← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
Loading summary
Transcript110 lines
- [00:01]
Bart Ehrman
A burst pipe, a dead water heater, the AC calling it quits. Who do you call? HomeServe is an easy way to handle unexpected home repairs with plans covering stuff basic homeowners insurance usually won't. Instead of scrambling for a contractor, you make one call to get the repair process started. Join the millions of customers who trust HomeServe right now. Go to HomeServe.com podcast for 50% less your first year. That's HomeServe.com podcast savings compared to a renewal price void in Florida.
- [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 on Misquoting Jesus. We're talking about the Gospel of Matthew. Who was it written by? What's the overriding theme of the book and how does it portray Jesus? But before we get to that, Bart, hi. How is your new semester going?
- [01:09]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, well, okay. So it's back in the saddle. I was off last semester and of course, you know, Research Scholar isn't really kind of ever off. It's just like you're doing other things.
- [01:20]
Megan Lewis
You just keep going.
- [01:21]
Bart Ehrman
But you know, it's a different set of things and both are important. But I, you know, the thing is I love the classroom. I love teaching undergraduate students. And my students at Chapel Hill are, they're smart people and they're interested and interesting and they're kind of a self selecting group because people who wouldn't like the kinds of things I do don't take my classes. Yeah. So it's great. It's a different kind of great. For me, teaching is actually the perk of the job because you have so many other things you got to do. But actually undergraduate teaching, that's great. So, so yeah, it's going well.
- [01:54]
Megan Lewis
I want to ask, actually, just on a personal note, what's your favorite class that you've ever taught?
- [02:01]
Bart Ehrman
Well, that's, it's really hard to say. It's kind of like my children. I love every one of them. But the class I'm doing now, I'm kind of fond of the class on Jesus in scholarship and film where the students have to, you know, we study ancient gospels and to see what they say about Jesus and then we watch film to see what playwrights say about Jesus. So it's a lot of fun. And one of the fun things about this class is that The Jesus movies that I really like from back in the day. My students have never heard of, like, Jesus Christ Superstar is. Oh, it's such a fantastic book. And its music is in my bones. And they've never heard of it. And so, like, they love it because it's such a period piece, so.
- [02:43]
Megan Lewis
Oh, that's wonderful.
- [02:43]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah. So you're not in the classroom. So what. What is new for you at this point?
- [02:48]
Megan Lewis
What's new for me? That's a really good question. I am actually not currently in the classroom, but preparing to teach later in the summer. But I'm starting to get everything together because I'm teaching, like, a community course through a college called Peninsula College, which I'm really excited about. Actually. It's not a class for typical students. It's kind of like an evening class for the local community to get them involved.
- [03:18]
Bart Ehrman
I thought you were gonna say it's an evening class for Sumerians. Wow. Okay. Good on it. Yeah, sounds good.
- [03:27]
Megan Lewis
Yeah, we'll see how it goes. It will be my first time teaching Sumerian to people.
- [03:33]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah.
- [03:33]
Megan Lewis
Like, rather than just writing it down. Yes, exactly. And doing it over video. But no, I'm. I'm very much looking forward to it. I think it'll be fun. Okay, so we should dive into Matthew. Why do you think it's important to look at the Gospel of Matthew in detail?
- [03:48]
Bart Ehrman
Well, one of the things that scholars have emphasized for a long time, scholars of the New Testament, is that each of these Gospels is a different book. We tend to read them as if they're all saying the same thing. When casual readers read the Gospels, rarely do they actually start at the beginning of a gospel and go all the way through to read that Gospel. Usually you pick passages here and there and you just read them, and they all sound kind of similar. But even if you read them straight through, you start at the beginning of a book and you go to the end of it, they sound similar to most people. You know, you read Matthew's Gospel and you start chapter one, verse one, and you read all the way through, and okay, it's about the life of Jesus, right? His life, his miracles, his teachings, his death, his resurrection. Great. Then you read Mark, and it's about the life of Jesus. It's about his life, his miracles, his teachings, his death, resurrection. Read Luke. Same thing. John John's different. It's like, oh, that's a little bit different. That sounds a little different, but it's basically the same thing. And so you read them, they all sound the same. And if There are things that are different between one or another. You just. You just in your head, you think, well, okay, okay. So he added that story. The other one didn't have it. But, you know, they're just telling parts of the stories. And what modern scholarship has discovered, I mean, it really is kind of a discovery since just the 19th century and especially in the 20th century. And then down today, scholars have recognized these books are each individual books. They're written by different authors in different places at different times, and their perspectives are different. It's not that their overall perspectives are contradictory. It's not that Matthew says that Jesus is the Messiah and Mark says, oh, no, he's not. You know, it's not like that. But it is that they have a very different perspective that they're applying to the story, and they're seeing Jesus in different ways, sometimes significantly different ways. There are, of course, contradictions as well, but those tend to be kind of on the smaller level. But the overall perspective and the thing that each one's trying to emphasize is different. And so you have to read Matthew as a book by itself without pretending he's saying the same thing that John is saying, because he's not saying the same thing John is saying, or Mark or Luke. So the scholars read the four as different things. And so it's important to let each one, each author, have his say. Otherwise you miss his perspective.
- [05:55]
Megan Lewis
I see. And we'll obviously get into the specifics of that and Matthew's personal message. As we go through today's episode, I thought we should start with a couple of easier questions. Who wrote the Gospel of Matthew and if we know when and where it was written.
