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- [00:00]
Narrator
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- [01:05]
Megan Lewis
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, and the rise of Christianity. I'm your host, Megan Lewis.
- [01:24]
Let's begin. Hello everyone and welcome back to Misquoting Jesus. With Christmas fast approaching, many people's thoughts are turning to the birth of Jesus, which naturally brings to mind his parents. The virgin birth is probably one of the most well known stories about Jesus, but where did it come from and why is it recorded in the New Testament? Was this story important to early Christians? And if not, how and why did it become a central tenet of many denominations? Before we get into that though, but good morning. How are you doing today?
- [01:57]
Bart Ehrman
Doing well. I'm, you know, looking forward to a, the Christmas break ahead. We'll be in England as we normally are with Sarah's family. And as is my want, I'll be taking a bunch of books. And so instead of preparing for classes and preparing for podcasts and things, I'll be, I'll be on leave next semester and so I'm hoping to get this next book written on the ethics of Jesus. And so I'm really looking forward to just having some time to read. How are you? I mean the, the holidays. Here we are.
- [02:25]
Megan Lewis
Yeah, no, I'm good. I'm good. I'm enjoying myself. The kids are enjoying themselves. We spent some time decorating the house so it looks more chaotic than normal, but a very festive form of chaos. They all enjoyed that very much. And on the subject of books, my parents always ask me, what does Josh want for Christmas? What does Josh want for birthdays? And, and the answer is always he would like books or monetary contributions towards books because academic volumes are not exactly cheap. My mom is, I think about ready to just give up asking and start sending gift cards for bookstores.
- [02:59]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, well, the problem with buying books is that you never know if the person has it. So they're either going to dictate their own present or you're going to get them something they have. And so I gave up a long ago buying books for Sarah because it's like, it's like it's hopeless. And so go for plan B.
- [03:16]
Megan Lewis
His birthday is the beginning of, well, middle of November. And I asked our 10 year old, what do you want to get Daddy for his birthday? And her answer has been the same, I think for the past three years. I want to get daddy a book about the Bible.
- [03:31]
Bart Ehrman
There you go.
- [03:33]
Megan Lewis
Because he likes books about the Bible. And I said, sweetheart, he would love a book about the Bible. That's a great idea.
- [03:39]
Bart Ehrman
Great answer, right? I know.
- [03:43]
Megan Lewis
So, yes, Exciting times.
- [03:45]
Bart Ehrman
That's good. Yeah, that's good.
- [03:47]
Megan Lewis
So are you ready to talk about Mary and virgin birth and all of that exciting stuff?
- [03:52]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, it's good stuff. Yeah.
- [03:53]
Megan Lewis
Okay, so we're going to start out a little bit more general and then narrow down. In the New Testament, Jesus mother obviously is said to be a virgin. Do we have other religions from the same kind of time period that describe virgin births?
- [04:08]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, so that's a good question because people often tell me that the virgin birth of children, Jesus is rooted in Greek and Roman traditions of virgins giving birth. I think that actually that's not true at all. What you do frequently get in Greek and Roman myth is the miraculous birth of a child whose mortal mother is made pregnant by a God. And so Zeus will get a woman pregnant or some other God will get a woman pregnant. So you get that sort of thing. But in every case the woman has had sex and if nothing else, she has sex with the God, sometimes in quite graphic terms it's described about their sexual activity. And so she's not a virgin and most of the time she's a married woman anyway and she's been having sex. The New Testament accounts different is that Mary has never had sex. And the accounts of her having birth are not explicit about. It's not that God becomes a human and has sex with her. And so it's different in that sense
- [05:10]
Megan Lewis
from he doesn't like turn into a swan or a bull.
- [05:13]
Bart Ehrman
He doesn't turn into a SW or in the appearance of her husband, as happens in Greek and Roman Myth.
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Megan Lewis
So do all of the canonical gospels show her as being a virgin, or is this restricted to one or two accounts?
- [05:27]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, well, this is one of the really interesting things. You get the virgin birth story in both Matthew and Luke. Their stories of how it happens are quite different from each other. People don't realize this because, you know, we're used to thinking of the Christmas pageant. And if you do a Christmas pageant or you imagine the Christmas story or you read about it, it's Matthew's stories combined with Luke's stories put into one big story. But if you actually read Matthew carefully and then Luke carefully, they tell completely different stories. And in places their stories are at odds with each other. They contradict each other in some key ways. People don't realize unless they actually read them and compare them carefully. But they both are quite explicit that Mary is a virgin. Mark says nothing about it. Mark doesn't have a virgin birth story. And John, which is later than Matthew and Luke, doesn't have a virgin birth story. And no other book of the New Testament mentions the virgin birth. So the only places you find this are in Matthew chapters one and two and in Luke chapters one and two.
- [06:31]
Megan Lewis
So you said that the accounts aren't explicit like we might see in classical accounts of God's impregnating mortal women. Are readers supposed to understand that God physically impregnated Mary, or is it framed more as a spiritual occurrence?
