← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
Why Christians Keep the 10 Commandments (But Ignore the Rest of the Old Testament)
00:37:24
Loading summary
Transcript76 lines
- [00:00]
Podcast Advertiser
We're almost halfway through the year and a lot of people are running on empty without fully realizing it. Grow Therapy helps you find care that's covered by insurance before burnout becomes the baseline. Whether it's your first time in therapy or your 50th, grow makes it easier to find a therapist who fits you, not the other way around. They connect you with thousands of independent licensed therapists across the US offering both virtual and in person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters like insurance, specialty, identity or availability and get started in as little as two days. And if something comes up, you can Cancel up to 24 hours in advance at no cost. There are no subscriptions, no long term commitments, you just pay per session. GROW helps you find therapy on your time. Whatever challenges you're facing, Grow Therapy is here to help. Grow accepts over 100 insurance plans, including Medicaid in some states. Sessions average about $21 with insurance and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. Visit growththerapy.com booknow to get started. That's growththerapy.com booknow growththerapy.com booknow availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.
- [01:16]
Megan Lewis
The Ten Commandments are the most famous laws in the Bible, despite the fact that most people can't name more than a few of them. Today I'm joined by Dr. Bart Ehrman to discuss why the Ten Commandments are so famous and why Christians still see them as important even though most of the other 600 Old Testament laws are ignored. Welcome to Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. The only show where a six time New York Times best selling author and world renowned Bible scholar uncovers the many fascinating little known facts about the New Testament and the historical Jesus and the rise of Christianity. I'm your host, Megan Lewis. Let's begin. Welcome back everybody to miss Quoting Jesus. Today we're talking about the Ten Commandments and their place in modern Christianity. We've also got our bonus segment Outsmart BART right at the end where I test the limits of Barth's knowledge with specially submitted listeners questions. So please make sure you stick around for that before all of that though. Bart, how are you today?
- [02:22]
Bart Ehrman
I'm well. As we are recording this, it's the day my book has been released on Love Thy Stranger. And so that was a, that was a slow train coming and so it's, it has arrived at the station and so I'm very pleased and sorry I've been doing book events already and uh, going to be doing that for a while and uh, and all good. Yeah. So, uh, yep, life's looking good from that perspective. How about you? How you doing? Oh, thanks.
- [02:50]
Megan Lewis
Good, thank you. Everyone's kind of ticking along. I finished my archaeology class, which is great. And I just signed up to teach some more stuff for the next semester after the summer. So I'm going to start thinking about that in a few weeks, but right now I'm just breathing.
- [03:08]
Bart Ehrman
You did a presentation at the New Insights into the Hebrew Bible Conference last year. I did, yeah, I did. That was on lots of fun. What did you do?
- [03:17]
Megan Lewis
It was.
- [03:18]
Bart Ehrman
I ran the conference, by the way. What did you.
- [03:22]
Megan Lewis
Great question. It was a conference on a paper on Mesopotamian precursors to the Book of Genesis. And then the parallels that we can still see in the Bible to those precursors and how scholars kind of know they exist, how you identify them, and then how you kind of test whether or not those parallels are significant or if they're the result of just people living their lives and having similar concerns.
- [03:50]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, no, it's great. You know, I read Ovid. I was reading Ovid's Metamorphosis this morning, which is not part of the Engineer, but. But, oh, my God, I had forgotten just how closely Ovid's beginning is just like Genesis. I mean, it's just stacks right up. Wow. There are a lot of these similar stories floating around back then. I mean, back then, it's like 2,000 years after your people before.
- [04:16]
Megan Lewis
Now. It's fin. Seeing how these things are, like, interconnected and. And interwoven, and I love it.
- [04:23]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah. Well, it's a great field of study, so. Okay, I'm glad you did that. It must have been fun.
