← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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Megan Lewis
how would you respond if I told you that actually Judas was the only apostle who truly understood what Jesus was doing on earth? What if I said that Jesus is unrelated to the deity who created the world and that the deity responsible for creating the world is not the same as the deity who created humanity? It might surprise you to learn that these seemingly blasphemous statements were actually believed by early Christians. I've got New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman with me today.
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Bart Ehrman
Hello. Hi, nice to see you. Megan. Nice to deal with this one.
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Megan Lewis
Always pleasure. And Bart is going to be revealing the early Christian Gnostic text responsible for these beliefs. Stay tuned. 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. Now, Bart, today we are talking about the Gospel of Judas. When did you first hear about this gospel?
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Bart Ehrman
Ah, okay. So Megan, this is gonna be a long story.
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Megan Lewis
Excellent.
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Bart Ehrman
This is like one of the weirdest things that ever happened to me in my academic life. I've had some weird things this in my academic life, nothing quite so strange. It was literally 20 years ago this month. I was sitting in my office at Chapel Hill, teaching my classes at unc, just in my office, reading a book or something, and my phone rings. Pick it up and it's a woman that I know. She has some resources and she funds archaeological trips to Israel. We'd known each other for years and we were friends. We never ever have talked on the phone before, but we chit chat and I'm wondering what this is about. And then she says, so Bart, what do you know about the Gospel of Judas? And I said, the Gospel of Judas, so nobody knew about it at this point. And I said, well, you know, church fathers have said that there was a Gospel of Judas, but you know, we don't have it and we don't really know what's in it except it. At least the church fathers who talk about it said that it was one of these gnostic gospels, these gospels that were used by these groups that didn't think that the death and resurrection of Jesus is what brought salvation, but that people were saved by escaping the gospel God of this world, who is not the God of Jesus. So they had to escape their material world. And this gospel apparently was used by that group. I said, but that's, that's about all I know. I, you know, I don't really know much about it because we don't have it. She said, oh, okay, that's fine. And so click, hung up. Wow, that's weird. Okay, whatever. So three weeks later I'm sitting in my office again, phone rings and it's a different woman, this one I don't know. And she identifies herself as a person from National Geographic. And we chat for a second and she says, what do you know about the Gospel of Judas? What? Okay, so all right, okay. So between that time I'd actually looked it up because when my first caller I didn't really know, but I decided to look it up. And the deal is this. It is mentioned by a church father named Irenaeus who is writing about the year 180, a book against heresies, that we have a five volume book against heresies and in it, he mentions one of the gnostic groups that he calls the Cainites. He claims that they called themselves the Cainites, named after Cain, as in Cain and Abel. Now, anybody who knows their Bible knows that Cain is the bad guy. He murders his brother first. Murder. And so they're the two sons of Adam and Eve. They claim to be followers of Cain because they think this canine is a gnostic group that thinks that the God who created this world is not the true God, that the God who created this world is a wicked deity, an evil deity. I mean, look around. This world's terrible, with earthquakes and tsunamis, hurricanes and volcanic eruptions and. And murder. And. I mean, it's like this world is a mess, starvation. And they thought, well, the God who created this world could not be good because the world's no good. And so they thought that there was a greater divinity above the God of this world, and that the Old Testament talks about the God of this world who created the world and called Israel to be his people and that God gave them the law, which is a horrible thing. The people in the Bible who are opposed to the God of Israel are on the right side. They're on the side of the true God, starting with Cain. So they called themselves Cainites.
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Megan Lewis
And how does this tie into the Gospel of Judas? And why were so many people calling you about it?
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Bart Ehrman
Right, exactly. So the deal is these Canaanites, they thought that other people in history were the good guys that everybody else thought were the bad guys. The men of Sodom and Gomorrah, they really revered them, for example, these immoral folk. And they said they had a gospel of Judas, and so that would fit in with their characteristic understanding of things, that the enemies of God are actually the. The right side. So I learned all that, and I'm talking to the second woman, and she. She wants to know about the Gospel of Judas so I can lay out a little bit more detail now, and I tell her what it is. And so then I said to her, okay, what's going on? What do you have? And she said, well, would you think it would be significant if we found it a little?
- [07:18]
Megan Lewis
I. I would say a little significant, yes.
- [07:22]
Bart Ehrman
Okay. I said, all right. I said, look, it would depend, you know, things show up on occasion. And, you know, I talked to her about the, you know, some other discoveries. And I said, I don't know, because I don't. I don't know what's in it. I said, but I think probably there are two choices. Either, you know, it may well be A Gnostic gospel like those found in the Nag Hammadi library in the 1940s. It could be that kind of thing, which is an account from a Gnostic point of view about how some other God created this world as a place of misery and entrapped sparks of the divine here in this world as punishment, and we have to escape our bodies in order to return to the heavenly realm. That's a basic Gnostic view. And there we have Gnostic gospels like that. And if the Gospel of Judas is like that, I said, this would be really significant for people like me who are historians of early, early Christianity, and it would, you know, presumably would help us understand Gnosticism and early Christianity better. So. So that's one option. I said, the other option is it could be that if it were a book where Judas is portrayed as the good guy and Judas and Jesus get into conversations about it, you know, and you actually have Jesus talking to Judas like he's the hero of the plot. I said, man, that would be front page news. I said, okay, so what do you got? She said, well, we're not sure what we got. We want you to help us authenticate it.
