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- [00:01]
A
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B
The Dead Sea Scrolls preserve the beliefs of the Essenes, an ancient Jewish sect that were like Jesus and John the Baptist expecting the end of the world. Dr. Bart Ehrman joins me today to talk about whether Jesus and John could actually have been members of this group. 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 scholarly 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. Happy October friends. Before we get started, I wanted to let you know about some special offers this month including courses on sale for up to 50% off, a newly launched Halloween themed course, a way to get Mark Goodacre's latest book for free, and a special buy one get 12 offer on our new discussion series Face to Face on the Bible. Proceeds help keep this podcast going and we truly appreciate your support. You can find all the details@bartehrman.com October and be sure to use the code MJPodcast for a special discount. Welcome back everybody to Misquoting Jesus where this week we are talking about the relationship between Jesus, John the Baptist and the the Essenes. We've also got listeners questions at the end so make sure you stay for all of those. But before any of that, how are you doing this week?
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C
Yep, I'm, I'm doing well. I just, I just turned 70. Congratulations.
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B
Happy birthday.
- [02:12]
C
I. I'm an official geezer entering old geezerhood. Officially.
- [02:18]
B
I didn't realize 70 was the cutoff. I need to inform my parents.
- [02:22]
C
Yes, you need to tell them because you know, I was just like, yeah. And yeah, so I had a big bash and people came in, you know, friends from around the country and family. It was great. It was great. But you know, the funny thing is as you get older, many people feel old before they are and a lot of people feel young when they're old. And I'm kind of one of those. And I always feel that way unless until I see a photograph of me looking in the mirror. Doesn't do it because I deceive myself when I look in the mirror or I look, you know, but you see a photograph, say oh my God, are you kidding me? So. But Megan, you have a long time to geezer hood.
- [03:00]
B
I do, I do. My parents, I think are all there. My mother is firmly convinced that she's still in her mid-20s and I have to say most people who meet her are not terribly inclined to disagree with her. So she keeps going.
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C
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, good.
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B
Now, before the actual topic of today's conversation, I wanted to know, have you ever taught a course that has flopped?
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C
Ah, right. Well, it, the thing is there are probably a lot of courses my students think of flopped.
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B
You don't know unless they tell you
- [03:40]
C
and they don't tell you. So there actually was one year. So for years and years, almost my entire career, I taught this large New Testament class with, you know, anywhere from 240 to 420 students in it. So usually about 350 students in it or so. And I had a colleague at Chapel Hill who is an extremely good teacher and who believed that lecturing was the worst way of teaching. And you know, he might be right about that. Especially today with social media, you've got to get people involved in discussion and stuff because they can't, they can't sustain their attention long enough. But this is many, many years, 30 years ago. And he said, he told me that when he teaches a class that size, he actually does not do it with lectures. He had ways of getting students to be involved in a class of that size. 360 students. And every class period, he'd have them, he had strategies for doing it. So he, he convinced me and so I said, okay, I'll do that next time. So next time I'm teaching this class and I've got ways of getting students to talk during class and exchange ideas and things and going on like this throughout this large classroom. About halfway through, I'm telling my, my teaching assistants, my graduate student teaching says, I'm saying, you know, I think this is going pretty well. And one of them says, yeah, I'm not so sure. No. I said, really? He said, yeah, I'm not sure they're happy with this. I said, oh really? And so I got the course evaluations back at the end of the semester because you always get course evaluations, anonymous ones, you know, and, and the student, I got all these comments like, man, you're being paid to teach, why don't you teach anything? Wow. Lectures. Will you. So that was a, that was a one time experiment after that, I gave it up for. For the large class. My small classes are all discussion and, you know, lecture and stuff.
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B
But, yeah, I can't even begin to think about managing a class that size. That sounds very challenging.
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C
Well, the thing is, if you're lecturing, it's not a problem. Lecturing to 60 people is no different from lecturing to 360. I mean, it's just, you're giving a lecture, you're kind of dancing around and trying to, you know, entertain. But it's still. It's the same thing. But if you try to do it some other way, it's.
- [05:57]
B
Now, today we are talking about Jesus, John the Baptist and the Essenes. I think it's probably safe to say that most of our listeners know who Jesus and John the Baptist are. But what about the Essenes? Who were they, Bud?
