← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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- [00:01]
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- [00:35]
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 the rise of Christianity. I'm your host, Megan Lewis. Let's begin. Hello everybody and welcome back to Misquoting Jesus. We are sticking with Paul for another week and today we're going to be talking about his shift from someone zealously persecuting Christians to being an active Christian missionary and one of the most influential people in the formation of the religion. What exactly prompted this shift and why did his change of heart go to such extreme lengths before that, though? Bart, I have a question and I was mentioning before we got started that it can be a dicey one to ask academics because sometimes you get. I don't. But my question is what do you do to relax and not work?
- [01:33]
Bart Ehrman
Oh my God, I do.
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Megan Lewis
Wonderful.
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Podcast Announcer
Very important.
- [01:39]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah. No, you know, I believe in working really hard and my talent is being focused and keeping focus. But when I'm not working, man, I'm not working. I believe in having a good start to a day, like doing something that will make me happy to start the day, you know, and what I do isn't what like most people would do, just preface it with that. So I always get up early, 6, 6, 30, something like that. I get a cup of coffee and I read something that is not necessarily related to my work, like just read something I'm interested in. And so not a novel that I read novels at night, but in the morning. Right now I'm reading evolutionary psychology, trying to understand bits of evolutionary psychology. So I'll read, you know, for half an hour or 40 minutes. Yeah. And then after that I do Pilates for 30 or 40 minutes. Usually just mat exercises for 30, stretching and balancing and Pilates for 30. Then I meditate for 20 minutes every day. Then I walk the dog. Then I read some Greek. I've been reading Plato, reading Plato's, some of the early dialogues of Plato. And that's before I get to work.
- [02:43]
Megan Lewis
And so for me that's wonderful start to the day.
- [02:45]
Bart Ehrman
And so the problem is, you know, by the time it's like 11 in the morning, like I've been up for five hours, I haven't done anything. But it's a great way to start. I love getting up to something I'm looking forward to rather than getting up thinking, oh God, I've got to do this, I got to, oh gee, you know, I just like getting up and starting out that way and then once I once that's out of the way, then I'm just like, I can just focus on the rest of the day. I've had some little exercise and meditation and I'm ready to focus and then I can just kind of go at it for hours and hours. But yeah, I like to start like that. How about you? You've got all these kids. You probably don't you. You're not probably doing a lot of Pilates and meditation in the morning.
- [03:23]
Megan Lewis
No, not a lot. Josh and I. So Josh bro toe recently, but before that we started to do some yoga together. I've done yoga for years and really enjoy it. And he always weightlifted, but with his multiple sclerosis, that's getting a little tricky now. So he's transitioning to doing yoga with me. So we did that for a while and once his toe is not broken anymore, we're gonna keep going. But when I need to switch off and not use my brain intensively. I play video games a lot.
- [03:51]
Bart Ehrman
Really?
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Megan Lewis
Yeah. I've been a gamer since I was in my very early teens and it's just carried through.
- [03:57]
Bart Ehrman
Hold on, have we talked about this before?
- [03:59]
Megan Lewis
I don't think so.
- [04:01]
Bart Ehrman
Do you ever play Fortnite?
- [04:02]
Megan Lewis
No, I don't. I don't much like those stars of games. I like adventure games. I like role playing games. I play a lot of Final Fantasy. A couple of people have noticed my Final Fantasy mug that makes the odd appearance on the show. And my current favorite is a video game series called Horizon, which is a kind of post apocalyptic series, but it has some very heavily archaeological themed like threads running through it which as well as having a fantastic storyline and really fun play style, I enjoy the archaeology as well.
- [04:33]
Bart Ehrman
Wow, interesting. So post apocalyptic. That sounds like as serious as a shoot em up game.
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Megan Lewis
It is. And when you get into the very detailed points of the plot, it's a little on the depressing side because machines overthrow humanity. But it's nice because you're in the world and you're kind of rebuilding civilization and piecing together what happened to the civilization that came before you, which, as an historian, really does appeal to me.
- [05:01]
Bart Ehrman
So is it named chatgpt? It's not. Good.
- [05:09]
Megan Lewis
I will keep you posted.
- [05:10]
Bart Ehrman
Okay. Yeah, please. Yeah.
- [05:12]
Megan Lewis
So we should get into Paul, and like I said in the introduction, we're talking about his conversion to Christianity. But even that sentence contains a couple of controversial terms that we should probably dive into before we get further. What do people usually mean when they talk about conversion? And is it really an appropriate term to use here?
- [05:32]
Bart Ehrman
It turns out it's a big debate. There's a lot of scholarship on conversion. I'm not talking about, like, Paul's conversion or Constantine's conversion or, you know, the concept of conversion, because it continues to be a major issue in modern religion, especially in the monotheistic religions. In pagan religions, you didn't really convert to another religion because if you started following a new religious practice, you didn't have to give up your old one. And in modern lingo, conversion usually means you give up one thing to turn to another, but it doesn't necessarily mean that. And so the term conversion just means something like to turn around. It doesn't have to be from a religion to a different religion. The reason it's controversial when it comes to Paul is because many scholars would maintain that Paul did not convert, like from Judaism to Christianity. In fact, that's the common view among professional scholars, is that's not what happened, but that in fact what happened was that Paul continued being a Jew, but he understood that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. And so it was a different form of Judaism, but it's not a conversion from one religion to another religion. He didn't think that he left Judaism. I actually agree that that's right. I think he didn't think that he joined a new religion, But I do think that he turned around. He turned around from thinking Jesus was the cursed of God, to think that he was the Christ of God. He changed in his understanding of Jesus, and to that extent, I think it was a conversion.