- [06:47]
Bart Ehrman
It kind of depends on which gospel you read. In fact, it doesn't just kind of depend. It depends. Matthew is not explicit at all about how it happens. It's just the Holy Spirit will make her pregnant, and the process isn't described. In Luke, there is a verse that describes the process, but it's ambiguous, and people have read it in different ways. In Luke 1:1, the angel Gabriel comes to Mary for the Annunciation, where he informs her, doesn't ask her permission. He informs her she's going to get pregnant. And he says, you bear a son. And she says, but I've never known a man, you know, I've never had sex before. And the angel then says, and this is Luke, chapter 1, verse 35, that the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the one born of you shall be called Holy, the Son of God. And so this business of the Spirit coming upon her and overshadowing her, some people read that as a kind of a physical description, that in some way there's some kind of physical connection with the Spirit. Other people don't I think probably most people don't even notice it. But it can be taken as some kind of physical thing that's happening, but it's not explicit.
- [08:09]
Megan Lewis
So if we look at Matthew and Luke in turn, what do scholars think is the significance of this depiction, this event? Like, why would Matthew want to describe Jesus mother as being a virgin?
- [08:21]
Bart Ehrman
Well, that's another interesting issue, because Matthew has a different view of it than Luke. I wouldn't say that they're contradictory views, but what Matthew says isn't at all what Luke says, and vice versa. Matthew explains why she's a virgin by quoting Scripture. Matthew thinks that Mary has to be a virgin because that's what was predicted in the book of Isaiah. According to Matthew, Matthew says that she was a virgin in order to fulfill what was spoken of in the prophet. And then he quotes Isaiah, chapter 7, verse 14. In his quotation of it, Matthew quotes it as saying, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel. And so he's quoting Isaiah 7:14 in the Greek version of Isaiah 7. The reason Mary's a virgin is because Isaiah predicted that she would be a virgin. This is one of the fulfillment citations of Matthew on a number of occasions throughout Matthew's Gospel. Only in Matthew's Gospel, Matthew will say that Jesus said or did something or something happened to him in order to fulfill what was prophesied. He, for example, had to be born in Bethlehem because that was prophesied. In Micah chapter 5, he had to go down to Egypt and then come back out of Egypt as an infant because Hosea chapter 11 said, out of Egypt have I called my son. And so throughout Matthew's account, whatever Jesus does, especially in the birth narrative, is in order to fulfill Scripture. And so for Matthew, that's the significance. The significance is that Jesus, the fact that he's born of a virgin shows that he's the one that was predicted.
- [10:03]
Megan Lewis
We'll get to Luke in a second, but I just wanted to talk a little bit about the Isaiah quotation in Matthew. So Matthew isn't quoting the original Hebrew text. He's quoting the Greek translation of it, known as the Septuagint. But there's a bit of a difference linguistically between the Hebrew and the Greek. Could you talk a little bit about that?
- [10:23]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah. You know, it's not clear at all that Matthew knew Hebrew. In fact, I think the indications are he did not know Hebrew. People think that's weird because it wasn't Matthew. The tax collector in Israel wouldn't He like know Hebrew. But scholars, for reasons we've talked about, I think on other episodes, scholars think that all the Gospel writers are Greek speaking Christians from a, from later generation living outside of Israel. And Matthew doesn't claim to be Matthew the tax collector doesn't claim to be a disciple of Jesus, doesn't claim to be from Israel. And he probably wasn't. He's a high level speaking Greek. And so he would have read the Old Testament, the Bible in Greek translation, as most Jews did who weren't living in Israel. I don't know if Matthew was a Jew, but whether it was or wasn't, he was reading it in Greek. So when he read Isaiah, Isaiah in the Greek translation says pretty much what I just quoted. A virgin shall conceive and bear a son. You'll call his name Emmanuel. But there's a problem there because the Greek translation of Isaiah 7 is not an accurate translation of what the Hebrew says. Hebrew does have a word for virgin. It's the word bethulah. It means a woman who's never had sex. But there's another Hebrew word, alma. So in English I guess it'd be a L, M, a H. Alma means a young woman. And many young women have never had sex. But being an alma doesn't mean you've never had sex, it just means you're a young woman. So he does not use the word for virgin. Isaiah doesn't he use the word for young woman? And moreover he indicates that the woman, the young woman, is already pregnant. So in Isaiah it's important when people read Isaiah 7, 14 and they just read that verse, right, they don't read the whole chapter. If they read the whole chapter, they'd realize what's going on here. So the king of Israel is in hot water because the city of Jerusalem is being surrounded by two foreign armies and they're laying siege to the city. And he's really upset because Jerusalem's going to be destroyed. So he calls in Isaiah the prophet and says, what does God say about this? And Isaiah tells him, don't worry about it because God is going to solve this. You're not going to be destroyed. And he says, God will give you a sign. The sign is, you see this woman here who is pregnant, she will bear a son. And before the child is old enough to know the difference between right and wrong, these armies will be dispersed. And so it's a woman who's already pregnant who will bear a son. So she's pregnant now and will bear later. So when the Greek translators were translating this, for whatever reason, they used the word that becomes the Greek word for virgin, parthenos. And they say a virgin has conceived. And it's a bit of a mistranslation, but that's what Matthew knew. He didn't know the Hebrew. So Matthew quotes it and he says, well, okay, it's predicting the Messiah is going to be born of a virgin. So it's not talking about anything in the days of Isaiah himself, It's now talking about the future Messiah. And so Matthew gets to that by his quoting a misreading of the Hebrew.
