← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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- [00:00]
A
Did you know that Jesus wasn't the only apocalyptic prophet traveling around Galilee during the first century ce? If the answer is yes, Megan, of course, then you probably know something about John the Baptist. But what do we really know about the historical figure and what impact did his teachings have on the historical Jesus? Today we're talking about what we can and cannot say about John the Baptist, using listeners questions as our guide. We also have our bonus segment at the end, which this week is Barthes Books, where Barthes gives his recommendation for books on the New Testament he thinks we should read. Welcome to the Misquoting Jesus podcast with Bart Ehrman. Bart, there's this fascinating conflict associated with John the Baptist in that historically, the baptizer is typically thought of as being spiritually superior to the one being baptized, which is kind of uncomfortable for Christians because John is the person who baptizes Jesus and not the other way around. Is that something you ever, ever wrestled with as a believer?
- [00:59]
B
No, I don't think, I don't think most people kind of thought about it that way. It does explain a lot of things in the New Testament though. You know, scholars tried to figure out what actually happened in the life of Jesus. You have lots of stories, and it looks like some of these are not historical. How do you know if something's historical or not? And one way to know, not to know, but one way to think probably that's historical, is if there's a story that is not the kind of thing like an early Christian would want to make up that's in there. If they didn't make it up, then it probably happened. You see what I mean? If nobody would have made it up. And that's why it's there, because it had. And so the thing about John baptizing Jesus, it's on the Gospel, all four gospels, John the Baptist and Jesus. And it doesn't seem like somebody would make it up for just the reason you came up with. Because in early Christianity, people, people thought that the person baptizing is the spiritual superior. So why would you say Jesus got baptized by someone else? That probably shows that Jesus really was baptized by John the Baptist. But, you know, the way the Gospels get around, you know, get around that problem is they talk about him as the forerunner, he was the forerunner. And they go out of their way to show that even John the Baptist told Jesus that he was inferior to Jesus. And you know, oh, no, I shouldn't baptize you, you should baptize me. Is what happens only in Matthew, the most interesting one of Those is in the Gospel of Luke where Mary is pregnant and her relative Elizabeth is pregnant with John the Baptist. Mary goes to visit her, knocks on the door, and John the Baptist starts leaping for joy in the womb. And already John the Baptist is like, is so impressed with Jesus before they're even born. And so, yeah, so it didn't bother me though, as an evangelical, because I thought, well, that's just, you know, he's the forerunner.
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A
Do we know anything specific about John the Baptist beyond what was spoken of in the gospels? Like, do we know anything about his messenger messages, how he was different from other preachers, or is it just the Gospel accounts?
- [03:09]
B
We have two, we have two sources of information. Well, really, actually, I have to. I guess we have six sources of information. We have the four gospels that all talk about John sometimes in different, slightly different ways. And the book of Acts mentions him, that's five. And we have the Jewish historian Josephus. Josephus talks about John in his book the Antiquities of the Jews, which is a 20 volume work in which he talks about many, many important Jews, especially toward his own day, and also talks about Jesus. He actually talks about John more than he talks about Jesus. But so those are, those are our sources of information.
- [03:53]
A
What is the significance of John the Baptist's ministry in relation to Jesus?
- [04:00]
B
Well, if it's historically right, which I think is, and I think most virtually every scholar I know thinks is that Jesus was baptized by John at the very beginning, before he started his own ministry, that would show that Jesus first associated with John the Baptist movement, which would mean that he. You join a movement when you agree with it, right? And so he, it shows that he lined up with John's message and agreed with it and was baptized himself. It's in. One interesting thing about that, by the way, is that John was baptizing people for the remission of sins. That either means that the baptism itself was washing them for their sins, from their sins, or they had confessed their sins and he's washing them as kind of a symbolic illustration of their being cleansed. But either way, why is Jesus getting baptized if it's for the remission of sins? Whoa, that's a problem. And so that's again why the gospel writers try to say, well, you know, he was just following through on what he had to do, not because he was a sinner, but it would show that Jesus started out his ministry at least agreeing with John the Baptist message, his basic message, which was a message of the imminent judgment of God. We have a record of John's Teaching in Matthew and Luke. So it's a passage that Matthew and Luke have a lot of agreements in. That's not. It's part of the thing that. Not in Mark. Mark does have John the Baptist, but not this little preaching bit. And the preaching is when John says that he's warning people to repent because he says the ax is already laid at the root of the tree. Every tree that does not bear fruit will be chopped down and thrown into the fire. And so what? So the idea is there's going to be a day of judgment coming and you're going to be judged by your fruits. If you are a tree that's bearing fruit, you'll survive. If not, you're going to be cut down as wasted and burned and destroyed. And the ax is already laid at the root of the tree, meaning the chopping is ready to start. And so it's imminent. So this is the message that Jesus started with. It's the one that he got, you know, that John had and he agreed with.