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C
Right, so the Essenes, there were a number of groups within ancient Judaism at the time of Jesus that had different ways of understanding what really mattered religiously and what it meant to be a faithful Jew. And we know about a number of these groups. Our principal source of information about them is the Jewish historian Josephus, who was born a few years after Jesus died and was a prominent figure throughout the first century. And he lived in Israel and was very active in Jewish politics and in military and was a leading thinker of the day. And he wrote several extensive works that we still have. And he indicates that at the time that there were four distinct Jewish groups, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, and something he calls the fourth philosophy that today people might call Zealots. And they each had their own kind of emphases and things about what they wanted to emphasize, whether it was like strict observance of the Torah or following the rules for how to worship God in temple, or trying to recapture the land from the. From the Romans. They all have different things. But the Essenes are one of these groups. Josephus describes them, and so we know about them from that. But just two things about this. One is, of the four groups, they're the only one not mentioned in the New Testament at all. They're not mentioned. And despite that, they're the one we know the most about because of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. So we'll talk about in a second.
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B
Does Joseph Cephas give us anything concrete about the Essenes, or does most of our information come from the Dead Sea Scrolls?
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C
No, he does give us concrete information. So Josephus wrote two. His two major works are his Antiquities of the Jews which is a 10 volume work that describes the history of the Jewish people from Adam and Eve up to his own day, which we've talked about before. But he also wrote a six volume work called the Jewish War in which he was personally intimately involved, first as a general leading troops against the Romans and then as a captured prisoner who served as an interpreter for the Romans with the, with Jews in Jerusalem who were holed up in Jerusalem during the siege. And so he knew just about everything about the Jewish war. So he mentions the Essenes in a couple of places. He gives a lengthy description of the Essenes and their practices and their beliefs in, in book two of the Jewish Wars. And so we have, it's like several pages long, but you know, you can still read if you look at, look it up.
- [09:06]
B
So what does Josephus say about the practices and beliefs of the Essenes?
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C
So he emphasizes several things about them. He says that they are groups that reside in a variety of cities and that they are, they tend to be very pious Jews who are, they practice an ascetic lifestyle. And so they refuse to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh because they think those can be sinful. But they believe in virtue and they think that's, and that virtue is hard to attain. And so, you know, no drinking parties, no sex, no wealth. And so they apparently share their, their funds with one another. They, they don't actually have private funds or very few private funds. They, they don't dress, they, they don't buy new clothes unless the ones that are no longer wearable. They, they practice life together in community. It's a very hard process to join the community. It takes a three year initiate before you can join the community. You have to demonstrate your supreme piety. And they're strict observers of the law. He gives some examples for all of these things about the strict observance of the law. He says most Jews, he says don't. Can't prepare the Sabbath meal on the Sabbath. You know, they've got to prepare it before the Sabbath begins the day before. He said, but Essenes don't just do that. They, they don't, it's not that they just don't prepare meals. They, they, their rule is you can't even carry a container through, you know, on the Sabbath of any kind. You. And he says that the, these are all men by the way, according to, they're all men and they live in this community and they're not allowed to relieve themselves on the Sabbath. And he's talking about bowel movements apparently. And he says that is not allowed. And that on the other days of the week when they have a bowel movement, they have to go off in a wilderness area with that little hatchet, dig a hole and do their business there, and then cover it up again and then go through a purity ritual afterwards. And so they're very concerned about purity issues, about retaining their purity before God and a strict observance of the law. And they don't. He says there are two groups. Most of them don't marry because they think women can't be faithful in a marriage. That's what he says. Apparently men can be or are. And. Yeah, so it's a strictly ascetic movement that is concerned with purity in its own communities.
- [11:54]
B
So you mentioned beforehand the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are the writings of this community. Can you tell us a little about those?
