Freedom From Religion Foundation Lecture

the Bible is the bestseller that nobody reads it's in the hotel room that's all over a few people like me when I was a preacher I would cherry-pick verses to preach from and I thought I was teaching the Bible to my congregation I was not I was preaching the Bible I thought I was teaching them things that were actually true from the Bible I think no one in this country at least has done more to increase actual biblical literacy about what we should know about what the Bible not only says but how it came to say what the authors thought it says no one has done a better job of that than Bart Ehrman and how many of you have read at least one book by Bart Ehrman look at that well there's more in the back there's a brand new book of his Bart Ehrman is right here in North Carolina he teaches at the University of North Carolina in in Chapel Hill who was some Chapel Hill people here he's it's the James a great professor in the Department of Religious Studies he's a graduate of Wheaton College of all things and you know about Wheaton College where they have the Billy Graham archives Wheaton College the bastion of critical biblical scholarship and maybe Bart will tell us a little bit about how his views change from being evangelical true Bible believer to actually a true Bible teacher so in light of the fact that he has had such a tremendous impact in his books my favorites are misquoting Jesus and forged you know I thought I knew a lot about the Bible as an ordained minister I realized how little I actually knew about the Bible and then his newest book how Jesus became God we have copies with those books in the back we only have a few left we only have I think maybe 30 back there so afterwards dr. Ehrman will sign some of the books for you but in light of the fact of the tremendous contributions he's made towards real education Bible literacy and just real religious literacy in this country as a public figure who speaks plainly about religion we at the Freedom From Religion Foundation are offering Bart Ehrman the emperor has no clothes award today without an actual emperor the emperor has no clothes I told you earlier that this statuette is made by the same company that makes the Oscars and based on that Hans Christian Andersen story about the young boy who's just told it like it was the emperor has no clothes so Bart Ehrman come up here to receive well I'm really glad to be with you this is an unusual experience for me I I usually don't get asked to speak to groups of atheists agnostics and skeptics I get asked a lot speak a lot of Christians so this is a this is this is very nice and sure I'll enjoy this very much I've had a lot of interesting speaking engagements this last this last year about a month ago I was asked to give a to do a public debate at northern Alabama University so I had never been in northern Alabama before I came back and told my wife Sarah we don't live in the in the Bible Belt if you want to go to the Bible Belt go North Alabama so I we were supposed to have this debate that the debate was the topic was whether the problem of suffering should call into question the existence of God I was debating a fellow who is a Christian apologist a fundamentalist Christian apologist every time I have one of these debates in the middle of the debate I start writing notes to myself with saying such things as why the hell am I here so he was very articulate and and he knew a lot and he knew exactly what I was going to say because I had done this debate before and he knew what my line was I had no clue who he was my my my argument in this is that in fact I believe the the problem of suffering does cause problem for people who believe in God and should cause problems from should call into question the existence of God his argument was that I'm an idiot so I started out this was this is in front of a crowd of 1,200 people and I start so the big church in northern Alabama is the Church of Christ I don't know if you know the Church of Christ but it's a it's a big church in some parts of the the South especially in Alabama I think parts of Texas and some of the Churches of Christ are are quite fundamentalist in their orientation so I started out my presentation when I got up is this big auditorium with 1200 people in it I asked I said so how many of you in here are associated with the Church of Christ boom the entire room raises it oh my god I'm in the lion's den so my sense is that well let me say they were generous people they were they were kind to me they were nice they actually applauded they laughed at a few of my jokes I mean it was fine my sense is that for people like that audience the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion is the freedom to practice their own religion but also for a lot of them it's the freedom to impose their views of religion on the rest of us my view is that freedom from religion does not mean necessarily opposing religion I'm going to be that's going to be one of the sieze I have in my talk with you here freedom from religion means opposing the imposition of someone else's religion on us in our public institutions our public spaces our public schools our public offices at our public laws I stress the difference between opposing religion and imposing the imposition of religion because for me as an agnostic professor of religion it's a very important distinction indeed I am in fact not opposed to most kinds of religion I'm simply opposed to the idea that someone else's religion should have any bearing on how I live my life in public or in private it's very interesting being an agnostic scholar of religion in this talk I'd like to explore what it means for me to be one I think I'll begin by explaining what I mean by what I myself mean by this term that I'm using them we all use all the time the term agnostic because over the last 18 months or so I've come to think it means something different from what I used to think so what I used to think before I was an agnostic was that agnostics and atheists were two degrees of the same thing and when I first declared myself agnostic I was amazed at how militant both agnostics and atheists can be about their terms every agnostic I met thought that atheists were simply arrogant agnostics