← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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A
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B
hello everyone and welcome back to Misquoting Jesus. Today we are talking about the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. Now these two texts are widely understood to be a two volume set written by a single author. Given that we've spoken before on Misquoting Jesus about just how difficult it is to identify an author of an ancient text, why are scholars so sure that these two are written by a single author? Who was that author if we know? And why on earth would they write two books when they could have just written the one? Stay tuned for all of that and so much more on today's Misquoting Jesus. Welcome to Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman, the only show where a six time New York Times best selling author and world renowned Bible scholar uncovers the many fascinating little known facts about the New Testament, the historical Jesus and the rise of Christianity. I'm your host, Megan Lewis. Let's begin. Good morning Bart. How are you doing today?
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A
Yep, doing a okay today. Things are all right. How about you?
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B
Yep, also very good. Also very good. Looking forward to hearing about the Gospel of Luke and Acts of the Apostles if you're ready to tell us about them.
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A
We'll see. I think so. I've been thinking about them for about 50 years, so I think I'm probably ready to talk about them.
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B
Probably a good time to start the talking part of the process. Do you remember when you first learned learned about this relationship between the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles?
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A
I certainly remember when I didn't know about the relationship when it sort of shocked my system because When I was 15 I had a, I had a born again experience and became an evangelical Christian and I decided well, okay, I better read the Bible because like I'm a Bible believing Christian now, so let's see what's in it. And so I started trying to read the King James and that was too complicated. I couldn't understand these words. And it wasn't just the these and thou's. It's like the grammar. I just. Oh, man, this is hard. I didn't think the Bible would be hard. Someone suggested I pick up a volume of a translation. It's called Good News for Modern Man. Back when we didn't realize that that was a problem generically and everything. So. So anyway, I picked it up and it was more kind of paraphrasing, more kind of a looser translation, and I could understand. So I read the Gospel of Matthew. I said, oh, this is great. You know, the life, the birth, the life, the death and resurrection of Jesus. Oh, this is interesting. I read Marcus. Oh. Huh. Yeah, that's like the other one. It's like the life and death and resurrection. Read Luke. That's good. That's. Boy, it's more. More of the same John. Okay. Yeah, this. I thought the entire Bible was that way. I had no idea. I had been raised in the church. I was raised in the Episcopal Church and was an altar boy and was active in the church, but I knew nothing about what was actually in the Bible. And I just thought. I didn't know there were 27 books, but I knew there were a lot of them. And I thought they were all, like, books about Jesus. I get to the Book of Acts. Wait a second. This isn't about Jesus. I want to hear more about Jesus.
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B
Someone's missing.
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A
Where's Jesus? Here? He starts out there, but then he goes up to heaven. Like, oh, my God, what's going to happen now? How can this be a long book? So I read Acts, and so I had no idea at that time, and I didn't realize that there were also, like, epistles to come and then a book of Revelation. I really didn't know. But then, you know, two years later, I was enrolled at Moody Bible Institute, which was an evangelical Bible college. And there I learned quite well what the Bible was. And among other things, we learned that Luke and Act were written by the same author. This was firmly taught there, as it is almost everywhere. But the difference, of course, is that at Moody Bible Institute, every book was written by the same author. The New Testament isn't 27 books. It's one book written by God. As I developed in scholarship, I came to realize, in fact, there are multiple authors and that these two books really do appear to be written by the same person.
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B
So what is it about these books that lead authors to think that they have a single author?
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A
Yeah, I suppose it's widely known that that's the case, but I think a lot of People don't notice that or think about it for this kind odd reason that in the canon of the New Testament, there's a book inserted between the two. The Gospel of John appears between Luke and Acts. And you don't kind of read Luke and Acts as like, as two volumes of the single work because you think it comes after John and you might not notice it, but if you read it closely, I mean, I should have noticed this as a 15 year old, but I didn't. The beginnings of these two books are a dead giveaway. It's not the only reason for thinking so, but it's something that should alert you to the fact that this author is the same person. Because in the first book, the Gospel of Luke, the author who does not name himself says that there have been many others who have written accounts of the things that Jesus had said and done. The things have been accomplished among us, and now he is going to give an accurate account and he dedicates it to a man named Theophilus. So to you, Theophilus, I'm writing this account so you can know what really happened. That's in the very first four verses of the Gospel of Luke. When you get to the beginning of Acts, the author begins by saying, so Theophilus, in my first volume, I described the things Jesus said and did. Now I'm going to talk about, like when you read those two things, you realize, wait a second, this guy's, he's continuing the story now. And it does begin where Luke ends with the Ascension of Jesus.
