← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
The Book of Revelation and the End of the World: Are the Signs Now Being Fulfilled?
00:54:51
Loading summary
Transcript56 lines
- [00:00]
Bart Ehrman
Are you a parent looking for an independent, flexible and tuition free school in Oregon? Evergreen Virtual Academy offers a dynamic and tuition free public education with Oregon certified teachers for PK through 12th grade students. Your student gets a laptop, live class sessions and the ability to chart their own unique path. Plus in person events and social activities all year. When school has no walls, learning has no limits. Learn more and enroll now. Evergreen Virtual Academy evergreenvirtual.org.
- [00:34]
Megan Lewis
Welcome to Ms. Quoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. The only show where a six time New York Times best selling author and world renowned Bible scholar uncovers the many fascinating little known facts about the New Testament, the historical Jesus and the rise of Christianity. I'm your host, Megan Lewis. Let's begin. Today we are starting a miniseries looking at the book of Revelation. And we're going to kick things off by asking if the book of Revelation predicts the imminent end of the world. The book has been used over and over to predict and repredict the end of the world. And yet the world does still stand. So what did the author of Revelation intend his work to do and how is it misread by modern people to predict the end times? But before we get into all of that, Happy Valentine's Day. Barthes, how are you doing?
- [01:25]
Bart Ehrman
I'm doing well. Happy Valentine's Day to you too. Sarah and I decided long ago never to go out on Valentine's Day.
- [01:33]
Megan Lewis
Very nice, very wise.
- [01:35]
Bart Ehrman
Around here you go out and all these Duke and UNC students are in the nice restaurants causing problems, especially the Duke students who can afford them. And so it's just like, oh my God. So yeah, it's better just to cook a nice meal at home and open a nice bottle of wine and that's what we do. How about you? Do you go out?
- [01:53]
Megan Lewis
No, not really. We're generally homebodies anyway, so I don't think we have anything specific planned. Just probably a nice quiet evening, nice meal, maybe watch a movie.
- [02:04]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah. And the thing is, you've got kids. Like I don't have kids around anymore. My kids are grown and gone and so like I can do whatever I want, but it's harder when you one day.
- [02:13]
Megan Lewis
So starting with the book of Revelation and the end of the world, why is this worth talking about and why are we talking about it right now?
- [02:22]
Bart Ehrman
Well, we're talking about it right now because there are people who think that it's going to happen right now. And it's one of those books of the civilization that people are onto because they think it actually has immediate relevance in fact, probably more than any book of the Bible. And I guess I had known, of course I had known this because I was an evangelical Christian for many years. And I too thought that the end of the world is coming soon based on the book of Revelation. One of the reasons we're doing this is because I've got a book coming out on the book of Revelation. It's called Armageddon. One of the anecdotes I tell in there is when I moved to the South, I realized in a pretty clear way why this book was important. I moved to chapel hill in 1988. I'd been teaching at Rutgers and most of my students at Rutgers were Roman Catholic. I had some Jewish students and some nothing students. And it's like. But I moved to the south and I'm thinking, okay, I'm going, I'm going south now. And these are going to be, these, this is going to be a different environment for me. You know, a lot of evangelical Christianity. So I come to the South. I'm in my office like two weeks after I move here, 1980, August 1988, and my phone rings. It's a reporter from the local newspaper. Oh, okay. And this woman, it's a he, he says that he's heard that I'm a biblical scholar, New Testament scholar, and he wants to know, is it true that Jesus is coming back next month? I said, it turns out there's a. That was in circulation that was called 88 Reasons why the Rapture Will Occur in 1988, possibly the best time for
- [03:57]
Megan Lewis
you to have moved to the South.
- [03:59]
Bart Ehrman
Well, it's a very good time. Were you raised in the kind of rapture circles?
- [04:02]
Megan Lewis
No, no, we didn't really touch on Revelation much.
- [04:05]
Bart Ehrman
You didn't do that. Okay, so the Rapture thing, just for people who don't know what this is, the Rapture is an idea found in conservative evangelical circles that Jesus is coming back to take his followers out of the world before a seven year period of horrific suffering, the seven year tribulation, and that this Rapture is going to happen. And so you need to be ready for it. If you're not ready, you're going to be left behind and the Antichrist is going to rise up and life's going to be hell on earth. So this reporter is asking if it's going to happen next month. And it's because there's this book, 88 Reasons why the Rapture Will Occur in 1988. This is written by a guy named Edgar Huisinnant. He was not A dumb guy. He was a rocket engineer for NASA and quit his job to write books like this. This one had 88 reasons why the Rapture was going to occur next month. And there are interesting reasons. Wisenick gives this example From Matthew, chapter 25. In Matthew 25, Jesus is describing what's going to happen when the end comes. All the cataclysmic disasters that will take place. And the disciples will say, well, when's it going to come? And Jesus tells them, learn a lesson from the fig tree. When the fig tree puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So too, when all these things take place, you'll know that the end is near. Truly, I tell you, this generation will not pass away before all these things take place. Okay, so Weisen uses this to argue why the Rapture is going to happen soon. And it's in 1988. And it's because the fig tree puts forth its leaves. The summer is near, according to Jesus. What is the fig tree? Well, in the Bible, the fig tree is sometimes used as an image for the nation of Israel. Okay, when it puts forth its leaves, what does that mean? It means it's been dormant over the winter, and now spring is coming and it's coming to life again. Okay, when did the nation of Israel come to life again? 1948, when it became a sovereign state once more after all those centuries. Okay, 1948. This generation will not pass away before all these things take place. How long is a generation in the Bible? 40 years. 1948 plus 40. Bingo. 1988. And so he had 87 things like that. 87 other things.