- [07:09]
Megan Lewis
So if conversion can be used in this sense, because Paul is changing his mind about something specific. How about Christian? You said he didn't convert from Judaism to Christianity. Can we even use the term Christianity this early in the religion's history?
- [07:24]
Bart Ehrman
Well, yeah, it depends which scholar you ask. Most of my colleagues object. I'd say most. I don't know if most. A lot of my colleagues object to using the term Christian for the early years of Christianity. Many of my colleagues in the field don't think that we should use the word Christian for anything happening during the New Testament period. Their logic is twofold. One is that people who are believing in Jesus early on at least still are Jewish. They're still engaged in Jewish practices and Jewish customs, and they're still circumcising their babies and keeping kosher and whatnot. And so it's not really appropriate to give them a different call them by a different religion that fully develops later. That's the second thing, is that in this early period, Christianity isn't what it became. And so it's not like you have a Nicene Creed and that you've got these ritual services and things and that you think of yourselves as different. And so their idea is that you shouldn't really call it Christianity until a later period. I disagree with that. I'm kind of in a minority on this. But the argument that you shouldn't call it Christianity because it's not what it became later seems flawed to me because at what point does it become Christianity? Is it Christianity in the third century? They didn't have a Nicene Creed yet. Is it Christianity in the 4th century? They didn't have a Pope yet. I mean, it's like you just kind of go on, you know, and like the Christianity in the ancient world until modern times, Christianity is not what it became. And so when do you start calling it Christianity? And so. So I have a kind of a. What seems to me a simpler understanding of things. Christianity, of course, is a way of referring to Christ. These are followers of Christ. My view is that anybody who thinks that Jesus is the way of salvation is a Christian follower of Christ. That opens it up so that you can call Paul a Christian as soon as he converts. But when I say that he's a Christian, I'm not saying therefore he's not a Jew. Yes, he was a Jew and he's a Christian. I've got friends today who still consider themselves both Jews and Christians. And so that's a possibility. And it'd be very different in Paul's day, but it's the same concept.
- [09:45]
Megan Lewis
So as we spoke about last week, when Christianity was still in its infancy, Paul went from being someone who actively persecuted Christians to a very committed missionary. What reasons does Paul give for this shift in thinking and behavior?
- [10:01]
Bart Ehrman
So Paul is a little bit, I was going to say obtuse, not obtuse. He just doesn't say much. That's the problem. He just doesn't give us a lot of information to go on. The major passage is in Galatians, chapter one, Paul says that he had been persecuting the Christians, trying to destroy the church. And then he says, but when God, who set me apart from my mother's womb, decided to reveal his son to me. And then he goes on to explain that he came to realize that Jesus was in fact the Son of God, the Messiah. Messiah. And that this is what led him then to decide he needed to be a missionary to take this message of salvation that God had provided to Gentiles. Jews were already hearing the message from the other apostles. And Paul's going to take it to Gentiles. And so he says, when God revealed his son to me in the book of Acts, we have an account in chapter nine of Paul going off to persecute the Christians in Damascus. This is the famous Road to Damascus story. Paul doesn't say anything about the road to Damascus. But in Acts, Paul's on the way with some companions to Damascus, and Jesus appears to him. He realizes that Jesus has been raised from the dead, you know, and so he converts. The account in Acts is problematic for a lot of reasons. One is, one I said in my earlier episode. This is predicated on Paul having been given authority by the high priest to go persecute followers of. Of Jesus in Damascus, which doesn't make any sense historically because the high priest had no jurisdiction over Damascus. But also it's problematic because we have two other accounts of the same event in Acts, and the accounts cannot be reconciled with each other, at least in my judgment. And most people look at this without kind of saying, well, they've got to be consistent. If you look at them, in one of them, Christ appears and Paul is blinded by the light and he falls off as a donkey kind of thing. And he's like. He's blinded and he hears Jesus talking to him. But we're told that the companions. In one of the stories, the companions heard the voice but didn't see anything. In another of the accounts, they see the light, but they didn't hear anything, which is that it's one or the other. In one of them, Paul's told to go to Damascus. And this person Ananias, will instruct him about what he's to do next. He does. In another account, he's not told to go to Ananias. Jesus instructs him on the spot. And so you have these various things, and the whole thing doesn't agree with Paul himself. Paul says in Galatians that when God revealed his Son to him, Paul emphatically states, I did not consult with flesh and blood. In other words, I didn't talk to anybody about it. That's directly contradictory to Acts. He goes to Ananias and talks about it. And then he says in Galatians he says, and I did not go to Jerusalem, Jerusalem to confer with the apostles. And in the book of Acts, that's the first thing he does. He goes directly to Jerusalem to confer with the apostles. There are problems with this whole thing. Paul says that God revealed something to him. And later in other Pauline letters, he says that he had a vision of Christ, that Christ appeared to him. He says this in 1 Corinthians 15, 1 Corinthians 9, he says this. And so it appears that Paul had a vision of Christ. He was convinced that he saw Christ alive. And as I said in our previous episode, based on Paul's own chronology and everything else we know, this has to be three or maybe even four years after Jesus death. And so Paul thought that Jesus appeared to him from heaven, apparently. And so he knew that Jesus had been raised from the dead and that's what converted him, because he actually saw him.
