Joseph, the "Father" of Jesus.

[Music] welcome to misquoting Jesus with Bart Man the only show where a six-time New York Times best-selling author and world-renowned Bible scholar uncovers the many fascinating little known facts about the New Testament the historical Jesus and the rise of Christianity I'm your host Megan Lewis let's begin hello everyone and welcome back to misquoting Jesus the last time Bart and I recorded we spoke about jesus' Mother Mary but what about Joseph what role does he play in the story of jesus' birth and what other stories about him developed in Christianity's early days do the non-canonical gospels tell us anything that the New Testament doesn't and why does he have such a secondary role in Christianity before we get to that though but hello how are you doing today uh I'm doing well so uh while we're recording this I'm looking forward to Christmas when it's playing we've just finished Christmas so uh right December 26 is uh for me is always kind of like uh somewhere between kind of a anticlimax letdown and a relief because it's always uh um you know and Christmas there's there it's funny how we a lot rides on holidays and I think I think it's one reason that um so many people find Christmas a difficult holiday instead of a time of Joys because uh there's so much pressure put on the day that um it can to very difficult things and obviously families get together sometimes when they don't want to and when they but but in my case we we've spent Christmas um for many years uh at Sarah's mom's house in uh Woodbridge which is in suffk in England and um we you know it's always great uh we we really enjoy it but uh it can be fraught for some people how how about you you looking forward to the uh the day I am I am I I enjoy Christmas day very much and I really enjoy the day after Christmas in the UK as you will know B is boxing day and it's for our family kind of a continuation of Christmas we kind of get up late and have a nice breakfast together we will usually have like old family friends coming over um or at least we did when I was a child obviously I don't live at home with my parents anymore um but I have very very fond memories of boxing day and um trying to recreate that for our children just having a a nice relaxed day that they can play with their presents and and have good food and spend time together I think most America most Americans don't know about boxing day and those who here think that there's some kind of athletic contest going on but so it's that was tradition give me I've heard number of stories about this but just I think I've got the right one but I probably don't that um the uh the the uh Ser people who were the servants would be given uh box lunches that day is that right so yeah so it's um it very very classist but uh the origins are it it was the day where servants typically would be given the day off and be given a box of food and maybe gifts to take home and enjoy with their families because obviously they've spent Christmas Day preparing Christmas for the family that they work for so so boxing day is is the day where those who are in service to others um get their day off it doesn't I was going to say doesn't really happen anymore but I'm sure for families with servant maybe it is still a thing I don't know we don't we don't have I I don't know too many families with servants in England anymore but uh yeah it was it was the thing but yeah it's it's it's a a day off it's a holiday still in in the UK um but yeah it's it's a good day um but today we are talking about Joseph and you of course just did a course on the 10th of December to a two-part course talking about this so if you enjoy this and would like more information and and more details then you can go and and watch the course the details are at b.com Joseph and you can use MJ podcast for your discount code but on not quite such a detailed level we're going to be chatting about him today and I wanted to start by asking if all of the gospels talk about Joseph Mary's husband or if he only appears in a couple of them uh yeah I mean he he he appears in one way or another other um he's not named in all the gospels but um he is uh referenced uh in all four gospels uh and uh consistently named uh Joseph um the reason that matters it wouldn't matter for normal Bible readers because they just well if the Bible says his name is Joseph his name is Joseph right but the for historical Scholars who trying to figure out like the past and how you use the Bible as a historical Source it really helped if you have various uh independent sources giving the same datum and so um if you had like three gospels that said his name was Joseph and the other saying it was Samuel then you might wonder and you think well that seems unlikely right well no it's not unlikely because the names of Jesus disciples vary the gospels all say he had 12 but what were their names and so so you can get varies of names but in this case Joseph is always name and uh so you know it looks like father was Joseph do is do historians assume that he actually existed and if they do then what can we say about the historical figure I think historians assume that that uh in one way or another Jesus father existed and