- [06:25]
Megan Lewis
That's impressive.
- [06:26]
Bart Ehrman
It's good. No, it's good. It's like, wow. Oh, okay. That's good. So he had worked it out that it was going to come during the festival of Rosh Hashanah. That was late September that year, you know. And so the reporter wanted to know, is it going? Is that really going to happen? And I said, yeah. No, I said, it's not going to happen. I said, but, you know, either way, it's good news for you. I said, either you will be taken up to heaven or you're going to have seven years of really good news to be reporting. A lot of things to be talking about in the newspaper. So Rosh Hashanah came and went. No Jesus. Then Weissenant wrote a book explaining that he had made a mistake. He had forgotten that there was no year zero that we went from one BC to one AD and so. So it's gonna be 1989. So this book had 2 million copies in circulation. Who knows how many had read it? 2 million had gotten it. And I had a student that semester whose parents literally sold the farm because the end was coming. So it was. It was a serious business. And kind of surprising to me, having come from New Jersey, the idea that the end is imminent is usually predicted, not just from, you know, especially the Book of Revelation. And so that's why one of the reasons why studying and understanding what Revelation really is matters, my book argues it's not about predicting what's going to happen in our future.
- [07:43]
Megan Lewis
How does the kind of modern popular understanding or people using the Book of Revelation to predict the end of the world, how does that behavior stack up against what modern scholars think of the book?
- [07:56]
Bart Ehrman
You know, I think one of the issues is that most people, even most Christians, don't read the book Revelation because they think it just too odd or strange or bizarre. I know a lot of Christians who just. They say, look, I can't understand it. I can't figure it out. I get that part of my book is explaining that it's actually not that complicated. Once you understand how it works, you get a roadmap and you'll figure it out. It's not that hard. But the people who do read it read it as a prediction of what's about to happen soon. So there's a whole group of evangelical authors who are sometimes called prophecy writers, who are writing about how the symbols, the metaphors in the Book of Revelation are symbols of things that are going to be happening soon. And they try to prove that the signs have already started being fulfilled. This has happened. That's happened, that's happened that. And now we're right at the end. And so the people who do read the Book of Revelation tend to read it like that as a kind of a map for the road that lies ahead. Scholars don't read it as a blueprint for our future. Scholars know that this was a book written 2,000 years ago by somebody who's trying to communicate to his own audience. He wasn't writing a book thinking that nobody would understand what he's talking about. He wrote a book because he's trying to communicate to his people. And so scholars. Scholars put it in its ancient context to try to understand what it meant.
- [09:21]
Megan Lewis
So if. If modern people use it, misuse it to predict the end of the world, what was its intended function in its own time and place? Why was it written?
- [09:30]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah. So to understand that, you have to understand what kind of writing it Is today. When you read a piece of writing, you really pay attention to what kind of thing it is. Like if you're reading a story about a scientific experiment in New York that went badly and a bacterium got out of the laboratory and has infected the entire water supply of New York City, and everybody's going to die. If you read that in a science fiction novel, you know it's a science fiction novel and you pretty much know how this is going to go. But if you read it on the front page of the New York Times, you get nervous. That's very different because they're different kinds of settings and different kinds of genres. So a newspaper report is very different from a science fiction novel, and a science fiction novel is very different from a limerick poem, and a limerick poem is very different from a short story. All of these things are genres of literature. One problem with the Book of Revelation is that when people read it, they don't realize it's one of a genre of literature. When you read it today, it just seems so bizarre. It's so you got these wild beasts and these things coming down from heaven and these battles up, and I mean, it's like, whoa, it is cosmic and weird and what is that? And so it just seems like unlike anything anybody's ever written before. And since it's unlike anything written before, nobody knows what to make of it, except for these prophecy writers who tell you what to make of it. But the reality is, most of these prophecy writers don't realize that this is an entire genre of literature. There were books like this being written in Jewish circles, and then in Christian circles, there are books that scholars have called apocalypses. The word apocalypse, the Book of Revelation itself, is sometimes called the Apocalypse of John. The word apocalypse is a Greek word that means something like a disclosure or an unveiling or revealing or an unveiling a disclosure, something like that. The Latin equivalent of the Greek word apocalypse is the word revelation. Revelation is the Latin form. Apocalypse is the Greek form. There were books written about this that are trying to describe the realities of. Of heaven that can make sense of what's happening here on earth. They're trying to explain the supernatural, the spiritual realities that explain this mundane world. And they do it in a variety of ways. You can look at the Book of Revelation if you know what. How the genre of an apocalypse works. You can look at Revelation and you can see how. How revelation works. And so that's what scholars do.
- [12:04]
Megan Lewis
So we've talked a little bit about the apocalyptic worldview before, and we've touched on apocalyptic literature as well. What's the connection between the two, the way of thinking and then the literary genre?
- [12:17]
Bart Ehrman
It's a very important question because people get it confused. Even some scholars get it confused. The apocalyptic worldview is a way of kind of understanding the world that we did talk about before. But just to kind of summarize, an apocalyptic worldview came about in ancient Judaism a couple of hundred years before Jesus. It was a view that said that there are two components of reality. All of reality participates in either good or evil, and that God's in charge of the forces that are good and the devil's in charge of the forces that are evil. These are in struggle with one another. And that in the current age that we live in now, the forces of evil are dominant and becoming more dominant. God is allowing that to happen for some unknown reason. But that's why there's so much incredible suffering in the world. It's why you have epidemics and why you've got starvation and drought and you've got birth defects and you've got accidents. You've got wars and you've got volcanoes and hurricanes. You got all this stuff going on. Oh, my God, this is a mess. It's because the forces of evil are in control. But God is going to intervene to destroy the forces of evil and set up a good kingdom here on Earth. And it's going to happen pretty soon. So that's the apocalyptic worldview. Anybody can have that worldview without writing a book. And many people write books, have that worldview, but they don't write apocalypses. An apocalypse is a kind of writing that embodies that worldview. And so one way you might think of it is that, you know, you can be a Marxist without writing the Communist Manifesto. Now, there's a. There's a kind of writing that you can do to encapsulate Marxism, or there's a kind of writing you do to capitalism. And there's kind of, you know, you can write an economic treatise, but an economic treatise isn't the only way to be a capitalist. And so apocalypses are. Are a literary genre written by people with apocalyptic worldviews. But most people with apocalyptic worldviews don't write apocalypses.