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Megan Lewis
Oh, wow, that's exciting. What happened then? Did you authenticate it first?
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Bart Ehrman
I said, well, okay. I said, look, tell me some things about it first. I said, what do you mean, authenticate? She said, we want to know whether it's actually an ancient gospel or whether, like, may somebody forged it. Okay, great. So what language is it written in? She said, it's written in Coptic. And so Coptic is the ancient, Ancient Egyptian language. So I say, well, look, if it's written in Coptic, you know, you don't need me. I, I'm a scholar of ancient Greek manuscripts and Greek is my primary language. I said, what? You really, you need a good coptologist? And she says, okay, great. She said, what's a coptologist? Okay, yeah, a coptologist is somebody who ancient studies ancient Coptic. I said, there are real experts in the world who have that as their primary language. I can, I can read some Coptic, give me a dictionary in some time. I can probably, I can read a text, but it's not, this is not my expertise, and it's just like a very much a tertiary expertise for me. She said, all right, well, you know, what we really want is somebody who can help us date the manuscript. We want to see if the manuscript itself is an ancient manuscript or maybe, you know, maybe it's modern. And she said, can you help us with that? And I said, look, no, for that you need a paleographer. She said, okay, what's a paleographer? A paleographer is somebody who studies ancient handwriting. So the way you date manuscripts is on the basis of a handwriting analysis, because handwriting changed over the years when. Back before the invention of printing. And so you can date a handwriting within about 50 years, if you're any good at it.
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Megan Lewis
Is it similar to looking at, say, a letter my grandmother wrote and it's incursive? And then you look at a letter that I wrote, and it's definitely not incursive? Is it that kind of shift?
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Bart Ehrman
It's that kind of shift to some extent. Although some today, even still, people sometimes write in block letters, and sometimes people write incursive. It's more like, you know, when you read an old book and the S's look like F's.
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Megan Lewis
Yes.
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Bart Ehrman
And so you see a book like that and you say, yeah, okay, this wasn't made last year. And so it's more like that. The form of the letters, the slant of the letters. I mean, they're things that differ over time. And so paleographers, what they do is they get manuscripts that have dates on them, and then they know, okay, this time, 500 of those written in particular, then you know what the handwriting is. So I tell her, I say, okay, look, yeah, you need a Coptic paleographer. And then she says, well, you know, what we really were thinking is we wanted a carbon 14 date the manuscript. Could you help us with that? That. No, no, I can't. I can't help you with that. What? I'm not a scientist. I said, you need a scientist to carbon 14 data manuscript. So then I said, look. Okay, I'll tell you why I said, look, you find a carbon 14 expert, and I'll find you a cop to paleographer, because I know people who do this kind of thing. I'll find you one of those. They can, but you don't need me. I said, I do. You know, I do. I work with a Greek man.
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Megan Lewis
I will not be helpful for this.
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Bart Ehrman
She says, no, no, we'd really like you on the project. You know, the thing is, we'd like to know, like, if it is ancient, how it fits into the contours of early Christianity and how it fits in with other Gospels. I said, well, I do. That I can do. Yeah, yeah, I can do that. So we decided we're going to do this. So. So the manuscript was being kept outside of Geneva in a town named Neon on the shore of Lake Geneva. And so I got on the Phone. I called a guy in Germany that I know named Stephen Emmel. Emil is one of the world's leading Coptic paleographers. He's a coptologist. And so I called him up. I had never really met him before, but we knew about each other. I called him up, I said, so Stephen, I said, you know, I don't know if you heard, but they think they found the Gospel of Jud. Hamill says to me, oh yeah. He says, you know, I saw it 20 years ago. I said, what? So, yeah, no, I saw it because he had like earlier they had been trying to like sell it or something. And as a Yale graduate student, he, they, he had seen it for a few minutes. So he says, yeah, I think I saw it 20 years ago. I said, really? You want to see it again? Yes. I said, okay, let's fly to Geneva. So, so we did. There was a team of three of us, Emil and me and a guy named Timothy Joel, who is a expert in Arizona on, among other things, carbon 14 dating manuscripts. And we flew to Geneva and went to Neon and we examined it. And it's clearly an ancient manuscript. This was in 2004, two years later. We'll talk about this a little bit more in a minute. But when it was ready for publication, there was a translation done of it. And there was a big event in Washington D.C. with the three of us and other scholars, including like Elaine Pagels and Craig Evans and some who gave kind of presentation. But they had like this whole core of press, you know, from around the world doing this thing. And it really, it did end up being front page news because this was, it was a major discovery.
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Megan Lewis
That's amazing. Now my notes say that the manuscript was discovered in the late 70s, like 1978.
