← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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A
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B
the resurrection of jesus is probably one of the most well known stories from the new testament but how do historians deal with this miraculous event should it be discounted in its entirety or can it be investigated using the historical method today we're talking about what historians can and can't say about the resurrection we also have our bonus segment at the end which this week is outsmart barthes where questions from our listeners test the limits of barth's behavior biblical knowledge welcome to the misquoting jesus podcast with bart ehrman but before we get into the scholarly response for what historians can say about the resurrection how did your evangelical background shape the way you first thought about historical evidence for the resurrection well
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C
when i was an evangelical i was very much in the apologetic mode i thought that we could you could demonstrate on historical grounds that jesus was raised from the dead that it was the most likely explanation because no other explanation actually made sense and if no other explanation made sense for the data that we had that there was an empty tomb and that people claim they saw jesus and various data that there's no other really satisfactory explanation therefore probably jesus was raised from the dead just on purely historical grounds
- [01:53]
B
interesting i have heard that series of statements before is always a little surprising when people say that the best way to explain all of these data points is that someone came back from the dead yeah well we
- [02:08]
C
would argue it and we would just you know and we would just drive it down people's throats i mean this is absolutely just like just like apollo just tried to do with me today that's what i used to do
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B
wonderful so now you're on the other side
- [02:21]
C
of it yeah well i think you know i think it's always good for people to be willing to change their minds once they start thinking about things instead of just sticking with what they thought when they were thirteen and so yes i changed my mind on this
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B
one so what's the difference between demonstrating something historically and talking about it historically
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C
well historians try to talk about what happened in the past and they they they try to show what what the pro what probably happened and they do that based sources and evidence that they have and there are there are some things that you can talk about historically that are just you know they're historical events and there are other things that historians are not able to to show one way or the other and so when it comes to something like a miracle it doesn't matter whether you're talking about jesus or if you're talking about the emperor vespasian who is recorded doing a couple of miracles or apollonius of tiana or in recent times the baal shem tov the founder of hasidic judaism we have stories of of miracles by all these people and by many many more and you can certainly talk about some things that are historically you know established you know such as this you could probably establish the person really existed you could establish that they had a certain kind of reputation you could establish that people believe they did miracles or that miracles happen to them those are perfectly fine historical topics because it's just like talking about anybody else and so you could talk you could talk about what can be established historically you can talk about anything but you can't establish historically things that historians cannot establish including
- [04:08]
B
miracles can you give us an example that isn't religious isn't miraculous just to try and elucidate the difference there
- [04:21]
C
yeah i mean do you mean about a miracle or about a person
- [04:26]
B
if we say if we're talking about actually an example you used on the blog that i found helpful was the theory of
- [04:33]
C
relativity yeah yeah so so i myself i myself can demonstrate to my to my absolute satisfaction that einstein came up with the general theory of relativity and i can establish i can i can i can quote i can quote part of the equation and i i can indicate that every that that he ended up convincing the vast majority of physicists in the known universe i can talk about those things i am not able to because of my lim my personal limitations to show that he's right it's beyond my is beyond my ability and in that case it's just beyond my ability there are other things that are kind of beyond everybody's ability and you you can show on the grounds of physics that the equation is right you can't show on the grounds of history that it's right the grounds of history would be you know i mean it's not a historical claim just like you can't you can't show that a particular poem by seamus heaney my favorite poet you can't show that a particular poet of poem of seamus heaney is a beautiful poem you can talk about it but you can't establish that it's beautiful because history doesn't establish beauty and history doesn't establish laws of physics and history doesn't establish it doesn't establish supernatural interventions the natural world these are just things that that that history doesn't do it's not the fault of history it just isn't the something that it can do any more than history can build a house you just can't do it
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B
so what does this mean then in the context of the resurrection specifically what can history be used to examine or what can historians examine and what is just beyond the realm of the discipline so
- [06:37]
C
