← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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- [00:00]
A
Hey you there. In the baby registry rabbit hole the thing experienced parents agree on. A Nanit Smart baby monitor, one camera, one app for video, breathing, motion monitoring and personalized sleep insights all in one place. Check in from anywhere, get real time safety notifications and capture every sleepy smile and goodnight kiss. The best part? Those insights help you get more sleep. Starting night one, add it to your registry or shop@nanit nanit.com. Welcome to Ms. Quoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. The only show where a six time New York Times best selling author and world renowned Bible scholar uncovers the many fascinating little known facts about the New Testament, the historical Jesus and the rise of Christianity. I'm your host, Megan Lewis. Let's begin. Welcome back everyone to Misquoting Jesus. Today we're going to be talking about martyrdom. If the apostles all died for their beliefs, then surely they must have seen the resurrected Jesus. But what happens to that assumption if they didn't die for their beliefs? What evidence do we have for early Christian martyrdom? And what do we know of the fates of the apostles after Jesus death, but before that? Barthes, hello. How are you doing today?
- [01:20]
B
Yeah, I'm doing well, thanks. Our classes have now ended. Students are taking exams and professors are grading them. The university calendar just seems, it seems a little bit strange that you end classes this early in the year, but you do. But for research professors it doesn't end. Sounds like there's no difference.
- [01:43]
A
You just kind of switch focus a little bit.
- [01:45]
B
You switch, you go from teaching to doing more research basically. So yeah, yeah, but it's all good. How about you, how are you doing?
- [01:51]
A
Yeah, good. Busy ramping up for, well, not quite finishing teaching the Sumerian grammar class that I'm doing, but moving swiftly along. It's fun. I've not actually taught Sumerian grammar to people before. I've done videos on it, but nothing with a classroom. So I'm enjoying myself.
- [02:11]
B
So. Yeah, I may have to admit I've never studied a Sumerian. Is the grammar difficult?
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A
It's bits of it are interesting.
- [02:19]
B
The reason I ask is some, some languages, grammar is very difficult, like Greek, you know, Greek is very difficult grammar. But others like Coptic for example, is not particularly difficult. In terms of the grammar, I'd say
- [02:30]
A
once you get your head around it, it's actually very regular and it makes a lot of sense. I think the difficulty a lot of people have is that it's very different to how English works. So. Yeah, but once you make that shift, I find it, it makes sense.
- [02:44]
B
Yeah. Well, I had a Professor once who told me that when it comes to Semitic languages, he says, you know, once you learn two or three of them, they're all pretty easy. That's helpful. Thanks. I think I may just stick to one or two, if it's okay with you.
- [02:59]
A
Only one or two. Well, moving on to martyrdom, then. Why is this kind of martyrdom in the history of early Christianity an important topic?
- [03:09]
B
Well, it's an interesting topic for a lot of people because they wonder what happened to the disciples of Jesus, and they wonder what happened then after the apostolic period. I mean, how widespread was martyrdom? And I think most people have this idea that thousands and thousands of people were martyred Christians and they had to go into hiding because they were an illegal religion, but that it goes all the way back. Just as Jesus was crucified, his followers were all executed. And the way it comes up with me a lot is with students or with Christian apologists who tell me that one of the really strong reasons for thinking that Jesus must have been raised from the dead is because his disciples all said they saw him alive afterwards and they were willing to die for their faith. And you can understand that somebody would be willing to die for the truth, but who'd be willing to die for a lie. And all of them died for a lie. That just makes no sense. And so that's a piece of evidence that really did see Jesus, and it means the resurrection really happened. So it's important to know when people tell me that, I just ask them, how do you know how they died? How do you know how, like, say, Peter died or John died or how do you know? And because they have no idea, they just heard, they all got martyred.
- [04:25]
A
What do we mean when we talk about someone being martyred? And where does that word come from?
- [04:30]
B
So the word, our English word, martyr comes from a Greek word, martyros, which means. It actually means witness. And so the verb means something like to bear witness, to give a testimony. And so you can give a testimony. You know, you can bear witness to something you saw yesterday, you saw a car accident. That would be your witness, your testimony. But it came to be used in a technical sense within early Christianity for people who are willing to bear witness to Christ unto death. And so the martyrs very early came to be understood as people who had died for the faith. And it's not just within Christianity. There are other religions, of course, that have martyrs, still have martyrs who've died for their faith. And within the Christian tradition, the Christian tradition is getting it from the Jewish tradition, because There are numerous accounts of Jewish martyrs, especially in the 200 years before Jesus, who were persecuted by ruling authorities because the ruling authorities didn't want them to keep the Jewish law. They wanted to move these Jews into being like everyone else, Hellenistic people, Greek people, following Greek cultures and customs. And so some Jews were martyred. And so Christians then picked up that, that whole motif, the martyrdom motif from, from Judaism.
