← Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
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- [00:00]
A
Hello beautiful. I'm Amy Ehrick, founder of Madison Reed, a hair color company I named after my daughter. Forget everything you know about hair color. The mess, the smell, the hassle, the damage. We're female founded and female led. We've transformed the hair color experience with ingredients that care for your hair and award winning color on your terms at home or at our hair color bars. The future of hair color is here. MadisonReid. I would love to say that I am never wrong about anything. But as with every single other person on the face of the planet, I would be lying if I said so. But what about the Bible? Many modern Christians view the Bible as the infallible, inspired, inerrant word of God. But what does that actually mean? Did the writers of the New Testament themselves hold that view? And are there passages that can be used to disprove this assertion? Stay tuned for all of that and so much more. Welcome to Ms. Quoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. The only show where a six time New York Times best selling author and world renowned Bible scholar uncovers the many fascinating little known facts about the New Testament, the historical Jesus and the rise of Christianity. I'm your host, Megan Lewis. Let's begin. Everyone is wrong sometimes, except Bart, of course. As the Bible was written by humans, I think it's a reasonable statement to say that it can also be wrong. A statement many fundamentalists would take issue with. Today we're talking about inspiration, interpretation and whether the Gospels can prove or disprove their own inerrancy. Before we get to that, Bart, how are you doing today?
- [01:43]
B
Well, you know, I've only been wrong three times today so far. So I think I'm doing pretty well.
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A
It's a good going. Really.
- [01:49]
B
It's good. Yeah, things are pretty good right now. How about you?
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A
I am good. I am good. I have lost count of how many times I've been wrong this morning. It's only noon when we're recording and there are countless opportunities for me to be wrong for the rest of the day. So I am embracing that fully.
- [02:06]
B
I think the big thing is people, you know, some people obviously never admit they're wrong. They just don't. And it's irritating. It's not helpful, not helpful for a person themselves. It's not helpful for society and it's not, you know, for social relations. It's just better, you know, when you're wrong. Just say you're wrong. I'm sorry, I was wrong.
- [02:24]
A
Absolutely. We are human and we get things wrong sometimes. And that's okay. Now you Are leaving. We're recording this ahead of time because you are about to leave for Greece, which I'm very jealous about.
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B
Yeah, well, I'm actually, when people are hearing this, I'm on the road. I'm going to Greece. I'm doing this tour to the Greek Isles. Tough gig where I'm giving lectures. I'm going to spend a few days in Athens before getting there. Just I want to look around at some things, you know, many things I've seen before and a couple things I haven't before. So. Yeah, yeah. On the road now, what are you
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A
most interested in seeing in Athens?
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B
Well, you know, the Acropolis Museum is exciting and fantastic and all that, and I do that. I'll go up on the Acropolis, but I want to see the theater of Dionysus. I've been reading and thinking a lot about Greek tragedy lately. We don't have the original theater there, but they have a remade one. And so, you know, when I do these trips, I do several trips a year with tours where I give lectures. And this one is a pretty easy one because it'll be Greece and that. You know, it's easy to lecture about the New Testament relationship to Greece. But I do others, too. I mean, this next December, I'm doing one to Antarctica. I think I'll lecture on, you know, the Bible's view of penguins or something. I don't know what I mean.
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A
But penguins feature heavily in the Gospel of Mark, I think.
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B
But it's one of these fantastic tours that we'll be announcing. I guess I just started, too, but we'll be announcing eventually that, you know, people will be able to sign up for to go to Antarctica with me. And it's a place like I would just never go for my research place I desperately want to go because it's supposed to be fantastic. And so. Yeah, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it'd be very different from going to Greek islands.
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A
Sounds very exciting there.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Well, we should get into inspiration and inerrancy and all of those other exciting things. To start with, when someone talks about the inspiration of the Bible, what is it that they're talking about? What do they mean?
- [04:20]
B
Well, it depends who they are and what their view is. The word inspiration literally means to be breathed into. And the fundamental idea is that God has breathed into the Bible, his word. And so the Bible is inspired because God has in some way, God is connected with what the Bible says. And so inspiration is a broad term that can be interpreted in a wide range of ways and is interpreted Interpreted in a wide range of ways by various Christians and various Christian denominations, various Christian theologians and so forth. Some thinking that it is a very, very strict thing that these are actually God's words that he either dictated or made sure the authors wrote exactly what he wanted to, saying that the Bible somehow conveys truths about God that are true and that in some kind of a broad way can inspire people to understand God better.
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A
Are there any verses in the Bible that is inspired or was thought to be inspired by those writing it?
