← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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A
Hi, I'm Jake Grez, also known as Nurse Jake. As a travel nurse, I've worked in all kinds of places, different settings, cities and climates. Every assignment brings on a new challenge, which is why I always bring my figs. These scrubs are built for whatever the job throws at you. They're breathable, flexible and comfortable in any environment. No matter where I land, I know they're going to keep me looking and feeling my best. And don't sleep on the details, the pockets, the features, the finishing touches. Everything has a purpose and it makes a real difference when you're moving non stop. The fit is clean, tailored and super polished and they come in a huge range of colors. In other words, they feel great throughout a 12 hour shift and they always look good. See every healthcare professional on Instagram. If you work in healthcare or know someone who does, check out figs and get 15% off your first order at wearfigs.com with code FIGSRX. That's wearfigs.com code figsrx we all know
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B
that the Gospels describe Jesus crucifixion and subsequent resurrection. But what about that time in between? What do historians say about the treatment of Jesus body following his death? And how does this line up with Jewish funerary practices and Roman custom? Was Jesus body placed in a tomb as the Gospels describe, or ignobly tossed in a mass grave? Stay tuned for all of that and much, much more. Welcome to Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman, the only show where a six time New York Times best selling author and world renowned Bible scholar uncovers the many fascinating little known facts about the New Testament, the historical Jesus and the rise of Christianity. I'm your host Megan Lewis. Let's begin. Today we're talking about a bit of a controversial what happened to Jesus body following his crucifixion? Bart has some unconventional views on the subject, so we'll look at what he says as well as what the majority of scholars think before we get into that. Bart, good morning, how are you?
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C
Yes, I'm doing well, thank you. So we're kind of bursting into the hotter months. Things are good. I prefer the heat to the cold and so it's all fine by me. How are you doing?
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B
Yes, okay. I haven't melted yet, so that's a bonus. We've mentioned before. I am, I like the heat. I do enjoy it. But functioning daily life, functioning in temperatures that get as hot as they do in Maryland is a little unenjoyable at times. But currently I am very well. I have a Very personal question. How did you and Sarah meet?
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C
Ah, right. So Sarah and I both had been married before and I was teaching North Carolina UNC. So this is in about 1996, and friends introduced us. So one of my closest friends from graduate school days was a New Testament scholar named Dale Martin, who taught at Duke. But we were friends in graduate school and he lived across the street from Sarah, and Sarah lived across the hall in a fourplex from another scholar at Duke, Elizabeth Clark. And Liz was one of the prominent scholars of early Christianity, especially 4th and 5th century. She was really one of the. One of the international superstars in that field, which is closely cognate to what I do. And Dale and I had known each other for many years and Dale and Liz hung out together all the time. And so Dale decided that he would introduce us. Sarah and I are very different in many ways, but we're both scholars. Dale warned me ahead of time that every man who meets Sarah is just scared to death of her because she's so smart and articulate. So she said, brace yourself. So we met and nobody thought it would last very long, but here it is. You know, we got married almost 25 years years ago now. At our wedding, Dale gave us a toast and said, you know, I thought it would lead to a wild weekend, but I didn't know it would come to this.
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B
And were you terrified of her?
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C
She can be terrifying, but she's very funny and she's very humane and she's very kind of a devoted person. But she's more like a. I think I've said this before, she's more like a European intellectual who like, knows a lot about theoretical issues in philosophy and literary studies. She's a literary person really, mainly. And it can be intimidating, but it's a nice balance because my kind of scholarship is so different from hers and so it works out really well. But you also married an academic, so.
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B
I did.
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C
Introduced by academics.
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B
We were in grad school together.
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C
Ah, that's right, yes.
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B
And Josh was married to his exact for most of his grad school experience. And then they divorced while he was in Germany. He had a full ride scholarship and when he got home, we started dating. And yeah, haven't really ever looked back. So people ask me, I always tell them that the library is genuinely the best place to find a spouse. Academic library is for preference, but, you know, any library will do well these
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C
days nobody meets somebody like live. It's like you don't even ask anybody how did you meet anymore? Because like, it's like, yeah, well, online, how else would you meet?
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B
Absolutely. People are hard to find.
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C
Oh, man. No, that was. Yeah, that was long. I was long before all that.
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B
Okay, we should dive into our topic for today. Now, before we get to the decidedly non standard postmortem experience of Jesus body, could you tell us a little bit about what a typical Jewish burial would have looked like at this time?