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C
So the Dead Sea Scrolls are a. A large collection of texts that were discovered in 1947 accidentally. And so they're discovered at a. They're discovered near a site that's called Qumran. It's spelled with a Q, Q, U, M, R, A N. Which was some kind of community development that it looks like the scrolls were. Some of them were produced in this community and some were brought into the community. The community, the area Qumran, has been excavated by archaeologists. These scrolls were discovered in caves around this community by accident. Once they were discovered, then archaeologists and scholars and others started searching for more of them. They searched hundreds of caves in the area, and they found scrolls in 11 of the caves. Some of these scrolls were actually like a complete scroll, a complete writing. Like we have a book of Isaiah. That's like. It's like the whole thing. But most of them were fragments of text that have disintegrated over the years. Hundreds of them are little fragments the size of a credit card with some writing on them. And so they found these things in 11 caves, and they had to figure out what they were. And the word Essene does not occur there any more than in the New Testament in these scrolls. But the location of this area, this community, the Qumran, is where a Roman person, Pliny the Elder, indicated there's a community of Essenes. And the material found in these scrolls sound like things that we know about the Essenes otherwise from Josephus, etc. And so scholars, the majority, the vast majority of scholars, have concluded that this was a community of Essenes who produced and copied scrolls of interest to their community.
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B
What do these scrolls help to show about the beliefs of the people who were working on them.
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C
There are different kinds of scrolls that were discovered. You know, there are different kinds of writing. So it's not just one thing. For some scholars, the most important thing is that there were copies of all of the books of the Hebrew Bible Bible except for the book of Esther. And when I say copies, I don't mean complete copies. The Isaiah scrolls complete. But virtually everything else is not complete. And in some cases it's just a little fragments, all we've got. It is interesting that Esther, the book of Esther is not found, was not found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Esther's the one book of the Hebrew Bible that does not use the word God. Huh. Is that an accident? I don't know. So they have parts of books. So that was important. The reason that was important, by the way, is because before the Dead Sea Scrolls, these scrolls are written sometime around like in the years before Jesus, like a hundred years up to Jesus time, like in there sometime. Our earliest copy of the Hebrew Bible before that was the complete copy was from the year 1000 CE, like a thousand years later. So now you've got these, you've got portions of the Hebrew Bible that are a thousand years earlier. Oh my God. You can see how, like how well it's being copied. So that was good. There are also commentaries on the Bible that are written by the community, explaining how the predictions of the prophets were being fulfilled in their own day. You have accounts of, you have poetry and psalms that were composed by members of the community. Other psalms. You have a scroll that describes the coming war that is going to bring the end of the age, like the apocalypse is coming. And there's a scroll that describes what's going to happen. You have documents that describe what the life of the community is supposed to be like, how they're to conduct themselves, and what the rules and regulations and policies are of the community. So there's a wide range of things there's. And all of them are like incredibly useful because they give us evidence about what was going on in 1st century Judaism by a group within 1st century Judaism Writing these things at the time that were just accidentally discovered.
- [16:24]
B
So you've mentioned a focus on purity and you just mentioned some apocalyptic end of the world thinking, what were the Essenes? What did they believe?
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C
This is where it gets a little bit difficult between Josephus and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Josephus describes the community that I was talking about, the very ascetic, very much into purity and things. But he does not describe their apocalyptic perspectives. Having said that, I'll say that Josephus is rather famous for trying to smooth out off the rough edges of what he saw as the rough edges of Judaism. And especially he diminishes the apocalyptic element within Judaism of his time. The reason being because he suspects that the apocalyptic hope that the end is coming soon may have been part of what drove Jews to rebel against the Romans. And so he doesn't want the Roman audience that partly he's writing for to think that Jews are typically like heavily apocalyptic. And so he mutes much of the apocalyptic message that various Jews of his day held in Jewish groups, including the Essenes. The Dead Sea Scrolls are heavily apocalyptic in their orientation. By apocalyptic, what I mean is these scrolls are anticipating, the people writing these scrolls are anticipating that they are living at the end of time, that the end is coming soon and that God, God's justice is going to be done. Finally, this Essene group, this particular Essene group had formed this monastic like community off in the wilderness away from Jerusalem. But if you, anybody visits Jerusalem can have a day trip to see this place. It's fantastic. People should do that. And they're called the Dead Sea Scrolls because it's on, it's, you can see the Dead Sea from there when you go up. And so it's like, so it's northeast of the, northeast of where the Dead Sea is. And so they're in this community because they're expecting the end to come and they're trying to preserve their own purity so that they will be delivered when the wrath of God hits this world. And they're very concerned about their own purity. That part reflects Josephus, but Josephus doesn't explain that. It's because they think that the end of the world is coming soon. But that's a major element within their own writings.
- [18:58]
B
So they formed communities apart from the rest of Jewish society because they felt that the rest of society did not conform to the purity standards that were necessary to survive.