the the first thing to point out is that when when historians talk about establishing history their history is not actually the past and the past is not necessarily history the past is everything that's happened before and and everything that's happened is okay it's happened and so history is our ability to show what pro what what probably happened in the past but there are trillions and trillions of things in each of our lives that cannot be established historically as having happened even though they happened and so the example i use with my students is i cannot demonstrate historically what my grandfather ate on may first nineteen twenty seven i just can't i mean it happened but i have no access to it in this case i don't have access to it because i don't have kind of i don't have any sources of information but it just shows that things that happened in the past are not necessarily what we can establish as history miracles like the resurrection there are things about the resurrection that we can talk about that you can establish because we have sources and we have information and we can establish them of having happened but historians cannot establish that a miracle happened because a miracle is a supernatural intervention into our natural world and historians can only establish what happened in our natural world and so a good analogy i think it's a good analogy maybe people won't like this analogy but a good analogy is that it's not possible for historians to establish that god intervened on behalf of the allies to win world war two they can believe that you know personally they might think that god answered prayers and that's why the allies won against odds but it's not something they can establish because you don't have any access to what god was doing and that's true of every miracle a miracle by definition is something that violates the natural order and historians can only deal with the natural order so when you apply that to the resurrection you can certainly establish that there was a man jesus i think and that he was crucified i think and you can establish that after his death some of his disciples claimed to have seen him alive as well as at least one person who was not one of his disciples and you can establish that they claimed that jesus tomb was empty later and you can establish christianity started and it became the world religion these are all historical facts you know there's no problem with establishing those things what you cannot establish is that god intervened in history and reversed the natural order of things in order to to raise jesus from the dead that's beyond what historians can do you know whether you like it or not historians cannot establish miracles
- [09:35]
B
so we can use the sources that we have to look at how people seem to have responded to jesus death how they explained jesus death and and the rise of of the the argument of the resurrection and then how that was used to build or how that was involved in in building the religion but that's very different and distinct from saying history can in fact establish that jesus did was raised from the dead is that that's right yeah that's
- [10:02]
C
right and so again i'll emphasize i'm not saying that i'm not saying it didn't happen that i'm saying if it happened in the past if it did happen we don't have historical access to it because it's a super historical event you know somebody coming back to life again but being raised by god that that that view that that's what happened in the past is requires a belief in god and a belief and some access to knowing what god did in the past we have no access to what god did in the past and so and so that's why why it's not a history you can't talk about it as a historical event even if it did happen but let me say also that since historians cannot show that a miracle happened in the past well the corollary is true as well you can't show it did not happen in the past history cannot disprove a miracle if you can't prove something you can't disprove it so history is irrelevant to the question as it turns out i mean it's weird that history would be irrelevant to the past there it is it is that's the case it's kind
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B
of like looking at egyptian pharaohs and saying the people of the time believed them to be divine they were understood as kings but we can't say yes they were indeed immortal beings yeah i
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C
mean how would you prove that historically you could say yes or no but it's not based on i mean what would your historical grounds be for saying that a particular pharaoh was a god yeah you can't do that and of course christians would say well of course he wasn't a god because you know but that's based on their theology their religion and that's great that's fine you can do that religiously you can't do it historically historians are only able to establish what probably happened in the past
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B
so we're going to take the rest of the conversation and look at what historians can actually say about jesus death and the following events i wanted to start with with the burial what do the gospels say about jesus burial so
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C
all four gospels agree that jesus was executed by crucifixion on a friday and that on the and on the third day people went to the tomb either one woman went to the tomb mary magdalene or several women the gospels all disagree on how many women what their names were who they were but they all agree women went to the tomb and that the tomb was empty and that the women saw a person or two persons or an angel or two angels depending which account you read who told them that jesus had been raised from the dead and so you know so you you can investigate whether it's true that jesus was crucified and you can investigate whether he was buried and whether he women found an empty tomb the burial in all four counts is is there's a man named joseph of arimathea who requests jesus body from pontius pilate after he died and pilate allows joseph of arametta to take the body they take him off the cross joseph takes the body and puts it into a tomb nearby a cave tomb you know one hewn out of stone nearby
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B