- [06:09]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, good. I'm all for the easy questions, except these are not easy, as it turns out. These are a little bit complicated. So the Gospel of Matthew, of course, is attributed to somebody named Matthew. And in the Christian tradition, that refers to a tax collector that Jesus chose as one of his disciples. This is an episode that's narrated in Matthew chapter 9. Jesus is going by this tax collecting booth and this man named Matthew is there, and Jesus calls him to be his disciple. And Matthew leaves everything and follows him. You have the same episode in the Gospel of Mark with some differences, but it's the same episode. But there the person is called Levi. Even in the early church, people were a little bit puzzled by that, and they concluded that this person had two names. Matthew. And Levi was somebody with two names. That actually doesn't happen in antiquity. It hardly ever happens in antiquity that somebody has two bona fide, different names. But biblical readers often assume that that's the case here. So the thing is though, that when you read the account in Matthew 9, people should just do it. Just read it and ask yourself, is there anything in this account to make you think that the person Matthew is, the being described in this account, is the one who's writing it? Is he writing about himself? Is there anything to indicate that any more than in the case with Levi in Mark? But the thing was that in the early church, they certainly wanted these anonymous gospels to be ascribed to actual followers of Jesus so that they would be authorized as people who knew what they were talking about when they described his words and deeds. And so this seemed like a character that would be likely to have written a gospel for some reason, I guess because he's a tax collector, maybe people thought, well, he's more highly educated or something. So they ended up assigning it to Matthew. But we don't, we don't know who it was.
- [07:55]
Megan Lewis
Do we know anything about the when and the where of the writing?
- [07:59]
Bart Ehrman
Well, we know a little bit. One of the pretty assured findings of scholarship is that Matthew had as one of his sources of information the Gospel of Mark.
- [08:08]
Megan Lewis
Mark.
- [08:09]
Bart Ehrman
About 93% of Mark's gospel is replicated in Matthew's gospel, where they'll tell the same, many of the same stories and usually in the same sequence and often the same words word for word, the same. And there are reasons, we'll get into later podcasts for thinking why it's Matthew who copied Mark and not the other way around. So he's writing after Mark, and Mark is usually dated around the year 70 of the common Era, right around the time of the end of the Jewish war against Rome, around the year 70. Matthew had it as a source. And it's usually thought that Matthew, it had to be in circulation for a while before Matthew got a hold of it. And so usually Matthew's dated in the mid-80s, like around the year 80 or 85. So, you know, 50 or 55 years after Jesus death.
- [08:53]
Megan Lewis
Do we know where roughly it was written or is that a tricky one?
- [08:57]
Bart Ehrman
It's also a tricky one. And in some ways it's really kind of the hardest one to answer. Because who wrote it? Well, it's anonymous and we don't know who wrote it. But what we do know about who wrote it relates to the where it was written because it's written in fairly high level Greek. It's not high level Greek the way, you know, like Euripides is or something like A really high class, like top. But it's, you know, this person is high, is more highly educated than 99% of the world at the time, and his native language is Greek. Some people have argued that the book was originally written in Aramaic and then translated into Greek, but there's absolutely no sign of that. And very, very good reasons for thinking that in fact it was written originally in Greek, one being that author copied the words of Mark, which was written in Greek. And so this person's writing in Greek. As to the where, it would have to be somewhere in the Greek speaking part of the Roman Empire. It is sometimes located to the city of Antioch in Syria, but the grounds are really flimsy for that. Even though scholars often state it as something that's, you know, pretty certain. Yeah, well, no, there's nothing certain about. It's just that Matthew shows that there's a lot of conflict between Jews who are not followers of Jesus and Jews who are followers of Jesus. And scholars say, well, so where is there a large Jewish community and a large Christian community that would be behind that? Oh, Antioch, why not? So we don't know it wasn't written in Israel because the language, if he was writing in Israel, would have written in Aramaic almost certainly. And so probably somewhere else, probably a big city someplace in the Roman Empire. How's that?
- [10:34]
Megan Lewis
So you mentioned that Matthew used Mark as his primary source for writing the Gospel. Do we know anything about the other sources that he may have used? Or is this really all we have?
- [10:45]
Bart Ehrman
Well, it's a big issue in scholarship and has been for a very long time. And in fact, it goes all the way to the early church. In the early church, St. Augustine believed that he knew that there had to be some kind of relationship between Matthew and Mark because they're just too closely related. You can't, you can't have two human beings write down something they've seen or heard someone do. Even if they saw and heard it and come up with exactly the same words over the course of a paragraph, it just doesn't happen. Augustine thought that what happened is that Matthew was first and that Mark made a kind of a condensed version of it. What we might call Reader's Digest version of Matthew, where he cut out a lot. But since the 19th century, scholars have thought that Matthew's Mark, Luke, also on the same grounds, is thought to have used Mark. And so Matthew and Luke both used Mark. But the thing is that both Matthew and Luke also have materials that they have in common that are not in Mark. And these tend to be sayings, materials, the sayings of Jesus, like the Beatitudes or the Lord's Prayer or some of the parables. You'll get the same ones in Matthew and in Luke, sometimes word for word, the same. But they're not Mark, so they didn't get them from Mark. And so scholars have long thought that they had some other source available to them. There are reasons for thinking that Matthew didn't copy from Luke to get those stories, or that Luke didn't copy from Mark from those stories. So if there's some other source out there, the scholars who developed this theory were German, and they called it mainly sayings of Jesus. And so they called it the sayings Source. The word for source in German is kavela, spelled with a Q, Q, U, E, L, L, E. And so the short for that is Q. The Q source is the source that Matthew and Luke had in addition to Mark. So Matthew had Mark, he had probably had Q. And then Matthew has some other stories that he himself tells that nobody else tells. So they don't know where those come from, but probably from a written source or an oral source or a bunch of written sources or a bunch of them. And so they call that M. So Matthew special source and Q and Mark.
- [12:45]
Megan Lewis
Excellent. Thank you. We touched on this in a prior episode and you mentioned it a couple of minutes ago, but this is definitely the place to go into more detail. One of the things that historians do when they're looking at ancient texts is try and ask, why was this written? And how does the author try and achieve their purpose? And I know that asking this question of the Gospels may seem a little redundant to some of our audience. Obviously they were written to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. But there's, like, more to consider here if we're coming at it from a scholarly perspective. You mentioned that each of the Gospels is different, with a different emphasis and therefore a different portrayal of Jesus. Specifically for Matthew, why was this gospel written? And what version of Jesus does he portray to try and achieve that goal?
