← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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A
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B
Welcome to Ms. Quoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. The only show where a six time New York Times best selling author and world renowned Bible scholar uncovers the many fascinating little known facts about the New Testament, the historical Jesus and the rise of Christianity. I'm your host, Megan Lewis. Let's begin. Hello everybody and welcome back to Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. Today we are going to be talking about the Gospel of Mark. It's widely agreed by academics to be the earliest gospel of the New Testament. So we're going to be looking at why it was written, how it's different from the other gospels, and what exactly Mark's message to his reader is. But before that. Bart. Hi, how are you this week?
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C
Yeah, I'm doing well. University professors usually get this bad rap for having like all this free time. Like you get the summer off and
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B
things and you just lounge about eating chocolate. It's great.
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C
Yeah. Watching soaps, I mean, you know, how hard is it? And yeah, you know, I get that because it seems weird, but our semester actually ends at the end of this month. Some university professors can probably be lazy. I don't think I know any of any, but I'm sure they are. But oh my God, it's like it never stops. Because if you're a research scholar, you just, there's no time off. But apart from that, we're heading to the end of the semester now and for students, this is kind of the crunch time because you've got the last few weeks and you realize, oh my God, I really haven't studied as much as I wanted to and I as I should have. And sure, I've been a lot of parties this semester and oh my God, I got papers to write and finals to think about. Oh gee. And so students are kind of at that point where they realize it's getting serious. So yeah, that's where I am. So how are things on your end?
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B
Good. Actually, April is a busy month for me too. Not because of teaching or exams or anything, but I run a small nonprofit. We give grants, summer grant money to PhD students who are in the study of the ancient near east, very broadly speaking. In March, we get all the applications in. Then in April, we do online interviews on the digital Hammurabi YouTube channel. It's kind of like I describe it as America's Got talent, but for PhD students, because everyone who donates to the fund gets to vote for the research they would most like to see funded over the summer. We have all the interviews during April, which is. I love it because I learn so much and I get to meet so many wonderful students, but it's. It's quite busy.
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C
I've heard about this thing. I think I read about it, but I don't think we've talked about it. But it sounds amazing. So you actually, you provide funding for graduate students who are working in ancient near east, but you said broadly defined.
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B
Yeah. So it's Egyptology, art history, serology. We do a lot of Hebrew Bible as well, and archeology as well. And we have very few strings attached to the money because if you're applying for funding as a PhD student, a lot of the time it's travel money or money for attending conferences, and often you have to provide receipts and be reimbursed. And grad students don't always have that disposable income at hand to pay for things up front. So we essentially say, come and tell us about your research. Tell us what your plans are for the summer. And if our funders vote for you, you get $2,000 to pay for childcare, even if you need to put your kids in daycare so you can write.
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C
Oh, this is fantastic. No, we need to talk more about this because. Yeah, okay. Promoting your field. Well done. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Okay.
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B
So, yeah, that's. That's going to be my next month. It's. It's fun, but busy.
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C
Sounds exciting, though, because you get to read up on all this research that people are doing. Wow. That's a good way to keep up on it and to reward them for it. Wow.
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B
So we should get into the Gospel of Mark. I know it's your favorite. You've said that a couple of times before. Why do you think it's worth our time and consideration?
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C
You know, Mark, it's one of these books that people kind of. They take for granted, I think, because people generally, if people do read the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, they usually think of Mark as the condensed version. It's the shortest of our gospels. And it seems on first reading to be a kind of nuts and bolts version, kind of a cut down version of the life of Jesus. Some people, even historically throughout the history of the Christian church, people understood it to be a condensed version of the Gospel of Matthew. And that's simply not right. Mark is, it is the shortest of our gospels. But if you start paying attention to it and you realize what this author is doing, it is flat out amazing. It really is my favorite gospel. I think it's my favorite book of the Bible. I just think it's an astounding book that people don't pay attention to and they really should because the craft that goes into this book is really, is quite stunning.
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B
Correct me if I'm wrong. It's thought to be the oldest of the gospels. Is that right? Do we know why do people think that's the case?
- [05:23]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we do. I mean, the starting with St. Augustine, it was said that Matthew was first. I mean, you know, shows up first in our Bible. So you kind of assume it's first. Augustine thought Matthew's first and Mark had written a shorter version of it. And that was the official line pretty much to down to the 19th century. In the 19th century, scholars started trying to figure out what they called the synoptic problem, which is the problem of how to deal with the three synoptic gospels. Matthew, Mark and Luke. They're called synoptic because you can see them together, sin together and optic to see. You can see them together because they tell many of the same stories, usually in the same sequence. The stories occur often word for word, the same. And these 19th century scholars, mainly in Germany, realized, look, somebody's copying somebody. I mean, there's no way you can get verbatim agreements for like sentences that are exactly the same if somebody's not copying somebody. And for a variety of complicated reasons that we won't go into here, they decided that Mark was the source, one of the sources for Matthew and Luke, which necessarily made Mark the first. Everybody has, pretty much everybody's always agreed that John's the last. And so it makes Mark our first account.
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B
So the gospel itself opens with the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And I think that first sentence really sets the tone for the rest of the book, which is very concerned with showing Jesus as the Messiah. What did the term Messiah mean in the ancient world? And how would Jewish and gentile audiences have understood it?