and every atheist thought that every agnostic was simply a wimpy atheist two degrees of the same thing what someone will just say I don't know the other will admit they do know and so that was the I have come to think that in fact they are not two degrees of the same thing they're two different kinds of thing that agnosticism has to do with epistemology what you know what you know and atheism has to do with belief what you believe I actually consider myself to be both an agnostic and an atheist I'm an agnostic because if somebody says to me is there a greater power in the universe my response is how the hell would I know I don't know so I'm an agnostic if somebody were to ask me do you believe in the God of the Bible do you believe in a God who interacts with the world who intervenes in the world who answers prayer do you believe in a supernatural divine being no I don't believe it so I don't believe it so I'm an atheist but I don't know címon agnostic and since I'm a scholar I prefer to emphasize knowledge rather than belief and so I tend to identify as an agnostic it's really unusual for anyone in my line of work to be an agnostic I'm a professor of biblical studies so there's a society of professors of biblical studies called the society of biblical literature we have our annual meeting every November there are probably six thousand professors of religion in the Society of biblical literature I don't have the exact number I bet there are six thousand of us who teach biblical studies at one level or another throughout the country in seminaries divinity schools universities colleges and so forth and so on probably six thousand of us and there well those of us who are agnostic or atheist are very much in the minority virtually everybody who teaches New Testament is is a Christian as I was when I started when I started being interested in biblical studies Dan mentioned that I went to Wheaton College the alma mater of Billy Graham I don't know if he knows this what but in fact for me that was a step towards liberalism I started out at Moody Bible Institute where as we used to say Bible is our middle name so I would I was a hardcore fundamentalist I wasn't like those wimpy fundamentalists at Wheaton College but in any event those of us who are atheists or agnostics in the society biblical literature very much in the minority the others that I know about who are agnostic or atheists do not try to reach a wide audience that's not unusual most people in the society biblical literature don't try to reach a wide audience they write books or scholars and they write they write books maybe for churches or things but but very few people actually try to reach to wide audience I do try to reach a wide audience and so I want to talk for a minute about what it's like to be an agnostic New Testament scholar who tries to reach a wide audience so there are actually three kinds of books that I write I write I write textbooks for college and university students so I have a textbook on the New Testament that is that is widely used throughout the cut in fact I have two textbooks on the New Testament and I have a textbook on the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation I've got I've got a number of textbooks that are right for for the 19 year olds in college and and university I write trade books as they're called for for general audiences so this is the kind of book you would buy in a Barnes & Noble such as these three books that are are back here the most recent one is the one I'm going to spend most of my time talking about here how Jesus became God it's written not for the 19 year olds but for their you know for their parents basically so those are the two kinds of book and so the one is for university students the others for a general audience and obviously I tried to reach as broad of an audience as I can the third kind of book I write are scholarly monographs those are meant to be hard-hitting scholarly books for the six people in the world who care and I so I try to alternate which books I write to two of those three though are intended to reach wide audiences either University kids or adults I do not see it as my mission in life to convert my readers to agnosticism or to atheism my goals in writing my books are to educate the general population in knowledge about the New Testament and early Christianity knowledge that's long been available to scholars but that most people as it turns out have no idea about even people who consider themselves Christian who have allegedly been going to sunday-school their entire lives they simply don't know scholars are saying about the Bible most Christian scholars this may come as a surprise to some of you most Christian scholars are not actually believers in the infallibility of the Bible apart from fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals most Bible scholars approach the Bible from a historical perspective even if they do also consider it to be a document of faith so most Bible scholars are not closed-minded fundamentalists at all when my colleagues and all my friends all my friends in the virtually all my friends in the field are our believing Christians when they approach the Bible in their research they do it from a critical perspective this involves historical knowledge what we can know about the historical Jesus the early Christian movement and the New Testament from a historical perspective as opposed to a believing theological religious or confessional perspective this is what scholars of the Bible do and unless our fundamentalists they do it historically I'm interested myself in reaching the widest possible audience with this kind of information the historical information whether people are non-believers or people of faith I'm interested in reaching everyone I don't see people of faith as my enemies or as my opponents and I don't consider my textbooks or my trade books to be written against people of faith or positions of faith with one exception I do stand in opposition to anyone who is a fundamentalist whether Christian Jewish Muslim or even atheist my students sometimes ask what is a fundamentalist I give them a very simple definition a fundamentalist is no fun too much damn and not enough mental I would like to convert fundamentalist