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B
Yeah, it's a complicated thing because nobody ever writes a book and says, I mean, none of the biblical authors, some people do today, where they say, God has told me this, you know, and they write it down and say, so this. You've got to believe this. And so the biblical authors don't do it like that. In the Hebrew Bible, you will have prophets who declare the word of the Lord, listen to the word of the Lord, and then they'll quote something, and presumably they think this really has come straight from God. You certainly have authors who believe that what they're writing is what God has revealed to them. The one verse that everybody points to, that we used to point to when I was in Bible school at Moody Bible Institute is second Timothy 3, 16, which says that all scripture is inspired by by God and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, and training in righteousness. This passage that allegedly is written by Paul, the author of 2 Timothy, claims to be Paul, the word for inspired. There is a word that the author appears to have made up. It's theopneustis. So thea from Theos, God theology, God, and pneustos from pneuma, which means spirit. Like in a pneumatic mattress, you blow air into it in spirit or air. And so it's underst. Typically, maybe more literally translated, something like God breathed. All scripture is God breathed. That was the verse we always pointed to as being the one that showed that all scriptures inspire every book of the Old and New Testaments.
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A
So if that's inspiration, what then do we mean when we talk about a text being inerrant or the Bible being inerrant?
- [07:10]
B
Well, part of the problem with this word, God breathed is that it doesn't explain exactly what it means, because you could have something that's God breathed, that it could mean a range of things. And so that's why there are debates about what inspiration is within Christian communities. Another problem with this verse, by the way, there are lots of problems with this verse. One problem is that this author is not talking about the New Testament. For an author and the Christian author of the first century, there wasn't a New Testament yet this author is referring to the Hebrew Bible and saying the Hebrew Bible is God breathed. Another problem is that this book claims to be written by Paul to Timothy, but modern scholarship is pretty convinced Paul didn't write it. And so, yeah, it's this kind of funny situation where the author is claiming to be someone he's not in a book that he says all Scripture is inspired. So what would inerrancy mean? Inerrancy is one way to understand what inspiration is. It's the idea that every single thing in the Bible, on every level is without an error. That if God breathed into this text, there can be no mistakes in it of any kind. No contradictions, no discrepancies, no factual errors, no scientific errors, no geographical errors, no mistakes of any kind. It is thoroughly inerrant. And this was the view that we had when I was at Modi Bible Institute. It's completely inerrant.
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A
Are the thoughts or the concepts of inerrancy and inspiration always connected when we're talking about Christianity and how the Bible is viewed? Or can you think about inspiration apart from and separate from inerrancy?
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B
Absolutely. Throughout the history of Christianity, inerrancy has not been the idea that was pushed. It was always understood. The Bible is inspired and speaks God's truth, but the idea of inerrancy is actually a modern development. Most people have no idea about this because it's become such a prominent view among conservative evangelical Christians that they just think, this is what everybody's always thought. The Bible is inerrant. And if you don't think it's inerrant, you can't be a Christian. And that's just nonsense. In terms of the history of Christianity, the reason inerrancy developed actually is because of very modern situations with in the 19th century, conservative Christians, evangelical Christians after the Reformation, had always thought the Bible, of course, is the source of authority for what to believe and how to act. But it wasn't that. It's like every single syllable has to become straight from God kind of thing. That idea arose in the 19th century, especially the second half of the 19th century, for a couple of reasons, one of which was the rise of science. Once you have Darwin in 1859 talking about survival of the fittest and the development of the species and the rise of species and, you know, and natural selection leading to evolution of humans and such, and you have geologists who are realizing the Earth is not 6,000 years old, but it's really, for them, millions and millions of years old. Once you realize that, then it calls into question narratives of the Bible, especially the creation narratives. And so what happened was the conservative Christians in England and then in America realized that they were not going to accept these scientific views. And so they doubled down on their views of inspiration and elevated them to a new level, claiming that everything in the Bible is completely inerrant and setting up then the conflict between that kind of Christianity and science. And so that's where inerrancy came from. But it was a new development in the 19th century.
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A
Does someone have to believe in inerrancy in order to be a Christian?