I think I think since he's named Joseph and there's no like alternative there's no reason to think it wasn't Joseph it's you know a lot of times when you get a like a datum about Jesus in the gospel it's one you might question because it seems like it's fulfilling some kind of like purpose like it's like a Storyteller might want to insist you know that he walked on water you know because that would that would highlight something about him that would be significant for the Storyteller but it doesn't really look like the name Joseph is gonna give a lot of purchase it was a it was a popular name at the time uh as was Jesus and James and a lot of these other people have well-known names and so um so uh I think Scholars assume there was a Joseph that he was the father of Jesus and um you know there there are other things in the gospels that are fairly consistently reported about Joseph I think can give us some information about him so both Matthew and Luke give a genealogy of Joseph but they are not the same thing so how do we explain those differences obviously that it's the name is the same so that's that's fine but the different genealogies must be doing something different the genealogies are really interesting I'm going to be I deal with this at greater length in my in that course that I did and in other places I've talked about it and many people might know this but if you if you actually just look at the two genealogies they're different genealogies and um in in in uh Matthew's genealogy it actually starts with the father of the Jews and it goes from father and son so Abraham was the father of Isaac was the father of Jacob and so forth and you get on down until you get to another person named Jacob who's the father of Joseph um and so uh you get you know you get the the lineage going down to Joseph and then the lineage breaks because in Matthew Jesus is not Joseph's son um and so the genealogy is tracing it all the way down to Joseph and then Jesus is born and and I you know to Mary and I think the assumption there in Matthew is maybe Joseph adopts Jesus or something there's it doesn't say but in some way it's a little bit odd though because it's giving a genealogy uh it's trying to show that Jesus is related to both King David and to Abraham and all these other Jewish folk in between but it's showing that he's related to people he's not related to other words he's not in the genealogical line that's a little bit strange but you know what are you going to do I me his mother's a virgin so so Matthew uh has that Luke Luke also has a genealogy of of Jesus but there it starts it goes instead of going from father to son it goes from son to Father And So It traces it the other way and so Jesus is supposedly the son of Joseph and Joseph is the son of so and so and so and so and so and so and it goes all the way back and in this case it goes beyond Abraham it goes back to Adam Adam and Eve so it's a really big genealogy um but there again Jesus isn't related to it both of them give a genealogy of Joseph many people have tried to reconcile their differences uh but the reality is they both go back they both go back to Joseph uh explicitly and in order to show Jesus uh genealogical line the problem is that Joseph has a different father in the two genealogies and a different grandfather and a different great-grandfather they're different they are different it's a different line all the way back to King David um one of accounts traces the davidic line through King Solomon David's son Solomon the other traces it through Nathan his other son one of his other sons and so they're different genealogies and so you wonder why you have two genealogies neither of which relates to Jesus and that are different and uh ultimately I think they're both trying to say that Jesus is related to the davidic line and uh and that that qualifies him then to be the son of David which qualifies him to be the Messiah is there anything specific in the differences that speak to the purposes of of Mark not Mark Matthew and Luke in writing the the names that they did obviously they're both indicating relationships to very important figures in Jewish history King David Adam why would they have chosen different lines of descent um so the different lines of descent go from David down and I'm not sure that there's any particular reason that uh one of them CH chose David's son Solomon and the other chose David's son Nathan but my I think the normal assumption is that they're not making these genealogies up they've inherited genealogies from the tradition and that any tradition that wants to trace Jesus back to David has to have some kind of genealogy and there are lots of options because David had several sons and so they just the people who are making up this genealogy are simply coming up with names um most of the names um in both genealogies most of the names are previous to David and those are coming from the Old Testament uh especially the book of First Chronicles where you have you have nine chapters of genealogy and and they're tracing the they have those names but after David they're kind of on their own um and so they trace it back to a different son I don't think for any particular reason but then they