← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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- [00:00]
A
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B
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. Hello everyone and welcome back to Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. Today we're talking about writing books. Bart is a six time New York Times best selling author. But really, how many other academics can you name who have had such success in writing popular books? Why are so few professional researchers trying to write for non academic audiences? Is it really that difficult or is there something else going on before we get to that? Bart, how are you doing today?
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A
Yeah, I'm doing well. Yeah. So this week is my birthday week. My birthday's in two days.
- [01:29]
B
Well, happy birthday.
- [01:30]
A
Well, yeah, kind of. I mean, I'm going to be 68. How did this happen? But the thing is, you know, I've got a brother who's also an academic who's a classics scholar. He and I work in very similar fields. He's a Greek and Latin scholar, teaches at Kent State. He was born three years before me to the day we had the same birthday.
- [01:51]
B
Oh wow.
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A
Everybody, especially my wife Sarah, says, man, it must have been bad for you. You came along, man, that's just not good for you. I said, look, it's not my fault. And in fact, his name is Rad, Rad Ehrman. He's a fine classicist philologist. He's such a nice guy, doesn't have a mean bone in his body, he's never taking it out on me. But anyway, yeah, so it's our birthday in two days.
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B
Well, it's very kind of him to be so gracious about it because I can imagine many young children would not be. I know, quite so kind.
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A
No, I know, I know, I know. But yeah, so anyway, these birthdays, you know, people always used to say that the Older you get, the faster time goes by. And you kind of always thought that was a metaphor until it happens. And it is just unbelievable how fast things go the older you get. And when I get to be about 120, I think it'll go really fast. How are you doing?
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B
Yeah, good, good actually. And on the subject of birthdays, my son was born first grandchild for my mother. He was born on her birthday.
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A
Okay.
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B
That's not for a couple months though. But yeah, I, I officially won all daughter points possible with that particular birthday present.
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A
Yeah, well, you know, I'm awful because I never can remember my grandkids birthdays. I keep writing them down, forget, it's like, oh God, oh my God, next Friday, that kind of thing. But you know, if, if the child's born on your birthday then man, you got that one nailed.
- [03:11]
B
You kind of have to remember. I, I am, I am similarly not so gifted with remembering birthdays. My younger sister is very, very organized and she will send out a family message two weeks in advance for every single birthday and anniversary so that everybody remembers. And somehow I still manage to completely forget.
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A
I was going to say I wish one of my siblings would do that, but in fact I'd forget too.
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B
It's very kind and helpful of her.
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A
Academics are horrible, horrible people.
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B
My mum very optimistically bought me a birthday book so you can write down and I've never written a single thing in it.
- [03:46]
A
Yeah, well, I had an app and then the app stopped working and I didn't ever refer to it when it did work. So I don't know what to do.
- [03:53]
B
Oh gosh. Well, we can't do dates, but we can write. And writing is something you are personally very, very good at. So we should talk about exactly what a popular or a trade book is and what academics mean when they talk about those.
- [04:10]
A
Yeah, that's a good way to put it because academics call the end, publishers call these things trade books. And the problem with that phrase is that most people don't know what that means. Trade book. In fact, I didn't know what it meant until after I'd written my third or fourth book. Somebody said trade book. I didn't even know what they meant. It means a popular book, a book for a popular audience. But the problem with calling it a popular book, if I tell somebody I'm writing a popular book, they're thinking, well, what makes you think it's so popular? And so it's like either what, but it refers to a non academic book. And so the kinds of books I Write. I actually write three different kinds of books. I write the academic books that are sometimes called scholarly monographs, but they're scholarly books for scholars with a lot of background with whom you can use jargon, and they know the history of the discipline and you don't have to say the basic stuff. And you really can't say the basic stuff or they're going to think you're an idiot. But then I also write textbooks which are for college and university students. I have several textbooks on the Bible and the New Testament and early Christianity. Those are for classroom work at university. And then I have trade books, you know, books for popular audiences. And those are books that are trying to reach not people who are trained in the field, but people who are precisely not trained and trying to convey scholarly knowledge to a broader audience. That's what a trade book is.
- [05:37]
B
We've talked a little bit before about tenure and the career path for most academics. Do trade books give you any advantage over colleagues when you're putting together a tenure packet or when you're applying for jobs and that kind of thing?