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C
Well, typical Jewish burials were probably like typical everybody's burials, which is that most people were poor. Our sources of information about the past, especially like ancient past, come to us from the literary elite, which make up like 1 or 2% of the population. And they're always talking about their situations. Most people were desperately poor. Many were just on the edge of existence and many were below it. And so the majority of people would have been buried simply by somebody digging a pit or a ditch and putting the person into it and covering them up. And so that was true throughout the Roman world and it would have been true of most Jews. People who had money had other ways of being buried. And that was true in Judaism and elsewhere in the land of Israel at the time. If somebody had money, they would have a family tomb that would be cut out of a rock face. And so they're rock hewn tombs which would hold multiple bodies. So there'd be niches for multiple bodies. The Jewish tradition, even back then, a wealthy person who was buried that way in a known location in a large family tomb would be buried. And then about a year later, they would gather the bones and put the bones in an ossuary, which is a bone box. We have hundreds and hundreds of these ossuaries still in Israel. Thousands. You can just see them in some places from antiquity. And so that's, that's how rich people would be buried. Poor people would just, you know, they would make a makeshift trench of some kind and put the person in it.
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B
Is it fair to say that regardless of social status or wealth, being buried was actually very important? You didn't generally just leave your family members on a hill somewhere?
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C
No, no, you did not. And you know, of course today, you know, everybody wants to have a nice funeral and most of us wish we could come to our funeral to see what they say. But as the saying goes, you know, the size of the funeral depend on the weather that day, you know, but we all have a concern to have a decent burial and to whether we're cremated or buried. But in antiquity, this was a huge deal. I mean, it's hard to imagine being much bigger, but it was much bigger in Antiquity, not receiving a proper burial. In all the Western cultures that we know of, including Judaism. But going back in Greece to Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey, if you weren't given a decent burial, it was a horror. I mean, you would know it at the time, but looking ahead to it, you really wanted a burial which would involve being put in the ground and having some dirt placed over you and possibly saying a few words or something. But at least you had to be had some kind of burial like that. And so it was a very big deal. And so nobody would be left, you know, unburied unless, you know, it wasn't known that they had died or they died off, you know, at sea or in a wilderness place or someplace. Or sometimes people were not allowed to be buried as part of the punishment for whatever horrible things they had done during their life.
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B
That was actually going to be my next question. What circumstances would mean that someone was deliberately left unburied following their death?
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C
The only circumstance I know of is when an authority decides that the person has committed a heinous crime that requires them to be humiliated, not just during life, but after their death. And so, for example, the person who's been executed might be nailed to a tree to be left to be exposed to scavengers and to rot away, or might be publicly displayed, you know, like a head might be cut off and publicly displayed on a stake if it's like the ruler of an enemy. But it's almost always some kind of authority figure or someone who wants to shame a person that would not allow for a decent burial.
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B
Did the Roman or Jewish authorities during the first century have prescriptions around what happens to the bodies of criminals following their deaths?
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C
Most criminals were buried depending on circumstances, but Jews had in the first century, and still today, observant Jews bury their dead on the day of their death. And so a person dies and they're buried that day. That was already prescribed by Jewish law that if somebody died or if somebody was killed, or even if somebody was executed by Jews, the authorities were responsible for giving them a decent burial that day. And in the Roman context, people were expected to be buried either by whomever killed them or by their family members.
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B
So turning then to Jesus particular circumstance, what do the canonical gospels say happened to Jesus body immediately after his crucifixion?
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C
So the crucifixion is the key part of this question, because when I said that when Jews and Romans would execute people, they would bury them, there was a major exception in the Roman world, and it did have to do with crucifixion. Crucifixion victims were killed in a particularly horrific way in order to further humiliate them publicly. So crucifixion involved being nailed to wood, a wooden post or a wooden tree or stake or a cross, and being left there to die. The reason this was such a horrifying experience is because death was very slow in coming in many cases, and a person was completely helpless. It was a painful experience. And a person didn't die by loss of blood. They died by asphyxiation. It looks like Romans crucified people on crosses with an upright and a cross beam. And they would hang on the cross. They'd either be. Their arms would be tied to the cross or nailed to the cross, or both. The ankles would be nailed to the cross or left dangling. And the weight of the body was such that after a while, the body would distend and a person couldn't breathe. And the only way then to breathe would be to pull up on the nails or on the rope in order to breathe. And some people apparently lasted days that way before they just died of exhaustion. And so it's a horrible death for many reasons. One is it's slow and very painful. So it's a torturous death. But also, you can't even scratch your head. You can't fend off birds or insects or whatever. You're hopeless. The Romans were using this in part to show that you are hopeless against the power of Rome. You are helpless. You cannot even help yourself. And they had people die that way. But then to further the humiliation, the Roman policy was to leave the body on the cross after death and not allow it to be buried that day or for days, so that the body would deteriorate on the cross and again be attacked by scavenging birds, especially as a way of humiliating the person further and also as a deterrent for crime. Romans had a very different view from the modern American view where we debate Many people are opposed to the death sentence altogether. But many people who admit there's going to be a death sentence, at least look for the most humane way to execute a criminal. Private and humane. And the Romans had the opposite idea. If you want to deter crime. If somebody commits a crime, you put them on a cross in a public place, and people will hear them scream, and they will see them there and hanging there, and they'll see their bodies rot afterwards and be picked apart by birds and then see how many people commit the crime times. So Jesus was crucified, and according to the Gospels. He died in Mark. He died at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. So mid afternoon it was starting to get dark. A man named Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate, Pontius Pilate, the governor, who ordered the crucifixion for the body. Pilate granted him the body. And Joseph had the body taken down from the cross and he put him in a tomb, a rock hewn tomb. And that's where he was until the women discovered the tomb empty three days later.