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C
Yeah, so this is, this is it. You read that first sentence and that's all it says, the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, you know, and you think, well, okay, but in fact, if you start understanding it it's like, whoa, wait a second. For one thing, a lot of scholars think that that's actually the title that Mark gave to his book. And that, you know, it may be just referring to the beginning of the book, but some people think it means actually the account of Jesus, life, death, and resurrection that Mark gives is the beginning of the Gospel. Because the Gospel is spread throughout, go spreading throughout the world, and it's the beginning of Christianity. This is how it begins. But the remarkable thing about this, just those few words that nobody thinks about today, they just see it. Gospel of Jesus. Beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is precisely with the question you raised. What does it mean to be the Christ? So the word Christ is the Greek word, comes from a Greek word, Christos, which means a person who's been anointed. And it's the Greek translation of the Hebrew word Mashiach, which is where we get Messiah from. And so Messiah and Christ are the same word. One's in Hebrew and one's in Greek. And so I have to tell my students, I may have mentioned this before, that when you say Jesus Christ, you're not giving his first and last names. So it's not Jesus Christ born to Joseph and Mary Christ. It's Jesus is the Messiah. But the reason that is a stunning way to begin the first account we have of the life of Jesus is because anyone who knew about Jesus, most people had never heard of him, but anyone who did know about Jesus knew that he was a crucified criminal. He's crucified for crimes against the state. The Messiah in Jewish thinking wasn't that. It was the opposite of that. There are various. Various views of what the Messiah would be. In Judaism at the time, there wasn't a standard view, but all of the views understood that the Messiah was going to be this figure of grandeur and power who overcame the enemy and destroyed the opponents. In this case, it'd be Rome and set up God's kingdom with himself ruling in Jerusalem. He'd be the king, the ruler of Israel. And Jesus was a crucified criminal. He wasn't anything like the Messiah. He's the opposite of the Messiah. And when you realize that anybody reading this for the first time in the ancient world says, beginning of Jesus the Messiah, they're saying, what? And so Mark's entire agenda is to try and show how Jesus can be the Messiah if in fact he's the opposite of the Messiah. So he's really set a big task for himself just in these opening words.
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B
So you said that Christ is obviously a translation of a Hebrew word. Would Messiah Christ have meant a lot to gentile readers? Or was this specifically to address a Jewish audience?
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C
I think Mark is written to address a gentile audience. But you're right, it's a Jewish word. I mean, if you were talking to somebody in Rome and you're speaking in Greek, pagan in Rome, and you said that somebody was Christos, they'd probably think that this person had just been exercising and had been rubbed down with oil. Okay, that's interesting. Jesus had a nice rub down with some. With oil on his head or something. So it's completely a Jewish word. And it goes back to the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, when a person was chosen to be the king of Israel during the coronation ceremony, rather than like in America, where we have an inauguration ceremony where there's some rituals that go through and you put your hand on the Bible and you swear the oath of office. In ancient Israel, the king during coronation would have oil poured on his head, perfumed oil, to indicate that this is the person who stands under God's favor. And so the Messiah was the one who's favored by God and was the one through whom God worked his will. And it was the king. Mark. And all the early Christians are operating under the assumption that Jesus is the king of the Jews. But the audience that he's writing to is a Christian audience. And even though there are reasons for thinking that they are Gentiles rather than Jews, principally Mark, they know full well what this is all about. That this is about how Jesus can be this anointed king when in fact he's a crucified criminal.
- [11:20]
B
So you said that obviously Jesus doesn't fit the mold for what people may expect the Messiah to be. He's a crucified criminal. He's not a prince or a king or bringing glory. And entering God's like bringing down God's kingdom onto earth. Does Mark accept this kind of typical expectation of what the Messiah was supposed to be?
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C
Mark actually writes his gospel to redefine what it means to be Messiah. It's true that for Mark, and it's emphasized in Mark that Jesus was a very powerful person. And so at the very beginning of his gospel, he sets up what he's going to do in the gospel by showing Jesus at work. And the first thing Jesus does after he's baptized, he gets baptized. And a voice comes from heaven and tells Jesus that he's God's son. The reader knows that this is the Son of God. You are my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased at the baptism, in the very first thing that happens. And so the reader knows, okay, this is the Son of God. And Jesus begins to act like the Son of God. The first act he does is he's walking by the Sea of Galilee and he sees Peter and Andrew fishing. And he says, follow me. And they drop their nets and follow him. They don't met him before. Then he sees James and John fishing. He says, follow me. They drop everything, follow him. So these people just, you know, he's got the author to speak and people do what he says. And then he, he goes into a synagogue and he starts teaching. And the people are looking at each other saying, he's not teaching like our Jewish leaders. He's teaching with authority. And then a man comes into the synagogue who's got a demon inside of him. And Jesus casts out the demon. Whoa. He's got authority over demons. And the whole thing is setting up his authority. And so he definitely wants to portray Jesus as this authoritative and powerful Son of God at the outset of the gospel, but it's going to lead to a crucifixion. And the question is, how do you get from this to that?
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B
I want to come back to the opening in a second, but you were mentioning several times in there, Jesus being named as the Son of God. What did it mean to be a Son of God? In the ancient world? Was Jesus the only one? Or is Mark drawing on a more well established tradition that we're not really aware of?