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Megan Lewis
Do other people or did other people claim to have similar visions?
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Bart Ehrman
Well, it looks like they did. You know, part of the problem with this period of Christianity, by this period I mean something like the first 40 years of Christianity. For four decades, we only have one person's writings. Those are Paul's. After the year 70, we start getting gospels and other letters and other books and things. But for the first 40 years between Jesus death and about the year 70, Paul's the only author we have. And so we don't have other, we don't have apostles writing, telling us what they're experiences of the resurrection were. But we do have Paul tell us that Jesus died and that when he was raised from the dead, he appeared to Cephas and to all the apostles. And he makes a list of people that Jesus appeared to. This is in First Corinthians, chapter 15, verses 3 to 8. And Paul knew Cephas or Peter. He spent time with him. He knew James, the brother of Jesus, who's also one of the ones that Jesus apparently appeared to. And so it's usually assumed that these people also had visions of Jesus or they thought they saw him alive after his death. And in the Gospels of the New Testament, Mary Magdalene is the first or one of the first to see Jesus alive after not Cephas, but Mary Magdalene. And so it's often thought that Mary Magdalene, one of Jesus followers, not one of his Close closest ones in the Gospels. But one of his followers also had a vision of him. And so I'd say that there appear to have been people who are saying, yes, I saw Jesus after his death.
- [15:36]
Megan Lewis
Does it seem like in the ancient world more broadly, visions of the supernatural were relatively common, or would this have been something of note?
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Bart Ehrman
Visions were common then, just as they are now. People often today say, look, if you got all these people saying they saw Jesus, Jesus must have come back from the dead, because why are you having all these people saying it? Well, usually the people who tell me that, by the way, that, you know, there's so many accounts of this, it's got to be authentic. Moreover, they'll say, in some cases, Jesus appears to groups of people, and you can't get group hallucinations. You know, hallucination goes on in your head, doesn't go in the heads of groups. Right. And so people say that. But then there are almost always Protestant apologists who tell me this. And I say to them, okay, what about appearances of the Blessed Virgin Mary? Those are extremely well documented in the modern period. We're not taking one person's account from, you know, decades later, Paul's account and Paul's writings are decades after these events. And we're taking his judgment on. We're not doing that. You can go interview these people, and there are sometimes hundreds at a time and say Mary appeared. And so do you think that's a group hallucination? Well, she wasn't there. Well, but they said she was there. Well, so why is it any different? It's the same thing somebody says they saw. And so it was common then, and it's common now, not just with, like, you know, religious figures like Mary and Jesus also still shows up today sometimes, but also, I mean, deceased loved ones, somebody you really love. People have visions of deceased loved ones all the time. Modern psychological analyses have shown that. Assessments have shown that one out of eight people has a vision of a deceased loved one they actually see and they can touch them, they can talk with them. It happens all the time. One out of eight of us. So it doesn't mean you're crazy. Yeah, yeah, that's a big number. But, you know, your grandmother dies, and three weeks later, you see her sitting on your bed in your bedroom, and you talk to her and you're convinced that, you know, you may not think that she's bodily alive, but you think that she's alive and up in heaven and she's visiting you.
- [17:44]
Megan Lewis
So what would people in the ancient world have thought if they had one of these visions.
- [17:48]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, you know, it completely depends on what their understanding of life after death was. They, like, now would think that the person is still alive even though they died. And today, as I just said, you think, well, my grandmother's in heaven, and so she's just come down to tell me, you know, and to comfort me. But that's because we think that when you die, your soul goes someplace. Your soul goes to heaven or hell. And, you know, some people thought that in the ancient world. And so when they. They thought they had a vision, that's what they thought. You know, they had that kind of vision of the soul appearing to them. But there were other people in the ancient world who thought that the afterlife was a bodily afterlife. For example, Romulus, the first king of Rome, who founded Rome, was in tradition reported by Livy and Plutarch and others, that at the end of his life, he ascended bodily up to heaven. And there's accounts of him actually coming back down to talk to eyewitnesses, who then later said, I talk with him afterwards, and he's alive, but he came down bodily because that was his understanding that he ascended bodily to heaven, which is different. Jewish apocalypticists like Paul and the apostles and other followers of Jesus, like Jesus himself, John the Baptist, their view was that a person dies, they're dead. But at the end of time, God is going to raise the dead back to life physically. It'll be a physical resurrection. And that's what the afterlife is, is at the end of time, there'll be a physical resurrection. And so if somebody's alive again, it's because God's brought their body back to life. And that's what Paul and the other disciples thought about Jesus, that his body had been brought back to life and had been taken up to heaven then, kind of like Romulus, only it's that the body had been reanimated now, and that that shows that the resurrection is about to happen because the first one's been raised. And so they thought that Jesus body came out of the tomb and got reanimated, taken up to heaven, and this was the beginning of the resurrection.
