Am I Going to Hell? What the New Testament Says About Death and the Afterlife

[Music] welcome to misquoting Jesus with Bart ehrmann 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 [Music] going okay good happy New Year but did you make any New Year's resolutions ah right yes you know I I know I I normally don't reveal mine because it's bad luck but you know I've been finding it as bad like even if I don't reveal them that strategy doesn't seem to work uh so I'll tell you you know I've gotten you know with adding this the podcast and I have the these courses that I do online and I do these one-off lectures and I and I have my daily blog and I have a day job it's like it's like it's a little bit crazy so so my my New Year's resolution actually is um it's not uh it's not to cut back on things because everything I do I I just love it I like everything I like everything I love teaching undergraduates I love giving away I mean I just I love it so but my resolution is to uh work uh even harder on uh not experiencing stress and so if you find a way to do that would you please let me know well I know you're you are absolutely as passing your words but it's just like you know the thing is I I I I do you know I do exercise every day I sleep a lot and I I read novels you know I do things and but you know I find that when I stress it does it doesn't help you know it doesn't like you know make me more efficient and it probably shortens my life and so so this will be a stress-free year I guarantee it so how about you man what do you got for New Year's resolutions well um I am going to try and learn Greek my husband so my husband has a masters in um Theology and did Greek at grad school and he very kindly offered to teach me the basics of koine Greek as I'm doing so much New Testament reading so we're going to try at least I'm not a philologist by any stretch of the imagination but we're going to give it a go yeah no uh right it Greek is it's a great language and I you know and it's a very very interesting language very it's kind of a logical language it's kind of you know I've never I've never been very good at Semitic languages I you know I had to learn them you know I had I learned Hebrew and then I learned Syriac and so it was like and but it was didn't really resonate with me but for some reason the way my mind works the kind of logic of Greek and Latin really kind of makes sense to me and so yeah okay so when you're you know when you're when you're having trouble with your uh your articular infinitive just let me know I absolutely will he assures me that it's easier than Sumerian and he's better at me than both so well for one thing it has an alphabet yeah that's true I don't have to learn anymore right exactly so okay yeah well listen I'm here for you I would probably be calling you but I don't understand this yes okay okay so we're starting the new year off with a bit of a bang and trying to answer the question am I going to help um obviously not literally it's always a good thing to argue ask yourself at the beginning of a new year why not uh we're talking about what the New Testament actually says about the afterlife does it describe the fires and eternal Paradise that so many of us are familiar with and if not then where exactly did these ideas come from but you have written an entire book on the subject I can highly recommend it to anyone who's looking for some reason on this why do you think it's an important topic to talk about yeah well so I wrote the I wrote this book it's just called a history of it's called the history of Heaven and Hell I think it's gone I guess I should know what it's called right what is it called the history of the afterlife yeah I should know the titles of my books at least I know what's in it and so I think that's the more important bit I I I wrote the book basically to to assure you Megan that you're not going to hell that's why I am glad to hear it thank you yeah yeah so we can end the episode there really you've answered my question we're done I know and so like you know we can just go off and do other things but it the thing is that you know the um still in America a uh a huge percentage of people believe that when you die uh your your soul goes to uh goes to heaven or to Hell fewer people believe in hell now but still the the way over half the population almost 60 percent of the people believe that there's a there's a place of eternal torment of some kind after death and and more people believe that there's some kind of reward in heaven but the idea is that you your body dies and you know events routes away but you your soul lives on and goes to one place or another and the reason I wrote this book is because um this view about your soul going to heaven or hell is found nowhere in the Old Testament and it's not what Jesus taught and so why is it the Christian view and you know through Christianity it's crept into popular culture as well but I'm in my book I show this is not this is not the teaching in the Bible uh and that it's that it's a later development within Christianity eventually becomes the idea of Christianity but it's uh it's not the original idea thank you and I think before we get into New Testament and Christianity in particular it might be helpful just to start briefly with Old Testament conceptions of the afterlife I know there's not a lot in the Old Testament by way of description but my impression is that what is said is much closer to my subtamian ideas of the afterlife than what modern Christianity teaches so no torment or reward like you said regardless of how you lived your life just kind of boredom and Gloom um and it seems like instead of Heaven being a reward for a life well lived it's more that avoiding death for a little bit longer and being able to Joy life is the best you can hope for does that seem like a fair comparison yeah I think so I mean I I actually began my book on your Turf this is the first time I've ever done this but I've actually talked about ancient near Eastern materials because the you know the oldest surviving piece of literature we have in the west is the that we have today is the Gilgamesh Epic um which is uh definitely not not biblical uh but it's we have it in several in