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B
There obviously is reason to think that this is a single author, but why do people not view it as someone kind of adding to or like a forgery, almost writing in the name to the same person? A sequel.
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A
Yeah. You know, there actually are some scholars who argue that there are different authors. I wouldn't say it's a widely held view, but it's held by a few scholars who, you know, who have that kind of view. If it's written by somebody else, it's someone who's trying to imitate the other. The reason that really hasn't caught on, I think, I don't think it's caught on a lot is because when you read through the books, even though they're about different things, one is about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. The other is about the spread of Christianity throughout the Roman world after Jesus death. And so the content is different, but the themes are consistent. The kinds of things that happen in the Gospel of Luke that are thematically distinctive of Luke continue in The Book of Acts, one of the ways it's interestingly set up is that the things that happen to Jesus and the things that Jesus does in the Gospel of Luke are replicated by what the disciples experience and what they do do in the Book of Acts. That's another clue that, like, somebody has this continuity in mind. You could say, well, forger could do that. The writing style is very similar between the two. The grammar is very similar, the vocabulary is very similar. The themes are very similar. The theology is very similar. If you're just kind of being dispassionate about it and saying, is this by the same author? I mean, he doesn't come out and say, I'm the same author, but basically he does. And it's the same thing all the way through. It can tell us a continuous story. And you can't do that with any of the other Gospels in the Book of Acts. And so it really looks like it could be somebody's forging it, but there's not really any evidence of it. Of course, I'm very big on forgery. I love detecting forgeries, and I don't mind digging down deep to find. I mean, I wrote a couple books on forgery, and I just don't think this is one of them. Because you don't have the evidence. You don't have.
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B
I see. Thank you. Do we have any information? I always feel silly asking this question because the answer is always a resounding no. Do we know anything at all about who might have written these books?
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A
The answer is a resounding yes.
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B
What? Yeah, well, I need confession or something. That's amazing. Yeah, kind of. I'll take it. I'll take it.
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A
Kind of. If you mean, do we know the name? The answer is no. Resounding no. What kind of person is this? What do we know about this person? There are several things. Whoever's writing this is actually claiming to be somebody he's not. You wouldn't know this from the Gospel of Luke, but in the Book of Acts, this author, who is describing the spread of Christianity and whose major character in Acts for most of the Book of Acts, whose major figure, his hero, is the AAPostle Paul, on four occasions, this author implicitly indicates that he was one of Paul's companions, because there are four passages where the author starts talking not about what Paul and the others were doing, but about what we were doing. And so these are called the we passages in Acts. I don't think we're going to get into that at any depth here, but I'll just say it's an implicit claim that this person was a traveling companion of Paul. And these four passages, even though they seem kind of tucked away and you kind of think, well, if the author really claiming to be a friend of Paul's, wouldn't he like come out and say it and really kind of stress it? Yeah, you might think so, but he just has these four little passages. And since then, for 2,000 years, everyone has assumed he's a companion to Paul. And so he's like terrifically effective. But there are very, very good reasons. Again, these are not things we're going to be talking about much here, but we will be later about for why we think that this author was not one of Paul's traveling companions. But we do know other things about him. We know, for example, that he absolutely appears to be non Jewish because of various indications in both texts he's a Greek speaking Christian. He appears to be writing much later than Paul, decades after Paul's death. We know that because the Gospel of Luke, his first volume, is dependent on the Gospel of Mark, it borrows a number of stories from Mark, word for word. And Mark was almost certainly written around the year 70. And so Luke is usually dated to the mid-80s and Peter and Paul would have died in the mid-60s. So it's a Greek speaking Christian living somewhere outside of Israel. He doesn't seem to know the geography of Israel particularly well. He's a follower of Paul, even though there are things about Paul he doesn't know very well, apparently. So there are things about him we know, we just don't know who he is.