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B
So listening to you, it strikes me that there are some substantial conflicts between Roman law surrounding crucifixion victims and Jewish burial customs which would have taken precedence in these situations where you have a Jewish person who has been crucified. Is it the law of the land or do we follow religious customs?
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C
Well, Romans, you know, Romans of course, did not want to offend huge crowds of people in any place, not because they particularly cared about the crowds of people, but because they didn't want any uprisings and they didn't want, you know, any kind of public problems. And so most Jewish laws, Romans allowed Jews to keep, you know, they didn't object to people keeping Torah to, you know, keeping kosher or to observing Sabbath or keeping festivals or things like that, circumcision. They allowed Jews to keep their custom. But there were some things that Romans absolutely were the rulers about. And one of them was public order. And so when Romans crucified people anywhere in the empire, they weren't concerned about local burial practices or local laws or religious laws. The idea of the crucifixion was to humiliate the person, to torture them to death publicly and to display them as an instance of what happens if you cross the power of Rome. It was really reserved for either low level criminals, you know, just low lives that they wanted to get rid of and to show low lives. I don't care if you're starving, you shouldn't steal from the rich folk, because if you do, this is what will happen to you. And it's better to go hungry than to have this happen to you or slaves. Because it was important to enforce slave law. Because if people couldn't have trustworthy slaves, the economy wouldn't work. And so rich folk had slaves. And so if a slave ran away or did something wrong, be crucified. If the Romans crucified the person, they were left on the cross. The other reason for crucifixion in the Roman Empire was for insurrection or threat of insurrection if somebody was seen as threatening the Roman state or a troublemaker to the Roman state or troublemaker to the public order, they would crucify them and torture them to death, leave them on the cross for days to deteriorate so that people would realize you cannot cross the power of Rome. If you do, this is what will happen. And so in cases like that, Romans didn't care about the public, what people's sensibilities would be, oh, you know, I don't want you to crucify my brother because, you know, that would be very painful to me, you know, sorry, he's an insurrectionist and he's going to hang on his cross.
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B
So we have an account from Josephus that seems to indicate that Jews were able to bury their crucifixion victims. And I believe we have a couple of crucifixion victims, burial sites identified. How does that kind of interplay with the Roman law and how the Romans were trying to maintain order?
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C
So the big issue is, the one we've just kind of hinted at is that in the Gospels, Joseph of Arimathea, who's an otherwise unknown figure who apparently is one of the Jewish leaders, has asked Pilate for the body and Pilate agrees and lets him bury Jesus. But that's contrary to everything else we know about Roman practices of crucifixion. And so the question is, could it have happened? And some people have said that it's perfectly plausible that it happened because Jews have these practices, you know, that they have to bury that day. And so that's the Jewish rule. So they buried him that day. Let me say something about that before I get directly to Josephus. So I think that it's an error to assume that Jews had to do it, so they did it. When we're talking about whether Romans would do it, whether Romans would allow crucifixion victims to be buried that day. And so far as we know, that just didn't happen. So the question is, is it possible that it did happen in special circumstances in Judea where Jesus was crucified and some people appealed to Josephus. Josephus is a first century Jewish historian. He was born a few years after Jesus death, but he was a historian in the second half of the first century. Is our primary source of information about what life and events were in Judea in the period, including the war against Rome that happened about 40 years after Jesus death, that Josephus himself was involved in. And so Josephus wrote many books. We have a six volume book about the Jewish war itself by him, an eyewitness. We have a 20 volume book that he wrote called the Antiquities of the Jews about Jewish history, including a lot of stuff on his own period, the first century. There's a passage there that some people have appealed to to show that Jews did bury crucified victims. Josephus says it that Jews buried, unlike the Idumeans, the people who lived in a nearby country, Idumea. Unlike the Idumeans, when Jews crucified the people, they buried them that day in accordance with the law. So he does say that. Well, he kind of says that. When you actually look closely what he says, it's actually a little bit more complicated what he's really talking about. But one thing is that he's talking about people that Jews crucified. So Jews also crucified people. Jewish authorities did. There are incidents that we know about that Josephus talks about where instances were. For example, one instance where 200 Pharisees were crucified at one time. And what Josephus is saying is that, you know, we still follow our law when we crucify people. And that may or may not be true. But whether it's true or not, it has no bearing on this situation. Because Jews didn't crucify Jesus, Romans crucified Jesus, and Romans had a policy of leaving crucified victims on their crosses. To my knowledge, there's no exception to that. The reason I say, to my knowledge is this. We actually do not have any literary descriptions of a crucifixion in the sense of a description of what actually happens. And so when you watch a movie, you know, about the death of Jesus or something, they come up with some way of making it happen, right? Sometimes, like they'll tie him to the cross and they'll nail him to. To the upright, and then they'll elevate the cross and they'll put it in a hole, and then they'll secure it with rocks. And, you know, they come up with something about how it actually happens. We don't have any descriptions of how it happened. And we don't have any descriptions of, like, the whole process. What we don't have it. What we do have are a number of instances of people talking about crucified victims from a range of sources over a number of areas, a number of periods, and almost always, sometimes with kind of gallows humor, talking about how these people are left on their crosses as food for the birds. And so usually it's not very humorous, but sometimes people use it as kind of a Gallo humor in some of ancient writings. So Josephus does have this thing, but it doesn't not relevant to what we're talking about here. Also, Josephus is talking about a situation that took place decades after Jesus death. So he's not Talking about the 20s under Pontius Pilate at all.
