← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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- [00:01]
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- [00:42]
Megan Lewis
Welcome to Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman, the only show where a six time New York Times bestselling 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. Today we're going to be covering a more personal topic than usual. We're going to be looking at Barth's faith journey and deconversion from Evangelical Christianity. A person's reasons for deconversion to agnosticism or atheism is something that many Christians speculate wildly about, misunderstand, or simply refuse to believe. But those reasons can be varied and complex and I think are worth spending some time investigating. But before we get into the heavy stuff, Bart, how is your week going?
- [01:31]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, so my week is going well. This is a big week for me. My book has come out today and so when you write a book you never know when it's going to come out because the publisher decides and you have no say in it. Books on religion, they like to come out either before Christmas or before Easter. People kind of accuse me of being cynical by doing it that way. It's like I had no choice in this. This thing was ready to come out October, last October as far as I was. So yeah, so it's a big day. Books released and so yeah, life's good. How's your life? Good.
- [02:03]
Megan Lewis
Yes, good. Actually, March tends to be a little on the busy side. We have several birthdays, so my daughter's birthday was yesterday. She turned 10 and my mum actually went back to the UK yesterday as well. So it's been a busy week, but very pleasant.
- [02:18]
Bart Ehrman
Well, 10, you know, the thing about 10 is that, you know you're going to be in double digits for the next 89 years of your life. So like it's a big deal.
- [02:26]
Megan Lewis
She was very excited.
- [02:28]
Bart Ehrman
I bet. Okay. Well, I hope I hope she did well in the birthday hall.
- [02:33]
Megan Lewis
She thinks so, which is important.
- [02:35]
Bart Ehrman
That's what matters. She thinks so. Yeah.
- [02:39]
Megan Lewis
So we're not talking, like I said, and like you said last week, we're not talking about biblical studies or early Christian history today. We're talking about you and your personal life. And we spoke in some detail, I think, in the very first episode of this podcast on your religious background. But a refresher might be helpful for people who have joined us since then. Could you just take a minute or two and tell us about what your religious background was prior to deconversion?
- [03:04]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah. So the quick story is I was raised in a Christian household. My parents were Christian. My mom was fairly devout. They weren't like, overly conservative at all. We would say grace before meals and such, and we went to the Episcopal Church. And I was an altar boy when I was in high school. When I was 15, I had a born again experience led by an evangelical fellow who ran a Youth for Christ club that I was in. And, you know, I committed my life to Christ, asked Jesus into my heart, committed my life to Christ, and went off and after high school, went to Moody Bible Institute and was a very hardcore conservative Christian who believed in evangelizing and defending the faith. I was interested in apologetics and interested in evangelism and wasn't sure what I was going to do with my life. I ended up taking Greek in college and was good in it and went off to Princeton Theological Seminary, where I studied biblical studies, but also theology and a number of other things, and started changing my views. I eventually left evangelical Christianity when I started thinking the Bible, in fact, was not the infallible word of God because of my studies, and eventually years later, after I was teaching already at Chapel Hill. So it would have been the late, I don't know, maybe late 80s or so when I started really questioning my faith. And I ended up leaving the faith altogether and considered myself an agnostic. And now I consider myself an agnostic and an atheist, which is confusing to people, but we can explain it.
- [04:38]
Megan Lewis
So I think it's fair to say that a lot of people have heard you speak about or read your writing on how your relationship to the Bible changed as you went through graduate education and following that, came to the conclusion, they themselves came to the conclusion that it was the contradictions and textual problems in the New Testament that led to your deconversion. This isn't the case, and we'll get to the actual reason in the moment, but what impact did learning about the Bible and Seeing these textual contradictions have on your religious convictions.