- [14:11]
Megan Lewis
So what are maybe some of the hallmarks or the characteristics of the apocalypse genre?
- [14:16]
Bart Ehrman
So we have examples from ancient Judaism, as I said, one is in the Hebrew Bible, parts of the Book of Daniel is an apocalypse. The way the apocalypse genre works is they are usually written by somebody who's claiming to be someone Famous that they're not. Usually they are pseudepigraphic. And so whoever wrote Daniel actually was not somebody living in the 6th century BCE is somebody who's living in the 2nd century BCE claiming to be Daniel, living 400 years earlier. And that's the kind of thing you get a lot you get. You get apocalypses that claim to be written by Abraham, the father of the Jews, or Elijah or Enoch or Adam. We have an apocalypse of Adam, as in Adam and Eve. So the people who wrote these things were not really Adam and Enoch. There are people claiming to be the usually because it provides some kind of authority for them, because to whom else is God going to reveal the secrets of the universe than somebody like that? And so usually that's the case. The book of Gospel, the apocalypse of John, by the way, is an exception to the rule. Whoever wrote this thing, his name was John. We just don't know which John he was. But usually they're pseudepigraphic. They are narrative descriptions of supernatural realities that make sense of natural events. And so they typically involve somebody who is a prophet, a seer, somebody who sees visions. And these visions are one of two things or both things. Sometimes the seer is taken up to heaven and is shown the realities of heaven. They see what's happening up in heaven and it's being mirrored here on earth so that they see what's happening in heaven. They know, they understand what's happening down here on earth. The other thing they have, which is more like in the book of Daniel, is the seer might be shown a symbolic sequence of events to happen. You'll see something that is symbolizing the future of history. Book of Revelations we're going to see does both of those. In both kinds of apocalypse, you've got a seer writing pseudonymously who has a vision. This vision is filled with symbolism, massive symbolism throughout that has to be interpreted. And almost always the author gives you hints. And to the interpretation that's the key. These apocalypses, they often violate common sense. And so like you might like have a disaster, disaster, disaster, like the world gets destroyed and then more disasters happen on the earth kind of thing. Well, that doesn't make sense, but it doesn't matter because the point is that these apocalypse are trying to emphasize a point. They kind of overemphasize it by going to extremes. They usually involve terrible things that are going to happen to earth that end up triumphantly. Things end up well in the end. And so there's stories about how in the end everything is going to be made right. That is wrong.
- [17:00]
Megan Lewis
Now, could you give us maybe the cliffnotes version of what happens in Revelation? And I'm aware that that's a very, very large request.
- [17:10]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, it is. But it's worth kind of doing the brief summary so people realize, as I said before, there really is nothing to be afraid of in the book of Revelation if it just gets explained to you. And that's part of what I do in my book is I lay it out, I give it like a chapter just explaining the thing. And so the way it starts out is you have this prophet who calls himself John. He doesn't say which John he is. It was a very common name in the ancient world. John is exiled, apparently to an island named Patmos off of the Turkey coast. And there he has some visions. The first vision he has is he. He actually sees Jesus, who's one like a son of man, who is this powerful grand figure who is walking around among seven lampstand, golden lampstands, and he holds seven stars in his hand. And it's a powerful vision that John basically faints on the spot. But then Christ explains that the seven lampstands are the seven churches of Asia Minor, seven churches in Western Turkey. Now Turkey. And in his hand are the seven stars are the angels of those churches. So already you get some imagery that Christ is among his churches. And. And he holds the destiny of the churches in his hands. The guardian angels is in his hand. Christ tells John to write the things that he's seen and the things that are now and the things that are to come. And so the things he's seen is this vision that he describes in chapter one, the things that are now is. He's instructed to write a letter to each of the seven churches. And he does that in chapters two and three. And then the rest of the book is where the action hits, chapters four to the end. 22. Chapter 22 is where the action begins. But it starts with these letters to these churches that Christ dictates. He dictates a letter to these seven churches. And they're churches like Ephesus and Laodicea and so Pergamum, these places including Philadelphia, but not the one in Pennsylvania. Christ dictates these letters to John, and John writes down, and these letters tell the churches that, you know, they're doing some things well and some things ain't doing well at all. They better shape up or Christ is going to take their lampstand away. And so there's kind of the judgment's going to happen if they don't shape up. And he describes what the various problems are. That's an important passage. People skip over chapters two and three because they see, oh, yeah, he's writing letters. Who cares? But it's really important. But the thing is, it shows that John is writing to Christians of his own day, that he knows he's writing a message to these church. He himself is connected with these churches. He's expecting these churches to pay attention to what he's going to say in this book. He's not writing for somebody reading it 2,000 years later. Well, okay, so then the action does begin in chapter four. And I'll give you a brief summary