Jesus, the Law, and a "New" Covenant

it is with great pleasure and honor that I turned to introduce tonight's speaker professor Bart Ehrman the James a gray distinguished professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill is a national celebrity he has appeared on television shows such as Dateline on NBC The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report and on radio shows like fresh air and talk of the nation he has written and edited around 30 books some heavily on scholarship others approaching a more popular approach that could engage the wider public I stopped counting at a certain point finally realizing that is more important to read the books than to count them five of those books were featured on the New York Times bestseller list and his work has had his works have been translated all over the world to languages such as Greek Slovak polish Czech Portuguese Romanian Bulgarian Italian Turkish Dutch German Serbian Korean Japanese Indonesian and Chinese to name but a few in other words people want to listen to what Bart Ehrman has to say his field of study is similar to that of George Mendenhall the Bible although a thousand years separate their interests professor ermine is an expert on the New Testament and on Jesus and his life whereas George Mendenhall was consumed by the origin in the beginning of the Israelites in the ayran age Bart Ehrman's work is focused on the origin in the beginning of what we eventually came to call Christianity these two men Mendenhall and ermine share a passion for their subject and they also share a strong sense of healthy suspicion and if you read professor Airman's book he cannot avoid that an essential ingredient to any meaningful scholarship toward the texts and the authors who took upon themselves to present these early beginnings of what came to be some of the most influential categories of Western civilization the Hebrew Bible the New Testament the people of Israel and their monotheistic God Jesus and his students the Messiah Christ all come under meticulous scrutiny by Mendenhall and ermine respectively each one in his own thousand years we in Michigan as a public and secular University share this scholarly agenda studying these religions but not preaching them respecting the religious traditions but not necessarily believing them it is no surprise therefore that George Mendenhall was a foundational figure at our institution and at my department and for the same reason that brought him to prominence we are also delighted for the opportunity to host and learn from Professor Bart Ehrman please join me in welcoming professor ermine who will speak to us today about Jesus the law and the new quote/unquote covenant professor ermine please well thank you very much for that very very generous introduction George Mendenhall was one of the truly great scholars of Hebrew Bible in the 20th century and I'm humbled being mentioned in the same breath he brought considerable prestige to this university in the fields of ancient Near East and Biblical Studies and and so I'm also deeply honored to be asked to give a talk at an occasion inspired by his work it gets less interesting ok right so Jesus the law and a new covenant I'm going to begin by talking about some of the issues that I want to address in this in this lecture and I'm going to start by describing how I begin my my course on the New Testament at Chapel Hill every year so I teach a class on the New Testament that has Oh a large enrollment it usually has 240 students 350 students it depends how many students we want to let into the class and every year I begin the class by first day of class handing out the syllabus and explaining that this is a class at a research university this is not a class being given in a church this is not a Sunday School this is this is a class it will be approaching the New Testament not from a devotional point of view of faith but from a historical and a literary point of view trying to understand the New Testament from these other perspectives that's not necessarily better than the way it's done in church or in Sunday school but it's certainly different now most of my students are from North Carolina which means most of my students were raised in the church as conservative Christians and so most of my students still are conservative Christians and so I have to explain to them that that this class they'll have no advantage by having been a Christian it doesn't matter for the class whether they are Christian or Jewish or or Muslim or Buddhist or atheist or pagan or anything else because we're not approaching it from the perspective of faith and so I try to explain that all to them and then we go through the syllabus and explain how the class is going to be set up and then the second half of that first period I give my students a pop quiz now they think this is a little bit odd then I'd be giving them a pop quiz before I've taught them anything but when I'm starting to teach this class I want to know how much do they know about the Bible I also want them to know how much they know about the Bible because a lot of the students are taking the class because it fulfills some some requirements in the curriculum and they're thinking how hard can it be it's the New Testament we're not talking about you know quantum physics here it's the New Testament and so so we give them that we give them this quiz the quiz has 11 questions on it and I tell my students that if anyone in here gets eight of these 11 right I'll buy you dinner at the armadillo grill last year out of my 240 students I bought one dinner and the thing is these are not hard questions these are not complicated questions involving deep knowledge of scholarship these are basic factual questions about the New Testament that anybody who's at all knowledgeable about the New Testament they ought to know the answer to these questions so just to give you an example I begin I begin the quiz first question is how many books are in the New Testament well it's just a basic factual piece of information and it knocks off about half the class because people don't know and it turns out I can see some of you are looking a little confused and shaking your head so the answer the answer is 27 I tell my students that actually is a very easy answer the reason it's an easy answer is this when you think about the Bible you think about God when you think about the New Testament you think about the Christian God and when you think about the Christian God you think about the Trinity and what is 27 it's 3 to the 3rd power 3 times 3 times 3 27 it's a miracle so the second question I ask is in what language were those books written now this is interesting because about half the students think that the answer is Hebrew and I've never quite figured it out but I think it's because when you watch all those shows on Discovery Channel or in the History Channel about Jesus they're always flashing up Hebrew text behind him and so you think even you think he's Jewish he's Hebrew right wrong no it's not Hebrew Hebrews wrong luckily every semester only four or five of the students think that the answer is English that's wrong too so the answer is Greek and so and I explained to them it's because Greek was the lingua franca of the Roman Empire I talked about Alexander the Great and I I use this quiz as a way to teach them basic factual historical information so so I go through this quiz they're 11 of these questions I there are a few curveballs on the quiz I throw a few curveballs because I don't want to buy any dinners so so for example one of the questions is what was the Apostle Paul's last name and invariably somebody will say of Tarsus okay Paul of Tarsus he has okay the good Deena but I do that because I want them to realize that that people in the ancient world most most people in the ancient world didn't have last names people had one name which is why in the New Testament you you have a number of people with the same first name and they always