- [05:08]
Bart Ehrman
As a conservative evangelical who had gone to Moody Bible Institute, where, as we said when we were there, Bible is our middle name. I was a big Bible guy, and I was convinced that it was the word of God. And it wasn't just the word of God, it was the words of God. I didn't have a theory that God had dictated the books to the authors, but I thought that he had made sure that the right words were written somehow, which meant there couldn't be any contradictions. But as I started studying the New Testament in Greek fairly intensely and started reading the Old Testament in Hebrew, I started looking very, very carefully ways that people don't normally read the Bible. They kind of read, you know, like they read a novel. They get through a page as quickly as they can. And so I started reading it very, very carefully, and I started noticing things that were just. I got to a point where I just said, look, you know, if I'm just being honest with myself, this is a contradiction. Once I admitted that, it made a big difference to me when I had friends or liberal professors or something who would have these kind of big contradictions. You know, Mark has a different view of Jesus than John, you know, or Genesis contradicts. You know, I could reconcile all of that stuff, no problem. But the problem was that you get down into some nitty gritty little thing. And so the one thing, the one that got me was in Mark, chapter two, when Jesus says that David entered the temple to eat the showbread when Abiathar was the high priest. And I realized, in fact, Abiathar wasn't the high priest, it was Ahimelech, his father. I tried as well as I could for a long time to rec. I finally said, look, it's a contradiction once you open that floodgate, right? If you have that kind of mindset, that fundamentalist mindset, that there can't be any contradiction, once you find one, then it opens the floodgate. And then you say, well, maybe this too. And then you see this tune, this tune. And then so it builds up. But for me, it started very small, as a little chink in the armor. But I remained a Christian. I just didn't think I wasn't a fundamentalist anymore.
- [07:04]
Megan Lewis
What then did truly prompt you to leave Christianity? And how long had you been wrestling with the problem before you realized that it wasn't one that you could solve?
- [07:15]
Bart Ehrman
Right? So when I moved toward a more kind of liberal understanding of Christianity, I still believed in God. I still believed Christ was the Son of God. I thought that somehow his death had brought about salvation. And as time went on, I developed my views more and more. I suppose I became more and more liberal. I couldn't quite get my mind around the doctrine of the atonement that God required somebody to be tortured to death for my salvation. Why couldn't he just forgive me? I don't require people to torture others to forgive them. And so I started having doubts about the atonement and then about whether Jesus really is God. I ended up with a fairly liberal view that the Bible in my view, taught truth. That needed to be considered as other books do. But the Bible, especially in my tradition. But I still believed in God. I believe there was a God. And I believe Jesus manifested God and showed me who God was. God is one who gives of himself to others, one who loves others enough to sacrifice for others. Christ himself sacrificed for others. And that if I want to be a good person, it's not that I'm going to go get crucified for someone, but I will love others and try to help those who are in need. And that's what God, Christ showed me as the way of God. But this is predicated on the existence of God. What ended up getting me wasn't the contradictions. It wasn't the biblical problems, the historical mistakes, anything like that, or even the doctrine of the atonement. Or what got me was whether I really believed that there was a God who was active in this world, who intervenes in this world to help those in need. Is there a God like that in the world? And what ended up getting me to think not was the age old problem of suffering. There's so much suffering in the world. I came to a point where I thought it was impossible to explain it. If there really is an act of
- [09:04]
Megan Lewis
God in the world, was there a specific moment that led you to finally say, no, I don't, I don't think so. Or was it a culmination of thought and reflection over several years?
- [09:17]
Bart Ehrman
It was a long process. It took years. There were painful years, emotionally very painful for me because it meant leaving the faith that I loved and it meant leaving my community, my Christian community and so forth. In some ways, the process for me started early on in my teaching career. I was teaching at Rutgers in New Jersey. I was an adjunct there. And I was asked by my department chair to teach a class that was called the Problem of Suffering in the Biblical Traditions. And at the time I thought, well, this would be a great class to teach because even as a, you know, as a Christian, I'd long thought that the authors of the Bible all wrestled with why they're suffering and that they wrestled with it in different ways and had different ways of understanding why they're suffering. And by this point, I was a fairly liberal Christian at this point, and I'd come to think that, you know, some of these views of suffering are not consistent with each other. What one author says isn't the same as another. And so you have. You have people like the prophets of the Old Testament say that the reason they're suffering is because the people of God have disobeyed him and he's punishing them. And so in the Book of Amos, you know, God starves people and he brings drought and he brings epidemics in order to make them repent. He kills some of them in order to make them repent. And so the solution is that people have to pay for their sins and God punishes. That's why they're suffering. Other people, like the author of the Book of Job, completely disagree with that. They don't think it's because people are wicked. Part of the Book of Job indicates that it's not that at all, that in fact, God can do whatever he wants. And he's not going to tell you why. He's not going to tell you why they're suffering, but it's not because of that. You get other authors who think that suffering is supposed to make you appreciate the good times and you look for a silver lining. And sometimes suffering leads to a good. Sometimes there's redemptive value in suffering. That's obviously the teaching of the cross. Suffering can bring redemption. You have other people, other authors who think that suffering becomes. Because there are other wicked people in the world who are doing nasty things to you, and that's why they're suffering. And you end up with apocalyptic thinking that think it's none of the above. It's because there are forces of evil in the world that are creating havoc on earth. And God's against it. He's not for it. That's the opposite of the prophetic view. So I taught the class. So this is like in 19, like 85 or something. And students in college back then, basically they were in college so they can go off and get a job at IBM and make a ton of money. So they're taking this class just because they needed. They weren't really interested in. The course was called the Problem of Suffering in the Biblical Traditions. I had trouble getting them convinced there was A problem with suffering. And so, like, this is a problem if you, if you're religious, this, how do you explain this? And I had to resort to things like this was during the time, I'm not sure if it was 85, it's right in there. One of these Ethiopian famines were happening that ended up killing 2 million people, starved to death. And I would come into class with a front page of the New York Times. They would have a picture of a woman who was clearly starving to death with an infant on her breast, who wasn't getting any nourishment and was starving to death. I'd point to this picture and say, look, if you believe in God, this is a problem. How do you explain this? So of course I, you know, I knew the biblical answers. I knew what the philosophers were saying. I, you know, I read around, I read what theologians say, what popular preachers say. You know, I read that started me thinking more and more about it. And it was, it was really only years later that I got to a point where I said, I just don't, I don't think any of these explanations are right.