of the next 18 chapters. John sees, like a window open up in heaven, a door open up in heaven. And he shoots up through it. He's told to come up. He shoots up through it, and he sees the throne room of God. And God is sitting on his throne and he's holding a scroll in his hand. And John gets very upset because nobody is worthy to break the seven seals that are on the scroll. The image here is that you don't have the book form. You've got a scroll. You seal a book with seals. And nobody can break the seals except for the person to whom a writing is sent to, unless they're of equal authority to the sender in antiquity. Okay, so the king sends a letter. Only somebody's. Well, nobody's equal to the king. But John gets upset and starts weeping because there's nobody who has the authority to open God's scroll. But then he's told that, in fact, there is one that can. Can break the seals. The. The lion from the tribe of Judah is able to break the seals. And this, this is an image of Christ who. Lion is the king and tribe of Judah. Jesus comes from the. From the tribe of Judah. And so he starts looking around for this lion. Where's the lion? And there's no lion. There's a lamb that appears, a lamb who's recently been slaughtered. Another image for Christ. And the lamb goes up to the throne of God and takes the scroll from God. And he starts breaking the seals. And once he starts breaking the seals, bad things start happening. People have heard of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, the first four seals. When he breaks a seal, a rider comes out on a horse and creates havoc on the earth. And so there's war and there's internal uprising, insurrection, there is famine, there's death that happens on the earth with these four horsemen. As Christ the Lamb, he breaks the sixth seal when he breaks the sixth seal, the moon turns to blood, the sun goes completely dark, the stars fall from the sky onto the earth, and the entire heaven rolls up. And you'd think, oh, my God, it's the end of the world, right? No, wrong. You're only in chapter six. It's just starting. And so this is what I meant when I said it's going to be repeating itself a lot. He breaks these seven seals, and when he breaks the seventh seal, nothing happens. There's silence for a while. But then you're introduced to seven angels who each have a trumpet. And each of these angels blows a trumpet, and more disasters hit the Earth. Boom, boom, boom, boom. A third of the Earth is destroyed. A third of the fish die in the sea. A third of the. She turns to blood. I mean, it's all of these things going on, crazy things. And disasters went after. And then the seventh trump gets blown and nothing happens. And then you're introduced to seven angels who are carrying huge bowls on their shoulders. They're filled with God's wrath, and they start pouring out the bowls of God's wrath on the Earth. So basically, the Earth is just being completely wiped out and the people on it. In the midst of all that, there are other things that happen within these episodes, but the point is you have a sequence of three sets of disasters, seven each. So these are all symbolic numbers, right? Seven is the perfect number in the Bible. And three, of course, I mean, you think Trinity or anything. Numbers three is very important, too. So a series of three of seven things with other things happening in it, including the rise of a figure that people have called the Antichrist. He's not called the Antichrist in the Book of Revelation. He's called the beast from the sea. And we're told that this beast from the sea is an enemy of God. And he's the one who raises. He creates problems on Earth on top of God causing problems on Earth, the Antichrist gathers troops and wants to do war with heaven. And at the Battle of Armageddon, Christ appears from heaven with his angelic troops. And the beast has gathered his earthly troops, and it's no contest. Christ wipes them out and they're mercilessly destroyed. It's an awful, awful battle scene. When all of the destruction has happened near the end of the book, finally what happens is that there's a final judgment and people raised from the dead, the enemies of God, the devil and the beast. They're thrown into a lake of fire, a burning sulfur, and then there's A judgment day. And those who have sided with the devil and with the forces of evil are also thrown into the lake of fire. Everyone who's ever lived, those who have sided with God are given an eternal city. It's not that they go up to heaven, they're on earth and Earth gets recreated. God makes a new heavens and a new earth. And in this earth, there's a new Jerusalem that descends from heaven. The city of God descends from heaven. It's an enormous city. It's 1500 square miles, cubicle miles, 1500 miles high, wide and long, and it's made out of gold. And it has streets of pearl, gates of pearl. And this is where the saints will live forever, where there'll be no more pain or suffering forevermore. And then the book ends with John asking Jesus to make it happen soon. And Jesus assures him, it's going to happen soon. Be ready. It's going to happen soon. Yes. And it ends with, yes, Lord Jesus, come soon, Lord Jesus. And so that's. That's the end of the book. So it's about the disasters on earth that eventuate in God's eternal city, descending to heaven, from heaven to earth.
- [25:23]
Megan Lewis
And if anyone has read through Revelation, you are. I agree with, with all the things that people have said to you about. It's. It's difficult to read. I don't understand the language. It's full of symbolism. And unless you are aware of the fact that it is symbolism and aware of the culture that produced that book, I can see it being very easy for people, for these prophetic authors to take that symbolism and kind of reinterpret it using a lens and a framework that makes sense to them as modern people. But if we pause there for a second and go back to its ancient context, what is the book actually talking about if it's not the literal end of the world?
