← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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- [00:00]
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- [00:32]
Megan Lewis
why on earth would someone study the scripture of a religion that they don't even believe in? Today, Dr. Bart Ehrman joins me to explore that very question. Welcome to Ms. Quoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. The only show where a six time New York Times best selling author and world renowned Bible scholar uncovers the many fascinating little known facts about the New Testament, the historical Jesus and and the rise of Christianity. I'm your host, Megan Lewis. Let's begin. Hey friends, I have a quick reminder for you. Our biggest event of the year. New insights into the New Testament is coming up at the end of this month from September 26th to 28th where our theme is going to be the Historical Jesus. We'll be hearing the latest insights from 13 Jesus scholars including Elaine Pagels, Mark Goodacre, Paula Friedrichson, and of course Paul Bart Ehrman. And for all of September, we've got something special just for Misquoting Jesus listeners. When you grab an elite pass to Nint through the link bart erman.com forward/mj conference, you'll get our very first merch ever created for the show. A custom Misquoting Jesus coffee mug. Look. Look how pretty it is. Ah, now you can't buy this mug on our Etsy store or anywhere else. It's just exclusively available through this promotion. It is our gift to you for joining us at this incredible three day event with the top scholars in the field. All you have to do is sign up for an elite NINT pass in September and it is only available when you register through bart erman.com mjconference thanks and I hope to see you there. Welcome back everybody to Miss Quoting Jesus where today we are talking about why an atheist would become an expert in Biblical studies. We've also got Bart's Scholars Spotlight at the end, so definitely stick around for that to see who the scholar is that you should be paying attention to. Bart, before we get into everything, how are you doing today?
- [02:41]
Bart Ehrman
I'm doing well, things are smoothly going along. I'm starting to do research on the next book and so, you know, life's good. Best part, when you're doing reading and just thinking instead of, like, having to write, the writing. Writing's hard.
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Narrator/Announcer
Yeah.
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Megan Lewis
No, the. Right. The writing is definitely the most challenging part. Are you allowed to tell us what you're researching or is it too early?
- [03:02]
Bart Ehrman
Oh, the next. No, no, the next book is on how we got the New Testament, how we got the 20, why these 27 books.
- [03:10]
Megan Lewis
Told me that last time.
- [03:11]
Bart Ehrman
I may have done, but it's. I'm going to tell you about it a lot over the next two years.
- [03:16]
Megan Lewis
Excellent. That's why we do this.
- [03:18]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, yeah. So how are you doing?
- [03:21]
Megan Lewis
Yeah, good, good. Everything's ticking along nicely. Children childrening, you know, as they do, running around, causing chaos. All excellent stuff. And our question that we're opening with today. What is the most surprising thing that a student has ever said in your class?
- [03:39]
Bart Ehrman
Whoa. Ha. You know, I gotta look at these questions ahead of time, so I know I'm gonna deal with it. What's the most surprising thing is I like your course. You know, I'll tell you, the problem with. The problem with my classes is, and it may be. It may be typical of university professors is that students rarely say what they think. And because, for one thing, they're afraid, you know, it'll, like, affect their grade. But I have had, like, I'll tell you one. One that was kind of surprising is I. I had a. Some years ago, I had. I do these debates. I've mentioned my debates in last one where I have, like, controversial topic and students have to debate it. And so it could be something like, you know, does the Bible condemn homosexuality? Okay. And so you. Every. So every student has to participate in one debate in their small group recitations where there'll be like three or four people on the affirmative side and three or four on the negative side. And they each. Everybody has to give a speech, then they have to respond to the other side. And it's a formal debate that takes an hour. And the thing is that these are. Are. These are topics on which students often have opinions already. You know. And so one of the really most valuable things pedagogically is for somebody to have to debate. Four of you, they're actually against. And so that happens sometimes we just assign, okay, you're going to. You'll be in this debate. They choose which debate they want to be on. Then, okay, you'll be in the affirmative. You'll be in the negative. We could assign it. And a few years ago I had a student who came up to me and said it was actually on this homosexuality debate. And he said, I can't debate that. I can't argue, because I'm supposed to be, I'm supposed to argue that the Bible does not condemn homosexuality. He says, I cannot argue that. I said, well, no, you can argue it. You don't, you don't have to believe it. He says, no, I, I, it's against my religious principles to argue that. I said, you're not, I'm not asking you to agree with it. I just, you can't really understand the other side unless you know what their view is. And you can't really know their view unless you try to figure out what their view is. And we had this long discussion and he refused. He just refused. He said, I'll get an F in the class. He said, but I'm not going to do it. Wow, okay. And so, you know, I thought, well, okay, I mean, I can't force him, you know, if it's a religious scruple, you know, it's, you know, I can't compel him to violate a religious scruple. So I, you know, so I, I, instead, I signed him a long term paper instead, which, on the topic. But so, yeah, so that, for me that was kind of surprising. It's like, you know, you can't even like pretend like what, that you're, what the, you can't even imagine what the other side wants to say. I just thought that was, it was too bad. The student eventually came around. A few years later he told me he really enjoyed the class and it turned out like it changed his life. Okay, good. But not that debate.