several ancient forms long before we have anything from the from the Bible itself and it's it's really it's a it's a very we're not going to go into it into the whole plot here but it does have a description of what happens when a person dies and a lot of the narratives around about about Gilgamesh the hero of the story um uh his his best friend dying and Gilgamesh being completely torn with anxiety that he too will be uh dead and buried and basically you know uh kind of down there being eaten by worms and it's like you know he doesn't like that and so a lot of it is about the fear of death I actually begin with that because people today uh many people are afraid of death and those who are afraid of death often are afraid today in our context people are afraid of going to hell but also people who don't believe in hell are just kind of the idea of the Void you know the nothingness the not existing anymore is just a terrifying idea to people and I want I wanted to start the book by showing that this fear of death has been around as long as there's been civilization as long as there's been culture going back to the gilgames chapter can you you certainly find uh find some of that in the in the evil Bible as well so by the time of Jesus there was a different understanding of life after death which you know makes sense to several hundred years in between the compilation of the Hebrew Bible and Jesus teachings and that different understanding is an apocalyptic one which we've talked about um what apocalypse is in a previous episode we will talk more about it in future episodes for those who kind of missed um what we said before apocalyptic thinking understands the world as being locked in a struggle between good and evil ultimately God will Triumph and bring about his kingdom on Earth which is the afterlife that we're talking about here the details vary based on which apocalyptic work you're reading but generally they include physical resurrection and the righteous living in Paradise on Earth with God forever and sinners somehow being punished for their crimes either cast out into darkness or just Eternal death do we know where this kind of judgment-based belief came from or how it developed out of what is previously like a one-size-fits-all afterlife yeah I guess you know to get to that answer I probably should answer your first question which I never got around but it is it it completely develops this apocalypse you just described but we'll talk more about in a minute uh absolutely comes out of an earlier view uh in the biblical tradition um which is comparable to what you get in some other Traditions which in the old in the Old Testament um the basic line is that when well first thing to say is the old testament's a big book they're in English there are 39 different books uh most of them by different authors and uh living at different times with they had different views about lots and lots and lots of things but um the the major view that you find in the in the Old Testament the Hebrew Bible is that uh that life is a precious gift from God and that you uh while you live you know you are being blessed but you know hopefully but but that at death you don't exist anymore um and so the way you to the way people can think about this the best is that in the Hebrew Bible um there's no idea that your soul lives after your body dies uh so you think think about Adam when when God creates Adam how does it work how does how does a human being come into existence God takes this dirt uh mud or clay and he forms like this humanoid being but it's just this glump of Clay on the ground that looks like a human and then God breathes his breath uh into it and it becomes a living creature so the way it works in the Hebrew Bible is that a human being isn't two things your body and your soul it's a it's a unified it's an entity that uh it's a it's a physical entity that has the Breath of Life breathed into it and in the heat for most of the Hebrew Bible and in some places it's quite explicit where it says it indicates that when you stop breathing you you're not you don't exist anymore you know you've gotta you've got a shell of a body there but it's not you uh and so um we have trouble I think modern people have trouble imagining what that how that works because you know surely you live on forever right everybody knows that uh and and it just is common sense to us that when our body dies our soul lives on but not not in ancient Hebrew thought uh in Hebrews I the soul is really the word the word for uh for soul and breath and air are you know that you can use these words interchangeably uh and and so your spirit inside of you is just your breath and so today so the analogy for today is when you die you stop you stop breathing um your breath doesn't go anywhere it not that it exists apart from you it's what keeps you alive and so when it doesn't exist you don't exist and so we you know that's how we think the breath doesn't go anywhere and that but if the breath is the soul it doesn't go anywhere it's just it's the thing that animates you uh and so most of the Hebrew Bible um had has that view and promotes that view um the problem with the view was that's going to lead to apocalypticism is that in the Hebrew Bible tradition God is ultimately good and God is ultimately Sovereign over this world and God is a God of Justice when God God um is fair and he wants you know good people get rewarded and bad people get punished and that's and so um that's you know and Israel is is you know that those are the people of God so God rewards them and so forth so the problem with the Hebrew is aligning God's justice that his love and his Justice with with kind of finitude of the human being because many people uh Nations and individuals suffer horribly and then die that's it whereas you have the you have other people who are just just horrible Schmucks who are getting away with criminal activity uh who you know we won't name any politicians you know pick whichever side you're on and then then they they die and they get away with it like they get rich and famous and powerful and then like and by by burning other people and hurting others and they so that can't be right and So eventually what develops in the