so I I mean I am I am out to convert fundamentalist to D convert fundamentalist but other than that my goal is to educate not to convert I want to talk about how I go about doing that as an agnostic historian of early Christianity by discussing my most recent book how Jesus became God and so the bulk of what I want to say over the next 20 minutes or so will be on this book that just just came out just uh just you know I don't know a few weeks ago so the book is called how Jesus became God and in my opinion it is dealing with the biggest issue I've ever dealt with in any of my books I try to deal with big issues when I write books because most people don't care about small issues and so I'm interested in big issues and I think this is the biggest thing I've ever tackled it's obviously big for Christians because if Jesus had not been declared God they wouldn't have a religion so for Christians it really matters how Jesus became God but I would argue that this question of how Jesus became God should be important for all of us whether people of faith or not and here's the reason if Jesus had not been declared to be God his followers would have remained a sect within Judaism they would remain a Jewish sect they would not have attracted large numbers of Gentiles into the fold if they hadn't drawn large numbers of Gentiles into the fold the Christian religion would not have grown over the years at the rate that it did if it had not grown at the rate it did it would not have been a sizable minority at the beginning of the fourth century at the beginning of the fourth century the Christian religion made up maybe 5% of the Roman Empire so something like 3 million people if that hadn't happened the Roman Emperor Constantine almost certainly would not have converted to Christianity if Constantine is not converted the Roman state would not have converted if the Roman state had not converted to Christianity we wouldn't have had had the Middle Ages the Renaissance the Reformation or modernity as we know it it's a rather big question because if Jesus hadn't been declared God none of that would have happened so so this is not just a question for people who are personally committed to the idea that Jesus is God it's important for all of us I think at least all of us who have any interest at all in the history of Western civilization so I think it's big and so in this book I want to tackle the question of how it came about how did it come about that Jesus came to be declared God so the way I start the book is somewhat discomforting for for conservative Christians I start the book by talking about what we know about divine man in the ancient world Jesus was not the only one who was a human being that some people thought was God or became God and so in my in my book I show that in Greek and Roman circles it was it was thought that there were human beings who were also divine beings so it worked in one of three ways sometimes there is a human being who was just so far superior to the rest of us either they were more powerful or they were more intelligent or they were more beautiful or all three that they they were so special that at the end of their lives the gods took them up and rewarded them by making them gods themselves so that happened for example with the founder of the the city of Rome Romulus Romulus the founder of the city of Rome was thought at the end of his life to have been taken up into the heavenly realm without dying and had been made a God he was he became a powerful God in in ancient Rome he was one of the three main gods worshipped in the city of Rome after he had been divinized and of course the Roman Emperor was later thought to have been made of God and so we you have these these humans who are made divine the second way a human could be divine was that in some instances a divine being would come down and would impregnate a mortal God would so my favorite story about this is is in a book called am victory on by the roman comic playwright plough tiss-you probably most of you haven't read plough design ever read ploughed us I had decided early on in my academic career not to read plowed us because my brother wrote his PhD dissertation on plowed us and I thought that if my brother liked him he can't be that good so so but it turns out I was completely wrong it's it's it's terrific stuff so according to plough dhis in this book amp victory on he retells the story am victory on is the name of a general of the are of the of the city of Thebes and am victory on has this gorgeous wife named al kameena whom he has left pregnant to go off to war so he's off at war and Alcmene is at home Jupiter the king of the gods looks down and he sees out Mina and he is awed by her beauty she is drop-dead gorgeous and Jupiter decides he has to have her and so he knows how he's going to make this happen Jupiter comes down disguised as I'm victory on and he tells alchemy know that he's come home from the war she welcomes him with open arms takes him to bed Jupiter enjoys it so much that in the middle of the night he orders the constellations to stop moving in other words he stops time and they go at it not just all night but like forever until even Jupiter gets his fill and he orders the constellations to start up again they start up again and then he and he they're you know they get up in the morning he ascends to heaven and and then as it turns out the real lamp 50 on comes home that morning and doesn't understand why his wife doesn't welcome him with open arms she's had enough of him for a present thank you very much and so but as it turns out as I said and feature gone had she had been made pregnant by him pitch-around before he went off to war but according to this myth Jupiter also made her pregnant so they weren't real big on Anatomy back in the days of Roman mythology but anyway she got doubly pregnant and she had she had twins one of them you've heard of Hercules was the son of Jupiter and out Mena that's how Hercules was born but Hercules had a twin brother if it please who was who's mortal Hercules was born to the union of the God and a mortal and so he was both God and human so that's another way a person could be both divine and human the same time if they have a parent two different parents the third way a Greek