- [13:23]
Megan Lewis
And when the Septuagint was first composed, would parthenos have meant virgin? Or is this a meaning that was more common in Matthew's time?
- [13:30]
Bart Ehrman
So in Greek, like every language, is a little bit tricky because words can mean different things in different times. You know, words like in Shakespeare's day often means something different today. Parthenos is a word that can mean young woman. It eventually comes to mean young woman who's never had sex. And so Matthew's taking it to mean a young woman who's never had sex, if the Greek translators may have just been using it in the. In the idea of young woman, because it can mean that. It can mean just like maiden, something like that. Definitely the early Christians took this to mean that she's a person who's never had sex, that kind of parthenos.
- [14:07]
Megan Lewis
So if that's. If that's what Matthew is doing with this, he's kind of reading Jewish prophecy slightly faultily, but reading Jewish prophecy and using it as a prophecy about Jesus. What is the Gospel of Luke doing? What is the significance of a virgin birth? And how does it differ from the Gospel of Matthew?
- [14:25]
Bart Ehrman
This is really interesting because Luke doesn't quote Isaiah and doesn't say that it's to fulfill Scripture and that it's not related to that at all. For Luke, Jesus is born of a virgin, but he gives a very different reason. And it's the reason in that verse I just quoted Luke 1:35, where the holy Spirit will come upon you. The power of the Most High will overshadow you, so that the one born of you will be called holy, the Son of God. For Luke, Jesus is literally the Son of God. God gets Mary pregnant. So it's to show that Jesus has a divine origin. And so Matthew's concerned about Jesus fulfilling the prophecy, and Luke's concerned about him having a divine origin. And it's kind of interesting just for understanding both of the two Gospels, because when you read through all of Matthew. Matthew's very emphatic about Jesus fulfilling Scripture. Many people have considered Matthew to be the most Jewish of the Gospels, whatever that means. But I mean, he certainly is invested in the Scriptures and in Matthew. Jesus as an adult says that you're supposed to observe the Jewish law and you have to observe it better than the Scribes and the Pharisees. And, you know, it's all emphatic about the Jewishness of Jesus. Luke has a very big interest in the Gentile world. He's interested in how Jesus message ends up going to convert Gentiles. And so when he describes the virgin birth, it's really more in terms of these unique births in Greek and Roman mythology. It's not the same thing because Mary's a virgin, but the idea that the God gets immortal pregnant so that the one born is some kind of divine being. And so that's how you get the birth of Hercules, for example, Heracles. This is the union. And so Jesus is being portrayed like that as the union of the divine and human.
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Megan Lewis
Is it significant that neither Mark, which is the earliest canonical Gospel, or John, the latest, seem to know about or speak about the virgin birth?
- [16:23]
Bart Ehrman
I think it's hugely significant. I guess later we're going to be talking about this next course I'm doing in a little bit, but I'm going to be dealing with this a good bit because Mark and John both assume that Mary is the mother and that Joseph is the father. And in fact, there are passages in both Mark and John that make best sense. They not only say that, but they also their passages make best sense. If they don't know anything about a virgin birth and they just assume Joseph is the father or else they know that Joseph is the father. It would be understandable with Mark because Mark is our first gospel. And it may be that stories of the virgin birth just hadn't been circulating yet. So maybe Mark just doesn't know Matthew and Luke used Mark. But Matthew and Luke have different virgin birth stories, as I said. So they didn't get it from one another. John knows the latest Gospel and you would probably think that John would at least have heard of the virgin birth, but there's no evidence that he does. In John, Jesus is an incarnate divine being. He comes down from heaven as a divine being who comes to reveal the truth that can bring salvation to people so that people would believe in him and his message. They can have salvation, but there's nothing about him coming down into a virgin. What ends up happening is that later Theologians take the idea of the virgin birth from Matthew and Luke, and they take the idea of the incarnation of a God becoming human in John, and they combine them together into a teaching found in none of the Gospels, which is in the Creed that he became incarnate through the Virgin Mary. Well, you say that in the creed and you think that's biblical and it kind of is because you get the incarnation from John, you get the virgin birth from Matthew and Luke. But in Matthew and Luke, Jesus is not pre existing. He comes into existence when he's conceived in Matthew and Luke, and in John, he's not born of a virgin. It's not the conception, it's the incarnation that matters. And so this again is kind of the theologians combining different passages.