- [05:47]
A
The early martyrs of the Jewish religion that you were, you just mentioned, were they being martyred specifically because of their faith or because they would not follow the, the legal traditions of the, the communities they were living in?
- [06:01]
B
Yeah, so it's a little bit tricky because today, you know, we think the faith is everything for religions. You know, what do you believe? That's everything. And it wasn't so much in the ancient world. Our accounts of early Jewish martyrs are varied. But one of the best sources are the books of the Maccabees. These are books that people today refer to as among the Jewish apocrypha. So they're not in the Old Testament, but they're written after the Old Testament period and before the New Testament, but they were considered as authoritative books in some circles. And the Maccabean martyrs are these people who were in Israel who were resisting the Syrian government's attempt to make Israel Hellenistic, to make it Greek. And so they built, the authorities, built a gymnasium in Jerusalem and they were outlawing Jewish practices. And in Judaism, part of being a Jew is being circumcised, keeping kosher, observing the Sabbath and so forth. And the Syriac monarch prescribed that, made it illegal to circumcise baby boys, to force people to eat pork and you know, and tried to make them non Jewish. And there were people who stood up to this. It ended up leading to a revolt in which it was kind of a, it was an extended period of guerrilla warfare really that Jews won in the Maccabean period to become a, a self governing state again for about a century before the Romans came in. But in the book of first and Second Maccabees, we have accounts of Jews who refused, who would refuse to eat pork even if it meant being tortured, horribly tortured, described in some lurid detail in these texts because they were going to stay true to the God of Israel. And so whether that's a matter of faith, it's not so much a matter of like believing the right creed or something, or the right propositional statements about God. It's a matter of doing what God commanded, which is to observe his law. And in this case things that we might think of as kind of ritual laws or something like that, but kosher food laws and Sabbath and such, when
- [08:04]
A
we talk about then early Christian martyrs, is it this same kind of martyrdom for following specific practices, or is it more to do with what people are professing as a personal faith in the Christian tradition?
- [08:19]
B
What happens is the earliest followers of Jesus, of course, are Jewish. And they by and large are not going to be martyred by Roman authorities because they're Jewish. And Jews did not have to follow Roman customs within the Roman Empire. They didn't have to sacrifice to the gods. They didn't have to practice any kind of Roman religions. They had their own religion, and that was acceptable. And the followers of Jesus followed Judaism. The reason Christians ended up getting into trouble with Roman authorities is that by the end of the first century, most people who are following Jesus are not Jews. But they're also not. They're not following Jewish practices, they're gentiles. So they're not necessarily circumcising their children. They're not keeping kosher food laws, they're not keeping Jewish festivals. They're not doing things Jews do. But at the same time, they're not participating in civil life within their cities. And they're not worshiping the Roman gods because they can't. They're monotheists. They worship the God of Israel. But outsiders had trouble figuring this out because you say you're following the God of Israel, but you don't follow the Jewish law. So what does it even mean that you. And they found it confusing. They knew these people were not Jews, but they're not worshiping the Roman gods. And that was seen as problematic because if you don't worship the Roman gods, the gods are the ones who make the state great and they support us and they help us thrive, they help us win our wars, they make sure our livestock reproduce and our crops grow, and you're not worshiping them. That's bad. And so there are instances then when Christians began to be martyred because they crossed the authorities or because they were just seen as troublemakers or whatever reason. But they end up being crucified then. And they understood it to mean that it's because I'm staying true to my Christian faith. And if it requires martyrdom, okay, I'll say most Christians who are confronted with this choice didn't necessarily decide to get martyred. We have lots of evidence even within Christian sources that most people just caved in and said, look, it ain't worth it. You know, I'll Believe it in my heart. But I don't mind offering a sacrifice to the emperor if it's going to get me off the hook. I'm just going to go through the motions. But some people were martyred.
- [10:34]
A
How often were people martyred? Do we have a sense of that?