- [04:27]
Megan Lewis
It was. It was really fun. I'm glad I did it. And we had some really great questions as well, so I think people probably enjoy themselves, which is always, like, if
- [04:35]
Bart Ehrman
people don't know about that, this is. It's available. People can, you know, if they can still buy a ticket and get a recording of it and stuff. And because we had 10 people doing presentations on all sorts of things and all of them involving Genesis and some really, really bright and interest interesting people there. That was. Yeah, that was a good one.
- [04:52]
Megan Lewis
No, it was. It was lots of fun. Okay, so before we get into the Ten Commandments, I have our icebreaker for the week, and I want to ask what is like to teach the Bible in the south and if it's harder to teach it in that part of the country than in other places that you've taught.
- [05:09]
Bart Ehrman
Oh, God. Yeah. We need an episode on this. This is. Yes. Well, back when I was teaching two months ago, know, this was a big issue for me because I moved from New Jersey to North Carolina and I taught at Rutgers University for four years, and then I moved to the south. And there was a stark difference. Most of my students, Rutgers, were either Roman Catholics who had never read the Bible, or a number of them were Jews who were interested in the New Testament, although I thought Hebrew Bible there as well. And. And a lot weren't religious at all. And I moved to the south, and most of the students were from conservative Christian households and had been raised with certain views of things. And so it made it both challenging and really interesting. For one thing, these students had a vested interest, you know, and if you're teaching in a part of the country where people, you know, aren't really church people don't really think much about the religion, you know, teaching the Bible isn't like, you know, it's not, you know, it's just something they're doing. But in the south, teaching the Bible is fantastic because especially in a state university, if, If a state university or a liberal arts college, if. If a school like that has, as one of its functions to get people to think like, you know, you. You're trying to train students to. To think for themselves and come up with their own ideas and look at evidence and figure out what arguments are and. And reason things out so they don't just accept things they've always heard or that, you know, they. They learned, but they actually can question them and think about it. Think New Testament or Hebrew Bible is perfect in the south because these students come in with a vested interest and opinions that haven't been tested usually. And then you. You show what scholars have been saying about it. It runs completely contrary to what they've ever heard before. And it just, like, confuses them and befuddles them and makes them disturbed and. And it makes them study and makes them.
- [07:09]
Megan Lewis
It's really what you want.
- [07:11]
Bart Ehrman
And so the goal, you know, the goal, my goal was never to change somebody's mind, you know, to like, deconvert somebody or like, you know, or to trash the Bible or anything. But it was to get people to think intelligently about this thing and with the hope that would transfer to other areas like, you know, what. How they think about governmental policy or how they think about social agendas or how they think about philosophy or the world or why they're here, but it's getting them to think. And so teaching the Bible in the south is fantastic. For that reason. And it's challenging because students think that you're, like, trying to harm them in some way sometimes, but then by the end of the semester saying, oh, man, I'm really glad I did that.
- [07:49]
Megan Lewis
Yeah, thank you very much. Now we're going to move on to the Ten Commandments and to. To just start with, in terms of genre, what exactly are the Ten Commandments and where do they occur in the Bible?
- [08:05]
Bart Ehrman
Okay, so you need a little bit of the backstory to understand the Ten Commandments. They're found in the Book of Exodus. They first occur in Exodus, chapter 20. And what's happened in the story so far is that the people of Israel were enslaved in Egypt and had grown into a large nation. God raised up a savior for them to bring them out of Egypt so they would be removed from their slavery to head toward the promised land that God had promised their ancestors. And so in Exodus, you have the account of Moses taking them out of Egypt and all the miracles that occurred to make that happen. And then they go to Mount Sinai, which is on the southern part of the Sinai Peninsula, and big mountain there. And he goes up on the mountain, and that's where God gives him the law. So the law of Moses is the law that God gives Moses on Mount Sinai starting in Exodus 20. And then the law continues on through the rest of the book of Exodus, all the way. All the way through Leviticus, with a bit of a hiatus in numbers. There's. There's also legal material there, too. And then Deuteronomy is the second time Moses gives the law. So most of the Pentateuch, most of the first five books consist of the law of Moses. It begins on Mount Sinai in Exodus 20. And the first thing in the law of Moses are the Ten Commandments. And so God gives these ten Commandments, and that's boom, that's the beginning of the giving of the law,
- [09:38]
Megan Lewis
when the rest of the law kind of continues. Is other ten commandments set apart from the rest of this legal material, or should they be understood as being part of it?