- [18:20]
Megan Lewis
I see. Do we see the virgin birth in other New Testament books or is it just in Matthew and Luke?
- [18:27]
Bart Ehrman
It's nowhere else in the New Testament. There's not a lot about Jesus birth at all. There is this curious statement in the writings of Paul. In Galatians chapter 4, Paul gives us one of the few comments that he makes about the historical Jesus. Paul doesn't say much about Jesus life. He's very interested in Jesus death and resurrection. This is the core of his message and it's what he's particularly intrigued by. And he thinks his ultimate universal significance is death and resurrection. But he makes very few comments about Jesus life. In Galatians chapter four, though he does say that Christ was born of a woman and born under the law. And you think, well, that's not telling you much because he says he's born of a woman. Well, what options do we have here if you're going to be born? But he says that. But it is interesting that he doesn't say born of a virgin. If he knew about the virgin birth, he certainly could have said born of a virgin. But he doesn't mention the virgin birth in the one place he mentions the birth. And he doesn't say anything about Jesus birth anywhere else. And neither does the rest of the New Testament. That's particularly interesting when you deal with the Book of Acts, because the Book of Acts was written by the same author as Luke, the Gospel of Luke. Luke wrote both books. And it's interesting that in Acts you get a number of statements about Jesus ministry and his life and the significance of Jesus while he was alive. But the Book of Acts never says anything about him being born of a virgin. Moreover, when you think about it, when that occurs to you, then you read the rest of Luke. So you have the virgin Birth in Luke chapters one and two. But the rest of the book doesn't ever refer back to Jesus birth. It refers back to his baptism as a significant moment. One reason that's significant, we should probably do a whole episode on this. There are a lot of scholars who think that Luke chapters one and two were not originally part of the Gospel of Luke. That what we think of Luke's Gospel originally started with what is now chapter three, verse one. The two chapters about the virgin birth story may have been added later. And it's a very interesting idea and there's some good evidence to support it.
- [20:44]
Megan Lewis
That is really interesting. So if there's nothing in the New Testament except in Matthew and Luke about the virgin birth, do we have anything in the non canonical writings that talk about either a virgin birth or explicitly state that Mary wasn't a virgin?
- [20:59]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, well, you do. I mean, in Christian writings after this, it's almost always assumed that Jesus was born of a virgin because Christians had access to Matthew and Luke and they simply accepted their accounts as authoritative. You do have fuller stories of it in some of the non canonical gospels, most especially in a book called the Proto Gospel of James, which is one of the infancy gospels that I'll be doing an episode with it on this maybe in a week or two, I forget which, with a former student of mine, Christopher Freilingis, who wrote a book on the gospels that are outside the New Testament about Jesus young life, including his birth. And in the Proto Gospel of James we have this account of Jesus being born to Mary, who is absolutely a virgin. And to find out if it's true, the midwife comes in and gives her an internal exam after she gives birth to see if her hymen is still intact. And it is. And it's like, whoa. So this is really going out of its way to say, man, she was really a virgin. And so you get this in later Christian traditions. You also though get traditions from non Christian sources that maintained that she was not a virgin and that in fact there's this tradition that you find in both Jewish and pagan sources about Jesus birth that indicate that Mary was in fact impregnated by a Roman soldier and that it was an illegitimate birth. That's something I'll be dealing with in my course about where that tradition came from, what that's all about, but it's emphasizing his unusual coming into the world.
- [22:39]
Megan Lewis
I wanted to go back briefly to the Proto Gospel of James. If the midwife gives Mary an internal exam and she is in fact still a virgin after she's given birth to Jesus. Is this where the idea of perpetual virginity comes in? What is that? And how does it work with Jesus having siblings?
- [22:56]
Bart Ehrman
Okay, so there are. There are several terms that many people, especially Protestants, get wrong that are applied to this. And so. So let me go through the. There are actually four of these terms. So I always lecture my class, and my undergraduate students tend to be Baptist from North Carolina. They're saying, whoa, really? Huh. I had no idea. Yeah. So technically, the New Testament itself does not narrate the virgin birth of Jesus. It narrates the virginal conception of Jesus. Mary conceives as a virgin. She hasn't had sex, but she gets pregnant. Virgin birth is a term that refers to Mary remaining intact after giving birth. So what that means is that her hymen is still intact even though a child has come through the birth canal. That's what you get in the Proto Gospel of James. You get the idea that she's still, you know, intact. And I think the logic is, in a lot of. Lot of cultures in antiquity and still today is that if a woman is intact, somehow she's more pure or something like that. So you got the virginal conception in the New Testament, virginal birth, where she still intact. And then the perpetual virginity of Mary is the doctrine that she never does have sex and she remains a virgin her entire life. This became an important doctrine in the third into the fourth centuries and especially early in the fifth century, when church fathers were insisting that people who were truly saintly did not cave into their bodily desires, but lived ascetic lives, and that included chastity. So that the body is, you know, it's material, it belongs to this world, but our real home is up in heaven. And so we should lead a spiritual existence instead of being concerned for the needs of the body. And that means people who are saintly don't have sex. And so this becomes a very big movement at the end of the 4th into the 5th centuries and on onward. It's why priests are still supposed to be celibate today in the Catholic tradition and so forth. But if that's the case, then Mary could not have had other children. And so she was the perpetual virgin. And so then you're right if you say that, you've got a problem, because the New Testament says that Jesus had brothers and sisters.