have to identify which person it is and so you have all these women they marry but they tell you which marry they're talking about are they talking about Mary the mother of Jesus Mary of Bethany Mary Magdalene they all have the name they have described description so that you understand which name they're talking about so the reason I want my students to know this is because most of them don't understand that Jesus Christ so so cool so Christ it's not in Christ is not his last name it's not Jesus Christ born to Joseph and Mary Christ it's it's it means Jesus is the Messiah and so I so I explained all this stuff too so the the last the last question on the quiz is I give them a list of names and I ask them which one of these which of these people were Jews and so I have what do I have on there I have John the Baptist and I have I have the Apostle Paul and I have Julius Caesar and I have Tacitus and I have and I have Jesus and so I have these names and they have to decide which ones are Jews and interestingly these days virtually everybody gets it right about 20 years ago when I was teaching a lot of people didn't get everything right the reason I asked this question is because as I said I'm using this as an opportunity to teach and I want to stress on the first day of class that Jesus was a Jew now most of my students think he hates a Jew but he was really a Christian well yeah probably not quite yet so but but but there they are they do recognize yes Jesus was a Jew and so it starts when you start pressing this with the students though it leads to a little bit of confusion after a while if Jesus was a Jew did he follow the Jewish law my students who usually think oh yeah I probably Danny was Jewish then those think wait a second his Sabbath the whole time so no he didn't follow the law well did he follow the law or not no he probably didn't follow it well then how was he Jewish well uh too late you know there's a little they're quite sure how to work that one out and so what about Jesus expectations did he expect his followers to follow the law no I don't think so I know Jesus did because he know because Jesus is starting a new religion right so he probably so his followers don't have to follow the law but then others other students say well no actually if he was Jewish he probably kept the law himself and he probably told his followers to follow the law but was after his death that they stopped following the laws and that you started having Christianity as a separate thing and other students would say no yeah yeah probably probably Jesus did think his followers should follow the law and so probably Christians should follow some of the laws well which laws and when you press when you press my students on this which do you think that Christians should follow the laws of the Old Testament my students will almost always say no okay so it's okay to commit murder and adultery oh no you can't do that why not because it's in the Ten Commandment that's part of the law oh well yeah but Jesus wanted us follow the Ten Commandments he just didn't want us to follow the other laws said okay so you're supposed to follow the Ten Commandments right okay so you shall honor your father and mother that one is that one of the tenth yeah that's one of the ten are you supposed to follow that yeah now do you agree with what's said in the next chapter in the book of Exodus that if you curse your father or mother you're to be put to death no I don't think that's right okay so what okay so you say if you want to follow the Ten Commandments what do you think about working on Saturday what do you mean well it says you're supposed to observe the Sabbath was to honor the Sabbath and keep it holy well yeah well that means you're not supposed to work on sat on Saturday oh yeah we don't do that okay so you follow the nine commandments and so so it just raises some confusion in students head about what's the what's supposed to be the relationship between what he murders in Jesus wake as as Christianity what's the relationship of that to the religion out of which Jesus came and students have very vague and confused ideas about this and part of my point of this lecture is that the confusion is not merely modern that Christians have long contended with this issue and there's never been a single answer to the question so let me provide a little bit background very briefly this is a ridiculous thing I'm going to in four minutes tell you about what it meant to be Jewish in the days of Jesus so of course being Jewish in the days of Jesus meant doing things that Jews did whatever whatever that was going going to synagogue or or praying or reading the Torah or or what but I'm thinking at this point about what it is that made Jews distinctively Jews in the world of Jesus the world of Jesus was the world of the Roman Empire in the Roman Empire 93% of the world was non-jewish and so modern people might say this 93 percent was pagan so pagan by when historians use the word pagan they're not using it with derogatory connotations the way that I use it when I say that my next-door neighbor is a real pagan which by the way he is pagan simply means anybody who's not Jewish in the ancient world Jewish or Christian so everybody in the ancient world apart from Jews worshiped many gods and Jews were distinctive because they did not worship many gods Jews worshiped one God the God of Israel was the one God that Jews would worship some Jews probably thought these other gods existed but they weren't going to worship them other Jews thought in fact these other gods don't even exist there's only one God but Jews did insist on worshiping one God the creator of the world the one Almighty God the God who had chosen Israel to be his people that's the God that's to be worship and being Jewish in the days of Jesus meant worshipping that one God Jews throughout the world thought that this one God had chosen Israel and given Israel its covenant the word covenant means something like a peace accord or a peace treaty a covenant was something that was given from a dominant nation to a lesser nation and the idea was that God the great power had given the Jewish people an agreement and the agreement was that God would protect and defend his people that he would be their God if he would if they would be his people okay he'll be their God he will protect and defend them if they'll be his people this was this was the agreement and so the Jewish people believed that this one God had made a special arrangement with them the Jewish people part of that covenant was the law that God had given to the nation of Israel the law indicated how Jews were supposed to worship God it gave restrictions for and directions for worship and indicated how Jews were to relate to one another in their community and so it's how they were to live together in community and how they were worship to worship God many of my students in the south and the u.s. South have a complete role idea of what traditional Jewish religion was all about many of my students think that the whole deal with Judaism was that God gave Jews a law that they could not possibly keep and since they didn't keep this law God sent them all to hell and that's why Jesus showed up it's because everybody was supposed to follow a law that they couldn't keep and so they were all going to go to hell and so Jesus came up to save them from hell and that's that's the Jewish religion it's religion where everybody's going to go to hell because they've got this law and this law is like this this huge burden that people have to follow and it's hard and nobody can do it and so that is a that's that's a common view among my students and it's completely wrong historically the law the law given to to Israel was was not a particularly onerous law was one super ticked I mean you know you read through the law just read through the law in the Hebrew Bible it it is not a terribly difficult thing I mean it's not like American law we have so many laws just