- [05:51]
A
No. In fact, quite the contrary. For a long time, trade books were looked down upon by other academics, and they still often are. Many academics think that you're just dumbing things down for a broader audience, that it's not serious work, it doesn't involve any serious research. This is what they say, and that, you know, it just kind of simple to do. Anybody could do that, you know, especially when you're like me, I'm at a research one university. So research one university means the top priority is research. Of course, teaching too. I mean, we teach and it's really important to teach. And we do teach. But at a research university you have to teach and do high level research. And people who do high level research historically have looked down on people who can do the research, but then also communicate to a broader audience and especially look down on people who don't do the research but write for a broader audience. I always tell young academics who ask me who, if they don't have tenure yet. Tenure is when you are. You go through a process where you're evaluated for your teaching, but especially your research and the kinds of public service you do, whether they're going to give you a permanent position in which you cannot be fired unless there are serious financial exigencies in the institution or because of very serious moral infractions. And so you basically, you've got a job for life for reasons. We've talked about another thing. But if you don't have tenure, you have to get tenure. And to get tenure you have to show that you do research. Even at, like, you know, small liberal arts colleges, you've got to show that you're a serious academic. And so I tell young academics who tell me they want to write a trade book, I say, no, don't write a trade book. You'd be crazy to write a trade. Number one, it's going to count against you for tenure because you should be doing research instead of trying to communicate to a popular audience yet. And number two, it takes years to become an expert in your field after your PhD and you're not ready yet really to write a book for a broader audience until you really are an established expert. As I usually tell young scholars, at least write two scholarly books or three scholarly books before you even think about a trade book.
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B
So when you're looking at writing a trade book, how do you decide what you're going to write about? And do you try and write about the same things that you write about for your academic monographs and papers?
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A
Of course, different people have different approaches. Normally people who are writing a trade book are writing about something they're already an expert in. And so it's something that they've, you know, they spent their lives doing hardcore research for. And in my case I do a lot of writing. And so on a number of occasions I've written a scholarly book on a topic and a popular book or trade book on the same topic or on a closely related topic. And people who are just going to Barnes and Noble and looking for a book or on Amazon looking for some, some kind of non fiction that they'd be interested in, they're not going to want to slug through a really hardcore academic book even in religious studies. It's just that it's not simple to do. And so they want a popular book. And so I sometimes do that. I've done that several times in my career. There are other times when I've simply picked a topic for a trade book and written it. It's something I know a lot about, I've taught about all these years, or I've read about all these years. And so I know the literature and stuff. What I typically do in deciding whether it's just a kind of a one off for a trade book, like I have a trade book called How Jesus Became God. So I've never written an academic book dealing with the issue of the development of early Christology, which is what that is, which I would love to do if I had time. But I have never done that. So that was kind of a one off thing. And other times, like I've got here in front of me, I've got two books that I wrote. One is called Forgery and Counter Forgery, that's a serious book. And this book is called Forge, which is a popular book. And in this case it's a spin off. But in both cases, whether it's the How Jesus Became God or the Forged. The reason I choose to write a trade book is because I think it's something that's really interesting that people would be really interested in that need to have it explain, you know, what scholars say about it. Because what scholars say about this is not what people would assume usually. So something interesting that they might be interested in and that could be explained.
- [10:15]
B
When you're coming up with these book ideas is like the market viability something that you have to factor in, or do you have like a publishing rep that you talk to and say, hey, I want to write this book. Is this something that you would publish because you think there's a market for it?
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A
I think marketing is very important to the publisher because the bottom line is they're publishing books to sell books. And scholars who are writing trade books are writing trade books for the same reason. They write any book, they want people to read them. And that's the major point, is to get scholarly ideas broadly spread out among the population. And so it would be a little bit crazy to write a trade book on something nobody was interested in. The publisher won't accept it and nobody will read it. So what's the point? And so in my case, usually what happens is I come up with an idea and I bounce it off my agent and we bounce it off a publisher and they go for it or not. Most of the time the ideas I come up with are things I'm pretty sure people are going to be interested in because I do a lot of speaking. For years I spoke all around the country doing stuff and I just knew what people, you know, were interested in. And so I had a pretty good idea. Other times I'll propose something, they'll say, you know, I just don't think it's the kind of thing people want to read. And then I go to plan B.
- [11:37]
B
So what is plan B? You come up with a different idea or you kind of workshop it with the publisher and with your agents?