- [09:50]
Bart Ehrman
They're part of the legal material. The legal material throughout the. Throughout the Torah, throughout the Pentateuch, comes in two. Two major forms. God gives two kinds of laws. The books don't put it this way, but when you look at them, some laws are actually told. You're told what to do or what not to do, right? And so do this, don't do that. So you're to love your neighbors yourself, but you know you're not supposed to steal, right? These are commandments where they just. Their commandments do or don't do this. There are other kinds of laws that are kind of conditional where. And they're not conditional like you should do. It's that if this happens, this should be the result. So if your ox gores your neighbor, you should pay this kind of fine, you know, or if this happens, that should happen. And so you have these kinds of, these kinds of laws. The Ten Commandments are the, are the first kind where you're told what, what to do, what not to do. And so, and so they're. So they're. But they're incorporated throughout, throughout the Torah. You get, you get laws, you get laws like that as well as these other kinds.
- [11:06]
Megan Lewis
Now, today, we're talking about the Ten Commandments in a modern Christian context. And I think that a lot of modern Christians would say that they're an important part of Christianity. Has this always been the case?
- [11:20]
Bart Ehrman
Well, it's kind of hard to say. I mean, I guess I should say to begin with that this category, the Ten Commandments, is not really something that you find in the ancient world very much. I mean, you have, you know, you certainly have these things. But even in the book of Exodus, when God gives these commandments, they're not called. In Exodus 20, they're not called the Ten Commandments. They're just the beginning of the law. And the interesting thing is that in modern Christianity, there are different ways to number these laws. So in the tradition that I was brought up in, in the Protestant tradition, the. The first law is, you shall have no other God before me. And in Jewish tradition, that's not the first commandment, the Jewish commandment. The first is, I brought you up out of the land of Egypt. You know, I, the Lord your God, brought you up out of the land of Egypt. And they take that as the first. And Protestants say that ain't a commandment. And the thing is that they're. They're not called commandments in Exodus 20. They're not called the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20. And later, 14 chapters later, you get another list of commandments that are. That are called the ten words. And they're not the same as the, these Ten Commandments. They're different things. But at least they're called ten, the ten words. And so that's why people call this the decalogue. The, the word decalogue is a synonym for ten commandments. And decalogue literally means ten words. But so these, this list that people go through, that they number differently. Are you Know, are, you know, the Ten Commandments. But the reason Jews can say that this first one is I brought you up out of the land of Egypt is because it's not a commandment, it's a word. It's a statement. So the 10 statements. The other irony, I don't know if you're planning on getting this later. There's another. Listen, Deuteronomy, chapter 5, which is like Exodus 20, but different. Oh, my God. So, right. You had a question in there somewhere. I had an answer in there somewhere.
- [13:33]
Megan Lewis
I was, I was wondering. Yes. So if we, if we rephrase it to look at. When the ten, like the Ten Commandments as a. A contained unit become a thing, are they important to Christianity at that point?
- [13:48]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah. So Christians, you know, the early Christians don't talk about the Ten Commandments and they don't say, you know, I keep the Ten Commandments, but not the rest of the law, which is what people commonly talk about today. That wasn't a thing in early Christianity. There are places that indicate that some Christians, and possibly Jesus himself, saw these commandments as especially important. An example in the Gospels is when the rich young man comes up to Jesus and asks him, what must I do to have eternal life? Jesus says, keep the Commandments. And the man says, well, which ones? And Jesus starts listing several of them. Don't commit adultery. Don't steal, etc. And these happen to be ones in the Ten Commandments. And that's taken to mean that these were seen as highly important to begin with. But you don't have, you don't have Christian scholars saying, you know, keep, keep the Ten Commandments.