- [13:27]
Bart Ehrman
Well, it's the great question, and I think it's the most important question. And when you study Matthew carefully, the answer emerges pretty quickly, especially when you know that Matthew used Mark as his source for many of his stories. Mark's Gospel, as we'll see in a later episode, begins with Jesus as an adult being baptized by John the Baptist. And so that's the very beginning of Mark. Matthew doesn't begin that way. Matthew begins in a different place. Matthew begins by introducing his gospel by Saying the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. And then he launches into a genealogy where he gives Jesus genealogical line that starts with Abraham, who's the father of the Jews. And then it goes down from father to son. Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, et cetera, and goes on down, and it goes down to King David. And then it goes from King David and goes from father, David's son goes down father and son, to the Babylonian exile, when the nation of Judah was destroyed and people were sent into exile. And then it goes from there and it goes all the way down, goes down to Joseph, who's not really Jesus father, because Jesus is born of a virgin in this account. So it goes down to Joseph, and then he's the husband of Mary, who was the mother of Jesus. But then Matthew summarizes this and says, so the genealogy of Jesus is it starts with David, and after 14 generations gets to David. And after 14 generations from David, it gets to the Babylonian exile. And after 14 generations after the Babylonian exile, you come down to the Christ. And so what he's done, he's given you this genealogy of father and son relationships where Every section is 14 generations. There are three of them, three being a very good number in the Bible. And so from the father of the Jews to the greatest king of The Jews is 14 generations. And the Messiah is supposed to be the son of David. Right. So from the greatest king of the Jews to the greatest disaster of the Jews, the destruction by Babylon, 14 generations. And from the destruction of the Babylon to the Messiah, 14 generations. 14, 14 and 14. And the whole point of this is to trace Jesus line back to King David because he's the son of David and to Abraham, the father of the Jews. And to show that this whole thing was preordained. This is the Christ now that God has promised, who has appeared. And so the kind of. The big point about this is Jesus in this gospel is going to be really Jewish. Of course he's Jewish in Mark. But here you have this emphasis, kind
- [16:00]
Megan Lewis
of smacks you in the face.
- [16:01]
Bart Ehrman
In Matthew, it just hits you in the face. And, you know, a lot of people don't like genealogies, but look, this one's not hard.
- [16:06]
Megan Lewis
It's that for a reason.
- [16:07]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, it's 16 verses. You know, it's not like first chronicles where you have to go through chapters after chapter after chapter of it. You know, it's not nine chapters, it's 16. And. And there are lots of interesting things about this particular genealogy. And one of the things interesting, by the way, is that this 14 business. 14, 14 and 14, it really does sound like it's preordained.
- [16:26]
Megan Lewis
It's very convenient.
- [16:28]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, it's convenient. And it's been made convenient because to get to the 14 in the second set of 14, he had to drop out some names. So he says somebody so and so is the father. And so and so, yeah, actually he was his great grandfather. And then in the third set, if you just add them up, there aren't 14, there's only 13. Oh, ah, but he has a point, you know, so it's trying. 14 significant for several reasons. One is that. So scholars aren't sure, why pick 14, you know, why not 17, you know, or 12 or why 14? The two big theories about this, there are lots of theories, but the two big theories are the perfect number in The Bible is seven. And what's 14? It's doubly perfect. So that's the line of the Messiah is doubly perfect. But the other interesting thing is that the whole point is to show that Jesus is the son of David, the Messiah. If you spell the name David in Hebrew, Hebrew doesn't use vowels. It just has consonants. And in ancient languages, they didn't have a different numerical system from their alphabetic system. And so in Hebrew, Aleph, the first letter is 1, abate, the second is 2, gimel, 3, et cetera. They go through the Alphabet this way. And so every letter has a number attached to it. If you spell David, it'd be in English, it'd be DVD. The D is worth 4, the V is worth 6. So the name David adds up to 14. And so he's the son of David. 14, perfect. See, this is the kind of thing like you just wouldn't. When you read Matthew, people just read the.
- [18:01]
Megan Lewis
No, you wouldn't know it.
- [18:02]
Bart Ehrman
They skip over this part. Of course they do, because it's like, oh, God, in genealogy. Are you kidding me? That's how I'm starting the New Testament. But no, it's like it shows that this is really going to be emphasizing something about the Jewishness of Jesus. And Matthew just hammers that home throughout his whole book. Jesus is a Jewish messiah.
- [18:19]
Megan Lewis
And as a Jewish messiah, he fulfills in Matthew a lot of prophecies. Yeah, the first is, I think, a whole 23 verses in when he's born of a virgin, which supposedly fulfills a prophecy from Isaiah. So can you talk about the impression that this prophecy fulfillment creates for Jesus, Especially when so Many of them come so early on in the Gospel of Matthew.
- [18:42]
Bart Ehrman
Well, that's right. Right after you get this genealogy, then you get hit with the infancy narrative, the story of Jesus birth, which is one of two in the New Testament. The other is in the Gospel of Luke. But their birth accounts are completely different. They tell just different stories. They're just all different stories. But in Matthew, one of the most striking things is that he narrates stories and at every key point he points out that this fulfills what the prophets had predicted, the Jewish prophets, the Hebrew prophets of the Old Testament. And so you're right, the first one is we find out that his mother is a virgin. And in Matthew, the reason the mother's a virgin is to fulfill Isaiah, chapter 7, verse 14, which Matthew quotes as saying, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel, which is God with us. The reason Jesus is born of a virgin is because Isaiah predicted he would. But then why is he born of Bethlehem? Because Micah, chapter 5, verse 2 said that the Savior is going to come from Bethlehem. And why is it that he goes down to Egypt? Because Hosea says, out of Egypt I shall call my Son. And so, right, right at the beginning, these first two chapters, you get five places where Matthew tells you this is to fulfill what the prophets said. So these are called fulfillment citations. And you get six more in the Gospel of Matthew, and you don't get them in any other Gospel. They're not in Mark. And so this is like an emphasis. Jesus is the Jewish Messiah who fulfilled all the prophecies.