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Bart Ehrman
Yeah.
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Megan Lewis
You say the translation wasn't published until 2006. People weren't even trying to authenticate it until 2004. What on earth happened? Why did it take so long for this to get worked on properly?
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Bart Ehrman
It was discovered in Egypt in a small place about 120 miles south of Cairo by just some locals who were looking around for stuff, going through caves and things and seeing if there was anything of valuable. And they found this cave that had some stuff in it, including a couple of limestone boxes. And there are human remains in there. And in limestone box they found four books. So they sold it to somebody for a little bit, you know, local kind of person who dealt with antiquities and he sold it to somebody else who paid a lot more money for it, who sold it to someone Else who paid a lot more. People started realizing, oh, this is. Finally got it in the hands of somebody who realized this thing's worth millions. He came to America to try and sell it, but he couldn't get buyers for it. This is why Stephen Emmel had seen it. He had arranged through middleman to have Yale University look at it, to possibly buy it for the Beinecke Library for $3 million. They didn't buy it, and in part, they were afraid that since it had been smuggled out of Egypt, Egypt would take it back and they'd be out $3 million. So the guy couldn't find somebody to buy it, and he decided to put it in safekeeping. Then this thing had probably been in Egypt, buried away since the 4th century, and it was discovered in 1978. It'd been there for 1600 years, but the climate is so dry and the humidity is so constant that things survive there. So this person who couldn't find any place to sell it decided to put it into a safe deposit box in New York City on Long island, where humidity is not constant.
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Megan Lewis
Slightly different climate there to Egypt.
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Bart Ehrman
So it was years later they finally found somebody might want to buy this thing. And 16 years it was in the safe deposit box. When they opened the safe deposit box, it was turning into mush. And I won't go through the whole story here. I give the story in my book. I've got a book on this called the Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot, where I talk about my involvement, but mainly I talk about this gospel and the historical Judas Iscariot, you know, which we've talked about some. But in it, I describe what the whole thing had happened. And, man, it was a mess. It wasn't just that it was put in this box. It was that the guy who finally bought it, you know, once coming out of the box, was told by someone else, like an expert, that he had to stop it from decaying, saying, so he should put it in his deep freeze. So he froze the manuscript, which made it really brittle, so that, like, if you just touched it, it would turn to dust almost. And the ink in the manuscript that had, you know, written on, you know, all those years, 1600 years ago, the ink that was used that had penetrated the manuscript, the freezing process brought the ink up to the surface, blackening some of the pages. So you couldn't really read it very well. And the guy wanted to sell it, had apparently taken the manuscript. We know who this is, by the way. Taken the manuscript and ripped it the top third of the off top so that he could rearrange the pages so the good pages would look like they're on top and like he would re. And so in the year 2002, it got into the hands of people who knew what they were doing, and they started restoring it. And they had gotten to a restoration point by 2004 that National Geographic found out about it and contacted us. And then that was. Began it. And so it took a couple more years before it was ready for public presentation in 2006.
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Megan Lewis
Gracious me, that's a lot. That's a bit of a whirlwind of a journey. So it had been hidden away for 1600 years. When then, was it probably written?
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Bart Ehrman
So, yes, this was the big debate. The first thing the National Geographic team wanted was to verify that it was an ancient manuscript. It's. It's papyrus. So it's that ancient writing material, papyrus. And the reason you carbon 14 dating date something like that is because it's organic material. And the carbon 14 has a, you know, a set half life of like 5,700 years. And once an organic thing dies, it starts deteriorating. After 5,700 years, it loses half of its carbon 14. And so you see how much carbon 14 it has in it then you can see. Guess you get a pretty good estimate about state within 60 years or so. So they wanted to know, is this ancient just by us looking at it. And, you know, I'm not an expert in Coptic manuscripts, but I know ancient manuscripts because that is one of my fields. And this thing's ancient. This wasn't produced, you know, 20 years ago. This is an ancient manuscript. And Emma looked at it and said, yeah, no, this is ancient. And so the question was then, well, okay, how ancient is it? And to me, it looked similar to biblical manuscripts from 4th, 5th centuries right around in there, which we have 3rd, 4th, 5th century. But I'm not a Coptic paleographer. Emil thought probably mid 4th century. That night, actually, at dinner, we had the whole crew there, like camera people and producers and directors, and the people own it and the people managing it. And like, there's a big crowded room up there looking at these things under plexiglass, right? You're not handling these. They've got them under plexiglass. And so we took bets that night. We had a. We all went out to dinner, the film crew and stuff. We're all taking bets about. And I'm saying. I'm saying I think it's 340, Dayton, 340. And Elmo thinks This and, but it turns out the paleographical dating is probably early 4th century. The carbon 14 dating put it at 280 plus or minus 30 years. So the carbon 14 suggested an earlier date. The thing is, the date that the papyrus plant was killed is not necessarily the date that the manuscript was written. You see what I mean? So the writing you based on the paleography and the manuscript on carbon 14,
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Megan Lewis
the carbon 14 will tell you how old the papyrus itself is, probably within like that 60 year time frame. And then the, the paleography tells you when it was written on.