- [25:07]
Megan Lewis
So how does the church, once this idea of perpetual virginity comes into play, how does the church account for these siblings?
- [25:15]
Bart Ehrman
Ah, right. So, you know, when I taught at Rutgers University, I got different reactions from my Students than the reactions I get when I teach in Chapel Hill. In North Carolina, at Rutgers, I had very few evangelical Protestants, Bible believing Christians by a lot of Roman Catholics. And in Chapel Hill, I have very few Roman Catholics, but I've got a lot of Bible believing or people grew up in Bible churches. And in Chapel Hill, students get upset because they start realizing their contradictions in the Bible, for example, or discrepancies, and they find that upsetting. At Rutgers, nobody found that upsetting. Almost nobody. What they found upsetting, I got complaints about every year where students said, you know, professor Ehrman said that Jesus had brothers. Jesus didn't have brothers. How could he have brothers? He was an only child and he was like these others. So there were two theories about this that developed in early Christianity that have come down till today. The book we were talking about earlier, the Proto Gospel of James, indicates that Jesus has stepbrothers because Joseph had been previously married and he was an old man when Mary was given to his protection. He had older children already and he had sons and daughters. And so when it talks about Jesus brothers and sisters in the New Testament, it's talking about children from Joseph's previous marriage. That's why, by the way, when you see all the artwork from the Middle ages about when you see, like the nativity scene, Joseph is normally portrayed as an old man. Why is that? Well, because of this tradition that it's his second marriage because his wife had died, he was a widower, and then Mary, but they never had sex. So that was one explanation. And that was a popular explanation until about the 4th or 5th century. Right. When people like the church, Father Jerome, were saying that Mary could never have had sex because she's a saint and saints don't have sex. They started saying, well, you know, Joseph was a saint too. If Joseph is a saint, then he couldn't have had sex either. Well, then who are these people? Who are the brothers if they're not children from a previous marriage? And Jerome came up with the argument that they were his cousins, that they're the cousins of Jesus. Jerome had an advantage because he's advocating this in the western part of the church, where they spoke Latin, but Jerome could read Greek, and he let them know that the word brother in Greek can also mean cousin, which technically I suppose might be right. But there is a word for cousin in Greek as opposed to autophal cross, and that's not the word used. And so Mary shows up with his brothers and sisters, say in John 6, or you have the brothers of Jesus, I mean, in Mark 6 and the brothers of Jesus in John 7. And, you know, it says brothers. And so the normal assumption is that they were brothers.
- [28:04]
Megan Lewis
So one final question before we move on for the show. From what you're saying, the virgin birth was not necessarily as important in early Christianity as it has become in modern Christianity. It doesn't appear in Mark and John, and there are reasons to believe that those authors thought that Joseph was Jesus Father. When do we think the virgin birth did become a central tenet of Christianity? And why do you think it became so important?
- [28:34]
Bart Ehrman
You know, this is just guesswork, but I would guess that if Mark knew about a virgin birth, he probably would have said something about it. Or if Paul knew about it, he would have said something. You know, maybe not. But I think the common way of figuring out when it came into existence was that it's sometime after Mark wrote his gospel, before Matthew wrote his. So maybe in the 70s or 80s, people started saying that he was born of a virgin. And both Matthew and Luke have heard different stories. This means, by the way, that when modern Christians say you have to believe in the virgin birth or you can't be a Christian, it sort of makes you wonder. I mean, was Paul a Christian? Was Mark a Christian? I mean, was there. Were they followers of Jesus? Said, well, yeah, sure. Well, they didn't believe. They don't appear to have believed in the virgin birth. So. So then the question is, when did it become a big deal? It starts becoming a big deal in the second and third centuries because it's a. It is a proof that Jesus is fulfilling Scripture, and it's a proof that he is a special human being. I'd say it becomes a very, very strong doctrine starting in the 4th century, especially when you have this emphasis that sex may be necessary to propagate the human race, but you really should abstain from sex as much as you can, and that saints do abstain from sex. And so Mary then becomes the model of that. Mary becomes the model of the person who then abstains from sex. And it's kind of interesting that two models emerge eventually over Christianity. Two models of women. One is Mary, who's the virgin, and the other is Mary Magdalene, who ends up being called a prostitute. She's not a prostitute in the New Testament, but she's understood as the prostitute who repents. And so throughout the Middle Ages, these are two of the major figures. And this is what it means to be a woman. I guess you either don't have sex or you're. You know, you're a prostitute who repents. And it's like, it's not, not a great image. But so throughout the Middle Ages and it becomes very important because of that. And then down into the modern period when fundamentalists began asserting their strength at the end of the 19th century into the 20th century, it became one of those cardinal doctrines, one of those fundamental doctrines that make a fundamentalist a fundamentalist. They hold to this fundamental doctrine. She was literally a virgin.