- [06:48]
Megan Lewis
No. That's a good outcome though.
- [06:50]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, yeah, that's a good outcome.
- [06:51]
Megan Lewis
Interesting. Now we're talking today about why on earth an atheist would become a biblical expert. And we've, we've touched on this at various points in the past, but I think, I think it would be interesting to have a bit more of an in depth discussion on it. But how big of a factor was your faith when you started to go down the biblical studies career path?
- [07:16]
Bart Ehrman
Oh, it was everything, it was the only reason. I mean, I, you know, I, I grew up, you know, I grew up knowing about the Bible a little bit, but I wasn't a Bible guy until I had my born again experience. And then when the Bible, when you come to think Bible is the inerrant revelation from God, you know, it May pay. Pay off to understand it. I've always been amazed at the Bible. Believing Christians who never have read the Bible, including most of my students. It's like, wow, why would you, you know, why would you think God wrote a book and then not want to read what he had to say? I mean, it seems like, to be kind of important, but when I did, you know, I, I thought, man. And so that's, it's, it's not only what made me a Bible scholar, it's what made me a scholar there. I think there's absolutely no way I would have become a scholar otherwise, like studying, you know, anything history or English or chemistry or whatever. I never would have become a scholar. But it's because I was so passionate about the Bible that it made me kind of made me scholarly, made me work really hard at school and develop my academic skills.
- [08:25]
Megan Lewis
Now, before your own deconversion process started, did you know any other students who were atheists within your community?
- [08:37]
Bart Ehrman
No, I don't think. You know, I started studying the Bible seriously at Moody Bible Institute, and atheism was not a big deal there. We didn't, of course, there weren't any atheist students. The only, the only students that we had questions about were the ones who were not as passionate as we were about inerrancy. It's like, oh, they're not sufficiently passionate about this. So. But, you know, I don't think I would have imagined atheists having an interest or an expertise in the Bible. Our concern really were for liberal Christians who didn't understand the Bible and thought there were mistakes in it. We thought that was as extreme as it would get. But the idea that you'd be an atheist, I don't think it ever occurred to me.
- [09:22]
Megan Lewis
As you kind of went through your training, when did you start to think that maybe atheists would be interested in studying the Bible in an academic capacity? Did you come across anyone, or did that kind of get delayed until your own deconversion?
- [09:40]
Bart Ehrman
You know, there are not very many atheist Bible scholars. There are some, and I, I don't think I even heard of any until, I mean, I suspected. I, I had suspicions that that guy can't really be a believer. Are you kidding me? Look what he's saying. And so that kind of thing. But wasn't until probably late in my graduate program that I actually met somebody who was a. Who had been a Christian who had deconverted but was still interested in biblical studies and was a very fine Bible scholar. So it took a long time, and it isn't it's not a very common thing.
- [10:20]
Megan Lewis
At what point in your own training did your deconversion kind of start to, to gain a bit of speed?