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B
How about this character Theophilus? Do we know anything at all about him and why someone will be writing a book for him? Two books in fact.
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A
Two books, yeah. There are two major theories about it. The most popular theory, I think that was one I was kind of taught, not just in Bible college, but actually through graduate school. I think a lot of scholars assume is that this Theophilus was an actual human being. And he's called most Excellent Theophilus. That term most Excellent might not sound like anything significant, but the other time the author of Acts uses it, it's in relationship to a Roman official, an administrative official. There are aspects of both Luke and Acts that look like the author is trying to emphasize even more than other writers of the New Testament, that Christianity is not a threat to Roman society, that Jesus was not killed for actually committing any crimes against the state, that he was completely innocent, and that the followers of Jesus don't do anything to violate state law and that they're completely innocent. So it looks kind of like this person is defending Christianity against charges leveled against them by non Christians. This theory is that Theophilus is a local Roman administrator and that the author is writing to him to explain that he doesn't need to persecute Christians because they haven't done anything wrong and in fact they're good for society. So that's one theory, I suppose. It's the most dominant theory. I don't really know what the majority view is, and that's what I thought for a long time. The other view is one that I came to appreciate in graduate school and have held for many years, which is that Theophilus actually is not a real person, but that the name Theophilus is symbolic. The name Theophilus literally means Theos means God, and Philos comes from Philia which means love. And so it's the one who's beloved of God or it's the lover of God, or both. I don't think there's any way an author living in the 80s would think that a Roman official is going to pick up this massive two volume book and read it to become convinced that Christians are innocent. Like that's just so implausible. I think these other books, the other gospels, appear to be all written for the Christian communities of the authors. And I think that's what this author's doing. He's writing for his Christian community, those who are beloved of God, those who love God. He's picking a symbolic dedication name so they'll realize this is written for them.
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B
Excellent. Thank you. We're going to take a very brief break. We will be right back to talk about things like genre and the themes and materials that appear in both of these works. 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 Paul and Jesus 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 teaching 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 Bart ehrman.com Paul to learn more or sign up today. And remember, remember to use discount code mjpodcast for a special offer. Once Again, that's Bart ehrman.com Paul with a discount code mjpodcast welcome back, everyone. We are talking about the Gospel of Luke and Acts of the Apostles. And I'm going to open the second half of the interview by asking whether these two books are in the same genre. Are they both biographies? Are they both histories? What's going on with this?
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A
Well, you know, there are a lot of debates about the genres of the Gospels generally, or I guess I should say there used to be a lot of debate. I'd say most scholars today would say that in terms of genre, in terms of kind of writing, the Gospels are like ancient biographies. They're not like modern biographies where you get lots of names and dates and you get a lot of research and you. You see kind of the psychological development of the. Of the figure and the person, you know, from the. Their influential teachers and things like that. It's not like that ancient biographies were done very differently. But we have a number of ancient biographies by authors like Plutarch and Seneca who are living right around the time when these books are being written. And so these look like biographies accounts, lives of an important, in this case, important religious figure, Jesus. The Gospel of Luke goes from his birth to his death and resurrection. And so it's an account mainly of his ministry and then his death and resurrection. In terms of genre, it looks like an ancient biography. The book of Acts is not a biography because it's not about an individual. It's about the spread of Christianity. It does have individuals at the heart of it. Peter is the main figure in the first 12 chapters of Acts. Paul, who converts in chapter nine, begins to be the key figure, starting in chapter 13 and for the rest, the other 2/3 of the book. But it isn't really a biography of Peter or a biography of Paul. It's about how the Christian church came into being. And so the thing that's most like that in the Greek and Roman worlds are histories of peoples, say history of a city or history of a state or history of an ethnicity or something. And so it's like that. And those are sometimes called general histories. And so it looks like they're different genres, even though they're dedicated to the same person, probably written by the same person. One is a biography and one is a general history.
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B
That's interesting. So the books are aimed at the same people. They have a lot of continuity in terms of theme, which we'll get into a little bit later, but they're different genres. Why do people think the author chose to switch Genres between the volumes.