- [30:51]
Megan Lewis
Thank you very much. That was really, really interesting. And it's one of those things that you are told in church and you don't necessarily stop and really think about. Fascinating. Especially detangling the Luke and the Matthew accounts because they're told in conjunction, intertwined so often.
- [31:07]
Bart Ehrman
Oh, absolutely. I'll tell you, people listening to this, you know, I don't tell my students this at Chapel Hill or anywhere else. I just say, okay, here's your assignment list. On paper, everything that happens in Matthew's Gospel in the first two chapters. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Now list everything happens in Luke's chapter, chapters one and two. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Now compare your list and not only notice what's different, but see if there's anything you cannot reconcile. And I'm telling you, there's stuff you cannot reconcile. So they do it themselves and they realize, oh my God. I say, yeah, I know, I know. I didn't even have to tell you.
- [31:42]
Megan Lewis
Well, we are going to take a quick break and then we will be back with Barth's weekly update and more information about that course he mentioned.
- [31:50]
Have you ever wondered where the New Testament Gospels were 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, Mark, Luke and John? In this 50 minute talk with Q and A, you'll learn answers to some of the most intriguing questions surrounding the Gospel's authorship, such 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?
- [32:43]
And.
- [32:44]
And last, if the apostles did not write the Gospels, who did and where did they get their information? Don't miss your chance to uncover The
- [32:53]
Truth behind the Gospels.
- [32:55]
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.
- [33:12]
Bart Ehrman
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.
- [33:26]
Megan Lewis
So Bart, you every year, or at least for the past two years, have done special Christmas courses. And you mentioned a couple of times today that you are planning another one. Can you tell us a little bit about what you'll be talking about for this one?
- [33:40]
Bart Ehrman
Well, it's closely related to what we just discussed, but it's something I've never given a lecture on before and weirdly, I've never thought about it at length before until just recently. And it's the New Testament evidence that in fact that New Testament authors thought that Joseph was Jesus father and that apart from the New Testament authors themselves that even Matthew and Luke have heard the stories that Joseph was the father. So what I'll be looking at, I'll be looking at all the New Testament evidence and there's more to it than I would have imagined until I started thinking about it, that these authors thought that Joseph was the father, assumed he was the father, said he was the father, and that even Matthew and Luke, you can look at things in Matthew and Luke themselves, which shows that they also know about this, that Joseph was the father. And so. Wow. And so this is, it's kind of a controversial thing because I mean, it's not just saying that, you know, I don't believe the virgin birth. It's saying that actually there's evidence from the New Testament that goes against the idea of the virgin birth, which as we just said, is found only in Matthew and Luke, but not even throughout Matthew and Luke. And so that's what it's going to be about. It's going to be a two lecture course about whether Joseph was the actual father of Jesus.
- [34:53]
Megan Lewis
Fantastic. And I believe the first one will be recorded on the 10th of December.
- [34:58]
Bart Ehrman
They'll both be recorded then.
- [34:59]
Megan Lewis
So fantastic.
- [35:00]
Bart Ehrman
Do a two lecture course on December 10th. That's right.
- [35:03]
Megan Lewis
Fantastic. And if people are interested, if you want to learn more or sign up for that, you can go to bart ehrman.com Joseph of course, use the code MJ podcast to get your podcast discount. And if you can't attend on the 10th of December, it will be available to watch afterwards in your own time. So don't worry if you can't make that specific date. But no, it sounds sounds really good. And we'll be talking not in as much detail. We'll be very briefly going over Joseph as potentially Jesus father in I think two episodes or three episodes time. So that'll give you a little teaser if you haven't yet signed up for the course. We are going to do some listeners questions now, which is always one of my favourite parts of the show because you all ask such fantastic questions.
- [35:55]
Bart Ehrman
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 ehrman.com Ask Bart
- [36:12]
Megan Lewis
okay Bart, are you ready for listeners questions?
- [36:15]
Bart Ehrman
Bring them on.
- [36:16]
Megan Lewis
Okay, first up, are there clues you can see in the text in the New Testament or in any non canonical sources which helped explain the order in which the stories in the Bible became established? What I'm trying to understand is once Jesus came back to life and was recognized as a God or the hero in the story, was it necessary to then go back to his early life and rework things to help explain later events?