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Bart Ehrman
Yeah, again within a 60 year range or so. So and the logic there is that if you're basing it on, on handwriting, like handwriting analysis, then somebody who's trained as a scribe is like probably fully trained when they're in their late teens, maybe around the year 20. And if they're still writing 30 years later, they're still writing the same way they did before. And so you can't tell did they make this manuscript when they're 20 or when they were 50, you see, and so there's usually a 50 or 60 year gap within a guess. It's not a guess from paleographers, but it's pretty sure it's within this someplace or other. So early 4th century probably, I think probably most people are saying early 4th century now.
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Megan Lewis
Thank you. We are going to take a very brief break, but please stay with us. We're going to be back soon to dive into the surprising details of the Gospel and to examine some of the, of the revelations it contains. How well do we really know the gospels that shaped Christianity? The New Testament books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the cornerstones of our understanding of Jesus. But how reliable are they as historical documents in the unknown? Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Join Bible scholar Dr. Bart Ehrman as he takes you on an illuminating journey through these ancient texts. Across eight captivating lectures, you'll explore the origins, authorship and historical accuracy of the Gospels in an online course. Are these accounts based on eyewitness testimony or are they a mix of history, myth and legend? What do historians see that most readers miss? This course is an opportunity to dive deep into the stories that have defined a faith, questioning their origins and understanding their impact. Ready to uncover the truth behind the Gospels? Visit barterman.com gospels to learn more or sign up today. Use discount code mjpodcast at checkout for a special offer. Welcome back. We're talking about the Gospel of Judas, a newly translated, very enigmatic Gnostic gospel. Say that 10 times fast. After having a drunk before our break, Bart gave us the details of where and when it was found. So now we're going to explore exactly what it says. And it is definitely a wild ride. So, but what does the Gospel of Judas narrate?
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Bart Ehrman
It's a gospel that narrates the last days of Jesus. It's not a complete gospel like giving, like his ministry or his birth or his ministry and things. It's all about the last eight days on earth. And it is largely about his interactions, his conversations with the disciples leading up to his death. It begins with him talking to them. It ends with Judas betraying him. It does not end with his crucifixion. It ends with the betrayal. Judas is the key figure in the gospel, but the other disciples also figure prominently in it. And by and large, it's a revelation of Jesus, where Jesus is revealing to them the truths of the universe that they don't understand.
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Megan Lewis
What secret information does the Gospel of Judas reveal about the creation of the world and about humanity?
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Bart Ehrman
I need to say, I need to emphasize that because of the way the manuscript was mistreated, we don't have the entire thing anymore. It looks like we're missing maybe 10% or up to 15% of it because little fragments have broken off and disappeared or got destroyed. And so there are gaps in the manuscript sometimes at places that we really wish we did not have gaps. We'd like to know what was written there. But it began, begins with Jesus coming up to his disciples. And we're told that they're engaged in some kind of godly exercise. So they're worshiping God in some way. They're eating their bread and they're giving thanks for the bread. And Jesus starts laughing at them. Why are you laughing at us? And it turns out that they think that the true God has provided them with their physical sustenance, but they don't realize that this is not the true God. And so you're worshiping your God, but it's not the right God. Jesus laughs four times in this gospel at the disciple, usually at the disciples. And one reason that's interesting is because, as you know, Jesus never laughs in the New Testament, but he laughs here. And it's because they don't understand that starts off with this beginning of things like, oh, my God, this is going to be different because they don't think the creator. This gospel does not think that the creator God is not the real God.
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Megan Lewis
And Judas is set aside from the. The other apostles. How does he kind of play into this, what role is he in?
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Bart Ehrman
Yeah, well, so when Jesus laughs at them, they, they get all upset with him and, but he says, if any of you, you know, is strong enough, stand up before me. And none of them could stand because they, they weren't strong enough to deal with him in, in their presence. But Judas stands up. Judas stands up, but can't look him in the eye, which shows that he's going to be stronger, superior to these other apostles. But he can't look Jesus in the eye. And right away, you know, this is a Gnostic gospel because Judas says, I know who you are. You come from the realm of Barbelo. Barbelo won't mean things to most people, but Barbelo is one of the beings in the divine realm talked about in Gnostic circles.
- [24:42]
Megan Lewis
So the two of them then go off and have quite an in depth conversation about the origins of everything. Really. What is it that Jesus reveals to Judas?