controlling you like how you can drive a car or what kind of things you can put in your mouth or what I mean there we have all these la mean so Jewish law is not it wasn't like that if this was God telling you how you can worship Him and how you can relate to each other this is seen as the greatest good I mean can you imagine the creator of the universe telling you how you can live is fantastic well Jews understood that the law had been given and following the law was not in order to earn your way into heaven it was how you live together as community in response to God who's given the Covenant so yeah right that's my four-minute version of what it meant to be a Jew in the days of Jesus so Jesus Jesus had followers that eventually became Christianity and the big question I want to struggle with in this lecture is how did Jesus followers after his day understand the relationship to this law that God had given the law that still found in the Hebrew Bible the Christian Old Testament the law of Moses what is the relationship of the Christian to this law did God get rid of this law Christians many Christians most Christians would say we still worship the God of Jesus so well if that God gave the law as he decided to rescind the law well you know as he changed his mind for example oh that's the question so I'm going to go through a number of options that we know about from early Christianity a number of options for how one understands the relay ship of the follower of Jesus to the law of the Jews and so option number 1 I'm going to begin at the server in the middle of the second Christian century so we're talking 120 years after Jesus was dead 120 years later when we have some pretty good evidence about what some Christians were thinking about this particular issue I'm going to begin with a group of Christians called the márcia Knights they were called the Marcia Knights because they were followers of a particular theologian philosopher whose name just happened to be Marcion Marcia the Marcy Knights were very were very interesting and distinctive group because Marcion himself had a very distinctive and interesting teaching marcin was particularly obsessed with the apostle paul and the writings of the Apostle Paul now the Apostle Paul taught that Christ had saved people by his death and his resurrection and Paul differentiated between the gospel of Christ which brings salvation and the law of the Jews that brings condemnation this is my students resonate with this so Paul the law of the Jews brings condemnation the gospel of Christ brings salvation Paul differentiated between the law and the gospel and Marcion took very close note of that Marcion maintained that the God who gave the law cannot be the same God who brought salvation the god of the Hebrew Bible the of the of what Christians have called the Old Testament the Old Testament God is actually a different God from the God of Jesus Marcion wrote a book called the antithesis the contrary statements where he tried to show that that that the the Old Testament is not the god of the New Testament so for example he points out that in the in the Old Testament the God of the Old Testament tells the children of Israel they're supposed to take the promised land well the problem is somebody already lives in the promised land so how are we supposed to have a promised land well you've got to kill the people who are in there huh really yes so Joshua chapter 6 God commands the the troops under Joshua to go in and take the city of Jericho you know the story they're supposed to march around the city once a day for six days seventh day they march around seven times they blow the trumpets they shout and the walls will come a tumbling down and it happens and God says go into the city and murder every man woman and child in the city Marcion tells the story and then he says is this the same God that says love your enemy if somebody persecute you pray for them if somebody slaps you on one cheek turn to him the other also no that's not the same god they're different gods you've got a wrathful God in the Old Testament and you got a merciful God in the New Testament in the Old Testament you have the prophet Elijah a man of God who's walking by a group of boys and these boys start making fun of him he's going bald and so they call out Baldy Baldy and Elijah calls the wrath of God down and two she bears come out of the woods and Maul forty-two of them to death is this the same God who says let the little children come unto me no it's not the same God it's a different God Marcion literally thought there were two gods literally thought there were there were two gods the god of the Old Testament was the God who created this world and chose Israel and gave them the law and the god of Jesus is the God who saves people from that God there are two separate gods Jesus does not belong to the Creator God Jesus wasn't even a material being in this world because if if Jesus had been born of the union of Joseph and Mary and been born like everybody else he'd be a creature like everybody else which would mean he'd belong to the Creator like everyone else so Jesus was never born Jesus descended from heaven as a full-grown man and wasn't really a fleshly human being because he didn't belong to the Creator why didn't wash in simply read the New Testament to realize it wasn't that way there wasn't a New Testament it didn't exist yet of course the books that later were put into the New Testament existed but there wasn't a Canon of Scripture yet Marcion may well have been the first Christian to devise a Canon he had something like our Gospel of Luke and he had something like ten of our letters of Paul and that was it his Bible didn't have 66 books in it the way the Christian Bible typically has he had he had 11 books no Old Testament that's the book for the Jews well whatever you think of that it's a rather elegant solution about what to do about the relationship of the Old Testament of the New Testament you simply get rid of the Old Testament at the same time Marcin was doing this there was another group of Christians known as the Ebionites the Ebionites did not share marcin's high praise of paul the Ebionites thought that paul was the arch heretic who got everything wrong he got everything wrong because he didn't understand the relationship of the gospel of Christ to the law of the Jews among other things the EB Knights wanted to insist that there's only one God Marcion is wrong and anybody who thinks there's more than one God is completely wrong these are radical monotheists the radical monotheists in part because they are very serious about their Jewish commitments Jesus for the Ebionites was the Jewish Messiah sent from the Jewish guy odd to the Jewish people in fulfillment of the of the Jewish Scriptures so this religion this following Jesus is completely Jewish for the Ebionites if you want to be a follower of Jesus then of course you have to follow the Jewish law and so the Ebionites insisted that in fact the Jewish Scriptures the Hebrew Bible that is the Bible now they may have had other books as well some people think they had something like the Gospel of Matthew which is widely considered to be the most Jewish of our Gospels they may have had other books but they certainly had the Jewish Bible for them Christianity was the fulfillment of Judaism but that didn't mean you got rid of Judaism Christianity was the correct interpretation of Judaism and so even eyes were Jews and they continued to be Jews they circumcise their babies they kept kosher they observed Sabbath they follow the festivals they were Jewish this is a pretty stark contrast with Marcion they contrast up and down the line Marcion thinks there's two gods the evening I think there's one God Marcion thinks that Paul's the hero the EMU Knights think Paul's the heretic Marcy and ice think that Jesus was a was a divine being but not a human being even I think he's a human Messiah not a divine being the Marcy and I attempt something like