- [19:11]
C
Yeah, that's exactly right. There were several issues. One is that it looks like the community may have been formed about 150 BCE or so. This was a period when before this, the land of Israel had been controlled by the Syrians. And there was a big rebellion against the Syrian monarch, Antiochus Epiphanes, because he was trying to Hellenize the Jews in Israel, trying to force them to adopt Greek culture and customs and religion. And there is a rebellion, the Maccabean Revolt, it's called, in the 160s. And it led to, they, they, they, they succeeded in driving out the Syrians and they, they started up religion as it should be, but they appointed the wrong kind of person to be the high priest. In the opinion of the Essenes, there. There's supposed to be somebody from a particular lineage within Judaism who is the high priest, but they appointed somebody else. And they thought that that corrupted everything, that the temple cult was corrupted. The worship of God, the sacrifices they didn't want to participate in. They thought they had the wrong calendar, the wrong sacrifices, and so they start their own community. So they disagreed with those Sadducees who had that particular view. They disagreed with Pharisees who they thought were lightweights. They just. So they disagreed with everybody, let alone hoi polloi. You know, the people out there who are just kind of regular old Jews. I mean, they wanted nothing to do with them because they were sinners and sin crops and they wanted to remove themselves from the sinful influences. And so that's why they, that. So that coincides well with Josephus's emphasis on purity. But in this case, they started their own community in order to preserve it.
- [20:58]
B
Thank you very much. I'm sure people listening are wondering when Jesus and John the Baptist are going to enter the conversation. They'll be right with us. We're going to take a very brief break. We have an announcement and we'll get right, right back to the conversation. Now, Bart, we have a very fun announcement related to our good friend Dr. Mark Goodacre. But before I reveal it, have you heard about his new book, the Fourth Synoptic Gospel, John's Knowledge of Matthew, Mark and Luke?
- [21:26]
C
I've not only heard it, I'm reading it because he and I are going to be having a face to face on this. So. Yeah, he, he worked on this, he worked on this one for a long time. And it's. Yeah, okay. It's going to be challenging, what a lot of people think.
- [21:41]
B
Excellent. I like to hear that. I like it when academic work challenges people. And the exciting announcement is that we have a special offer exclusively through our course company, Paths in Biblical Studies for the month of October, only If you buy Dr. Goodacre's the mystery of the Synoptic Gospels course in October, you will get a copy of his new book absolutely free. We will cover the cost of the book as well as shipping. And you can think of the course as kind of like a prequel to Mark's book. You can visit bart erman.com synoptics for the deal. But I am sad to say this is for us residents only. When the book does become globally Available. We will update you if we're able to kind of extend our reach, as it were. Again, that is bartiman.com synoptics and as always, use the code mjpodcast for a discount at checkout. But before we get back to Jesus, John and the Essenes. Are you enjoying the book? The title's spectacular.
- [22:41]
C
Well, Mark has been most of his career trying to figure out who used whom in early Christian writings. Was there a cue? Did Luke use Matthew? Did Matthew and Luke both use Mark? And did the Gospel of Thomas know Matthew, Mark and Luke and John. And now it's did John know Matthew, Mark and Luke. So I mean he is so enmeshed in the details that it's scary. And as we said, I'm doing this dialogue with him about this topic. Did John know Matthew, Mark and Luke? And that's what this book is about. And we'll be doing this face to face event on that. This is a great offer. I mean he teaches this class on the Synoptic Gospels. It's like a semester long class and then you know, you take that, then you find out, oh yeah, John knew them too. It's great. It's gonna be great.
- [23:28]
B
I have to say I don't envy you having a conversation with Mark on this particular topic. Not only am I not a biblicist, but the, the just the command of the information that he has is really quite spectacular.
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C
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's going to be fine.
- [23:46]
B
All right then back to Jesus, John and the Essenes. So before the the break, Buck, we were talking about who the Essenes were, what they believed, why they didn't live in the rest of society. And I want to kind of turn now to how they compare to the beliefs of John the Baptist and Jesus. So what do we know about John the Baptist's beliefs?