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B
So do we have remains of crucified victims? I mentioned that. I think there are a couple that have been buried. How do they add to the argument here?
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C
Yeah, so this is another argument people have used. We've actually uncovered a couple. I mean, we haven't. But archaeologists have found remains of people who are definitely crucified. And these have been used to show, oh, well, people did get decent burials because, look, we've got the remains buried. So there it is, you know, so ermine. You blew that one. We got archaeological evidence for it. So the first discovery was in the 1970s, late 1970s. They found a. They found an ossuary, a bone box that had the remains of several skeletons in it. So the bone boxes aren't very large because the skeletons, they're not full skeletons like you see in a doctor's office or something there. They're like the bones are put in there, and they use an ossuary for multiple. But there was one in there that had an ankle bone. It still had a nail through it. And so they called in forensics experts. This was in Israel. They called in forensics experts to examine the remains before they reburied it properly. And the forensics experts determined that this person had been crucified. I mean, I guess that part was obvious. The nail was through the ankle bone, and there was a piece of olive wood on the other side of it. The olive wood had a knot. And so what had happened is the stake had gone through the ankle and been driven into this knot. And it had bent the nail so that when they couldn't pull it out, when they took the person off the cross, so they buried him with the nail still through the ankle. And now more recently, they've discovered something in England, actually a crucified victim in England from roughly the time. So the point people make is, well, okay, so who have crucified. So they were buried. So they were buried. Why are you saying they weren't buried? They Several things to say about that. These are really important discoveries and significant and we just. Really important for us to understand how the process worked and everything else. It is true that these people were buried. What we don't know is when were they buried? They found the skeleton, they found the bones. But how long were the bones hanging on a cross before they were buried? There's Nothing to suggest that they were buried that afternoon. And so they could have been on the cross for two weeks. And then finally an authority said, okay, you can have the body now, what's left of it. And they took it and they gave it a burial. That's completely possible, but there's nothing to say they were buried that day. And so this isn't evidence against the. My contention is that Romans did with Jesus what they did with every other crucified person we know about. He left them on the cross. That's highly offensive to people. Boy, do I get it. But I think if they followed custom, they would have left him on the cross. And people have this idea, well, it would have been different, right? I mean, surely. But they're thinking, well, it's because he was the Son of God, so they would have treated him differently. Right? You know, we're talking Jesus here, but, you know, he got crucified with two other people that day. Do we think that Pilate had all of them buried? How about the three or four the next day, or the six the day before, or, you know, or the hundreds who were crucified during the destruction of Jerusalem? Were they buried that day? No, they weren't buried that day. I don't think Jesus was the only exception. I don't think there was an exception.
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B
Do we have any actual examples of people being taken off their crosses sooner than maybe two weeks after their actual death?
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C
Well, the only instance that I know of is actually goes back to Josephus again, where two people were taken off their crosses on the day of the crucifixion, but it was before they died. And so the deal was that when the Roman general Titus overthrew Jerusalem in the year 70, they crucified masses of people. They basically ran out of lumber. They crucified so many people. And Josephus, he'd been a general in the Jewish army who had surrendered. Because he was an elite. He had been used as a kind of a interpreter, a translator for the Roman armies. He got along well with the Roman authorities, including Vespasian, the first general who attacked Jerusalem, who then ended up becoming the emperor, and then Titus his son. And so Josephus was there while this happened. And two of the people they were crucifying during this whole event were people that he knew, and he requested that they would take them down. And they took them off their crosses. And one of them survived, one of them lived. So that shows that crucifixion didn't automatically kill you. It took a while. Some people have used that to say. So Romans did take people off their crosses? Well, yes, in those two instances, they took off somebody who was alive, who they decided not to punish. What we're looking for is evidence of them ever taking somebody off the cross who died on the cross as a humiliation and then would have been left on the cross. And we don't have anything at all like that.