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A
Well, I don't know how this happened, but I have some graduate students who never have an idea. I think they don't know what they want to do. They're really smart, they know tons of stuff, but they can't decide, oh, do I do this Sometimes it's because they have too many ideas. They'd like to do this like that 20 things they want their dissertation on. And you say, look, you got to pick something. And there are other people I've had who just like, have trouble just, oh, God, I don't know. I just can't come up with some kind of new idea about anything. You know, what do I do? And so there's like that. And for me, it's never been like that for me. I probably have 12 trade books in my head right now that I'd like to write. I won't be able to write them all because as I pointed out, I'm turning 68. It's unlikely I'll be able to write them all. But they would all, I think, would all be good trade books. And so I'm one of these people, like, who has an idea and I can figure out how to do it and I would love to do it. And sometimes when I propose one of these things, as I said sometimes my publisher will say, yeah, I don't think so. Or they'll say, well, okay, but you know, you really need to do kind of this angle. But I get all of that worked out before I even start Quran it, because otherwise you're wasting your time preparing for a book you're not going to write.
- [12:53]
B
So once you've had a proposal accepted, you obviously have to start with the research process. Is that very different to when you're researching for an academic book?
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A
Yeah. So the way the entire process works is I come up with this idea, I pass it before my agent, my current agent, he's really, really good. He was my editor for six of my books at Harper, and five of those became New York Times bestsellers. And so he's a really good editor. But then he quit being editor and became an agent. So he understands his entire world. We know each other, really. So I'll bounce an idea off of him and he'll say, yeah, let's play this one out and take it to a publisher. They accept it. If they accept it, then the research begins. And different people have different way of going through the process. I have a pretty set way of doing it, which is I know in advance what the most important writing, scholarly writings are in this particular area because it's almost always an area that I've worked on before. So when I wrote the book, well, both the book How Jesus Became God and the Book forged, both trade books. I already knew the scholarly literature and I'd read most of the important stuff, but there's a lot of stuff I hadn't read, and there's a lot of stuff I needed to reread. And so my process is to start accumulating bibliography and start reading massively. That is what I do for scholarly books as well. The big difference is that with the scholarly books, you have to know just about everything. And for scholarly books, you know, you have to read books in other modern languages, languages in German and French and Italian, and. And so, you know, it takes a lot, lot longer for the trade book. You're not going to go into the kind of nuance and depth that you do for the scholarly books. So it doesn't matter that much if some Italian scholar, 1968, said this, that, or the other thing for the trade book. What matters is that you understand the field and you understand the arguments and you understand the evidence, and you know, why that might be interesting to somebody else. For the scholarly book, it matters that it's interesting to other scholars, but it doesn't matter whether, you know, my nectar neighbor would care.
- [15:08]
B
So once you've got all the research done or you're, you're going through that process, how do you go about starting to write? And again, is that, does it differ from your academic writing or is it the same general process? You're just changing the language that you use?
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A
For me, the general process of constructing the book is similar. I always do all of my research first before I even think about writing anything. And I just keep doing research until I know I've done enough research, when I know that I've read everything that needs to be read, or if I'm at a point, especially with a trade book, if I'm reading something, I realize, you know, I know all of this, or you know, they're just kind of rearranging, you know, the seats on the, on the deck, the chairs on the deck, like, I'm not learning anything here. When I get to a point where book after book, I realize, you know, I think I've got this already, then I'm ready to go. What I do is unlike what just about every scholar I know does. And I have always tried to convince my graduate students to do it this way because I think it works really well, and I've yet to convince anybody. And so what I do is early on, I imagine, what is the thesis of this book? I believe that, you know, a nonfiction book, even a nonfiction book has to have A point. And it has to have a point that you can summarize in a sentence. I need to be able to tell you in one sentence what this book is. And once I know what I want to argue, and it should be something kind of controversial that people wouldn't have known before because it's stuff they know already, what's the point? And if it's, like, not interesting, and so I come up with something that I think, you know, people won't expect this. And so that's going to be important, then I think, well, in order to make that thesis point, what kind of major things would I need to argue to establish that point? And I think the major things and those become the chapters. And then within the chapters, that's the point I'm going to make in this chapter. What points would I need to get to that? I make outlines chapter by chapter. And eventually, I mean, I do this. I reread all the notes I've taken on everything. I take notes on everything I read because I have a terrible memory. Then I review all the notes on every book, every article I've read, and I start thinking, what do I need to argue in order to make this point? And I end up making an outline with points and sub points and sub points so my entire book gets outlined. There have been times when my outline for a chapter was more pages than the chapter supposed to be. And so when I start writing, I actually know exactly what I'm going to write.