so as far as historians are concerned is the crime that jesus is charged with is the punishments does that does the punishment of crucifixion match the crime that he was charged with is it reasonable given the the legal system at the time for him to have been
- [13:45]
C
crucified yeah no it's a good question and it's absolutely it is true this is absolutely right that that he was in the gospels he's not killed for blasphemy against god or for disagreeing with pharisees or for any internal jewish disputes or breaking the sabbath nothing like that he's crucified for calling himself the king of the jews that's consistent throughout the gospels romans took it very seriously when somebody claimed to be the ruler of the land that they were the rulers of and they they typically crucify people for insurrection and so that's right crucifixion was reserved for either really the kind of people who were very low on the totem pole for the poor and the outcast and for slaves and for insurrectionists and it was considered it was considered the worst worst form of death penalty you could get in the empire but if you're claiming to be the king yes that would lead to crucifixion
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B
we're going to take a very brief break but when we come back i'm going to be asking a bit more about jesus burial and whether he would have even been put in a tomb but before that we have a very fun promotion that we're doing for the entire month of june and it's really unlike anything that we've ever done and i'm not one hundred percent sure that they're going to be or chris is going to be doing it again so if this is something you're interested in you should absolutely take advantage of it bart has selected a handful of his favorite courses that we've produced at paths in biblical studies going to be calling them bart's picks and for the month of june only you can get them for whatever you want to pay so you can pay what you want for bart's favourite courses it can be a thousand dollars if you think that it's worth a thousand dollars you could pay a dollar it's literally whatever you want to pay i'm not going to tell you what courses bart has picked you have to go to the website to work that one out but if you've ever purchased a course oh no if you've not purchased a course from us there we go perhaps because of affordability or you weren't sure if they were right for you or it's just been really bad timing now is the best time to do it because you can just pay what you want test it out see if it's something that you enjoy and really learn something interesting about the bible and early christianity so you can go to bart ehrman dot com courses anytime this month and you'll see all of the promotional information there but this is a really really great idea i hope lots of people take advantage
- [16:11]
C
of it sounds like a crazy idea to me but go for it so yeah no look and you know look people will pay what they they feel it's worth and that's fine that's absolutely or what they can we part of our goal with the paths of biblical studies of course is to reach as broad an audience as we can in order to in order to spread what what scholars have said about the bible and so and so we've done we've done well over fifty courses now not all me most of them aren't by me anymore but but but i've done a lot of them did a lot of them i've done a lot of them and so yeah but we want people to have access to them and so this is kind of an interesting interesting way to spread the word a
- [16:55]
B
bit so you can go to bart ehrman dot com forward slash courses and see what's available and i really hope you will have fun with it all right we are going to get back to jesus and the resurrection now and before the break i asked if crucifixion was a reasonable punishment for the crime jesus was charged with the answer was yes absolutely so the next question from that is do you think that jesus was buried in a known location i know this isn't typically something that happens with victims of crucifixion no it's not
- [17:26]
C
and it's this again is a historical question is it likely that somebody a rich jewish person was able to ask pontius get an audience with pontius pilate and say let me have this particular body so that i can bear period and the answer to that i think is that it's highly implausible historically we don't have detailed explanations of how crucifixion worked in the ancient world when you see the jesus movies they always have some way of doing it but you know we don't we don't have description of it by ancient people probably because they knew full well how it happened and they didn't need to describe it but we're kind of at a loss about like how did they how did they always use a cross beam did they how did they make it up right how did they nail the person did they they sometimes they tied people sometimes how did they decide how you know we don't know those kinds of details what we do have lots of references not lots we have we have a number of references to what happened to crucified victims once they died because it's referred to in a number of places in all sorts of ancient genres from kind of what we would call fictional accounts to to historical accounts biographical accounts there we have references and what tip what what is clear from reference i've ever seen i tried to look up every reference i could in every greek and roman author at one point and what they all indicate is the person was left on the cross for several days so that after they died as part of the humiliation in the ancient world even more than today people wanted a decent burial today of course everybody wants a decent burial but in the ancient world there was this really kind of passion that you've got to have a good burial and the romans threw this in the face of people who were being crucified they wouldn't they would allow them to be on the cross for several days where the body would start decomposing and be attacked by scavengers it's a common line about how birds would attack these bodies after they died and so it was part of the punishment and it was meant to show that rome rome is all powerful and this is the crucifixion itself is demonstrating rome's power because if you're attached to a cross i mean you cannot move your limbs and you're just hopelessly there until you die and then they leave you there and you decompose and birds go after you and that's what happens to you if you cross rome and so that was part of the disincentive for insurrection and so the idea that you'd have somebody just kind of out of the blue come up to the governor and say oh could i have the body and the governor say sure take him by the way i'd