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C
There are different traditions about what it means to be the Son of God in the ancient world. In Jewish circles in the Old Testament, being the Son of God meant being the human or the group of humans who were chosen by God in order to mediate his will on earth. And so the kings of Israel who were anointed, the, the anointed ones were called the Son of God. King Solomon called the Son of God, David, the Son of God. Israel itself is called the Son of God. In the Old Testament, angels who mediate God's will on earth are called Sons of God. In Jewish thinking, being the Son of God did not mean that you were divine by nature. It didn't mean that you pre existed your coming into existence for humans. It didn't mean you pre existed your birth. It didn't mean you were really God. It meant that you're the one chosen by God. And so we're in a special father
- [14:27]
B
son relationship, kind of like humanity plus
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C
humanity plus, you're still human. But God has made you the one that he's going to work through, but you're still completely human. In Greek and Roman circles, Son of God has a different connotation. In those circles, a son of God is often portrayed as somebody who is partially divine. We have accounts of people who are born to the union of a God and a mortal, where a God comes down and has sex with a woman. And the child then is the Son of God. And these sons of God in Greek and Roman circles are very powerful. They can do miracles. They deliver fantastic teachings. The end of their lives. They ascend to heaven to live with the gods. Mark is probably playing with both of these concepts. He's writing in a Roman. In the Roman world, he's writing in Greek. He's writing to probably to Gentiles who have this connotation of Son of God. But these are people who are also believers in Jesus at this point, so they understand the Old Testament image as well. And so I think you've got both things going on in Mark. It's a very, very interesting title because it's not a title that is used a lot in Mark for Jesus, but it happens at all the key points. In chapter one, verse 11, he gets baptized. And the voice from heaven says, you are my son. He's speaking just to Jesus in Mark, just to Jesus, telling him he's the Son of God. And so, you know, the readers realize it because they're reading it. But then halfway through the Gospel, Jesus is transfigured before three of his disciples. Peter, James, and John. He goes up on this mountain and he starts radiating and glowing. And Moses and Elijah come down and start talking to him. And the disciples are completely wowed. What is this? And then a voice comes, says, now to the disciples, this is my son. And so now God is identifying him as Son of God. And as we're going to see as you and I talk here, nobody in this narrative understands what it means. And nobody actually understands that he's the Son of God until the very end when the centurion who crucified him looks at how he's died and says, this man was the Son of God. And so Mark is the very beginning, the very middle, the very end, the Son of God. And so that brackets the entire narrative.
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B
That's really interesting. Thank you. And it's very different to other gospels, which begin with a birth narrative that you may expect if you're trying to draw, like, a genealogical line. Actually on that topic, Mark, just like there is no birth narrative in Mark, you open with an Adult Jesus meeting John the Baptist with. Why does Mark start at that point in Jesus life?
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C
Well, it's a really good question because, you know, so we have the four Gospels and Matthew and Luke tell a birth narrative. And in Luke especially, it's really clear. Luke says the reason Mary conceives as a virgin is so that the one born of you shall be called holy, the Son of God. In Luke, Jesus is literally the Son of God, the way that Greek and Roman mythology. Somebody's the Son of God, A God gets a woman pregnant. But that's not in Mark. Mark doesn't have a virgin birth, and neither does John, by the way, for a different reason. We'll get to eventually when we do some. Some things on John. Matthew and Luke are the only two gospels that have. Have a virgin birth. None of the rest of the New Testament mentions Jesus being born of a virgin. Never found in Paul, never found anywhere in the New Testament, except for these two passages. And so the question is, why doesn't Mark start there? My guess, for one thing, is that Mark maybe didn't hear about it. This was not a story he was familiar with. That would explain it. But also I think that it's not really what Mark wants to say about Jesus. Mark wants to emphasize that Jesus was the one chosen by God to do his will. And so he is the Son of God, but he's the Son of God in a way that's completely different from what anybody would have expected.
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B
Interesting. And how does Mark try and show Jesus as the Son of God, Jesus as the Messiah, with the narrative that he presents us?
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C
The narrative is fascinating because one of the things I have my students do is read through the first eight chapters. So that's half the book. The book is 16 chapters long and figure out how Jesus is portrayed and who understands who he is in the narrative. This is distinctive to Mark. You don't get this in the other gospels. In Mark, so God tells Jesus that he's the Son of God at the baptism. And then when he casts out demons, they will start crying out, we know who you are, the Holy One of God, or you are the Son of God. And Jesus will silence them. He'll tell them, don't tell anyone. And when you go through this Gospel, Jesus is doing all these miracles. He has these crowds following him. And everybody wants a miracle. And everybody wants to be healed, obviously, and everybody. And Jesus delivers these teachings. And the striking thing is nobody can figure out who he is. This motif is just so striking to Mark because when you look at it Who? Who gets it? He goes to his hometown, Nazareth, and he begins teaching. And they say, who is this? Isn't this a carpenter? How's he get all of this?
- [19:37]
B
He fixed my table last week. What's going on?
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C
He fixed my table. What's he doing? How does he know all this? The Jewish leaders think that he's possessed by the devil. How else could he cast out demons Unless it's by the power of the chief of the demons? And so they think he's possessed by the devil. His family thinks he's gone out of his mind. In chapter three, his mother and his brothers come to take him out of public sight because they think that he's gone crazy. This is very interesting because Mark doesn't have a virgin birth. There's no story of Mary being a virgin. And in this story, Mary thinks he's gone crazy, and so do his brothers. And so none of them understand. You think, well, the disciples at least get it right. Wrong. The whole point of the first eight chapters is Jesus keeps teaching, keeps doing these things. And the disciples can't figure out who he is. And repeatedly, he keeps saying, don't you understand? Don't you get it? And it's only halfway through the gospel that any of the disciples starts getting an inkling of it. And when they start getting an inkling of it, they don't get it. They still don't get it. They never get it. And they never get it in this gospel.
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B
So why do you think it is that people don't understand who Jesus really is in Mark?