- [17:39]
B
I was going to say, that must make actually writing very, very simple.
- [17:43]
A
It does for me. The deal is I can write very fast. I mean, just actually physically writing most of my trade books for the last 20 years, the actual writing of my books takes two weeks because I know exactly where I'm going, and it's as fast as my fingers can fly that I can write. You know, I can write 12,000 words a day, 14,000 words a day. And it's because I know exactly where I want to go. And then it's a matter of putting it in prose. I have to edit it, you know, and everything, but. And many times. I edit everything many times. But I can. I can write a book and edit it once and stuff within two, two weeks. But it's because I've done all the background work. Other people don't do it like that. I was having a conversation the other day with fellow scholar who's talking about people that we know who will. When they write, they have to write a sentence that is perfect or they won't go to the next sentence, you know, they agonize over this sentence. And then, then, okay, that's good. So they'll go to the next sentence and they go, oh, my God, I could never do that. I just whip this thing out. I go. And then at the end, I can edit it, because it's much easier to edit something than it is to write it. And I usually write fairly well the first draft because of the way my brain works.
- [18:54]
B
So what then are the hardest parts of writing a trade book? And do you find it harder than writing for an academic audience?
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A
Well, you know, as I said earlier, academics tend to look down on this and they think, well, how hard can it be? Well, many of them try it and they realize, huh. They either realize that it's harder than they thought, or they think it's about as hard as they thought and nobody buys their book. So it actually is not easy at all. To write a trade book is really not easy. It's very, very hard. And it's very hard to write a good one. But the skill set is somewhat different because for the academic book, people learn how to use the jargon. They presuppose lots of things. They know that their audience will know the background, and they're making a detailed argument about something that people are already familiar with. The key there for the writing the academic book is coming up with new insights. It's advancing knowledge that's hard. It's reading everything in the field before you that's hard. It's mastering that field, and it's writing in this technical way. The difficulty is advancing knowledge and advancing new theses or new arguments or finding new evidence that nobody's seen before. And that's very, very difficult. For the trade book, the difficulty lies elsewhere. A big thing with the trade book is figuring out what about this would be interesting to someone else. Why would anyone care? For me, that is the key. And most scholars who try to write trade books just don't get their minds around it. They think that if they've got something they're interested in, and if they just put it in simple language, then everybody will understand it. But they don't realize that people aren't interested in it. You know, they don't get it because, well, I'm interested in it. Why wouldn't they be interested? I'm sorry, they're not. You need to make them interested in it. And writing the trade book largely is figuring out how to make something interesting for someone else, both conceptually and in terms of the style of writing. The writing has to be accessible and interesting writing. We're never taught this, right? You never, you never learn anything like writing a trade book in graduate school. It's the last thing you're gonna learn. But some people have the knack of doing it, some don't.
- [21:09]
B
So once you've got your book all ready to go, how does the publication process differ to publishing academic work? I assume you don't go through peer review or anything similar. And the first time you published, did you find it hard to find a non academic publisher who was willing to put out your work?
- [21:27]
A
Well, I'll tell you, I've been lucky in my entire academic career because almost every, at every turn there's been incredible luck involved. Most of the time when somebody wants to write a trade book, they need to get, for one thing, they need to get, they need to get an agent. Because if you're publishing an academic book, suppose I've written a dissertation, I want to publish it, my supervisor might help me, but basically I contact a major university press that publishes this kind of thing and I contact the editor and they say, well, let me see a chapter of it and you know, explain it to me, let me see a precis of it and then send me a chapter. And they do that. And then Oxford Press or Cambridge Press or Princeton Press, whatever, looks at, yeah, show us the whole thing now. And they show the whole thing, they send in the whole thing and then they send it out to readers like one or two other academics who read it and evaluate it. Because the editor at the press can tell whether it's quality or not in terms of the writing, whether it seems smart, seems like it's well researched, but they don't know the, they don't know the ins and outs of this particular field. And so they send it, whatever field it's in, whether, you know, whatever field it's in, they send it to experts in that field and experts in that particular sub field. And so for example, in New Testament studies, if there's somebody who's written a book on the Gospel of John and there's somebody, an academic book, a scholarly book on John, and someone else has written an academic book on the manuscripts of the New Testament, well, the editor who has these two things will not send both of those to the same reader. Because some New Testament scholars are experts on John, the interpretation of John, others are experts on manuscripts. And so you pick people who are experts in that particular subfield and you get a couple of them or three, and you get the reports back months later and they tell you whether they think it's worthy of being published or not. And if everybody agrees, then probably the editor puts it forward to the editorial board. If there's a difference of opinion with two people thinking it's good and one thinking it's terrible, then, you know, or if you've got two people and they split, then editors have to, you know, go to the next plan which might be send it to someone else or just to make a decision or you know, there are various things they do that. That's for the academic level.