- [12:55]
Megan Lewis
Did you find any of the explanations maybe more convincing, more comforting than others, or were they just all substantially lacking?
- [13:04]
Bart Ehrman
So it's, I have to say, anybody listens to this, I know I'm going to get about 300 emails explaining why they're suffering. I wrote a book on this. My book is called God's Problem, and it deals with the biblical understandings of suffering. And I got a lot of email from that. When I was a Christian, the solution that satisfied me the most was that there were powers of evil that were beyond our comprehension, that were creating problems on earth, creating human suffering. And I continued to think that even as a liberal Christian, even as a liberal Christian, I just thought that in the end good is going to triumph. And I really liked this hymn, this is My Father's World, that has this line in it that though the wrong be oft so strong, God is the ruler yet. And you know, I always really like to that and I like that idea. You know, I, I don't believe in the devil anymore. I, I think the two best explanations are one, of course, everybody says, well, look, we have free will. If I've got free will, I can, I can punch you in the face as well as give you 20 bucks. And so, you know, I can choose which to do. And so I think that's, you know, that's kind of obviously true. I, I mean, I'm not on philosophical grounds. I Don't know. I think free will is actually a problematic category, but certainly I can decide to do things and do them that can hurt people. So that. That can account for a lot of things. Up to the Holocaust. I mean, although, when you get to the Holocaust, you're dealing at the level of evil that seems so immense that it's really kind of hard. Just as well it's free will. You know, it seems a little. It's a lot more going on there. But the other thing is just, it's a nasty world out there. Not just human beings, but I mean, we're in a brutal and uncaring universe and the universe gets in the way. And so you get volcanoes and earthquakes and things. And so it's not God's fault. Other than the fact that he. He made it this way. There is that, you know, the free will argument. I'll tell you this about the free will argument. People, for some reason, people think, well, that solves everything. And when you press them about it and they say you, they say, well, look, if you didn't have free will, you couldn't love God willingly. If God made you without free will, you know, it's the robot answer. You'd be a robot. God didn't want robots. He wanted people freely to love them. And if you can freely love God, it means you can freely hate God. And if you can freely love another, you can freely, you know, and so you can use your free will either way. And so there's got to be suffering. People always say this, there has to be suffering. And my response sometimes is, okay, so there has to be suffering. It's because we have free will. And then I'll ask, do you think that when you die and go to heaven, will you have free will? And they say, well, yes, of course. So, but there won't be any suffering in heaven, right? He said, well, no, I said, so it is possible to have free will and no suffering. You get this silence like, huh? Yeah, but that's different. Why is it different? Well, because we're sinful. Oh, we're sinful. Okay. So the problem isn't free will. The problem is sin. So, I mean, you kind of. So, like, yeah, so the free will, the robot thing doesn't work too well for me anymore.
- [16:03]
Megan Lewis
You said when you were explaining what did finally lead you to deconvert, that it was a long and painful process and that you lost a lot during that process. How did you go about filling the void of the lack of faith, the lack of community?