the Gospel of Luke the EMU Knights have something like the Gospel of Matthew the Marcy Knights don't have the Old Testament the Knights do have the old test I know Christians who line up on one or the other side today I know Christians who of course I know Christians who could insist that who are still Jewish who maintained their Jewishness at least they they say they do the Messianic Jews who who understand themselves to be both Jewish and Christian I know a lot of other Christians who think that mark they've never heard of Marcion but if they had heard of Marcion they would think that he was onto something because you have the Old Testament god of Wrath and the New Testament God of love and that just made inherence sent for a lot of people who aren't quite sure why they have they have an Old Testament but you know they have it and so so you get people on both side well there are other options here's a third option that you have from the ancient world from about the same time as these groups the letter of Barnabas the letter of Barnabas was probably written in the 130s a little bit before marcin was doing his thing the letter of barnabas almost made it into the New Testament there were Church Fathers who thought the letter barnabas belonged in the New Testament I think we can be very grateful it didn't make its way into the New Testament because this book is more anti-jewish than anything that did make it into the New Testament Barnabas Barnabas is principally about how to understand the relationship of the followers of Jesus and the Jewish people and how to understand the relationship between the followers of Jesus and the Jewish law Barnabas maintains that the Jews had been given the Covenant of God with the law under Moses but they broke the Covenant just as soon as they got it and so barnabas tells the story about how in the Old Testament Moses goes up on Mount Sinai and God gives him the two tablets of the law the Ten Commandments and then he learns that the people down below are making idols for themselves and engaging in wild activities and he comes down and he sees what's going on he throws down the two tablets of the law and smashes them Barnabas says this indicates that the Jews literally broke their covenant the Israelites broke the Covenant and for Barnabas it was never restored Jews who had just had the Covenant made with them broke it Jews for Barnabas never have been the people of God okay what about the law Barba's maintains that since Jews were never the people of God they never understood the law that God gave them they never understood their own law much of Barnabas this letter of Barnabas is designed to show what the true interpretation of the law is and to show how the Jews have misinterpreted their law they've misinterpreted their law because they've taken their law literally but God never met the law to be taken literally and Barnabas shows how this is by going through a whole bunch of laws to show how these have been misunderstood for example kosher food laws when the Bible says don't eat pork it doesn't mean don't have ham sandwiches that's a literal interpretation that's not what it means not partaking a pork means not behaving like pigs for Barnabas that means this pigs when they're hungry grunt and make a ton of noise when they're fed they don't you should not be like that you should not pray to God whenever you are in desperate need and then when your needs are satisfied you have no no communication with God you should pray to God all the time don't behave like a pig that's what it means don't eat pork Barnabas goes through a number of the kosher food laws and gives the correct interpretation that those Jews have never understood the Sabbath day Jews say you should not work on Saturday should you should observe the Sabbath they completely misunderstand according to Barnabas Barnabas points out that the Sabbath day requirement is rooted in the creation in the book of Genesis where God creates the world in six days and on the seventh day he rests thereby sanctifying the seventh day Jews have misunderstood that too to think that it means that they themselves are not supposed to work on the seventh day and that's not what it means at all what's going on is this in the Bible a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day when the Bible says that God created the world in six days means that creation is going to last six thousand years the day of rest is the Millennium that's coming the thousand year period of peace that's going to come to earth it's not talking about what you're supposed to do on Saturday it's talking about what's going to happen in our future when the end comes Barnabas is the first one that I know of who who indicates that the world's going to last six thousand years you may remember this is kind of a big deal back in the year 2000 when people thought well this is it because you know fundamentalists thought the world's created 4000 BC now it's 2,000 at 6000 this is it well that Barnabas is the first one to come up with that particular bit of reasoning you can Majan this kind of reasoning wasn't all that convincing too many Jews especially this last one was not circumcision Jew circumcised their baby boys Barnabas thinks this is a ridiculous literal interpretation you should you should know you're not supposed to be circumcising your baby boy what is circumcision Barnabas points out that the that God gave the sign of circumcision to Abraham and Barnabas talks about how Abraham was told to circumcise the 318 servants of his that went off to save the the nephew of Abraham lot who had been captured by some other foreign Kings and so he circumcised 318 and so what does that mean why 318 well Barnabas points out that in in the Greek Old Testament 318 the the way that ancient the the way that ancient languages wrote out numbers was by taking letters of the alphabet and each letter had a numerical value and so if you write out 318 in Greek it's it be a towel that looks like in English tea and then a yoda which is like a J and then an ADA which is like an E so it's TJ E and he points out T looks like a cross and J and E are the first two letters in the name Jesus circumcision is the cross of Jesus you're not supposed to be cutting the foreskin off your baby boys you're supposed to be believing in the cross of Jesus it's right there in the Old Testament Barnabas concludes that little example by saying no one has ever learned a better lesson from me I'm sure he's right Barnabas thinks that the Old Testament was never a Jewish book it's a Christian book it's a Christian book that needs to be interpreted in light of Christian principles well okay let me give you a fourth option the three I've given you so far or after the New Testament what about inside the New Testament there are various views within the New Testament not just outside the New Testament let me give you one that is very surprising to my students it's surprising because some of them have read this before but they've never really thought about it it's the view that you find in the Gospel of Matthew the first gospel in the first major teaching of Matthew the Sermon on the Mount Matthew chapters five six and seven Jesus explicitly tells his followers do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets I have not come to abolish but to fulfill for truly I tell you until heaven and earth pass away not one letter not one stroke of a letter will pass away until the law from the law until all is accomplished therefore whoever breaks one of the least of these and myths and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven for I tell you unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees you will never enter the kingdom of heaven the scribes and the Pharisees are for Matthew are the highly religious Jews and you have to keep the law better than them what you have to keep the law better than the most religious Jews yes for Matthew the answer is yes that's in the New Testament yes that's