- [19:51]
Megan Lewis
What do you think actually happened to prompt Paul's conversion? Do you think he did genuinely have a vision, or do you think it can be explained in another way?
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Bart Ehrman
Well, I don't know, and I don't think we can know, given our source material. I mean, he has these brief references and Acts, has accounts that contradict his. And so that's basically what we've got. I think there are a lot of options. Of course, committed Christians who hold to traditional views of Christianity would say that Paul saw Jesus because Jesus was raised from the dead and Paul saw him. And so that's one explanation. There are lots of other explanations. But people have visions all the time of things that aren't there. And I talk about this at some length in my book How Jesus Became God, because I have to deal with why it is that Christianity started. It didn't start with the death of Jesus. If Jesus had died and you know, then he stayed dead, they wouldn't have Christianity. It starts with people believing he got raised from the dead. And so what made them believe? And I argue that's because they had these visions. But I don't think we can explain. We don't know exactly what they were. I mean, either he did come back. If he didn't come back, then psychologists would call that a non veridical vision. A non veridical vision is a vision where you see something that ain't there. As opposed to like my seeing you right now. I assume you really are there.
- [21:14]
Megan Lewis
Pretty sure I am.
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Bart Ehrman
I think you are. But a non veridical vision is when, you know, I see my grandmother and she's not really there. But there are other explanations. It could be that kind of thing which can be psychologically induced for a beloved loved one or a very important religious figure. Both of those types show up a lot. And Jesus, of course, was both. He was a beloved deceased one and he was a great religious figure. But sometimes, you know, you see somebody and you mistake them for someone else. Happens to me all the time. I have sometimes given lectures to an audience where I was sure the guy in the eighth row was my father. He looked just like my father.
- [21:54]
Podcast Segment Host
Wow.
- [21:55]
Bart Ehrman
And you know, I'm a rationalist. And so I'm thinking, yeah, okay, it's not, but boy, but it sure looks like it. But you know, if I weren't a rationalist, you know, I might well think, well, wow, that's nice. So he could have mistaken something he saw, could have been a psychological event in his head, but not in reality. Some people say, well, maybe he made it up. Maybe he made it up. I don't think so. But you know, it's possible. I mean, so short answer, Megan, is we don't know.
- [22:22]
Megan Lewis
That's sometimes the best answer. We talked a lot last week about Paul's dislike and hatred of Christians before his conversion and the fact that that was seemingly mainly theologically motivated because there is no way For Paul, that Jesus could have been the Messiah. So does his sudden shift in belief affect his personal theology?
- [22:46]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, it does, fairly radically. And I'll say, you know, that it affected him so much that people say so he must have seen something. To say he must have seen something isn't the same thing as saying it must have happened as described. I think he did think he saw something and it changed everything for him. Let me go back on that. It did not change everything. In fact, some things remained the same. And he saw that Jesus raised from the dead, confirmed some things that he already thought. And so that's an important first point. Paul, as we talked about last time, was a zealous Jew who was just absolutely committed to obeying and following the God of Israel. And he was an apocalyptic Jew. He didn't know Jesus or John the Baptist or Jesus followers at the time, but he, like so many other Jews, was raised in an apocalyptic tradition that believed that the world is controlled by powers of evil. That's why there's so much pain and misery in the world. God for some reason has relinquished control of the world to these evil forces. But God will soon intervene. He will destroy the forces of evil and he will judge the earth, including humans. Those who have sided with God will be rewarded. Those opposed to God will be punished. And that applies not just to those who happen to be alive at the time. It applies to everybody because God will raise everybody from the dead and people will be shown the errors of their ways if they don't side with God. And they'll be ruthlessly destroyed for all time. So they'll have an eternal punishment of eternal non existence annihilation or they'll be rewarded by being brought into a utopian kingdom. Apocalypticists believed this was going to happen very soon. The world's gotten just as bad as it can get and God will soon intervene. Paul had that view before he became a follower of Jesus. He was convinced that Jesus could not be the Messiah. He was crucified, but then he saw him alive. And the only way for a person to come back to life is if God raises him from the dead. And if you're an apocalyptic Jew, if you get raised back from the dead, you're on God's side. Jesus is clearly favored of God and no one else has been raised yet. Christ is the one, the first one to be raised from the dead. And so this confirmed Paul's view that he was living at the end of time, that the God of Israel was about to intervene. In fact, for Paul, it's already started. The resurrection has begun. And that's why he calls Jesus the first fruits of the resurrection. It's an agricultural image. The farmer goes out first day of the harvest, brings in the first fruits, and he gets the rest the next day. He doesn't wait, you know, 20 years, he goes the next day. And Paul thought, man, it started, it's going to happen. And so the resurrection of Jesus, once he became convinced because he saw Jesus, he believed, convinced him Jesus was raised, that convinced him the resurrection had started. And that confirms what he already thought.
- [25:56]
Megan Lewis
Does this conviction that the end of days, the resurrection was imminent explain why Paul's conversion seems to have been on such an extreme end of the scale? He doesn't just start attending a different house of worship. He goes on a massive mission of conversion.