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A
Yeah, you know it's an interesting thing because there aren't a lot of books like that in the ancient world. Two volume works where the two volumes are different genres. We have lots and lots of multi volume works from the period Josephus, you know, we have a 20 volume antiquities of the Jews and we have a six volume account of the Jewish war and we have people write multi volume works, but two genres. What I think the reason is pretty obvious actually. Although I'm not sure a lot of scholars even talk that much about it. But it seems kind of obvious to me if you're going to write about the life and death of Jesus, you write a biography, you're writing about an individual. But Acts is trying to take the story forward by talking about how Jesus influence spread throughout the world. And so the topic now is about the beginning of the Christian church. There's absolute coherence between these two in terms of interest and theme and theology. But because of the different contents of what it involves, he had to write in two different genres. Genres. And so it's a little bit odd, but I think it's pretty clear that's why it had to be that way.
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B
So you mentioned in one of your previous answers that the book of Acts takes events in Jesus lifetime and kind of recreates them through the apostles. Can you give some examples along those lines of how the two books complement each other?
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A
Yeah. So you know, when you see the life of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, there are a number of very interesting things. I mean Luke more than the other gospels emphasizes the role of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit in the life of Jesus. The Spirit comes upon him, the Spirit drives him into the wilderness. The Spirit is the one who tells him what to preach. The Spirit inspires his miracles. I mean it's like spirit, spirit, spirit, a lot more than the other gospels. And when you get to the book of Acts, it's all about the Spirit. Just as the Spirit came upon Jesus at his baptism, that comes upon the disciples on the day of Pentecost. Just as it led Jesus to do miracles, it leads the apostles to do the miracles. Just as it told Jesus what to preach, it tells the apostles what to preach. Just as it directed Jesus life direction of the apostles lives. And some of the things are very common. I mean Jesus does certain miracles, he heals the sick, he casts out demons, he raises the dead. And the apostles do the same things. They heal the sick, they cast out demons, they raise the dead. And so you have, you have that kind of Thematic continuity between the two. Jesus ends up being persecuted by Jewish authorities in Jerusalem who punish him. And the apostles start out being persecuted by the same Jewish authorities in Jerusalem and get punished by them. Jesus mission is not going to fail because it's all according to the plan of God. This is a theme in Luke about the divine plan, how it's necessary for these things to be. And the whole thing in the Book of Acts is going according to the plan of God. These things are necessary to be. So that kind of thematic similarity is something you get precisely between Luke and Acts. And you wouldn't be able to trace it out nearly as well between, say, any of the other gospels in Acts.
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B
What message is this continuity really being used to portray to the audience?
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A
You know, the revolutionary thing about the Christian message was that it was claiming that this new understanding of the God of the Jews, that it's not just about God of the Jews and his chosen people, the Jews, but that he has taken the message of salvation. He didn't take it away from the Jews, but it went from the Jews to the Gentiles. And that God now has inaugurated a new thing with Jesus, an unexpected thing in Jesus. Most Jews at the time, historically, not in terms of the writings or the stories, but historically, most Jews at the time simply thought that the Christian message was contrary to their understanding of the God of the Jews from Scripture. And Christians wanted to emphasize, no, in fact, there's continuity. This is what God planned all along. And Paul preaches that message, and other apostles preach that message. The book of Luke and the book of Acts try to demonstrate that the continuity is to show that Jesus really is the Messiah predicted by Scripture. And the entire point of predictions of the Messiah is that Messiah would bring salvation not just to the Jewish people, but to all people. And that this was God's plan from the very beginning. And so it's trying to emphasize there's not discontinuity with like this weird new thing coming along claiming to be the truth. This was the idea from the outset.
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B
Excellent. And so then that continuity between early Judaism and Jesus leads into continuity between Jesus and the apostles, which you see in the Book of Acts.
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A
That's exactly right. I mean, it's. The Hebrew Bible leads up to the prophets of the Jews who predict Jesus, who comes exactly as he was predicted in Luke. And that in fact, from the beginning, God had planned that this coming of Jesus would lead to the apostles, which lead the spread of Christianity, which would lead to the salvation of the world. And so it goes from like a Creation of the world to the salvation of the world. And it's all right there in the story of Luke and Acts.