- [20:08]
Megan Lewis
So we've talked a little bit previously about how the Gospels are a kind of Greco Roman biography. So the audience for these works wouldn't necessarily expect the kind of factual accuracy that a modern audience would. Biographies were stories that showed someone's essential character rather than like an historical account of what they did in their lifetime. Do you think that Matthew believed or intended his audience to believe that Jesus really did fulfill these Jewish prophecies? Or are these statements more about showing his essential nature as a Jewish messiah?
- [20:41]
Bart Ehrman
That's a great question. And I wish we knew what was going on in Matthew's head.
- [20:47]
Megan Lewis
Just hop back and ask him. It's very, very simple.
- [20:50]
Bart Ehrman
I know. And the problem is, who do you ask? We don't even know who he was. It's like, oh, God. So there's several things that can be said about it, though, I think with some assurance. For one thing is, we do know that the early readers of Matthew believed that he Was, was saying that really these are literal fulfillments, that the prophets really were thinking about Jesus and Jesus fulfilled the prophet prophecies. So that's not evidence that that's what the author had in mind. But you know, it's suggestive that people in his environment assumed that that's what he had in his. In. In his mind. And so that that's helpful. My sense is that Matthew really did think that Jesus fulfilled these prophecies. But it's important to, to understand what Matthew means by fulfilling a prophecy. I think a really good example of this is the one about out of Egypt have I called my son? So what happens in Matthew's gospel, only in Matthew's gospel is that King Herod finds out that the king of the Jews has been born by the wise men are following the star and they show up and Herod finds out and he interviews them and they say, well, we've seen the star and it shows the king of the Jews and Herod has been born. And Herod's a little bit upset because he's the king of the Jews. And so he wants to get rid of the child. And so he sends in the troops to kill every child in Bethlehem. This is only in Matthew. And there's no historical record of this happening at all. But Joseph the father, the adopted father, I guess, finds out in a dream it's going to happen. So he takes the child and the mother down to Egypt. And then after Herod dies, months, years, I don't know how many, how long later they come back to Israel. And Matthew tells you that the reason this happened was to fulfill what was spoken of by the prophet out of Egypt. Have I called my son? Now that's. That's from the book of Hosea, chapter 11, one of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible. And Hosea, when you read Hosea, he's clearly talking about God saving Israel from their slavery in Egypt at the Exodus under Moses. So out of Egypt have I called my son? Means that these. He's delivered his people from their slavery and their oppression in Egypt. Matthew says that's been fulfilled by Jesus. And it appears that in this case, what Matthew means is that what had happened in the Old Testament was hugely meaningful and now it's been filled with more meaning, it's fulfilled, it's got more meaning now when you realize that in fact it was foreshadowing what would happen with the true salvation of Jesus coming. So God provided salvation for the Jewish people at the Exodus, but he provided salvation for the entire world through The Messiah. Messiah. And so this is a foreshadowing of what would happen. And the event with Jesus going down to Egypt fulfills the event, fills it full of meaning.
- [23:42]
Megan Lewis
Do you see additional parallels in Matthew between Moses and Jesus?
- [23:47]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, this is something people don't pick up on that. They, you know, if they read it carefully, they probably will pick up on it. But most people don't notice this. And again, it's only in Matthew, this isn't in Mark. Luke has, doesn't have it done this way at all. So the way it works is that the whole birth narrative is set up to replicate what happened in the birth narrative and following set up to replicate what happened with Moses. You could argue the first seven chapters are set up to show that Jesus is the new Moses or the new interpreter of Moses or probably the new Moses. So what happens is Jesus is miraculously born and he's protected at birth. Moses was born and was protected at birth. Jesus is the ruling king is out to get him. And Pharaoh was out to get Moses, so he had to be hidden. And so they have similar things with the monarch out to kill them. Jesus goes to Egypt, where Moses is from soon after his birth. Jesus then comes up out of Egypt, just as Moses leads the people out of Egypt. The next thing that happens in the account is he's an adult. He gets baptized, he goes through the water. Moses takes the children of Israel through the water at the Sea of Reeds. Jesus then goes into the wilderness and he's tempted for 40 days. Moses takes the people of Israel into the wilderness for 40 years. And then Moses, Moses goes up on the mount and he gives them the law. Jesus goes on the mount and gives the Sermon on the Mount. And in the Sermon on the Mount he quotes the law of Moses and gives his interpretations of it. And so this is like. So clearly this is modeled on the Moses story. And any Jewish reader is going to read this and say, oh yeah, boy, that sounds familiar. Again, it's another way of emphasizing that Jesus, he's thoroughly Jewish and that there's continuity between the law of Moses and the teachings of Jesus and that Jesus is fulfilling what had been set out earlier, which was in a sense, I guess, incomplete because now it has been filled out and now it has reached fullness from its kind of partiality before.
- [25:50]
Megan Lewis
So if Jesus elaborates on, explains the laws of Moses, I'm assuming that Matthew is not saying, or the writer of Matthew is not saying that now Jesus has come and given his own laws. Jewish law is completely moot. And inapplicable here.