- [24:52]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, he says these, you know, these others aren't going to get it, but you know, he'll reveal it to Judas. And that the deal is it's this Gnostic thing that people have read any Gnostic text, they'll know about this. But it seems really weird if you don't, that the divine realm is not a God. There is a kind of beginning divinity of some kind who is like so far beyond what we can imagine. You can't describe this being, but this being wants other beings to come into existence. And so he starts generating other ones. One that's called the self originate, the one who originates in himself. And there are luminaries like lights that are invented. There are divine beings and there are eons, they're divine beings and there are angels. And so there are all these divine beings that are created up there. And then there's a realm of chaos and a realm of light that are created in the realm of chaos is ruled by lower level divinities who are not good guys. So the description, once Jesus gets into the description, it's just mind blowing for a normal human being. It's really hard to understand what in the world's going on. I have my students read this and they just, they think, oh my God, this is crazy, I can't even follow it. Yeah, yeah, that's the whole point. It's secret knowledge. The whole point is if it was easy, there wouldn't be any mystery to it. So you have this divine realm created with all of these various kinds of divine beings, but then you have two that are created, one named Nebro, which is a word that means a rebel, and he's said to be covered with blood. And another named Sacklos, which is a word that means fool. Nebro is the one who creates the material world, and he's sometimes called Iadabaot, which is the Gnostic name for the God of the Old Testament. So the God of the Old Testament is a bloodthirsty rebel, and the God who creates human beings is Sacklace, the fool. Sackcloth says, let us make humans in our own image. And so humans are created by a fool. The material world's created by a bloodthirsty rebel. And so that's the vision of the world that this complicated mythology leads up to, to show that this world is not a good place created by the one true God.
- [27:02]
Megan Lewis
Where or how does Jesus fit into all of this? I'm assuming he is not the son of our bloodthirsty created deity or the foolish one.
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Bart Ehrman
Now, in these Gnostic texts, when they portray Jesus, typically he is some kind of divine being who has come down from this realm of these many luminaries and eons and angels in order to reveal the truth that is accessible only to those who have a certain kind of divine spark within them, who are different from the rest of us. And they're the only ones who can understand what he's talking about, which makes sense because the rest of us read this. We don't know what he's talking about. But there is a thing that he calls this other generation in the Gospel of Judas, who are the ones, when they die, they will go up to this divine realm, and they will exist forever up in this divine realm, but everyone else will die. And that's the end of the story. And so Jesus reveals this.
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Megan Lewis
Is Judas part of this other generation, or is he being used as, like, an intermediary?
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Bart Ehrman
So, as usually happens when a new text is discovered, there are large disputes about its interpretation. So we were given a translation of this, I suppose, in 2004. And so when I was reading this, I remember with crystal clarity reading this for the first time. And it kind of blew in my mind. And I had the Coptic there to compare it to. But, you know, the English text was really well done. It was written by, translated by a friend of mine, Marvin Meyer, who is now deceased, but he was a very fun Coptic scholar. He did this English translation, translation. So it's really quite stunning trying to read this thing. But when we read it, I think all of us on the team, including others they brought in, like Elaine Pagels and others, read this it looked to us like Judas was being portrayed as the hero of this account. So I wrote my book about it. Six months afterwards I was allowed to write. We had to sign non disclosure agreements to see this thing. National Geographic wouldn't let us anywhere near it without agreeing. We wouldn't spill the beans until they did their big thing because they were investing millions of dollars in this whole thing. But I was allowed to write up my account and then publish it six months later. And in that account and in other accounts of the others wrote up too, we all thought Judas was the hero. And several reasons for that. One is that Judas is the only one who has an inkling about what Jesus is all about. He's the one who understands. Jesus says, you're greater than all the others. And so Jesus praises them to some extent. And the most important thing is at the end, Jesus says to you will exceed all of them, for you will sacrifice the man who clothes me. And what that appears to mean in a Gnostic setting is that Jesus is this divine being that is in a human body, a material body, but he doesn't belong to the material body because the material world is created by this bloodthirsty rebel. Judas is going to make it possible for Jesus to escape his body because he will be killed. And once he's killed, his soul will be released from its prison. And so Judas then is praised for being superior to all the others because he's the one who will allow Jesus to be released. And that's why this gospel ends not with the death of Jesus, but with his betrayal. Because what matters is not his death for salvation. What matters is his escape. And Judas makes it possible have subsequent
- [30:30]
Megan Lewis
assessments of the text kind of turned that on his head and on its head and seen Judas as the bad guy again.
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Bart Ehrman
Yeah, so. So as I say, you know, scholars like to debate things and every time you have somebody staking out a position, then you'll have, you know, a few years later somebody coming along and saying, yeah, absolutely, that's, that's completely wrong. You know, it's the other way around. Judas is the bad guy. And so there's a scholar named April Deconnick, a friend of mine, who wrote a book attacking us for having this view, saying we were idiots. Basically her view is that Jud Judas is being portrayed as a bad guy because he's named the 13th demon in the book. And so she takes demon in the standard Christian view that a demon is an evil spirit. And so Judas can't be a good guy. That's Kind of a shorthand way of putting what she has to argue in her. In her interesting thought.
- [31:20]
Megan Lewis
Does demon have a different connotation in Gnostic texts?