- [10:26]
Bart Ehrman
Well, you know, so I think with a lot of people, deconversion is a lengthy process. And for some reason I continue to get emails from people or comments from people about how, you know, the reason I deconverted is because I was a fundamentalist. And once I learned there are mistakes in the Bible, I left the faith and they want to know why that is. And I said, well, that is not how it is. It wasn't like that at all. And so my deconversion is in many ways unrelated to my biblical scholarship. The biblical scholarship showed me that my fundamentalist views of the Bible were wrong. And I, I got to a point where I just realized, look, the truth is the truth, and the truth is this passage in John is contradicting the one in Mark. It is. And if I want to deny it, if I want to say, well, no, it's not, when it is, then I'm going against the truth and surely God is not against the truth. And so that, So I moved away from fundamentalism because of the biblical scholarship. And that move itself took years. I think I first started thinking seriously that way early in my master's program, but I didn't. And I, I kind of moderated how I understood the inspiration of the Bible. Once I recognized there are errors in the Bible and contradictions, I, I still thought the Bible was inspired, but maybe in a different way from the way I thought before about it being inerrant, that it still spoke God's word in some way, but that, that it communicated God's will in some way, but it wasn't inerrant. So that took years. And then I got to a point where I thought, I came to think it's very human book. So all that took multiple years. And then my becoming a deconverting away from Christianity, as I've said before, wasn't related to the biblical scholarship. It was about trying to understand how there can be suff. Suffering in a world if there's a powerful God who loves the world and wants the best for people. How do you explain it? So the problem of suffering, what is what led me to deconversion? But that would have been God. I mean, that was years and years. So it wasn't. It wasn't. It, it wasn't right away. Wasn't right away.
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Megan Lewis
Now when you had this long shift away from fundamentalism, do you feel that that impacted significantly your scholarship or how you approached the biblical text as an historian?
- [12:57]
Bart Ehrman
Yes, absolutely, very much so. Not, not because I was an atheist now, but because I recognized that the Bible is a very human book. And I think the largest, I think the most significant discovery of, of modern times about the Bible, the most significant discovery is not archaeological finds like the Dead Sea Scrolls. It's not manuscript discoveries of the New Testament. It's not. I mean, you can go down the things that have been hugely significant. The most significant thing is the recognition, in my view, is the discovery that the Bible is not a single book, that it's a collection of different books written by different authors at different times, in different places, with different points of view, different theologies, different beliefs, different perspectives, like they're different. And once you recognize that, it completely revolutionizes how you try to understand the Bible and it allows you to understand it much better because you take each author seriously for what he has to say rather than assuming that he's saying something that every other author is saying. If you see the Bible as this kind of unified whole and it's all the same thing, then you don't really understand any part of it. You may think you do, but what you're doing is you're reconciling all the parts and you're constructing this unified whole out of something that's not a unified whole. So you're imposing your own views on it. And so once I realized that, it changed everything for me. And in a sense it opened up, it opened up questions for me because now the Bible is not the inerrant revelation. And to know the truth, all I have to do is understand the Bible. It became, you know, you got to use your head here and you've got to use your intelligence. And it's not, as people accused me of saying, look, you think you're smarter than God. You know, how can you. Why do you think that you can, like, you know, out reason God? And my view is I'm not trying to out reason God, I'm trying to out reason you. You think that the Bible is like there's an integrated whole. And I think you're wrong. And so if I'm, if I'm right, I'm on the side of God. And so, so it isn't. And my view was if God gave you a brain, he expected you to use it. And so if you don't go in just with a jackhammer trying to rip the thing out apart, but you're actually trying to understand it, then that, then that's good. And that's okay. So I think that that's the biggest thing that my scholarship did is it made me recognize how you go about studying the Bible to really. To understand it, as opposed to imposing some other perspective on it.
- [15:45]
Megan Lewis
It sounds like it would have opened up a lot more avenues of research for you if you're understanding each of these individual books on their own merits rather than trying to view them as an amalgamation.
- [15:56]
Bart Ehrman
You know, it's a real problem with students who come from my kind of background, an evangelical background. When we have students apply to our graduate program, for example, and they want to work in, say, a New Testament, then if they have a kind of fundamentalist assumption about what these books are and about how to understand them, it's almost impossible to do some kinds of critical scholarship. You can't do it because, you know, you can do some things you can. You can become an expert in, like how to classify Greek manuscripts, for example, or how to. There's some things that you can do, but there are other things you just can't do because you don't think it can be that way. And so, like, for example, if you. If you really want to explore the Christology of, say, the Gospel of Mark, the understanding of Christ in the Gospel of Mark in relationship, say, to the Christology of the Gospel of John, their Christologies are very different from each other. But if your mentality is that you reconcile everything, then you can't see the differences. And so you can't. You just. I mean, you just can't see it. I remember when I started out, when I first year in seminary, I had a professor, I was taking a class on the Gospel of Luke, and the teacher of the class, very, very bright young guy, you know, we were dealing with, like, differences within the Gospels, and I just didn't see them. He would say, look, this is, you know, we would point out, you know, other students say, you know, this is at odds. I just couldn't see it because everything was just kind of automatically reconciled in my mind. Like, I knew how to reconcile everything. So it just all looked the same to me. And it took years to get over that. But the point in terms of the broader conversation here is that once you decide you're going to use your intelligence and you're going to actually let things, you know, say what they say, it opens up other avenues of thinking and that other things you thought were true may not be true. And so you have to see some of the things you thought were true actually probably are true. Some of them probably are not true. But you have to be willing to do that. And for me that was opened up because of my growing understanding that the Bible was not a single book, but was a bunch of different books.