in the New Testament this is the view that you find in the Gospel of Matthew Christ did not abolish the law Christ fulfilled the law and his followers have to follow the law and then Jesus proceeds to explain what he means you've heard it said that you should not murder I say to you you should not only not murder you should not get angry with someone else you murder somebody out of anger don't even get angry in the first place you've heard it said don't commit adultery don't take someone else's spouse what I say to you is don't even think about it don't even want to take your neighbor spouse you've heard it said an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth that the the punishment should fit the crime I say to you turn the other cheek Jesus radicalizes the law and makes it more difficult he doesn't give to rid of the law Jesus doesn't say you've heard it said that you should not commit adultery but I say to you you should commit adultery you know he doesn't get rid of the law he makes the law harder in Matthew Christ followers have to do this have to do the law even more strictly than the scribes and Pharisees Jesus himself has portrayed as the new Moses in Matthew's Gospel Jesus Jesus goes up on the the mount and he delivers an interpretation of the law of Moses because for Matthew's Gospel Jesus is the new Moses he's not a new Moses who replaces the old Moses the old Moses is still there but Jesus gives his interpretation of the law which now has to be followed so you have to follow the law and you have to follow Jesus interpretation of the law it's an interesting question whether the Gospel of Matthew thinks that the followers of Jesus have to be Jews I don't think there's an easy answer to this question because Matthew doesn't come out and say when Matthew does talk about the laws that people have to follow in every case it's it's things like adultery and murder and and and and turning the other cheek and so on and so on it's not it doesn't talk about laws like laws of circumcision or kosher food so it's hard to know does Jesus want his followers to keep to keep everything in the law some scholars think the answer is yes that Matthew wanted his followers to be Jews and other thing either - no no that that maybe he's just interpreting maybe ethical laws instead of ritual laws it's an open question what's not an open question is that Matthew had a high evaluation of the law and thought that Jesus followers had to follow the law rigorously Jesus own interpretation of the law in a sense becomes the new law you have to follow not just the prescriptions of Moses but Jesus interpretation of the prescriptions of Moses let me take a step back now and ask what Jesus himself thought I've talked about what the Marcion in tonight's thought Jesus taught and what the ebee Knights thought Jesus taught but Barnabas thought Jesus taught now what Matthew thought Jesus what did Jesus teach there is as you know an enormous range abuse about what Jesus actually said said during his ministry and so I'm going to give you a rather non controversial aspect of this Jesus in relationship to the law virtually virtually everybody that I know of who works on the historical Jesus thinks that Jesus was and meant to be law observant that Jesus himself followed the Jewish law sometimes it's it's thought that Jesus wasn't following the law because he's breaking the Sabbath all over the place when you actually read the New Testament Gospels it's very hard to find any place where Jesus breaks the Sabbath you can find places where Jesus breaks how other Jews might have interpreted how you're supposed to observe the Sabbath but you can't really find places where Jesus actually does things that are outlawed in the law of Moses with respect to Sabbath so there are different opinions about what I meant to observe the Sabbath and Jesus had one set of opinions that others others had different opinions about pretty much it looks like Jesus was law observant Jesus was almost certainly a teacher of the law if Jesus was a teacher of any sort it was certainly a Jewish teacher what does a Jewish teacher teach in the first century he teaches the law his interpretation of the law so Jesus observed the law and he taught the law Jesus did have disagreements with other teachers especially Pharisees Jesus wasn't the only one who had disagreements with Pharisees Sadducees had disagreements with Pharisees as scenes had disagreements with Pharisees and most especially Pharisees had disagreements with Pharisees there were all sorts of disagreements within Judaism it continues down to today as you know Jesus had disagreements with other teachers that doesn't make him anti-jewish or undo or non Jewish or against the law it simply makes him a Jewish teacher did Jesus plan to start a new religion virtually everybody who works on the historical Jesus today from a critical perspective will say the answer's no Jesus was not planning to start some kind of new religion that was separate from Judaism Jesus was a Jew who followed Jewish customs and kept the Jewish law and was a Jewish teacher who had Jewish disciples whom he taught the Jews understanding the Jewish law Jesus may have wanted to present his own interpretation what it meant to be one of the people of God but that wasn't to start a new religion Christianity Christianity starts after Jesus day it's not something that Jesus himself wanted to start and so if that's the case why did Christians end up changing what it was that Jesus taught so this last set of points is what I'm going to conclude with it's going to take me about 10 minutes I think to develop this point after Jesus died his followers proclaimed that he was the Jewish Messiah it may be that some of Jesus followers thought that he was the Messiah before he died but it is certain that after he died his followers are calling him the Messiah they called him the Messiah so much and so frequently that in fact Messiah did become his last name Christ becomes functioning as a name in Christianity Jesus Christ or Jesus the Messiah Christ is the Greek word for the Hebrew word Messiah what does it mean to call somebody the Messiah here's another thing that my students absolutely don't understand my students tend to think that if you call somebody Messiah that means you're calling them God no being a Messiah has nothing to do with being God for most Jews it could haven't defined it for most Jews no being Messiah was not then go what was it being so let me give you just the very brief history lesson on the term Messiah the word Messiah in Hebrew like the Greek word Christ literally means Anointed One the Anointed one originally it was used of the kings of Israel the king of Israel starting with King Saul the first king then King David then King Solomon the Kings were made King say during a coronation ceremony by having oil poured on their head part of the coronation ceremony having oil poured on their head they were anointed with oil as a sign of divine favor favored by God the Anointed One the Anointed One originally refers to the king and in the in the Christian Old Testament in the book of second Samuel the second King the great King David is told by God that he will always have a descendant sitting on the throne David will always have a descendant sitting on the throne the kingly throne and so there'll always be a Davidic King in Jerusalem so that was true for about 400 years there always there was a dynasty a Davidic dynasty where there was a king on the throne until the Babylonians came in and destroyed Jerusalem and took the King off the throne what are people supposed to make of this promise of God that there will always be a Davidic King on the throne an anointed one on the throne if there's no longer a king on the throne some Jewish thinkers started to think that there'd be a future King on the throne a future Anointed One the Messiah was that future Anointed One a king like David a great political military leader who would sit on the throne