- [14:48]
Megan Lewis
So if they weren't terribly important in, in Christianity's early days, why do you think their existence is so well known today? Why do they mean so much to modern Christians?
- [14:59]
Bart Ehrman
The Jewish law is a complicated thing altogether. You'd mentioned around 600 or so. If you actually add them up, there are 613 commandments. I point this out to my students because have been raised, most of them, to think that the Jewish law is this incredibly complicated. So many picayune laws, nobody can possibly keep them. You know, and, and it's like that. And that's their view of. Because they don't know. But, but that. And that's a common view among Christians. But there are 613 of them. I think there are more than 613 traffic laws in North Carolina. I mean, it's not like this, you know, there aren't millions of these things. 613. But a lot of these laws in the Old Testament, a lot of the law of Moses deal with very specific kind of cultural factors and religious factors that are not applicable for most Christians. When, when you have laws about what to do in case your, or your, your, your ox gores the next door neighbor, you know, it's like, yeah, I don't think I need to keep that one. And you know, if there are laws about like how you can't sow two kinds of seed in like, you know, that doesn't seem like particularly relevant to our modern situation. But these things are commandments that strike most people as being moral commands. But how you're supposed to behave morally, they're ethical injunctions, you know, about stealing or committing adultery or, you know, or, you know, coveting or, you know, there are things you can and cannot do that don't seem particularly Jewish per se. They're just like good ways to live your life. And they come from God and they're the first thing God says and so on Mount Sinai. And so those, those are, that's the key for many Christians. And so it's become kind of the, the thing that Christians will say. Yeah, I don't really keep the Old Testament, but I do keep the Ten Commandments.
- [16:52]
Megan Lewis
We're going to take a very brief break for an announcement and when we get back in, I'm going to ask Bart how many people can actually name all 10 of them. So let's see what happens there. Now I want to let everyone know about a brand new course we're offering with Dr. Joel Baden of Yale Divinity School called the Ten Commandments. Appropriately, do you remember how many lessons there are for this one? Bars?
- [17:17]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, suitably, we decided we normally do eight lecture courses for these things. We thought, okay, we gotta have 10 lectures. Joel, Joel is going to do, he'll do 10 lectures on the Ten Commandments.
- [17:31]
Megan Lewis
Excellent. Now you probably think you already know the Ten Commandments, but Dr. Baden, who many of you may know having had him teach a semester long course on the Hebrew Bible last year, argues that what you and I think the Ten Commandments mean is not at all what they meant in their original context. We've also been talking today about how popular the Ten Commandments are in modern Christianity. Dr. Baden is going to argue that that may not have been the case when they were first written. So he's going to explain how they became the powerful religious and cultural symbol they are today. Now, but given that everyone has probably heard of the Ten Commandments and possibly even read them at some point, why do we need an entire course on them?
- [18:14]
Bart Ehrman
Well, as people are going to find out if they take this course, what is generally thought about the Ten Commandments today, not just among Christians, but like with the populace at large, is largely really not what they were about at the time and even like the specific things. You and I are going to talk probably about a few specifics in a little bit. But Joel, you know, Joel is one of the really great Hebrew Bible scholars in the country and he's an expert on the Pentateuch and, and this kind of material. And he's going to explain where these things came from, what they really are all about and, and how they've been interpreted over the years. This is material that most people do not know. And I myself am going to learn some things from this. I mean, I've lectured on the Ten Commandments. I have a, I have a course actually in our, in our repertoire on Finding Moses where I have a section on the Ten Commandments. So I talk about them a good bit there. But Joel is really, you know, one of the world class experts on it. So I think given their centrality and their importance to modern religion, I think that this is going to be a really eye opening course for people.