- [23:48]
B
So then what do you do for a non academic? A trade book, right?
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A
Oh, yeah, that's where I started out. So for the trade book, you really almost always need an agent who is in communication with one of the major trade presses. There are some academic presses that publish trade books. So I started off publishing with Oxford. My first monograph. No, that's not true. My third monograph was with Oxford, but I started publishing monographs with Oxford, but they also had a trade division. So I started publishing trade books with Oxford. Most really high level trade companies. There are five major trade companies in the world. Recently. Simon and Schuster has been in the news because it's been purchased. So it's been all over the news. And that's my, that's my current, my current trade publisher for Simon at Simon Schuster. For an editor at Simon and Schuster to consider publishing a book, it has to be represented by an agent. So an author can't do what they do when they're publishing an academic book. They can't just send it to an editor. They can send it, but the editor won't read it. They need the agent to represent it and explain why this book is worth them looking at. And then if they convince the publisher, then the publisher will read it. And they usually do not send it out for peer review. They may do if they're not kind of alert to who this person is. They may send it out and let somebody look at it. But usually it goes through a different process. So when I said I was lucky, when you asked me how it happened with me, I was lucky. I've been lucky at every stage because the reason I wrote a textbook, I wrote textbooks before I wrote a trade book. The reason I wrote a textbook is because I wrote this monograph for Oxford and they wanted a textbook in the New Testament. And so they asked me because I was on their minds because I just published it. So it's like they asked me to do it. And then after I wrote the textbook, they asked me to write a trade book. And So I didn't need an agent, didn't have an agent. And for years and years, I didn't have an agent. I didn't have an agent until about 10 years ago, eight years ago. But most everybody doesn't look into it. They've got to get an agent.
- [25:54]
B
So that's the whole, like, process of start to finish. How. How one writes a trade book. I wanted to ask, going back to something you said earlier, that writing trade books is generally frowned upon by a lot of academics and can adversely impact your career because you're seen as not a serious scholar. What then is the draw for writing them in the first place?
- [26:16]
A
Well, I think different things for different people. I know a lot of people who say, oh, God, I've got a kid coming, going college, pretty soon, I better make some money. And they think, you know, they'll make a ton of money if they write a trade book. That's one thing. But I think probably the more pressing thing for scholars who are doing this is that they really, they've come to believe in reaching out to a broader audience with the things they know and what's happening in their field. Because it's kind of a shame for scholars, just to talk to scholars about important things and not to let everybody else know. And especially for someone like me in a state university, my employer is the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, which part of the state system. And so part of my salary gets paid by state taxes. And so people are paying taxes so that people like me can teach at a university. And I feel like it doesn't make any sense for me not to share my knowledge of what I do with the broader public. I mean, they're why I have a teaching job. And it's not just that. It's that I think that the kinds of things that biblical scholars know are important to lots of people in the world because there are a lot of people who believe in the Bible and are interested in the Bible, even people who don't believe in the Bible, there are a lot of people who are really interested in knowing more about it. For a very, very long time, there were very few scholars trying to communicate with the broader public. And those who were doing it weren't doing it very well. I mean, the example, I may have used this on the podcast before. In 2005, I published my book Misquoting Jesus, which is this book about how scribes changed their manuscripts of the New Testament, after which we've named this podcast. It's about Greek manuscripts through the Middle Ages. Through, like, from the 2nd century up through the 15th century, and how Christian copyists changed their manuscripts when they were copying them. And my friends, when they heard I was writing a book like that, a trade book, they just thought I was nuts. And it's because nobody had done that before. And I thought, you know, this is information that people would really love to know. And so I feel like that about most things that we do in biblical studies, there's stuff that people just would have no idea about, they would like to know, but they're not going to read your academic books. I've had friends who, you know, they'll write on something really interesting, but for, for academics, and I'll tell them, you know, someone on my blog would just love to have a book about that, you know, for a popular, you know, they would just to. To know more about that. And the scholar will tell me, well, just tell them to read my book then. And I'll say, well, no, you don't get it. They're not going to read your book. It's an academic book. Well, you know, if they can't handle it, they can't handle it. What? Okay, but. So I think, I think the two reasons to write some people do it for the money, and some people, everyone does it, I think, because they want to spread knowledge of their field more broadly.