just have to come up with a bunch of names and um let me say PE people listening to this and a lot of students tell me that you know they've always heard that Jews kept you know genealogical records of their ancestry and um I think the reason people think that is because of First Chronicles and because of Matthew and Luke in in reality Jews were not keeping their genealogical lines anymore than we are I mean today you can go to ancestors.com or something and get it but you can't can't really get the names but but you you can do research and get the names but most most most Jews in the Jesus day had no idea what their great-grandfather's name was and let like it happened it's certainly not their great great great-grandfather and something so the these are madeup genealogies in order to show Jesus relationship in in Matthew's case to a to Abraham the father of the Jews and in Luke's case to Adam the father of the human race and they're both trying to say something by that but they're both they're both as you said they're both genealogies of Joseph not genealogies of Jesus why would they include genealogies of Joseph if he is not in either of these books related to Jesus does that suggest that maybe they think he was kind of his father what's going on there that's a very good point and I'm GNA be pursuing I pursue that in in my course because um you know if Jesus was the son of Joseph then it would make sense to have these genealogies but Matthew and Luke both think that he wasn't the son of Joseph they can't they both have to have the genealogy because they're trying to show that he goes back to David Son of David and it goes back you know to Abraham father of the Jews or going back to Adam the father of the human race so he's either you he's a savior of the Jews in Matthew he's a savior of Gentiles as well in Luke and so that's why it goes back to to Adam they can't trace the genealogy of Mary because in the ancient world women didn't have you know the genealogical lines it's it's Patrol linear goes through the father so they can't do a genealogy of Mary I'll say that one way people try to reconcile a difference between these two is by saying that Luke's genealogy is Mary's genealogy and that Matthews is Joseph's genealogy which kind of makes sense until you look at the genealogies and it's quite clear they are both Joseph's genealogy um so they they want they want to trace these genealogical lines uh because they want to show Jesus could be the savior of the human race he could be the Savior you know the son of David and he is for them but it creates a problem because they also want to say that he's born of a virgin so you got Joseph's genealogical line unrelated uh and it could be that originally these were genealogical lines of Joseph the father of Jesus so is there anything in the New Testament that suggests that Joseph was actually viewed as Jesus real father before the the Virgin birth became main mainstream and white spread yeah so this this is what my course my course is I spent two lectures on this so I'm going to give you know the 30 second version here but um it is interesting um not only about the genealogies but also that there are places where um Joseph is called Jesus father um and so in the story of Jesus in the uh Temple as a uh 12-year-old he's uh uh he's left behind by the Caravan uh 3 days later they search around they find him in the temple and his mother finds him and in the temple speaking to the Jewish teachers and she's very upset and she says why have you done this to us your father and I have been looking all over for you and so okay well that's kind of interesting in the Gospel of John um Joseph is mentioned twice and is called the father of Jesus he's the father um one of the really interesting stories is in Mark's gospel in in Mark's gospel for one thing uh both okay for for one thing there's no virgin birth another thing is already in chapter 3 you have an account you do have an account of Jesus mother Jesus mother and his brothers come to take him out of the public view because um he's Gathering these crowds and they think he's doing strange things and they think he's gone out of his mind and that's what it says his mothers and brothers his mother and his brothers came uh to take out of the public because they thought that he ecstatic is the term but standing outside of himself means he's they think he's going to out of his mind that's strange if his mother knew that she was a virgin and that he was the son of God she would expect him to be doing Miracles and to have crowds around odd behavior yeah but in Mark she's not there's no virgin birth story and so the Assumption there seems to be that that he has Brothers he has sisters and that um that mother is still alive at that point but there's no reference to his father there but the assumption is that she doesn't know she's a about the Virgin birth because otherwise she wouldn't think he's crazy so we don't have have anything else really about Joseph in in the New Testament do you see anything developing of there stories that develop after the the New Testament um there are some Joseph ends up not being the main figure um in uh apocal stories about Jesus uh but there are there are some