- [26:08]
Bart Ehrman
Again, this is a distinctive Matthean emphasis that you get just in Matthew. And people just don't notice this one. Jesus begins the Sermon on the Mount, not the very beginning. First he tells the Beatitudes, but then he tells his followers. He says, don't think that I've come to destroy the law, the law of Moses. I haven't come to destroy it, I've come to fulfill it. Truly, I tell you, not one part of a letter will pass away from the law before everything is fulfilled. And so it sounds like, okay, he's going to fulfill the law, so it's all over with now, right? No. He goes on to say that you have to keep the law better than the scribes and the Pharisees, just keeping the letter of the law the way other Jewish leaders argue, you need to do this, this and that, you know, you need to do. He put Jesus in. Matthew says, you need to do that, but that's not the whole thing. And then he launches into his what are called the antithesis. This is in the Sermon on the Mount, still in chapter five, where Jesus says, you've heard it said, you know that you shall not murder. So that's one of the. One of the Ten Commandments. And Jesus says, I say to you that you shouldn't even get angry. You've heard us said, you shouldn't commit adultery. I say, you shouldn't even lust for another woman in your heart. And he kind of goes through these things. And the important point that people miss is Jesus does not negate the law of Moses. He doesn't say, moses says, don't murder. And I say, yeah, go ahead and murder. He doesn't say the opposite. Don't commit adultery. Of course, go ahead and commit adultery. He doesn't say the opposite. What he does is he tries to get to the heart of what the law is about.
- [27:45]
Megan Lewis
He's elaborating on the spirit of the law rather than just the letter.
- [27:49]
Bart Ehrman
He's bringing it out. He's trying, like, what's the point not murdering? You need peace in your community. You can't go around murdering each other. And Jesus saying, being peace means, like, don't go around getting angry at everybody. You know, and adultery in the Old Testament, the problem with adultery is that you're stealing somebody else's spouse. And Jesus says, don't even want to do it. It's not that, you know, of course you're going to have desires. He's not saying, don't desire anything. He's saying, don't try to get somebody else's spouse. Don't do it. Or the law says, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. And people misread that one all the time. They think, oh, God, that's a rough law. No, it's not a rough law. It's a law of mercy. If somebody knocks out your tooth, you don't have the right to lop off their head. Right? Punishment has to meet the crime. And so Jesus says, you've heard eye for an eye, for tooth, for tooth. I say unto you, turn the other cheek. He elevates the mercy. So for all of these, he embraces the law and he tries to get to the heart of it.
- [28:44]
Megan Lewis
So given that Matthew paints Jesus as a very Jewish messiah and as the second more perfect Moses, if you will, why is he so critical in Matthew of the Jewish leadership that he comes across. So he has run ins with them, it's scattered through the whole book. And chapter 23 is essentially just one long rant against them. And he kind of just details all the ways in which they're incredibly hypocritical. How does that work?
- [29:11]
Bart Ehrman
Right. This is, I think, the key to understanding Matthew. He portrays Jesus as being vehemently in support of the Jewish religion as correctly understood, and vehemently opposed to other Jewish leaders for misunderstanding it. So when you ask sometimes with my students at Chapel Hill, I'll ask them, is, you know, what's Jesus relationship to Judaism? And is he for it? Is he against it? And the short answer is, well, he's completely for the Jewish religion and he's completely against the Jewish leaders. And that's not a contradiction. Most people read Matthew as if he's, like, opposed to Judaism. And that's completely wrong. Chapter 23, as you mentioned, is this long harangue against the scribes and the Pharisees. And it's famous for Jesus starting out, like each harangue with, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees. You know, you hypocrites, you whitewashed sepulchers. That's a great image, by the way. So it's like. Like this tomb, like, it's whitewashed, you know, it's nice and white and pristine on the outside. You go inside, there's rotting bodies in there. That's what you're like. You know, you look great on the outside, but inside, oh, my God. And so Jesus goes after these leaders, but he does it after saying at the beginning of chapter 23 that you are to do what the Pharisees tell you to do. He says that people don't read this verse. You are supposed to do what the Pharisees say, do what they tell you, do their follow interpretation, but don't be like them. And then he launches in because they are hypocrites. They say one thing and they do another thing. They, you know, they try to get by by following the letter without being concerned about the spirit of the law, etc. So it's really setting up Jesus as the true Jew. I mean, he's the. The one who really is a Jew. And the odd thing then is the question that a lot of people have asked. Is Jesus telling his gentile followers that they have to be Jews in Christianity, of course, Christians historically have said, well, no, if you're a Gentile, you don't have to. This is because of Paul. If you're a gentile, you don't have to be circumcised, you don't have to keep kosher. You don't have to observe the Jewish Sabbath. Those are Jewish things, because Paul insists on that. And there's a bona fide question about whether Matthew agrees because Paul, Matthew says, keep the laws, just don't be like the Pharisees. And it's not clear. He seems to be talking to Jews and Gentiles. But does it mean the Gentiles have to keep kosher? It's a live question.
- [31:40]
Megan Lewis
I think that that brings up another point that I wanted to ask you about. Gentiles in Matthew, when they appear, seem to more readily recognize Jesus power than his own community does. So if you look at the centurion who asked Jesus to heal his paralyzed servant and has so much faith, he says, you don't even need to see him, just speak and he will be healed. Is this kind of interaction included, do you think, to emphasize further the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, or is it to try and make the gospel appeal more to maybe Matthew's gentile audience?