and Roman thinking that a person could be both divine and human was was what happened when Jupiter came down as an Fitri on sometimes a God would become a mortal temporarily so be a human but would be a God all right so in my book I start out by explaining that there were these three ways that you can have both a human and a divine in the ancient in ancient thinking and then I argue that Jews had the same way of thinking that in fact you know many people today think that Jews were monotheists and so they couldn't imagine that a human could be divine wrong in fact Jews at the time of Jesus had very much the same way of thinking they knew of people who had been taken up and become God for example Enoch Enoch was thought to be a human being who had been taken up to God and became a divine being himself there were there were traditions about God's coming down and or divine beings coming down and having sex with mortals producing demigod offspring you get that in the Bible by the way Genesis chapter 6 the sons of God looked down on the daughters of men and saw that they were beautiful and they came down and took wives for themselves and their offspring were the Nephilim the Giants Genesis chapter 6 that's why God flooded the world is because you had these demigods running around these giants who were the offspring of divine beings and human beings in Judaism and in Judaism it was thought that humans could be gods that the king of Israel in the Hebrew Bible is sometimes called Elohim God so so Jews have the same thing so you have in the ancient world they had a different understanding of the divine realm from the way believers have today most believers today think that God is up there and God is separated from us from this huge chasm so you got God you've got chasm you've got us ancient people didn't see it that way the divine realm had a number of layers to it and the human realm had numbers of layers to it and sometimes they intersected right so that's the setup for explaining how it is that Jesus came to be thought of as God one of the leading questions in my book is did Jesus think that he himself was God I devoted chapter to that and I answer emphatically no Jesus did not think about himself as God he did not call himself had got himself God Jesus would have gone crazy if somebody told him they thought he was God in my opinion and I explain why on historical grounds that certainly is the case that Jesus didn't consider himself God it is true that in one of our Gospels of the New Testament the Gospel of John Jesus identifies himself as God Jesus in the Gospel of John talking about the ancestor of all the Jews Abraham we lived eighteen hundred years earlier Jesus says to his Jewish opponents before Abraham was I am he lived eighteen hundred years earlier not only that but the word the phrase I am is the name of God in the Old Testament when Moses asked God what is your name God tells him my name is I am Jesus claims I am and his Jewish opponents know exactly what he's saying they take up stones to stone him to death a couple chapters later Jesus again to his Jewish opponent says I and the father are one again they break out the stones a few chapters later Jesus tells his followers if you've seen me you have seen the father Jesus makes these claims for himself in the Gospel of John there's no doubt about that the question is did the historical Jesus make those claims about himself what I argue in the book is that Jesus almost certainly did not I give I give a number of arguments for it but I'll just tell you one of them which is John is our last gospel to be written it's probably written I don't know 60 65 years after the death of Jesus we have earlier Gospels Matthew Mark and Luke and to some extent we can reconstruct the sources behind Matthew Mark and Luke if you look at Matthew Mark and Luke and you look at all the sources behind Matthew Mark and Luke Jesus never says these things about himself now if Jesus historically were going around calling himself God would would somebody who wanted to write an account of his life leave that part out like that part wouldn't be important enough to mention it's not in any of the earlier Gospels or sources but it is in our latest why because it's not something it was historical it was a later theological development put on the lips of Jesus so anyway I devote a chapter to showing that Jesus didn't call himself God why then did his followers start calling himself God this the the key to the book and it's the key to this whole question of how Jesus became God Jesus followers did not think he was God during his life they certainly did not think he was God when he got crucified but some of them came to think that he got raised from the dead and that's what led them to call him God so the question is what happened to make people think that Jesus was raised from the dead Christian apologists today will argue that there are all sorts of reasons for thinking Jesus was raised from the dead when I was a Christian apologist I used to get up on stage like this and argue and prove that Jesus was raised from the dead and here's the proof one of the proofs that's commonly said is that Jesus tomb was found empty on the third day that Jesus tomb was found empty on the third day and then what you do if you're an apologist you say well why was the tomb empty everybody agrees it was empty so why was it empty did somebody steal the body well that's unlikely because of this reason that reason that reason did they go to the wrong tomb well that's unlikely because this reason this isn't that reason did they I mean you come up with the possible you know the possible explanations and you rule them out and then you say since none of these explanations works Jesus must have actually left the tomb alive so in my book I argue that in fact there was not an empty tomb that Jesus probably was not given a decent burial my reason for thinking that and for arguing that is that we know something about Roman practices of crucifixion and the normal Roman practice of crucifixion was to leave bodies on the cross for several days so the body would decompose and be eaten by scavengers that was part of the punishment it wasn't simply the horrific and slow tortuous death of crucifixion that was the punishment