- [06:22]
A
Are we able to tell if there are any significant differences between the message that John the Baptist was preaching and what Jesus came to preach later on?
- [06:31]
B
Well, we're quite limited when it comes to John because all we have are these very terse accounts, short accounts of his preaching in the Gospels, especially Matthew, Mark and Luke, and a reference to his disciples in the Book of Acts, and then what Josephus says. Josephus and the Gospels pretty much agree on important things, but they disagree at some key points, really. Key points. But so with Jesus, we have chapters of his teachings. And so you have a lot more information. It's not that Jesus taught everything that's in these chapters in the Gospels, but he taught a lot of those things. So we're better informed about Jesus teachings than John's. What I would say is that the basic message is very, very similar. The first words of Jesus are very similar to John's. His first words in Mark's Gospel. Jesus words are in Mark's gospel. Mark, chapter 1, verse 15. The time has been fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news. And that's pretty much what John was saying. The kingdom of God's almost here. You need to repent or you're going to be destroyed. But if you repent, this will be good news for you. So they're agreeing on that. The question is, did they have any disagreements? And there it's a little trickier to say,
- [07:59]
A
do we have any evidence for what John the Baptist thought about the temple and the priesthood and the practices of the Jewish elites, or is that just outside of our sources?
- [08:16]
B
In the Gospels, he maligns Jewish leaders. Pharisees, for example. The Pharisees were not active in the temple cult. The temple was run by priests and by the Sadducees were in charge. So the only criticisms of the Temple from John the Baptist that we can get is through inference. But there is a really good case that could be made that John was not a supporter of the Temple cult by cult. Here we're not talking about, you know, like the modern term of a negative derogatory cult, you know, where some charismatic leader is trying to get you to drink the Kool Aid. You know, we're not talking like that where the cult just means the worship within the temple. It was, you know, in the Torah the temple is established, you know, the sanctuary of God is described in the Torah. The priests, their function there, the sacrifices for sins and for other things are described there. And the, the clear idea throughout Judaism historically was that worship of God in the temple was the, was the core of the religion. And to be right with God meant participating in this temple culture. John the Baptist though, indicates something different. He doesn't try to get people to prepare for the kingdom coming kingdom by going to the temple to sacrifice for their sins. He calls them to repent of their sins and to be baptized by him. In Judaism at the time, there were cleansing rituals, a number of different kinds of cleansing rituals. We do not have evidence of a one time baptism either to produce a right relationship with God or to represent a cleansing that's already happened based on repentance. But we don't have one time baptisms that we know of until John the Baptist. And it appears that he thinks that if people repent of their sins and get baptized, then they'll be ready for the kingdom. And it's notably lacking in any comment about the temple or priests or sacrifices. And so I think a plausible interpretation of this is that John was one of those Jewish teachers, teachers who thought that the temple was not really the key to being on the right side with God. He wasn't alone in that. There are other, other apocalyptic Jews who thought the same thing, including the Essenes who produced the Dead Sea Scrolls.
- [10:45]
A
Thank you. The next question from our Q and A inbox is asking a really interesting question. I'm not sure how much we can answer it given the historical evidence we have. What do you think were the chances of a John the Baptist movement taking off in the same vein as the Jesus move? Both prophesied about the coming Messiah. Both had substantial following during their lifetime, and both were martyred in the eyes of their followers. Did the John the Baptist movement just die out when he died?