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B
Do you think that writing trade books is becoming more acceptable in academia than it was a couple of decades ago?
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A
I think it is, but it's a little bit hard for me to say because it's kind of like, you know, when you get a new car, you get a new Volkswagen, and all of a sudden you start noticing there are all these Volkswagens on the street. Seems like, wow, a lot of people have Volkswagens. You know, I don't think I ever noticed that. And so I'm writing trade books, and so I'm thinking, well, you know, a lot more people are writing trade books, and it may be just my vision is askew, but I certainly have a lot more colleagues who talk to me about it now. Well, they talk to me about it now because I do it. I guess maybe they didn't talk to me before because I wasn't doing it, but I get the sense that people are seeing the virtue of it. And I think, especially in the humanities now, it's really, really important for scholars to write trade books not in lieu of research, because the main thing is to do the research because we have to be advancing knowledge or there's no good purpose in our existence. So we have to keep advancing knowledge, but it's also to communicate our knowledge with a broader audience. And I think especially for the humanities now, because the humanities are in decline because of stem. The, the STEM courses, you know, the science, technology, engineering and math courses are the ones that are being promoted within universities. There are universities who are cutting back on the humanities or cutting out the humanities, English, philosophy, classics, religious studies, et cetera. It's a real tragedy. And if it goes all the way, it's going to be a disaster for our culture and society. An important way to try to counter that is to show why what we're doing is important. Why does it matter if you understand Shakespeare? Why does it matter if you understand Plato? Why does it matter if you understand what biblical scholars are saying, it does matter. And it can matter. And it can make a huge difference in a person's individual life. But also it can make a huge difference about how that life affect other people and can have effect on ripple effects throughout the entire culture. Especially in a culture where so many people don't know how to reason, how to think, how to decide a good argument from a bad argument, how to know what's true from what's false. People don't have those skills as well anymore. And it, it's becoming a huge social, cultural and especially political problem. And it's the humanities that teach those things. And so I think the more humanities gets out there, the better it'll be for the world. So not so that you have like a particular opinion that all those humanities people have, but so you can evaluate and make rational judgments instead of just kind of emotional things that seem right to you.
- [32:00]
B
It's a ringing endorsement for I think all of the digital public humanities work that's going on. Obviously what we're doing here and all of the various other projects that I know are in existence and are wonderful, wonderful things. We should take our break and then we will be right back with some news about some upcoming excitements and listeners. Questions for Bart to answer. Have you ever wondered where the New Testament Gospels really came from? Were the books actually written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? As everyone seems to say, the answers to these questions may surprise you. In fact, what you discover may challenge everything you thought you knew about the Gospels. If you're ready to learn the historical truth, then you won't want to miss Bart Ehrman's free webinar. Did Matthew, Mark, Luke and John actually write Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? In this 50 minute talk with Q and A, you'll learn to how answers to some of the most intriguing questions surrounding the Gospel's authorship, such as why did early Christians say the Gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? If they're anonymous, what's the best evidence that the Gospels were written by the apostles? Were the apostles of Jesus educated well enough to write books? And last, if the apostles did not write the Gospels, who did? And where did they get the their information? Don't miss your chance to uncover the truth behind the Gospels. Sign up now for free lifetime access to Did Matthew, Mark, Luke and John actually Write Matthew, Mark, Luke and john? @barterman.com Authors thank you. It's not a weekly update, but it is an update of something coming in a couple of weeks. We have our 50 seconds misquoting Jesus podcast episode coming up on the 17th of October, but do you want to tell everyone what we're going to be doing?
- [33:56]
A
Well, we're going to do something different and we hope special. I think it's going to be special for us. We're going to this is, we think this is going to be great. Instead of doing a topic for the podcast for our one year anniversary podcast, we're going to do a live Q and A for the entire period where people will submit questions and I will try to answer them. So this be a Stump Bart thing and people will be asking live questions so that people can participate in this and pay attention and listen to other people participating and just come up with questions for me to deal with and so it'll be something different from what we've done before.