- [26:05]
Bart Ehrman
So the way to get to that is to understand the symbolism. There's some symbols in it that the author basically gives away the game. And when he gives away the game, that gives you the clue for everything else. There's one episode in chapter 13 that's very useful for giving away the game. And there's another one in chapter 17 that gives away the game. In chapter 17, the prophet is taken into a wilderness area and he sees a great beast with many heads and many horns on its head and a grotesque woman sitting on the beast. She's adorned in jewels and expensive clothing, but she's a horrific figure. She has an inscription on her head that says Babylon the great, the mother of whore whores. It's intentionally an offensive image, calling her a whore. And she is drunk with the blood of Jesus. She's holding a cup of abominations in her hand. She's drinking. It's filled with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And the prophet is, oh, my. What is that? And what always happens in these apocalypses, this is the important thing to remember in these apocalypses. There's always an angel standing by to tell you what it's all about, because you're looking there and saying, what is that? I have no idea. And the angel says, okay. So he said, and the prophet wants to know, who is this? And the angel says that, well, the woman who is seated on the beast, the beast has seven heads, and the seven heads represent the seven hills on which she is seated. So you're wondering, what is that? The woman seated on the seven hills, drunk with the blood of the martyrs. But then at the end of it, in case you're not getting what this is, anyone in the ancient world would understand the seven hills. At the end of the chapter, the angel says, the woman is the city seated on the seven hills. And so anyway, the angel. Oh, that's Rome. Yeah, that's Rome. Rome, the city of seven hills that is drunk with the blood of the martyrs because Nero killed these. As we said a couple episodes ago, Nero persecuted Christians and shed their blood in horrific ways. She is gold. She's. She's decked with finery and jewels because Rome has gotten rich off the other nations of Earth, for which it was quite infamous and for which the Book of Revelation is very upset about. About Rome being. Being so rich at the expense of others. And so she. She's the city. And on her head is written Babylon the Great. Well, what's that all about? Babylon was the city that destroyed Jerusalem in the 6th century BCE and destroyed the temple. This woman represents Rome, and it's called Babylon because Rome also destroyed Jerusalem and the temple. And so this is referring to this being this woman who is controlling the Earth now, but she's going to be destroyed. God is going to destroy her because she destroyed Jerusalem.
- [29:13]
Megan Lewis
Interesting. And I have a very brief question. Is Rome not explicitly mentioned for the safety of the author, or is that simply an apocalyptic convention? You have to make things a little bit esoteric and a little bit mysterious.
- [29:28]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, it's really a good question because people ask me this all the time. Like, John is afraid, like, he'd get even more trouble, so he doesn't mention Rome and He doesn't. You call it by name because the
- [29:39]
Megan Lewis
seven cities thing is kind of, that's a major giveaway.
- [29:42]
Bart Ehrman
It's such a giveaway.
- [29:43]
Megan Lewis
You may as well just say Romeo.
- [29:45]
Bart Ehrman
He's not hiding anything. I mean, anybody who reads this will know he's talking about Rome. And as it turns out, this is a major point that historians make that prophecy writers do not make. The enemy, the beast from the sea, the so called Antichrist. This is Rome and its emperor. The reason he doesn't name them has nothing to do with trying to keep it a secret. He's not imagining that Roman officials are going to start reading his book and come out to arrest him. Nobody's a small Christian group is going to be reading the book. And so he's not trying to hide anything because he's not clearly not hiding a thing. The other reason you give is right these books are supposed to be mysterious and they're supposed to be a little tricky to interpret until you get the clues. But once you get the clues, they start making sense. And it's because, you know, God's Revelation isn't a straightforward kind of essay about what's going to happen at the end of the world. You know, it's mysterious and it's esoteric and you need to figure it out. You get that in one other place, by the way, that's also a place that has symbolism. That's pretty easy to figure out once you have the clue. And it's the passage in chapter 13. In chapter 13 is where we get introduced to the beast from the sea who wreaks havoc on the earth and is a horrible figure who's opposed to God and his people. John wants to know who it is, what it is, because it's this. You know, it looks like a sea beast and it is a sea beast. And the angel tells him that in fact, that it's a man. And the man has a number. The number of the man is 666. Okay, so the number of the beast is 666. Now people have had a field day with that one. Over the years there have been so many books written about who really is 666, this figure, this beast of the sea is said to have. So he forces everybody to have a mark put on his forehead and on its hands or is unable. Anyone who doesn't do that cannot buy or sell anything. And so the mark of the beast is, as it's called. This figure has been wounded, but has returned, apparently returned from the dead. So you get these hints about he is. Then at the end, you're told it's 666. So what is it? So when I was. When I was in college, there was a book that argued that the Pope. The Pope was. Which is a view that goes way back to the Middle Ages. There's a book that's written that said Henry Kissinger was the Antichrist during the Iraq War. Saddam Hussein was the antichrist in the 1940s. Mussolini was the Antichrist because he, you know, came from Rome. Or Hitler could be the Antichrist. And so it's always somebody you don't like who's the Antichrist. When I was in college, there were somewhat liberal Christians who pointed out that in the 1980s that Ronald Wilson Reagan had six letters in each. 660. They didn't like his defense budget or whatever. And there are all sorts of ways you can get Donald Trump on there. And in my world, my students think it's great that the Department of Religious Studies Phone number is 962-5666. Who's the Antichrist? So the angel tells. Tells him, okay, anyone with wisdom can figure this out. It's the number of a man. It's. It's 666. And so what is this? Well, we already have the hint that the Antichrist is connected with Rome. Not just a hint. It's like everywhere throughout this book, I try to show there's a big sign and there's lots of little signs. This is the enemy's Rome. And so what is 666? The leader of Rome, of course, is the emperor. The first emperor to persecute Christians was Nero during the fire of Rome in 64. And so here's the thing. An ancient interpreter knows exactly what's going on here, because in ancient languages, they didn't have separate numeric systems from their alphabetical systems. So in English, we use a Roman or a Latin Alphabet. A, B, C, D, E. But we use Arabic numerals 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in ancient Greek. And in ancient Hebrew, they didn't do it that way. In ancient Hebrew, aleph, first letters 1, beit, 2, gimel, 3. It's like. And you go like that till you get to 10. And then the next letter will be 20, 30, 40, 50. When you get to 90, the next one's 100. Then after that's 200, 304. The way you indicate a number is by putting the letters and usually putting a tick above it. So they realize it's a number, not a. Not a word. And usually doesn't spell a word anyway. It's just, you know, it's three letters that add up to, you know, 453 or something. And so you just do that. You just. In Hebrew to come up with. With the number 13, you do a Daleth. Vav. Daleth. You know, it's just DVD. And that adds up. Numbers add up. What the author is telling you is if you add up the letters of this person's name, it adds up to 666. Okay, so Nero is the enemy. Nero is the emperor of Rome. If you spell the name Kaiser Nero, Kaiser Neron in Hebrew letters, it adds up to 666. But there's an interesting variant on this. Some manuscripts, some Greek manuscripts of the Book of Revelation don't give the number as 666. Some give it as 6. One, six.