- [16:20]
Bart Ehrman
It was really Rough, you know, and people. I think a lot of people think that people who deconvert become these kind of. These kind of cynic, unfeeling types or something. And like, man, that wasn't it for me. It was a very difficult transition for me. And the void. There were numerous aspects of the void. One was, I think I mentioned that, you know, I really. I had to give up my. My community. So I was a member of a church. I was an Episcopalian here in Chapel Hill. And there's a church that I was member of that's right next to our campus. And a lot of professors go there and a lot of, you know, it's. It's. It's really a nice church. So I'm there. I'm there one Sunday morning and having all these doubts and thinking, I don't really believe in God anymore. And we're saying the Nicene Creed, you know, I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, etc, and Jesus Christ his son. And I realized, you know, the only line I can say in this creed is, he suffered under Pontius Pilate, was dead and buried. It's the only thing I can honestly say that I believe. And, you know, I just. I don't belong here anymore. Because it's not just that I feel out of place. It's not. I didn't think it felt honest for me to be in a church worshiping with people who do believe this while they're confessing their faith. And the part of the problem is I was a known figure. You know, I'm a professor at the university right next door. So this church is called the Chapel of the Cross. So, I mean, it's right virtually on the campus. I finally said, I just can't do it. And so I stopped going. And that created a huge void. And the kind of irony is that the church, it's a great. It's a really good church, and it's. It's got really smart and interesting people in it. And people would keep saying, look, just come on back. It's okay. I said, no, man, I don't believe. I just. I don't feel right. They say, oh, no, we really want you to come back. I said, I just, you know, because I just felt like people would be in there looking, say, what's he doing in here? And it's like, so. So I lost that community. So what do you do to replace that? Well, it's not easy, okay? There, There aren't alternatives for agnostics, atheists. Agnostics or atheists or people like me, who are both, there are alternatives, but you know, there aren't groups of people like me who get together every week to talk about big issues. And you know, you can have a book club or something, I guess, but it's not the same because in the, in the church you get to fellowship, you get people you don't know very well who support you, who share your concerns, you can talk with about big issues, you can have education together, you worship together. There's like, there's very little like that out there otherwise. And so avoid like that. You just, I think what I, what I did is I started investing a lot more time and energy into my family and friends and developing friendships and things like that. That became kind of the replacement for me.
- [19:02]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. I have an awful lot of friends who are atheists and I think that's, that's a way that a lot of them have filled that void and found a community that is not faith based. But you're right, and it's something that I've certainly noticed if, if you're used to that faith based community, you can't just like leave and walk into, like you said, a book club or a sports club. It's, it's very different. It really is. You've mentioned this a couple of times now and I think people would probably appreciate maybe a definition or an explanation. What do you mean when you say you're an agnostic atheist?
- [19:37]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah. Okay. So when I became an agnostic, I thought about these terms the way almost everybody I know still thinks about them, which is that somebody who stops believing or somebody who's never believed is either an agnostic or an atheist. And the idea is that these are 2 degrees of the same thing that agnostics say, you know, I don't know if there's a God, an atheist says there is no God. And those are 2 degrees. And when I became an agnostic, I was really kind of amused because I hadn't realized this because I thought they're basically the same thing, but one's more certain than the other. But when you become one, it turns out that, you know, some agnostics are really quite militant and some atheists are really quite militant about what they think. And so the atheists typically think that agnostics are just wimpy atheist, they're really atheist, but they just can't bring themselves to say it. Like they think that's going too far. Like they, maybe they will go to hell if they say that, you know, so like they can't, they can't bring themselves to go that far. So they think that agnostics are wimpy atheists, and the agnostics think that atheists are just arrogant agnostics because they don't know. How would they know? So they're saying they know something they can't know. So that's what it makes. And so there are two degrees, right, of certainty. And I don't think that anymore. So it was a former student who actually convinced me that they're actually not two degrees of the same thing. They're two different things. And so I think they're two different things, but you can be in both at once. The two things are. Agnosticism comes from the Greek word gnosis, which means knowledge. In Greek, if you put an A in front of a word, it means not. So gnosis is knowledge and an agnostic is someone who says they don't know. So if you ask me, you know, do you know if there's a superior being in the universe who's, you know, in control? I'd say no, I don't think there is. No, I don't, I don't know. I don't think so. I don't know. How could I know? I mean, how could I possibly. Not really. I mean, like, can a rock know that humans exist? If not, then how can humans know whether a God exists? I mean, how? It's like, you know, so, yeah, I don't know. But atheism, I think, is not about knowledge, it's about belief. Theism is a form of belief. And if you ask me, do you believe there's a superior being in the universe? No, I absolutely don't believe so. I don't believe so do you know? So, no, I don't know. I don't know or believe. But so I'm, I'm an atheist in what I believe or don't believe. I'm an agnostic about what I don't know. I like continuing to claim the agnosticism because I think there's a kind of a sense of humility about it that, not, not that anybody's accused me of humility, but, you know, there is a sense of like, recognizing that this is a big world and to claim that we know things that we can't possibly know is, is a mistake. And so I, I don't, I really don't know. But I don't think anybody else does either. Even though 300 people are going to write me emails telling me why they
- [22:20]
Megan Lewis
know, that was a very clear expert.