- [36:46]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah. So that's, that's a great question. It's a complicated question and to answer it requires a fairly thorough study of the Gospels. Because when you read the Gospels, you actually do find indications that the stories have been formed in light of the later knowledge of Jesus, death and resurrection. There are some kind of obvious points for that, at least for most critical scholars, including Jesus repeated predictions that he's going to die and be raised from the dead. Those are called passion predictions. You find three of them in the Gospel of Mark, four of them in Luke where he explicitly says it, and he's talking about it all the time in the Gospel of John. But you also get subtle references to it where he doesn't come out and say, I'm going to go to Jerusalem and die and be raised from the dead, but where he talks about the bridegroom being taken away from you. He's the bridegroom, he'll be taken away from you. And so there are things like that. There are also far more subtle references. You know, and we were talking earlier about Luke chapters one and two, where you have the birth narratives in Luke one and two, you have the story of Jesus in the temple in Jerusalem, teaching the Jewish teachers. This is kind of a foreshadowing of what's going to happen because his parents have gone home, they've been to Jerusalem for a festival, and they go home in the caravan up to Galilee. And after three days, they realize their son's not with them. Whoops. We thought he was with someone. Oh my God, where is he? And so they start looking for him. And Mary finds him in the temple in Jerusalem, talking about the law with the Jewish teachers. So it's on accident that that happens, that they find out that he's gone on the third day. So it's the third day of the resurrection, you know. And the idea in Christianity is that Jesus will return to the temple in his second coming, and then he will certainly be schooling the Jewish authorities. So you get all sorts of stuff like that. And so I think the answer is yes. I think the entire Gospel narratives are framed around the idea that they're leading ultimately to Jesus death and resurrection. And that climax has affected how the earlier stories are told.
- [38:58]
Megan Lewis
Somewhat related to that, the next question asks why did Jesus several times say that he was he would die as it was written of him, unless he had found some kind of Hebrew writing expressing that he would die as willed by God? Is there somewhere other than Isaiah 53:10 that he could have found that kind of scriptural prediction?
- [39:19]
Bart Ehrman
My view is that Jesus himself did not predict his death, that he wasn't planning to die, he wasn't expecting to be crucified. Certainly when you read the Gospels, he expects that and says that that's what's going to happen. But again, I think those are reports of Jesus sayings that are coming long after his death by his followers who were pretty sure he was not caught by surprise. But I think that Jesus himself was predicting that God was soon going to intervene and send a cosmic judge from heaven, the Son of Man, to destroy the evil forces aligned against God and bring in a kingdom on earth and Jesus would be made the king. Jesus thought he'd be the future king of the kingdom. I don't think he was expecting to be crucified. He was expecting to become the king. So I think these are words put on his lips later by followers, which happened a lot. We have lots of later gospels where all sorts of words are put on his lips. And I think it happened in the earlier gospels too. The root of this question, though, is what passages were they thinking of that could indicate that a Messiah would die? And that's a really good question because it was the major bone of contention between Jews and Christians after Jesus death. The followers of Jesus who are Jews, claimed that the death of Jesus was predicted. And the Jews, who were not followers of Jesus said, that's not at all what the Messiah is supposed to be. And so Christians had. The followers of Jesus had to search around. And so yes, Isaiah 53 was probably a key passage for many Christians where you have a description of the suffering servant of the Lord who suffers for the sake of others. You have Psalm 22 which begins with My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And sounds to be describing somebody who is suffering horribly. So what they did is they found passages in the Hebrew Bible that talked about a righteous person suffering. And they said that those are referring to Jesus. And after a while it got. It was pretty amazing what people could find. And over time, just about everything in the Old Testament is taken to be a reference. So that, for example, images back in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve, they eat the wrong fruit and they. And they make fig leave. Make fig leaves for themselves to cover their genitals. And then God finds out, he gets all ticked off, he gives them animal skins, he gives them clothing out of animal skins. And later Christians in the Middle Ages would say, so he had to sacrifice an animal. That's foreshadowing the sacrifice of Jesus to cover your sins. Yeah. So there were all sorts of possibilities for people, but I think some of the key ones in the prophets and the Psalms were the ones that they turned to first.
- [42:03]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. Somewhat related again, after stating that Jesus predicted a God willed death several times, how could the author of Mark have written a Gethsemane scene in which Jesus expressed strong qualms about fulfilling God's will unless the scene represents something that actually happened?