- [10:37]
B
The sense that historians have is very different from the sense you get from Hollywood movies. When you watch the movies, you know, it looks like the Christians are illegal and they have to go into hiding. They go into the catacombs, and if they get caught, they get crucified or they get killed in some way. And that's not, not true historically. There's an interesting book by Candida Moss that's called the Myth of Christian Persecution, where she argues that the idea that Christians are being persecuted all the time and getting martyred right, left and center just ain't true. And she goes through the sources to show it ain't true. We don't know how often it happened. Within the New Testament itself, there are two accounts of people being martyred. James, one of Jesus, closest disciples, not his brother, but Peter, James and John. That James and Stephen in the Book of Acts, it's not clear to me there really was a Stephen who was martyred. He may have been. We only have this account in Acts, chapter seven and eight. There are some suggestions in the Gospels that Peter, James and John will all suffer martyrdom, but that's it by way of the Gospels and the Book of Acts. So we're just talking about a couple people then, in the Book of Revelation, the author of Revelation seems to think that countless myriads are being martyred. That's certainly not true. He appears to have been writing during the reign of Domitian in the 90s, and there's no evidence of any major persecutions going on in the days of Domitian. We start finding about martyrdoms in the early second century, but they're scattered, they're quite random. We know the names of a couple of people, Irenaeus and Polycarp, but the accounts are spotty. Later authors claimed that hundreds and hundreds of people are being martyred, but there's very little to support it. And when you have somebody like Eusebius in the 4th century saying, you know, oh, at this place, you know, there are these hundreds of martyrs and, you know, he names three. And so it's hard to know, but it doesn't look like it was. It was a massive thing.
- [12:38]
A
Did people ever try and provoke their own martyrdom?
- [12:41]
B
Ah, now this is an interesting question, because voluntary martyrdom was an issue in early Christianity. We have a number of accounts that are called the acts of the martyrs, the acts of the Christian Martyrs, which are allegedly eyewitness accounts of martyrdoms in the second, third, fourth centuries. And they're interesting for lots of reasons. One is how historical are they? Some of them claim to be actually not quite stenographic notes of the trials, but something kind of close to that. And some are actually descriptions of the martyrdoms and what happened and so forth. And a couple reasons they're interesting is one thing is the Roman authorities, in most instances, do their best not to martyr somebody. You know, they try to get somebody just. They say, look, just see reason. All I'm asking you to do is to throw a little incense on a fire and honor the emperor. Nope, not going to do it. Just do it. I'm a Christian. I can't do it. But the authorities sometimes are really trying to. They don't want to do it. The authorities don't want to do it. But the other interesting thing is that sometimes somebody will be on trial, a Christian will be on trial, and someone else in the crowd will say, look, just give him, you know, just shove some mercy, and the ruler will turn to him. Are you a Christian, too? Yes, I'm a Christian. Okay, you too. Martyrs him as well. But then we have some accounts that go back our earliest account of a martyrdom, where we actually have a narrative of it. It's called the Martyrdom of Polycarp. It's one of the books that is called the Apostolic Fathers, which is a collection of writings allegedly made by people who were companions of the apostles. That's almost certainly not true now we know. But they're early books within Christianity. And the Martyrdom of Polycarp describes the martyrdom of this bishop of Smyrna in Asia Minor, named Polycarp, an important figure in early 2nd century Christianity. The account normally dated to around the year155 or so and is said to be an eyewitness account. But recent scholarship has shown that it's probably not written then, that it was written later by somebody simply claiming to be an eyewitness. So maybe early third century. But in the account, there's a condemnation by the author of the account, who condemns a person who came forward as a martyr, who voluntarily martyred. He wanted them to martyr him. And the reason the author condemns it is because this person named Quintus comes forward to this Christian and turns himself up. And so they'll martyr him when he sees the Implements of torture. He backs off and he recants. And so this office says, don't volunteer. This is not good. Don't volunteer. And so it's not clear how many volunteers there were, but there are accounts of them volunteering anyway.
- [15:27]
A
Thank you. Turning then to the apostles themselves, what sources do we have for their lives after the crucifixion of Jesus? And how reliable do we think they are?
- [15:37]
B
You know, the interesting thing about Jesus? 12 disciples. Who? Okay, so the 12 disciples. Let me define a couple of terms, because the term disciple is not the same as the term apostle. The term disciple means somebody who learns from someone else. And so you're somebody's student and you're a follower of that person that's a disciple, somebody who's a follower, a learner, an apostle. The term apostle means somebody who has been sent out. And so an apostle is somebody who's been sent on a mission. Like a king could have an apostle send him out on a mission. And Jesus has these apostles. The 11 remaining disciples all become apostles. They're sent out on mission. Paul understood himself to be an apostle. Barnabas is called an apostle. A woman named Junia is called an apostle. In the New Testament, these are people who understand themselves and who are understood by others to have been commissioned by Christ to spread the Gospel. So the interesting thing about the 11 disciples who become apostles, we know very little about any of them, even during their lives. In the New Testament, Jesus chooses 12. But there's just nothing said, no stories about most of them, either during Jesus life or afterwards in the Book of Acts. Book of Acts is called the Acts of the Apostles, meaning their activities. But apart from Peter and John and then Paul, you hear almost nothing. We don't have good records from the New Testament at all about these people. What we do have are later accounts that are highly legendary of a few of them. These are called the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. And so we have fragments of a number of them. But there are five major ones that still survive today. These are accounts of the missionary activities and teachings and so forth of the apostles after Jesus death. We have Acts of Peter, Paul, John, Andrew, and Thomas. Those five. They're the five major ones. And one interesting thing is that most people's understanding of these various apostles come from these legendary accounts. For example, the idea that Thomas was the missionary to India or that Peter was crucified upside down. These kinds of things that are kind of common knowledge come from these apocryphal acts of the apostles.