- [24:12]
C
Our principal sources for John the Baptist are the New Testament gospels and Josephus mentions him as well and gives us some information. As with the Essenes, what Josephus says about John the Baptist coincides with what we get in the Gospels. But he leaves, he appears to leave things out and the same things. He leaves out John's apocalyptic message for the same reason, I think. So what we can say about John the Baptist's message, I mean it seems pretty clear when you read the gospels. This is all multiply attested and it fits right in with what we know historically about the climate at the time and everything else. John the Baptist was an apocalyptic preacher who was anticipating that the world was soon going to come to a crashing Halt. That God was going to destroy everything opposed to him and bring in a good kingdom here on earth. And John thought that those who were on God's side, who lived in the ways God wanted them to, would enter into this kingdom, but that those who did not would be destroyed. And so his most memorable lines are about this where he's preaching to the crowds. And so you get this in Matthew and Luke where he preaches crowds in Mark as well. But this particular thing is in Matthew and Luke where he says that he's telling people they need to repent for their sins. And so what he's doing in all these three gospels is he's baptizing people for the remission of sins so that if they get baptized, it shows they've been cleansed of their sins and they can enter into this kingdom. Baptism for the remission of sins. But he says in Matthew and Luke, you need to repent right away. The axe is already laid at the root of the tree. Every tree that does not bear fruit will be cut down and cast into the fire. And so it's a metaphor of destruction that you don't bear good fruit, you're going to be destroyed, meaning if you don't behave like God wants you to, you'll be destroyed. And when's it going to happen? The ax is already laid at the root of the tree. The chopping is about ready to start. So John the Baptist is proclaiming this message that people need to urgently need to repent in preparation for this coming destruction of God.
- [26:42]
B
Now Jesus is, is quite similar in his apocalyptic hard word to say, apocalyptic preaching. He's obviously baptized by John the Baptist. Does he have any differing beliefs or anything that we can add on to what John has already said?
- [27:00]
C
Well, I think the, the fact that he was baptized by John speaks volumes. And I, I think it's, it's a well established reality that he was, he was baptized by John the Baptist. It's in all the gospels and it's, and it's, he's connected with John the Baptist and it's, and there are reasons for thinking it's not the kind of thing the later Christian would have made up. He associated with John the Baptist. So he didn't join the Pharisees and didn't join the Sadducees and didn't, you know, he, he was a John the Baptist guy. And his message is very similar, that you need to repent. His first words, Jesus first words are the time has been fulfilled, the kingdom of God is near. Repent and Believe the good news sounds. I mean, John the Baptist could have said that virtually. And so Jesus did align himself with John the Baptist, and he had a very similar message with John the Baptist. At some point, he went off on his own. There are debates about why or when, but Jesus started on his own at some point and gathered his own disciples. I think one major difference between John the Baptist and Jesus is that Jesus thought that he himself would have a role in this coming kingdom. This too would require an entire episode. But it appears that Jesus did teach his disciples that when this kingdom came, he would be the king. He himself, Jesus would be the king, and that they would be ruling under him. The disciples would rule under him. And so he had a vision of this coming kingdom that is not evidenced in. In what John probably said.
- [28:36]
B
So we have two individuals and a group of Jewish people who are all concerned with the imminent end of the world and also have an interest in ritual purity, the cleansing of sins. The Essenes remove themselves from society entirely to keep their purity intact. John is baptizing people to kind of restore their purity. Very obvious commonalities going on there. Do you think it's likely that Jesus or John the Baptist were familiar with the Essenes?
- [29:10]
C
I don't know if they are familiar with the Essenes. They never mention the Essenes. The Essenes, as I said, are not mentioned anywhere in the Gospels or anywhere else in the New Testament. So if John the Baptist and Jesus knew about them, it wouldn't be surprising. But one thing I guess I should have said earlier when I mentioned these four groups within Judaism that. That Josephus mentions Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes in this fourth philosophy kind of zealot group. These were not large groups, the Pharisees. Josephus tells us the largest group was the Pharisees with 6,000 members. And the Essenes had about 4,000. This is in a world popula, a Jewish population in the world, about 4 million. And so it's not that everybody. It's not that every Jew belonged to. To one of the groups. So it's not like, you know, it's not like today, most Christians today identify with some kind of church. Yeah, I'm Baptist, you know, I'm Episcopalian, I'm Catholic, like that. And Jews. It wasn't like that with Jews. It's more like, you know, some people belong to the Rotary Club and some belong to the Elks Club, and some belong to the Chamber of Commerce or whatever. But they're like, no, most people don't. And so, so it's not that everybody knew about all these things, but. So I don't know how widely known the Essenes were, because all we have are these sources, really Josephus, who names them. So could they have known about them? Yeah, sure.