- [42:22]
Bart Ehrman
Oh, well, that's an unusual take at the end. You mean he couldn't have said that unless it actually happened? Well, but I mean, it sounds like this person is saying that. I thought he was starting off saying that Gethsemane couldn't happen because Jesus is earlier saying that he understood. I think the question is saying that there's a contradiction, but that he solves the contradiction by saying one of the two things happened. I'm not quite sure I understand, but. So I think it works like this. Mark definitely has points of view that he's trying to get across in his gospel about Jesus that he thinks are serious importance. The major thing for Luke is that Jesus, contrary to expectation, died according to the will of God and that he had to die as the Messiah. No Jew was expecting the death of a Messiah or a resurrection of the Messiah. And so Mark knows that Jesus died and believes he was raised from the dead. And so he has to explain how it is that a Messiah could Die, rise again. His gospel is oriented toward that. At the same time, Mark is trying to say something about what this death of Jesus meant and to tell something to his audience about the significance of Jesus facing death. And in Mark's Gospel, Jesus not just Gethsemane, but the crucifixion scene itself. Jesus appears to be portrayed as in deep agony and despair. And in Gethsemane, he doesn't understand why he has to do it. And at the end, in Mark, this is only in Mark, the only thing Jesus says on the cross in Mark's Gospel, unlike the other gospels, but in Mark, the only thing he says is his last words. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He feels forsaken and abandoned, and he's being mocked by everybody. And he doesn't know why he has to go through with it. I think that the author of Mark is trying to say that when it came to it, Jesus didn't understand, but the reader understands, because right when he dies, the curtain rips in half of the temple, so that now God is not isolated from his people. God lives in the holy of Holies, and Jesus death makes God available to everybody, so that God is working behind the scenes. And I think the author is telling his persecuted readers, you may be persecuted now, you may not understand why this is happening to you, but God has a purpose even Jesus couldn't understand at the end. And yet God was using his death for a good purpose, for salvation of the world. And your persecution, too, can lead to good things. So I think Mark has competing, you know, things that he's trying to say about Jesus. And it ends up leading this kind of confusing thing that throughout the Gospel, Jesus knows he has to die, but in the end, he doesn't want to die or doesn't understand why he has to die. And so I think that's what leads to the tension. I don't think that indicates that it really happened, the prayer in the Gethsemane of Jesus. In Gethsemane, we're told explicitly that Jesus took Peter, James and John and left the other disciples behind. And then he left Peter, James and John and went off by himself and prayed this privately. And right after that, he was arrested, they fled, and he was crucified. So where would Mark get the information about what he prayed? Because there was nobody there. I don't think that that's an indication of historicity. I think it's an indication of very good storytelling.
- [45:43]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. Final question. Isn't it odd that neither the Apostles Creed nor the Nicene Creed mention Scripture did Christians in the first three centuries not take written texts seriously?
- [45:55]
Bart Ehrman
It's odd and often not noticed. I wouldn't say it's odd. I'd say it's significant in a way. Many Christians in my part of the world, now, in the south, say that if you don't believe in the Bible, you can't be a Christian. And that's a view that came about with fundamentalist Christianity in the 1890s and then came into power really in the, you know, the last 50 years or so. You know, it's kind of a strange statement that you have to believe in the Bible. The weird thing is that even non Christians say that now, too. Even non Christians say, well, if you don't believe in the Bible, you can't be a Christian. Where are you getting that from? Well, that's what everybody says. Well, the Nicene Creed lists the things, and the Apostles Creed lists the things that Christians are to believe. And it says nothing about the Bible. So it doesn't say, you have, you know, I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, and I believe in the Holy Bible. That's inerrant. No, it doesn't say that. And so why is that? For one thing, it shows that belief in the Bible was never historically taken to be the criterion for being a Christian. But secondly, the Nicene Creed and the Apostles Creed are presented not in the creeds themselves, but they're formulated on the basis of the church father's understanding of the Bible. And so they are rooted in biblical interpretations. They're not really rooted in biblical statements. In other words, the statements in the Nicene Creed or the Apostles Creed are not statements that you find in the New Testament, but they are theological views that emerge among church fathers who are studying the New Testament, who are trying to make sense of God and Christ and the Spirit and salvation. And so they're meant to be rooted in the Bible, but they're not meant to be indications that it's necessary to believe in the Bible per se. The Bible is the guide for understanding the truth, but it's not the thing to be revered and worshiped.
- [47:52]
Megan Lewis
Thank you very much for that. Before we finish for the week, Bart, would you mind summarizing what we talked about and let people know where they can find out more?
- [48:00]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah. We're talking about the very interesting issue about the virgin birth as found in the New Testament, how it's found actually in only two of the authors, Matthew and Luke. And even in Matthew and Luke, it's only found in their first two chapters. Their presentations of the virgin birth are different from each other in significant ways, and they think different things about the virgin birth. Matthew thinks that it's to fulfill the scripture, to show that Jesus really is the Messiah, and Luke thinks it's in order to show that Jesus really is the Son of God, literally. So we talked about that, and about whether the other authors of the New Testament think Jesus was born of a virgin, and if so, why they didn't say so. It's a particularly relevant topic now as we're heading into Christian, since the virgin birth, of course, is a central feature of the Christmas celebration.
- [48:46]
Megan Lewis
Thank you very much 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 njpodcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.bartehrman.com. that includes his upcoming course on the 10th of December on whether the New Testament authors thought Joseph was Jesus Father. You can find more information at www.bartehrman.com. joseph misquoting Jesus will be back next week and our running order is a little bit out of alignment. Next week we will be talking about meaning in a world without God. I think we advert last week, but that's coming up next week. The following week Bart will be talking with Dr. Christopher Frolingos again and the week after that I am back and we will be talking about Jesus and Joseph and the relationship there. So please join us for all of those. It's going to be a lot of fun. Thank you all and goodbye.
- [49:45]
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.
- [50:01]
Thank you for joining us.