- [10:52]
B
Well, no. I mean, so. So as I was saying, I mean, it didn't exist before that, and presumably there were Christians before that. You don't need the Bible for Christianity at all. When Paul wrote the Corinthians in the middle of the 50s of the common era, they didn't have a Bible. They didn't have a New Testament at all. There was no Gospels yet. They were still Christian. And so you don't have to have the Bible to be a Christian. The Bible never says you have to have a Bible to be a Christian. The creeds of the early church, the Nicene Creed, the Apostles Creed, these are creeds that were understood to be embodiments of what Christians have to believe. They were understood that way for century after century after century. They don't say anything about believing the Bible. So you don't even need the Bible, let alone an inerrant Bible. People have such a hard time getting their mind around this. You know, it's like, it's really hard because you, you tell somebody that and they say, well, how would you know about God if you didn't have the Bible? If you think about it, you believed in God before you'd ever read the Bible because somebody told you what to believe. You didn't acquire your faith by reading the Bible. Somebody told you, well, where'd they get it from? Well, they got it from the Bible. Well, kind of. They got it from their parents. Where did their parents. They got from there. It just goes back like that. The idea that you have to have the Bible at all or the inerrant Bible is not historical historical. It's a theological view that people use because it gives them a kind of solid base for how they think they are to live their lives and how they can have eternal life. It gives them this unmovable foundation, this inerrant Bible. But There are plenty of ways to believe in Christianity without the Bible at all. There are plenty of ways to believe in the Bible that is filled with errors. There are plenty of ways to believe in the inspiration of the Bible without believing in inerrancy.
- [12:39]
A
We will get to all of that in a moment, including what the Gospels actually say about inerrancy, if anything. So stick with us. We will be right back. Have you ever wondered where the New Testament Gospels really came from? Were the books actually written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? As everyone seems to say, the answers to these questions may surprise you. In fact, what you discover may challenge everything you thought you knew about the the Gospels. If you're ready to learn the historical truth, then you won't want to Ms. Bart Ehrman's free webinar. Did Matthew, Mark, Luke and John actually write Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? In this 50 minute talk with Q and A, you'll learn answers to some of the most intriguing questions surrounding the Gospel's authorship, such why did early Christians say the Gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? If they they're anonymous, what's the best evidence that the Gospels were written by the apostles? Were the apostles of Jesus educated well enough to write books? And last, if the apostles did not write the Gospels, who did? And where did they get their information? Don't miss your chance to uncover the truth behind the Gospels. Sign up now for free lifetime access to Did Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? And can actually write Matthew, Mark, Luke and john@barterman.com Authors thank you. So how then do you believe in an inspired Bible without necessarily believing in an inerrant Bible?
- [14:16]
B
Well, you know, many, many millions of Christians do and have there are various views of inspiration. So let me just give you kind of. So the range, I suppose, is you have people who say that's completely inerrant in everything. It says the world was really created in literal days. There really was a physical Adam and Eve. They were the only they're the first human beings. You have that group. You have people who would say something that sounds familiar to outsiders. But it's not the same that the Bible's infallible. As a Christian, when I moved away from the idea of inerrancy, I moved to the idea of infallibility, which itself is defined in a variety of ways. But at one point I defined it as meaning that whatever the Bible claims to be true about God and salvation theology, that is infallibly true. And so it's not that there can't be contradictions or There can't be. Like the world didn't have to come into existence in six literal days. But when the Bible is teaching about what to believe, that it is infallible. So what it affirms is infallible. What it assumes is not necessarily infallible. So that was one way later on in Christianity. I really, as a Christian, I realized there were a lot of people who thought that the Bible was inspired in the sense that God speaks through it. That it's one way that God reveals himself is in the Bible. He can reveal himself in other ways as well. But the Bible, since it has God breathing into it, it breathes out his truth. And again, it doesn't mean that it's inerrant or infallible. It could have mistakes in it. But you can still hear God's Word in this book. So that the Bible is the word of God that speaks to you, but it's not necessarily the words of God. That's another view of inspiration. And so it's perfectly possible to believe in inspiration. And throughout the vast majority of Christians have without believing in inerrancy.
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A
Were there any church fathers who thought that there could be mistakes in the Bible?
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B
Oh, yeah. The idea of mistakes in the Bible is not this modern phenomenon that crazy scholars who teach at Chapel Hill came up with. This goes away, back goes all the way back. So one of the most interesting theologians in early Christianity that we've talked about some, but not at length yet, is named Origen. O R I G E N Origen. He is, I think, without a doubt, was the most influent theologian of the first four centuries of Christianity, before St. Augustine. And much of his theology was predicated on the idea that there are inconsistencies in the Bible and there are contradictions in the Bible. His view was the Bible was completely inspired by the Spirit of God. He also thought that the Bible had deeper meanings than you get if you just read at the surface level. You know, it's not kind of surface level stuff, since it's inspired by God. There are very deep meanings. And he argued that there are places where the Holy Spirit consciously, intentionally put in mistakes and contradictions. Because when you hit a contradiction, say in a narrative like there are two versions of the same story between Matthew and Mark, and they're contradictory. He wouldn't deny that they're contradictions. He'd say the Spirit put that in so that you'd realize that if you take this literally, it doesn't work. If you can't take it literally, then you need to find the deep meaning. The deep meaning is what matters. And so he was happy to have contradictions and mistakes, scribal errors. He was happy with all of that because for him, it was a way of digging deeper into what God was trying to communicate.