- [30:36]
B
Do you think it's likely that they were ever members of the Essenes?
- [30:40]
C
Ah, this is where the big controversy was. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. There's a. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered and scholars started reading them, there's a major figure in the Dead Sea Scrolls called the Teacher of Righteousness, who may have been the one who founded the community. And scholars saying, whoa, teacher, a righteous teacher. This might be Jesus. And so, and so people start getting excited. Could Jesus be in the Dead Sea Scrolls or John the Baptist, man, he's got views like them, and he's baptizing around the Jordan and they're near the Dead Sea. Could he have been a member of the community? And so there are all sorts. There's, there's. There's some sensationalist scholarship that was done arguing that, which has all. All been pretty much debunked. I'd say that the vast majority of scholars today do not think that Jesus was personally connected with the Essenes or a member of their community for reasons. I'll explain in a minute. A bigger debate is John the Baptist. My friend Joel Marcus, who is one of the really very fine Gospel scholars in the world, wrote a book on John the Baptist. The best book about John the Baptist came out a few years ago, and he thinks that John the Baptist was a member of the Essene community at one point. And I absolutely do not. And I think there are very good reasons for knowing that Jesus was not and for thinking John was not.
- [32:11]
B
So what are these reasons? What makes you think that they probably weren't affiliated with the Essene group?
- [32:18]
C
You know, one problem that I pointed out before, I think on, on, on the podcast, is that scholars tend to link things together from the ancient world because we have so few things to link. So you've got, you know, you got three texts that, like, survive out of, say, a thousand. And if they're similar to each other, then you say, oh, this one copied that one, you know, because. But you're ignoring the other. 997 we don't have. Right. And so people do that not just with texts, but also with ideas. If this person has an idea and that person has an idea, this person must have been connected with that person. So you get that kind of thing. And that's what happened with the Essenes and Jesus. Oh, they both have apocalyptic views. If they have apocalyptic views, then Jesus must have been in a scene, you know, as opposed to the many thousands of other people had apocalyptic views. So on one hand, it's kind of a dubious assumption that if two Jews at the same time have apocalyptic views that are basically similar, that one must have been the member of the other person's community. I don't think that that's true at all. But there's a bigger problem, which is that precisely the focuses that you find among the Essenes are not just absent from Jesus, they're contrary to Jesus. The whole point of this Essene community that produced the Dead Sea scroll, and there were other Essene communities, by the way, and some apparently lived in cities and things. But. But specifically with the Essene community that we know about, actually the other communities, too, their whole point was to separate themselves off from the impurities of the rest of society because they didn't want to become contaminated. Jesus just. It's not just that he disagreed with that. He was quite the opposite of that. He had this dubious reputation for hanging out with tax collectors and sinners and prostitutes, and he got maligned for it. His idea was that he didn't come to call the righteous, he came to call the sinners. And his whole idea was to spend time with people who needed to repent. So that's. That's one important thing. The other important thing is Jesus did not think he got into the kingdom by being pure, ritually pure. Ritual purity has very little to do with what Jesus preached. He preached that people have sinned against God and need to repent and return to God's ways, which is not about performing purity rituals. It's about how you behave to one another and how you help those who are in need. It's a very contrary message. And so it doesn't look to me like Jesus was connected with the Essenes. He simply shared an apocalyptic worldview that the Essenes had, the Pharisees had, by the way, Jesus had, John the Baptist had, Paul had. And people had this view. And so it doesn't make him an Essene.
- [35:17]
B
So it's reasonable to say that while Jesus, John, and the Essenes were all apocalypticists, they were concerned with very different aspects of that particular lifestyle choice. I don't know. That's probably not the right phrase.
- [35:32]
C
Yeah, well, they had different understandings of what it meant to be faithful to God and how to prepare for the kingdom. But this is why I don't think John the Baptist was in a scene either because he does not teach that you need to have regular purification rituals in order to keep your holiness. He did practice a baptism, and he may well have gotten the practice of baptism from Jewish purity rituals within Judaism. Broadly, if anybody is impure, for example, by touching a corpse or by having a nocturnal emission, or by having a period or whatever brings ritual impurity has to be purified before a person can worship in the temple. John the Baptist appears to be taking that and turning it into something else, a baptism for the remission of sins. His insistence was people repent of their sins and start living the lives God wants them to. It's not ritual purity. So again, it's not at all the emphasis. It's nowhere near the emphasis of the Essenes. It's a different message. And so I don't think there's good reason for thinking that he was an Essene.