and re-establish Israel as a state as a kingdom by the time of Jesus there were people who expected that the future Messiah would be that kingly figure there were other Jews had other expectations about what a future Anointed One would be there were some who thought that this this future figure who led Israel would be more of a cosmic figure a divine like being who would come from heaven to destroy the enemies of God and set up God's kingdom on earth call him call him the Messiah call him the son of man Colin Colin there were various things they called it this future one there are other Jews who expected that the future ruler of Israel would be a great priest who had interpreted the law of God for his people and rule over his people with with a very stern fist but as a great interpreter of the law a powerful priest who would rule the people there are various expectations about what the Messiah would be like but one thing all of these expectations had in common was that the Messiah would be a future figure of grandeur and power who would rule over the people of Israel typically would overthrow the enemy and set up Israel as its own Kingdom a figure of grandeur and power Christians came along and they said Jesus is the Messiah there was a very real problem with that declaration everyone knew that Jesus had been crucified Jesus did not destroy the enemy and set up a kingdom in Israel Jesus was destroyed by the enemy Jesus was publicly tortured to death humiliated and tortured to death that's the Messiah that's not the Messiah that's the opposite of the Messiah so when I try to get my students to understand what what it's like for for a first century Jew to agree Jesus is the Messiah crucified criminals the Messiah well what I used to do I can't do it anymore because now my students don't remember who David Koresh was but what I used to do was I would say that the kind of gut feeling you'd have by saying Jesus is the Messiah is a gut feeling that you yourself would have if I told you that I think David Koresh is the Lord of the universe David crash you mean that guy at Waco the Branch Davidian and stockpiling arms and abusing kids and and and who got killed by the FBI that's the lord of the universe yes that's the Lord of the universe what are you crazy that so that's so yeah so I used to get in trouble in this on my my class because every year I get my course evaluations back and get about half a dozen who would say I can't believe that Herman thinks that David Koresh is the Lord of the universe okay so so that's not why I was that I'm saying that that it's just David Koresh is the opposite for most for most people so Christians said that Jesus was the Messiah and most Jews absolutely rejected it the vast majority of Jews did and do reject this claim while the early Christians are proclaiming that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah you have the phenomenon of the Apostle Paul Paul himself was a Jew was a Pharisee was a apparently a strict and highly religious Jew who because of the vision that he had of Jesus came to think that Jesus had been raised from the dead Paul came to think apparently maybe at his conversion right after his conversion came to think that Jesus death was absolutely the key to salvation to being made right with God and that since Jesus death is what made people right with God nothing else had any relationship to being right with God it was only the death and resurrection of Jesus that mattered Paulette Paul's been raised as a lob serve in Jew who thought that the law really mattered but he came to think that when it came to a relationship with God the law actually didn't matter because of the law matter God wouldn't have had Jesus died Paul knew that God had had Jesus died because Paul knew that Jesus had been raised from the dead if Jesus got raised from the dead the only way to get raised from the dead is if God raised him if God raised him that shows that God favoured him if God favored him then his death must have been something God planned his death must be some kind of sacrifice for others but that means that it's the sacrifice of Jesus that matters not the law and so Paul came to think that people could be right with God could have salvation apart from the law by believing in the death or resurrection of Jesus and so Paul saw himself as the apostle to the Gentiles he wanted to convert Gentiles and he did he started his Gentile mission Paul converted Gentiles and Paul had much more success then his Jewett then his counterparts who were trying to convert Jews mainly Gentiles were converting to Christianity if you've got a situation where most Jews are rejecting the message of Jesus and most of the people who are accepting the message of Jesus are Gentiles who don't keep the Jewish law why do Christians keep the Old Testament why do Christians keep the law if they're not going to follow the law and why even have an Old Testament there are lots of reasons why historically Christianity kept the Old Testament let me give you one of the reasons that most people have not thought of during Paul's day after Paul's day Christians found opposition from their pagan neighbors and from the Roman rulers on some occasions Christians were attacked for a reason that might not make much sense today but made a lot of sense in the ancient world when it came to ancient religion and philosophy ancient people really liked antiquity in the ancient world people like ancient stuff if you were a new religion there was something wrong you you had to have an Old Religion religions had to be old to be acceptable philosophies had to be around for a while to be accepted you've got a bit you've got to have antiquity Christians had to have the Old Testament because it gave them antiquity they could claim that their religion was as old as Moses Moses predicted Jesus Jesus is the fulfillment of the law the law was looking forward to Jesus and so Christians had to have the Old Testament and they claimed the Old Testament and they claimed the Old Testament was theirs and not the Jews because of the Jews could rightly claim it then the Christians could not rightly claim it Christians wanted to rightly claim it because they needed antiquity in order to to to have any credentials at all in the ancient world even though they had the law of Moses most Christians chose not to follow the law of Moses most Christians were Gentile they didn't circumcise their baby boys they didn't follow kosher food laws they didn't observe the Sabbath they didn't keep the Jewish festivals they didn't do the other parts of the law they didn't keep the law but they did want to keep the words of Jesus because they understood that the words of Jesus were a kind of new law Jesus is the one who tells us how we should live we keep the Old Testament because it provides us with our ancient roots but actually we follow the laws given by Jesus and the question is are these laws given by Jesus meant to be read interpretations of the law or are they meant to be replacements of the law this was an issue that different Christians had different views on as we have seen there remained Christians and still remain Christians who think that Christians should still follow the Jewish laws other Christians think that the law is an important part of the Christian canon but it's not to be followed my sense is that there are a lot of Christians in the world today who think that we have the law we have the Old Testament but they aren't really sure why they have the Old Testament this was a source of confusion in the ancient world and I think it continues to be a source of confusion today thank you very much we have we have about 15 minutes for questions if people have questions there are microphones here and you need to come up to the to mic to the mic if you want to ask a question Oh yes go ahead hi would you say a few words about the love theme and the teaching of Jesus and what your thoughts are opponent yeah the love theme in the teaching of