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A
Did other early Christians have different interpretations to explain these biblical difficulties?
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B
Yeah, so absolutely, you know, and throughout the Middle Ages, there's a fourfold way of interpreting scripture. You get the literal interpretation. Then you have three kinds of more kind of spiritual interpretations, one of which would say what this passage, you know, apart from what it's saying, literally what it really is talking about is the afterlife. How's it talking about the afterlife? Or what it's really talking about is a moral. Moral issue. And so what you do is you. You figure out the various ways that it can mean something. And the literal was understood to be kind of the least important because, you know, literal's just saying basically that, you know what it says. It says in Greek, the word for that is prosrama. It's a phrase, prosphorma, which means according to the word. So it's like according to the word, it means this, but spiritually it means this, you know, and that's more important. And so if you have that frame of mind, then contradictions and things are really not significant for your understanding of. Of theology. That frame of mind was in place for the vast majority of Christianity. It was Martin Luther and the Reformation that got rid of it in the 16th century. So it had been in place for nearly a millennium and a half. Martin Luther wanted to insist that the literal interpretation is the only valid interpretation. So you have to have a literal interpretation of the text. The reason he had that is because he found it dissatisfying that the Roman Catholic Church, which he had belonged to, used these other forms of interpretation to justify their doctrines. And he thought some of these doctrines were contrary to the literal meaning of the text. So he insisted only the literal meaning works. And this then leads into what happens with the Enlightenment, where they develop ways of interpreting texts where you're just focusing on literal interpretations and that that's become the dominant view now in the. In Protestant circles, at least.
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A
So if we think about the authors themselves, is there any way to know whether they believed that what they were writing was inerrant?
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B
I'm not sure I've ever seen a discussion. There must be scholars who've talked about this, but I don't know of any. Most people who are experts on the Apostle Paul probably think, and probably most people read Paul think that he doesn't think he ever wrote anything wrong. But that's more like what you were saying today earlier when we were saying, yeah, I made a mistake. Like, yeah, Paul just. He thinks that his views are a revelation from God and he's writing them down. And he doesn't seem to think he's wrong about much of anything. And if anybody disagrees with them, then they're disagreeing with God. Okay, so you'd have that kind of phenomenon, but it's really not quite the same thing as saying that he thinks that, you know, the spirit is moving his pen or that, that he thinks he's writing the Bible. There's nothing in Paul's letters to make us think that he thought he was writing the Bible. He was writing letters and he thought he was writing what he said, but he wasn't writing Scripture. And the idea that Paul's letters of scripture just didn't come about for decades until after some of these letters have been collected together. Paul would be the closest thing. But I don't think any of these authors, there's nothing to suggest they thought they were being inspired.
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A
How about the Gospels? How even would we go about deciding if they thought what they were writing was inerrant?
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B
Well, there's, you know, they never say anything about it. They never talk about, you know, I'm inspired by God to write this thing. They say things like, well, we heard these stories from people who passed them on by word of mouth. That's what Luke says. You know, these stories started with eyewitnesses and people who are preaching the word, and now I'm going to write them for you. So he doesn't say anything about God telling them what to write. And that's true of all the Gospels. What I would say is that there's no positive evidence that any of these authors, they don't claim it. There's no positive evidence to make you think that they thought it.
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A
Do we have negative evidence about this question?