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Bart Ehrman
Yeah, a couple of things to be said about that. One thing is, Paul obviously was really, he felt really urgent in his mission to convert people. And I think the urgency absolutely is explained by his sense that it's going to come soon and you don't want to be caught unawares. And so this is a major emphasis of his preaching. But I think the thing that sent him on the mission in the first place wasn't the imminence of the end so much as his realization of what the resurrection meant, both for understanding who Jesus really is and for understanding God's entire plan of salvation. And so the way I try to explain it to my students is that you have to imagine Paul thinking backwards from what he experienced to what the conclusions have to be. What are the implications of this? And so the way it works is Paul thinks Jesus is the enemy of God, cursed of God. But then he sees him alive years after the death, and so he thinks God has raised him from the dead. Boom. First thing is, he is not the enemy of God. He's God's chosen one. He's the first God is raised from the dead. Whoa. So then once he thinks that, he's got to think, well, wait a second, he got crucified. God's favored one. God had his favored one crucifies that. What he does to his favored one, what's he do to his enemies? I mean, why would God have his son crucified? Then Paul thought back, well, he was a curse. He was cursed by God. But if he's the chosen one, he wasn't cursed for anything he did. He must have been cursed for some other reason. And Paul as a person living in the ancient world knew full well that the reason people sacrifice animals and in some Cultures sacrifice humans is in order to avert the anger of God or to become pleasing to God, to offer up something to God. Why would God have his son killed? It must have been a sacrifice. God sacrificed his own son, and his son sacrificed his life, but not for his own sins, because he's the son of God. He was righteous. He must have died for the sins of others. And so that's consistent with Jewish theology and pagan theology that a sacrifice, some sacrifices are for sins. And so Paul kept thinking then, well, if Jesus was sacrificed for the sins of others, that's how people's sins removed. Sins are removed by the sacrifice of Jesus. But if sins are removed by the sacrifice of Jesus, what about, I thought within Judaism that people were right with God by following the law of God. And Paul came to think, actually being right with God doesn't come by following the law. If it came by following the law, there'd be no reason for God to sacrifice his son. You could just keep the law. Well, then God had to sacrifice his son because the law won't do it. And if the law won't do it, that means being Jewish won't do it. And so he keeps thinking backwards. And the implication I think he comes at almost right away, he says it happened instantaneously, but it came soon. I think, is that means you don't have to be Jewish if you want to be right with God. It's not keeping the Jewish law. It's not about being Jewish. It's about believing in the death of Jesus. And boom, once he hit that, he realized, oh, my God, I've got to take this message out. Not to Jews who hear it from the others. I've got to tell the Gentiles they can have salvation by believing in Jesus and they don't have to become Jewish. And that becomes his mission.
- [29:56]
Megan Lewis
Is this message to the Gentiles something that we see elsewhere from other Jewish thinkers? Or is this purely Paul's own personal mission?
- [30:06]
Bart Ehrman
So there are two ways to answer this. One is within the Christian movement at the time. So three or four years after Jesus death, there were the followers of Jesus, the disciples, the remaining disciples, assuming they all came to believe in the Resurrection. Historically, we don't have any of them saying that because we don't have any writings from them. The New Testament says they all came to believe. And that may be true or maybe not true. But whoever did come to believe in him started declaring also that his death was the death of the Messiah. They're preaching to the Jews. The idea that the message would apply to Gentiles would have been open to them, Peter or John or James, the others. They would have been open to the idea that this death is also for Gentiles. But they almost certainly would have said, but, you know, of course, you got to be Jewish to be a believer in Jesus. Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. He sent from the Jewish God. He fulfilled the Jewish scriptures. It's a Jewish thing. And so they would have said, yes, you need to believe in Jesus for salvation. And to do that, first you need to. To become a Jew. Paul said, no, you don't have to become a Jew. You can remain Gentile because it doesn't matter if you're Jewish. What matters is only faith in Jesus.
- [31:18]
Megan Lewis
What was the general thought around Gentiles converting to Judaism then?
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Bart Ehrman
Yeah, well, it was, you know, it was certainly permitted. And we have accounts of Gentiles converting. Most Jews had no interest in converting Gentiles. Judaism was a religion for Jews. So, you know, they didn't insist that you follow their religion or there were not big efforts of Jews to convert Gentiles, we now know. But that having been said in the Old Testament, there are passages that in which prophets predict that God is going to use the Jews to bring Gentiles into the fold, that God is using Judaism to reach the entire world. And that even though he called Abraham out of all the peoples of earth to be his special one, his chosen one, whose descendants would be his chosen people, the idea is that eventually even Gentiles would come to acknowledge that God is the one true God. And you get this in places like especially, for example, in the book of Isaiah, the second part of Isaiah and the third part of Isaiah talk about that all Gentiles are going to flood to Mount Zion and recognize God and that God is going to send out a person who will be a light to the Gentiles, who will preach salvation to the Gentiles, so that all Gentiles will also come in. And so Paul's inherited this tradition that at the end of time, Gentiles too will convert. Now, in Isaiah, that means they're going to become Jews. Paul's understanding that's simply to mean that Gentiles are going to recognize that the God of Israel is the true God. And Paul thinks they're going to recognize that by believing in Jesus. The interesting thing that most people have not noticed is that Isaiah talks about this prophetic figure who will be a light to the Gentiles to lead them in. Paul thinks God has commissioned him to bring in the Gentiles. I think Paul believes that he's a fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah. Paul himself is the culmination of God's plan of salvation. Whoa, that's a big thought that you're the one that the scriptures are pointing to. But it appears that's what Paul thought.