stories that are pretty uh they're pretty interesting uh in a podcast a few weeks ago Christopher FR Lingus and I were talking about the infancy Gospel of Thomas which is an account of Jesus uh activities as a young boy between the years five and 12 and Joseph appears in a number of those stories as um as kind of the disciplinarian in the family he's portrayed as a carpenter in the family uh as he is in the new test as well it's called a carpenter although that's a term we should talk about in a second uh he's um uh and he uh on several occasions he upgrades Jesus for doing things that are mischievous and not right early on uh Jesus is making uh he's by the stream of a he's by the he's by a stream and he's taking some of the mud and he's making sparrows makes 12 sparrows out of this this mud and a Jewish man walks by really it's the day of the s Sabbath and Jesus is breaking the Sabbath so he goes off and tells Joseph your son's breaking the Sabbath and S Joseph comes what are you doing you're not supposed to be working on the Sabbath and so you have that kind of episode and and um where Jesus has this confrontation with him and later Joseph decides that Jesus needs to have some learning because obviously that would help and so he sends them off to teachers and and so Joseph is involved in some of those stories that are very uh they're kind of interesting anecdotes um and so you you sometimes do get apocryphal accounts of him are there any other stories about Joseph that give us more information well there there's one account that is not well known even among people who uh study the non-canonical gospels um it's not very well known because it wasn't popular through the Middle Ages or down till today it's not in Greek or Latin there's uh it's a book called the history of uh Joseph the carpenter and it's an apocryphal story that's found in only three ancient manuscripts uh one is uh in Arabic and two of them are in Coptic the ancient Egyptian language uh it's an account of Jesus talking to his Apostles about his father and it's a lengthy account where he describes um he he actually describes a couple of things including his own birth uh and what happened at his birth with Joseph and Mary his and he's descri this in the first person so the book is written in the third person about something Jesus is saying okay so he's not writing this he's he's preaching this thing to his disciples and he describes uh Joseph and Mary and how he himself was born and it goes from that to the death of Joseph and he gives a detailed description of Joseph's death and in this account Joseph lives to be 111 years old and uh Jesus is at his deathbed and he won't promise his father eternal life at the time and he ends up he ends upom promising that he will protect him and and after Joseph dies he preserves the body from uh deterioration and uh and so it's Jesus own account of his father so this is Jesus the uh um the H the history of Joseph the carpenter you can if anyone's interested in this they can find it in this this book that my colleague Zopa and I produced called the other gospels and uh zako did a translation of this out of the Coptic so it's not very widely known it's pretty interesting story you said a couple of answers ago that we should talk about Joseph as a carpenter so what what's going on with that yeah so that's yeah okay so um you know people tend to think that Jesus was a carpenter um and they don't realize that there's only one verse in the New Testament that says that and it may not say that and so it's in it's in Mark chapter 6 uh in Mark chapter 6 um Jesus goes into the first part of Mark 6 Jesus goes uh to his hometown to Nazareth and he starts teaching in the synagogue and the um people in the synagogue are kind of looking around saying where did he get all this wisdom from these are these are people you grew up with and they're kind of wondering what how'd he get so smart and they say uh isn't he the isn't this the Carpenter and isn't his like isn't his mother here and her brothers and sisters and names the brothers and so where' he get all this wisdom from all right so a couple things to be said so he's called a Jesus is called a carpenter there but there's a textual variant in other words there's some manuscripts that read it differently in some manuscripts it doesn't say that he's the son of that that he's the carpenter but that he's the son of the Carpenter and that's what you also find in the gospel of Matthew that he's the son of the Carpenter and so it's not clear whether Mark originally called Jesus a carpenter or called his father a carpenter Matthew calls his father a carpenter and it would make sense if if that was the case that that his eldest son would be a carpenter but it's not clear that the word means Carpenter so the word Mark uses is uh tectone and it doesn't necessarily mean carpenter a tectone is somebody who works with their hands somebody who makes things and so it's a word that could be used for say uh somebody who carves Stone a stone Smith or who works with metal a metal Smith a blacksmith uh it could be somebody who works with wood which would be a carpenter um if it does refer to somebody who works with wood it's not referring to somebody who