biblical tradition is that since Jewish thinkers started thinking about 200 years before Jesus they started thinking look that it can't be right that we die and that's it because it's not fair and God doesn't God of fairness and Justice and so there must be something else and that's that's when you start getting the doctrine of the resurrection of the Dead um which I'll just add as a teaser is different from the idea that Christians have that your soul lives forever because this is this is very much a physical bodily Resurrection this is the key actually it's a bodily so so so since you have this this Jewish notion uh that body and soul are necessary together for life the only way to live is to have your body and soul together and so what develops back about 200 years before Jesus is the idea that there is going to be Justice after you die and what's going to happen is God is going to breathe your spirit back into you and you will then live you'll you'll live eternally but it's in the body your body will be raised from the dead and right now because of the sin of Adam or for whatever reason our bodies die and um we you know we die now but but God's going to make it so we don't die so we'll be raised with Immortal bodies um and um and so so when people say even Christians today of course confess to Resurrection of the dead it's in the Creed um but by that most people don't understand that means your body is going to be raised from the dead Resurrection is a bodily idea in which you'll live forever uh in your body and of course you know throughout even in Antiquity and today people people would say you mean I gotta be living this body it's like my body's my problems properly my back's a bit of an issue can I not just get a new one yeah well you know I mean am I not gonna have any hair I'm like you know if I hit my hand if you take them I'm not gonna have a hand what if I was born blind I'm gonna be blind for eternity what and what you know at what age am I going to be like you know what if I die when I'm 98 am I gonna be 98 for each oh my God you know it's like that doesn't sound good so so even in Antiquity they had to explain that and uh Jewish authors tried to explain as did Christian authors later that uh they try to explain what it would be like but the basic idea is it's going to be great and it's going to be it's going to be perfect and you're gonna love it but it will be a physical thing it won't be just yours you know your spirit floating around up on clouds or something you're gonna you're gonna live in Paradise here on Earth and it's gonna be fantastic now you've argued elsewhere and again future episodes we'll come back to this that Jesus was an apocalyptic Prophet so I assume he shared this this view of the afterlife that you've just described with the caveat that we obviously don't have first-hand accounts and absolutely nothing written by Jesus himself what does the New Testament say about Jesus personal views on the afterlife well I think it's pretty clear when you read um when you read the earliest gospels Matthew Mark and Luke um so we will be talking a lot probably on the on the podcast about how we can possibly know what Jesus actually said and did and there are you know there are ways of doing it and that Scholars have developed and we have these sources the early gospels the gospels are all different from each other just as I said you have all these books in the Old Testament that you have different authors at different times it's true of the gospels too um you know Matthew and John aren't saying exactly the same thing we have different different views and but there are some things that come out fairly consistently in the first three gospels Matthew Mark and Luke about the teachings of Jesus um which is that he did think that this um that this world was a corrupt Place controlled by forces of evil they're demons in the world and people are people are ill and their their weather disasters and people are hungry and there's like you know there's these massive problems that just seem insuperable and they are because they're caused by powers of evil you've got the devil and the demons and these forces of evil so this is this view that we've talked about a little bit already is an apocalyptic view a view that the powers of evil are in control of this world and things are going to are getting worse but in this apocalyptic view that Jesus shared I mean he absolutely believes that there are these demons out there that he had to fight and that there was hunger and there were there was illness he had to heal and he believed all of that but he thought that it was going to come to an end soon that the and so his main teaching is that the kingdom of God is soon to arrive people mistake what Jesus met by that um in in the first century when it when a Jewish teacher talked about the kingdom of God they meant a kingdom it's you know it's it's a kingdom here on Earth it's going to be ruled by God's Messiah and Jesus Jesus believed like other apocalyptic Jews at his time that what was going to happen was when very soon God was going to intervene he was going to destroy these forces of evil that are like making life miserable and have been ever since Adam and Eve and he's going to then bring uh destroy the evil and destroy the people who sided with evil and he's going to reward his faithful so that those who have been faithful to God will be rewarded with this new kingdom ruled by his Messiah and the way it will work is that it'll happen not just for people who happen to be alive when it hits but uh it's going to be for everybody so that people who live 300 years ago who are really righteous good people who suffered like crazy are going to be rewarded with eternal life God will raise bodies from the dead everybody you've got to live in the body because you know it's the only way you the bodies are raised from the dead those who who have opposed God and who have not lived good lives are going to be condemned shown the errors or the ways and then eternally destroyed it'll be they'll be annihilated they'll be wiped out once they see that they really blew it and then the people who are righteous will be living forever then in their bodies in this Utopia I mean God