- [32:15]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, okay. Yeah. You're full of complicated questions today. And this is one of them that is especially intriguing. And that is, I don't think there's a crystal clear answer, but I think that it's a question that really has to be delved into deeply by people reading this book. Why is it the Gentiles seem to come off so much better than Jews in this Gospel? There's a kind of a theme that runs throughout most of the early Christian literature. Through each of the Gospels, I'd say, and through Paul and through the book of Acts. That the message of Jesus as the Messiah came to the Jewish people. And most Jewish people rejected the message. And so the message therefore went to the Gentiles. Now in the apostle Paul, Paul thinks that's the plan of God. That's how God's going to save the world, because Jews have to reject the message so that followers of Jesus are compelled to take the message to non Jews. And so it's part of the plan of saving the world. Matthew doesn't lay it out quite that way. But in Matthew, Jesus emphasizes that he himself has come just to minister to Jews. And he sends his followers to minister to Jews. But every now and then, Jesus encounters a Gentile. And the Gentile seems to get it better than anyone else does. And at the very end of the Gospel, Jesus during his ministry says that he's come only for the lost sheep of Israel. But at the end, after his resurrection, he meets with his disciples and he tells them to go into all the world and make disciples of all the nations, nations, teaching them what Jesus has taught them and baptizing them. And so the idea, I think, is that Matthew emphasizes that the Jewish leadership rejected Jesus and that's why he got executed, because the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem rejected him and handed him over to the Romans to be crucified. So he was the rejected Messiah after his rejection, after, okay, well, that's it, you know, they killed him, so they're not accepting him. Then the message goes to the Gentiles. And I think that the idea that Gentiles come off seemingly better in the account than Jews is foreshadowing that. That in fact Gentiles are going to welcome this more than others.
- [34:26]
Megan Lewis
I see. Thank you. Is there last question before we move on? Is there a part of the Gospel illustrates all of these themes together?
- [34:34]
Bart Ehrman
You know, when I'm teaching my class, my undergraduate class at Chapel Hill, I have my students study this very early story. I mentioned it earlier, about the wise men coming to Jesus, the visit of the magi. So you only get this in Matthew. And the deal is that Jesus is born. Luke tells a set of stories about what happens when Jesus is born. And Matthew tells another set of stories. And Matthew set of story includes that there are wise men from the east who are following the star. So they're some kind of astrologers. They see a star in the sky and they're following it because the star is indicating that the king of the Jews will be born. And the star leads them to Jerusalem, and they go into Jerusalem and they start making inquiries because apparently the star stopped somehow, like it was. It was leading them. And all of a sudden it stops over Jerusalem. So they don't know where to go now. And so they go in and they start making inquiries. And King Herod finds out that you have these. These wise men from the east. We're not told how many of them there are. Eventually they're going to leave three gifts. So people talk about the three wise men, but we don't know how many wise men they're supposed to be. But King Herod finds out about them, and he brings them in to find out because he's curious, like, is there really a king of the Jews that's been born? And they say, but we don't know where. And he inquires of his scripture scholars. Herod asks, brings in biblical scholars and says, where's the king of the Jews to be born? And they tell him, well, according to the prophets, he's to be born in Bethlehem. And they quote Micah 5, 2, that a savior will come out of Bethlehem. And so Herod tells them it's in Bethlehem. And so Bethlehem is a short distance from Jerusalem. And so the wise men go off and the star reappears and takes them to Bethlehem and then stops over the house that Jesus is in. And so they go in and worship him with gold, frankincense and myrrh. And then they leave. Interesting story. How does a star stop over a house? Exactly.
- [36:23]
Megan Lewis
I was going to ask, but my
- [36:26]
Bart Ehrman
local planetarium has a. Has a show every year to try and show. Oh, you know, it might have been a. You know, it might have been a comet. You know, it might have been a supernova. It might have been. Yeah, yeah. They don't stop over houses. And, you know, and if it's. If it's something that's like 30ft off the ground, that could go over houses, you know, then you could see that. But it's a star. And it really interesting is to see how movie directors deal with this. How do you do that? And so, like, the best ones are things where you got the star way up, you know, millions of miles away. But then a light beam comes down, you know, it hits the house. And so they know that that's the best one, actually is the Life of Brian. Wise men going to the wrong house.
- [37:02]
Megan Lewis
Yes.
- [37:02]
Bart Ehrman
They can't tell which. So anyway, so they go to the house, they worship, and then they leave. And Herod then realizes that they haven't come back to tell him where the child is, what he wanted, and so he's not sure which one is. So he sends in the troops and they kill all the children. Okay, so what's that got to do with what we're developing about Jews and Gentiles and Jesus being a Jewish savior and things? Well, this is what has to do with it. This story is an early illustration of the entire message of the Gospel of Matthew. In a very subtle way, when you read the story, you ask, who is it? Who knows where the King of the Jews, the Messiah is supposed to be born?
- [37:42]
Megan Lewis
The non Jewish people in the story,
- [37:44]
Bart Ehrman
they don't know at first. They find out from the Jewish scripture scholars. The scripture scholars of the Jews who know their scriptures inside out know exactly where the Son of God is to be born, where the Messiah is to be born. The Gentiles don't know. They find out from the Jewish scholars. And then who goes to worship him?
- [38:07]
Megan Lewis
The Gentiles and not the Jewish scholars.
- [38:09]
Bart Ehrman
The Gentiles go. The Jewish scripture scholars who knew full well what the scriptures were saying don't accept their Messiah. The Gentiles who don't know find out and they do worship the Messiah. And so this is foreshadowing the entire Gospel already in chapter two. And so it's a brilliant story that, you know, people get all hung up on, you know, following stars and who these people are and, you know, and that kind of thing. And they're missing the point. This is showing that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, sent from the Jewish God to the Jewish people in fulfillment of the Jewish scriptures, only to be rejected by the people to whom he was sent. And so the message goes out to gentiles and they're the ones who accept it.
- [38:51]
Megan Lewis
That is fascinating. Oh, that's beautiful. Foreshadowing.
- [38:55]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, it's great. It's really these gospels, I'm telling you, it's so easy just to read through them and not even to think about it. And when people do think about it, usually they think they'll take a verse and just think, well, how does this apply to my life? And that's absolutely fine. There are moments of brilliance in these books that you have to. You have to look really carefully to figure out that, oh my God, that's amazing. And in every one of these gospels you get stuff like that. And so this is one of those moments in Matthew when that happens.