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B
quite like to bury this person i'd
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C
like to bury this person you know and we don't hear anything about the other two people got you know was was joseph of arimathea particularly concerned about jesus because he thought he was the son of god and that pilate agreed he's the son of god so he should be given special treatment or did they do the same thing with the other two the other two aren't mentioned that way and pilate probably crucified a few people the day before and a few people the day after are these people like why jesus well you know it makes sense to christians of course i mean it's jesus but you know historically we don't have we don't have record of that kind of thing happening we don't know of a single instance of you know a specific incident of somebody doing this and so i think it's i think it's unlikely yeah what
- [20:58]
B
are some of the other kind of strange things about the joseph of arimathea story that suggests this is possibly not historically accurate well for one thing we
- [21:08]
C
don't have any record of somebody named joseph of arimathea i mean the only the only account is in in the gospels and we don't actually know of a place called arimathea at the time and so yeah so the night before he allegedly was in the sanhedrin which is the jewish council taking care of kind of local governmental affairs and he we're told that the entire sanhedrin voted for jesus to be crucified and then the next so joseph would have wanted him crucified but then he the next day he wants to give him a decent burial and so i don't it's a little bit hard to figure that one out but the main thing is that that we don't know of anybody like this we don't know if this ever happening in pilate's reign this is completely contrary to pilate's own policies and personality he was a brutal ruthless guy pilate was not a nice guy and and he is famous for not paying any attention to what jews wanted him i mean we have several accounts in josephus where he just basically just actually was ruthless when people protested against anything let alone you know just take just this random person asking him and so it just doesn't stack up kind of in terms of joseph of arimathea but it doesn't stack up from what we know about typical crucifixion practices so i've
- [22:31]
B
heard people argue apologists argue that there was something special about the jewish roman relationship and that the roman government would not have wanted to anger the jewish population and so they would have been given special dispensation to allow jewish victims of crucifixion to be given a proper burial is there any kind of historical
- [22:56]
C
truth in that it's based on a statement by josephus josephus was a jewish historian who was writing about fifty or sixty years later and he said he said that romans gave gave kind of special privileges to jews to take them off the crosses and give them burial so a couple of things about that one is he doesn't give any single instance of it happening he doesn't name any instance of it happening the only instance he mentions there actually was one that he was involved with were josephus when jerusalem was destroyed in the year seventy rome has just crucified masses of people of just the opposition they just line the streets with crosses and just and two of the people that they were crucifying were friends of josephus and he persuaded titus the conquering general who with whom he had it's a long story about josephus but he had connections with titus he had two of his friends taken off their crosses before they died and one of them survived but that's a different thing that was taking somebody off the cross before they died because of personal favor of josephus who was the translator that titus was using for the whole episode so he doesn't give any instance of somebody who died who's taken off the cross even though he knows of thousands and thousands of jews for that happening when josephus says that that romans gave that special permission to jews he's saying it in the context of his writings in which he's trying to show that jews were not enemies of romans and and that romans overall were kind to jews and he's he's doing this because he he's riding his back in rome he was taken prisoner he was a general jewish troops and and he's become a court historian for the for vespasian the emperor and and so he's trying to write this thing to mollify the relationship between jews and romans and so you know so he's just trying to make romans and jews look good to each other in this case and he does since he doesn't cite a specific instance and since we have no instance of it mentioned in any other source of any other kind it doesn't look likely
- [25:15]
B
so what is most likely to have happened to jesus body what happened to victims of crucifixion after they died did they they were left up there for a while until they started to decompose and animals started to to eat the remains what happened when they were eventually taken down
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C