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B
Do we know how persuasive ancient peoples were finding this argument of continuity?
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A
Well, the argument of continuity was mainly, in some ways it was mainly directed toward Jews to emphasize, you know, that this is a fulfillment of what you, you believe. Whether it seems unusual to you, you look at it, you'll see this was a fulf. And that argument was not very persuasive to most Jews. I mean, most Jews actually rejected the Christian message and said, no, that's not what the Messiah is supposed to be. Jesus clearly was not chosen by God. He got crucified as a public criminal. And the Christians are preaching that God now has moved from the chosen people, the Jews who keep his law, to Gentiles who have nothing to do with his law. You're saying that you're the people of God, you're not even circumcised, you don't keep kosher, you don't observe the Sabbath, you don't keep the festival. What do you mean? You are the people of God. So most Jews rejected this message, but it did become a kind of a rallying point for Gentiles who then identified with the God of the Jews and realized that in fact they were something special in the history of the world. The history of the world had been pointing to them. And so for some reason, reasons we can speculate about, Gentiles found this message more persuasive than, than the Jews to whom it was directed.
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B
Can you share some of those speculations with us? Why were Gentiles finding this persuasive and important?
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A
You know, it's a strange phenomenon that many people haven't thought of. I mean, most people agree that, you know, Christianity became primarily a Gentile religion. I think most scholars think that didn't happen until the second or third centuries. And I think that's just wrong. I think by the end of the first century, the vast majority of people who are converting to Christianity are Gentile. From one perspective, it seems a little bit weird that Gentiles would convert more easily than Jews because for Jews it's a one step process and for Gentiles it's a two step process. All Jews have to do is agree that Jesus is the Messiah because they continue worshiping the God of the Jews and they continue believing the Hebrew Bible. And they have one thing to do, agree that Jesus is the Messiah. But Gentiles, man, they have to go back to the beginning. These are Polytheists, they have to give up all their other religions just to believe that there's only one almighty God. That's a huge step. And then once they got that, then they have to agree that Jesus is the Messiah. So why would two steps be easier than one step? It seems like it'd be twice as hard, but it's like 100 times easier, apparently. And I think it's because for Jews, this was just a huge stumbling block, as Paul says in the Book of First Corinthians that the crucifixion of Jesus is the stumbling block. Jews simply are not going to accept that a crucified criminal is the Savior of the world sent by the God of the Jews. Are you crazy? But Gentiles didn't have that reaction. So what happens is the Gentiles become convinced that the God of Jesus can do greater miracles than their own gods, that the God of Jesus is more powerful than all their other gods. They come to believe that. Once they believe that, then it's not a problem thinking Jesus is the Messiah. And so the trick is getting them to give up on their polytheism. Once that happens, it's easy to think about Jesus as the Messiah because they don't have the stumbling block that Jews have.
- [24:43]
B
Excellent. Thank you. So my final question, just to wrap up the interview for today. You mentioned in one of your earlier answers that you don't think the author of Acts and the Gospel of Luke was actually a traveling companion of Paul. So if he wasn't, where do you think he got his information from?
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A
Yeah, well, it's an important question because he records the life of Jesus from his birth to his death and his resurrection. And he records the history of Christianity from the beginning. It's our first and only history of Christianity for hundreds of years. And he begins with the very beginning of the church and goes up for the next 30 years, with most of that time being taken up with Paul. So the question where is he getting his information from? If he had been a traveling companion of Paul, then you could see where he'd get a lot of that. So where does he get his information? And the answer seems to be that he has sources of information for all of these things. There are very good reasons that we'll talk about in other episodes about why he wasn't Paul's traveling companion and why some of the things he says about Paul were wrong. But he certainly knows things about Paul and Paul's life. A lot of the general things he says about Paul were right. And a lot of Things he says about Jesus are the things found in other Gospels. So it's usually thought that in terms of the Gospels, this author had access to earlier sources of information. He doesn't claim to be a follower of Jesus during his lifetime, but he had read the Gospel of Mark and he uses Mark and he had other sources, probably this Q source that we talk about and other sources of information. And it appears that he had sources of information for Paul. There's very little to suggest he actually knew Paul personally. In fact, whenever he says something in detail about what Paul said and did, if it's something that Paul himself also talks about in one of his own letters, they're at odds with each other. And even basic major things he doesn't seem to have really understand what Paul's actual preaching was about. For example, as we'll talk about in other episodes, it looks like he has sources of information and people have speculated that there were written documents, There might have been some travelogues floating around. There's certainly stories about how Christianity spread to places throughout the Empire and lots of stories about Paul floating around. He's heard stories, possibly he's read stories, and so it's all based on second, third, fourth hand information. But he puts all together into these two coherent volumes that tie together and so it ends up being a beautiful story. I don't think we mentioned this, but we probably should. When you ask people who wrote most of the New Testament, people who know something about the Bible will typically say Paul, because he wrote all those letters. But in fact, if you look at the volume, the author, Luke, we call him Luke, we don't know what his name was. He wrote more than anybody, a lot more than Paul did. The two volumes, Luke and Acts, take up about a fourth of the entire New Testament Testament. And so he's a very important author and he's provided a kind of a coherent account. That's a beautiful account when you go from beginning to end.