- [17:54]
A
Do we know Given what you've just said about the sources, do we know how any of the apostles died?
- [18:01]
B
Yeah, well, knowledge is a tricky thing when it comes to history. There's some things we're more certain about than others. One thing that everybody says, as I indicated earlier, is that all the apostles are martyred for their faith. We don't have any record of that. In one of these apocryphal acts, the Acts of John, John is not martyred. He dies as an old man of old age in Ephesus. And so that puts the lie right there in our oldest account of John's death. He doesn't die as a martyr. The other four are martyred. But these are later accounts, and they are so highly legendary that if you actually read them, you aren't going to believe that they're historical. I'll give you an example. The martyrdom of Paul. According to the martyrdom of Paul, in the Acts of Paul, Paul has raised one of Nero's, the Emperor Nero's servants from the dead. The servant then realizes that Christ is his lord rather than Nero. Nero gets upset, and he finds out a couple of the people in his court are also Christians who understand Christ to be lord rather than Nero to be lord. And so he gets upset, and so he arrests the Christians. And so this is the account of how Nero persecuted the Christians. In this account, it's not because of the fire in Rome, as we know from history and from Tacitus, for example, but it's because all of Nero's people are becoming Christian, and he has the Christians rounded up, including Paul. And Paul appears before Nero. And Nero says, you know who's the real lord? And Paul says, well, actually, it's Jesus. So Nero condemns him to death. And Paul says, you can kill me, but you're not really going to kill me. I'm going to come back and visit you after I'm dead. And since Paul is a Roman citizen, in this account, Nero orders him beheaded. In the Roman world, people who were Roman citizens were given the least painful way of execution, which at the time was beheading. So Paul goes off and he gets beheaded. When he's beheaded, milk pours out of his neck rather than blood, and it spatters the coat of one of the people who's executing him. And it's apparently because milk is what you give to babies when they're just born. And now Paul's been born again because he's had his head lopped off. And then, then he comes back and he visits Nero with his Head still on. And he says, see, I told you I was going to visit you. Right? Okay, so that's the account. And you know, nobody really thinks that's what happened, but that's the account. I'm sorry, this is kind of a long answer to your question. Do we know how any of these people died? So we don't know how any of them actually died. We do have indications that Peter probably was martyred, but we don't know the circumstances. There's a suggestion of it already in the Gospel of John, which appears to be written after Peter's death. Jesus at the end of the Gospel tells Peter that he will be martyred. So that suggests that it has happened. In a non canonical work called First Clement, we have an indication that Peter and Paul bore witness unto death. This is an account written around the year 95 or so by Christians living in the city of Rome, written to Christians living in Corinth. And the author mentions Peter and Paul going to their deaths. And so that's usually an indication that they died of martyrdom. And the author though does not say it happened in Rome, which is the traditional place of their death, doesn't say it happened under Nero. He indicates that they died a faithful death. Other than that, we really don't have too much to go on apart from these apocryphal acts.
- [21:34]
A
If we have so little actual evidence for how the apostles died. Do you know how this idea of them all being martyred for their faith came into being?
- [21:44]
B
The early church fathers who wrote history wanted to claim that Christianity has always been a persecuted religion. It's always had a lot of martyrs wanted to argue that the apostles were all faithful unto death. And so some of the church fathers who end up writing church histories, like Eusebius, make claims about the apostles deaths. This claim though, that all the apostles died for their faith, I think it's just become kind of common knowledge, so much so that people don't ever look into it. And so it's one of these things where nobody bothers to try and document it. But it's become useful as an apologetic tool in modern times for the reason that I mentioned, because Christian apologists want to affirm that the apostles really did believe Jesus was raised from the dead, which means they must have really seen him. And they wouldn't be making it up, they wouldn't be lying about it. They really believed it. And that's evidence that it really happened. And so that's an apologetic tool. It's more based on rumor and hearsay from long centuries after the fact than it is anything in history.
- [22:48]
A
So I have just a really quick question. One of the things that you kind of hear if you look up, for example, death of the Apostles, is that Peter was crucified upside down. Is that true? And why on earth would would that be the case?