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B
So returning briefly to people seeing Jesus as maybe the exception to the rule, Given that Pontius Pilate kind of washed his hands, well, literally washed his hands of the whole thing and effectively found Jesus innocent, do you think it's likely that he would have been maybe more flexible in the whole staying on the cross until your very, very, very decomposed part of things?
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C
Yeah, you know, some people have argued that as well. The reason it's a complicated question is that it's presupposing that the gospel accounts are historically accurate in Pontius Pilate's attitudes towards Jesus. One of the very interesting things about the Gospel's accounts of Jesus death in relationship to Pilate is that if you line the gospels up chronologically, so Mark was written first, then Matthew, then Luke, then John, and then you get into later gospels still. If you do that through the gospels, Pilate becomes more and more innocent in the death of Jesus. In Mark's account, Pilate basically agrees with the chief priests and the Jewish leaders that, okay, he'll crucify Jesus. He's not quite sure why they want it so badly, but he agrees. He does it. In Matthew's gospel written later, Pilate declares that Jesus is innocent, but the Jewish authorities insist on getting him crucified. So Pilate washes his hands and says, I'm innocent of this man's blood. And the Jewish crowd, the Jewish crowd, all the crowd, all the people crowd. His blood be upon us and our children. When you get to Luke, Pilate declares Jesus innocent three times. He says he has done nothing wrong, declares him three times, and he sends him off to King Herod, who happens to be in town, and he finds him innocent as well. And then when he's crucified, the Roman soldier looks up and says, this man was innocent. Like it's all about Pilate and all the Romans being innocent in this thing. When you get to the Gospel of John, the last canonical gospel in John, the Jewish authorities are insisting that Jesus be crucified. And Pilate hands him over to them to crucify him. He didn't even do it. Pilate didn't even do it. My point of this is that as time Goes on. Pilate gets exonerated increasingly. One reason is, I think the Christians are trying to show the Romans were not against Jesus. Well, why did he get crucified then? So Jews, they insisted on it. So it's kind of an anti Jerry Judaism thing going on in these accounts. But it's involved with Romans becoming increasingly innocent. The question is, what about the historical situation 30, 40, 50 years before the gospels were written, Pilate ordered his crucifixion. He did that because he thought that, you know, he was a troublemaker who was calling himself the king of the Jews. And this is what we do to people like that. I don't think Pilate thought Jesus was innocent. If he thought he was innocent, he wouldn't have crucified him. Oh, but he would have had so much pressure from the Jews. Why would Jews pressure him for Jesus? Well, because he's the Son of God. No, we have to start thinking historically, Jesus was an unknown preacher from rural Galilee who came to Jerusalem. Nobody knew him there, but he started preaching that the destruction was coming soon. The temple is going to be destroyed. God's enemies are going to be destroyed as. And the authorities decided he was, you know, he's gathering some crowds, small crowds around him. They decided just to get him out of the way to stop the trouble. He was not the famous person who, you know, was the Son of God. He was just this person, and they crucified him. But then the stories build up after that. So I don't think that Pilate thought he was innocent at all, or he wouldn't have crucified him. And if he crucified him, then the entire punishment is not just death on the cross, but being left on a cross.
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B
So I suspect I know the answer to these questions. How likely do you think it is that Jesus would in fact have been buried on the afternoons of his crucifixion? And do you think it's likely that his body would have been given to Joseph Arimathea for burial?
- [30:31]
C
Yeah. No, I don't think so. I did not start out with this view at all. Not just when I was a Christian, but even after I'd been an agnostic for years. The first time I read anybody who argued this was. Well, it was a long time ago. But it's probably. I forget when I first read a book by John Dominic Crosson, who is a prominent scholar of the historical Jesus, started out as a Catholic priest and became a prominent scholar. And he's, you know, probably one of the best known Jesus scholars of the 20th century and into the 21st century, and he's still around, and he's still very, very smart and clever and writes a lot of books. He argued in one of his books that just this thing, that Jesus would not have been taken off the cross. He went a step farther and he said that they would have disposed of Jesus remains, probably by tossing him into a ditch, and he probably would have been eaten by scavenging dogs. And when I first read that thing, I thought, oh, my God, you got to be kidding me. Are you serious? This is like in the early 90s. Jesus was eaten by dogs? Come on. What? And I just thought, you know, so I didn't take it seriously because it seemed kind of sensationalist to me. But then, you know, some years later, when I started writing a book dealing with Jesus resurrection on called How Jesus Became God, I decided, you know, I need to figure out what did they do with crucified victims. I looked up every reference I could find in every ancient Greek and Roman source that referred to crucified victims. And whenever they talk about what happened after the death, it was always they were left on the cross. And I didn't find any exceptions to that. And so I just decided at that point, you know, I'm not going to go so far as he's eaten by dogs, But I will say that I think his body was almost certainly left on the cross to decay. And that the account, all these accounts, not all of them, but whenever they talk about what happens, you talk about birds coming and pecking away at the flesh. And I suspect what happened was that Jesus then, after some days or longer, like everyone else who had this horrible death, was taken off the cross and they disposed of his remains somehow. So he was buried. I mean, he was buried, you know, in the fact that they probably. They wouldn't just leave him on top of the ground. I mean, that it would stink and it would be bad. And so what they typically would have done, I think, was dig a ditch and put the body in and cover it up. Or if they wanted to kind of save time, they might dig a massive grave and put a lot of bodies in there. We don't know, but something like that. So I think it'd be unprecedented for this person, Joseph of Arimathea, to be given the body that afternoon.