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B
Well, we don't have negative evidence about, like, any one of the authors because none of the authors ever says, I'm not inspired. So you don't have that. But with the Gospels, this is, this is the interesting thing. One of the assured findings of scholarship since, you know, for the last 200 years, is that the Gospels have contradictions between them where they'll be just flat out. One author will say, jesus said this, and then other say, he said the opposite. Like in one Gospel, Jesus will tell his disciples, don't take a staff with you when you go on this journey. And in the other gospel, he'll say explicitly the same passage. He'll say, take a staff with you when you go on this journey. It's like it's the opposite. You know, people recognize that that creates problems for inerrancy because they both can't be right. So if you define inerrancy as, you know, it can't have a mistake, well, you know, they both can't be right. Or when Mark's Gospel chapter two says that David went into the temple when Abiathar was the high priest to eat the showbread. And it turns out that when you read the story in the Book of Samuel, that it's not Abiathar who's that priest. It was his father, Ahimelech, who's the high priest. I mean, it's a mistake. It's just a mistake. So that is what led scholars to start realizing that the Bible has contradictions and things, and that would naturally rule out inerrancy. If there are contradictions, they both can't be right. But the question you're asking is, is there anything within the gospel writers themselves to suggest that they don't think that other authors are inerrant? And this is the thing I haven't really seen people talk about. Maybe they do all the time. I've just never heard them. But the reality is, scholars have known since the 19th century that Matthew and Luke are using Mark's Gospel and changing it for their gospel. So Mark was one of the sources for Matthew and Luke. They both copy out his stories and they change them in ways that are sometimes contradictory. Well, if it was inerrant and they thought it was inerrant, they wouldn't change it. The fact they change it shows they don't think that it's inerrant. They think it's a malleable text, not a fixed text text, and that it can be improved and it can be corrected. That is biblical proof against inerrancy, in my view.
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A
Do you have any examples of these changes?
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B
Well, you can do it on a big level and a small level. I mean, on a small level. For example, one that I like to use a lot is in Gospel Mark, chapter five, where there's this man named Jairus comes to Jesus and asks him to come because his daughter is very ill. He wants Jesus to heal her, but Jesus gets delayed. And before he can get there, messengers come from the house and say, it's too late, she's died already. And so then Jesus goes and raises her from the dead. Mark five. You get the same story in Matthew, but in Matthew's version, it doesn't work like that. In Matthew's version, Jairus comes to Jesus and says, my daughter has just died. Can you come do something about it? Come raise her from the dead. Well, wait a second. Did he come to say she's very sick and then she died later, or did she die before he came? Depends which gospel you read. So one time when I was in graduate school, we had a guest speaker from Europe who had come in, a New Testament scholar. I was a graduate student. I had breakfast with him, just the two of us, and I was starting to doubt my view of inspiration, wasn't quite sure what to think. And he was a leading scholar in Europe in the New Testament, who thought there weren't mistakes in the Bible, apparently, and so gave him that story. I said, so, yeah, the story of Jireh. I said, you know, so. So I just don't see how you can possibly, you know, it's. It's a contradiction. And I says, how do you explain it? He says, well, it happened twice. The first time, Jairus came, his daughter was very sick. And then Jesus came, she died, and he raised him. The second time, the girl had died, and he came to him and said, could you raise her from the dead, Jesus? So it happened twice. At that point, I started thinking, man, I don't think I believe in inerrancy anymore. If that's the explanation.
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A
If people believe in inerrancy and they're familiar with these stories, are there other ways that they explain it aside from the, oh, it happened twice explanation?
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B
Yeah, the happened twice thing finally got too much for even some very conservative evangelicals. There's a, you know, a friend of mine that I've debated publicly before, and this. Actually, there are recordings of this. I have videos of them. There was a kind of an event that he and I were both speaking at. Mike Lacona. This is about inerrancy and whether there are contradictions in the Bible. And this thing about the staff versus no staff came up. You know, one gospel says, don't take a staff. The other says, take a staff. And the moderator of this thing asked both of us and the other people who were there, do you think that that's, you know, is that a contradiction? Does Matthew contradict Mark on this? And Mike would say, well, yeah, they both can't be right. Then the moderator says, so is Matthew inerrant if he's changed Mark? And Mike said, yes, it's inerrant. Wait a second, Mike. You just said that it's a contradiction and they both can't be true. So how is it inerrant? And he said, well, it's inerrant because Matthew was simply taking the event and transforming it for a literary reason. He wanted to alter what the story said because it fit in better with his literary agenda. You know, my response to that is, yes, that probably is what's going on here. Matthew has changed the story for a literary reason. By doing that, he's created a contradiction. And if you want to know what actually happened, he can't be historically accurate in what happened. What he says is historically wrong if he's changed it for literary reasons, if Mark is right, so it's not inerrant. But Mike continues to say that he believes in inerrancy even though he agrees there are contradictions. I don't think that's really right. You know, you can't have it both ways. You have to be just come out and say, look, it's not, it's a mistake.
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A
The example that you gave seems relatively minor. It doesn't change the course of the Bible or of the story or even change much about the picture of Jesus that's given. Are there more crucial, more important changes that we see gospel writers making?