makes fine Cabinetry uh it's it's uh in in that context it would be somebody who's making like Gates and yolks and kind of rough hee things um so whether Jesus is called the tectone or the father in either case in Matthew it's the father Joseph if Joseph is a tectone uh he may be a carpenter the other thing about that though is to uh point out that in Roman Roman Elite authors Elite authors among the Romans um who talk about various kinds of professions tectone is understood to be a very lower class kind of profession it's not a respectable job for the elite and it'd be like um I guess it'd be kind of like a Harvard professor or saying something about the construction workers outside his window you know be more like a construction worker kind of kind of level so we're not talking about like a a businessman making making fine cabinets but so um it's usually thought that you know that makes sense that Joseph would have been been doing something like that so how would that inform our understanding of Jesus kind of so socioeconomical background and and his class status and and and the opportunities that he would have had based on that life lifestyle yeah um you know the um the tradition consistently throughout the New Testament is that Jesus comes from Nazareth uh there wasn't much to Nazareth at the time archaeologists have uh have dug it up and they they know what it was like and there wasn't much there there were no public buildings um there were rough hee houses made out of stone they probably used U straw or um or cow manure to to insulate them um maybe like one room Shacks everybody would live and sleep in um and if he was if Joseph was a carpenter um it would mean probably that they they they would have had probably would have had a kind of a farm plot to grow their own food and then on a kind of a barter system he would have worked for somebody in exchange for some you know eggs or something I don't know kind of a barter thing but this is a very low associ economic class uh uh people like that would have been uneducated um they uh would never have gone to school they would be living a hand to mouth existence very close to the poverty line or probably in poverty um and uh if Jesus had a large family as Mark indicates Mark names four brothers and sisters plural so even if they're two or three sisters you have uh plus Jesus you'd have eight kids so it's a family of can uh and they're they're basically trying to survive and so Joseph probably would mainly be you know raising vegetables and things and uh doing exchange work for uh working with wood why don't we see Joseph really coming into Jesus life after the birth narratives take place um it's a much debated question because in the gospels Mary shows up after so after the birth narratives after chapters 1 and two Mary shows up uh on occasions all the way to his death in the Gospel of John um she um shows up in his public Ministry in Mark chapter 6 and in Mark chapter 3 and so Mary's around but Joseph isn't named um the usual explanation for this is that Joseph had died by the time Jesus was engaged in his public Ministry we don't know um when that would have been uh life expectancy was not good generally for people uh at this time especially for um day laborers and um lower class folk in rural areas uh work to survive was hard there wasn't a lot of food um and um not a lot of you know there just weren't opportunities for longevity um and so life expectancy would be short and typically men would marry when they were older than women um women were normally married in this context when they when they when they started menstruating because then they could have children and the idea is that the you need to have a lot of children uh you especially want male children because they can help more around the farm and uh and do and do things to earn some kind kind of Revenue um and as I said I it looks like according to to Mark there'd be five boys and at least two girls and so it's a family of nine or 10 probably and so um that's how you know so that's that's kind of the situation they're in and and the the uh if if Joseph was older when he married uh Mary then you know he would have died sooner men tend to die sooner anyway but if he's older then so likely is he if Jesus starts his ministry sometime as as a young adult then Joseph is probably dead already this is part of what lies behind the idea that Joseph was an old man is that you know it's more typical that way that old older men would marry would this explain why Jesus entrusts Mary to to John when he's on the cross because that she doesn't have a husband to take care of her yeah you know in in uh this context throughout the Roman World generally but also in Judaism uh women were understood to uh not just be kind of helped out by the males in their life but more or less to be to belong to the man and so a woman who a girl is born when a child is born it's a girl she she's the father's property and he determines what she can and cannot do uh and he he calls the shots he does for the boys too but it's especially true for the women because as the women get older and older the teenagers and into their 20s the father is in charge of this person person and has the say over her