- [18:11]
Megan Lewis
Thank you. We've kind of covered your move away from fundamentalism. We're going to take a very brief break to remind everybody about the New Insights into the New Testament conference. And then when we come back we will dive a little bit more into the actual atheism part of this discussion. So this is your quick reminder that it's your last chance to book your tickets to the New Insights into the New Testament Conference. The conference starts this Friday with a keynote speech by, by Dr. Elaine Pagels. Bart will also be giving a presentation this weekend. Altogether we have 13 world renowned new Testament scholars delivering presentations on the historical Jesus. And you can check the website for a schedule and all of the presentation titles so you can see exactly what each person is going to be presenting on. We've also got extra events like round table panels and mixes that you can attend. And it really is, as Dr. James Table called it, the event of the year in terms of the study of the historical figure of Jesus. Remember also that as you heard at the set of this episode, if you sign up for an elite pass with the link I'm going to give you, you'll get this delightful misquoting Jesus mug with a little Bart and Megan there. I believe I have purple glasses and blue hair so I may even try and dye my hair to match the mug for the conference. Don't hold me to it. We'll see. And yes, I will be hosting as well. So you will see all of your favourite scholars, all of Bart and also myself. And if you are interested you can sign up for the conference at the buterman.com forward/mj conference. But are you excited? Because I'm excited.
- [19:45]
Bart Ehrman
I haven't look, I mean the historical Jesus, how important can you get? And we, these are, these are, these are some of the very top scholars in the, in the, in the world. Talk, talk about various aspects of the historical Jesus with you should, people should look up, see what the topics are and what they're about and they'll see these, this is, you know, if you've got any interest in the Bible, the New Testament, Jesus, Christianity. This is, this is for you.
- [20:12]
Megan Lewis
I was, I interviewed Dr. Tabor a couple of weeks ago about what he's going to be talking about and he said essentially he could not have picked a better panel of speakers. He said if, if I'd been asked to put together this conference. This is exactly who I would have chosen. So I think it's, it's going to be a really good one. So, yes, that web address again is Bart. Okay, Bart Erwin, changing your name for you, Bart ehrman.com forward slash, MJ conference. And now back to the topic at hand. When you started to actually properly deconvert away from fundamentalism, but away from Christianity more broadly. Did you ever question whether you could or should remain in biblical studies because you'd completed your training? By this point, you were already teaching, I believe.
- [21:02]
Bart Ehrman
Yeah, No, I taught at Rutgers for four years and I was teaching Carolina. I'd been to Carolina for a number of years teaching and was still active in the church and was a believer. And I, and so then I, you know, for these other reasons about suffering, I, I decided I didn't belong in the church and I didn't really believe anymore. So I left. It never occurred to me to stop being a biblical scholar. Never occurred to me. I mean, this is, I mean, I'm passionate about the Bible. I'm passionate about the study of the Bible. I. And I think it's hugely important, not just for a person's belief, certainly for a person's belief. I mean, for, for Christians, this is essential territory. Absolutely. But, you know, it's also important for other reasons that I subscribe to. I mean, the Bible's at the, you know, basically, it's hard to describe this without just using the platitudes that everybody would use. I mean, the Bible is the most important book in the history of civilization. I think that can be proven. It's the most significant book in our culture. I think it could be proven. It's shaped literature and art and music and philosophy. And if you want to understand us, the Bible's central. And so those are, you know, kind of platitudinous generalizations, but it's. They're true. And I just, I think it's endlessly interesting, even though I, I don't. I'm not a Christian believer, but I, I find the study of the Bible fascinating and important.