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B
Right. It's actually a very important question because in some ways it did not die out. There's still a very small group of religious group called the Mandeans, which were very popular in Iraq until recent times, when many of them were killed, who consider John the Baptist to be the major prophet rather than Jesus. And it appears that probably followers of John the Baptist have probably been around maybe on the margins for a long time, but they certainly go back to early Christianity after the death of John of Jesus. We know this because in the book of Acts, in Acts, chapter 19, there are followers of Jesus who encounter a group of people who are followers of John the Baptist, and they talk to each other. And John the Baptist's followers don't realize, according to the Christians, that the Messiah that he predicted has come. And they tell them about Jesus. They say, oh, okay, the one John predicted has come. Wow. And so they. They convert. So that story itself, you know, I'm not sure that's a historical story, but the historical aspect of it is that there probably were groups of people who had been influenced by John the Baptist who were not followers of Jesus yet. And possibly, possibly they continued on, on for a long time. So when Christians were. But one issue is, were these followers of John claiming that he was the one? Was he the Messiah? And were there John the Baptist followers who said Jesus is not, but John was? That would be interesting, but we have very limited evidence for that kind of thing.
- [13:04]
A
Thank you very much. We're going to take a quick break for an announcement and we'll be right back with more questions about the life and times of John the Baptist before we jump back in our new course with Hugo Mendez on the Gospel of John is coming very soon. And early bird pricing ends August 3rd 8th. But one of the things people hear about John is that it has a much higher or more elevated Christology. Can you tell us what that means and why it matters?
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B
Yeah. So Matthew, Mark, and Luke do understand that Jesus is in some sense divine, but they don't kind of explain it very much. And they don't have Jesus calling himself a divine being. When you get to the Gospel of John, Jesus is not just a human being who has somehow become a divine being or some way a divine being. He is. He is the incarnation of a being that created the universe back in the beginning, back in Genesis, that He is the word of God that has become a human. And Jesus declares in the Gospel of John that he preexisted his birth. He doesn't talk about his birth. John doesn't have his birth actually, but he preexisted his existence as a human and says that if you see him, you see what. See what God is like and that he and God are one and he existed before Abraham of the Jew. And so this is a very exalted view of Jesus. And so scholars talk about a high Christology where you have a very exalted view of Jesus as divine and a low Christology where he starts out as a human and then gradually moves into divinity. John definitely has the high Christology, as
- [14:40]
A
I think what makes this course quite so fascinating. Hugo shows how John's like, big theological ideas, like the elevated view of Jesus are actually woven into a layered, hidden network of symbols throughout the Gospel. It's one of those things that once you've seen it, you. You really can't unsee it. And I think if you want to experience John in a completely new way, you absolutely should. And you can join us live on August 29th and 30th. It is eight lectures and two live Q&As. And you can head over to Bart ehrman.com forward/john course and grab your spot before Early Bird pricing ends. That's ending on August 8th. And don't forget to use your code MJ podcast for an extra discount. And now we're going to continue our episode talking about John, but different John. This is John the Baptist, not John from the Gospel. Our next questioner says. I've heard Bart talk about the question of whether Jesus refers to himself as the Son of man or if he's talking about another figure. What is your opinion on whether Jesus thinks that John the Baptist is the Son of man?
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B
I don't think there's any indication of that in the Gospels or I don't think there's any reason to think so. The question may have something in mind that it's not occurring to me, but it's not an idea that I'm familiar with. And I can't think of any, any place in the Gospels that would suggest that.
- [16:06]
A
What innovations from John the Baptist's movement did the historical Jesus make in his own teachings that were probably not added by later Christian writers?
- [16:17]
B
Okay, so this gets back to the question that we had earlier about where are they similar? And I said, you know, they seem to be similar a lot of ways because they're apocalyptic. Views. I think one way that it looks to me that they're different is that John. It's not clear to me that the historical John the Baptist understood that exactly, you know, that there's going to be a Messiah coming. The gospel writers portray him as anticipating Jesus, but I'm not sure that's really what he was up to. I think he thought that there was going to be a divine destruction and a resurrection of the dead and day of judgment coming, kingdom coming, and that he didn't have an idea there'd be some kind of Messiah figure. I don't know if he thought that or not, but I think that Jesus did expect a Messiah figure. He expected there to be a person that God would appoint to be the king of the coming kingdom. And Jesus thought that he himself was that one. Jesus thought he was the Messiah, I think. And one really good piece of evidence of that is that that's why they executed him for calling himself the king of the Jews. And John the Baptist was not executed for that. There's dispute between Josephus and the Gospels about why he got executed. But he did get executed, but it wasn't for calling himself the Messiah. And I think Jesus was. So that would be an innovation
- [17:42]
A
related to this question of who's the Messiah. During Jesus own time, many people believed John the Baptist was the Messiah and he presumably started his ministry before Jesus. So the question is, when do you think the number of Jesus followers began to outlaw number John's? How close was this like messianic competition?