created the Garden of Eden begin with that's what he meant people to be like is going to be paradise and people who live in Paradise forever then so if the righteous are the ones who um get to come back and live in this paradise how does one achieve that if you ask any Evangelical question how to get to heaven I think top of the list is accepting Jesus as Lord and savior like is that from Jesus is that something that he said we have to do in order to get to heaven or are there different criteria well so this is part of the complication of my saying when you've got these four gospels that are kind of different from each other you do you do get Jesus saying um that sort of thing and he is the way to eternal life and only he's the way you have to believe in him for eternal in our final gospel the Gospel of John Our Gospel all of our gospels are written some decades after Jesus himself Mark is probably our earliest gospel uh it was probably written around their 70s so about 40 years after Jesus death and in in Mark and in Matthew Luke which are closely related to mark all three of them stand against really what's going on in the Gospel of John in the three of them uh the earliest gospels Jesus never says you have to believe in me for eternal life um what he says in Matthew Mark and Luke is well his first words in his mouth are in in the gospel of Mark the very first thing Jesus says is in chapter one where he says that the um uh he comes he comes forth preaching and he says the um the time has been fulfilled the kingdom of God is near repent and believe the good news and so the time being fulfilled is the idea that God's allotted a certain amount of time for these forces of evil and now their time's up the kingdom of God is Paradise on Earth is near it's almost here you have to repent and accept this message of Jesus that you and so you need to you need to turn your life around and get ready uh and so when you read the teachings of Jesus it's all about how you behave um I mean for me one of the really key passages is in Matthew 25 where Jesus is talking about what happens at the end and Jesus uh Jesus says that that when the when the king the Future King comes uh the the kingdoms of Earth all the peoples of Earth will be gathered in front of him and he'll separate them into two groups the sheep and the goats uh the goats uh the goats represent most people on Earth and and Jesus uh uh Jesus says to them uh yeah you know uh you did not help those who were in need you didn't you know you didn't help people who were hungry or who were thirsty or who were lonely or who were sick and you did you didn't care about since you didn't take care of them you know you you're go off to your destruction you're going to be you're going to be destroyed and and they're kind of confused and they said you know but I mean yeah no you know he says no go then they turn to the sheep and he says you help those in need you fed the hungry you gave drink to the Thirsty you clothed those who were naked you took care of those you're lonely and so enter into the kingdom these uh these people are rewarded or punished not based on whether they believed in Jesus but then on they they it indicates in the story itself they've never even heard of Jesus they don't even know who this person is who's talking to them uh but they but they're rewarded because how they live their lives and I think that's what Jesus thought God wants you to live in certain ways that's why he gave his law on the Old Testament to teach you how to live and you know and it's not a matter of being a Jew and it's not a matter of of being a believer in Jesus it's a matter of how you live your life and if you if you live in a way that's pleasing to God God will be pleased with you and will reward you and so it's not it's not the message that I grew up on and so fundamentalist Christian you know you have to believe in Jesus where you're going to go to hell it's that you need to do what God wants you to do and He will reward you thank you so if if Jesus is is working with this apocalyptic expectation of an intimate imminent physical Kingdom how did Christian understanding shift from that physical Kingdom to a more spiritual one yeah this is the key question that I deal with in in my book because it's it's fairly um it's in look it's never straightforward trying to interpret the Bible I mean but it's not that difficult to see what the Old Testament says in the various passages about uh dying and it's and in the New Testament the resurrection message is very clear in places and the apocalyptic message but it is all this message it's this message that your body is going to be brought back and give an eternal life and yet Christians ended up thinking that your soul goes to heaven or hell so uh Jesus never talked about people I mean people people listen to me that's going to tell me but Jesus does talk about people going to hell and um I understand that I've got a lot I've got long discussions about this in my book where I where I try to show that when English Bible translators translate words like gehenna as hell they do us all a disservice Jesus does not ever talk about a place of Eternal conscious torment at all uh and so uh and so for those who think yeah you missed this verse trust me I didn't miss that verse uh you can but if you read if you read you'll read my book because we don't have time to talk about all that here but maybe maybe we want later time the question is if Jesus and his immediate followers believed in the eternal life in the body when people are raised from the dead at the end of time why do Christians end up thinking that it's not that it's that you die and your soul goes to heaven or hell what I what I show in my book is that Jesus expectation that the end was coming soon and his disciples thought the end was coming soon Paul thought the end was coming in his lifetime it didn't happen you know it didn't happen and people then started rethinking what Jesus might have meant when he talked about uh an eternal life and being rewarded and being destroyed but people who were riding uh our early Christian literature who developed our later Christian theology by and large were not Jews um as people like Paul converted people