- [19:32]
Megan Lewis
Now we'll be recording the lessons for the course soon, so make sure to grab your seat so you can join in live with the Q A with Dr. Baden. You can find the link for that@bart ehrman.com forward/10commands. That's 10 commandments. Early bird pricing expires on April 11th. And as always, use the code MJ podcast to get an additional discount or another idea, possibly get a free trial of the Biblical Studies Academy and you can watch the course as part of your BSA membership along with 40 plus other courses. And if you're interested in taking a look at that, you can do that@bart ehrman.com forward/BSA. All right, we are going to get back to our conversation on the Ten Commandments now. But like I said before the break, I have an important question. In your experience, can people generally name all of the commandments?
- [20:23]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, my experience, no. It's really hard to find somebody except for a really a really devout Bible reader, often somebody who is a, you know, a Christian, really committed to the Bible, for example, could list the list the Ten Commandments. My students often tell me, give me the line that I said before this. I'll ask them kind of what the relationship is to, you know, the Old Testament and they'll say, well, they don't follow the Old Testament laws, but they do keep the Ten Commandments. And so then I'll ask them, have you ever had a job? A job on Saturday? Oh, yeah, sure, sure. So, well, you know, according to the Ten Commandments, you cannot work on Saturday. It's the Sabbath day. You can't work then. Oh, so you keep the Nine Commandments. The Nine Commandments are important to you. And so. But the interesting thing is that there's been a movement, especially among conservative Christians in the country, to. To have replicas of the Ten Commandments posted on governmental, public. In public schools. They want. They want, you know, a plaque with the Ten Commandments on it. And, you know, there caused a lot of disagreement, dispute among people some years ago. I tried to find this before our episode today, and it looks like it's been taken down everywhere I can find because there was a video of it that was very funny. Colbert, back when he was doing the Colbert Report and would be interviewing people, he interviewed a congressman named Lynn Westmoreland from, I guess from Georgia, I think, who was trying to push legislation to have. Have the Ten Commandments put in courtrooms around the country. And Colbert was interviewing him, and Colbert asked him, you know, why, you know, it was so important to do this. And he said, well, these are really, you know, they're important for our. To our very fabric of our existence as a. You know, and that people should know these commandments so that, you know, because they understand it's one of the foundations our country's built on. And Colbert said, wow, they're that important. Said, okay, list them for me. Gets this confused look on his face, and it's like his eyes widen and he can remember that you're not supposed to steal, commit adultery or murder. And that's it. He knew three of this 10, and he's the one who's pushing to put them everywhere so people could read them. He hasn't read them or hasn't learned them. So that strikes me as fairly typical. And just as a side story to that, I was supposed to be Uncle Bear a few weeks after that, and I went home and memorized the Ten
- [23:08]
Megan Lewis
Commandments just in case. Oh, gracious. Now, you mentioned.
- [23:18]
Bart Ehrman
I don't think people do. It's a term you use, right? I keep the Ten Commandments.
- [23:23]
Megan Lewis
You mentioned the. The not working on the Sabbath one. Do any of the other Commandments surprise people when you talk to them about them?