- [23:02]
B
Right, so it's a quick question, but it's not a quick answer. So the idea that Peter got crucified upside down first appears in one of these apocryphal acts that I mentioned, the Acts of Peter, which has an account of his death. And the account that people who think they know about it is almost always wrong. The account that I grew up on. The account that I grew up on was that there's a persecution of Christians under Nero in the year 64, and that Peter decided to escape out of town to avoid the persecution. And he's walking along, and Jesus shows up, walking into Rome. And Peter says, quo vadis, where are you going? Quo vadis, where are you going? And Jesus says, well, I'm going to. I'm going into Rome to be crucified. Peter says, you have to be crucified again. And Jesus says, yes, I do. And so Peter feels guilty, and he says, oh, God, I'll die for you. And he goes in and gets crucified, and he decides to get crucified upside down because Jesus died that way. Jesus died by crucifixion. And Peter doesn't think that he's worthy to die the way Jesus did. And so he asked to be crucified upside down. There are elements of the story that do go back to this first account, the Acts of Peter, but actually it's all twisted and turned around from what the actual Peter actually says. So in our first account, what happens is Peter is trying to escape persecution in Rome at the encouragement of his followers. He himself wants to be martyred. But they say, no, Peter, we need you too much. You got to escape. So he leaves Rome, and he does see Jesus coming in, and he asks him, quo vadis, where are you going? And Jesus says, I need to be crucified. But Peter realizes that means, oh, I need to be crucified because Christ is in me. And so he rejoices. And he goes back happily, not out of guilt. He goes back happily to be crucified, and Jesus ascends to heaven. And so Peter goes back happily to be crucified. They arrest him. They're going to crucify him. And he does ask to be crucified upside down. But in this earliest account, it's not because he doesn't want to die like Jesus. He wants his crucifixion to teach an object lesson. And he says, if you just crucify me upside down, I'll explain to everybody why I want this. Okay. Romans, by the way, were rather infamous for using bizarre positions to crucify people in as a kind of mockery. It's kind of an ugly story about that. But they crucify Peter upside down. And from the cross, Peter gives a speech where he explains that the first man fell in sin, so he fell head first. And that's why children come out head first when they're born. And because everybody comes in out head first, they see the world upside down. And so we, from our very beginning, see the reverse of what's true for us. It's all upside down. So what we think matters is just the opposite of what matters. What we think doesn't matter is the opposite of what doesn't matter. And you have to see right side up, the things of this world that people live for are not the things that really should be lived for. You should not be living for things down here. You should be living for things up there. And you can only see it when you reverse your vision. You have to look at everything upside down from how everybody else sees it. And so that's why he's being crucified upside down, to show that the truth is upside down of what you think. And for one thing, dying is life and suffering is glory. And these are the opposite of what you think, because you haven't turned upside down yet. So that's a story. And then he dies.
- [26:33]
A
That's. That's really interesting. Yeah, I don't think I'd be half as eloquent in the same position.
- [26:39]
B
No, no, I know. And you know, these martyrs often are eloquent in their dying moments. And the martyrdoms are usually described not of the apostles, but just general martyrdoms. When you have these martyr accounts, they're usually described as showing that these people being martyred aren't feeling any pain. And so there's an interesting book about this by a former student of mine, Stephanie Cobb, who wrote a book trying to show that the whole account of these martyrdoms are designed to show that since they have a vision of Christ at the time, or since they are so spiritually oriented, they don't feel pain. And you get this right early on in this first martyrdom account, the Martyrdom of Polycarp, where the author tells us that Christians are being flogged within an inch of their lives. So they're using these whips, these devices that just rip the skin off so that you could see their veins and their arteries from their backs. And they don't even moan. It's like feels, you know, and the fire was like cold to them. So part of this is just glorifying martyrdom and showing that God allows people to get through it. But all of these are, you know, this is just highly legendary material. And so the question about what really happened to the apostles, we just, we don't know. I mean, they might have been martyred, but there's no evidence, real evidence that they were. They might have died of natural causes, died as old, old men. We don't, we just don't know.
- [28:03]
A
Well, Bart, thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions. We're going to take a very brief break, after which Bart is going to share some news and then we have questions from our audience.
- [28:17]
B
If you're enjoying the Misquoting Jesus podcast, you'd probably like my online courses as well. I've produced a number so far with multi lecture courses on the New Testament Gospels and the books of the Benitou, standalone lectures on the Christmas story and the earliest Christian views of Jesus, and a six hour debate on whether Jesus was actually raised from the dead. If you're interested, check them out@Barterman.com you'll receive a discount on your purchase simply by entering the code MJ Podcast.
- [28:53]
A
Welcome back everyone. And we now have parts the of weekly update.
- [28:59]
B
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.
- [29:13]
A
Bart, what is going on in your world this week?