they uh by and large most Jews rejected the message that Jesus is the messiah Jesus didn't seem like the Messiah that anybody was expecting the Messiah was supposed to be a great warrior who destroyed the enemy and set up a kingdom of for Israel and Jesus certainly didn't do that rather than you know destroying the enemy he was he was arrested and tortured to death by the enemy so then most Jews thought it was crazy to call him the Messiah Christian said he was the Messiah followers of Jesus the Jews and Gentiles most Jews didn't accept this message that Jesus could be the Messiah Christians took the message to Gentiles Gentiles would be anybody who's not a Jew and that would be like 95 of the world and so um Gentiles were not raised with the idea that the body and soul would be reunited in a resurrection uh Gentiles were raised mainly in the Roman Empire on Greek ways of thinking which go way back before Plato but Plato in the in the 4th Century BCE encapsulated and popularized the typical Greek way of thinking of things which is uh that the body and soul are two separate things uh Plato and in Greek philosophy emphasized that the soul lives forever even though the body dies most of the converts to Christianity in the already in the first century that's what they thought is how they're raised it made sense to them your soul lives on after your body obviously your body doesn't live forever that's crazy your soul lives on forever uh and Plato argued this in the number of number of his dialogues I think was the popular view what ends up happening in Christianity is that the Christians of course believe that Jesus is right that there will be rewards and punishments that God is just you're not going to get away with this garbage if you're doing it and if you're faithful and suffer you'll be rewarded but they brought with they combine that with the idea in Greek thinking that your soul lives on when your body dies and so what ends up happening is that the kind of view that Jesus had gets gets transformed by his followers and so the way I sometimes think about this is that in an apocalyptic view you have a kind of a dualism between the current evil age we're in now they're controlled by the forces of evil and a future age where it will be all good be paradise on Earth by God and that this is like on a horizontal timeline now and that um and uh what what I think happened is that this kind of horizontal dualism that you have originally with Jesus and his followers as soon as uh you know his theologians start taking a gentile theologians toward the end of the first century this horizontal dualism gets flipped on its axis and becomes a vertical dualism no it's not now about what's happening now what's going to happen then it's about what's happening down here what happens up there it's up and down instead of now and then and so it becomes more like a spatial dualism instead of a temporal dualism and the up and down uh originally with uh was that you're gonna die and you're you're going to Destroyer your soul is going to go to heaven but then if the soul is Immortal according to Greek thought well then even if you're a bad person you've got to live eternally so now the up and down is happening so what'd you do with those it's heaven and health so it's your soul is rewarded or it's punished and it's Eternal can't kill the soul so that's how Christians invent in a nutshell that is how Christians start developing the doctrines of heavenly now thank you and you kind of see this in writings by early Christians it's a much more fully developed like you said Heaven and Hell dichotomy so you've got the Apocalypse of Peter which is pretty gruesome details about what hell is and then the passion of perpetua which describes Heaven and the journey to get there with these texts then and others supposed to be understood as metaphorical or with a very literal understandings of what happened to you when you died yeah well Christians start developing this this View and they I they appear to believe it literally they certainly talk about it as they believe it literally and so the The Apocalypse of Peter is a great a great example of it because it's a most most people won't know the Apocalypse of theater but it's a very important book that almost made it into the New Testament into the fourth Century there were Church fathers prominent Church fathers who said that the Apocalypse of Peter should be part of scripture and some of them thought Apocalypse of Peter should be in but you shouldn't take the Apocalypse of John because oh boy yeah that's a problem so you know the Book of Revelation and others say oh we need them both and others say yeah we don't want either they're these debates but the apocalypse Peter nearly made it in um and uh I talk about The Apocalypse of Peter in my book it's the first Christian account we have of a guided tour of Heaven and Hell um people know about that guy the tour business mainly from Dante with the Divine Comedy but Dante didn't come up with this this Trope it was around uh for a long time and we have it in Greek and and Roman circles and in Jewish Church the first Christian example we have is in the apocalypse uh up here and in his account um Peter and the disciples are talking to Jesus and he's describing what's going to happen at the end of time as you as you can find in the New Testament in Mark chapter 13. but Peter wants to have more of a kind of a graphic understanding of it and he asked you what's it going to be like and Jesus shows him in his hand The Souls of all people and uh and Peter kind of enters into the scene in Jesus hand somehow and he has this vision and he and he sees the he sees what's happening in the Realms of the blessed and what's happening in the Realms of the Damned and it is really interesting one of the most interesting things is that the Realms of the blessed are barely described it's like it's beautiful it's gorgeous nice scenery smells great you know a nice gentle breeze it's like and people are having you know and it takes them about three or four sentences to describe it but then when he goes to see the torments of the Damned in hell oh my God it goes on and on and on because he describes individual punishments for individual