well the romans would take them down they probably want to reuse the cross and so they would take them down after a while i don't think there was a set amount of time and they would dispose of the bodies and so we don't have good evidence what they did with them but they did something with them they probably the common guesses are that they would just throw them in a mass grave or that they would or that they would just dig a ditch you know and put the body in and get rid of it and so we do have i'll say we do have remains of a couple of crucified victims that have turned up in modern times we know they were crucified victims one of them has the nail still in his ankle ankle bone and some people have used that as an argument that therefore jews were allowed to bury their victims on the day of the crucifixion and that's always struck me as a very strange argument if you find a person who had been crucified who was given a burial how do you know when the person was buried what makes you think it was that day i mean if romans follow their policies then they they kept them on the crosses for days so even if you find a crucified victim doesn't mean it was like it was on that day the way it has to be in the gospels but more than that it just shows that in a couple of instances we know of people who probably come from very rich families who were able to provide burial for the remains after the fact which isn't the same thing of course because jesus doesn't have rich family and his family is not even in jerusalem and the person who's you know the joseph river mathias story is just is about taking him off that afternoon by somebody we've never even heard of before sounds
- [27:21]
B
very different so if we've we've kind of covered the the act of crucifixion the the burial question if we look at the gospels again as our main sources for this story who is the first to say that jesus is raised from the dead to use that explanation for why the tomb is empty well
- [27:41]
C
it depends which gospel you read and which account you read the gospels all have in the gospel of john it's mary magdalene who first finds out in the other gospels it's mary magdalene with other women different numbers of women different names so different accounts interestingly none of the disciples is first and one reason that's interesting is because when paul talks about visions of jesus after his death or you know people seeing jesus after his death jesus appearing to people after his death he says cephas was the first that means peter and so peter was the first according to paul and paul does not meant to say anything about the women and so it depends which account you read but it's either it's either peter or it's mary in the accounts
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B
are there any other explanations in the in the gospels for why the tomb is empty or is the resurrection accepted by by all of the
- [28:39]
C
apostles well you know the interesting thing in the gospels is that whenever the disciples find out about the empty tomb they doubt it and so do the women it doesn't bring faith apologists today talk about the empty tomb as proof of the resurrection and in fact in the gospel it's just never cited as proof it's people people doubt doubt it when they see it what makes people believe is the appearances of jesus but even when jesus appears to people in every case they doubt i don't want their doubting because he's right there he's talking to them so you certainly get that doubt tradition in the gospel of matthew you get an alternative explanation where we're told that jews claimed that the disciples stole the body of jesus and they have to be and so that's a rumor that is put out by jews to explain the empty tomb and so in matthew the idea is that jesus really was raised but they wanted to cover up and so they knew the tomb was empty so they said well the disciples stole the body
- [29:49]
B
do any of the disciples kind of persist in their doubts for the the whole of the gospel story or is everyone ultimately convinced that yes jesus was raised
- [30:01]
C
in the gospels they appear all to come to believe but it's not it's not clear historically you have to ask why do you have all these doubt traditions where the tomb's empty it creates doubts and in the gospels even when they see jesus they doubt he's got to like prove that he's he's alive again he's like in john and luke he actually you know eats fish to prove that he's a real body so presumably as a digestive system still and he's like he's a human again and so but he's have he's having to prove it and the weirdest passage is in the book of acts chapter one verse three where we're told that jesus spent forty days with his disciples proving that he was alive with many proofs he took him forty days to prove something yeah forty days and what kind of proofs do they what what are these proofs i mean he's there he's talking they're talking to him you know so so the fact of this doubt tradition being so prominent in the gospels makes me think that probably the gospel writers and the author of acts knows that that some of the disciples really did doubt they they never did come
- [31:04]
B
to believe it so does it seem to have been the empty tomb specifically that gave rise to the belief in the resurrection or is it a little more complicated than that i'd say it's
- [31:16]
C
precisely not the tomb fantastic because yeah and it's for two reasons one is because as i said before in the gospels the tomb never convinces anybody because you can have all sorts of you can have all sorts of explanations for an empty tomb and so so my first thing is that it never creates beliefs and the second thing is you could have all sorts of explanations for the empty tomb you could say you know you went to the wrong tomb or you somebody stole the body the disciples stole the body the romans moved the body overnight because they wanted to put it somewhere else joseph of arimathea was just putting there temporarily then he moved it and then he you know he got killed by a soldier who saw him do it and so nobody knew you know you could come up with like twenty explanations for an empty tomb and so i don't think that that is at all what generated faith and i'll point out that we don't have any reference to an empty tomb until forty years after the event i mean we don't have so paul says nothing about you know people seeing finding the tomb empty and the first account we have is in the gospel of mark somebody living in a different part of the world speaking a different language who didn't has no references to speaking with any eyewitnesses about it who says the tomb is empty and his account is contradicted in its details in all the other gospels which all contradict each other and so i don't think the empty tomb is going to be the kind of the core for why people want to think jesus was raised from the dead