- [36:47]
B
Excellent. Thank you very much. That is about all we have time for for this week's interview and we are going to be right back with our bonus segment for the week which is Listeners Q and A.
- [36:59]
D
The New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John provide us with virtually all our knowledge of what Jesus said and did. This includes his birth in Bethlehem to the Virgin Mary, his baptism by John the Baptist, his miracles, miracles of healing and casting out demons, his Sermon on the Mount, all of his parables, his triumphal entry in the Last Supper, his trial and crucifixion, and his resurrection on the third day. But historians like Barthes want to know, can we corroborate these accounts? Are they historically reliable? Are some of them based on myth and legend? Join New York Times best selling author and New Testament scholar Dr. Bart Ehrman in the Unknown Matthew, Mark, Luke and John 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. 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 bart erman.com gospels to learn more or sign up today. Use discount code mjpodcast at checkout for a special offer.
- [38:22]
B
Okay, fantastic selection of Q and A as always. First up, were the moral and ethical teachings of the historical Jesus innovative and maybe radical for his time? Or were they just a rehash of philosophical and ethical ideas floating around in Palestine while he was alive?
- [38:42]
C
It's a very good question. And it's the question I deal with in my forthcoming book on the book is called Love Thy how the Ethics of Jesus Transformed the Moral Conscience of the West. And my thesis in the book is that many of the things Jesus taught about were widely talked about among ethical teachers in antiquity. Some among Greek and Romans and others. I mean, the golden rule, you know, you should do unto others as you'd have them do unto yourself. That been around in all sorts of cultures for a long time, for hundreds and hundreds of years. You find forms of it in Confucius, you know, and in. And in ancient Greek writers and stuff. But there are other, and there are lots of parallels between Jesus ethical teachings and what you find in other Jewish writings at the time. Not to show this in the book just by putting them next to each other to show it, but there are some teachings of Jesus that are distinctive. And the most distinctive, I think, is the emphasis that loving your neighbor did not mean just loving your fellow Israelite, didn't mean loving the person in your neighborhood. It meant actually loving strangers who were in need. Anybody in need is your neighbor. And that. And you don't find that in Greek and Roman moral philosophy, and you really don't find it in Jewish, in. In Jewish ethical teachings either, where, where love is very important within the community. But it's not. It's not. You're not supposed to go out and start helping the outsiders in the same way Jesus talks about.
- [40:16]
B
Excellent. Moving back to John the Baptist. Given that the voice in the wilderness Image from Isaiah 43 to 5 appears in all four of the Gospels, when or how did the New Testament writers figure out that Isaiah was talking about John the Baptist?
- [40:34]
C
Well, I don't think the writers are the ones who came up with it. I think that. So it's. It gets quoted in Matthew, Mark and Luke and. Which means that Matthew and Luke are getting it from Mark. And I think in Mark's community, they had the problem that a lot of other earliest Christians had, which was if Jesus was baptized by John, doesn't that mean that he was John's follower? And doesn't that mean that John is the spiritual leader superior to Jesus because Jesus is the follower? And so how do you explain the relationship of John the Baptist and Jesus? And the different Gospel writers have different ways of doing it, but what they agree on is that John was the one, the one leading the way for Jesus. It's not that Jesus was following John per se, is that Jesus is the one that was expected and he had a forerunner. And so John the Baptist is the forerunner of John. And so that's why they quote Isaiah. He's in the wilderness baptizing, prepare the way of the Lord. In other words, get ready for the coming of the Lord. And so in all the Gospels, then John recognizes Jesus as superior to himself in various ways in different Gospels. And it's a way of explaining their relationship. So I think it happened before the Gospels were written, before Mark was written, and I think the other two picked it up from Mark.
- [42:05]
B
Excellent. A question on your own thought processes. How much would you say that your thoughts and opinions are still evolving? Do you feel quite settled in your conclusions, or are you always recalculating and recalibrating even now?