sins and they're gruesome you know red pokers being stuck in your eyes by demons forever you know or being hanged by your genitals or a Flames forever if you're like an adulterers and so um so the idea of the of the idea of the Apocalypse of Peter is look these are your choices uh you can have this wonderful afterlife or you can be tormented forever and it's your choice um and so this is the first and so I think they really yeah I think I think these people uh they appear they talk about it as if they really believe this is what's going to happen just as many people literally uh believe it's still today with these texts used for recruitment or were they kind of internal documents for churches to use during services or teachings yeah yeah I think it was kind of like a lot of Christian literature today where you have evangelicals and fundamentalists who produce books trying to argue for the faith and almost always they're actually written for Christians uh but they're written for Christians to give them ammunition uh when they're talking with non-christians and it looks like that's what these books were as well they're they're they're written to explain but you know this is this is what's going to happen and part of it part of it is to warn Christians yeah you don't want to you don't want to leave you know you don't want and you don't want to start living a life of sin because you two are in danger uh but but also it's I think it's ammunition for uh for evangelism because in the early church this kind of fire Brimstone they realized early on this is an effective Evangelistic tool very effective It's very effective and so they yeah so they so that's why you start getting a lot of discourse about happening in hell well thank you that is an absolute Whistle Stop tour through the development of the afterlife um I greatly enjoyed it I hope the audience did too we are going to take a very brief break and we will be back with Bart's weekly update [Music] if you're enjoying the misquoting Jesus podcast you'd probably like my online courses as well I produced a number so far with multi-lecture courses on the New Testament gospels and the books of the pentateuch Standalone lectures on the Christmas story and the earliest Christian views of Jesus and a six-hour debate on whether Jesus was actually raised from the dead if you're interested check them out at barterman.com you'll receive a discount on your purchase simply by entering the code MJ podcast [Music] welcome back everyone it's time for Bots weekly update this is Bart's weekly update where we get to catch up on all the latest about Dr ehrman's book releases speaking engagements hermanblog.org happenings and online course launches [Music] thank you but what do you have for us this week well you know I was I was very fortunate uh last semester that I was on uh on academic leave uh for research and so I wasn't teaching uh and um this is a great a great benefit for University professors and most people think oh my God how easy does it get are you kidding me money work uh it's really what what is it you're doing you're like watching soaps and eating bonbons I mean my God and you know I'm not doing that I also you know I wanted to watch a lot more Sports I didn't get around the thing about an academic leave if you're an academic it means you still work you know 70 hours a week it's just like you do your research which is just different with what feeds you it feeds your teaching if you're at a research University like I am and so it it it contributes to your uh to your teaching and to your public Outreach so that was last semester and it was great and now I'm back to the day job facing reality as we know it which I also love um because I'm I'm teaching two undergraduate courses uh this semester uh that are small courses one of them is called Jesus in scholarship and film where we see how Jesus is portrayed in ancient gospels in modern scholarship and in modern film fantastic it's great and the other one is called the birth of Christianity which is about what happens to Christianity after the New Testament first couple centuries and these are I love this course I love teaching undergraduates I got smart students who are interested and so it's going to be it's going to be different but it's going to be great oh that sounds absolutely wonderful I hope you enjoy it and we are now going to have some questions from our listeners [Music] now it's time for questions from listeners where Bart answers real questions submitted by misquoting Jesus fans if you'd like to submit a question for future segments please visit barterman.com askbars thank you but are you ready for some questions we'll see okay this is not an outsmart bot so you can yeah I'm not grading you uh first question what did Paul mean by the third heaven and what are the other two oh boy that's a good one that could be a stump Bart yeah we wish we knew because he doesn't say so um the deal is is that many uh many thinkers in the Roman world understood that there are levels uh between humans and the Divine you find this in a number of philosophical writings including for example platonic thought at the period of Paul there's a kind of so Plato lived in the fourth Century but there's this this phenomenon that's developing in around Paul's time called middle platonism and the idea is that you know that we all know that there's a big divide between God and humans but what ancient people often thought was that there have to be gradations kind of getting up to God you can't just go from one to the other because it's so radical so you have different levels and and so in um in some ancient religions you have multiple levels of Heaven and in Christian circles uh they're developed ideas of multiple levels of heaven and so in some texts for example some Jewish texts will talk about seven levels of Heaven or uh or in Christian Tech seven levels of heaven and some later Christian groups that were deemed Heretics had all multiple levels of that he had one heretical group that believed in 365 levels of heaven and and each one had a different kind of deity in charge of it until you get to the very top of God himself uh is in charge and so Paul doesn't have that kind of a radical of