- [33:41]
Megan Lewis
Fascinating. There's nothing completely new and out of the blue in Paul's shift, in the change in his thinking. It is all still rooted in his background and understanding of Judaism.
- [33:56]
Bart Ehrman
That's why he doesn't think that he stopped being Jewish. He's the fulfillment of Judaism.
- [34:00]
Megan Lewis
He didn't.
- [34:01]
Bart Ehrman
He didn't. He's still a Jew. And so when people today say, you know, things like, well, Paul stopped being a Jew, no, he did not stop being a Jew. He understood that Christ was the fulfillment of Judaism, not that he put an end to Judaism.
- [34:14]
Megan Lewis
So if we view this shift as a maybe a sidestep rather than a complete about face, theologically speaking, what would the social significance have been for this change for Paul?
- [34:27]
Bart Ehrman
Well, it was huge. It doesn't change everything, as I said, because he thought that in fact this was God's plan all along. And so he remained Jewish. And an apocalyptic Jew who thought the end was coming soon, was convinced it's coming soon because the resurrection has started and will soon be completed, which is the reason for his urgency. But the other things change. Jesus. Jesus obviously went from being the cursed of God to being the Christ of God. Jesus death is now what brings salvation. Since Jesus death is what brings salvation, therefore the Jewish law is not what brings salvation. Paul never said Jews should stop being Jewish. He never told Jews, okay, stop circumcising. You don't need to do that. He did insist, though, that Gentiles not become Jewish. This becomes a big issue for him in the letter to the Romans and especially in the letter to the Galatians. In the letter to the Galatians, Paul is writing a set of communities, a group of communities that have had Jewish Christians come in who are saying they're followers of Jesus who keep the law still these other missionaries, and they're telling the people that they have to be Jewish. You can't acquire the promises of God without being a member of the people of God. That requires circumcision. God gave circumcision to Abraham, these people said. And he called it an eternal covenant. It's not a temporary one. It's an eternal. You've got to be circumcised if you're going to be among the people of God. And so they were telling Gentiles that Paul had converted. Well, that's great. You know, you believe in Jesus, but you've got to be Jewish. And Paul fundamentally disagreed. And it's not just that, like, oh, boy, that's not a pleasant operation. You do not want the foreskin cut off your penis. No, don't do that. You don't need to. It wasn't that kind of thing. It wasn't like, yeah, you don't need to. It was. Oh, my God. If you think that, you completely misunderstand. In fact, if you do that, you will lose your salvation because you will be denying that the death of Jesus is what puts you right with God. You'll be saying, you have to keep the Jewish law. And the whole point is you don't. So, yeah, socially, it had a huge impact because it means that Gentiles don't have to become Jewish. If that hadn't happened, if Paul hadn't come up with that idea, Christianity never would have taken over the Roman Empire. There is no way that 30 million men are going to get circumcised. It just ain't going to happen. And so it's one of the reasons Christianity took over. And I talk about this at some length in my book Triumph of Christianity, how the conversion of Paul to this belief about Gentiles was one of the sine qua non for the success of Christianity.
- [37:13]
Megan Lewis
I have one final question before we move on to the next segment of the podcast. A cynical person might suggest that this shift is a power grab by Paul. The resurrection is starting. He wants to be, understandably, I think, on the right side of that particular fight. And as an added bonus, he can be the one who's been foretold to bring Gentiles into God. Do you think that's a reasonable way of looking at it?
- [37:38]
Bart Ehrman
I think, you know, cynics, usually cynical views, usually, you know, kind of doubt most things. And I'm, I'm, as a historian, I'm all for doubting most things. I mean, I think that's what historians do. You've got to question the sources. And so people question the conversion of Constantine, as we've talked before, you know, and say, well, it's just a political ployer, or Paul, maybe he's just grabbing for power and it's a matter of probability judgments because we can't get into their heads to know what they're really doing. We don't know their motives and we can't decide their motives because we're not inside their Heads. Part of the problem is that many people don't know their own motives. You know, they don't know what's really incentivizing them or they don't think about it enough. I don't think that Paul was being dishonest personally. In fact, I think it's really, really unlikely. For one thing, this is not much of a power grab. He in fact loses power by doing this. I mean, yeah, he gets a lot of converts and things, but he's getting flogged by Jewish leaders, he's getting beaten with rods repeatedly by Roman authorities, he's going hungry, he's going homeless, he's starving, he's getting shipwrecked, he gets stoned one time, you know, with rocks. And so, I mean, it's like it's, he has a horrible life on the outside. It doesn't look like a power grab to me. And I don't think anybody would have imagined that being a missionary for a crucified man is going to be a power grab. And so I just, I don't see it. I mean, I understand the cynicism and I, you know, I'm not, it's not like I'm not religiously opposed to it or anything or philosophically opposed to it. I just, it seems so unlikely to me that this is how somebody grabs their power. I don't think so. I think it's a genuine conversion. I think Paul genuinely thought he saw Jesus. Jesus. And I think he genuinely believed what he preached. I don't agree with him, I don't believe what he believed, but I think he genuinely believed it.