- [34:36]
B
I think it's going to be a lot of fun actually. I'm really looking forward to it. So this will be October 17th at 8pm EST live on YouTube. If you watch us on YouTube already, make sure sure you are subscribed so that you get the notification. If you want to ask a question then you need to submit them ahead of time. Please. You can go to barturman.com Ask Bart. Please leave your email because that way we can get in touch with you, let you know if your question has been selected and give you instructions for how to join the live stream on the 17th and try and keep them as concise as possible. We want to give everyone the opportunity to ask Bart their questions personally and if you submit a question that is is half a page long, unfortunately we're just not going to have time for that. Yes, we'll contact you in advance and let you know if your question's been selected. I will be moderating. That means everyone has to be nice and kind to each other. Because if you are not nice and kind, I will remove you. I have five children, so don't test me. We're also talking about hopefully getting the rest of the podcasting team on at the end, so you can always meets the whole team. Because it's not just Bart and I beavering away by ourselves. There are several other people who put an awful lot of work into making sure that the podcast is the wonderful thing that it has come to be. So hopefully that's not set in stone, but hopefully they'll be joining us so everyone can can meet them. And I don't think they'll be taking questions, but maybe we can persuade them to.
- [36:03]
A
We'll see if I can't answer any. So, you know, if your question gets chosen, you. You'll come on live and ask me the question and I'll try to answer it live.
- [36:16]
B
No Googling.
- [36:17]
A
No. Right. That's right. That's right. I have a second computer right next to me, just in case.
- [36:25]
B
Perfect. Sounds wonderful. No, no notes at all. That's all the information we have for you. We'll go over this again next week just so everyone is aware. But next Tuesday, October 10th is when we would please like your questions in buy just to make sure we have time to read and review them all. So if you have a question, submit it as soon as possible to make sure you have the opportunity to actually ask Bart yourself. And speaking of questions, we have our listeners question segment coming right up.
- [36:56]
A
Now it's time for questions from listeners where Bart answers real questions submitted by misquotingjesus fans. If you'd like to submit, submit a question. For future segments, please visit bart erman.com Ask Bart
- [37:13]
B
listeners questions not live, but still definitely submitted by our listeners. Are you ready, Bart?
- [37:19]
A
We'll see.
- [37:21]
B
First question, are there any books you have written that you now mostly or completely disagree with either the details or the conclusions of? And do you have any examples that you can give? Huh?
- [37:33]
A
No.
- [37:35]
B
Excellent.
- [37:36]
A
I've changed my mind about some things, and I learned that I changed my mind about some things sometimes from readers who say, you know, you're just contradicting yourself. Because in 2002 you said this and in 2021 you said that. I'll say, yeah, that's. That's absolutely. That's correct. Because I changed my mind, you know, and I think it's a good thing to be able to change your mind when you see that evidence leads you in a different direction. And so that's okay. In. You should Try it sometime. But there are things I've changed my mind about. I mean, I'll give you one example. I mentioned my trade book, How Jesus Became God. For years and years I was convinced that Matthew, Mark and Luke did not consider Jesus to be God or at least did not portray him as God. John definitely does. And I would say, you know, you just don't see this in Matthew, Mark and Luke. And I changed my mind. In doing my research for that book, I decided that in fact I do think that Matthew, Mark and Luke do understand Jesus to be God in some sense. Not in the same way that John does, but that they have a different understanding of what it means for Jesus to be divine. But on some level he is divine. Not that he's a second member of the Trinity, not that he's equal with God, nothing like that. But in some sense they think he's divine. And I talk about that in How Jesus Became God. Why? It looks to me that that's probably the case and so you can make an argument either way. But I changed my mind, thought lots about it for a long time so that, you know, that kind of thing happened. But I, I don't think I've written. No, I've certainly haven't read a book. I disagree with their details. I disagree with here and there.
- [39:17]
B
Thank you. There is a huge scholarly debate about how Jesus saw himself, how he saw his relationship with God and his role in the upcoming end of days. But all of the scholars, from my limited knowledge, assume that Jesus view was consistent throughout his ministry. This seems to me inconsistent with what we know about thinkers like Freud, Aquinas, etc. This might especially apply when the intense psychological stress of his last few days kicks in. Does Barthes believe that Jesus self view was consistent throughout his life?