- [27:41]
B
Thank you. We're actually going to be getting into the characterisation of Paul a little more in a future episode, so I'm going to cut it here and we'll get back to that in a couple of weeks. We are going to take the briefest of breaks, then we're going to be back with news and updates and also some listeners questions.
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A
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.
- [28:16]
B
So next week is our live Anniversary recording. I'm very excited.
- [28:21]
A
Yeah, me too. We did that last year and we had a blast. It's kind of hard to believe that. I was just thinking the other day, I get emails from people, friends like I haven't been in contact with in forever and they write me, say, oh yeah, I'll listen to your podcast. And really. And it's like, it's just been so great because we're able to reach people that otherwise we wouldn't be able to reach. And, and so it's been great fun. But the two year anniversary thing, this anniversary thing's great because we started out thinking, you know, I think the last one we did, we were thinking like, okay, first year, you know, maybe we'll have like, you know, 100 questions for the first year, you know, 200 questions. But you know, that ain't going to work because we keep doing this thing forever. So. So this will be a live thing. People will ask questions and I'll answer them and hope I don't get stumped on too many of them.
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B
It's going to be fun. It was awful lot of fun last year. And if people are interested in asking a question, you can just go to www.barturman.com askbahrt. Put your question in there, make sure you tag it as being for the live anniversary recording and I will get back to you. You do obviously need to be available to come onto our stream to ask the question on the evening of the 20. Make sure you can actually attend before you send in your question. And yeah, we'll, we'll get back to you with organizational details and if you're not going to ask a question or your question isn't selected, please just join us live on YouTube and listen along and you can leave your comments and it'll be a wonderful evening. We also have another course coming up, which is the reason that we've been talking about ACTS today. I mean that and the fact that you've been thinking about it for the last 50 years. What kinds of things are you going to be covering in the course?
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A
Yeah, I'm really looking forward to this. I was actually walking my dog today thinking about what I would want to do in this course. And there's like so much you can do, but it'll be an eight lecture course, a weekend course, a Saturday, Sunday thing in November. And I'm going to talk about what ACTS is all about, what we know about the author and such and when he wrote and that kind of thing, but mainly about the kinds of themes In Acts, it's our first account of the spread of Christianity. And the main character in Acts is somebody we have have letters from so we can compare what ACT says with what Paul himself says. And so part of my thing is going to be literary, just showing how very powerful this literature is. People like pass over because they just think they were reading about what happened in the past instead of understanding like the, the message this author is trying to convey is really pretty interesting. But also like, how does it compare with Paul? I mean, do they contradict each other? Is it like in tiny little things? Is it in big things? Is like a major things? What is it? And so it's going to be all of that kind of wrapped up in an eight lecture course.
- [30:58]
B
So this is also going to be part of or available as part of the New Biblical Studies Academy, which is a really, really innovative program I think with university level courses available on subjects in and around Biblical studies. You can join that for an introductory rate of just $39.95 a month. There's a 14 day free trial so you can try it and see what you think. But that will give you access to all kinds of courses, including Mark Goodacre's Synoptics course, which I think has just been released, as well as this Acts course that Bart is talking about. So you can go to the website and find out a little bit more about that or you can, if you would like, just buy it as a standalone course and we'll have more details about that in an upcoming episode.
