Bart Ehrman Exposes New Testament Errors

do you think there's any instances in any of the Gospel narratives where writers are purposefully inventing events or sayings to serve a theological purpose oh yeah I think there are I think there are some places where you can identify it and I think there are a lot of places where they're just you know you just can't you just can't know you know if Matthew has a story that's only in Matthew there's technically no way to know whether he just came up with that himself and there's a lot of that kind of thing where you can't know there are places where um it's pretty clear somebody's just coming up with something like um I mean it's not clear if it's necessarily the author but somebody's clearly coming up with something I mean I mean the idea in math here's an example in Matthew Matthew explains why Jesus was born in Bethlehem but he came from Nazareth and he says that that the reason they moved to Nazareth was to fulfill the scriptures that says he shall be called a Nazarene yes but the problem this is part of Matthew's whole thing where Matthew's always saying Jesus did this to fulfill what the prophet said he's going to be born in Bethlehem gonna be born of a virgin he's going to be called a Nazarene well the other times when he says that you can actually find the verse he's talking about and you might be misinterpreting it but at least you know what the verse is there's no verse in the Bible that says he shall be called Nazarene and let's just let's just restate that for for our listeners because Matthew continually throughout the gospel is saying that and and this occurred to fulfill the prophecy to fulfill the scripture and you look in the Old Testament and you find oh there's the scripture and he's sort of got this story that fulfills the scripture here the idea that Jesus comes from Nazareth is to fulfill the scripture that says that he shall be called in Nazarene yeah and we look for that line it's not there and it doesn't exist yeah what's going on there well there are a lot of theories about it and I mean it doesn't it doesn't look like probably Matthew just like lying about it probably there are lots of explanations the most popular explanation is that he's referring to a mess allegedly Messianic Prophecy in the book of Isaiah in Isaiah chapter 9 verse 1 we're told that um that the um that there that David will have a successor who will succeed him on the throne and they'll come from the Nazar of David uh the root of David uh so it's like a tree metaphor like the tree has roots and so the root uh will grow into a tree and the one of the fruits of the tree will be this Messiah so he comes from the root of David and the word for root in uh Hebrew is not tsar and it sounds like Nazarene and so it's like so it's it may be that he has that in mind for example but if if that is the case yeah we're essentially talking about like a what a mistranslation yeah it's a mistranslation it's a misunderstanding it's somebody made it up I mean Matthew may have made it up somebody made it up so you say that this is this is like a popular explanation when I when I when I ask like how do we explain this I mean it's easy enough for for an atheist or an agnostic or non-Christian to explain it but I mean like as a Christian scholar surely that kind of explanation isn't available to you because it essentially says that the gospel yeah this this important gospel author just made a a translation blunder well okay so one thing I'd say is that not every Christian is a fundamentalist who think that every word has to be inspired by God I mean this idea that every there can't be any mistakes in the Bible is a really fairly modern idea um most Christians throughout history haven't really had that view of the Bible at all so it's not whether it's it's not like Christian versus a non-Christian explanation because within Christianity there's an enormous range sure and Christian Scholars just would basically agree with most of the things we're talking about here if they're critic historical Scholars the scholars I studied with for both my masters and my PhD I went to Princeton Theological Seminary and this is where I got most of this stuff from these people were ordained ministers most of them but they said yeah of course that's not you know they didn't have this fundamentalist view of the Bible so in this particular case what a critical scholar would say that when Matthew says the scripture says he shall be called a Nazarene it he's not trying to give a Verbatim quotation he's trying to say that this is somebody who would be a Nazarene and that that he's misinterpreting Isaiah 9 1 knots are to refer to and that's what he's thinking and you know you got that wrong but that's that's what he's doing can I ask you about mistranslations of Old Testament verses in general are there sort of uh other examples of what we might consider to be translation blunders in the New Testament oh boy yeah Arthur Matthew's kind of famous for this uh the uh the one that's the most famous one is again in the birth narrative in Matthew um both Matthew and Luke as I said um have Jesus born of a virgin one of the interesting differences is why he had to be born of a virgin in Luke's gospel Luke Luke says the reason he had to be born of a virgin it's it's in the enunciation the angel Gabriel comes to Mary and says you're going to conceive a child she says what never had sex I'm not going to have saying no no the holy spirit's going to get you pregnant and the the angel sister in Luke 1 35 the the um the Holy Spirit shall come upon you the power of the most high will overshadow you sow that the one born of you shall be called holy the son of God so Mary gets pregnant by the spirit so that Jesus is the Divine Son of God in Luke uh that's not Matthew's view Matthew doesn't say anything like that Matthew says that she had that she had to be a virgin to fulfill the scriptures because the scripture says that a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and you shall call his name Emmanuel that's a quotation of Isaiah chapter 7 verse 14. in this case it's really there Isaiah 7 14 is there and it says something like that it's a good stuff but it's a good you thought that it's actually in the old it's a good start it's a good start so it's there the problem is that Matthew is quoting it in the Greek translation of the Old Testament and when you actually read the Hebrew it does not say a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and in fact when you read it in the context of Isaiah it's clear as day that it's not talking about that it's not talking about a messiah at all is that so I mean because the the the word used in the Hebrew Old Testament is the word Alma yes which can mean virgin yes it can also mean what young woman well it doesn't mean it means young woman but it's young woman irrespective of whether she's had sex or not sure um and the Greek translation in the Septuagint which is the the Greek version of the Old Testament for our listeners the the New Testaments written in Greek that's right the Old Testament is written in Hebrew right which means that the New Testament writers were reading a Greek translation of the Old Testament when they wrote the New Testament uh and the Greek version of the Old Testament uses the word is it parthenos that's right which does mean virgin well it also means young woman so you said a moment ago that you think it's it's I mean I've heard before that there's a bit of a sort of translation problem here but you said it's clear that this is not what's meant In this passage oh yeah how do we know that well nobody reads the passage that's the thing people people read the verse yeah so the passage is really quite clear so the the deal is is that um um I Isaiah so it's written by a fellow named Isaiah in Jerusalem in the uh in the 8th Century BCE and he's a prominent figure in um at the time in Jerusalem the uh the king of uh of Judah ahaz is um is under threat two opposing armies have have laid Siege to the city of Jerusalem and it looks like Jerusalem is going to be destroyed and ahaz is freaking out about this he calls in the prophet Isaiah and Isaiah says that God will give you a sign to show that it's not going to happen that you're not going to be destroyed the sign is that a young woman who has conceived will bear a son and when the sun is holding is old enough to know the difference between Good and Evil can eat Kurds and Whey and knows the difference between good and evil these two kings will disperse they will be gone they're not going to and so he's saying give it time and they will go away of their own you don't not even going to have to fight the war he's so so there are two translational issues one is he doesn't use the Hebrew word that means a woman who's never had sex bethulha he uses just a word for young woman um any and the Hebrew tense is the young woman has conceived she's pregnant before she gives birth I mean before the child she Bears is very old you won't have these political problems anymore so it's a young woman has conceived it's not a virgin will conceive and it's not talking about a future Messiah it's talking about some woman here who's pregnant who and about what's going to happen to the city so it's not even a Messianic prophecy it's not prophecy of a future Messiah the full conversation that the clip you just watched was taken from is available via the link that just appeared on your screen don't forget to subscribe thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Alex O'Connor

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Keywords: Alex O'Connor, cosmic, skeptic, cosmicskeptic, atheism, within reason, podcast, within reason podcast, religion, debate, Alex J O'Connor

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Length: 9min 55sec (595 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 16 2023