- [31:23]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah. Well, so this is the thing, the word demon, if you read it in the New Testament, it's clearly referring to evil spirits that inhabit bodies that create very nasty things. But in the broader world of antiquity, especially in middle Platonic thought, which is where Gnosticism probably originated, a daimon in the broader world and in Platonic thought wasn't necessarily an evil divinity. It was simply a divine being that is kind of closer down to earth than the others, that is more actively involved in people's lives, sometimes for bad, but often for good. And so it's not necessarily a negative term. So she staked out the opposite position, and other people have gone that way. My view now, having read this thing for 20 years, and this is a view that was first suggested to me by my colleague Zlatkoplasia, who, along with Stephen Emmel, is one of the great coptologists in the world. But he happens to teach at unc. He lives across the hall from me and a friend of mine. He ended up thinking that Judas is neither the really good guy or the really bad guy. The really good people are those of the other generation, which are Gnostics who will understand the truth and escape this world and then have a heavenly life. That's the good guy. The bad people are just the people who think that the God of this world is a good God. They're going to die, and that's the end of the story. Judas appears to be in between the two, because he is definitely better than the apostles. He's not the most wicked. He's not the enemy. He's the one who understands. And he's the one who allows Jesus to escape. So he is better. But the sad news for him is he is not of the other generation. He will not be able to join them in the heavenly realm. It's a kind of predeterministic thing, you know, where you, you know, you're predestined to be one thing or another, and you can't really help, you know, whether you have a divine spark within you or not. Look, you know, some of us do and some of you out there don't. So it's like he doesn't have the spark, but there's something about him where he. He at least understands. So he's the good guy of the story, but he's not an awesome Gnostic,
- [33:31]
Megan Lewis
has the discovery and translation of The Gospel of Judas changed how scholars think about early Christianity at all or is it very much in line with other Gnostic texts?
- [33:40]
Bart Ehrman
It's very much line with a certain form of Gnostic text that scholars have labeled Sethian Gnostics. So Gnosticism was a complicated phenomenon. There were many religions that we would call Gnostic. There are big debates among scholars even what to call Gnostic or even to use the term, Gnostic. These are. Everything is debated. But. But the basic idea is that there are some groups that emphasize the importance of knowledge, Gnosis for salvation. And these groups that we call Gnostic are those who think that the secret knowledge is revealed by Christ, that this material world is a mistake or a disaster and it needs to be escaped by acquiring the secret knowledge that he brings about the heavenly realm. So there are many groups of these. We know about some of the groups. One of the groups we know best about is called Sethian Gnostics because they followed Seth, who was the. The third son of Adam and Eve. And so it is like that and it helps us clarify understanding of Gnosticism. So there's that. It is very helpful for understanding Gnosticism more because now it's one of our principal texts. It's one of our earliest gospels because it's mentioned by Irenaeus in the year 180. This appears to be the one he mentioned. And so it must have been written in the second century, around 150 or so. It's one of our earliest Gnostic gospels. That's good. The other part that's good is man. Judas, he is not the bad guy. He's not the enemy. He's the one who. He has at least a partial understanding of what Jesus is all about.
- [35:05]
Megan Lewis
It's an absolutely fascinating manuscript. I've been really enjoying talking to you about it. And we really have just scratched the surface and I'm sure we're going to return to it in a future episode. But for now we do have to move on to our highlights and upcoming events and then we'll finish up with some listeners questions.
- [35:24]
Bart Ehrman
Welcome to our upcoming highlights and events segment where we catch up on bart's courses, community updates and all the latest news from the Biblical Studies Academy and beyond.
- [35:39]
Megan Lewis
So we are announcing today a new course. We're coming up to the Christmas season and you're going to be doing a course called the Painful Dark side of the Christmas Story that will be recorded on December 7th and will be two lessons and a question and answer session. But what can people expect? What kinds of things Are you going to be going through?
- [35:58]
Bart Ehrman
I'll be giving two lectures on the Christmas story. I've been doing Christmas lectures last few years and I decided to do something a little different this time. I love the Christmas story, you know, I love the Christmas season. I really. I like a lot of what the story is itself. Just personally just. It resonates with me in many ways. I think though, it's a lot more profound and deep than people think about. And one aspect of that is what happens when Jesus comes into the world and what, you know, what brings. We always think about the goodness of it, the happiness of it, the baby Jesus and Joseph and Mary. But you have this account in Matthew, for example, where Herod sends out the troops to kill the children and Joseph and Mary and Jesus escape and we always, you know, it's always great. Oh yeah, they get out of it, that's great. But he slaughters all these babies in Bethlehem. And I think there's gotta be something to that in terms of what the story is trying to say. It's not just that they escaped. It's something about the pain that's brought into the world as well. That the Christ event is not simply this happy, good feeling thing. It's coming in the midst of misery. But why does God need to create this misery? Why do these people have to be sacrificed for his son to come into the world? It's the kind of question I don't think I really had asked much until recent times. And I'm thinking about it. So I thought maybe I'd give a talk about it. Not to make it a downer because as I say, I love the Christmas season, but it is worth thinking about these kinds of episodes where pain is brought in the midst of salvation.