- [42:21]
C
I've always been committed to questioning my own thoughts and beliefs. And I, you know, look, none of us can be objective because, you know, we have biases, we have prejudices, we have opinions. We do, and we're. That's part of being human. For me, the issue is how is, is it possible to bracket what I already think, I'm already convinced by and consider it an alternative point of view? And I try my best to do that. And so I am happy to change my views when I feel that there's evidence to do so. But, you know, I think there's. I have a fairly high bar of evidence, generally, unlike a lot of my colleagues who seem to like, you know, they'll take a hint of something and then run with it and make a mountain out of a molehill talent, in my opinion. But I, I don't. I mean, I try not to. I try not to, but there, you know, there are things I'm pretty convinced by, but I'm open to being convinced otherwise. There's very little under my scholarship that I have, like, a personal stake in. I mean, it's like, you know, why would I care if there's a queue? Is it going to, like, affect what I do on Saturday? No. So, so it's not like I, like, I don't have a stake like that, so. And some, you know, some scholars do, of course, because of their personal lives. But, but. So since I don't, I'm open to other things, but I've got to be convinced.
- [43:49]
B
Thank you very much. Final question of the day on the languages of the Gospels. Our minister told us that the gospels were originally, originally written in Aramaic and then translated to Greek. Is there any evidence of this?
- [44:04]
C
There, There are scholars who used to argue that. There are not very many scholars who argue it now. I, I don't, offhand, I can't think of anybody who thinks that. Not just people I know, but like, you know, scholarship. These books were written in Greek. There are very good reasons for thinking that. Just to take. Just to take one example, Matthew. Sometimes people think that the others are written in Greek, but Matthew is written in Aramaic because there's this old tradition that math. The. The disciple Matthew wrote a Hebrew gospel, and so he must have written it in Hebrew or in Aramaic, related languages. There's no way Matthew is written in Hebrew. Aramaic, in my judgment. For one thing, he copies Mark in Greek word for word. If he wrote it in Hebrew, he could not translate it. He could not put word for word the same as the Greek. And so he's copying Greek sources. And also Q, which I believe in. But, but so the style is Greek. The. There are Semiticisms in Matthew. In other Semiticism is when there's a grammatical construction which, which makes sense in one language, but it's not normally how you would say something in another language. So like if you say, you know, you got to go down the right path, you know, in Hebrew, you'd say you go down the path of righteousness. And so if you have a phrase like path of righteousness in a Greek text, you say, man, that ain't how a Greek would normally express it. So it's a Semiticism. And people pick up Semiticisms by reading things like the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, which retains some of the grammatical features. So Matthew was written in Greek. Almost certainly one evidence he copied Mark in Greek and lots of other evidence. So, no, they were not. They were not. And the Gospel of John, man, try to put that into Aramaic sometime. It. It doesn't work. And so. So, yeah, I don't. I don't think so. Even though there was a time when some people did think so.
- [46:13]
B
Thank you so much, audience, for your questions. Bart, thank you very much for your answers. Now, before we finish for the week, could you just remind us what we spoke about today?
- [46:24]
C
Right, so we're talking about the group of Jews called the Essenes, which are the one. A group. One of these groups of Essenes produce what we now think of as what we call the Dead Sea Scrolls. Very important discovery in 1947. And they had some apocalyptic beliefs very similar to what you can find in the teachings of John the Baptist and Jesus. And so the question is, did John the Baptist and Jesus belong to an Essene community? And I tried to show why. I think the answer is no. But they certainly did have views that were similar in many ways to the Essenes audience.
- [46:58]
B
Thank you all 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. If you are interested also in receiving a free copy of Dr. Mark Goodacre's new book, you can go to bart ehrman.com synoptics for details on that. Remember that you can use the code mjpodcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.bartehrman.com misquoting Jesus will be back next week, but what are we talking about next time?
- [47:26]
C
Ah, yeah, well, next time, in anticipation, I guess, for these face to face talks that we've talked about. We're going to have a session on the Gospel of John and especially on why is John so different from the others, yet sometimes they call it the Maverick Gospel. It's like, what makes it so maverick? Why is it so? And how is it so different in ways that people who don't, like, study them closely may not, may not have noticed?
- [47:53]
B
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 Ehrman's YouTube channel so you don't miss out. From Bart Ehrman and myself, Megan Lewis, thank you for joining us.