- [23:31]
Bart Ehrman
I think when you say them, they don't sound surprising. I think what's more surprising is that is when they learn, if they learn that they don't actually mean what they think they mean. I think Joel's going to be doing this on. And in his thing. I'll just, I mean, I'll just give you. I guess I'll just give you one adult. One example is the command about adultery. You shall not commit adultery. We normally take that to mean that you are not to have sex with somebody other than your spouse. And that if you, that's, you know, that's a. Ethical. It's a, it's immoral, it's an ethical violation. And so, you know, I'm not disputing that, but I am saying that that's not what that commandment is. It is kind of that. What it, what the commandment is is that a woman cannot sleep with a man other than her husband and that a man cannot sleep with someone else's wife. And the issue is not what we normally think of sexual. Of as sexual immorality, although it's that too. But the commandment has to do with property rights. The woman belongs to the man, and if another man takes her, he's taking his property. There's actually support for that even in the Ten Commandments, the Decalogue. When you get to the commandment about coveting, where people are told, I guess men are being told that they're not supposed to covet, which means they're not supposed to want so badly. They're willing to take. They're not. So it doesn't mean just like having the idea, oh, yeah, I'd like to have his donkey. It's like, you know, planning, making a plot to get his donkey. You're not supposed to covet your neighbor's donkey, his house, his ox, his wife, and goes on like that, which means the wife is right up there with the donkey as, as the man's property. And you're not supposed to want to take his wife any more than his donkey or vice versa. So this is, this is showing, you know, the status of women in, in. This is not unique to Israel. This is like common everywhere in the ancient world. I mean, but, but the woman becomes the man's property. And so that's worth thinking about, you know, that, that the adultery law isn't really what we think of typically as sexual promiscuity, but we, but it is. It's involving a man's property rights.
- [26:08]
Megan Lewis
So if people don't really know what the Ten Commandments are or indeed what they actually mean, why do you think they've become such popular Talking points.
- [26:18]
Podcast Advertiser
Hey, want a cookie? Oh, I know you just ate, so
- [26:22]
Megan Lewis
you're craving something a little sweet.
- [26:24]
Podcast Advertiser
Besides, one cookie isn't gonna kill you.
- [26:27]
Bart Ehrman
How about half?
- [26:29]
Megan Lewis
Just a bite. Bite it. Bite it.
- [26:32]
Podcast Advertiser
Bite it.
- [26:33]
Mochi Health Advertiser
Food noise isn't fair, but Mochi health is your affordable glp. One source that puts you on a path to successful weight loss by quieting food noise.
- [26:41]
Megan Lewis
Bite it.
- [26:42]
Bart Ehrman
Shh.
- [26:43]
Mochi Health Advertiser
Learn more@joinmochi.com Mochi members have access to licensed physicians and nutritionists. Results may vary.
- [26:49]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, it's a great, it's a great question. I wish I had a great answer to it. But it actually is the case that Christians have for a long time both misunderstood and misrepresented the law of Moses as being a set of do's and don'ts that nobody can possibly keep, which was God's plan. God planned to give them a law that they couldn't keep so that they would realize they need Jesus. So this is the, a Christian interpretation of the law of Moses that I learned when I was young and I believed in all the way time I was an evangelical Christian into my adulthood. It's flat out wrong. That's not what the law is all about. But Christians have thought that the, the first part of it, the first the 10 Commandments of they're ones that Jesus quotes and so Jesus, you know, sanctions those, sanctifies those, and so we should keep those. They also notice that Jesus didn't keep the Sabbath in by the way, that's probably not true when you actually read the Gospels. Jesus, Jesus actually never breaks the laws of Sabbath. He breaks the Pharisees understanding of Sabbath. But Christians later claimed that he didn't care about the Sabbath. So they kind of exclude that one in their head. But they keep the Ten Commandments. So I think the answer is because they, they begin the law. They're ones that are relatively simple to keep. You know, you don't have to go out and murder or steal somebody else's spouse or you know, or there are things that you can actually do. And they're ones Jesus taught. And so, so Christians think, well, those are the ones. Then for us.
- [28:37]
Megan Lewis
Is this the reason why the other laws in the Old Testament haven't been given the same kind of weight? This association with Jesus and, and what you're mentioning before about, well, I don't have an ox, so I don't really need to worry about that particular law.