- [37:28]
Megan Lewis
And I do think it's appropriately placed because a lot of times for a lot of people, Christmas is a painful period. Especially if you're without family or if you've lost someone. Having this very strong emphasis on togetherness and family can be really hard. So I think stopping to consider the flip side of it is a really valuable thing.
- [37:49]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, yeah, me too. Absolutely.
- [37:52]
Megan Lewis
So as I said, that is going to be recording on December 7th. You can always, if you can't attend in person, you can always access the recordings after the fact. The regular price will be $24.95. The early bird price is $19.95. And that is good through November 23rd. So you have a couple of weeks. If you would like to sign up at that early bird price price, you can Sign up and find more information@bartiman.com DarkSide as ever, you can use your podcast code, which is MJ Podcast, for a special discount. And contrary to some of the other things that we've been doing recently, this one is not part of bsa. So if you are a member of BSA and you want to join us for this, you do have to purchase it separately. I'm afraid we'll have a little bit more information about that next week, but for now we are going to go to some listeners Questions.
- [38:45]
Bart Ehrman
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 barterman.com Ask Bart
- [39:02]
Megan Lewis
okay, we are starting with a question about the Herodian Temple. If Jesus never called himself a Christian or otherwise condemned Judaism while he was alive, given that he was an active Jew, how did his followers and he likely view and interact with the Herodian Temple and how did they deal with its demise in 70 CE?
- [39:22]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, well that's a big question and it would take a long time to answer fully. The thing to preface it with is being a Jew did not mean that you really respected the Temple cult. They're just like today there are Americans who really don't like certain American institutions. There were Jews who had varied opinion about lots of things, including the Essenes who the ones who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls who were dead set against the temple and the Temple cult and the priests running it. And so it's not that Jesus would be against all the Jews if he were opposed to the temple. Our only records of Jesus talking about the Temple really are not good. I mean, he predicts it's going to the God's going to destroy it and he goes into the temple and in the Gospels he overturns tables and he drives people out and he's upset with what's happening there there. I think that maybe at its very heart some of that is historical. I think that Jesus did not think that the sacrificial system followed by the Temple priests was really what God was interested in. Like some of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, he really thought that God is far more interested in how you behave to one another rather than in your sacrificial practices. So I don't think Jesus was pro temple. I think he was somewhat anti temple. I think that may have been part of what Greek got the ire up of his enemies in Jerusalem when they ended up having him turn over to the Roman authorities when the temple was destroyed in the year 70. Forty years later, Christians sometimes started pretty soon saying that the reason God destroyed the temple was as punishment for Jesus being killed. You killed Jesus, God killed your temple. Wow, that's rather extreme. But that's what Christians were saying, is that the destruction was caused by God in retribution for killing Jesus and for Christianity, in a way. For Judaism, that changed everything because they couldn't have worship in the temple anymore. And for Christians, they could say, see, you don't even have a temple anymore, so you know, you should convert to Jesus who's. Who really is where God is located, not in the temple.
- [41:22]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. Given the inconsistent portrayal of Jesus in the Book of Revelation, to what purpose do you think this depiction was chosen to close out the New Testament?
- [41:31]
Bart Ehrman
I think inconsistent in the sense that it doesn't seem consistent with the rest of the New Testament, say the Gospels. And that actually is going to be the topic of our next episode, I think. I think. So why was it chosen to be included? In a way, putting the Book of Revelation at the end of the New Testament is a stroke of brilliance, because the Bible, the Christian Bible, begins with Genesis, with the creation of the world and the creation of a paradise and the sin of humanity who opposes God and God's punishment for sin. The Bible ends with God punishing sin once and for all and punishing people and bringing in a new heaven and a new earth. You know, it kind of rounds off the entire Bible message, as you know, many people have noted. So I think that's probably the one reason throughout the New Testament, there's prediction of the coming Day of Judgment and what that's going to entail. And so they chose to end the book with a description of how that's going to happen.
- [42:30]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. This next question is a bit of a throwback to our last episode. When would you date First Timothy, and is it Pauline?
- [42:38]
Bart Ehrman
Ah, right. First Timothy. I think among the disputed letters of Paul, the six that many scholars don't think Paul wrote. I think one Timothy heads the list is one that Paul probably did not write for lots of reasons. There are lots of differences from Paul, lots of disagreements with Paul, different vocabulary. Sometimes they'll use the same words that Paul uses. It means something different, like we're like family, faith. Faith means something different in First Timothy from what it means in Paul. So there are all sorts of reasons for thinking Paul didn't write it. It presupposes a church situation where you have a very fairly structured hierarchy, where you've got leaders of the Churches, and you've got people under them. You've got people serving in the churches of various offices. You don't find that in Paul. It's a later development. I don't know exactly when it was written. I suppose most scholars dated to the mid-90s or so, though, and that seems plausible to me. It's probably written sometime in the mid-90s, maybe 30 years after Paul had died.
- [43:35]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. Why did the author of Revelation use Hebrew numbers to calculate the number of the beast when he was writing in Greek?