- [34:58]
Megan Lewis
Huh?
- [34:59]
Bart Ehrman
You can spell Kaiser Nehron two ways, either Kaiser Nehran or Kaiser Nero. This means the same thing just in these ancient languages. Sometimes you put an extra letter at the end of a letter. In Hebrew, the nun is worth 50. So if Kaiser Nehran has the nun, it's 666. If it doesn't have the nun, it's 616. It's talking about Nero. Once you know it's talking about Nero and it's talking about the Roman Empire. It is not predicting what's going to happen on Yash Hashanah in 1988. It's not. And it's not talking about what's going to happen during the Iraq War, which people thought, or during the Second World War or during. During the war with Ukraine. This is not fulfilling scripture. It's not fulfilling scripture. The scripture isn't talking about that. John's talking about Rome is going to be destroyed and he's hoping it's going to happen soon. You can't object, by the way, by saying, oh, yeah, it didn't happen, so he couldn't be talking about that. Oh, yeah, somebody predicts something that isn't going to happen. So he couldn't be saying that. Right. Edgar Weissen didn't really mean 1988 because, you know, it didn't happen then, so he couldn't be. John did say that he thought it was going to happen soon. He did. He just thought, you know, God's not going to put up with Rome anymore. He's going to wipe it out. When he wipes it out, he's going to give all the power of Rome and all the wealth of Rome to the Christians. They get the city.
- [36:21]
Megan Lewis
I See, interesting. And despite the fact that it clearly doesn't predict the end of the world, it's still continually reinterpreted that way. And I think something that certainly was. Was news to me and seems to have been news to you in 1988, is that people take this very, very seriously. This is a. An honest belief for many, many people. And my next question is, what is the impact on the wider world and wider society? I suspect mostly American at United States society, but probably that it bleeds through into other nations and other cultures as well. Because this belief is clearly not as fringe as I would have once assumed. And I think that many other people probably would assume. What does this do to our world and to our society?
- [37:09]
Bart Ehrman
So the second part of my book actually deals with this at some length. You know, people, it does sound like a kind of a fringe view to most. To most people. But you need to realize some years ago, the Left behind series of novels massively millions and millions and millions of copies sold and made three movies out of it. And so people just think, this is what the Bible says. And there have been times when the predictions have been made so explicit that it's wreaked havoc in people's lives, as happened somewhat with Weissenant. But there are other times in history. In America, there was a moment in the 19th century that was very big where people expected on a certain day it didn't happen. And it was a big, big deal then. And so there's that kind of problem. And so people put their hopes in something that it's being predicted. They're sure it's going to happen because it's got to happen, because it says so right here. And you got this interpretation and it says so. So it's going to happen on Octo. Going to happen. And the problem is that people have been predicting it that way for centuries and centuries and centuries about their own time. So the one thing you can. Two things you can say about those people, one is every one of them has been incontrovertibly wrong. And the other thing you can say, they base it on the book of Revelation. So probably the problem isn't that they're getting a few details wrong and that now we finally got it right. The problem is they're just. They've got the wrong interpretation. But that's not the way to interpret the book. The actually the issue goes beyond people who believe it, who get, you know, upset or frustrated or have their lives ruined, because it doesn't happen. It has larger effects. It has effects on American foreign policy, for one thing. I can't go into this too much because we don't have too much time, but I, and I'm not saying this is a, this is necessarily a bad thing, but it is something that is absolutely worth noting that people don't. Don't realize. I have a section of my book that talk about American support for Israel. And I am not taking a single. I'm not taking a stand on the Israeli Palestinian situation at all. But what I am saying is that American support for Israel isn't just about oil and about stability in the Middle East. It actually started before those were issues for America, American support for the nation of Israel. The idea of Zionism, there was actually Christian Zionism before there was Zionism, before there was Jewish Zionism. Zionism. Christian Zionism started in the 19th century in England and then came over to America. And the reason that it was supported by evangelical Christians who wanted Israel to be. To become a state again. It wasn't. Again, it wasn't for political reasons. It was for religious reasons is because the Bible predicts that Israel will be restored as a nation. And starting in the year seven, well, in the year 135. So back in the second century, Israel was wiped out and Jews were not allowed to enter into Jerusalem anymore. Anymore. And so for centuries and centuries and centuries, there's no state of Israel until modern times. But in the 19th century, Christians started urging, especially the British government, but then also the American government, to support a state in Israel because prophets like Jeremiah and Ezekiel predict that the people will come back to the land. But in American politics, it's become especially important over the last few decades because evangelical Christians believe that for Jesus to return, something has to happen first. This isn't based on revelation. It's based on The Book of 2 Thessalonians, which indicates that the Antichrist figure, when he rises up, will enter into the Temple and declare himself to be God. Well, there is no temple. The Temple was destroyed in the year 70. For that to happen, for the Antichrist to arise, there has to be a temple. For there to be a temple, Israel has to control the Temple Mount. But you've already, you've got Islamic sacred sites on the, in the Dome of the Rock, on the Temple Mount. And unless Israel destroys it and builds the Temple, Jesus can't come back. And so most people don't realize that the American evangelical support for Israel is rooted in a theological belief. It's not rooted in, of course, they, you know, people are concerned also, of course, about stability. In the Middle east and about issues related to oil from the Middle east and all that. That's absolutely right. But this whole thing started because of an eschatological expectation that the temple had to be rebuilt. And there are evangelical groups that are planning on it. They're planning on it now, and they convince everyone that you gotta vote, you know, for Israel. And this is when Trump moved the embassy to Jerusalem. This was not, this wasn't out of the blue. This is evangelicals desperately want Israel to take over all of Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount. Again, I'm not taking a stand on the problems, the Israeli Palestinian problem at all, but I am saying that this kind of expectation of what's going to happen in the near future affects American policy.