- [39:23]
Megan Lewis
I've said it. I can't remember if I've said it when talking to you, but I've definitely said it elsewhere. That so much is lost, I think, in the appreciation of the Bible as a Literary construction, when you just focus on it as a religious text, like this story from Matthew, I've, I hear it for a year at church and this is a whole new dimension on it that I have never known about, never considered. And it's fascinating and beautifully crafted and I really appreciate it.
- [39:51]
Bart Ehrman
Well, you know, the Gospels are multifunctioning books. Functioning is not the right word. They're multi layered books. They're trying to describe something that happened. And so historians have to figure out did this happen, did this happen, did that happen? Did you say this or that? So they're kind of historical sources. On one level that's history. They're religious documents obviously. They're documents of faith that people believe in and that they shape people's lives, their religious lives. They're thinking about God and Christ and salvation and such. They're also literary texts. Even those who believe that God inspired them, he inspired texts. And that means to understand these books you've got to treat them as texts. You need to explore them as pieces of literature or you're not going to understand them. And, and especially if you think God inspired them, you might want to know what God had to say. I think the best approach is to understand them as historical and religious and literary texts.
- [40:43]
Megan Lewis
Well, I think we will end our conversation on Matthew there. Bart, thank you. That was fascinating as always. We have a brief announcement. Bart has a new course coming up called the Unknown Jesus Revealing the Secrets of Mark's Misunderstood Gospel. Bart, could you give us a bit, a brief, brief summary of what this course is about?
- [41:02]
Bart Ehrman
Very brief. Yeah, just, you know, in this episode here we've talked about Matthew. We're going to be doing something similar with Mark. Where I'm going to be doing. It'll be an eight lecture course that deals with the kinds of things we've done in Matthew here. In about 45 minutes we're going to do with Mark in eight lectures of 45 minutes each, going into plumbing the depths. And it's not like, you know, it's going to be so much that. Oh God, really? Here's more. No, like every bit of it's interesting. There's so much that's interesting in these books. And so this will be an eight lecture course on Mark. Mark. One of the themes in Mark is going to be the basis for the course about how nobody in Mark can figure out who Jesus is. And people don't get this reading Mark. They, people just don't see it. And so I'm going to explain how it's a misunderstood Gospel about somebody that is misunderstood in the gospel.
- [41:46]
Megan Lewis
Wonderful. Thank you. It is currently on Early Bird special for those who are interested. The regular price will be 59.95, but if you purchase before Friday, January 27th at midnight, then you will only pay $47.95. And as always, you can still use the code MJ podcast for an additional discount at checkout with the Early Bird. And if you miss it, you can use that discount as well afterwards.
- [42:14]
Bart Ehrman
This is Bart's weekly update where we get to catch up on all the latest about Dr. Ehrman's book release, thesis, speaking engagements, urmanblog.org happenings and online course launches.
- [42:29]
Megan Lewis
But what do you have for us this week?
- [42:31]
Bart Ehrman
Well, I was saying earlier you were asked about my teaching and, and I was saying that, you know, this is, this is the perk of the job, I think. People don't know. Like being a university professor, it seems kind of like pretty easy, right? Teach a few classes a week and like you got the rest of the week off, right? You're watching soaps and eating bon bons or something. I don't know. So. Yeah, but the thing is, like, the academic job is there's a lot to it. And so I'm finding out anew when you go on leave, you try and forget it all. You forget about the committee meetings and the department meetings and the obligations and the, it's like, and the advising of students. It's like, oh, my God. Yeah, there's a lot here. My update is, yeah, I'm realizing that. Keeping your head above water, trying to keep your head above, above water in the professorial life.
- [43:13]
Megan Lewis
Oh, well, I hope you continue your acclimatization back to professor life with little problems or few problems.
- [43:21]
Bart Ehrman
Well, I mean, everybody's busy. Everybody has too much to do and everything. So it's not that I'm saying I'm different from anyone else. It's just like there's some busyness you like, like, you know, teaching students some things you don't like, like committee meetings, but you gotta do them and they're important. They're important.
- [43:33]
Megan Lewis
I can absolutely understand that.
- [43:39]
Bart Ehrman
Doctor Ehrman has written six New York Times best selling books and holds a Ph.D. from Princeton. It's not often you'll see him made a fool, but it doesn't hurt to try. It's time for Outsmart Bart.
- [43:57]
Megan Lewis
So this week's Outsmart Bart questions come from Joel Zahn. I hope I'm saying your name right, Joel. If I'm not, please accept my apologies. Which Middle Platonist philosopher is attributed with this phrase. What is Plato but Moses speaking Attic Greek.
- [44:13]
Bart Ehrman
What? Okay.
- [44:14]
Megan Lewis
Gone a bit further afield than the Bible for this one.
- [44:16]
Bart Ehrman
I assume it's Philo of Alexandria, but I don't know.
- [44:19]
Megan Lewis
It is Numenius of Apamea.
- [44:24]
Bart Ehrman
Middle Platonic philosophy.
- [44:26]
Megan Lewis
Are you kidding me? Well, last time I thought we'd go for something a little bit more tricky.
- [44:31]
Bart Ehrman
Oh, yeah, well, thanks so much, but okay. But I do need to explain to people that. Because like, people aren't even going to understand the question.
- [44:38]
Megan Lewis
I didn't understand the question.
- [44:39]
Bart Ehrman
I just read the words at one time. I actually probably knew. I did know the answer, actually. Numinous. But because we don't have. Have his writings, we only have fragments of his writings. And so Middle Platonism was. Plato was back in the 5th century and he developed his philosophy through these dialogues that we have. And there's a phenomenon that's more, not widely known as Platonic thought, but there's something called Neoplatonic thought that was developed in the 3rd, 4th, 5th century CE. So 800 years later, which is a very mystical thing that to people reading it sounds a lot like Gnosticism without the kind of religious aspect, but it's kind of a spiritual connecting with the God. And the idea is that the God is this spiritual being up there and we're down here and there's a lot of intermediaries between. And it's. How do you access the divine? Middle Platonism is something that's not very well attested. Philo is one of them, but we have fragments of others who are sort of. They're very Platonic in their thinking, but they haven't gotten to Neoplatonism. There are a bunch of these guys and they're. They're all. We just have little fragments of them. Yeah, sorry. Okay, I should know that one. Give me another one. I don't know.