- [18:04]
B
I don't know that people thought of John the Baptist as the Messiah. It's hard to say. He doesn't claim to be the Messiah and his disciples don't. Claiming to be the Messiah in the Gospels or in the Book of Acts, I don't think. But he's anticipating that there's going to be a day of judgment, but not that he's the Messiah. There was as we said earlier, probably competition to test it. There was competition between the followers of John and the followers of Jesus. Probably the gospels show that a number of the followers of John became followers of Jesus. And that's completely plausible, I think. At what point did Jesus group exceed in size that of John's group? It's really kind of hard to know how much of a group John had. People are coming to him to be baptized, but once they're baptized, it doesn't mean they necessarily are wandering around with him for a month or something like that. It may be the kind of thing where they, they came and they they believed his message, they got baptized and they went home. And there's not like a, not a community at the same time. It's not clear how big the community of Jesus was during his lifetime. He is, he has 12 disciples. I think that's historical. He had a handful of women following him. That's historical. But the idea that he had like thousands of people in the Galilean countryside that he was feeding five loaves of bread to, I don't think that that's historical. I don't think he had thousands of followers. A couple of dozen maybe, but not, not a lot. I think what happens was after Jesus death, his followers start converting people. And there aren't very many followers of John the Baptist who are converting people. I mean he died, he got executed and he had a good message. But they are like following John the Baptist so much. So I don't think it was long. I think by the time you get to someone like Paul, like 20 years later, I think there are a lot more Christians and followers of John the Baptist already.
- [19:59]
A
How common was it in the ancient world for people to kind of go and follow these itinerant preachers? Was it something that everyone like went through a phase, I guess and went and found their favorite preacher and followed them for a while and then came home again? Is this something that was actually kind of weird to do? Do we even have a sense of how often that happened?
- [20:21]
B
I don't think it could have happened very often. For one thing, we're talking about a society that is organized very differently from our society. In the Roman world at the time, 80 to 90% of the population was rural. And that's true in Galilee where Jesus was rural population. And most people living in a rural population are having to live a hand to mouth existence. And over half of the population is just either on the line of survival or below it. Many are destitute people can't take weeks off to follow some, a teacher around. I mean, they just can't. And so I don't think that these stories, having these long followers is, is plausible. You do get, you know, of course you get stories of other teachers who have followings, you know, Greek philosophers for example. But rarely are these people who are like engaged in itinerant ministries and those who are itinerants don't have many followers, like cynics and things like that. So I, I think it'd be unusual to have like masses of people following somebody around the whole time. I don't know where these masses are going to come from. And if they were, I don't know how they'd survive. So I don't think, I think that's all fictional.
- [21:44]
A
The next question is related actually to one I asked you before our break. Do you believe that John had continuously had a community of followers, so the Mandians were presence way back when, when John was alive, or do you think that these groups were established later after his death?
- [22:03]
B
I really don't know. I think there probably are people who do know, but I don't. The Mandeans were a. They're kind of a Gnostic group, which doesn't, you know, Gnosticism itself. The views of the Mandeans surely can't be, you know, much, much older than the middle of the second century or something, I would think, because you don't have, you don't have kind of solidified Gnostic groups until then. And so was there some kind of continuous community of John that, that combined with some other Gnostic group to lead to the Mandeans? I, I'm not an expert in that field, so I really can't say. Did they, did they exist through the Middle Ages? I don't know. I mean, I, I just don't know, so. Right. So maybe. A question I can answer.
- [22:55]
A
It seems that John the Baptist emerged from the Essene sect of Judaism with a unique outlook and message based on descriptions of John and what we know about the Essenes. What are your thoughts on this idea?