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Megan Lewis
I was just going to ask you, as an atheist, why the study of the Bible and early Christianity is important to you. But I feel like we just covered that one so well.
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Bart Ehrman
I'll tell you. But there are other reasons it's important, I think. I mean. Well, look, our. I'll give you one reason that we've talked about before. There are a lot of people in our world today who use the Bible to promote social and Political agendas. And I'm not opposed to that in principle. In fact, I myself think that the Bible provides us important lessons about how we ought to live as a society, what agendas we ought to promote, what people we ought to try to help. I think, I think it's all important for that. But beyond that, the Bible gets weaponized by people who want to promote their own agendas and claim that the Bible supports their views. And almost always these are people who don't really know what the Bible says. In my experience, like when it gets reported in the newspaper, that congressperson so and so said that the Bible, they've got to vote for this legislation because the Bible, you know, that's what the Bible says. It's usually they're just making stuff up. You know, maybe they heard this, somebody tell them this, but they, they don't know what they're talking about. I mean, maybe I shouldn't give an example, but maybe I will because it's not, it's, it's. How do I say this? I am not, I'm not opposed to people supporting views that I, that I don't agree with. I'm not, I'm not opposed to them using the Bible for that. I'm opposed to them misquoting the Bible. Here we are misquoting Jesus. Like, if you're going to use the Bible, at least understand what it says. And so, you know, kind of the famous example. I probably have talked about this before. Have I talked about Marjorie Taylor Greene's thing on the, you know, that I mean, opposing a legislation and anti Semitism because it would mean you'd be unable to affirm what the Bible says. That Herod handed Jesus over to the Jews to be killed. What. It's like, it's just not true. That's not what the Bible says anywhere in any of the Gospels. In fact, it says just the opposite of that. So why would you say that to support your agenda? Well, because you want the agenda to get true. And people don't know. They haven't read Matthew, Mark, Luke and John carefully, the trial narratives. But I have, millions of times, and it's just not what they say. And so it's, it's, it's misusing the Bible. So even if you're not, you know, if you, if you are a believer, then it's useful to know what the Bible's agendas really are. And if you're not a believer, you know, it's kind of useful to know what, what the Bible's agendas are to See whether people are misusing it in order to promote their own purposes instead of promoting the purposes of the Bible. It, you know, and it's. It's pretty clear what the Bible says about topics that are of real social and political importance still today.
- [25:52]
Megan Lewis
Do you feel like your lack of belief has had an impact, positive or negative, on your career since your deconversion?
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Bart Ehrman
Well, I'll say two things about it. One is, what impact has it had on my scholarship? You know, has my scholarship been affected by my turn to atheism? And most people that I talk to are surprised when I tell them the answer is no, not at all. There is. I don't think there's anything that I've said in our podcasts for lo. These many episodes. I don't think there's anything that I've said that I would not have said when I was still a Christian. I mean, when I was a fundamentalist. Yeah, I mean, I would not have said these things when I was a fundamentalist. But when I, My, my classes that I teach at Chapel Hill, when I teach the New Testament, I don't. Obviously, I don't teach the same thing I taught 30 years ago. I mean, you know, things have developed. I've developed scholarship, but the basic things that I teach are the things that I've always taught. And it hasn't changed my views about the Bible and understand the Bible at all. And so, you know, some students are worried that I'm giving them the atheist view of the New Testament. I'm not giving you the atheist view of the New Testament. These views that I lay out, most of you I lay out are things that I learned at Princeton Theological Seminary, which is training Presbyterian ministers. And so it's like, this is what we learned there. And so it has. It really has not affected my scholarship. The. I'd say the only book I've written that is that reflects my. My no longer being a believer. Is my book on the problem of suffering in the Bible, God's problem? It's called God's Problem. How the Bible Fails to answer our most important question, why we suffer. The. The data in the Bible, though, that I give in that book are not. They're not atheist views of the Bible. The only thing that's atheist about is I explain why these various views of the Bible are not compelling to me personally and why I don't think that there's a good answer to why there's suffering in the world. To my knowledge, it's the only thing that I've ever written that even, like where the atheism has anything to do with anything, and even there it isn't, you know, it doesn't affect the biblical scholarship.
- [28:17]
Megan Lewis
So that's, that's the scholarship section of the, of your career. What's the other side?