- [22:24]
Bart Ehrman
I get letters like that every week I believe it.
- [22:28]
Megan Lewis
I absolutely believe it.
- [22:30]
Bart Ehrman
And I'm welcome those. I mean, I'm fine with them. This is why I have no problem with people who do believe, because I don't think, I think all of us believe lots of things that are just, in 100 years, people are going to think are ridiculous. And so including me. And so I don't have a problem with people being believing Christians or whatever they are, as long as they're not hurting other people. My bottom line is hurting other people. If your Christianity is making you hurt other people, then I'm not for you. But if it, you know, if you're trying to do good for people, I mean, great, great. Why not?
- [22:59]
Megan Lewis
On the the point of not trying to deconvert others, I'm sure you've been told that the real reason that you write all of your books and speak in public and run your blog is because you are just on a mission to deconvert the faithful in God's problem. And here you've made the point of saying you absolutely no interest in deconverting anyone. You have no problem with people holding religious belief. Your wife is a Christian. Why do you do this work?
- [23:28]
Bart Ehrman
Well, it's always been important to me personally to understand the Bible, for example, and to understand where Christianity came from and to understand where Christian theology came from. For me, it was important originally because I believed it and I wanted to know everything I could about it. Before I became a born again Christian, I was not really academically interested. I was smart enough and did fine. But I mean, it was only when I became a born again Christian that I became just crazily interested in studying. And so like, I was just, I went crazy at Moody Bible. This is just stomach. I said, oh, God. And it's just, it remains hugely interesting to me, but not for reasons of personal faith and not so I can help other people get to heaven. So it's just personally interesting. But also, I think historically and culturally and socially, it's hugely important. Not just the Bible, but the history of Christianity. You know, there are 8 billion people in the world and 2 billion of them worship Jesus and believe in the Bible. And the other 8 billion, whether they know it or not, have been seriously influenced by people who believe in Jesus. The Western world. There's been no institution more powerful in Western civilization than the Christian church. Nothing's close. Nothing's close. And you know, the Bible's the most important book in Western civilization and Jesus is the most important figure in the history of the world. In my opinion, people, people come try to come up with alternatives. I'm telling you, you don't have 2 billion people worshiping someone else, let alone all the other influences, cultural influence. You think about music and art and philosophy and literature without Christianity. And so culturally, historically, it just as important as you can get. And so that's why I just passionate about it, because I think it's part of who we are as people, especially if we live in the. It doesn't matter if you're an agnostic or an atheist or both or a believer or anything else. It's really important.
- [25:22]
Megan Lewis
Thank you.
- [25:23]
Bart Ehrman
Let me say, by the way, you know, people ask me this all the time, why do you study the Bible? You don't even believe in it. And you know, welcome to a university. My wife Sarah, she started out as a medievalist, so she would teach classes on Chaucer. She didn't believe Chaucer. She doesn't believe in Chaucer. I've got friends who teach Marxism, you know, and they're not communists.
- [25:42]
Megan Lewis
Doesn't make the Marxist people teach criminology.
- [25:44]
Bart Ehrman
They're out robbing banks, you know, they're just, you know, it's like you don't believe that. You don't teach in a university. You teach knowledge, you don't teach what you believe. And so it's a secular research. So that's why I'm interested in the knowledge. That's why.
- [25:58]
Megan Lewis
Sorry, no, no, I. My husband has been asked that question multiple times because he does an awful lot of work on the Old Testament. You're not a Christian anymore, why do you keep talking about it? I was like, well, I don't believe in Marduk, but I still talk about the Enuma Elish myth ad nauseam if someone lets me. It zero to do, zero to do this belief. I have just one more question before we move on. And like I said, this is a really personal topic for a lot of people and certain groups of Christians seem to have a real problem with it. My husband Josh had a very similar faith journey to yourself. He was a chaplain in the Air Force and a pastor. And then through his educational journey, he ended up leaving the religion. And he's now told with disturbing regularity that he was never a real Christian or never really saved or he just left because he wanted to sin, which personally bothers me. And I'm always fascinated that all of these perfect strangers know his mind and reasons better than he does. And I'm sure you've had very similar responses and probably many more I was wondering if you've had any thoughts on why someone else's decision to leave a religious tradition seems to be so very threatening to other people. Especially when, like in your case, like in Josh's case, the person who has left is making no effort to deconvert anyone else and has no interest in other people following their path.