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C
This is the big question. And it's. It's what? One of the things that makes Mark so interesting. And in part, it's interesting because Jesus himself tries to keep it a secret in Mark. There's a passage in chapter four that nobody pays attention to. Chapter four is where Jesus starts telling his parables. Mark doesn't have a lot of the teaching of Jesus. A lot of things that you find in Matthew and Luke and in John. He doesn't teach a lot, but he has an extended passage of teaching in chapter four where he tells parables. And then another passage in chapter 13 where he tells a long discourse. But in chapter four, he tells a parable about a sower who goes out to sow the seed. And some of the seed lands on the path and the birds eat it before it can grow. And some falls on rocky soil and doesn't have any root. Some gets choked up by the thorns. But some falls on good soil and produces a lot of fruit. And the disciples come up to Jesus and they say, privately, what's that mean? And Jesus tells them that he has chosen to speak in parables to the outsiders. And I have my students read the passage. And so if you read chapter four verses, say 10 to 12 or so Jesus tells his disciples why he's speaking in parables. And it's the opposite reason for what everybody thinks. Every year I ask my students, read Mark 4. Why does Jesus tell parables? And everybody says every time they say, Jesus tells parables because he's trying to teach something simple, something complicated and spiritual in simple earthly language. And so he's telling a simple story so people will get it. Then I say, okay, read Mark 4, 11. They'll read it. I say, okay, why does Mark say Jesus is telling parables? Well, he's telling parables because he's trying to make it simple. Read it again. And they read it. And finally, after about three times, they say, wait a second. This is saying that Jesus is telling parables so that they won't understand. That's right. That's what it says. Jesus tells the disciples that he's talking to the outsiders in parables so that they may hear and not understand, lest they turn in repentance and it be forgiven them. He's teaching in parables so they won't repent. And you think, what? But it's Mark's motif. Jesus keeps his identity secret and nobody gets it. Nobody gets it until the very end. And then the person who gets it is somebody you wouldn't expect to get it. It's a fantastic, fantastic thing.
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B
That's really interesting. Why is it ever so. It says, obviously he's keeping things secret so people won't repent. That seems very contrary to. I think a lot of Christians understand their religion to be. Are there any theories on why this is happening?
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C
Oh, yeah, lots. Lots of theories. So this is called the messianic secret in Mark. The key point in Mark comes at the halfway point in chapter 8. Jesus has been doing all these things and he's been asking the disciples, don't you understand yet? Don't you get it yet? And then finally he does this weird miracle. When I say it's weird, it's unlike any miracle in the Gospels. They bring a blind man to Jesus, they ask him to heal him. And Jesus puts spittle in his eyes, the man's eyes. And he says, can you see now? And the man says, well, I can see. I can see people walking around, but they look like trees walking. So in other words, he's got a kind of a fuzzy visage, doesn't see yet clearly. And so then Jesus looks at him intently, and then the man begins to see. The reason it's weird is because it's the only miracle in the Gospels that happens in stages. Jesus doesn't heal somebody instantly. He heals him in stages. It's a miracle in which a person gradually comes to see, gradually has sight. Right after that, the next thing that happens is Jesus is with his disciples. And he says, who do people say that I am? And the disciples say, well, some people say that you are John the Baptist come back from the dead, or Elijah the prophet or one of the other prophets. And Jesus says, well, who do you say that I am? And at this point you think they get it because Peter says, you are the Messiah. Jesus responds by saying, don't tell anyone. And then he says, the Son of Man must go to Jerusalem and be rejected by the scribes and elders and be executed. And on the third day, he'll rise from the dead. So he's revealing his destiny. And Peter, the one who just said, you're the Messiah, Peter says, no, Lord, that's not going to happen to you. And Jesus responds by saying, get behind me, Satan. You're thinking in the ways of humans, not the ways of God. And he goes on to say that anyone who's going to follow him has to take up his cross and be executed with him. Okay, this is such a brilliant. It's right in the middle of the Gospel. A man gets healed, gradually comes to see. The disciples recognize Jesus as the Messiah, but they don't know what it means. They're seeing something, but they don't know what it is. They think they do, but they don't. Because the Messiah, in fact, is not going to be a figure of glory that destroys the enemy. The Messiah is going to be somebody who is crucified. So the disciples are like anyone else in the ancient world. Any Jew who's told that a crucified Messiah was, they'd say, no, that can't be. But that's Mark's point. Mark's going to try and show that that's it, that the Messiah is not the figure who's going to destroy the Romans. It's a person who's going to be crucified. So the whole narrative is laying that out.
- [26:41]
B
That's masterfully done. And you said that this halfway point is a pivot for the Gospel. Did the disciples, as we go through the second half, gain more and more understanding, or do they Just kind of stay at that level of you're the Messiah, but you're going to save us all and bring down the kingdom of heaven.
- [26:58]
C
The disciples never get it. Nobody gets it. So what happens soon after that, after Jesus has said that he's going to go to Jerusalem and the disciples representing Peter, don't get it. In fact, Jesus calls Peter, the one who just called him the Messiah, calls Peter Satan for not understanding it. The next chapter, Jesus again tells the disciples that he's going to be crucified. And again, the next episode, right afterwards, it shows that they don't get it. And then in chapter 10, he again says he's going to go to Jerusalem, be killed. And they don't get it. So, like, in one place, James and John come up to him and say, lord, when you come into your kingdom, we want to be on your right hand and your left. Meaning, you know, when you're ruling as the king, we want to be right there with you, your right and left hand man. Jesus said, no, no, you don't get it. You gotta. I'm going to Jerusalem to be killed. He's going, you know, he tells them, and they start arguing among themselves about which one is the greatest. Jesus, you're not getting this. This is not about greatness. This is about suffering. And he goes to Jerusalem in chapter 11. So the gospel's 16 chapters long, but 10 of the chapters are about his public ministry. But the last six chapters entirely six chapters are about his last week. And so some scholars have called Mark a passion narrative with a long introduction, meaning that it's really about the death of Jesus. And everything else is introductory to it. He goes into Jerusalem, and the first time you have. There's a sense that maybe somebody's getting this is not one of the disciples, not one of the Jewish leaders, not one of his family members. Jesus is in a house and there's a woman that comes to him with a very expensive vial of perfume. She opens the perfume and anoints him with it. And the disciples are very upset because this perfume could have been sold for a lot of money and given to the poor. And Jesus says, you always have the poor with you, but me you will not always have. This woman has anointed me for burial. And what she has been done will be proclaimed throughout the world. And so she's unnamed, she's not a disciple. It's actually not clear in Mark's narrative whether she knows what she's doing. If she does, then she's the first to recognize it. But if she doesn't know, Mark doesn't indicate, then still nobody knows.