it was also the fact you weren't going to be given a decent burial everybody in the ancient world wanted a decent burial but crucified victims were not given a decent burial as part of the punishment and the ravages wreaked on their body were also part of the punishment they were left on the cross for days and so the only question is was there an exception in the case of Jesus and I argue that the probably was not an exception in the case of Jesus probably his body was left on the cross and then was eventually thrown into a common grave that's so what it wasn't the discovery net of an empty tomb that led anybody to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead I argue in the book what led people to think Jesus was raised from the dead is that some of his followers had visions of him afterwards some of his followers had visions of him afterwards this is an explanation that works for people of faith as well as for agnostic sand atheists people of faith would say the reason the disciples had visions of Jesus is because he was raised from the dead and he appeared to them people who don't believe in the resurrection would say the reason people believed in the resurrection the visions they had were hallucinations and so I spend a chapter in my book talking about what we know about hallucinations it's interesting there are two - two of the most common forms of hallucination by the way one out of eight of us have has hallucinations one out of eight of us has had or will have a vivid hallucinations and there are two most common types one common type is a deceased loved one you know you see your grandmother in your bedroom two weeks after she died happens a lot and it's not only seeing you can hear them you can talk with them sometimes you can touch them you you physically experience this person's presence it happens a lot the other most common vision is revered loved ones I'm sorry not revered loved revered religious figures revered religious figures I have had Christian apologists tell me that there's no such thing as a mass hallucination so the hallucinations of Jesus don't work because lots of people saw them at the same time so that is work because you can't have a mass hallucination precisely these Christian apologists who are all Protestants who want to argue that you can't have a mass hallucination precisely these people are the people who deny that the Blessed Virgin Mary has shown up to hundreds and thousands of people at once even though it's completely well documented by eyewitnesses why do they deny it because they don't believe it happened but if they don't believe it happened they believe in mass hallucination because it's very well documented so you know you either believe in maths hallucinations or you don't but you can't you can't have it both ways well anyway so it is interesting that the two most common hallucinations are of deceased loved ones and revered religious figures because Jesus was both and so it's not surprising that his followers had hallucinations of him as I assume that they were so once the Christians came to once the followers of Jesus came to think that he was no longer dead they thought well they knew they knew that he wasn't still here in other words they they didn't think that Jesus had a near-death experience it wasn't that he his body was reanimate because his body wasn't here he didn't return to Galilee to start you know getting into controversies of the Pharisees again or didn't go back to Capernaum to do this error that he's in he's not here well if we know he got raised from the dead because we saw him and he's not here where is he he must have been taken up to heaven and so their immediate thought was that Christ had Jesus had been taken up to heaven and what does an ancient person think if they think that someone's been taken up to heaven they think he's been made a divine being that started the idea that Jesus is God as soon as they thought that Jesus had been raised in the New Testament itself there are different authors who have different understandings of what it means to call Jesus God remember I said there are three ways in the ancient world that it could happen and all three ways are applied by different Christians to Jesus there are Christians in the New Testament who think that when Jesus was raised he was made God so he's exalted to the divine realm I think that's the view of the Gospel of Mark our earliest gospel mark though doesn't think it happened at the resurrection the earliest Christians thought it happened at the resurrection but as Christians thought more about this they thought well actually it must not have just been at the resurrection he was made God he must have been the Son of God during his entire ministry and so the first thing that happens in Jesus ministry in the Gospels as he gets baptized Mark's Gospel begins with Jesus getting baptized and when he gets baptized in mark's gospel a voice comes from heaven and says you are my son in whom I'm well pleased Jesus has made the Son of God at his baptism as Christians thought about it more they thought wasn't just during his ministry that he was the son of God he must been the Son of God from his entire life and so they're developed traditions in Christianity like this idea of a God coming down and having sex with a mortal they're developed the idea that God got Jesus mother pregnant that's where you get the virgin birth traditions which are not in mark but they are in Luke in Luke's Gospel the reason Jesus is the Son of God is because the Holy Spirit makes Mary pregnant even though she's a virgin so Jesus is literally the son of God as Christians thought about it more they started thinking well it wasn't just the Son of God during his entire life he must have always been the son of God there developed the idea then that Jesus actually had existed before he was born that he was a pre-existent divine being who became human temporarily like the third way of becoming a divine human in the ancient world and that's what you get in the Gospel of John in the Gospel of John Jesus is a preexistent divine being who comes into the world as a human and then leaves it afterwards to return up to heaven so the ideas about Christ developed already within the New Testament by the time you get into