- [42:07]
Megan Lewis
That is quite a sobering thought, especially when you consider it's based largely on a book that is not at all talking about modern times and modern politics.
- [42:18]
Bart Ehrman
Yes, it's based on misinterpretations of the Bible. And that's why we have historians to tell us, well, actually, what did it mean in its own context? Presumably whoever wrote these books was trying to communicate a message to their context, not to somebody 11, 2000 years later.
- [42:35]
Megan Lewis
That is why we do what we do. So on that note, I think we'll end there and take a little bit of a break. And then we'll be back with bart's Weekly Update and some audience questions.
- [42:49]
Bart Ehrman
Are you a curious person with a passion for learning but don't want to go back to school? You need to take a look at Wondrium, the streaming service that provides classes on just about everything of interest. The Crusades, neuroscience, Beethoven, photography, travel, and lots else, all presented by true experts in accessible terms. For a free trial, go to barturman.com wondrium if you decide to subscribe to Wondrium, this podcast will receive a referral fee, but that'll have no effect on the cost of your subscription. And you'll be supporting our show. If you're interested in the Gospels of the New Testament, the book of Genesis, the resurrection of Jesus, the historicity of the Exodus, or anything else connected with the Bible, you should check out my online courses where I cover all these topics and more. If you'd like to learn about the courses, check them out@barturman.com you can receive a discount on any of your purchases simply by entering the code mjpodcast.
- [44:03]
Megan Lewis
Welcome back, everyone. We have Bart's Weekly Updates.
- [44:09]
Bart Ehrman
This is Bart's Weekly Update, where we get to catch up on all the latest about Dr. Ehrman's book releases, speaking engagements, ehrmanblog.org happenings, and online course launches.
- [44:23]
Megan Lewis
But what do you have for us this week?
- [44:25]
Bart Ehrman
Well, I'm. I'm getting geared up now. Next month, my book is coming out, my book on Armageddon. And what happens at this stage is. Gets exciting because it's. There's the long lull when somebody writes a book. Basically, it doesn't show up for another year. It doesn't get published for a year. It takes that long for a publisher to publish a book usually. So now I'm near the end of that year. And so I'm getting interviews lined up and podcasts lined up. And this can be the fun part because you get to talk about your book in public. It's how people become aware of it. And so now I'm working out kind of scheduling for all of that. And so it's a very exciting time. We ended up calling the book Armageddon. What the Bible really teaches about the end, that's what it'll be about. And that's. That's what we're doing these, this short series on.
- [45:10]
Megan Lewis
Oh, excellent. Very exciting. I'm looking forward to getting my hands on a copy and having a read. And now we have some time for some audience questions.
- [45:22]
Bart Ehrman
Now it's time for questions from listeners where Bart answers real questions submitted by misquoting Jesus as fans. If you'd like to submit a question for future segments, please visit bart erman.com Ask Bart.
- [45:40]
Megan Lewis
Okay, best part of the show, listeners questions. First question is the book of Revelation's condemnation of Jezebel representative of a shifting attitude towards women's roles in the church as compared to the time of Paul.
- [45:55]
Bart Ehrman
Oh, boy, this is tough. We need an entire episode on this, probably because I deal with this at length in the book because it's a very, very disturbing passage. I mentioned in the book that there are these seven letters that John writes to the churches. Christ is dictating to him, and he's writing what Christ dictates. Christ is very upset with the church of Thyatira, the city Thyatira, because there is a prophetess there that he calls Jezebel. Jezebel is the name of a wicked queen in the Old Testament who tries to lead Israel astray. And so John calls this prophetess in the church of Thyatira Jezebel, because she's leading the Christians astray in Thyatira. And he says that she is encouraging people to be sexually immoral and to eat food offered to idols. And because she's encouraging that he's going to punish her severely. So I'll get to the punishment in a second. Sorry, this will take a little bit of time, even just answering this question. But the person asks about, like, does it show things have changed since the time of Paul? Paul had to deal with this issue of people eating food offered to idols. And what that means is in the ancient world, when somebody wanted to have meat for a meal, they'd have to have it butchered. And the priests of temple pagan temples were the butchers. They'd sacrifice an animal to the gods and then burn the parts, the fat and the bones that the gods want. And then they'd give the carcass, they give the meat back to the person, or they'd sell the meat. If people wanted to buy meat, they would buy sacrificial meat, typically. And so Christians wondered, is that okay because the meat's been offered to a pagan God in a sacrifice? And if I eat meat offered to an idol, am I participating in pagan worship? And in Paul's day, in 1 Corinthians, Paul, chapters 8 and 10, Paul says. He says, basically, yeah, don't eat the meat. But there's a dispute about whether it's okay or not. Because, you know, some Christians are saying, well, those are pagan gods. You can't worship pagan gods. And other Christians are saying, they're not gods. Gods don't exist. And so it's okay to eat the meat because they're not gods. And so they're trying to figure out what to do. And Paul kind of goes back and forth and he says, yeah, they're not really gods. Yeah, it's better not to eat. Eat the meat. So he's kind of like, waffling, and he's, yeah, don't eat the meat. For reasons that he gives the Book of Revelation, John is opposed to it. He thinks it's the worst thing you can possibly do. If you do that, it's like committing sexual immorality. And so Jezebel in Thyatira is teaching people to do this. We don't know what Jezebel was really teaching. She might have been saying, look, your neighbor invites you over for a meal. Go over, have your meal. They offer you some meat, eat the meat, give you a chance to talk about Christ with them, you know, and so it gives you a chance to spread the word. You know, she might be doing something like that. But John hears, oh, my gosh, he's encouraging people to eat sacrificial meat. So he gets really, really Upset. So Christ in this letter says that because Jezebel saying this, he, Christ, will throw Jezebel on a bed and men will come and have sex with her, and then he, Christ, will kill her children. So it's not clear that these men who are having sex with her, it's not clear that she's welcoming them or if she's being forced into this. And certainly the children weren't asking to be killed, and Christ is doing this. We're going to later have an episode on whether the Book of Revelation is violent and whether Christ is portrayed in a violent way. And this is a very disturbing imagery, even if you think, yeah, he doesn't mean it literally. Okay, he doesn't mean it literally. Is this the kind of symbolism that is to be connected with Christ in my book? One of the things I ask in my book is whether the portrayal of Christ and the understanding of God and who God is and God's character and his relationship to the world, if this understanding is the understanding that Jesus himself had, is the revelation of John preaching the actual Gospel of Christ, is the Gospel of Jesus. And so it's an interesting question that most people haven't asked because it's in the Bible. Right. So it's got to be all the same. It's not all the same. Revelation is not the same as the teachings of Jesus.