- [29:16]
B
So we've seen that none of the disciples really understand who Jesus is. None of the Jewish leaders do. None of the people following him really get what's going on. And at the end, it kind of seems like Jesus himself is not entirely sure who he is. Why would Mark include that additional layer of doubt when we've already got everyone very confused about what's going on?
- [29:39]
C
This is one of the most puzzling things about Mark. And you only notice it when you read Mark and wearing your blinders, wearing your Mark blinders. You cannot pretend you're reading Matthew now or Luke or John. Mark has a very distinctive portrayal throughout his Gospel. If you start saying, yeah, well, John says this, and so Mark must mean that, you know, you completely are missing the point on Mark. He has this particular portrayal. And one of the most puzzling things is what happens at the end. Jesus, throughout his ministry has been predicting that he's going to be executed. He knows what's going to happen at the Last Supper. He tells Peter that Peter's going to deny him three times. Another indication the disciples don't get it. He indicates that somebody at the table will be the one who betrays him. Another disciple doesn't get it. And so he knows perfectly well what has to happen and why he's here. After the supper, he goes out to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray. They have the last meal, and at the meal he predicts that his body will be broken and his blood will be shed. He goes to the Garden of Gethsemane, and it's a stunning scene. He goes off, he takes the disciples, but then he leaves eight of them behind. Then he takes Peter, James and John with him, and he says, stay here with me while I pray. And he goes off by himself, and he falls on his face to the ground and begs God to take away this cup from him. Don't make him do it. You think, well, that's weird, because he knows he's going to do it. He has to do it. Comes back, the disciples are asleep, and Jesus says, can't you stay awake for an hour? And so he goes away, and he does it again. Praise God. Take this cup away from me. He doesn't want to do it. And then it happens three times. Finally, after the third time, Judas comes with the authorities and they arrest him, put him on trial. And from then on, Jesus is basically silent. When he's taken to Pontius Pilate, Pilate asks him, are you, the king of the Jews. And Jesus says two words in Greek. He says, suleges, you say, so it's not clear if that means yes. Does it mean no? Does it maybe? Does it mean those are your words, not mine? That's how you would put it. It's not clear what it means, but it's all he says. And Pilate can't figure out why he's not defending himself. And it's almost as if he's in shock. He's condemned to death, he's flogged, he's taken off to be crucified. He doesn't say anything the whole way. He gets crucified. He's nailed to a cross, and he doesn't say anything. Everybody's mocking him. People passing by are mocking him. The soldiers are mocking him. Both of the other people being crucified that day are mocking him. Both of them are mocking him. And he is silent the entire time until the very end when he cries out, eloi, Eloi lama sabachne, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And he dies.
- [32:30]
B
So Jesus dies, and then, by Mark's account at least, is confused, doesn't understand what's happened, feels abandoned by his God. Does Mark give any indication to the reader about why this has happened or really what's going on?
- [32:44]
C
Yeah. This is another beautiful thing in Mark that you don't find in the other gospels. Jesus dies asking God why he's been forsaken, asking, and he seems to be in genuine doubt. But the reader who's reading this is not in doubt because of what happens next. The second Jesus dies, the curtain in the temple is ripped in half. So to understand this, the temple in Jerusalem was the place where sacrifices could be made to God. And there's the inner sanctum of the temple was the holy of holies, the place where God himself was believed to dwell. Nobody could go into the holy of holies because it was such a sacred place. Except once a year on the day of atonement, Yom Kippur, the high priest could go behind the thick curtain in order to go in to perform a sacrifice for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people, to bring atonement for the sins of the people. This could happen once a year, and only the high priest could go in there. Normal people, even priests, didn't have direct access to God. When Jesus dies in Mark, the curtain rips in half. In other words, the death of Jesus now gives people access to God, direct access through the death of Jesus. You don't need the Jewish sacrificial system. You don't need the high priest. You don't need the Day of Atonement. Atonement now has been made with Jesus. And when that happens, the centurion who's just crucified him, the Roman pagan, sees how he's died and he says, truly, this man was the Son of God. He says that because of how Jesus died. The whole point of this gospel is that the Messiah has to die for the sins of the world. Jesus knows it and God knows it, and nobody else knows it. The only person who knows it is the person who crucified him, a pagan centurion. This is significant for all sorts of reasons. It's the first time anybody explicitly understands Jesus identity. It's not his family members. It's not any Jewish leader, it's not any Jew, it's not any disciple. It's this Gentile. It's the bad guy showing the bad guy. So he's the bad guy, but he's the one who converts. Mark is writing 40 years after Jesus death. And Mark knows that most people converting are Gentiles. Jews are not converting. It's the pagan who recognizes that Jesus death shows that he's the Messiah. And so within the Gospel, the very first thing that happens to Jesus in his life is the voice comes from heaven and says, you are my son. The last thing that happens right after his death is the centurion says, this is the Son. And so now you've got it that this entire thing is bracketed with Jesus really is the Son of God as declared by God because he has to die. This is a new definition of the Messiah. Mark started out by saying that he's going to show that Jesus is the Messiah, and this is how he does it.
- [35:50]
B
So by the end of the Gospel, does anyone else understand really who Jesus is, or is it just this one centurion?
- [35:57]
C
Well, just brilliance after brilliance when you come to the Gospel of Mark. Because what happens then is he's died and he's buried by Joseph of Arimathea. This is a Friday, and it's getting dark. And so Sabbath will now begin. And Jews cannot work on the Sabbath. And so he has a hasty burial on the third day on Sunday morning when it gets light, the Sabbath is over. And some women go to the tomb in order to give him a proper burial. Now that they can. And they were a little worried about how they're going to get in there because there's a. It's one of these burial Tombs. It's kind of a cave with a rolling stone put in front of it. And they're worried about how they're going to get in to the body. But when they get there, the stone is rolled away and there's a young man there. Jesus is not in the tomb. The young man tells the women that you're looking for Jesus of Nazareth. He's not here. He's been raised from the dead. Go tell the disciples and Peter that he will meet them in Galilee. Okay, so this is taking place in Jerusalem, which is about 100 miles south of where Jesus is from in Galilee. And the disciples are from. And so the. This angelic being is telling the women, go tell the disciples he'll meet them up in Galilee. And so they're supposed to go there. And then comes the most stunning verse in the gospel. And it says, and the women fled the tomb for fear. And they didn't say anything to anyone for they were afraid, period. It's where the Gospel ends.
