisting, no, only us. And even within Judaism with, within ancient Israel and then within Judaism later, you. The. The God of Israel just insists on being worshiped by his people. He doesn't insist that other people worship him. There develops an idea that since he's all powerful, all people will eventually worship him alone. That again is in second Isaiah, precisely the place where God says, I alone am God. There's an expectation that all the nations of Earth will eventually worship this God. And that's the expectation within Christianity that God's finally going to convert the world away from these false religions. But the whole idea is that you worship a God for his or her power. And so if you've got an almighty God, that's the God that you ought to worship. But for all of these gods, the reason you're worshiping them is because they can provide you what you can't provide for yourself.
- [29:40]
Megan Lewis
If we are trying to better understand the God of Israel and how people related to him and the role that he played, do you think it makes sense to view him against a background of all of these other deities? Or do you think that it's just too much of a different outside culture?
- [30:01]
Bart Ehrman
Maybe, you know, the only way to understand any phenomenon is by relating it to comparable phenomena. There's no such thing as something that is literally unique, at least nothing that we can understand. We can't understand something that is literally unique because we can only understand things in comparison to other things. And so the idea that you'd have a religion that is completely unlike every other religion, we wouldn't recognize it, we wouldn't call it a religion, for one thing, we wouldn't be able to relate to it. And so all religions related to one another in various ways. The only way to understand the God of Israel is in relationship to the other things on offer. And God himself says it, you shall have no other gods before me. He's putting himself in a position in relationship to other divinities, and he requires certain ways of worshiping him. And so some of the sacrificial laws, some of the kosher laws may well be in response to other religious practices of other. Of other people in the surrounding areas. It's often thought, I don't know, you can prove it, but it's often thought that One of the reasons pork is is proscribed within the Israelite religion is because it was a common, it was a con common pigs, hogs were commonly slaughtered to Canaanite deities in the surrounding area. And so to differentiate yourself, you have a different, you know, you have, you do a different thing. And so the way religions work is always in relationship to other religions. It's noticed not they're developing their own thing. They are developing their own thing, but it's always in relationship to other things. So the Henotheism of Israel stood out as different, but is recognizing these other divinities and within Christianity, what comes to be eventually kind of a monotheism is in relationship to other religions, but it has to have similarities as well or else it's not, you know, it's not competing with anything.
- [32:14]
Megan Lewis
Bart, thank you so much. That is about all we have time for. So we are going to now go to some reminders of upcoming events.
- [32:24]
Bart Ehrman
Welcome to our upcoming Highlights and Events segment where we catch up on bart's courses, community updates and all the latest news from the Biblical Studies Academy and beyond
- [32:37]
Megan Lewis
foreigners this week. The first one is about our new course, Demons and Ghosts in the Bible. I spoke to Dr. Travis Proctor last week about it and that course starts on Tuesday, May 20th. So throughout history and I think across the globe, humans have claimed that evil spirits or demons and ghosts, the spirits of the deceased, live among us in our midst. But did you know that such spirits appear in some of the most famous biblical narratives? This course studies the history of ancient ideas about demons, exorcisms and hauntings and how these influenced biblical ghost stories. It's a whole semester long 26 lecture course that runs twice a week until August 14th. You can sign up to join us next Tuesday@bartehrman.com Demons and Ghosts also like to remind you that Dr. Dan McLellan, who we had on the podcast a couple of weeks ago, is going to be coming to the Biblical Studies Academy. The Biblical Studies Academy is our online course and events platform and we're really excited to have Dan join us for a live AMA that's Ask Me Anything on Wednesday, May 28th. So please make sure you join us then. But we have some listeners questions. Are you ready?
- [33:55]
Bart Ehrman
Yes, I think so. We'll see. Now it's time for questions from listeners where Bart answers real questions submitted by misquoting Jesus fans. If you'd like to submit a question for future segments, Please visit bart erman.com Ask Bart.
- [34:20]
Megan Lewis
All right, first up, this is a really good one at what Point. Did the written words of the New Testament become an item of reverence? When can we say that there began to be a shift in focus from the writings merely being the report of miraculous historical events to a broader view where the message itself was seen as being divinely inspired and therefore an item of worship?