the second century virtually all Christians are saying that Jesus is God that led to some problems for Christians the most obvious problem was if Jesus is God and God is God don't we have two gods and if you throw the Holy Spirit into the mix don't we have three gods so aren't we really polytheists Christians wanted to say no we're not polytheists were monotheists yeah but you just said that God's God and Jesus is God and the Spirit is God so you're not a monotheists no we're a monotheists how's that work exactly so there are debates in the second and so the end of my book I deal with these debates in the second third fourth centuries about this kind of thing there were some there were some clever solutions to this problem there were there was one group of thinkers that was the dominant view at the end of the second Christian century that said it was its view that this modern scholars are called it modalism it's modalism because it insists that God exists in three modes so I myself as a human being I personally am a son and I'm a brother and I'm a father all at the same time but there's only one of me and so God is like that he's got three modes of existence he's both father son he's Father Son and Holy Spirit but there's only one of them so that was a view that's dominant for a long time but it ended up being declared a heresy because it didn't emphasize the distinctiveness of the three enough because people started saying whoa look I mean it can't really be that way because when Jesus prays in the New Testament he's not just talking to himself and so there's something else so they ended up with the idea that in fact there are three distinct beings all three of whom are fully God they're distinct from one another they're all fully God they are all equally God but there's only one God that's the doctrine of the Trinity that there's one God manifest in three persons and it doesn't make sense rationally and it's not menses makes sense rationally if anybody who says they understand the doctrine of the Trinity misunderstands it because you can't understand it so so I ended my book by talking about the controversies that ended up with how Christ came to be thought not merely as a divine being who became a divine being but came to be thought of as equal with God the Father and someone who had always existed from eternity past I talked about the developments that led to that what in this book would be offensive to fundamentalists apart from most of it two things would be especially offensive to conservative Christians one is my claim that Jesus did not call himself God and that Jesus did not understand himself as God the historical Jesus did not understand himself to be God that would be offensive to conservative Christians the second thing that would be offensive and has been offensive is my claim that Jesus did not get a decent burial that he was not buried by Joseph of Arimathea and that his - his tomb was not discovered on the third day those two are the outstanding claims that especially would be and have been offensive to people what should be offensive to other Christians say to liberal Christians mainline denomination my view is that nothing in the book should be offensive to other people of faith who are not fundamentalist or conservative evangelicals I had four friends of mine read the book four scholars who all self-identify as Christian and none of them had problems with any of it because there there are smart Christians in the world and who are critical scholars and just because they're people of faith doesn't make them fundamentalists well why don't I go after all the Christians though why not just really stick it to them here I get back to what and I'll close with in the next few comments I get back to what I started off saying my goal as an agnostic scholar of religion is not to attack religion my goal is to educate people about the history of early Christianity and to help people be more thoughtful about whatever it is they believe or don't believe whether they happen to be Christian or Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or pagan or agnostic or atheist I try go Liz to try and help people think more about what it is they believe or don't believe some people have accused me of mocking others who differ from my perspectives but in fact the only groups that I mock are fundamentalists because they deserve it and authors who pretend to know what they're talking about when in fact they're clueless there are plenty of authors like that among both Christians and atheists and I can tell you from personal experience neither group likes to be mocked as they let me know but I don't think that people of faith as a rule are idiots faith is not a matter of smarts next week I am going to the beach as I do every year with my best friend Dale Martin who teaches at New Testament at Yale University the senior professor of New Testament at Yale and my wife Sarah Beckwith who is a chaired professor of English at Duke University both of these people are flat-out smarter than me especially Sarah they are both smart they are they're both smarter than me and both of them are Christians and if you ask either one of them is Jesus God they would both say yes but it's not a matter of smarts and so I don't I don't think that there's any point in pretending that Christians are all idiots because they're not idiots I don't believe in attacking people for their intelligent understandings of the world even when they disagree with my understanding of the world unless they're religiously fundamentalist or socially dangerous then I think they are worth attacking in part I don't believe in going for the jugular of every person of faith because I don't think that anyone has been converted to a new point of view that way when I was in seminary and I was a conservative evangelical my first semester I took a course with a fairly radical professor of New Testament who had extremely liberal views and he had no impact on me whatsoever because he was so different from me and so opposed to everything I thought that I put up barriers and didn't want to hear it and so I didn't hear it the second semester I took a course on the New Testament with a very caring loving pious scholar who was sensitive to my points of view and