life and when the woman gets married if she like gets married say at 13 or 14 then the father hands her over to the husband who now is her master and you know often just called master um and so the um so the males are very important uh in the lives of the females because females don't have lives outside their home so in the Gospel of John when Jesus is being um being crucified um he I guess it sounds like when Joseph if if Joseph had died Jesus as the oldest son would have care of Mary uh because she needs to have a male in charge and then Jesus is dying and so he hands her off to this uh this disciple of his at the foot of the cross and says behold your son and so the son is now to be the son of this mother and and he's to take care of her so final question before we start to wrap up for today Mary I'd said in the beginning is definitely I think the more famous of Jesus mortal parents did Joseph have really any importance in early Christianity or is this this more of a shift away from him that we see in in more modern times uh no I think in early Christianity he was important uh as well not as important as Mary uh Mary's especially important because you know she's the virgin mother so she's the one responsible for jesus' death Joseph had for his birth Joseph had nothing to do with it uh and you know in our earliest traditions in Matthew and Luke when Joseph finds out that she's pregnant he's he's not just surprised he's kind of you know he's really upset he tries to divorce her and and then he finds out from God that that that it's okay that she's been impregnated by the Holy Spirit but he so he doesn't really play a large role in Jesus birth um he doesn't play a large role in his min Ministry doesn't play any role in his ministry whereas Mary is uh the Virgin and so she's the one that most attention uh is paid to but over time Joseph continues to have kind of secondary importance he shows up in these apocryphal gospels uh sometimes and people start thinking about him and you start getting stories about him um in uh in gospels in something like the uh the Proto Gospel of James where he um he's an important figure in this uh in this other gospel this protog gopel of James uh played more of a role uh and over time people started saying that well since he's so closely involved with with Jesus he um he too was a saint uh and so he he takes on sainthood and that means as we said in a previous episode that means that since he's a saint he must have been celibate and if he was celibate then uh then you have to explain who these sons of Joseph are or these brothers of Jesus are and so it leads to all sorts of speculation but in terms of kind of Christian piety uh Joseph is nowhere near as important figure uh as Mary um who becomes called the mother of God and uh by the fifth century that becomes a title becomes a controversial title for uh Mary being called the mother of God but if she gives birth to Jesus and Jesus is God she's the mother of God and Joseph doesn't inherit titles like that or take on the kind of elevated status that Mary does even though he continues to be important figure the irony of that all that is he was a far more important figure because if if it's right that the that the New Testament suggests in places that he was literally Jesus father well that makes him a pretty important person for the history of the universe absolutely I have to say talking about this uh puts me in mind of the Vicor of dibl I don't know if you're familiar it's a TV show was a TV show the late ' 90s early 2000s following um a vica in a a priest in the UK in the Anglican Church in a small rural parish and at one of the Christmas specials they put on a nativity play and choose a local couple to be Mary and Joseph and and the woman in question is very pregnant and does actually go on to give birth during their Nativity Play and she's she's not um she she's not the sharpest tool in the box and and then does go on to ask uh the Vicor if her child is Jesus um given that she she gave birth during during the Nativity but there's a beautiful scene during rehearsals where um the husband is instructed to act as if his wife had had become pregnant by someone else and they have like an honest to God fight about it um and it's it's a hilarious hilarious show I love fig dibl but yes it's kind of okay just call that all mind sorry little bit no that's good that's good yeah put it on the list okay good we are going to take a very quick break and then we'll be back with Bart's weekly update most people know many of the stories of Genesis the creation Adam and Eve Noah and the flood the stories about Abraham Isaac Jacob and Joseph but do you know what Scholars say about those accounts what Archaeology Science and History can reveal about them what their significance could be even if they aren't literally true enter Bible scholar Bart man's captivating online course in the beginning history Legend and myth in Genesis in six enlightening lessons you'll journey through questions like did Genesis borrow its stories from other cultures are these accounts historical or legendary and who were the real authors behind the pen whether you approach Genesis as a Believer a skeptic or simply a seeker of