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B
Well, there's some that are big and some that are huge. I mean, a big one, I think, is when the Gospel of John tells you which day Jesus died on which it's during a Passover week, and he tells you which day of the week that Jesus dies on. He explicitly says that it's the day of preparation for Passover. So that means it's the day on which they're preparing the meal that they'll eat that evening, the Passover meal they'll eat that evening. John 19:14 is quite clear. Jesus is crucified after noon on the day of preparation for the Passover. Mark's gospel, the first gospel chronologically, also dates when Jesus died during that week. In Mark's gospel, but not in John's, Jesus lives through the day of preparation. That evening in Mark, but not in John, he eats the Passover meal and he's arrested after the meal. He's arrested that night, the next morning he's put on trial and he's crucified the morning after the meal was eaten, at nine o' clock in the morning. So John has him die at noon on the day before the meal was eaten. Jesus has him die on the cross at nine, the morning after it was eaten. That's A straight out, it doesn't work. And I've had. I've had a hundred people tell me their explanation for it. And I've looked at all of them very carefully and thought about them before. I thought there were contradictions in the Bible and I just don't. They're not right. He dies on different days and for a specific reason. Because the day of preparation when John has Jesus die is when they're killing the lambs in the temple for the Passover. And in John's Gospel, John is the only gospel that insists that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. He wants Jesus to die precisely on the same day, at the same time, and at the hands of the same people, the chief priests, as the Passover lamb, in order to make his point that Jesus is the lamb. So he's changed a historical datum in order to make a theological point. So he's got a literary reason for it, but it creates a contradiction.
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A
Thank you. We're going to. We've got two more questions and then we will be wrapping up. But I wanted to ask you, does Christianity need really an inspired Bible?
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B
I think it's useful for Christianity to have an inspired Bible because the Bible has inspired many great things and it has motivated people to live in good ways. It's provided hope for people and it helps people to think. Well, God has provided this to me and so that can be helpful theologically. It's also done a lot of damage, the Bible, and continues to do a lot of damage. So it's a mixed bag when it comes to that. But it doesn't need an inspired Bible because it hasn't always had an inspired Bible. Before there was a New Testament, there were Christians, and they weren't worse Christians than the people after them. They were based on what they had heard. Christianity in large measure is far more about what people hear about God and Christ and salvation and ethics from their families, from their communities, than it is about what they read in the Bible. Most people don't master the Bible at all. They simply trust that it's there so it doesn't do any harm. But I don't think you need it. I don't think you need to have the inspired Bible.
- [31:20]
A
What would you say then is the point of the Bible? There's a very strong reliance or importance of biblical supremacy for a lot of fundamentalist Christians. What's the point of it if we don't need it for the faith to continue and to be meaningful to people?
- [31:38]
B
Well, I think Fundamentalists need it because it gives them ammunition. And so they use it as ammunition to prove that they're right about something in our current context to prove the right about social issues that they approve of or political agendas that they approve of. The irony is often the Bible get used in harmful ways to promote these agendas and social agendas from for example, the kind of movement of white nationalism. The Bible gets used to support white nationalism, which is a movement that often manifests itself in real hatred and violence. So I don't think that that's good, I think that that's bad. I will say though that for people who are not violent and who are not self centered and are not hateful of the other, all of which the Bible opposes, even though people use the Bible to justify those activities. But for people who really are sincere, well meaning people who look for guidance in life and who look for direction and who look for hope, the Bible has been and continues to be a real source of hope. So it has a very, very good effect for some people. The problem in my view isn't the Bible as an inherent thing. The problem is how it gets used. And the problem is it gets used by people. And people come of various sorts. Everybody were like me and thee, we'd be fine. But regrettably they're not.
- [33:14]
A
Well, thank you Bart very much for sharing your knowledge and information about this. We are going to take a quick ad break and then we'll be back with a news of what is going on in Bart's world.
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B
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.
- [33:41]
A
And we are back now we're kind of getting to the time of year when you were organizing the New Insights and New Testament conference in 2023. So I wanted to ask, are you planning on bringing that back for this year?
- [33:55]
B
Oh boy, are we. So we call it nint New Insights into the New Testament. You know, we had high hopes for it last year we did a, we did this thing, we had 10 speakers on the Gospels, each did a different presentation on some aspect of the Gospels. It was, you know, scholarship for non scholars. And we made sure that they presented things at a level that people could understand that were based on solid scholarship. Usually things people hadn't thought of before, didn't know about. And everybody did things and there was Q and A and there's discussion and man two day conference. It was fantastic. We didn't know how it would go, but it went really well. And you know, about 20 seconds after it was over, I said, man, we're doing this one again. And so we're going to do it again. It's going to be a completely different topic this year we've decided we're going to do instead of doing the gospels this year, we're going to do Paul, the life and writings of Paul and we'll have 10 scholars there. It'll be set up similarly, but now we're actually going to develop it even more and it's going to be even better and it's going to be bigger. We had probably about 3,000 people last time and we're expecting more because the word's getting out. These are all going to be fantastic scholars about Paul, some of them the same as last year's and some different. So it'll be in the fall. We haven't announced it yet, although once again, I guess I'm saying something about it, but something for people to think about and to look forward to. When we announce it, we'll announce it in a big way. We'll announce it here on the podcast, but we'll announce it in lots of other ways and try and get a large audience remote. It'll be all remote. It's going to be a highlight of the year for us.