- [39:33]
Megan Lewis
Thank you so much for that, Bart. We are going to take a quick ad break and then we'll be back with Bart's weekly update.
- [39:40]
Podcast Announcer
Jesus and Paul are the two most important figures in the history of Christianity. But did they even agree with one another? Join acclaimed scholar Bart Ehrman in his online course course Paul and the Great Divide, where you'll dive deep into the complex relationship between Paul and Jesus, explore their differing views on crucial issues and uncover the profound impact of their teachings on the early Christian faith. In this eight lesson course, you'll gain valuable insights into the historical context of Jesus and Paul's beliefs, their views on salvation and their understanding of the Jewish law. Don't miss out on this unique opportunity to enrich your understanding of these influential figures. Visit barturman.com Paul to learn more or sign up today and remember to use discount code mjpodcast for a special offer. Once again, that's Bart. Erman,.com Paul with a discount code mjpodcast
- [40:41]
Podcast Segment Host
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.
- [40:55]
Megan Lewis
And we are back. So, Bart, we talk quite regularly and we just finished talking over the past few weeks about the courses that you do on your website, which is bartehrman.com and we usually say it costs X amount of money. You can use this code for a discount. You do have a couple of free courses though that we always neglect to mention for people who are interested, maybe don't have spare cash right now or would like to see exactly what they're getting into before they make a purchase. So can you tell us just what courses are available for free?
- [41:29]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, you know, the reason I do what I do is because I believe in spreading knowledge and scholarship about these topics. The New Testament Jesus, rise of Christianity, literature of early Christianity. I believe in spreading these topics to a broader audience. And so it's, you know, what I do with my life. And part of that is doing things not just for, you know, not charging for everything, but a lot of what I do is, is free. And I've done some free courses. They for me have been great fun and people can just, you know, watch them. And so I think the first one I did, you know, for the, for My website for bartiman.com was did Matthew, Mark, Luke and John really write Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? Good question. People can see my views about that and I try to explain why. I don't think so. So I've only been doing these courses for two years. So my idea is I'll do a freebie every year. I think last year it was I did why I'm not a Christian. And I think that's been the most viewed course that I've done and it's completely free. You can just go to my website and see see it and I just explain, I don't try and trash Christianity. I just explain why I myself no longer believe I'm going to be doing another one probably in a few months. We haven't decided the topic, but I try to pick them to be like really pretty interesting things that people would want to know about. They can get them get them for free. I'd also like to say, you know, I do my One of the other free things that I do is my blog. I've got this blog that I've talked about before where I post five or six Times every week on issues related to all of these topics. I've been doing it for almost 12 years now. Every week, in and out. People do have to pay a small fee for that. But I don't, I don't get any of this money. It all goes to charity. And if people can't afford the blog, I give them a free membership. And so if people want a free membership, you know, if you can't afford it, you know, I just trust that people aren't going to lie about it because, you know, we're talking about, you know, the New Testament here and you know, you don't want to lie. You know what happens to liars in the New Testament. So, so, you know, but if you're, if you're strapped for cash right now, yes, absolutely, I'll give you a free membership. And also every week one of my blog posts is free. So I suggest, you know, look up the Barn Erman blog and go to thebarnerman.com where I have a couple free courses and I'm going to be add, you know, at least one every year.
- [43:41]
Megan Lewis
If you do take a look at the free posts on the blog and you're interested in that, like Bart said, all of the money does go to charity. And it's only, I'm looking at the website now, it's only 2995 for an entire year and you get access to all new posts that he makes, but also access to all of the archives. And since 2012, that's five posts a week for several years. Over a decade now. Two decades and no one decade. I'm bad at math.
- [44:11]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, yeah, so, so, and the thing is that the, for 29.95 you can read it, you know, every post and then there are different tiers of membership. So like if you want to be able to make comments, I answer every question I get. I've done this for over 12. Every question I get, I answer. There's a higher membership level then there's a higher one. If you want some free webinars, it's like it goes up like that. But 29.95 is, is it for a year? I mean, you know, what is that? Less than a dime a day for less than a dime closed. And it all goes to charities dealing with hunger and homelessness.
- [44:41]
Megan Lewis
Excellent causes both. Okay, we are going to switch over to another episode of outsmart Bart.
- [44:51]
Podcast Segment Host
Dr. Ehrman has written six New York Times best selling books and holds a PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary. It's not often you'll see him Made a fool. But it doesn't hurt to.
- [45:03]
Bart Ehrman
To try.
- [45:03]
Podcast Segment Host
It's time for Outsmart Bart.
- [45:11]
Megan Lewis
Okay, Bart, are you ready? We have three questions.
- [45:14]
Bart Ehrman
Okay, let's see.
- [45:16]
Megan Lewis
First up, who was in the manger with baby Jesus?
- [45:20]
Bart Ehrman
No one. What? Not sure what this person's thinking.
- [45:26]
Megan Lewis
The answer given says Mary and Joseph.