an idea but he does appear to think that there are multiple levels uh three three levels and that um he went up to the third heaven presumably the first Heaven is the sky uh and then the second level we don't know what it what it is for Paul but it might be elected Realm of the angels for example or or super superhuman beings who are above us and then the third level would be the the level where God himself lives with his particularly with his holy ones and so that's probably what he means by going to third heaven it's another way of saying he's gone up to the realm of God so I have a question based on that um does that a level of heaven and understanding of gradation between Mortal and divine feed into the Catholic tradition of saints and sainthood uh well it kind of It kind of does because it's a similar concept so that in the um in the in the older Jewish tradition people have direct access to God you'd say your prayers to God and God will down to your prayers and there's a direct thing although there were intermediaries right you have your priests your performing sacrifices that they give you special access to God and so you start having some kind of intermediate commuteary idea in in the Christian tradition the idea is that the Son of God is how you get access to the father uh and so you get to the father through the son and so the sun is understood and sometimes called a mediator between humans and God and then they develop other ideas about uh more mediators and so you can have the idea for example of angels as mediators in some parts of the Christian tradition within the Catholic tradition um if the sun has access to the father the mother is the access to the son and so Mary is elevated in in status and there the idea that saints that Saints are people who are closer to God than the rest of us because they're very very holy and if you want access to God you can go you can go through these intermediaries and so you can go through the Saints just like you can go through Mary and go through the sun and the Sun is you know way up there and Mary's not quite as high in Saints or not and so so it's this kind of intermediary thing and so it is closely related to what was an earlier idea of the multiple levels the multiple levels is the earliest idea probably and then you start getting these these various kinds of human and um superhuman intermediaries thank you um next audience question when did the idea of original sin become mainstream in Christian thought the questioner said he heard it was invented by Augustine right so um the term original sin um means different things to different people of course Protestants tend to think of the original sin as just that you're you're kind of born sinful because you know you're just sounded from Adam uh and that every one of us has some kind of sin nature in us the the doctrine itself is uh is not accepted in Protestant circles the Catholic doctrine that that was in fact uh not invented by Augusta but it's certainly formulated by having a more precise way and the doctrine of original sin is that the sin nature comes into humans because of a very human act that that it's the sex act itself that passes on the sin nature to a human so everybody's born because because the man impregnates the woman with him so the man's seed impregnates the woman the the the sin nature is actually this entity that's located in the male seed and so so necessarily since somebody's born of the male seed in combination with the woman that everybody there is necessarily has a sin nature and it's just as much of a part of you as your blood and your bones it's just it's infiltrated throughout you uh and so then there's nothing you can do to get rid of it and so without and so um and so Augustine developed a very uh complicated uh theory about how it's passed on but also how Christ is the one who um who is able to solve the problem of the Sid nature Christ himself didn't have us in nature because he didn't have a human father and Christ himself didn't get the sin nature through his mother because you know you could say well yeah but you know his mom had to have it so didn't he get part of it too no because in the Catholic tradition his mother is protected from getting us in nature by the Immaculate Conception she wasn't born of a virgin but God did a miracle to make sure that she didn't inherit a sin nature to pass onto her son and so so all of that becomes formulated in a more Crystal way uh in the uh at the um at in the early 5th Century by Augustine um and the last question we have a couple more questions but this is this is the last one kind of on the afterlife where do we first get an understanding of Satan or the devil as we see in in modern Christianity right it's a very good question because it's completely related to what we've been talking about um when you read through the Old Testament you don't have a devil people think you do because they read the devil into passages that don't have him and so people say wait a second the Garden of Eden Eden is the devil right now it's a snake it's a snake it's originally a snake with legs and so it's a I mean because God punishes the snake by taking away its legs so originally so somehow it's like some kind of reptile but it um so there's no mention of the devil in uh the Book of Genesis and people say yeah what about the Book of Job Satan's in the Book of Job right you have Satan and God having this argument and it is true there's a figure in in job who's called haslatan the the adversary uh he is not though the evil devil who is like ruling down in Hell or who's creating he's he's a member of God's counselor his court his his the counselors around him and he's one he he plays The Devil's Advocate because he's the one who who uh who is always kind of Nay saying things but he's one of God's advisors event what happens when um Judaism develops into an apocalyptic view it develops a dualistic view where it's not just God and you know the world it's there are these forces of evil in the world and just as God is over the forces of good there he's got it's not as equal but he's got a counterpart that's something ruling yeah something and the something is the devil who uh ends up being thought of eventually