- [35:24]
A
That sounds really, really exciting. I'm looking forward. I have lots of questions and I'm not asking you because it hasn't been announced, but I have questions and I will be getting answers from you in future episodes. So everybody please stay tun for more information on that. And now we are going to go to our listeners questions segment of the podcast. And please remember if you do have questions for Bart, you can send them in to us at www.barterman.com Ask Bart please be patient. We have a lot of questions and it is taking me a little while to get through all of them. But we are doing it
- [36:01]
B
now. It's time for questions from listeners where Barthes answers real questions submitted by misquoting Jesus fans. If you'd like to submit a question for future segments, please visit barterman.com askbart
- [36:19]
A
alright then, first question. Even though we know the Gospels weren't written until several decades following Jesus life, the widespread circulation of Mark to be referenced by Matthew just a few years later still seems like quite an achievement. Was it common for religious texts to take root that quickly or is this unique to Christianity?
- [36:40]
B
Ah, good question. So it kind of depends how you date things to begin with. So the Gospel of Mark is usually dated to around 70 of the common era, just probably just a little bit after the year 70, for a variety of reasons. Matthew is usually dated about 15 years later. Mark was composed wherever it was composed. The tradition is composed in Rome, but we don't know. Suppose it was composed in Rome. Then would it be unusual for it to be known in some other community 15 years later? I think the answer is no. Christians are traveling. Christians with funds are traveling business people or slaves or are traveling around, going to various places for various reasons. And if they're Christians, they're taking communications between churches. This is something that made Christianity distinctive in the Roman world. Other religions didn't have this sense that we are all part of the same thing, yet worshipers of Zeus everywhere throughout the Roman Empire. But there was no sense that, like, we're all doing the same thing. They were all local cults. Christianity understood itself as a universal religion. And so when Christians went from one place to another, they would carry letters, they talk, they'd communicate, see what's going on. So the idea that somebody in Rome might travel off to, you know, Antioch, say, and for business, and take a gospel with them, knowing that this other church may want something that wouldn't be weird. And yes, we do know of religious texts that circulate broadly, not just within Christianity, but outside of Christianity, but within Christianity. It's a special thing because of this unique aspect of the religion.
- [38:18]
A
Thank you. Second question. When Luke calls Adam the son of God, is he giving him equal status with Jesus? Is he suggesting that Jesus is Adam reincarnated in the same sense that John the Baptist was the reincarnation of Elijah?
- [38:33]
B
It, again, a really good question. It's impossible to know what's in his mind. The thing about the genealogy of Luke is that he's trying to show Jesus descent not just from Abraham. Matthew has a genealogy that goes back to Abraham, the father of the Jews. And that's where it stops. But that's to show for Matthew that Jesus is Jewish. He goes back to the beginning of Judaism. And so it goes back to David, back to Abraham. Jewish Luke wants to maintain that Jesus is not the savior, not the savior, just of Jews, he's a savior of the entire world. And so he traces the lineage not just back to David, then to Adam, but all the way back to Adam, the father of the human race. And so that's why he goes back to Adam. But why does he say Adam is the son of God? What's usually thought is that In a way, he's trying to emphasize the variety of ways in which Jesus is the Son of God. So in the genealogy, before the genealogy, in Luke, actually, Luke's genealogy is in chapter three, after Jesus is baptized. It's kind of a strange place for genealogy. But the birth narrative begins with Jesus coming into the world through Mary because the Spirit has gotten her pregnant so that her child will be the Son of God. So he's the Son of God because of how Mary conceives. Then in the genealogy, he's conceived of the Son of God because he's directly descended from God. God to Adam to Seth, and down all the way. So he's directly a descendant of God that way and that. Then right before that, at the baptism, the voice from heaven comes and says, you are my Son, today I have begotten you. So birth, baptism, I mean, it's like all of these ways, genealogy. So this is Luke kind of doing overkill. Jesus really is the Son of God. I don't think that it's necessarily taking the Pauline view that Jesus is like the second Adam. There's nothing in Luke's gospel that I've ever noticed or thought about or seen or heard anybody talk about that uses that kind of understanding of Jesus. But it's. It's an interesting question, but I don't think it really works in Luke's Gospel itself.