- [32:43]
B
so what do you think it is or was that gave rise to this belief if not the empty
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C
tomb i think it's absolutely that some people said they saw jesus alive afterwards paul says that explicitly paul's the only eyewitness that we would have so you know if jesus died around the year thirty paul's writing his letter to first corinthians around the year fifty five of the common era say so in mid to late fifties so paul's writing a letter twenty five years or slightly more later and that's the first and he says in first corinthians that he that christ appeared to him so that's the first time that we have any record of somebody talking about seeing jesus it's a it's a person writing twenty five years later referring to an episode that would have happened twenty two years before that and that's our only eyewitness account and so if you if you know if you're just thinking about like how you do how you try and prosecute this say in a court of law where you've got to prove what happened in the past if what you've got is one eyewitness who's who mentions it twenty five years later based on an account twenty two years before that is that going to convince a jury that he actually saw jesus and when you're thinking about paul in particular if paul had a vision of jesus how did he know it was jesus he wasn't a follower of jesus he had no idea what it would have looked like is it that he saw somebody who told him he was jesus presumably but how does he know it's jesus and how and you know could it have been something else could he have like could he have seen could he have seen somebody in the distance that he thought was jesus you could he paul doesn't say anything about the conversation they had and so so that's our that's our one eyewitness and so i don't think it would stand up in a court of law let alone you know to you know base your entire life on but it's just my view but but we don't have we don't have other accounts until later by people who are not eyewitnesses we have stories told by gospel writers who are living you know forty fifty sixty years later who have heard stories in circulation who are living in different parts of the world who weren't eyewitnesses who didn't interview eyewitnesses and so that's the that's the evidence we got we so we don't know if there's an empty tomb seems unlikely and we have one eyewitness who's talking about something happened two decades before
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B
that's quite a lot of historical problems or a lot of problems for understanding this as a as an historical event well
- [35:25]
C
it's probably the big problem is you can't prove it you can't prove that god intervened in history because you don't have as a historian you don't have access to god and you only have access to things that happened on the ground in the natural world and you could argue there was an empty tomb although i think you're hard pressed to do that but you could argue that i think you can certainly certainly argue that there are people who claim to see jesus later paul says he did and paul says that other people did and so he heard that other people did so he he himself has heard possibly from cephas himself or james himself possibly and so that's that's that's the that's the material we can talk about historically all that all that material is problematic for showing that jesus was raised from the dead let me put this in a different way other than just saying well historians can't talk about miracles if historians can only establish the likelihood of something happening in the past what you do is you collect all the data that you can be sure about people said there was an empty tomb people said they saw jesus you know christianity did start things like that you collect all that and then you try and figure out what are the plausible explanations for it and so just with the appearances of jesus is it possible that people saw somebody they thought was jesus but was not jesus it looked like jesus or they were just convinced was jesus they didn't get a close up view is that possible and then they said i saw jesus is that possible is it possible the disciples stole the body is it possible is it possible that that romans moved the body and didn't bother to tell anybody and later christians went to where he was buried and found is that possible is it possible that there was deceit is there possible there were mistakes made is any of that possible and you say well look it's not likely the disciples stole the body that's not likely why would they no yes that's right it's not likely none of these explanations is likely do these things ever happen do people ever lie do people ever start religions on false premises do people see someone that they think is someone other than who it is are there mistaken identities that happen do people have hallucinations do people have dreams that they interpret as things that really happen these things happen all the time they've happened thousands of times every day so if the historian wants to show what probably happened and the choice is things that happen thousands of times every day versus something that's never happened before which is more likely and so again i'm not saying you can disprove the resurrection i'm saying that if it happened it's a miracle and you can believe it it religiously you can't show it historically and if you're just looking at historical grounds it's not the most likely explanation it can't be
- [38:19]
B
i think that is an excellent place to end the conversation bart thank you very much is there anything that you wanted to add before we move on to our bonus segment i i'll
- [38:30]
C