Jesus so we have this passage in Matthew where a an expert of the law a lawyer comes up to Jesus and asks him master what is the greatest commandment and Jesus says and Jesus replies by quoting a passage from the book of Deuteronomy chapter 6 that the greatest commandment is you should love the Lord your God with all your heart soul and strength and then he says the second commandment is equal to this which is and then he quotes Leviticus chapter 19 verse 18 you shall love your neighbor as yourself Jesus then says on these two Commandments hang all the law and the prophets now as with most of the things that Jesus says in the New Testament it's very hard to know if this is actually something jesus said or if it's something that Matthew simply said that Jesus said or if it's something else but but it does seem like this teaching of love is a consistent teaching throughout a lot of the sayings of Jesus and so there are a lot of scholars who have said that Jesus understood that that Jesus understood that the entire law could be summed up in this this idea that you should look that you should love love God love your neighbor and that doesn't absolve you from like following the other parts of the law but it means that if you you know if you really want to get to the heart of the law that's the heart of the law and personally I'm inclined to that teaching I mean I'm kind of thinking that's that is that is an essence of what Jesus that Jesus was less concerned with with a lot of kind of fine-point niceties and was really concerned with the heart of the law which he saw as come as the dual love commandment yes so I'm sure I've read scholarship that indicates that James Peter some of the disciples immediately in the aftermath of the crucifixion were highly observant as traditional Jews if that's true how was that understood by the early you know second century Christians and how was it incorporated into this view as to I mean it's clear what Paul was doing but as for the behavior of those disciples in Jerusalem specifically yeah how is that dealt with in the 2,000 years afterwards yeah great so so what I want to do is kind of differentiate two things one is what was really the case with Peter and James and what they were really doing and the other is how they were later understood so Peter and James I think probably remained observant Jews and what the the Ebionites claimed that their teachings go went back to James so that the James the highly observant Jew and this is the true interpretation given to us by Jesus brother and so we continue to follow the law other other Christians in the second century got around that problem simply by denying it well actually no Peter and James they realize that Jesus polished the law so so so they came up with something so historically I think Peter James probably so these eBay nights these eBay nights are probably less like most Christians today the most most of these other early groups but in some ways they might have been representing the earliest form of Christianity which is interesting because what it means is that as Christianity develops what ends up being declared a heresy may have been the original form yeah yes yes I don't know if many people and perhaps and right or wrong but Bart has a fantastic blog that he's had gone and it's raised a lot of money Bart I would like you to speak to some of your favorite parts of this blog that you've been doing Thanks yeah okay yeah let me say something bout the blog I do do I try to say something about this in public events so yeah so I have a blog it's called the armen blog if you're interested in it look up the Bart Ehrman blog you'll find it so the deal with this blog is I I post five or six times a week and about a thousand words a day on everything having to do with the New Testament Jesus early Christianity the the Apostolic fathers the early the books that didn't make it into the New Testament the history of Christianity of Christians the role of women in Christianity the Hebrew Bible greco-roman where I mean like whatever I mean I deal with masters and stuff this thing's been going on for four and half years the only catch is to get on the blog you have to pay I charged 24.95 for a year subscription $24.95 now the reason I do this is because I give every penny to charity and so the blog is a way for me to raise money for charity it's the I mean I do it because I want to communicate knowledge frankly if it weren't for charity I wouldn't do it guess it takes too much time so I raise money for charity in this blog and so I'd like you should consider you should consider joining it I this this last year the blog raised 117 thousand dollars so it's you know it's like it's real money so and I give I give to charities dealing with hunger and homelessness so anyway if you're interested in the kind of things I've been talking about today this kind of stuff is going on in the vlog all the time and it's not much money I mean you know it's like you know what is it fifty cents a week the you pay but but it piles up when you get a lot of people on it so yeah so thank you for the pitch and I hope people will think about joining it so just just googled the Bart Ehrman blog yes so a question that's been much on my mind recently I'd like to get your comments on what was if anything the relationship between Jesus in the Essene movement was Jesus in a scene was this a context who's operating out of yes thank you so for those of you don't know the Essenes are usually thought of as the group produce the Dead Sea Scrolls and we know about the Essenes from from several sources we knew about them before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls but when the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered it was quickly thought that that probably this was produced by a group of Essenes so to kind of summarize the Essenes in a very simple way the Essenes maintained that they wanted to they wanted to preserve their own purity their ritual purity in away from the pollutions of the world and and so the Essene community that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls actually started kind of like a monastic like community off in the wilderness where they wouldn't be influenced by by by other people in the world including other Jews including like the Sadducees and the Pharisees and so and so they were starting there okay they had this own community and when the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered in 1947 one of the first thoughts that some people had was maybe this explains the origins of Christianity maybe you know you get this you get this group off in the wilderness declaring that the end is coming soon and the people need to be ready for the coming end and that sounds like Christianity and so maybe maybe like Jesus was in a scene or maybe maybe John the Baptist was in the scene and and so this became this became an important topic and for many people continues to be an important topic so let me tell you my view my view of it which is I don't think Jesus was in a scene or connect with the Dead Sea scroll community the REE one of the real reasons for that is that I think that his his his impulse in some ways was just the opposite so for the Essenes the idea is you need to remove yourself from impurity so that you yourself are not made impure and Jesus had just the opposite I mean Jesus is accused of hanging out with the tax collectors and sinners and the prostitutes and so he's just doing the he's doing the ah he exact the opposite approach and so it doesn't sound like an Essene to me so then the questions will was John the Baptist in the scene you know he's off in the wilderness he's talking about the coming Kingdom and so it's possible but there's I think there's really no evidence that he was with the senior and and the Essenes are not out there trying to to get converts I mean John the Baptist is like baptizing people wanting people to come to him and these scenes are more not like that so so I