- [40:34]
A
Thank you. Question number three. When did the idea of original sin become mainstream in Christian thought? I heard it was invented by Augustine.
- [40:43]
B
You know, people have different ideas about what original sin is. I'd say most Protestants think that that means something like, you know, we're just born sinful and, you know, nothing we can do about it. It's the original sin. Or sometimes they'll say the original sin is Adam's sin, and that that's the original sin. The questioners write that Augustine is the one who most fully developed the idea that became the standard, and it became standard after Augustine developed it. So 5th century is when it starts becoming the standard view because of Augustine's authority. In Augustine's view, what happened is that when Adam sinned, he passed on who he was to the next generation, and it got passed on through the sex act. Everybody who's descended from Adam sexually inherits his DNA. In our terms, Augustine didn't know about DNA, but they inherited Adam's nature. And the nature is the nature to sin. And so everybody gets. And they get it through the sex act. When the man passes it on to the woman in the sex act and the semen everybody has original sin. And so a person has to be washed of their original sin before they can be forgiven of the actual sins they commit. They have a propensity to sin because of original sin, which they can't help help. They have to be washed of that. So baptism gets rid of that so that then they can, through Christ, be forgiven of their sins. So that idea became dominant throughout the Middle Ages, down to the Reformation, and it does come into prominence. Right, with Augustine.
- [42:14]
A
Thank you. Final question for today. And it has Greek. I'm going to butcher it. I'm really sorry. What does the word aionios actually mean when Jesus says it? I've read that this is the Greek word literally meaning age or aeon. Is there evidence that it actually means eternity in the context of the verse when it's translated that way?
- [42:33]
B
Yeah. So it is a difficult question. There have been scholars who have debated about whether it actually means life that goes on forever or eternal punishment. Does it go on forever? And so the word ionos can mean. It does come from the word aeon. And the word aeon is sometimes translated age. And so is it just for this age? I think when you actually read the passages in context, it's quite clear that Jesus is talking about life that will never end. End and a punishment that will never end. And so I think it really does mean what we would think of as eternal life never ending. The issue I'll raise that wasn't raised by the question itself is people tend to think then, if some people live forever, then some people are tormented forever because it's either torment or life. I don't think it means that he never talks about eternal torment. Jesus, he talks about eternal punishment. The punishment is destruction, and it's called eternal because it's never reversed. So people are annihilated and there's no chance of coming back to life again. So it's eternal punishment, but it's not eternal torment, even if it's a tortuous death. So, but I think, yeah, I think when you actually look at the words in context, it does mean something that never ends. I talk about this a little bit in my book, Heaven and Hell.
- [43:53]
A
For what it's worth, Bart, thank you so much. Now, before we finish for the week, would you mind summarizing what we spoke about today?
- [43:59]
B
Well, we're talking about the idea of the inerrancy of the Bible, that there's no errors in the Bible of any kind whatsoever. I try to explain that this is a modern development that started arising in the 19th century, end of the 19th century. It's not the view Christianity has always had. It's not the view the vast majority of Christians have ever had. And so it's not a view you have to have. But we also looked into the interesting question about whether the New Testament ever claims to be inerrant. No. Does any author claim to be inerrant? No. Are there any authors who, who might suggest that inerrancy is not right? Yes. When the gospel writers change what other gospel writers say, that shows they don't think that they're inerrant. And so if something has no errors, you don't alter it to create a contradiction. And so I think the Gospels themselves show that inerrancy is not a biblical doctrine.
- [44:50]
A
Audience thank you all for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show, and if you did, please subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don't miss future episodes. Remember that you can use the code mjpodcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.barterman.com. misquoting Jesus will Be Back next Week Bart, what are we talking about next time?
- [45:09]
B
Well, next week we're talking about an idea that was long in Christianity that some people have heard of, but many people don't know what it means. And it's really interesting. It's called the Harrowing of Hell. It sounds kind of weird. It's the idea that when Jesus dies, he went down to Hades and got people out of there. Is that in the Bible? And if not, where'd it come from and what's it all about? So we're gonna. It's a very, very interesting topic that in my Protestant circles, we never talked about, but it's really, really interesting.
- [45:40]
A
Make sure you join us next week. 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 Barterman's YouTube channel so you don't miss out. From Bart Erman and myself, Megan Lewis, thank you for joining us.