- [37:28]
B
That's quite the ending.
- [37:30]
C
And anybody reads that and says, whoa, wait a second, hold on. You mean the disciples never hear that he's been raised from the dead? The women don't tell anybody anything, ever? What, ah, the deal is, is that scribes who were copying the Gospel of Mark through the centuries had exactly the same reaction. They said, wait a second. You know, in the other Gospels, Jesus appears to the disciples and the women do tell them. And it's like, what? How could it end there? And so scribes added an ending. So in the King James Bible, you'll have another 12 verses where the women do go tell the disciples, the disciples do go to Galilee, they do meet Jesus, and he. So there's a resurrection appearance of Jesus. Mark. Scholars have long known since the 19th century that ending is not original. The Mark we have ends in verse 8 with the women not telling anybody. This is the most brilliant ending. Let me emphasize. Some people say that, well, Mark doesn't have a resurrection of Jesus. People often tell me that, and that's not true. Jesus is raised from the dead in Mark, he said he's going to be raised from the dead. Earlier, he had told the disciples that he would meet them in Galilee at the Last Supper. He says, I'm going to meet you in Galilee. And then the women are told he's going to meet them in Galilee. So Jesus is definitely raised, but nobody finds out about it except for the women, who don't tell anyone. Now you think, well, yeah, okay, that can't be, because how would Mark know Then. So you have to differentiate between what makes any sense historically. You're like, it wouldn't make sense and what's going on in the story. The story ends with women not telling anybody. The disciples never get it. I think it's a brilliant ending for all sorts of reasons. One reason is because throughout the gospel, Jesus will heal somebody or do something fantastic and he'll say, don't tell anyone. And what often happens is then the person goes out and tells everyone. This time they're told to tell and they don't tell. It's just the opposite. So it's this brilliant irony, but also it's confirming this idea that nobody really got it. And you think, well, how can nobody really get it? So yeah, Mark is trying to shock his readers into understanding how it is that Jesus could be the Messiah, even though it's the opposite of the Messiah. And he's emphasizing, yes, it may not make sense, people may not be able to get it, but it's what is actually what happened. He really did die for the sins of the world.
- [40:00]
B
That is a beautifully poetic ending. That's wonderful. What has very strongly come across in our conversation is how carefully put together and carefully crafted the book is.
- [40:12]
C
Yeah, it is not a nuts and bolts retelling of what happened. When I mentioned earlier this, I used the term Messianic secret. This term was coined in 1901 by a German scholar named William Vrede, W R E D who wrote a book called the Messianic Secret. In Mark, he's the one who first showed it that the whole thing is about Jesus, about it being a secret, and that's why it's so amazing. And but this showed. This was the first time somebody really realized that Mark is a brilliant literary construction. It isn't just like a retelling of the facts, it's a brilliant work of literature.
- [40:48]
B
Well, thank you so much for taking time to answer my questions and for illuminating that for us. This is very enjoyable as always. Audience will be right back with Barth's weekly update and then we have a selection of listeners questions.
- [41:04]
C
If you're enjoying the Misquoting Jesus podcast, you'd probably like my online courses as well. I've produced a number so far with multi lecture courses on the New Testament Gospels and the books of the Pentateuch, standalone lectures on the Christmas story and the earliest Christian views of Jesus, and a six hour debate on whether Jesus was actually raised from the dead. If you're interested, check them out@Barterman.com you'll receive a discount on your purchase simply by entering the code mjpodcast.
- [41:41]
B
And we're back. Thank you, everyone. It's now going to be time for Bart's Weekly Update.
- [41:48]
A
This is Bart's Weekly Update, where we get to catch up on all the latest about Dr. Ehrman's book releases, speaking engagements, Ehrman blog.org happenings, and online course launches.
- [42:03]
B
But what are you up to this week?
- [42:04]
C
Well, you know, my, my book on Armageddon came out a couple weeks ago. And so this is kind of the exciting time for authors because you're finding out whether anybody's buying the book, you know, and so I'm, I'm still, I'm doing interviews and I'm. And doing podcasts and doing, doing various kinds of things for that. It's a little bit of a strange time for an author because usually it takes about a year between the time you finish a book and the time it appears. And then you start being interviewed on the book. And you're working on another book now and you're trying to remember. Yeah, okay. What did I say? You reread the book. Make sure, you know now when you said on page 192 that. Oh, God, did I. And so anyway, no, it's a very exciting time. It's the time where my agent says that he keeps a file of authorial shattered hopes. This is the time you realize, yeah, okay, I'm not gonna be the number one bestseller in the world. Okay. Nobody bought my book. Well, did my best.
- [43:10]
B
You've had, what, six New York Times bestsellers at this point? More than six. Maybe I can't remember, it's in introduction, but there, there have been many.
- [43:18]
C
So it was six, but I'm not counting.
- [43:24]
B
Oh, thank you. And, and can you just remind the audience, I know we've talked about it before, but what is this book called?
- [43:30]
C
So the book is called Armageddon. What the Bible really says about the end. And it's mainly on the book of Revelation and how historians understand the book of Revelation in a way that's really, really different from how most Christian readers today understand it and how the book has had a very important impact on Western culture, especially the misinterpretation of the book has had a. Has had some really bad effects on Western culture and still does, still does today.