as a as one of the archangels who who uh fell in some ways um and so uh so you start getting the devil with apocalyptic Judaism uh and this power of Evil by the time you get to the New Testament you absolutely have Satan as this force of evil who's over the demons and this is so it's a dualistic view that you don't have through most of the Hebrew Bible excellent thank you and our final question is not really about the Bible it's about you what does the James a gray distinguished Professor actually mean what does it mean so uh James a gray the gray family uh was a very it was and is a very important family in uh North Carolina um they originally uh had made their money off of tobacco it's tobacco money um there they were and are a very generous family that endowed a lot of a lot of things in North Carolina a lot of Charities a lot of good things including um uh in academics and so for example at our our cross town rival Duke the uh the religious uh the religious studies department is housed in the gray building uh because the gray family donated uh funds for the building and for and it gave a lot of money to do they also gave a lot of money to UNC the uh the department of religious studies at UNC was founded in the mid-1940s is one of the first or possibly the first Department of religious studies in major university in the in the country a secular depart Department of religious studies where you don't teach you don't try and promote religion or propagate religion or try and convert anybody you teach about religion just like you teach about philosophy where you teach about you know crime you know you teach well I'm not determinate you've got to be a Nazi to be teach about nazia and so in the religious studies Department you're teaching about Islam and Judaism and Buddhism and Christianity and you teach you about these things the James a great Professor was the second professorship set up in the University uh and is endowed by James James a gray and the professorship goes to a scholar of biblical studies uh and so it's an endowed chair which means that there's endowment that pays uh pays a good chunk of my my salary uh and so it's an honor to be a distinguished it's a distinguished chair in the University I'm not particularly distinguished but they gave me one anyway and they uh it so it's so it's an endowed chair within within the University it has no particular obligations other than to teach biblical studies and um you know and and I uh you know I had a gratitude thank the great I know I know a couple of great family members who are fantastic human beings and so that's uh so it's it's all connected with his ongoing family wonderful a little bit of a look into how Academia can be funded for those who are outside the field and so uh that's in other words it's not like they can't pull strings or anything um but um but they don't want to because we get along great and um they they believe in in teaching biblical studies uh in a historical way to to undergraduates thank you before we finish the week would you mind just summarizing what we spoke about today well it's one I mean I you know of all the things I've written about I would say that this is the one that is most important to most people because everybody I mean just about everybody's concerned what happens when you die and we have these ideas in our head that have been given to us we'll you know as soon as we as soon as we are conscious we have ideas of the afterlife built into it so they just seem second nature and the second nature I did for most people in our context is a lot of people now think that you just died that's it um which would be an Old Testament view but most people continue to think that you live on in some way to be to at least to be rewarded and a lot of people think you live on to be punished and I'm not my book I don't I don't argue against that viewer for the view I I'm interested in knowing where it came from because it's not the view of the Old Testament most of the Old Testament the idea is that you you live and that's a precious gift but then you die and that's it uh the the New Testament Jesus have the idea that your body is going to be raised from the dead and you live eternally here on Earth in a glorified body the creation idea that you die and your soul goes to heaven and hell is a kind of an amalgamation of the teachings of Jesus with the teachings of Plato and so it's kind of a combination of this early Jewish apocalyptic View and the Greek philosophical view that sounds kind of complicated but I map it out in my book and it's I think it's good if you believe something it's good to know where your ideas came from that's that's what I try and do I would agree in for those who are interested the name of the book again is Heaven and Hell a history of the afterlife and it's excellent I highly recommended audience thank you all so much for listening I hope you enjoyed the show if you did please subscribe to the podcast and make sure you don't miss future episodes remember that you can use the code MJ podcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.barterman.com misquoting Jesus will be back next week but what are we talking about next time well so next time we're going to move on to one of the gospels we're going to talk about uh the First Gospel in the New Testament is uh the gospel of Matthew and we're going to talk about the genius of Matthew people don't realize just how brilliant these books are and how interesting in ways and things people just have no idea really I mean that's not their fault but I mean but but Matthew's a genius gospel I'm going to try and explain why and what it's really talking about I have to agree with you everything I learn while I'm doing research for this makes me think why on Earth haven't I researched this before and why does no one know this so I hope you'll all join us for that thank you everybody and goodbye [Music] this has been an episode of misquoting Jesus with Bart um 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 Hermann and myself Megan Lewis thank you for joining us

Channel: Bart D. Ehrman

Views: 131,870

Keywords:

Id: OLfATpg1rBw

Length: 53min 32sec (3212 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 10 2023