- [39:50]
A
Well, I mean, I'll point out that Freud, etc. We're not the son of God. I'm kidding. You know, actually the idea of the psychological development of Jesus thought was a very common theme throughout the 19th century when scholars were trying to explain his life. Scholars at the time in the 19th century, the end of the 19th century, second half, 19th century, had become convinced that the Gospel of Mark was the most accurate gospel. But it gives kind of a framework for Jesus life and it doesn't explain a lot of the stuff that's happening in Jesus life. And the idea that was commonly set out was that Jesus had a kind of a progressive understanding of who he was. Starting at his baptism, he became convinced he was the son of God and eventually he Came to think he had to die for the sins of the world. And this was a view that continued to be popular. Even Albert Schweitzer's quest of the historical Jesus has that perspective. And I've known scholars who continue to have that perspective that the events in Jesus life began to change his views of things. My opinion about this is that there's no way to know. There's no way that you can psychologically evaluate somebody like that 2000 years ago from whom we have no writings and we have accounts written decades later by people didn't even know him. Nobody probably could explain what the psychological process. He's going in my mind about things that I do. Even a therapist who puts me on the couch for a couple years, it's going to take a while to figure it out. So it's just impossible with somebody like Jesus with such few resources even begin. So it's not that I think that he was necessarily consistent all his way through, but I think that it's impossible to know the kind of psychological developments that were going on in his head.
- [41:39]
B
Thank you. During the Counter Reformation, when Protestants were claiming sola scriptura, did Catholics, the Counter Reformation, ever dispute this by pointing out the discrepancies between Mark and the other Gospels? And how can a Christian faith be based solely in Scripture if there are major and minor textual difficulties or discrepancies?
- [42:00]
A
Yeah, that's a good question. One of the really interesting things about the Counter Reformation was that the textual differences in particular were important to Catholic arguments against the Protestant notion of sola scriptura, that only Scripture is the authority. Because some of the most serious textual scholarship, where scholars studied the manuscripts to see where they were different from each other, was attempted in order to show there are places where manuscripts were verses differently and there are places you can't tell which what the original was. And so the. The Catholic apologists were saying, look, how can you say that, that Scripture is the only authority when you don't even know what it says in places? Would God give us an authority where we don't even know what it is? And so this was the argument then, that the rich church tradition that had developed over centuries, there's not a lot of question about what the Catholic dogma is and that that actually made more sense as an authoritative source that God would give rather than source. We can't even understand or know what the words are. So yes, it did feature.
- [43:05]
B
Thank you very much. That is all we have for today. But before we finish for the week, Bart, would you mind summarizing what we talked about.
- [43:12]
A
Well, we're talking about what it means for scholars to write popular books, or trade books as they're called, and what the process is. A lot of scholars do try to reach out to a broader audience, and many academics look down on that, and they think that it's a process of just kind of dumbing things down and simplification. It's not really working as a scholar, and other scholars think it's a very important enterprise to engage in. For my part, I think that it's important, of course, it's important to continue doing serious academic scholarship, and real scholars ought to keep doing that. But it's also important to report the fines that we have to broader audience. But it's not that simple. It's not really just a matter of dumbing things down. In fact, it's not that at all. It's learning how to communicate complicated ideas in simple terms to intelligent people. That's the process of writing a trade book, and the process itself is somewhat different. But the result is really is really valuable because it means that people who know a lot about an area can share their knowledge with those who are interested but aren't experts themselves.
- [44:19]
B
Bart, thank you so much as always. Audience thank you all for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don't miss future episodes. Remember, 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 Bart, what are we talking about next time?
- [44:40]
A
So the topic is an interesting one, but it's hard to put a label on it. It's the idea that the Jesus and the earliest Christians had a very strong expectation that the end of the age was coming soon, that God was almost imminently going to come into history to destroy all the forces of evil against him, and that there'd be a utopian kingdom that would arrive on earth, the kingdom of God. And they were expecting this very soon. The topic we're dealing with is how that view started to dissipate over time and eventually virtually disappear. And you can see this movement away from this apocalyptic tradition already in the New Testament itself. And so we're going to be talking about de apocalyptization of the Christian tradition without maybe using that word too much.
- [45:30]
B
Thank you all and goodbye. This has been an episode of Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. We'll be back with a new episode next Tuesday. So Please be sure to subscribe to our show for free on your favorite 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.