- [44:02]
B
And I can say I was lucky enough to get my hands on a pre release copy. It's an excellent book, highly recommended. Go and buy one if you want to know more about Revelation and how academics read it as opposed to how Christians and evangelicals read it. And we are going to go now to Bart's answering Questions from our listeners, which is always fun.
- [44:25]
A
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 bars
- [44:43]
B
so, as ever, everyone, thank you so much for sending in your questions. You can do that on bart's website. And I'm just going to dive right in because we have several excellent ones that I want to know the answers to. First up, why does the author of Mark place the women followers of Jesus at the empty tomb, making them the first to discover Jesus has been raised? Wouldn't the author prefer to have male disciples be the first? And does this suggest that the empty tomb story could be historical because it's not what we would expect? Or are there other reasons to explain why the women are featuring so predominantly here?
- [45:15]
C
Well, that's a complicated question, and we probably should do an entire episode on it. So first, let me deal with the issue of does this show that it's probably historical because it's not the sort of thing somebody would make up. There's a kind of a logic to that, because in ancient judicial systems, women sometimes were not allowed even to be witnesses. You know, I mean, it's a very, very, very patriarchal society, and women's word wouldn't be taken for it. And even in the Gospels, when the women come back and report that the tomb is empty, the male disciples say, yeah, you're just a woman. What do you know? And so the argument would be, well, then that wouldn't be something a Christian would make up and so must be historical. I don't agree with that view. I think that, in fact, it's perfectly consistent with the entire Gospel of Mark. The whole point is that the men disciples don't get it, that it's so unexpected that nobody will understand. And so to have women showing up at the tomb makes perfect sense in Mark. It's not going to be the men disciples. Who else is it going to be? And moreover, I think that, you know, people say, well, who would make up, you know, if Mark's inheriting the story from the tradition, who would make up a story of women being to the tomb? Well, for one thing, women would. And so if you would think, who would make it up? But even more, it's just contributing to this entire irony of the Gospel of Mark that nobody on the inside gets it. And so I don't Have a problem with that. Yeah. So the women going to the tomb. The other thing that I would say, though, is that one reason for thinking maybe that this could be reporting that this is showing Mark's view of things is precisely the women don't tell anyone. And so the resurrection of Jesus is not predicated on these women's testimony. In the Gospel, Jesus himself says to the disciples in chapter 14 that he's going to meet them in Galilee. And the. The angel reports to the women that he's going to meet them in Galilee. And one way to read this is the disciples do go to Galilee and they do find out. Like. Like if you're trying to imagine what Mark has in mind, the women don't tell. And this would show that, in fact, the story is not based on women. It's based on an imagined meeting of the disciples in Galilee. I mean, I think it is a very important story. It's a very important aspect of the story, but I don't think it shows that it's historical.
- [47:29]
B
Just something that I was thinking as you were talking. And I don't know enough about burial practices from this point in history, but often in ancient societies, my experience says that women are often responsible for things like preparing bodies for burials, and they have very important roles in mourning. So this, again, I don't know about burial practices in Roman times, but this doesn't ring any alarm bells for me. As far as a historicity goes, it makes sense to have the women be the people, go to the tomb to continue burial practices.
- [48:05]
C
Yeah. Thank you. You just saved me because that was going to be. My other point that I forgot to make is that this is. Thank you. Because culturally, this is completely expected. I mean, that in fact, women take care of the body. And this still happens in highly patriarchal societies still today, is that the women take care of the burials. There's nothing strange about it from the cultural aspect.
- [48:28]
B
Thank you. And we are going to our next question. We're talking about still the end of the Gospel of Mark. The author says that Jesus was raised from the dead, but doesn't give really any details about what is meant by this. Do you think this was a bodily resurrection or visions similar to what Paul claims to have experienced? And why does the author say so little about the resurrections, while the other gospels have stories, more developed stories about seeing Jesus? Personally, I suspect you'll say that this was part of Mark's whole point, that no one would believe him. But did the stories of the disciples seeing Jesus personally develop later in time?
- [49:06]
C
It's a good question on the first part of the question about whether it's an actual bodily resurrection. I think for Mark the answer is absolutely yes. The body's not in the tomb. That's the entire point. The body's not in the tomb and. And he's not here. He's going to go tell the disciples he'll meet them in Galilee. And so the body has been raised. And for Mark, this is not a near death experience. It's not that they thought he was dead. He was really dead for Mark and he's been raised. Why doesn't Mark say more about it? Mark is writing to a Christian audience who will know what it all means. Jesus himself throughout the gospel had said that he had to be raised from the dead. He never reflects on the meaning of the resurrection and Mark doesn't reflect on the meaning of the resurrection. In early Christianity there were various interpretations of what it actually meant that he was raised and why in particular. But everybody seems to have thought that if he was raised from the dead, it showed that he really was the Son of God and that God was confirming the importance of his death. Many people have thought that Mark in some ways has been influenced by the theology of the Apostle Paul. I don't know that Mark read any of Paul's letters. I don't know that and I don't. Some people think he did, some he didn't. I don't think there's any evidence one way or the other. But he wouldn't have had to have read Paul's letters to understand the kinds of views that Paul promoted. And Paul wasn't the only one promoting these. But the oldest idea appears to be that Jesus died as a sacrifice for sins. And to honor what Jesus had done, God raised him from the dead and took and exalted him to heaven. And I think that that's probably what Mark is imagining, that Jesus has become a kind of divine being as manifest on the mount of transfiguration halfway through his ministry. And so the resurrection shows the divinization of Jesus, who was not born of a virgin in this gospel, who didn't pre exist in this gospel. He didn't create the world ahead of time in this gospel, he's a human who gets raised from the dead and is exalted to divinity. I think.
- [51:17]
B
Is this exaltation to divinity a reflection of the pagan understanding of the Son of God identity or is this something else?