- [45:44]
Megan Lewis
So this is another. A question I. I don't really understand. According to the Gospel of Truth, which entity caused Jesus to become powerless and thus crucified?
- [45:54]
Bart Ehrman
Oh, God. I have.
- [45:55]
Megan Lewis
So I'm going to say I don't even know what the Gospel of Truth is.
- [45:57]
Bart Ehrman
The Gospel of Truth is a great gospel. It's one of these gospels of. And again, it's a question I should know the answer to. It's one of the gospels found in the Nag Hammadi Library, which was discovered in 1945. This Nag Hammadi Library is often called the Gnostic Gospels, although a number of the gospels in the Gnostic gospels are not necessarily Gnostic. And the Gospel of truth is one of those. There's. It's. It may be. It may have Gnostic influence on it, but it's really kind of a dualistic conflict between darkness and light. And so it's, it's a celebratory book that allegedly was written by one of the famous Gnostics. I don't know darkness.
- [46:38]
Megan Lewis
It says Error.
- [46:40]
Bart Ehrman
Error. Yeah. Okay, good. Yeah, makes sense. It's a big mistake.
- [46:45]
Megan Lewis
Please.
- [46:45]
Bart Ehrman
I'm so glad. This is the final one.
- [46:50]
Megan Lewis
We're really putting you over the coals today. In the Ascension of Isaiah, what is used to carry out Isaiah's martyrdom?
- [46:57]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, so this one I know, the Ascension of Isaiah is a. Obviously it's a non biblical text with Isaiah the prophet as the key figure. And there are two separate sections of it. One part sounds kind of like a biography, trying to do kind of a biographical sketch of the prophet Isaiah. And the other is an account of Isaiah's ascent back to heaven. Going through how. I just said how. In Neoplatonism you have these various levels of heaven, and in some Gnostic text you have these various levels of heaven. And in the Ascension of Isaiah, it's not Gnostic, but it does have this Gnostic theme that the soul has to go through these various levels to get up to the true heaven. And each level has a ruler, and you have to give a password to the ruler for him to let you through. And so this is this text. I. Some people date it very early, some people, I think crazily. People say it's from the first century. I think there's no way it's from this. Probably the middle of the second century. But the biographical part, I believe that Isaiah is sod in half.
- [47:57]
Megan Lewis
Yes, he is.
- [47:58]
Bart Ehrman
And so that's not a good way to go. But. And it wasn't a magic trick where he came out okay.
- [48:03]
Megan Lewis
He was.
- [48:04]
Bart Ehrman
Was sawed in half.
- [48:06]
Megan Lewis
Well, thank you, Bart, for attempting these questions.
- [48:09]
Bart Ehrman
You did one out of three than
- [48:12]
Megan Lewis
I would have done. You at least recognized what the questions were.
- [48:15]
Bart Ehrman
I'm like, once again, if I play baseball, I'd be batting.333. I'd be in the All Star game.
- [48:20]
Megan Lewis
Exactly. Great. Thank you, Joel, for your questions.
- [48:23]
Bart Ehrman
Well, I'm not going to thank you for your questions.
- [48:26]
Megan Lewis
Bart isn't thanking you. I'm thanking you because these are questions that I don't have to come up with. So before we finish for the week, would you mind just briefly summarizing what we talked about and why it's an important topic.
- [48:38]
Bart Ehrman
We talked about the Gospel of Matthew as its own distinctive book. And the overriding kind of methodological argument I want to make is that if you want to know what Matthew wants to say about Jesus, how he wants to portray Jesus, you have to bracket your knowledge of what you yourself think about Jesus, religiously or historically. You have to bracket what every other author says about Jesus, including Mark, Luke, and John. And you have to focus on, on Matthew as a literary text. When you do that, when you focus just to see what this gospel is trying to say, it emphasizes that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah who was sent from the Jewish God to the Jewish people in fulfillment of the Jewish law, who ends up being rejected by the Jewish people. And so he stresses the importance of the Jewish law, the importance of Moses, the importance of keeping the law not just in the letter, but in the Spirit. And Matthew thinks you have to do that, that if you're a follower of Jesus. And being a follower of Jesus, of course, believing that what Matthew says about his teachings and his death and his resurrection, but believing that doesn't get you off the hook of doing what God commands. And what God commands is in the Torah. So you have to have to keep the law.
- [49:44]
Megan Lewis
Bart, thank you very much for your time. Audience, thank you all for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. And if you did, please remember to subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don't miss future episodes. Remember also that you can use the code mjpodcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses, including his brand new one, the Unknown Jesus Revealing the Secrets of Mark's Misunderstood Gospel over at www.bartehrman.com. misquoting Jesus will be back next week. Bart, what are we going to be talking about?
- [50:12]
Bart Ehrman
Well, next week we're talking about a topic that I've spent a good deal of my career doing research and writing on, involving the diversity of early Christianity. People often think of the earliest Christian community as being fairly unified, and then later it kind of got all fragmented and, and, and like it is today. But we'll be talking about how, in fact, very, very early in Christianity, it wasn't just a monolith. There are various kinds of groups that had various kinds of views, theologies, practices, understandings of the world, and they all called themselves Christian. They all said that they followed the teachings of Jesus and they were completely at odds with each other. So one view ends up emerging from this. That becomes the standard view, which also has many facets. So, yeah, we'll be talking about the diversity of Christianity, the schisms, the heresies, along with what becomes Orthodoxy.
- [51:03]
Megan Lewis
Well, I am very much looking forward to it. So we will see you all next week. Thank you, everybody, 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 list, 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.