- [50:11]
Megan Lewis
Thank you very much. We'll do one more audience question before we wrap up. And we've kind of talked about this before, but I think it's always worth revisiting. Did the historical Jesus believe the end was coming in his generation, and did he think that he was going to be this future ruler, or was he expecting someone else?
- [50:29]
Bart Ehrman
Okay, there's another episode or two. Yes. I'll give you my short answer, which will be unsatisfactory to most people because you got to look at the evidence, and the evidence takes a while to lay out. Scholars have talked about this one forever, especially since the Enlightenment. This has become a very big issue. I agree with those scholars. I'll say this is the majority view among historical scholars. Historical scholars who are not insisting that the Bible is inerrant, but are trying to approach it historically. Since the days of Albert Schweitzer, since 1906, the majority of scholars who work on this stuff in America and Europe agree that Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher who, like other apocalypticists in his day, including John the Baptist, the Essenes people, did the Dead Sea Scrolls, that Jesus thought the end was coming soon, that Jesus really did say that his generation would see it happen and that some of his disciples would be alive at the time. I think Jesus really did expect it to come soon. That was the common belief. And it was. It'd be weird for him not to have the common belief as he's living at the time. So he had his own beliefs too. But I think he had that belief. I do not think that he thought that he himself would be the one who brought the end. He wasn't going to be coming in judgment. Jesus thought that a separate figure from heaven, a heavenly being, was going to come and destroy the forces of evil and set up God's kingdom on earth. But this is a third episode. We need to have unrelated. I think Jesus thought that this heavenly figure who's coming to destroy the forces of evil would appoint a. Appoint him, Jesus to be the king of the kingdom. And that's what Jesus meant when he said that he's the Messiah, he's the future king of the kingdom. So I think the historical Jesus really thought that.
- [52:13]
Megan Lewis
Excellent. Thank you very much. Before we finish for the week, would you mind just summarizing what we've talked about and where people can find out more?
- [52:21]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah. So the book of Revelation is the most puzzling book and the most misunderstood book, probably the least read book of the Bible. It always has been. It's the least. Was the least copied book of its size. And, and, you know, other books its size were copied a lot in the ancient world, not Revelation wasn't copied very much. It is completely misunderstood by many, many people who think that it's predicting what's going to happen in the future, who think that they're convinced that the signs are now being fulfilled, which is what they thought in the 1980s and in the 1960s and in the 1920s. And you can go all the way back. People always thought they saw the signs being fulfilled in their day. Historical scholars don't interpret it that way as a blueprint for our future. Historical scholars. I'm not talking about atheists, just atheists here. I'm talking about Christian historical scholars have long thought that in fact, it's not talking about our future, it's talking about what was going on in John's day. The enemy of John was the city and emperor of Rome. And John believed that God was going to intervene in order to overthrow the Roman powers and bring in a good kingdom on earth. John expected that to happen soon. And his book of Revelation is a symbolic demonstration of the coming destruction of Rome. So anyway, I talk about that in the book and also my book and also the implications of that, especially the implications of misinterpretations of the book regarding our future, the implications of that for people's lives today and for their expectations, but also for things like like foreign policy in America and climate change and things like that.
- [53:56]
Megan Lewis
Bart, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure as always. Audience thank you all for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please subscribe to the podcast and make sure you don't miss any future episodes. Remember, 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 Bart, what are we talking about next time?
- [54:20]
Bart Ehrman
Well, we're going to continue the short thread on the Book of Revelation and we're going to deal with a bit of what I was talking about today about the violence in the Book of Revelation. There are a lot of people, including a lot of scholars, who will argue that God is not portrayed and Christ is not portrayed in a violent way in the Book of Revelation. That may seem remarkable to many readers of Revelation, but it's a common view among scholars that it's wrong to see it as a violent book. And so we're going to talk about the violence in the Book of Revelation.
- [54:50]
Megan Lewis
Thank you so much, audience. Thank you all for listening and goodbye. This has been an episode of Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. We'll be back with a new episode next Tuesday, so please be sure to subscribe to our show for free on your favorite podcast listening app or on Bart Ehrman's YouTube channel so you don't miss out. From Bart Ehrman and myself, Megan Lewis, thank you for joining us.