- [28:23]
Bart Ehrman
Well, yeah, I, it's a good question. I don't really, it's hard for me to know because my career has been based on my scholarship. And so I think some, it's affected things in some ways. I think a lot of people who are committed conservative Christians are, have heard that since I'm an atheist, they're not going to do, do anything with me. I, I, I mean, people tell me all the time that, oh, so, and so, you know, I mentioned your name. They said, oh, no, no, you can't listen to him. And, but then when they would ask, well, have you read any of his stuff? Oh, no, no, I'm not, He's an atheist. I'm not gonna read any of his stuff. So it's, that's, you know, so that's affected things, which I think is too bad because I'm not trying to present atheist views of things at all. I'm trying to present biblical scholarship. And most of the things I present in my books is, you know, things, there'd be disagreements, of course. Scholars disagree about everything. And a lot of things I say are things that other people haven't said, but they're not things they couldn't say on principle and they're not things they wouldn't say because they're believers and I'm not. It's just we disagree on scholarship and on things. So what I would say is, you know, people, some people have accused me of promoting my views as an atheist so as to, you know, get people to buy my books, which I think is crazy. If, if I really wanted to sell a lot of books, what I would do is I'd become born, I'd become born again. Again. Oh my God, would that one ever sell? So, so that's not, so that, that, that is not it. That's not it. So I don't know actually how it's affected, except it does make me unusual. There are, as I said, there are other atheist scholars, but they're not a lot of them that I know of.
- [30:21]
Megan Lewis
As I was preparing for this episode, I was thinking about the fact that I study Mesopotamian religion, and it's not weird for me to study Mesopotamian religion as someone who does not adhere to that particular set of religious beliefs. And kind of corollary to that is the fact that in the academic community, I think that people who do follow these ancient beliefs and then choose to study them as an academic practice, I kind of looked at a bit oddly, but it's completely inverted when you look at Christianity and modern or religions that have kind of continued into the modern era. So I just wondered if you had any thoughts about that before we finished up.
- [31:04]
Bart Ehrman
Oh, yeah, no, no, this is, it's a very important topic because look, you know, I teach at a secular university. I mean, it's not that people who teach there have to be, you know, non believers. It's just the, the state university, there's a separation of church and state. And so you don't have to be a Christian, you don't have to be a non Christian, you don't have to be anything. In my department, we have about 20 colleagues in my department of religious studies and we have people who teach Judaism, people who teach Buddhism, people who teach American, American religion, American denominational religion. We have people who teach religion and culture, people teach religion philosophy. We have people teach all sorts of things, a wide range of religion. People teach Islam, you don't, you don't have to be Muslim to teach Islam. But it surprises me that people think that it's somewhat offensive that a non Christian teaches the New Testament. These are people, if they went to some other college, they could take a class on world religions. And many of them have taken a class on the world religions. But they don't expect the professor of world religions to be a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Confucianist, to be a Daoist, to be a Jew, to be a Muslim, to be. All at the same time, there are people teaching about these religions. And people think it's weird that you do that with the Bible, but they think it's totally natural about everything else. And it's not just religion. I mean, if you take a class in philosophy, I mean, suppose you take a class on Plato. The professor doesn't have to be a Platonist. You know, if you teach, if you teach a class on mid 20th century Germany, you don't have to be a Nazi. You know, you're studying about these things and information is useful for people, whatever they believe. And when it comes to religion, the information, the factual information, the historical conclusions people reach, the literary analyses they do are significant not to promote atheism or Christianity, but so that anybody who's interested in stuff can have better insight. I often have Christians who come out of my classes and say, look, I'm a stronger Christian now because of this, he said, I know we disagree religiously, but this has been really helpful for my faith. I just want you to know that. And I think that's great, that's great. And then other people say, yeah, okay, this confirms to me that, you know, I don't want to believe this. And okay, that's great too. But, but the, the material itself is just the material. And the historical analysis is historical analysis, literary analysis, what you do with it is up to you.
- [33:41]
Megan Lewis
Thank you so much, Bart. That is all for today's interview. We're going to take a quick break and then we will be back with this week's Scholars Spotlight.