- [43:44]
Bart Ehrman
So, as I'll point out in my. In our next episode, I wrote this book called Armageddon about the Book of Revelation, where I go into all of these kinds of detail, and the questioner is asking about the number of the Beast, 666. In the book, it doesn't use Hebrew numbers per se. It just says that the number of the beast, the Antichrist figure, it's a number of a human being, and his number is 666. And scholars have long recognized what that means. I talk a lot about modern theories about that and stuff. It's, you know, Saddam Hussein or Adolf Hitler or Mussolini or, you know, pick whichever political person you don't like, that's the one. And you can figure out ways to make it add up to 666. Scholars have long recognized, going back to the second Christian century, that the main enemy of the Book of Revelation is the city of Rome and its emperor, the Emperor Nero. And if you spell Kaiser Nero Caesar Nero in Hebrew letters, it adds up to 666. Each letter has a numerical equivalent in Hebrew and in Greek. And so each letter, you can just add up the letters, and so it's 666. Why did he use Hebrew instead of Greek? The whole point of Revelation is that it's all mystical. Mystical. It's not easy to figure out. And the author keeps saying, you know, yeah, if you can figure this out, you know, the Wise One can figure this out. If you got any wisdom, figure this one out. So you got to figure it out. So it's not easy, but, yeah, that's how it is. It's. It's a way to make you a little bit more mystical.
- [45:09]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. Now, our final question for today is again a language question. Jesus spoke and taught in Aramaic. He did not speak or write in Greek. The books of the New Testament, however, are written in Greek. How can we trust the meaning of any of the sayings of Jesus since they are subject to the Lost in Translation phenomenon? And when Jesus was On trial, would he need a translator?
- [45:30]
Bart Ehrman
Well, if Jesus had an actual trial where they were talking to each other, yes, he'd probably need a translator. The trial, we don't really know what happened in the trial. There was no stenographer. And so the gospel writers might just be taking their best guess. If there was a trial, Pilate might have just said what he's calling himself, the King of the Jews, crucify him. It might have been just one of those things. So how can you trust any of the sayings of Jesus? Well, real experts translate the Greek sayings of Jesus back into Aramaic and to see if they make any sense. And so there are scholars who could do that kind of thing, you know, or philologists. And it actually makes a big difference in places. Let me give you one example. The saying where Jesus says that Sabbath was not made, I'm going to use the word man here makes better sense in the saying Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Sabbath. Therefore the Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath. That saying is in Mark chapter two. And very few people notice that. It makes no sense. Therefore the Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath. So I always tell my students, you should always ask, what's the therefore? Therefore? Why does it say therefore? So the Sabbath day, the idea you should rest on the Sabbath was created to help humans out. Humans weren't created out. Help the Sabbath out. But why does that make Jesus the Lord of the Sabbath? Therefore, Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath. It doesn't make any sense. I'm just logic, I'm just saying logically it doesn't make any sense. And so you can try to make sense of it, but it doesn't. The thing is that when you say that in Aramaic, the word for man and the word for son of man is the same word, Baranash. Sabbath was made for Baranas, not bar for the Sabbath. Therefore, bar is Lord of the Sabbath. Now it makes sense. Humans have prior. Yeah, so you put it back in Aramaic and you got it. And so that suggests number one, that it probably was originally spoken in Aramaic and that it got mistranslated by somebody, either Mark or someone else who wanted to emphasize Jesus lordship instead of following the logic of the saying. Number two, if it's in Aramaic, that's more likely something that would go close to the time of Jesus because it started out in Aramaic Jesus language. So you know, it wasn't made up somewhere in the Greek speaking diaspora or something. You know, everything is lost in translation and we have the Greek New Testament. The sayings of Jesus are translated from Aramaic, and when you read it, you're reading it in English translation of the Greek. The ultimate reason for that is so that you can have scholars who get employed to tell you these things. So otherwise you wouldn't need us.
- [48:08]
Megan Lewis
We have to find a purpose somewhere. Yes, Bart, thank you for your answers. Audience, thank you so much for sending in your questions. If you do have a question for Bart, you can submit it@bartehrman.com Ask Bart Now, Bart, before we finish for the week, would you mind summarizing what we spoke about today?
- [48:26]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, so we've been talking about this fascinating Gospel of Judas, which is one of the Gnostic gospels. It's the most recently discovered major text of Christianity that was published under 20 years ago. And it's the most important discovery in my lifetime of a Christian text. And it's fascinating on its own terms. And it's fascinating for what it can tell us about how gnostic Christians were understanding Jesus.
- [48:49]
Megan Lewis
Thank you so much, audience. Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don't miss future episodes. Remember that you can use the Code 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 talking about next time?
- [49:10]
Bart Ehrman
We're going to the Book of Revelation that somebody just had asked about. And we're talking about how the message of the Book of Revelation aligns or does not align with the teachings of Jesus himself. And if it doesn't align, what's it doing in the New Testament?
- [49:25]
Megan Lewis
Some excellent questions there. Join us next week. Thank you all and goodbye. Bye. 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.