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B
Now, I mentioned in the beginning and you mentioned at the end of the last episode that this is not a common view among academics. What is the predominant scholarly consensus about what happened to Jesus body following his crucifixion?
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C
The dominant view is that Joseph of Arimathea asked for the body and he put it in the grave that afternoon. So I'll just say from my experience, I had never talked to anybody who actually looked into crucifixion burial practices, except for John Dominic Cross. And then I, then I did it. And I think most New Testament scholars, it's so rooted in our mind that that happened. Even if you don't believe in the crucifixion, everybody says, well, there was an empty tomb anyway. And so people come up with explanations for why there was an empty tomb. And Christian apologists use it as argument that there must have been a resurrection because there's no other way to explain the tomb was empty. And they say this is one of the established facts that everybody agrees with. And man, I don't agree with it because I think that if you actually just go to the trouble of looking at what we know about the ancient world, that it doesn't look like it would have happened. But you know, since all of us were, you know, two or three years old, this is what we learned. And it's just as common sense to us as the law of gravity that of course that's what happened, that Jesus appeared. But we don't actually think about it historically because it'd be so weird to think otherwise. But you know, I think otherwise now. I don't think that happened at all. I don't think Jesus was given a proper burial that afternoon.
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B
I have one more question to wrap up and then we will move on. But what do you think the empty tomb is doing in the narrative if there was no actual tomb?
- [34:44]
C
So the earliest Christian author we have to talk about the resurrection was Paul, the Apostle Paul, who says that Jesus appeared to people after his death. He does say that Jesus was buried and he says the third day after his burial he was raised from the dead. He doesn't say when he was buried, he doesn't say he was buried that afternoon and he doesn't say anything about an empty tomb tomb. I think Paul believed that Jesus body actually was raised from the dead, but I don't know what he thought about the tomb. He doesn't say anything about Joseph of Arimathea or anything like that. So there's no empty tomb story until you get to the Gospel of Mark. Mark is written about 40 years after Jesus death. By that time people were interested in knowing, well, how do you know Jesus was raised from the dead? You know, you're trying to convert non Christians to believe in Jesus resurrection and the common line. Was, well, people saw him alive afterwards, but then they started saying, well, there's additional proof. These women went to the tomb and they found it empty. Oh, an empty tomb. It's very, very interesting. This is something rarely noted even among New Testament scholars, that in the New Testament, even though the empty tomb is reported, it is never reported as evidence that Jesus was raised from the dead. And in fact, every time you have a reference to the empty tomb in the Gospels, it creates doubt rather than faith. People can't figure out what has happened, that the tomb is empty, or they doubt that he's been raised. It never is a proof that he got raised, but it ends up being a proof that Jesus was raised. And once this story started first in Mark, it gets changed and expanded in Matthew and changed in Luke and radically changed in John. But it becomes a standard trope that Jesus was buried in a tomb because if he rose on the third day, he had to come from someplace and so gotta be a tomb you know about.
- [36:34]
B
Thank you very much, Bart. We're going to take a very quick break. We'll be back with some news about upcoming events.
- [36:41]
D
Most scholars agree that the Gospel of Mark was the earliest Gospel written and that it offers the most historically accurate depiction of Jesus among all of the Gospels. But scholars don't stop there. They also seek answers to pressing questions such as whether Mark had first hand knowledge of Jesus life or if most of his information was second, third or fourth hand or if perhaps he was just making things up. Scholars also ask whether later copyists of Mark's gospel changed what he said to create a different story. And have any of those changes led readers away from Mark's original message? Join Dr. Bart Ehrman in an online course, Jesus the Secret Mysterious Messiah, Revealing the Mysteries of the Gospel of Mark. And uncover the fascinating answers to these questions. In this eight lecture course, you'll also discover why Mark shrouds Jesus true identity in his gospel. Was this a true historical depiction of his followers view of Jesus during his ministry? Or is this simply part of Mark's literary agenda? Find out today by visiting bart ehrman.com, mark and as always, please use the code mjpodcast for a special discount.