- [28:50]
Bart Ehrman
Don't need to worry about that. And a lot of the laws have to deal the law. I said there are two Kinds of. There are two kinds of laws. There are these ones that are like direct commandments, do and don't. And there are some that if this happens, then do this other thing. There are. There's another way to talk about the two kinds of laws. In the Old Testament, this is not the way that ancient Jews talked about them, but there are some laws that have to do with how you worship God and others about how you treat people within your community. So in that sense, they're kind of two different kinds of laws. And the laws about how to worship God include a lot of things about, like how to perform sacrifices in the temple and how to practice Judaism, what kind of offerings to make. And so there are different kinds of sacrifices that are offered up and different rules about priests and different rules about Levites and stuff like that that Christians just think are irrelevant to their religion. They think that Jesus has surpassed Judaism, and so we don't practice Judaism. And so these laws are no longer in force. And so I think the most interesting thing about Christian use of the law is they do say this about the Ten Commandments. And many Christians pick out one law or another that they find particularly congenial to their perspective on something, and they focus on that as one of God's commandments. But if there are other laws that they don't. That they don't find congenial, they say, well, those don't apply anymore. And so most famously, Christians have long pointed out that there are a couple places in the. In the law where it is a shame for a man to lay, to lie with another man. It's an abomination for a man to lie with another. In other words, male sex relations are abominable to God. And so they. They pick up that one and they say, see, you cannot have gay sex, you know, and be pleasing to God. They don't. Look at the next chapter where it says, for example, that you cannot wear a sweater made out of two kinds of fabric. Oh, well, that doesn't apply anymore. Well, how do you decide what applies and doesn't apply anymore? You know, and people will fumble around and try and come up with something, but when you actually look at the logic, there's no logic to it. Some laws are congenial and some are not. And so you pick and choose. And so if you pick and choose, I think you ought to at least admit you're picking and choosing and that you're being. And you might think you're not being arbitrary about it, but there's some kind of arbitrariness about it, because you have one but not the other. And they both have the same status in the law. So, yeah, so there it is.
- [31:46]
Megan Lewis
But thank you very much. That's all for today's interview. So we are going to move on to this week's bonus segment, which is Out Smart, Bart. All right, Bart, are you ready?
- [31:56]
Bart Ehrman
Probably not.
- [31:59]
Megan Lewis
All right, first question. By what method did the grandson of Paul's supposed teacher die? According to rabbinic legend,
- [32:13]
Bart Ehrman
Paul's supposed teacher was Gamaliel, according to the book of Acts. Paul doesn't say anything about that. In the Book of Acts, Paul is educated in Jerusalem by the leading rabbi of the day. Paul does not indicate that and says nothing about Gamaliel, says nothing about being educated in Jerusalem, and in fact, doesn't show signs of knowing Aramaic. So it seems like Acts is trying to build him up. As somebody who's trained by a rabbi. I'm giving that as background because I can't answer the question. This is something I used. Not anymore.
- [32:52]
Megan Lewis
The person who sent the question in says that he was apparently struck down by the prayer of Rabbi Eliezer ben Hikainos according to the often overlooked end of the story of the oven of Akani or Aknai.
- [33:05]
Bart Ehrman
Right.
- [33:06]
Megan Lewis
Anything that I'm familiar with. So I'm going to assume that our listener is correct. So thank you for sending that one in.
- [33:13]
Bart Ehrman
I'd say this is not a good start, and I'm bracing myself now, given this question.
- [33:19]
Megan Lewis
Well, the next one is actually in the New Testament, so sorry, you probably stand a better chance. In which book are the following verses found? Indeed, to this very day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.
- [33:35]
Bart Ehrman
I believe that's Second Corinthians.
- [33:37]
Megan Lewis
It's Corinthians 3. 15, 16.
- [33:41]
Bart Ehrman
Second Corinthians.
- [33:41]
Megan Lewis
Oh, no. Yes. No, that's me. You're right. Second Corinthians.
- [33:44]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, yeah. No, it's a very interesting passage because it seems to suggest that most Jews do not have a proper understanding of their own scriptures. There's a veil over their eyes, and that has been used for very negative purposes over the years for Jewish Christian relations.