- [51:26]
C
Well, it is that because it's partly that because in pagan circles you have human beings who are taken up to be to the divine realm, who are understood now to become a God. This happens, for example, with Romulus, the founder of Rome, who ascends to heaven and becomes one of the major divinities worshiped in Roman religion. But it's not just in pagan circles, because even in Jewish circles you have stories of humans who are taken up and become divine beings. In some of the apocryphal literature, sometimes Moses is thought to have become a God, or Enoch. I deal with this in another book of mine by the book called How Jesus Became God, where I try to show that this isn't just a pagan, pagan view, it's also a Jewish view. And it's evidently the earliest Christian view that Jesus was made a divine being at his resurrection.
- [52:17]
B
Excellent, thank you. Next question. In Mark 16, 3, Mary, Mary and Salome go to the tomb to anoint the body. And they ask each other, like you said, who's going to roll the stone away? Why would the women set out to a tomb that they don't think they're going to be able to access? Is Mark setting up a series of convenient events in which supernatural intervention is an everyday occurrence, or is there some deeper symbolism going on here?
- [52:43]
C
It's hard to know. I mean, it's not clear what they're. They're thinking. And we obviously don't have any access either to their thoughts or what Mark wanted you to have as their thoughts. But the idea is that it's going to take something more than they can do. And so this, in a part, this is showing that you can't be saying something like, well, the women went in there and took the body out. They couldn't even figure out how to move the stone. And so what they find there is this. Described as a young man, but he seems to be an angelic being. And so it heightens the miraculous nature of it. It's interesting in the different Gospels how this works, because different gospels do different things with this stone. It's one of the things to see when you're comparing the various gospels. Was the stone rolled away already or not when the women came? So read Matthew's account, Mark's account, and pretty interesting the difference.
- [53:34]
B
Thank you. And we have one more question from our listeners. Was the writer of Mark aware of Paul's letters when he wrote his gospel?
- [53:41]
C
Yeah. So that is a big question, as I was mentioning a second ago, and I think it's become a bigger question over the last 20 years. Mark is writing around the year 70 or so. Paul was writing his letters in the 50s. So we don't know where Mark was writing. People often say it was in Rome, but we don't really know where he was writing. We don't know if he had access to Paul's letters or not. I think one of the mistakes we tend to make is to think that we have these letters in the New Testament by Paul, and we've got 13 letters. And most scholars will agree that at least seven of them probably go back to Paul. Paul had a ministry of over 30 years, a Christian ministry, where he was establishing churches and writing to his churches. And judging from the letters we have, he wrote his churches with fair regularity. If Paul just had 20 churches, say, that he had founded, and he wrote each of them twice a year, so that'd be 40 letters a year that he'd be writing. And for 30 years, that'd be 1200 letters. We have seven. And so to say that Paul. Did Mark know Paul's letters? It depends what you mean. There's nothing to indicate that he actually had read our particular letters, but he may have. He certainly does have some Pauline themes in his book, especially about the importance of the death of Jesus for atonement, for sins, and the resurrection. But it's important to note that Mark's overarching concern is completely lacking in Paul's letters that we have. Mark wants to talk about the life of Jesus leading up to his death. Paul has no interest in the life of Jesus, at least in his letters. He hardly says anything about what Jesus said and did during his life. It's all about the death and resurrection. And so Mark may have been influenced by Paul, may have been influenced by Pauline theology, but they certainly didn't have the same agenda for the writings.
- [55:39]
B
Excellent. Thank you. And audience, thank you so much for your questions. They're always fantastic and wonderfully different to anything that I would come up with. So you add an awful lot to the show. Thank you for. For sharing them with us. Before we finish out for the week, Bart, would you just summarize what we've talked about and let people know where they could find more?
- [55:56]
C
Right. So we've been talking about the Gospel of Mark, which in my view is one of the really brilliant books from early Christianity and is my favorite book of the New Testament because it is put together, structured in such a way that the subtleties come out only on a very close reading. But once you realize what this author is doing, it's really quite amazing. Jesus here is not recognized for who he is. He's the Son of God, the Messiah that no one recognizes. And he's the Messiah who has to do the opposite of what the Messiah was supposed to do. He's his Messiah who has to suffer and die. And Mark structures this account of Jesus life in such a way as to highlight that nobody gets it and that Jesus tried to keep it a secret. And so the reader then is left trying to puzzle over what it can all mean. So I think it really is quite brilliant.
- [56:46]
B
Is there anything that you've written on the subject that people could go and read or books that you could recommend?
- [56:51]
C
The place that I deal with, Mark, where I lay out the kind of things I'm talking about here, most are in my book on the New Testament. I have an introduction to the New Testament that goes book by book through the New Testament to explain what's really going on. And so it's called the New Testament A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. And at the end of that chapter, I have a brief annotated bibliography of works that people could could turn to for more.
- [57:17]
B
And if my personal recommendation is worth anything to anyone, that is the book that I usually start with when I'm researching these episodes. It's a great starting point and the bibliographies are really, really helpful. So if general New Testament is something you're interested in, I highly recommend. But instruction is a good starting point. Everybody, thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. Bart, thank you again so much for your time, audience. If you enjoyed, please do subscribe to the podcast and make sure you don't miss future episodes. Remember also you can use the Code MJ podcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.bartehrman.com. misquoting Jesus will be back next week. Bart, what are we going to be talking about?
- [57:59]
C
Well, we're talking about something that's really very fundamental and important, which is people tend to think of Jesus as fairly important. He's worked by over 2 billion people in the world today and changed the course of Western civilization. How do we know about him? You would think you would just kind of know what Jesus was like. Well, so historians, of course, want to know what sources are available of information. And we're going to be talking about just how do we actually think we know what we think we know?
- [58:26]
B
It's going to be a lot of fun. So please join us then. Thank you again 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.