- [29:17]
B
Well, I'm getting ready for some travel. We've got a couple of trips planned and since both Sarah and I are a little bit book crazy, the issue is always like, how do you travel? Because you need about 100 books with you and books are heavy. But I've decided actually, so I'm going to do something different this time. You know, I basically work when I'm on the road. But I decided I think I'm just going to take a Bible. And the reason is because I've been reading all this stuff on Greek and Roman moral philosophy, about teachings of ancient philosophers, about ethics and how to live and, and my book's going to be about how Jesus is really different and how Jesus is getting his ethics from the Old Testament prophets. And I think I'm just going to spend, like a couple months just rereading, like, teachings of Jesus and the prophets and then sketching out my book, you know, without reading secondary literature on it yet, just like, you know, doing that. So I'm thinking, wow, I'm going to travel light. That's going to be great.
- [30:10]
A
That sounds both convenient and productive.
- [30:12]
B
Yeah, I hope so.
- [30:13]
A
Okay, we are going to move on now to audience questions.
- [30:20]
B
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 bart erman.com askbart
- [30:38]
A
okay, Bart, no outsmarting you this week. This is just people would like your thoughts on some things they have. So first up, is there any scriptural basis for the mythology around Lucifer as a fallen angel? Any explanation as to why he fell and how and why he's been turned into Satan? The questioner says, I keep being told that the answer is in the Bible, but it wasn't in either of the two Bibles I had read.
- [31:04]
B
Yes, right. Okay. It's a good question. And most people get their idea of the fall of Satan from Milton, from John Milton's Paradise Lost, but they assume that it's simply in the Bible. Milton was a Puritan. He wasn't making stuff up. He's basing his traditions about Satan and the Garden of Eden and Paradise Lost. From biblical interpretation that had been around for a very long time, there's no passage that actually describes it the way people are accustomed to hearing it, which is that Satan starts out as one of the top angels, maybe the chief angel up in heaven, and he sins against God and so God kicks him out and he falls to earth. And this is why it causes such havoc here on earth. There are biblical passages that were cited in order to support this view. There are two passages from the Old Testament. One is Isaiah, chapter 14, and the other is Ezekiel 28, both of which are referring to a king, a foreign king, a foreign, foreign to Israel, who is dominating Israel, that God's going to take them out. And so they sometimes described in celestial terms. So there'd be like a fall from heaven. You built yourself up to be equal to God, but now God's going to destroy you and send you down. Those are referring to kings, a king of Babylon and a king of Tyre, the city of Tyre. And it's using metaphorical language then, which gets applied to the Satanic figure. Why the Satanic figure falling from heaven? It's because of what's in the Gospels. When Jesus sends out his apostles during his lifetime, he sends them out to do the things that he'd been doing, to go around the countryside and heal the sick and to cast out demons and to preach the coming kingdom. And when they return, you know, they're just all pumped because it worked. They had this power. They were able to do all these things. And Jesus says, I saw Satan falling from heaven. What he means by that is he knew that these apostles in fact were defeating the powers of evil by what they were doing by healing the sick and casting out demons. And so I saw Satan falling from heaven. And so that's applied to these passages in Ezekiel and Isaiah. And you come up with the total picture then of Satan being kicked out of heaven. And that's what's leading to all these disasters on earth.
- [33:24]
A
Excellent. Thank you so much. That's actually something that I'd wondered about myself. So I am glad to know. Next question. Is it possible, based on the depictions of Mary Magdalene both in the Bible and in extra sources, that she is the beloved disciple?
- [33:40]
B
Ah, good question. The beloved disciple is a reference to a figure in the Gospel of John who is one of Jesus disciples. And he's not named or she's not named, it's not named. The disciple is not named. The disciple is called the disciple that Jesus loved. And so there are a lot of theories about who this disciple who Jesus loved could be. The most common theory is that it is John, the son of Zebedee, one of Jesus closest disciples. The reason for isolating John is because this disciple whom Jesus loved, he's found only in the Gospel of John. And sometimes he's paired with Peter, so it couldn't be Peter. And in the other gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, you have three close disciples, Peter, James and John. So it can't be Peter, it can't be James. Because this person, the beloved disciple, sometimes said to be the author of the Gospel of John. And the Gospel of John is written at the end of the first century. And as I mentioned earlier, James was understood to be one of the first martyrs. So he couldn't be writing a gospel at the end of the first century. So it can't be Peter and can't be James, it must be John. So that's the argument. And so John is often portrayed as the closest disciple to Jesus, who leans against his breast at the Last Supper, who's at the bottom of the cross with Jesus, Mother Mary. And so that all that's from the Gospel of John. So That's a lot of people think, some people think that it's Lazarus because in the Gospel of John, Lazarus, Jesus is said to love Lazarus. So some people, some people who are on the Mary Magdalene kick, as we talked about in earlier, in an earlier episode, have said, well, it might be Mary Magdalene because she's the closest disciple and Jesus in the outside of the New Testament, we're told that Jesus loved her more than the other disciples. And so maybe it's Mary Magdalene. There are problems with this view, serious problems with this view. One is that this disciple is always referred to with a masculine pronoun. It's always a he. Nothing to suggest it's a woman. This disciple is at the Last Supper. So it'd have to be one of the 12. There's no indication that Mary Magdalene was one of the 12. And Mary Magdalene is set over against the disciples at the end of the Gospel of John. And so, so there are lots of reasons for thinking it's not a woman and that it's not Mary Magdalene. And I think the only reason people have said that is because traditions developed later that Jesus and Mary were very, very close. But as I indicated in our earlier episode, in fact there's nothing to indicate in the Gospels that they were person close in any way.