- [27:22]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, these people say that to Josh. Not only know his mind and reasons, they know his morality. Right. And I'm going to tell you an anecdote before I answer your question, which is that when I was thinking about leaving the faith, when I was thinking, you know, I really not sure I believe anymore, one of my major concerns were issues of morality because I had been raised to think that if there's no God, there's no reason to be moral. You know, if there's no afterlife, sin on, you know, let's party. And so that's what I. I guess I just thought, well, that must be right because, like, why would I. Why would I be moral? And it turned out, you know, that I thought, you know, I'd have no moral compass because without religion, why would you have a moral compass? Why would you care? And boy, that turned out to be wrong. I mean, I was really worried about it, but it's just completely wrong. I'm just as moral as or immoral as I ever was. And for me, it had just the opposite effect because it made me realize that this life is all we have. I don't believe in an afterlife. I think this is it, which means that I want to live life for as much as I can get out of it and help other people do the same thing. Because other people also, this is it. And if they're suffering now, there's not going to be a payback, you know, they're not going to get it back in the afterlife. There's no. I don't believe that. And so it's not, you know, you suffer now so you'll be rewarded later. No, that is garbage. That's just an excuse not to help people. If this life is. If all there is, we should be out helping people. And so for me, I just. I relish life more than I did before. And I throw myself into life more. I enjoy it more, I'm happier more. And I'm not worried about people's afterlife or my afterlife. And I. I am help. Interested in helping people now. And so for me, it had just the opposite effect. I'll just say that. Why do people get upset? Well, a lot of times they're afraid that the person who's left the faith might be right and that they're concerned that they might be barking up the wrong tree because it's the vitriol you get. Doesn't make sense otherwise, you know, if you stop some other aspect of your life, you know, if you stop watching baseball and start watching football, nobody cares. You know, suppose you're English and you decide to become an American citizen. You know, you don't have people. At least my wife doesn't have people yelling at her and writing her nasty letters about becoming something else. You know, if you become a lawyer, you used to be a doctor and you decide to go to law school, people don't yell at you for leaving the profession. And in philosophical traditions, you know, you used to, you used to have a certain view of the world. You changed your view of the world. And so, you know, people don't yell at you, but boy, do people yell at you about religion. And I think it's because it's like so important to people and so much is riding on it for them. And especially someone like Josh or me, I don't know Josh yet, but we are experts in this field of things that people believe in. And being an expert in the field and knowing, really knowing this material, I mean, really knowing it and not believing it. For people who don't know it and believe it, it's really disturbing because it's. Their eternal life is based on it. And so that's, I think that's, that's why it's just, it's so important to them and they think it's important for the world because they think, in the Christian tradition, they think that actually this has eternal consequences.
- [30:36]
Megan Lewis
Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts and sharing your life with us. It has been a pleasure to hear more about it. We're going to take a brief break and then we'll be back with bart's weekly update and then some audience questions.
- [30:52]
Bart Ehrman
If you're enjoying the Misquoting Jesus podcast, you'd probably like my online courses as well. I've produced a number so far with multi lecture courses on the New Testament Gospels and the books of the Pentateuch, standalone lectures on the Christmas story and the earliest Christian views of Jesus, and a six hour debate on whether Jesus was actually raised from the dead. If you're interested, check them out@Barterman.com. you'll receive a discount on your purchase simply by entering the code mjpodcast. Are you interested in learning about important academic topics but don't want to go Back to school. You need to check out Wondrium, the service that streams university level courses taught by top scholars who are also skilled communicators, educators. I've done nine courses for them and can tell you for high level adult learning, there's really no other game in town. For a free trial, go to barterman.com wondrium if you decide to subscribe to Wondrium, this podcast will receive a referral fee, but that'll have no effect on the cost of your subscription and you'll be supporting our show.
- [32:13]
Megan Lewis
We are back with Bart's Weekly Update.
- [32:17]
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.
- [32:31]
Megan Lewis
Bart, what's in your world this week?