just add that i you know even though i'm not a christian of course i i have i know lots of christians who i respect and admire for who they are for what they do for their intelligence for their persons who believe that jesus is raised from the dead and i have i have zero problems with that what i have problems with is is with people who want to insist that you can prove this historically i think that's just wrong you cannot since you can't prove it you can't disprove it i personally don't think it happened but but i'm not arguing against it happening i'm arguing against thinking that you can establish it on historical
- [39:12]
B
grounds thank you very much bart we're going to go to this week's bonus segment which is this week outsmart bart so we have three questions submitted by listeners designed to test the limits of bart's biblical knowledge are you ready sir
- [39:30]
C
doubt it
- [39:32]
B
we'll see we'll see okay first question the term holy city appears six times in the new testament four times in revelation and twice in one gospel which gospel whoa we're starting specific
- [39:51]
C
wow when you started the question i was immediately thinking revelation which gospel okay i'll tell you why i'm i'm blocked up on this one because gospel of luke has a special emphasis on jerusalem more than the other gospels as the central place where g where it's the scent it's the center of luke's gospel but matthew's the one that has this kind of thing for for the jewish you know kind of celebrating the jewish faith so my my heart says luke but my mind says matthew your mind
- [40:29]
B
is correct yeah in matthew four five and twenty seven fifty three we have the term holy city okay so four
- [40:38]
C
five is the temptation narrative and twenty seven is the apocalyptic discourse and so
- [40:42]
B
it makes sense yeah okay second question is on the gospel of mark mark's gospel begins with the beginning of the gospel of jesus christ the son of god god in mark when is the last mention of jesus being either the son of god or the christ well
- [40:59]
C
let me challenge the questioner because i think that in john in mark one one the term the son of god is a scribal interpolation into the text i don't think it originally had son of god i have a lengthy argument about this in my book orthodox corruption of scripture that it's missing from a couple manuscripts and i think it's it wasn't original i think the first time it's son of god is mentioned in mark is at the baptism when the voice declares this is my you are my son in whom i'm well pleased and the last time is was the centurion confesses this is the son of god when he sees how jesus died and that's very interesting because i hope that's the last time it's it's it's i it's the last time so it's interesting because these two marcus set these two up to to mirror each other at the baptism of jesus the he gets baptized and the heavens rip open it uses the verb schizo schizomai which we get like schizophrenic from ripping and it's split and and a voice comes from heaven saying you're my beloved son at the crucifixion jesus dies and the curtain in the temple rips same verb schizomai only two times it occurs in mark and the voice says this was the son of god the centurion and so there are brackets around it so am i right that that's the last
- [42:21]
B
one you are right you are right okay two out of three last one regarding judas betrayal in several of your blog posts you talked about the difference between the greek word paradidomi handed over and the word prodidomi betrayed i've probably mispronounced those i am sorry in modern greek translations paradidimai is consistently translated as betrayed when referring to judas actions and as handed over in all other cases which gospel author is the only one actually calling judas a traitor
- [43:00]
C
yeah it doesn't use the verb prodidome it uses proditas which means betrayer well i don't know i think it's john but i'm
- [43:10]
B
not sure the answer given is luke
- [43:13]
C
six sixteen oh six sixteen oh yeah yeah okay no that makes sense sorry i was yep that's right so it's be that's in the when he's given the list of the disciples he's he's naming the disciples and he's giving epithets that makes sense yeah the betrayer yeah sorry about that no well i'm batting six hundred and sixty six and so i should be an all star i
- [43:39]
B
am willing to agree with that so audience thank you very much for sending in your questions if you have anything that you want to try and test bart on you can go to bart erman dot com forward slash question i think i hope that's right i'm probably not right i should have checked that before i very very confidently announced it in a recording you're o for one yeah yeah who knows there's there's a link somewhere i'm sure you can find it if you google it okay but before we finish for the week could you remind us what we spoke about
- [44:12]
C
today well we're talking about really the the central issue within christianity was jesus raised from the dead and the issue we're dealing with is whether that can be demonstrated on purely historical grounds using purely historical methods and my answer is a very strong no it cannot be it does not show that jesus was not raised from the dead if he was it was an act of god and you can believe that as religious belief but it's not something you can demonstrate using the methods of historical analysis
- [44:43]
B
audience thank you so much for listening i hope you enjoyed the show if you did please subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don't miss future episodes i've also remembered the correct url if you want to ask bart a question it's bartiman dot com forward slash slash ask bart so you can go there and submit your questions remember that you can use the code njpodcast for a discount on all of bart's courses over at www dot bart erman dot com misquoting jesus will be back next week but not with bart instead i'm going to be talking to doctor charles gove about the very first christian hymn we're also going to be listening to a recording of the actual music so make sure you join us next week for that thank you everyone 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