- [36:13]
A
Excellent, thank you. This next question goes back to Nero and the Book of Revelation. And the questioner says the persecution of Christians under Nero you seems to depict as being small SC limited mainly to the city of Rome. How do you square this with the depiction of Nero and the Roman Empire as seen in the Book of Revelation?
- [36:32]
B
It's a really great question. I have to deal with this in my book Armageddon where I give an interpretation of the Book of Revelation. The author of Revelation understands that many multitudes of people have been martyred. Nero is the enemy. Nero is portrayed as the beast from the sea. This kind of Antichrist figure in the Book of Revelation, who is he in the city of Rome is drunk with the blood of the martyrs. And so martyrdom is a big deal in the Book of Revelation. This has come under a good deal of scrutiny by historical scholars, especially over the last 20 or 30 years. Were there massive persecutions under Nero or not? And for a very large number of reasons, historical scholars on all sides of the theological spectrum, I'm not just talking about atheists or just, you know, certain kinds of Christians, but they're basically historical scholars have agreed there was not a massive persecution of Christ under Nero. There were Christians who were persecuted enough for Tacitus to take notice. But you know, we're not talking about hundreds and hundreds. Whether we're talking about dozens is a question, but we're not talking about hundreds and hundreds. We're certainly not talking about myriads the way that they're portrayed in the book of Revelation. The most compelling work on Revelation in the last 20 or 30 years has examined this kind of thing by people like Adela Yarboro Collins, who is a professor of New Testament at Yale, who shows fairly conclusively that what's going on is that John is not describing historical realities when he talks about the myriads of martyrs. He is caught up in the idea that Christians are always persecuted. And it's a perceived problem, perceived opposition that isn't necessarily tied to historical reality. So there's evidence for that. But that's boldly stated view is that Revelation is describing perceived persecution rather than real persecution. And that's a very common phenomenon throughout Christianity, the history of Christianity, of people perceiving that millions and millions of people are being martyred in a time when there weren't even millions and millions of Christians.
- [38:44]
A
Excellent. Thank you. Could Mark have been written as theater? And if so, why does it matter?
- [38:50]
B
Could Mark have been written as theater? There's no evidence that it was. Theater was normally written in poetry. So there it's poetic lines and Mark is entirely prose. Mark doesn't have any of the markings of a play. For example, I suppose if you thought it was a play, you'd think it was a tragedy. And of course, we have lots of tragedy written. He's writing in Greek. We have a lot of Greek tragedy. And it is written and set up as nothing like any of the Greek tragedies. I'm right now I'm reading Sophocles, Oedipus the King, Oedipus Rex in Greek. And I can tell you Mark's Creek is nothing like tragic Greek. And so there's nothing to suggest it's written for theater. What it's like is biography. It's like account narrative accounts of people's lives. That's its generic connection. That's what the genre probably is.
- [39:43]
A
And this is our final question. Is Jesus the apocalyptic prophet, a kind of latest iteration of the attempts to reinterpret failed prophecies from the Book of Daniel? If so, what is the scholarly consensus on the authenticity and reliability of the Book of Daniel? And how does it reflect onto the story of Jesus?
- [40:02]
B
So at first when he said that, I thought he, he or she was, was asking about my book, Jesus the apocalyptic Prophet. But it sounds like they're not. It sounds like they're saying the identity
- [40:11]
A
of Jesus as well.
- [40:12]
B
The identity of Jesus as is an attempt to kind of, to readdress, reinterpret
- [40:16]
A
the Book of Daniel.