- [32:33]
Bart Ehrman
Well, this week, so this day is the day my book came out and so hooray. Yeah. So this is a good day for me and a good week ahead. I've got, I'm doing some book readings and doing interviews and podcasts and trying to promote the book. And luckily most people think, you know, if you write a book and you go on a, on a book tour, that, oh, what isn't that, wouldn't that be glorious? You know, that's so. Oh man, that's high living. It's. Oh my God. Book authors hate book tour. Hate them if all you gotta do is one. They don't do book tours much anymore with social media and stuff. I am going regionally though, around North Carolina and maybe a few other places on the east coast, but I'm not doing the big book tour anymore, thank God. So it's good, it's great. Interviews and podcasts and so a few book readings in the area. So it's all good. So, yeah, that's what's ahead.
- [33:20]
Megan Lewis
Well, congratulations. I hope you enjoy your readings and I'm glad that you don't have to do a full book tour because frankly, those do sound absolutely exhausting.
- [33:29]
Bart Ehrman
They're miserable. And you know, the thing is the book, the book's called Armageddon and it's about, you know, worth of the world. The end of the world is coming soon. I'm just glad that the end didn't come before my book came out. It didn't come that soon.
- [33:44]
Megan Lewis
Always a good thing. And now we have some questions from our audience.
- [33:52]
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 barterman.com Ask Bart
- [34:09]
Megan Lewis
so we have just a selection of questions, no theme, no topic this week, just whatever was in the email inbox that we haven't addressed already. So question one. How in the world is it that the story of the New Testament, what's released in the Gospels, is as detailed as when it's recounting speech? What people said was someone following Jesus around with a pen and paper to write it down. If that's not the case, which I suspect our listener knows is not the case, how could anyone remember what was said for long enough for someone else to then write it down?
- [34:45]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, no, it's a really good question. I think a lot of people don't think very carefully about this question with my students. The semester is teaching them about dealing with this issue, about how are Jesus in. The Sermon on the Mount goes through chapter five, six, and seven of Matthew, three chapters full of saying, saying, saying, you know, parable, saying. I mean, it's like three chapters full. So I asked my students, you know, how. How could somebody. Well, you know, people can remember things if they're paying attention. So. So I say, okay, so Biden gave his inaugural address two years ago. Would you write it down for me? Did you hear it? Oh, yeah, I heard it. Okay, what did he say? Okay, tell me what themes he said. Okay, so suppose, you know, Matthew's written 50 years later by somebody who wasn't there. And so how did they. They didn't remember, is the answer. We know from Greek historians, Thucydides, that people who write narratives of figures who give speeches have to make up the speeches. And the way they do it is they try to, Thucydides says, they try to do it by thinking what would be appropriate for this person to have said. And then they have the person say it. There's no other way. And so that's how they did it.
- [35:57]
Megan Lewis
Perfect. No tape recorders. Back when Jesus said no tape recorders,
- [36:00]
Bart Ehrman
no iPhones record anything, no stenographer standing by some of the sayings of Jesus, I will say this. There are sayings of Jesus that I, and most scholars think Jesus really did say. And what ended up happening is if Jesus repeated a saying, you know, the meek shall inherit the earth, and he said that, you know, a number of times, and the disciples heard him, then they would tell their disciples, and if it's like a pithy saying, you can remember that, but you're not going to remember, you know, the farewell discourse. And Gospel John, which is five chapters long, you're not going to do it. And people are not sitting around memorizing things the way everybody says they weren't. And we have good research on all of this stuff. So, yeah, pithy sayings and maybe a parable, a memorable parable. You can, you can get some things back to Jesus, but a lot of
- [36:44]
Megan Lewis
things, it's what we think Jesus would have said.
- [36:46]
Bart Ehrman
What he would have said. Yeah, would have said, yeah.
- [36:49]
Megan Lewis
So, next question. One of the reasons the Bible is the most quoted book of all time is because it's very poetic in its use of language. The listener says they have only read the Bible in English, but are curious if it is just as poetic in the original Greek. Or is this the result of translators of the Bible trying to make the text sound as majestic and epic as possible?
- [37:08]
Bart Ehrman
I'm afraid it's translators making the Bible majestic. But it's also that there is a long tradition of the Bible being available in the public sphere in America and in England. And the King James Bible is widely quoted even by people who don't know they're quoting it. They'll quote a line like a well known line. There's a kind of a resonance to the Bible that has infiltrated our culture, which many of us think is a very good thing. But it means that when you hear something that sounds biblical, it sounds elevated by the fact that it's part of our cultural discourse. The Greek of the New Testament is usually not elegant at all. In some places it's terrible. The book of Revelation is, we've pointed out on the podcast before, is really bad Greek. And there are others that are not good, but most of it's pretty good. In antiquity though, when non Christians were starting to look at the New Testament, they were struck by how inelegant it was in comparison with really high level Greek. And so it is usually understood that the Greek of the New Testament is often good and often very pleasing and rhetorically satisfying. But it's never thought to be highly literate Greek, except for in a few places. And it would have been read not as having a kind of particular power to it, as far as the rhetoric goes by people who weren't committed to the words already.