- [45:28]
Bart Ehrman
No, no, no, no, no, no. Wrong. So the manger scene is found in only one of our gospels, Luke. And what Luke says is that Mary gave birth and they laid the child in the manger because there was no room in the inn. So they are putting Jesus in the manger. The manger is a feeding trough for the animals. We're not told that there was a donkey. And, you know, the typical animals you see in the, you know, in the pageant every year, they're not told they were there, but there's obviously animals there because it's. We're not told that it was a stable. In early Christian tradition, it was a cave where they were keeping the animals. But my students tend to think that Jesus was born in the manger. And no, he wasn't born in a manger. He's born and they put him in the manger. So, no, it does not say that Joseph and Mary were with him in the. It would have been a bit crowded. And, you know, some people today do believe in attachment parenting where you all sleep in the same bed. No indication.
- [46:24]
Megan Lewis
The Bible trough seems a little bit uncomfortable.
- [46:28]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah.
- [46:28]
Megan Lewis
Right. Okay, second question. Who stirred up a riot against Paul in Ephesus?
- [46:34]
Bart Ehrman
Okay, yeah, right. Yeah, that's a good question. So Paul is in the city of Ephesus and he's preaching and converting people. And the silversmiths get all upset because the silversmiths make idols and people worship the idols. And now that everybody's becoming Christian, nobody's worshiping the idols. It's kind of like, you know, in your beloved England now, they don't just go on strike. They, like the, you know, the junior doctors of the NHS or something. They. They like, they start a riot and get ball dragged into the arena to face charges.
- [47:09]
Megan Lewis
So the. The answer given is Demetrius.
- [47:12]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry, Demetrius is the. Is the silversmith who leads the riot. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I should. You're right. Better not give me credit for that one.
- [47:19]
Megan Lewis
I should be more specific about exactly what we're looking for with. No, no, no, Final question. Who said to Job, for wrath kills a foolish man and envy slays a simple woman?
- [47:29]
Bart Ehrman
One. Now, you said these are New Testament questions today.
- [47:32]
Megan Lewis
Sorry, I Missed that one.
- [47:34]
Bart Ehrman
I don't. Well, no, it's good because I don't mind getting wrong something inside of Job. Okay, so give me the quote again.
- [47:41]
Megan Lewis
Wrath kills a foolish man and envy slays a simple one.
- [47:45]
Bart Ehrman
So Job has. He has three friends who come to him who say things like this. And then a fourth friend shows up later. I'll say that it's Bildad.
- [48:01]
Megan Lewis
It's not. It's Eliphaz.
- [48:03]
Bart Ehrman
Eliphaz. Eliphaz is the fourth. And so. Yeah, okay. All right. We should do an episode on Job because it's widely misunderstood, but the beginning and the end are this kind of narrative story that people know about Job being penalized by the Satan figure because of God. But the friends are actually friends there. When you get in the middle part, the long poetic section, which is chapters three to 40, the friends are attacking Job because he doesn't think he's done anything wrong. They think he's got to be punished by God because he's done something wrong. So they're all four of them are. Three of them do this for most of the book, and then Eliphaz comes in at the end and does it. So, yeah, this part's eliphaz.
- [48:46]
Megan Lewis
Well, you did better than I would have done, which isn't really saying much, if we're very honest. Okay. Now then, before we finish for the week, would you mind just summarizing what we talked about today?
- [48:59]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, we're talking about Paul's conversion. We talked about whether conversion is the right word for what happened to Paul when he became a follower of Jesus, whether it's the right word at all in early Christianity and whether Christianity is the right word for. Did Paul become a Christian before really Christianity had formed much yet? But we tried to understand what happened, what the dynamics were. I maintain that Paul did have some kind of visionary experience, I think, and that that completely revolutionized his understanding of Jesus, that he wasn't the one who was the cursed of God per se. He was the blessed one of God who bore the curse for others because God raised him from the dead. When Paul believed he saw Jesus raised from the dead, he concluded God had raised him from the dead. He concluded, therefore, that death was meaningful for God, that God had planned the death. That made him realize that Jesus must have been the sacrifice for sins, and that it's his death, not the Jewish law, that makes a person right with God. And that begins then Paul's decision to go take his message to the Gentiles.
- [49:59]
Megan Lewis
Thank you, Bart. AUDIENCE thank you so much. For listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please subscribe to the podcast and make sure you don't miss future episodes. Remember that you can use the code mjpodcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.barterman.com and that is also where you can find the two free courses that we mentioned earlier in the episode Misquoting Jesus Will be back next Week. Bart, what are we talking about next time?
- [50:24]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, next time we're talking about the topic who was Luke? So that has interesting. There's actually interesting things. The person named Luke is said to have written the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. And so part of the question is, who was this figure? What do we know about him? How do we know about it? And is it plausible that he wrote these books? But it gets into some very interesting details of things that most people wouldn't have probably wouldn't have thought of. And so that'll be next time. Who is Luke?
- [50:57]
Megan Lewis
Thank you everyone, and goodbye.
- [51:02]
Podcast Announcer
This has been an episode of Misquoting
- [51:04]
Megan Lewis
Jesus with Bart Ernest. 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.
- [51:18]
Podcast Announcer
Thank you for joining us.