- [34:43]
Bart Ehrman
That's actually several questions. So something being divinely inspired is not necessarily an object of worship. That'd be my first point where I emphasize that, because where I live in the American south, many people think that the Bible is to be worshiped and that if you don't revere the Bible, you can't be a Christian. But worshiping the Bible is idolatry in orthodox Christianity. I don't mean Orthodox in the sense of just Greek Orthodox, but I mean, in traditional Christianity, you don't worship the Bible, you worship God. And so. And the Bible might be the way to understand God and to hear what he his will, but it's not an object of worship. It is a question. You know, sometimes it was worshiped throughout history and is used for other things too. You know, the Bible, the Bible, the physical Bible, the, like the book or, or a portion of the book, a page of the book, or a sentence from the book was often used for magical purposes throughout history where people would wear like a, you know, an amulet around their neck with a Bible verse in it to ward off the evil spirits, for example, which might be something that Travis Proctor will be talking about in his thing, I don't know. So it has often thought to have been like something that exudes divine power or something to be worshiped. But that didn't happen in the earliest times of Christianity. You don't start finding that kind of thing until about the 4th century. That's when you start finding, especially you start finding amulets and things. But it's a good question. When. When did it stop being just kind of, you know, when did Paul's letter stop being just like things he wrote? Okay, here's a letter to being the word of God and when did the Gospel stop being just kind of stories about Jesus somebody happened to write down to being the gospels of Christ? And it's a very good question. Part of it is the question of when do Christians start considering these writings to be equal to the Hebrew Bible in authority? It's a long, complicated question. It's a question that my next book is going to deal with if I get around to writing it, on how you kind of got these books, these books together. What I will say is, with respect to Paul, Already in New Testament times, there's some sense that Paul's writings are scripture. You find it in the book of 2nd Peter, 2 Peter 3, 16, which a book that claims to be written by Peter, but almost certainly was not written by Peter and probably is written around the year 120 or so. So, you know, 60 years after Peter was dead. This author says that the heretics twist the sayings of Paul, the writings of Paul twist the letters of Paul the way they do with the rest of the Scriptures. Whoa. Okay, so they're already. So starting in the middle of the second century or so, you start having people thinking about the Bible as actually being the word of God in some way. And by the end of the second century, it becomes much more widely thought that the four gospels, the writings of Paul, etcetera, Are this kind of authoritative revelation from God.
- [38:11]
Megan Lewis
Thank you very much. Are there any instances of Gospel manuscripts where it is unclear which gospel the manuscript is from? Because the passage in the manuscript is one which is copied between the Synoptic gospels.
- [38:26]
Bart Ehrman
That could happen with very small fragments of texts. It especially happens, as it turns out, in citations of the New Testament. I became very aware of this when I was writing my PhD dissertation, which was on a 4th century church father named Didymus the Blind, who lived in Alexandria, around Alexandria, Egypt. I was analyzing his quotations of the Gospels to see which manuscripts he lined up with. And he'd quote a saying of Jesus, but he wouldn't say which gospel it was from. And it could have been either from Matthew or Luke. So how was I supposed to analyze it in relationship to the manuscripts of Matthew or Luke if I didn't know which one it was from? In a couple places he quotes something, say it was Matthew. In fact, it was actually from Luke. Oh, that really complicates things. So if you find a fragment of a manuscript, it is possible, but offhand, I haven't thought about this question for many, many years. So I can't think of an example where it happens where you aren't sure which one it's from, because usually there's some kind of variations, but it absolutely would be possible.
- [39:33]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. And our final question for today. Did Jesus mean to create a new religion or did he only intend to reform Judaism?
- [39:42]
Bart Ehrman
Well, it depends who you ask. And since he's asking or she's asking me, I'll tell you quite definitely what I think. Jesus was not planning a new religion. I think this is. I think it's absolutely clear from the historical record, Jesus was preaching that God's kingdom was soon to arrive in fulfillment of his prophecies, his promises, and that a divine figure was going to come from heaven to destroy the powers of evil and set up a good kingdom on earth and that Jesus himself would be the king of this kingdom. Jesus was. He's not just born and raised Jewish. He was Jewish through his entire life. And he thought he had the correct understanding of the Torah, of God's teachings, the correct understanding of God and that he was showing what Judaism was supposed to be. It was only after his death, which I think his disciples were not expecting, that they came to think he got raised from the dead and they realized that he was the path of salvation. Once they realized that, once they came to believe that that's what started the new religion, I don't think Jesus had any anticipation that there'd be a Christian church in his wake. And, you know, people would. People want to disagree with me. We'll quote the verses, you know, like in Matthew 16 or Matthew 18, where Jesus talked about the church. I think these, I don't think these go back to Jesus himself. Jesus himself understood God to be the God of the Jews who's going to fulfill his promises and wipe out evil and set up a good kingdom. And it'd be the worship of the God of the Jews. It would not be what we call Christianity.
- [41:19]
Megan Lewis
Well, thank you so much. AUDIENCE thank you all for your questions. Now, before we finish for the week, would you mind just summarizing what we spoke about today?
- [41:28]
Bart Ehrman
Well, we're talking, and it's kind of in broad terms, but it's really important, an important topic. How is the God of Israel different from the other gods of the environment? And you can ask the question about ancient Israel, you can ask it about early Christianity. And in some ways, the answer is very similar. That this one God is distinctive because the other religions don't have just one God, most of them, almost none of them, and that it affects how the worship proceeds. And so understanding either ancient Israel, light religion or Christianity requires you to understand something about these other religions, to know how these Jewish and Christian faiths stand in contrast to them.
- [42:08]
Megan Lewis
AUDIENCE thank you all for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don't miss future episodes. Remember that you can use the code mjpodcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.barterman.com. misquoting Jesus will be back next week, but what are we talking about next time?
- [42:28]
Bart Ehrman
Well, so next time we're talking about. Actually, it's related to what we did today. Christians inherited the Old Testament and the Jewish God. And even though they ended up saying, well, we don't have to keep these laws anymore, they kept the Old Testament. Why did they keep the Old Testament? What did they need it for? Why did they do that? Was there disputes about that? Yes, there were. And we'll be talking about that next time.
- [42:52]
Megan Lewis
Make sure you join us then. Thank you all 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.