- [23:09]
B
I'd say it's very hard to demonstrate. It's hard to, you know, disprove as well. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947, it really revolutionized how we understood Judaism and early Christianity. And of course, since Christianity is such, such a, so much larger in the world today, and there are so many more scholars of New Testament, early Christianity than there are of Judaism. Naturally, when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, many people wanted to kind of figure out what's it got to do with Christianity. And you started having people writing things about how Jesus is described in the Dead Sea Scrolls, you know, he's called the Teacher of Righteousness, you know, or they come up with, they come up with ways attaching Jesus and because, and the logic of it was not just that these scrolls were, were being produced both before and after, shortly after Jesus Day in, in Judea, up from, you know, just on the Northwest Sea of the, of the Dead Sea, so in kind of the time and the place where Jesus was more or less, and John the Baptist would have been baptizing near there in the Jordan River. And so, so people wanted to see Jesus there, they want to see John the Baptist there. And, and so, you know, so that was the question then. Did Jesus belong to the Essene community? Did they belong to the Qumran community that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls? Did John the Baptist belong there? The answer with Jesus I think is absolutely no. My view is that it's absolutely no. Jesus appears to have begun his ministry by leaving home in Nazareth and going to be baptized by John. There's no indication that he was a member of a monastic like Jewish community far south of where he grew up, 100 miles south or 80 miles south of where he grew up. Moreover, the message of Jesus is there. It is apocalyptic. He agrees with the Essenes in the apocalyptic message that God's going to intervene and destroy his enemies and bring in a kingdom for his followers. He agrees with that message, but his emphasis is so different. Jesus is known for hanging out with the people who are lowlifes in the wider elite opinion, who are people who are on the margins, people who are hated, tax collectors, people who are wretchedly sinful, the sinners, the prostitutes. You know, you get all these people that, you know, the, the elite despise and they get on Jesus case because he's hanging out with them. The Essenes did not hang out with anybody. The Essenes didn't even like the righteous people. They started their own community because they would, they didn't want to be polluted by the high priest and the, the high priest and the chief priests and the, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. They thought they were all corrupt and so they started their own isolated community at Qumran. That's the opposite of Jesus. So I don't think he was taken on board their, their basic practice of religion. He did have the apocalyptic ideology and so did John the Baptist and so did many others. You could make a case that John the Baptist was, was and a scene at the Qumran community. Many people have made that case. The best book on John the Baptist is by my friend and a longtime friend and one time colleague Joel Marcus. He has a book on John the Baptist that came out some years ago. That's the best thing out there. And he thinks that Jesus, that John was a member of the community, the Essene community. And I think he's, I think he's wrong about that. But it's just one of the things we disagree on. The reason for thinking then might have been though is that he has this apocalyptic message and he's preparing for the coming kingdom. And he's right near where they would have been. And so it kind of makes sense. But I don't, you know, the Essenes did not practice his practice of baptism. And there's nothing in the records that says anything about him being in a scene. And this worldview that they. That he's sharing with them is widespread. So I don't think there's much evidence for it.
- [27:22]
A
Thank you. We have one final question today. How did early Christians view John the Baptist?
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B
I think all of them seem to have all that we have record of who knew about him, acknowledged his connection with Jesus. Our first author of the first Christian author is Paul. He doesn't say anything about John the Baptist. Did he know about John the Baptist? I don't know. We don't have any. We don't know. We. We basically have seven letters that we're sure he wrote. And all those letters are written to deal with particular problems in the churches that he's addressing. And if there wasn't a problem, he didn't address it. So we don't know most of the things Paul knew, and so we don't know about Paul. But our earliest gospel is Mark, and it definitely knows about John the Baptist and sees him as a scriptural fulfillment who would be the forerunner of the Messiah. Matthew and Luke portray him the same way. Matthew and Mark are explicit about Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist. Luke implies that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, but doesn't actually say that John baptized him directly. And John and the Gospel of John mentions John the Baptist and Jesus in combination with each other, but doesn't say anything about Jesus being baptized at all by John. And so it looks like what's going on is that over time, Christians are trying to distance Jesus and John the Jesus from John the Baptist. And so in Mark, he's baptized in Matthew, he objects, oh, no, I should baptize. John objects, oh, I should baptize you. In Luke, the baptism isn't directly mentioned. And in John, there's nothing about him, Jesus at all being baptized. And so. So it looks like they're trying to distance him. Why would they do that? They'd be doing that because either because there is competition from the followers of John the Baptist, and Christians are trying to emphasize, no, Jesus is the one. Jesus is the one. Or because they just find it problematic that Jesus would have to be baptized for the remission of sins by someone else because that would suggest his secondary standing. And so they're naturally trying to exalt him to do that, they have to lower John the Baptist. And so that's what we know about what the early Christians said about him. And it's enough to give us some historical information, I think enough to show that Jesus was connected with him and subscribed to his message and that they had very similar messages in basically the similar, very, very similar messages, but that Jesus thought this kingdom was going to, when it arrived, that he would be the king. And I don't think John the Baptist had speculations like that.