- [40:17]
B
The Book of Daniel? Yeah. I think what's going on is that Jesus himself was influenced by a number of books that were in the Hebrew Bible and that Jesus himself was influenced by the Book of Daniel. Especially the passage in Daniel chapter 7. One of Jesus Common sayings involves the Son of Man. The Son of Man teachings in Jesus in Jesus teachings is, is a very, very, very complicated issue. Very large books written on this that disagree with each other about what Jesus meant by the Son of Man. And so I'm not going to get into all that here, but I will say this. In the Book of Daniel, chapter seven, Daniel has a vision of four beasts that come out of the sea, one after the other, who more or less take over the earth. They're horrible beings. They persecute the followers of God, they make life miserable for everybody, and everybody's miserable. But then he sees one like a Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven. As opposed to being a beastly figure, this is a humane like figure. Instead of coming from the sea of chaos, he comes from heaven. And this one destroys the kingdoms that are controlling the earth and takes over the earth and the entire earth is given over to this one. Like a son of man. Jesus talked about a Son of man coming. And I think the historical Jesus really did talk about the Son of Man coming, who was seen to be a cosmic judge of the earth that would destroy these other kingdoms and the forces of evil that supported them. So I think Jesus is himself reinterpreting the Book of Daniel to refer to something soon to happen in his day. The Gospels further reinterpret the sayings of Jesus so that he's the Son of Man who's coming. And so I think that Daniel is being reinterpreted by early Christians and appropriated to describe the apocalyptic end that is soon to come. That has no bearing on the authenticity of Daniel itself. This is how people were using Daniel several centuries after it was written. With respect to the authenticity of Daniel, the Book of Daniel claims to be written by a young man named Daniel who was an exile in Babylon in the 6th century BCE, a very holy righteous Jew to whom God revealed visions. Scholars even in antiquity, but especially over the last hundred years, have known that Daniel was not written in the sixth century. It was written in the second century BCE during the persecutions that I mentioned earlier under the Maccabees during the Maccabean period of persecution, and that it's written by somebody who wants to claim to be a person living hundreds of years earlier, who sees the future. And this author living in the second century knows that there's going to be a Babylonian empire, the media, and then Persia and then Greece. And so he predicts all this, but he's predicting what's already happened, and then he's predicting what's happening in his own day under Syria, indicating that God's going to destroy the Syrian monarch that's making life miserable. And so Daniel is written by somebody claiming to be a person living hundreds of years earlier in order to convince his audience of the truth of his message. So it's not written by the person it claims to be to that extent. It wouldn't be authentic in that sense, but it is certainly a document that was hugely important for apocalyptic Jews in the days of Jesus.
- [43:32]
A
Thank you, Bart. Audience thank you so much for sending in all of your questions. Bart, before we wrap up for the week, could you just give a brief summary of what we've talked about?
- [43:41]
B
Well, we were talking about martyrdom in early Christianity and the extent of how often were Christians being martyred. Some were, but it was not nearly as extensive as in the popular imagination today. We especially were interested in the question of whether the apostles of Jesus, including his 11 disciples after his death, whether they were martyred. So many evangelical Christians today insist that Jesus must have been raised from the dead because his apostles saw him, and they were willing to die for their belief that he was raised from the dead and they were willing to be martyred for it. And I'm not denying that they were martyred. I'm saying we have no evidence of it. And so the assured statement that all the apostles were martyred is simply not true. We don't have accounts of this except for later legends for a few of them. And those later legends are clearly not historical. So in the end, we just don't know how most of the apostles died.
- [44:36]
A
Thank you. And you mentioned a couple of books while we were talking as well, one by Candida Moss and another by a student of yours whose name currently escapes me, Stephanie Cobb. Yes. Could you just remind us what those books are, please?
- [44:48]
B
So Kada Dimas book is called the Myth of Persecution, and it's a myth of early Christian persecution. And so it tries to show that these accounts actually are not historical. And Stephanie Cobb, who's a professor at University of Richmond in Virginia, has a book called Divine Deliverance, Pain and Painlessness in Early Christianity. And so that's the account that tries to show that these accounts of the martyrdoms are trying to show that in fact martyrs who suffer death didn't feel any pain. And she tries to deal with why they would say that and how they used painlessness as a way of conveying their message.
- [45:29]
A
Well, Bart, thank you so much. As ever, it's been a pleasure audience. Thank you all for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please remember to subscribe to the podcast and make sure you don't miss future episodes. Remember also that you can use the code mjpodcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.barterman.com. misquoting Jesus will be back next week, but what are we going to be talking about?
- [45:53]
B
Well, we're going to move on from Jesus in the Gospels to the Apostle Paul. Many scholars and many lay people think of Paul as the one who really started Christianity, that Jesus taught that you needed to repent because God's kingdom was coming. But Paul preached that to be saved, you have to believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus. So is it right to call Paul the founder of Christianity? And so we'll be talking about that. It's a really big issue.
- [46:19]
A
Excellent. Please, everyone join us next week if you can. 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.