- [38:03]
C
This is Bart's weekly update where we get to catch up on all the latest about Dr. Ehrman's book releases, speaking engagements, ehrmanblog.org happenings and online course launches.
- [38:17]
B
So Bart, you have a new course lecture coming up called When Does Life Start According to the Bible? Could you tell us a little bit about that?
- [38:26]
C
Yeah. So I'll preface this by saying that this is not a lecture on abortion per se. It's not about taking a stand on abortion or when life actually begins. A number of people who believe that a fetus is a living human being so that taking the life of of a fetus performing an abortion is murder claim that the Bible supports that view, that the Bible says life begins at conception. And so that's the commonplace that's so widely believed that even people who are in favor of allowing abortion agree that the Bible says that. Many do. My question in this course is what does the Bible actually say? So again, I'm not arguing for or against the right to an abortion. I'm simply asking what does the Bible actually say about when life begins? Does it begin at conception? Is the fetus considered to be a human being? In biblical literature, there are several passages that speak directly to the question that are relevant that most people don't know about or simply ignore. I want to talk about what the Bible actually says, not because I think what the Bible says is like we have to go by what the Bible says. It's not that. But since people do use the Bible, I think it would be useful to see what the Bible actually says. Just for information, if nothing else.
- [39:51]
B
I think if you are using a text to support or invalidate yours or someone else's arguments, knowing actually what that text says is probably a good way to start. Now, that's going to be taking place in June and we will have more information, specific dates and prices and all that information coming up in later episodes. So please do keep your ears open for that when we get to it. And we are now going to do some listeners questions.
- [40:22]
C
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 askbart
- [40:39]
B
all right, first question. Christian manuscripts and theology have Jesus dying on the cross and being raised from the dead. How would you compare the evidence for these events actually happening in comparison to the Quran's teachings that Jesus was never crucified? Do you think there is enough evidence that Jesus actually was crucified?
- [40:58]
C
I would say these are two very different things. The question of whether Jesus was crucified and died on the cross is a historical question that you can use historical evidence to address. Just, you know, 99.99% of people who were crucified died. And there's good reason for thinking that Jesus was crucified. And so that's just a historical question. The question of whether Jesus was raised from the dead is not a question that can be answered by historians because it involves an act of God. And historians don't have any access to what God is doing. There's not evidence in the same way. Another way, kind of to put that is you can say what Romans did typically to people who are insurrectionists. You can't say what God typically does for people that he favors. And so it just isn't a historical question. It's a religious question or a theological question. And so I don't think that they're really commensurate.
- [41:56]
B
Thank you. How do historians determine if a character in a narrative is historical or literary fiction? For example, would Joseph of Arimathea, Mary Magdalene or Barabbas real or literary devices to enhance the messages of the texts they appear in?
- [42:11]
C
So I don't think the answer for any of these cases can come easily or just by conjecture or just by throwing out an idea one way or another. I think you have to evaluate what is said about the person and approach the historicity of this person the way you would approach the historicity of anybody, whether they're in the Bible or not. If you have stories about somebody, did that person really live and did they do what's said about them or not? In some cases, you can make a good case that the person is not a historical figure. If somebody is a historical figure, you do the same thing you do as for any history. You try and find how many sources talk about this person. How reliable are these sources when you can evaluate them generally? Are they independent of each other? Do the things they describe, are they plausible? Are the sorts of things that we can establish did happen in the past and so forth? And so when you do that with these people, we don't know of anybody named Joseph of Arimathea. Of Arimathea almost certainly means that he comes from the place Arimathea. It's not quite clear where that is, since we don't have a place named that at the time he's doing something that's completely implausible, getting the body of Jesus on the afternoon of his crucifixion. Since he's not mentioned in any other source and the only thing said about him something that's completely implausible. Some people would say, well, maybe he's been invented for the purpose that could be. I would say that's certainly true of Barabbas. I don't think there was a Barabbas. He's only mentioned in these Gospel accounts that are dependent upon each other to some extent and it would take a long time. We should probably have an entire episode on Barabbas. But I don't think he was existing. Mary Magdalene is a different thing. Mary Magdalene is found in multiple sources and there's nothing implausible about what she says and did. Her name Magdalene makes sense. It makes. She probably came from the town of Magdala, which has a big tower in it. The word Magdala means tower. And so there's nothing implausible. So there's no reason not to think there was a Mary Magdalene. But there is reason for thinking there was no Joseph of Arimathea and certainly not a Barabbas. I think.
- [44:17]
B
Thank you very much. In your writings and lectures, you have stated that there were just a dozen or a few dozen Christian believers after the crucifixion and in the early days of Christianity. What about all the people who followed Jesus during his ministry? There seems to have been thousands, if not tens of thousands. Do you believe that they all or most of them fell away after the crucifixion?