- [31:47]
A
Now it's time for questions from listeners where Bart answers real questions submitted by misquoting Jesus fans. If you'd like to submit a question for future segments, please visit bart erman.com askbars
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B
all right, but are you ready for some listeners questions?
- [32:08]
A
I. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready for the questions. I don't know if I'm ready with the answers.
- [32:14]
B
First up, in the modern versions of the Bible, Christians call their Gods God, basically using a common noun as a proper noun. Was that practice also common in early versions of New Testament books?
- [32:27]
A
Yeah. So the word for God in Greek is ha is actually the definite article. The normally they call like God, capital g God.
- [32:39]
B
Ha.
- [32:39]
A
Theos. Theos is God, like in theology, the study of God. And there's not a personal name for God used in the New Testament when they refer to God, capital g God, it's God. God has various designations. Father, Father Almighty, the Lord, the Lord Almighty, etc. There's not a personal name in the Hebrew Bible, there's a personal name, the name Yahweh, it's the Tetragrammaton, the four letters. In English, it'd be Y, H, W, H. And we're not sure how it was pronounced. We think it's something like Yahweh, that's actually God's personal name. But in the New Testament, they don't use that name. And it's kind of a tricky issue because Yahweh in the Old Testament, if you read it in English, Old Testament, and you read the word Lord, L O, R, D, the L capitalized L O, R, D. It's the Hebrew word for Lord, like master. But if you read it, capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D, that's the English word for Yahweh. Okay? So if they read the name Yahweh out loud, they weren't supposed to because it's the sacred name, the Tetragrammaton. So they had to say something else instead of Yahweh. So they would say Lord, they'd say Adonai, the word for my Lord. And in translation, then it came into Lord. So in the New Testament, when they're talking about the Lord God, that would be Yahweh. It's all very confusing, isn't it? But I do want to make the point that the personal name of God is not used in the New Testament. And that personal name refers to what Christians end up calling God the Father. And many Christians for some reason these days think that Jesus is being portrayed in the New Testament as God the Father, Yahweh. And no, that's not right. He's not Yahweh in the New Testament. All right, sorry. That's a long answer to a simple question.
- [34:31]
B
Perfect answer, and not a simple question at all. What was the historical Jesus understanding of the Jewish law? And how did it differ from other Jewish sects such as the Pharisees? For example, did he believe that converts to Judaism had to follow the law?
- [34:47]
A
That would require a book. But I can say a few things about it. It's actually central to the book I'm writing now, a central issue because I'm writing this book on Jesus ethics. Jesus views of ethics closely related to his understanding of the Jewish law. Every Jew that we know of from Jesus time understood that God had given the law to Moses. But different groups had different understandings of, of what the main emphasis of the law was, what the point of the law was, what God expected with Jews with respect to the law. And so it isn't like just Jesus against the Pharisees. Pharisees have a view. Sadducees have a view. Essenes have a view. Common folk have probably a bunch of different views. Jesus has a view. Other teachers have views. Jesus view of the law appears to be that you are supposed to love God with all your heart, soul and strength. It's like a summary of the law in Deuteronomy, chapter 6. And that you are supposed to love your neighbors yourself. Leviticus 19:18, that the entire law is summed up in these words. You should love God with everything you've got and you should love your neighbor. In the Old Testament, that means your fellow Israelite as well as you love yourself. If you feed yourself, you should feed your neighbor. If you clothe yourself, you should clothe your neighbor. If you house yourself, you should help the homeless. You love them, you know, like the way you love yourself. Even if you don't like yourself, you treat yourself well. If you don't like your neighbor, you ought to treat your neighbor well. The difference with Jesus is that Jesus thought your neighbor was not just your fellow Jew, it was anybody who's in need. So Jesus emphasized that, and he thought that if love of God or neighbor ended up making you violate one or another of the other laws, that love triumphs, love trumps the other laws. People like the Pharisees. Pharisees were very devout people. They were not born to be hypocrites. They didn't have to tell my students. They didn't have to take a hypocritical oath. It's not that they were all hypocrites, but the Pharisees did think that you had to keep the laws rigorously. They devised oral laws that are not found in the Torah that would help make sure that people didn't break the written law. And other groups of Jews like the Sadducees or Essenes didn't really subscribe to these laws. Jesus didn't subscribe to these laws. And he thought it really wasn't the point. The point isn't knowing exactly which things to tithe. The point is to love your neighbors yourself. And so that was Jesus view. Did he think that converts to Judaism should keep the law? Yeah, he probably thought everybody should keep the law, of course. I mean, he kept Sabbath, he was circumcised. And Jesus probably kept kosher. And yeah, he probably thought people following the God of the Jews, of course you do what you're supposed to love him. If he tells you to do this, you're going to do it.