don't think what I think's going on is you get different movements in Judaism at the time who are thinking that the end of the age is coming soon and they have various ways of approaching that and the Essenes have away John the Baptist is way Jesus is away and then the followers of Jesus end up being added so it's not that they're all like connected to each other directly it's that they're all sharing the same basic worldview in my opinion thank you you are hi hi I don't know how familiar you might be with breslov casitas I'm tired with I know it's not your area of expertise it's many centuries later but a breslav hassid it no I'm not okay there's the the concept that the Tzadik suffers on behalf of the people and he can die to atone for their sins this being applicable for many za became righteous people do you think that this is perhaps why Paul stressed the death of Jesus so much because this kind of atoning death also was pertaining to Gentiles in his view yeah I mean I think it's very hard to know where Paul and others are getting their ideas about the death of Jesus leading to some kind of atonement you know it's it's so hard to know where this is coming from is it coming from traditional Jewish understandings of sacrifice for example does they think this replaces the sacrificial system in the temple was there some previous kind of existing theology that he's buying into I just don't think we have the sources of information in order to know okay thank you you're welcome Jesus was a Jew and we have the Hebrew Bible as part of our Bible how did anti-semitism become part of Christianity ha right yes I see I have 30 seconds to answer this question right how did anti-semitism because okay well actually it's related to what I was saying I think at the end of this lecture so it's obviously very long it's obviously a very long complicated story first thing I do not use the term anti-semitism with respect to the ancient world I think the idea of anti-semitism that I'm just talking right now I'm just talking about the term the term is applicable I think to the to the modern world starting with the development of anthropological theories of race that you especially get starting in the 19th century where semi being a Semite means belonging to a race and it's a matter of blood its birth and blood before the development of these race theories the problem wasn't Semitic blood the problem was being a Jew and so if you could convert a Jew to being a Christian then that was fine but during the Holocaust if you were Jew converted to Christian it didn't matter because you were still a semi see that's it's even more insidious so with the ancient world I don't think we're talking about anti-semitism we're talking about the opposition to Jews and you don't get a lot of opposition to Jews as Jews prior to Christianity you get of course you get Greeks and Romans to make fun of Jews but they make fun of everybody who's not a Greek or a Roman so you know Jews were not kind of separated off and and attack it moat most of the time where you do start getting opposition to Jews for being Jews is in Christianity it's because of what I was saying at the end which is most you simply rejected the Christian claim that Jesus was the Messiah this is the very heart of the Christian claim this is the essence of Christianity that Jesus is the Messiah and most Jews rejected this claim Christians for reasons of their own wanted to clay that the Jewish Scriptures were their scriptures and so Christians are feeling rejection from the Jews and they want to hold on to the Christian Jewish Scriptures even though Jews and it just leads to antagonism and so you start getting antagonism already in the New Testament period where and you have reflections of the sent agonism in the Gospels where in the Gospel of Matthew the the Roman governor who crucified Jesus washes his hands and says I'm innocent of this man's blood and the Jewish be all the people it says all the people cried out his blood be upon us and our children the Jewish people taking responsibility for the death of Jesus in the Gospel of John written later Jesus is talking to a group of of Jews and they're called the Jews as if it's all the Jews and he has this this controversy with them and in Chapter 8 Jesus says that they're not the children of God they're the children of the devil Wow so I'm listen so this is just already in the New Testament when you get into the second century the the vast majority of Christians are Gentile you get a few Jews and kind of on the margins like the Ebionites but the but but Christians in order to justify their own theology and their own beliefs have to reject Jews and they do and it leads to a lead to the Epistle Barnabas and later in that century it leads to Melito of Sardis Melito of Sardis is a preacher who we didn't we knew of his existence we didn't know really what he thought or said until a discovery of a sermon of his in the 1940s in the sermon he preached on the occasion of the Jewish Passover Feast in which he declared that Jesus was the true Passover and that the Jews rejected their own Passover lamb but more than that Jesus actually was God and the Jews killed him which means according to Milito the Jews killed their own God so Milito is the first to charge Jews with dsi the murder of God and so the thing is when when when you have people in the second century saying things like this like Barnabas or Milito when they're saying things like this they are a tiny little minority and Jews are a fairly substantial group so at this time there might be something like at the time of Milito there might be something like on a four million Jews in the Roman Empire and maybe like you know a couple hundred thousand Christians and so they're the tiny minority the problem is Christianity took off and it became massive and in the fourth century it took over the Roman Empire by the end of the fourth century there's something like thirty million Christians in the world and the reason that was a problem is because those later Christians started taking that earlier rhetoric seriously and started acting out on it that if you say God and God hates Jews will if we're on God's side we're going to hate Jews and in fact if God's going to punish Jews we need to punish Jews and so by the end of the fourth century you start getting very serious anti-jewish legislation passed by Roman emperors and that just leads them to the whole history of anti Judaism through the Middle Ages and down to the history of anti-semitism in the modern world it's a very ugly history and it's not a history that had to happen it's not in the history that has to continue because Jesus was a Jew and it's following the Jews and so obviously there can be there can be very positive coexistence and there there there needs to be even though of course in some places is still there's not I needed something my time is up thank you very much I've enjoyed David

Channel: Bart D. Ehrman

Views: 531,409

Rating: 4.6204839 out of 5

Keywords: University of Michigan, Bart Ehrman, New Covenant, Law of Moses, Torah, Mendenhall Symposium

Id: IOPd80FN2ew

Length: 78min 14sec (4694 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 20 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Gh0sT07]

I would highly recommend his book, Misquoting Jesus if you haven't read it already.

[u/Strid3r21]

I want to thank you for post this. I'd never heard of Bart before but I've gone down a rabbit hole of his videos and even downloaded some of his lectures on audible.

Really fascinating stuff and very informative.

Thanks!

[u/ocdthrowaway1010]

What would you say if someone made the argument that Jesus did act as a future messiah because the nation of Israel now exists and is backed by what are traditionally "Christian" nations?

I'm not trying to make this argument, I can just see someone making it and I'm not sure what I'd say to them.

EDIT : The corresponding part I'm talking about begins at around the 48min mark.