who listened to me and had some differences but but he was very gentle and he started the process of my D conversion because I didn't put up the barriers people are converted by love not by hate they're converted by an attractive alternative not by vitriol they're converted by patient and loving and intelligent explanation not by harsh browbeating rhetoric now I know many Christians would be surprised to hear me say this because as I pointed out I do have a reputation for being aggressive and hard-hitting and controversial but I don't see myself that way I see myself as someone who's passionate for the truth who's willing to lay it out in clear and stark terms as necessary even if that offends somebody's religious sensibilities or I might add their mythos of sensibilities my goal though is not to offend it's to educate people about the history of early Christianity and especially to get people to think if anyone finds my views offensive whether fundamentalist or Methodist I firmly believe that's not because I'm an iconoclast but because some people just don't want to consider dispassionately and even-handedly points of view other than their own that lies at the heart of fundamentalist I don't think that freedom from religion means browbeating everyone we know into submission to our agnostic or atheist views it means ourselves being able to live in an environment where we're not forced to live according to religious standards and perspectives pushed on us by others but if we don't want religion forced on us then we should not cynically or hypocritically force our atheism on others we should live and let live in mutual respect and thoughtful consideration carefully explaining our points of view in showing why they are superior to the views of faith that superiority has to be shown in how we cherish and live our lives being free from the imposition of religion does not mean being free from the good benefits that have helped society in the name of religion if agnostics atheists and skeptics want to compete with religions of the world they need to become an equally significant player in dealing with the problems of the world we need an agnostic atheist and sceptical presence in the world that can rival the institutions of the faith communities throughout the world I know about the Church of Christ the Westboro Baptist Church the Vatican the Archbishop of Canterbury the Mormons and the Durham rescue mission why don't I know about the comparable institutions and social structures of atheists agnostics and skeptics why isn't the Freedom From Religion Foundation in the news as much as the Southern Baptist Convention non-theist organizations that are free from religion need to become as recognizable as the Baptist Church on the corner and the Episcopal Church up the street they need to be seen as the first responder when the hurricanes and earthquakes and famines hit they need to be seen as a mate as a major force in the fight against poverty homelessness malaria aids or name your epidemic they need to be seen as a vibrant and viable alternative to the religions of the world which often do so much harm while trying to do good whatever else we might say about organized religion it cannot be denied that religion is often the catalyst for much of what is good in the world but it shouldn't be the only one especially since so many people are silenced oppressed and harmed by religion we want to be free from the imposition of a religion and we were like others to be free from the superstitions of religion but once these people are freed from the bonds that bind them they need to be liberated not only from something but also for something humanists need to have something and someplace to give people to replace what they lose when they leave their faith that in my opinion should be the leading goal and objective of every humanist organization and I hope the Freedom From Religion Foundation and all of us can help to make it possible thank you very much I'm sorry yeah well I do I mean that's why I wrote the book well I mean okay yeah I mean I have a whole book on it I mean so there is a lot of evidence I mean there are so much evidence that it is it is not I mean I know in the in the crowds you all run around with it's commonly thought that Jesus did not exist let me tell you once you get outside of your Conclave there's nobody who I mean this is not even an issue for scholars of antiquity it is not an issue for scholars but there is no scholar in any college or university in the Western world who teaches classics ancient history New Testament early Christianity any related field who doubts that Jesus existed now that is not evidence that is not evidence just because everybody thinks so doesn't make it evidence but if you want to know about the theory of evolution versus the very fear of creationism and every scholar in every reputable institution in the world thinks that believes in evolution it may not be evidence but if you've got a different opinion you better have a pretty good piece of evidence yourself there the reason for thinking Jesus exists is because he is abundantly attested in early sources that's why and I give the details in my book early and independent sources indicate the G certainly the Jesus existed one author that we know about knew Jesus brother and knew Jesus closest disciple Peter he's an eyewitness to both Jesus closest disciple and his brother so I mean I'm sorry but you know again I respect your disbelief but I you know if you want to go where the evidence goes I think that I think that atheists have done themselves a mrs. disservice by jumping on the bandwagon of mythos ISM because frankly it makes it makes you look foolish to the outside world if that's what your going to believe you just look foolish you are much better off going with historical evidence and arguing historically rather than coming up with a theory that Jesus didn't exist sorry yes yes my question is about others you talked about the fundamentalist scholars if you can call them that my question is even though they might like yourself where you may have had sort of this wall in front of you before you kind of peel back layers how is it possible for some of these folks to claim to be biblical scholars where they study ancient