- [30:06]
A
Thank you very much, Bart. Those are all of the questions that I had today. Was there anything you wanted to add before we moved on?
- [30:12]
B
I'll just say one thing that's tangentially related when I say that Jesus connected with John the Baptist at the beginning and that they had the same message. There have been scholars starting really in the 1980s especially, who started arguing that Jesus himself did not have an apocalyptic message. And people like Marcus Borg and John Dominic Cross and really bright New Testament scholars, very influential New Testament scholars who denied that Jesus had this apocalyptic message. This was the theme of the, the Jesus Seminar, as it was called. And one real argument against that view, that he was not an apocalypse. The argument that he was an apocalyptist is he associated with John the Baptist at the beginning of his ministry. So he clearly started out as an apocalypticist. And what happened after he died is communities in his name started up that were apocalyptic communities, so that he begins apocalyptically and his aftermath is apocalyptic. And the only thing connecting John the Baptist with Paul and the others who are apocalyptic is Jesus. So he's the middle term. And if he's not an apocalypticist, you can't explain why both the beginning and the end are apocalyptic. And so this, I think it's a, it's a slam dunk argument that Jesus was probably an apocalypticist. It's such a good argument. I wish I had come up with it, but it's, but it's, it. I don't think you can get around it. And when you see how scholars who don't think it's an apocalyptist try and get around it, yeah, man, it's really kind of hard to explain that. So, so that's, that's one of the significances of John the Baptist, maybe for early Christian studies, for New Testament and such, this, I think it's significant. It really shows, I think, that Jesus himself probably was himself an apocalypticist.
- [32:02]
A
Thank you so much, Bart. AUDIENCE thank you all for your questions. If you have a question for Bart, you can go to bart erman.com forward/ask Bart and submit them there. That is all for today's interview. So we're going to move to this week's bonus segment, which is Bart's Books. So Bart, what book are you recommending for us this week?
- [32:23]
B
I often get asked about Gnosticism and about the Nag Hammadi Library, the Gnostic Gospels and of related things. And people ask me like where can I go for kind a basic overview of things. And there, there are a number of very good books, including by some, some authors I've mentioned on the podcast before. But I want to mention one, one book in particular, it's by a scholar named Nicola Denzi Lewis. She's a scholar of Gnosticism, very, very, very fine scholar who's written a book called Introduction to Gnosticism, Ancient Voices, Christian Worlds. And she explains what Gnosticism is and explains a bit of how we know about Gnosticism. And she goes of the, that were discovered in 1945, the Nag Hammadi Library. This was a discovery not connected with the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was discovered, it was a discovery in Egypt not of Jewish books like the Dead Sea Scrolls, but of early Christian books that are Gnostic Christian books. Most, almost all of them are Gnostic Christian books, including the, for example, the Gospel of Thomas. Some people debate whether it's Gnostic or not. But, but a lot of people debate that. But it's one of these books and Gospel of Philip and you know, the Apoc, the Apocryphon of John, these various books, she explains them in, in terms that people can understand. So this is an excellent book for people who just, who want to learn something about Gnosticism, something more than just like reading a page or two, you know, but actually want to learn something. So. Nicola Denzel Lewis, Introduction to Gnosticism.
- [33:57]
A
Thank you very much, Bart. Now, before we finish up for the week, could you remind us what we spoke about today?
- [34:02]
B
Well, I was taking questions on John the Baptist and the, you know, who he was, what he preached and his relationship with Jesus. And it's a very important topic because Jesus begins by, by associating with John the Baptist. So the more you know about John the Baptist, it gives you some, some purchase on what, what how Jesus started his own ministry. It's a debated topic, but we do have some good information in the New Testament and receive us.
- [34:31]
A
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, you can use the code MJ podcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.barterman.com. misquoting Jesus will be back next Week Bart, what are we talking about next time?
- [34:50]
B
Well, you're right. So next week we're getting semi personal with me. What did seminary not prepare me for? And so, you know, there are a lot of people who go into seminary and some of them come out of it. And what does it and does it not prepare? What did it not prepare me for? That's what we're going to talk about.
- [35:10]
A
Join us next week. Thank you all and goodbye. This has been an episode of Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. We'll be back with a new episode next Tuesday, so please be sure to subscribe to our show for free on your favorite podcast listening app or on Bart Erman's YouTube channel so you don't miss out from Bart Erman and myself, Megan Lewis. Thank you for joining us.