- [44:39]
C
So when I say that, which I do say, and I still stand by, what I mean is that after Jesus death, he was believed to be raised from the dead so that he wasn't like any other dead person. He came back to life. And the followers of Jesus are the people who believe that. The people who first believed that according to the New Testament at least, were the eleven disciples of Jesus and a handful of his women followers. And so if we assume that that's true, I'm not completely sure that it's right. I don't know that all 11 came to believe in him because we have no records really of. Apart from kind of general statements that they believed. We don't have any really independent records of them believing. But suppose it's true, then there were 20 people or so, or a little bit less, a little bit more, who soon after Jesus death, believed he was raised from the dead. Nobody in Galilee believed he was raised from the dead, even if they heard him preach, because they didn't even know he'd been crucified. And so the beginning of Christianity is with these initial believers soon after his death. I do not think that there were tens of thousands of people following Jesus around in Galilee. Where are these people coming from? This is a rural area where there are villages and towns and Jesus doesn't go into the major cities, Tiberias and Sephorus. So the idea there are tens of thousands of people traipsing around after him, I just think is. I mean, it's in the Gospels. Yes, but it can't be right historically. There aren't tens of thousands of people there who could be following him around. I think his following is highly exaggerated. People did hear him preach in Galilee. It wouldn't be surprising if some of them came to believe the apostles who said he got raised from the dead. It's interesting that we don't have any record of any of those who heard him during his ministry coming to believe. It's very interesting. I'm not sure how to account for that. But in any case, when I say the 20, that's what I mean. The people who actually believed him to begin with.
- [46:37]
B
Thank you. And final question before we wrap up. I have read that the Acts of the Apostles is written in the style of a Greco Roman novel. How does Acts conform to that genre? And if Acts and Luke are by the same author, is Luke also a Graeco Roman novel?
- [46:51]
C
The idea that the Book of Acts is written as a novel is developed mainly by a very fine scholar named Richard Purvo, who has died now. But it's a controversial view and it's one that I don't agree with. I don't think it is a novel. We do have examples of novels. We have five major Greek novels that have come down to us and fragments of others. We have one or two Latin novels, depending on how you count. And so we do know how these fictional accounts worked. There are certain themes in Acts that you find in novels involving travels and escapades and difficulties that people emerge from. And there are themes, but the genre is not a novel. I mean, for one thing, the people in Acts are described whether the accounts are accurate or not. The Book of Acts is describing people who lived. If you read Apuleius book the Golden Ass or sometimes called the Metamorphosis, it's about a fictional character. It's not about somebody. So it's a very different genre. And I think the Book of Acts is meant to be written more like a history than a novel. Even saying that, though it's a general history about the origins of a people. You have histories like this about the origins of the Roman people, for example, or history of beginning of this people or that people. This is the beginning of the Christian people. It makes it different from the genre of the Book of Luke, even though it's written by the same author. Luke is styled like a Greco Roman biography. Acts is styled as a general history. The reason there are different genres is because one is about a man, Jesus and the other is about a people, the Christians.
- [48:35]
B
Thank you so much audience. Thank you all for your questions. Now Bart, before we finish for the week, would you mind please summarizing what we spoke about?
- [48:43]
C
Well, we were talking about what happened to Jesus body after his death and my view is not the majority view, but I have been convinced for some years that it's right. I didn't come up with it, but I'm convinced it's right that Jesus would not have been given a proper burial after his crucifixion. The Roman policy that we don't know exceptions for was that a person would be left on the cross to decompose and be attacked by scavenging birds to further the humiliation of the punishment to show that a person should not cross the power of Rome or this will happen. I don't think they made an exception in the case of Jesus so that I don't think that the story of Joseph of Arimathea burying Jesus that afternoon could be historical.
- [49:29]
B
Thank you so much audience. Thank you all for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please subscribe to the podcast and make sure you don't miss future episodes. Episodes Remember that 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, just without me. Bart, what are you talking about next time?
- [49:50]
C
Well, I'm talking about a book that's come out by a former student of mine. She, she did her PhD at Duke, but she took a course with me. Her name is Jill Hicks Keaton. She teaches at the University of Southern California. Now. She's a scholar of New Testament early Christianity and she's written a book that probably be controversial. It's called Good How White Evangelicals Save the Bible to Save Themselves. So it's how white evangelicals sanitize the Bible and try to get rid of some of its unsavory character in order to use it for their own purposes. So I interview her about that and it's an interesting book and it's an interesting interview, so I hope people can come and watch.
- [50:35]
B
That sounds like a good one. I'll be there in spirit and definitely watching once it's aired. 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.
- [50:57]
D
So you don't miss out.
- [50:58]
B
From Bart Ehrman and myself, Megan Lewis, thank you for joining us.