- [34:09]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. Final question complete the following quote from First Corinthians 1. I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that none, no one can say that you were baptized in my name. I did baptize also the House of Blank. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.
- [34:30]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, so this is an interesting Passage, because the. Paul is. Paul is trying to deal with people in Corinth, leaders in Corinth who've come after him, church leaders who've come after him, Christians who are leading the church now who are claiming to have superior power to Paul. And they're claiming that Paul is kind of physically pathetic and he's weak and he is not rhetorically effective. He's not a good speaker, so that he doesn't. He clearly doesn't have the power of God in him. And they're claiming they do have the power in God in them, because they're vibrant people who are rhetorically powerful. And. And that shows that God's spirit is speaking through them. And they're also. Apparently. That part's clear. It looks like. Also, though, when they baptize people, they're claiming that the kind of charisma they have from the Spirit is being passed on to the people they baptize so that people who follow this leader are superior to follow that leader because this leader is more powerful. And Paul in 1 Corinthians is trying to show that, in fact, the way you see what an apostle is is not by whether they are physically powerful or particularly, you know, smart or rhetorical, because, in fact, the. The Gospel of Christ is about weakness and foolishness. God saved the world by having a man crucified. There's nothing wise or powerful about that. That seems ridiculous, but that's how God did it. So Paul, who in fact is weak and not a good speaker, is a better representative than these others. And in that context, Paul is saying, I didn't baptize any of you. You know, they're baptizing you claiming to pass this power. I didn't baptize any of you. And then he makes some exceptions. Oh, yeah. Well, I guess I did baptize these guys. I think the answer is Stefanis.
- [36:28]
Megan Lewis
It is. Yes.
- [36:30]
Bart Ehrman
Whoa, you just thought I was buying time there, didn't you?
- [36:34]
Megan Lewis
It crossed my mind, and then I thought, no, no, he knows that one.
- [36:39]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah.
- [36:40]
Megan Lewis
Well, audience, thank you so much for sending in your questions. If you do have questions for Bart, then you can submit them on the website. I can't remember the web address, so I'm not going to give it to you, but I'll try and remember it for next week. But before we finish, for the week, would you mind just telling us what we spoke about today?
- [36:58]
Bart Ehrman
Well, we're talking about the. The part of the law of Moses that has been most important, you could argue, the most important in the history of Western civilization because Christians have picked up on the Ten Commandments as being God's commandment, not just to Jews, but also to Christians. And so we're talking about what the Ten Commandments really are, where they're located, what we can say about them contextually, and how, you know, Christians today often, often don't understand what not just Christian, but modern readers have trouble understanding what they're really about. And many modern Christians who actually embrace the Ten Commandments don't know what they are. Isn't that interesting? So we and this is in preparation for a course by Joel Baden that will be on the Ten Commandments that's being offered from in the Past for Biblical studies.
- [37:50]
Megan Lewis
Audience, thank you so much 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 that you can use the code MJ podcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.barterman.com. and that discount applies also to the course on the Ten Commandments with Dr. Joel Baden. Address for that is bart erman.com Ten Commandments. That's 10 Commandments. Misquoting Jesus will be back next week, but what are we talking about next time?
- [38:21]
Bart Ehrman
Well, so next week we're getting personal, at least to me. We're going to talk about what I used to believe about the Bible early in my life and, and why I changed my mind about it, why I don't think what I used to think, and what kind of impact that's made on my life.
- [38:40]
Megan Lewis
Make sure you join us then. Thank you all and goodbye. This has been an episode of Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. We'll be back with a new episode next Tuesday, so please be sure to subscribe to our show for free on your favorite podcast listening app or on Bart Ehrman's YouTube channel so you don't miss out from Bart Ehrman and myself, Megan Lewis. Thank you for joining us.