Greek or Hebrew to keep to continue on like that for twenty thirty forty years are they not introduced to some of the same evidence that you see uh are you type of fundamentalists or you talk about just other biblical scholars well fundamentalists primarily yeah fundamental yeah no I'll tell you I mean the thing about fundamentalism is that it's a completely coherent system internally it's an internally coherent system so and it's a closed system so if you've got a closed system that's internally coherent it's very hard to to make any inroads into it and so since it's internally coherent and since there is such a very strong social fabric keeping it together you just you can't convince a fundamentalist that he or she's wrong you just can't do it you can point to any contradiction in the Bible and it just doesn't matter they'll just say either they'll figure some way to reconcile it or they'll say well I just believe that you know even though I don't understand God does understand you know and so there's just no no inroads I had a student this semester a lovely young woman who was just a flat-out fundamentalist in my New Testament class that just ended last week my in my class I I require every student in class to engage in a class debate in their small group recitation so the class itself is 250 students but they're every student is in a 20-person recitation and everybody in that recitation has to be involved in a and the debates are on controversial topics the first debate is resolved the Apostle Paul's views of women were oppressive that debate I used to call that debate I used the resolution used to be resolved the Apostle Paul was a misogynist but I realized after a while that some of my students didn't know what misogynist meant and that led to some very interesting debates the second debate is resolved Paul and Jesus represented fundamentally different religions the 3rd debate is resolved the New Testament condemns modern practices of homosexuality so students have some students have to argue affirmative so I have to argue Nate it on both of it this woman was assigned to argue that the New Testament does not condemn modern practices of homosexuality she refused to do it she would flunk the class rather than argue against her faith that's Jeske gotta be kidding me I've taught 20,000 students under at a student refused um I said look you're not arguing you think this you just have to argue what other people say no I refuse I'm not gonna do that ah she's so I made her write a 20-page term paper instead but after the course is over she wrote me an e-mail two days ago dr. Ehrman I'm praying for you and I just pray that you'll see that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior and I wrote her back I said thank you I really appreciate that I I hope that you will pursue the truth no matter where it takes you you know just thinking maybe maybe in five years that'll she writes back no you don't understand I'm praying that you'll understand the Jesus okay whatever you write I just don't think there's any way in wrote really yeah yes I have a question about the theological developments you were talking about especially considering the Jewish nature of the Jesus Movement yeah of course the Old Testament there's very little examples of resurrection and when it happens it happens with a human agent there's a lot of fertility problems but no virgin birth but around the time of Jesus and in the same area you've got a ton of pagan religions obviously you just mentioned about some of several figures who were divine you've got you know Addison mithran Horace and people that have they have virgin births and then you have resurrections as well that don't require human agents so what I'm wondering is when you have these elements of pagan theology kind of infused in Christianity how do you account for that over the development or do you yeah thank you you know it's it is a modern myth that that there were lots of accounts of people being born of virgins and on December 25th and that they were crucified and that they were buried and raised from the dead it's actually a modern myth those Mithras was not born on December 25th his mother was not a virgin Osiris is not raised from the dead people say that but the people who say that don't know the ancient sources the ancient sources in fact don't bear that out there are a number of things though that are common to pagan religions in my book I talk about Apollonius of Tyana who had he didn't have a virgin birth but he had a spectacular miraculous birth he was understood to be the son of God he could he could heal the sick he could cast out demons he could raise the dead at the end of his life he ascended to heaven and so I mean sounds a lot like Jesus so what's that about well what it's about is the Christians are speaking in terms that the people around them can understand and their understanding of Jesus is of course borrowed from the environment the only way we understand anything is in relationship to what we already know and so what they knew were these stories and so Jesus was told in light of the stories that's absolutely right so I do I do talk about that some length and in my book looks like I have one time for one more question just wanted to know if you're you must be familiar with the corruption of Christianity by Joseph Priestley and wondered if you could make any comments yeah you know I don't have any comments makers has been so long since since I've even thought about it yes I'm sorry well let me thank you again for this for this award and for being here today thank you very much

Channel: Bart D. Ehrman

Views: 81,733

Rating: 4.6739702 out of 5

Keywords: Freedom From Religion Foundation, Bart Ehrman, Triangle Freethought Society, Dawkins Foundation, Agnostic, Atheist

Id: VAhw2cVRVsA

Length: 59min 52sec (3592 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 14 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/JosephPalmer]

I really wish he had named the author who knew Jesus' brother and knew Peter.

[u/Liz4tin]

Can some explain why he always wears the same ugly brown jacket in every debate and lecture? I love Dr Ehrman. But I loathe that jacket.

I also love how he shut down that first question about whether Jesus actually existed.