- [38:34]
Megan Lewis
We have a slightly related question there asking about class structure in Palestine in the first century. And the listener is asking, how is it that literate Greek speakers were inspired to write the books that we have in the New Testament? How were they inspired to write them by people who were illiterate, Aramaic speaking peasants? Possibly not on the same social strata as they were, yeah.
- [38:57]
Bart Ehrman
It's again a really good question because the followers of Jesus were lower class people who were not educated and who spoke Aramaic. The books of the New Testament are written by highly educated, literate people who wrote Greek. And so that's a kind of a basic and kind of a simple way of putting that. Probably the followers of Jesus were not the ones who wrote these books. And what happened is Jesus taught his disciples and then he died. And the disciples spread his teachings and spread stories about him. And they converted people in Judea and in Galilee and started converting people who were Greek speaking people. By the time the New Testament is written, most people who have converted are Greek speaking people living in other countries with other backgrounds, non Jewish, most of them, and they're the ones who write the books. And so it's not the Aramaic followers of Jesus, it's people who've heard stories, many of which were started by the Aramaic followers of Jesus.
- [39:54]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. And the previous listener has an additional question that is 90% joke, but I appreciated it, so I wanted to share it with you. And they ask, will Barthes combine his literary works into one massive volume and call it the Bartinomicon?
- [40:09]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, you know, Barth sometimes looks up an article he wrote once years ago and says, wow, I don't remember that. I'm not sure I. So you can trust me, I am not going to do that. I definitely will not be doing that. Some people have asked me to. In fact, I've had editors ask me to take all my blog posts and combine them into a book just on my blog. God, I don't know. I've written several million words.
- [40:37]
Megan Lewis
I was going to say that's. That's a lot.
- [40:38]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, there's no way in the world I'm here. Reread those things. I'll bloom it up.
- [40:43]
Megan Lewis
Could you imagine editing that down?
- [40:46]
Bart Ehrman
No. Thank you, though. Oh, thanks for the suggestion, but it ain't gonna happen.
- [40:53]
Megan Lewis
Well, before we finish for the week, would you mind just summarizing. And again, this was a personal episode, so it's going to be slightly different to normal. But just summarize what we spoke about and why it's important.
- [41:03]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, this was, this is really more about my faith journey. It wasn't about scholarship per se, except insofar as that that has had an impact on my, on my faith journey leading me away from being a fundamentalist Christian at least to being a liberal one who had a more kind of open view about the Bible, Christian faith. I eventually left that because I just got To a point where I don't didn't think we can explain how there can be a God in the world, in a world who intervenes in the world, who's active in the world when there are so many people who are desperate for divine intervention, plead for intervention. Not just people off in some other country, but Christians, committed Christians who have horrible, horrible lives and there's no intervention. And God doesn't answer prayer unless the answer is usually no. And so I just got to a point where I just didn't believe it anymore. I thought it probably made better sense to think that there's not a God who's active in the world. And that's how I left the faith. But I'm still deeply interested in the Bible and knowing about the Bible, knowing about early Christianity. I'm not opposed to somebody else being Christian, and I don't try to deconvert anybody. But my belief is that, in fact, we are all we are. We're all we have, and this life is all we have, and we should live it for the most we can and love others and try and help them because there's no afterlife to make right all the wrongs that are here now.
- [42:26]
Megan Lewis
Thank you very much and thank you for sharing. Audience thank you all for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please subscribe to the podcast and make sure you don't miss any future episodes. Remember that you can use the code mjpodcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.barturman.com. his new book is now it's. I want to say it's called Armageddon.
- [42:47]
Bart Ehrman
Armageddon.
- [42:48]
Megan Lewis
It is called Armageddon. Good.
- [42:50]
Bart Ehrman
What does the Bible really say about the end?
- [42:53]
Megan Lewis
I should have written that down. I was convinced Armageddon was right, and then I came to say it and thought, oh, God, Megan, have you got the right book title? But I did. Beautiful. So Bart's new book is out today. Highly recommended, and I hope people who are interested will go and find a copy for themselves and have a read. It's fascinating. Misquoting Jesus will be back next week. Thank you again, Bart. Thank you, audience, 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.