- [33:50]
Narrator/Announcer
Most scholars agree that the Gospel of Mark was the earliest gospel written and that it offers the most historically accurate depiction of, of Jesus among all of the Gospels. But scholars don't stop there. They also seek answers to pressing questions such as whether Mark had first hand knowledge of Jesus life or if most of his information was second, third or fourth hand, or if perhaps he was just making things up. Scholars also ask whether later copyists of Mark's gospel changed what he said to create a different story. And have any of those changes led readers away from Mark's original message? Join Dr. Bart Ehrman in an online course, jesus the Secret Messiah Revealing the Mysteries of the Gospel of Mark, and uncover the fascinating answers to these questions. In this eight lecture course, you'll also discover why Mark shrouds Jesus true identity in his gospel. Was this a true historical depiction of his followers view Jesus during his ministry? Or is this simply part of Mark's literary agenda? Find out today by visiting barterman.com, and as always, please use the code mjpodcast for a special discount.
- [35:13]
Megan Lewis
So Bart, who is the scholar that we all should be watching?
- [35:18]
Bart Ehrman
Well, you know, there are, There are roughly 20,000 scholars of the Bible that we all ought to be paying attention to because a lot of them are saying good things. My, my specialty field when I started out in biblical studies was, was the understanding of textual criticism, how, how you reconstruct the original text of the New Testament based on the reality that we don't have it. And we have manuscripts that are very different from each other. And so, you know, my scholarship is devoted to that. And my, my book that we mentioned earlier, Misquoting Jesus, is about that. There's another scholar who actually who works in that field who has written a book that I think people would enjoy if they enjoyed Misquoting Jesus and they're interested in this kind of broader issue of manuscripts and Scribes, changing texts and how all that works. But like at a level that is not way down in the weeds. There's a scholar, he's emeritus now from the University of Birmingham in England named David Parker. And I think that he's like the, in the English speaking world, he is the top guy when it comes to analyzing into understanding the Greek manuscript tradition of the New Testament. But he's also written a book that people would be interested in for people who are not experts in the field. It's just called the Living Text of the Gospels. The Living Text of the Gospels by David Parker. And it's very interesting because he shows how you can't really think in terms of there being like this, like the Gospels as being like this original thing. Like it's this solid thing that's there. The Gospels as they get passed on over the years, grow and they shrink and they develop. And so one manuscript of, you know, if you have a 5th century manuscript of a gospel, that may be a very different manuscript from a 12th century manuscript of golf of save Matthew. And so the communities that are reading this are reading different things. And he tries to show how we shouldn't think about the, like the original as the thing. But you need to recognize that this is a growing organism. And he's, and David is a, you know, he's a, he's an Anglican priest. He's not like a, he was ordained as an Anglican priest, but then he became a professor at Birmingham. So he's not like this atheist coming up with this stuff. This is like, he's just trying to show how this works. So anyway, I would recommend that one. David Parker, Living Text of the Gospels.
- [37:43]
Megan Lewis
Excellent. Thank you so much. Now Bart, before we finish for the week, could you remind us what we spoke about today?
- [37:50]
Bart Ehrman
Well, you know, the basic question, why would an atheist become a scholar of the New Testament and you know, spend his life studying it? And I tried to explain why that's happened to me and it has happened to me other people, not a lot because most people who study the New Testament intensely, even critical scholars, are committed Christians on one level or another. But for me it's a really important enterprise and it's endlessly fascinating. And, and the atheism for me doesn't, I don't think it affects my scholarship even. It affects my, my personal life.
- [38:23]
Megan Lewis
Audience, thank you all for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please subscribe to the podcast to make sure sure you don't miss future episodes. Remember that you can use the code NJPODCAST for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.bartehrman.com. and remember that this is your last chance to purchase tickets for the New Insights into the New Testament Conference that's taking place this weekend. You can go to bart elman.com mjconference for more information about that. Misquoting Jesus we'll be back next week, but what are we talking about next time?
- [38:56]
Bart Ehrman
So next week we're going. Yeah, we're, we're going to the beginning, man. We're going to the very beginning. We're going to Genesis chapters one and two, which are hugely important for all sorts of reasons. And we're going to be talking about the relationship of Genesis 1 and 2 and what's going on with these creation stories.
- [39:13]
Megan Lewis
Make sure you join us then. Thank you all and goodbye. This has been an episode of Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. We'll be back with a new episode next Tuesday, so please be sure to subscribe to our show for free on your favorite podcast listening app or on Bart Ehrman's YouTube channel so you don't miss out. From Bart Ehrman and myself, Megan Lewis,
- [39:38]
Narrator/Announcer
thank you for joining us.