- [37:30]
B
Excellent. Thank you very much. We know that Gnostic Christians had discrimination with other sects of Christians. But do we have examples of one Gnostic group arguing with another Gnostic group?
- [37:41]
A
Oh, now that's a very good question. One Gnostic group arguing with another Gnostic group. Nothing comes to mind. We don't have things like essays and treatises by Gnostics for the most part. Most of our Gnostic writings are of a different kind of thing. We do have Gnostic writings that are attacking other kinds of Christians. There are two of them in the collection called the Nag Hammadi Library. These are sometimes they're grouped together and just called the Gnostic Gospels. Even though this discovery of texts, the discovery is made in 1945. Most of these texts are not gospels. They just call them the Gnosticospheres sometimes. But we have two of these texts. One is called the Apocalypse of Peter. That Apocalypse of Peter attacks Christians with false views. But the Christians that it attacks are not fellow Gnostics. They are the Christians that we would call the Proto Orthodox, the Christians who are supporting views that became standard Christianity. They are attacked by the Gnostics, for example, for believing, you know, believing in a dead man and for having theology that was completely inadequate. So I don't know of attacks by Gnostics. Honor the Gnostics. There may be some out there I'm just not thinking of right now.
- [39:01]
B
Thank you. And final question for today. In the Hebrew Bible, many men have multiple wives. Was this still happening by Jesus time?
- [39:10]
A
If it was, we don't hear about it to my knowledge, certainly not in the major writings of Judaism at the time. Judaism had by this time become monogamous in its understandings of marriage. Some Jews were not married at all. Of course, Jewish men, there were Jewish men who weren't married for various reasons. But we don't have records that I know of, that I can think of of people having multiple wives. You find those traditions, especially in the older traditions of the patriarchs, but in later Jewish tradition in the Hebrew Bible, like when you get to the prophets, that's not a practice that we hear about as a legitimate practice. Whether people are doing it, it's another question. I don't know about that, but yeah, it was not acceptable practice.
- [39:54]
B
Thank you so much, audience. Thank you all for your questions as always. Fantastic. Spotify on Now, Bart, before we finish for the week, would you mind just summarizing what we talked about today?
- [40:04]
A
Yeah, we're talking about this two volume work, Luke and Acts, and it's an interesting phenomena. They take up about a fourth of the entire New Testament, apparently written by the same person we were talking about. Why is it that it looks almost certain that these are two books written by the same person, even though they're different genres? One is a biography, one is a kind of a history of Christianity, but they appear to be to coalesce with each other. And so that was the topic of our conversation today, and it'll be the major, major topic that I deal with in this future course of mine that I'll be doing.
- [40:34]
B
Audience thank you all for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don't miss future episodes. Remember, you can use the code mjpodcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.barterman.com. misquoting Jesus will be back next Week Bart, what are we talking about next time?
- [40:53]
A
Ah, yeah, well, next week is a bit of fun. We're going to do a live show. Everybody is welcome to come, and everybody's welcome to submit a question. This will be all Q and A people will submit questions and we will choose. I won't choose. I'm not going to know what the questions are. Megan will choose which questions we'll be asking, and the people whose questions are selected will themselves have the opportunity to ask me directly, and I will try to answer them directly.
- [41:19]
B
It'll be a lot of fun. Please join us then. Thank you all and goodbye. This has been an episode of Misquoting Jesus with Bart. Okay, 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 Erman and myself, Megan Lewis, thank you for joining us.