knowledge this course will challenge your understanding of these ancient narratives it's a unique opportunity to navigate the complexities of the Bible's most famous [Music] [Music] book don't miss out on this intellectual Adventure visit bart.com Genesis to learn more or sign up today and be sure to use discount code MJ podcast for a special [Music] discount this is Bart's weekly update where we get to catch up on all the latest about Dr er's book releases speaking engagements ER blog.org happenings and online course launches bot what is going on in your worlds this week well so uh when when this is playing will be December 26 as we've indicated and um our class has finished up before Christmas and um now um I I have a research leave for this semester and so this is the beginning of my research leave and I'm um I'm really excited about it because um it's very very hard uh for for AC academics to write books while they're teaching and it is the thing is it's not just teaching right University teaching is very different from you know teaching say a high school or an elementary school or middle school and those teachers man they're teaching all the time and uh your hats off to them just unbelievable what uh our children teachers do for them it's fantastic and University teaching is very different especially at a research University like I'm at where uh in addition to like being in the classroom you're supervising students and you're advising students and you're you're you know you're helping PhD students and master students and you're you've got all sorts of administrative responsibilities and meetings and and oh my God it's like it's a lot like it's just the teaching in the classroom is the tip of the iceberg and so but when you have an academic leave as I'm having this term like all of that gets knocked off and so you actually are free to do your research which is one of of the reasons you're hired and so I'm um so I'll be I'll be working on this next book I'm I'm dealing with uh on Jesus ethics and um uh interested in uh trying to finish the research soon and maybe uh maybe get the thing written before I have to go back and teach and so that's that's the goal it's very excit very exciting time that sounds wonderful I am I am very jealous I would like someone to give me some research leave um it's not going to happen because that involves small children being not small children I suspect well I was I was going to say that I would authorize you to take six months off but it won't do any good I appreciate the authorization though the kids will not authorize you but yeah okay it'll happen it'll happen it will it will but no that that sounds wonderful and I'm I'm looking forward to talking more about um the book that you're working on I know we've spoken about it in bits and pieces here and there but I'd like to well it changed signant oh good yeah yeah yeah yeah so oh that's exciting well I think it's changed it's changed my head I'm not sure if my agent or my publisher is going to agree that it's changed I think it has talk them round to it okay well we have another round of outsmart Bart it's been a few weeks so we have um two different audience members have sent in a selection of of three questions to try and stump B Dr man has written six New York Times best-selling books and holds a PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary it's not often you'll see him made a fool but it doesn't hurt to try it's time for outsmart [Music] Bart okay are you ready uh I hope question one in the martyrdom of polycarp how does the sman bishop request to be fixed to the p so he doesn't um he doesn't want to be fixed uh to the stake because um he he says that okay I should provide some background right people have no idea what we're talking about here the martyrdom of polycarp is one of the writings of the apostolic fathers um it uh polycarp is a bishop of the City of Smyrna uh and is an important figure in early historically he's an important figure in early 2 Century Christianity we know more about him than almost any other Christian at the time but he uh in this account he he faces his martyrdom and the martyrdom account is um filled with legendary details in part showing how closely his death represent reflects the death of Jesus um and um so and the account claims to be written by an eyewitness uh but many of us think that in fact it's not it written some decades later he was probably martyred Mar was maybe martyred in the 150 like 155 or something like that uh but the account claims to be an eyewitness account but it almost certainly was not I think uh in the account um polycarp uh they're ready to like tie him to the stake and he says uh leave me Unbound uh and he he's trying to show that he has the fortitude to suffer this death being burned to death without without flinching because you know Christ is on his side and so that's what happens what happens next is really interesting because the Flames don't touch his body and uh they envelop his body and uh and then instead of smelling like wreaking flesh like burning flesh a smell of a perfume comes uh out of it and they they decid they can't kill him that way so finally the an executioner goes up and stabs him in the side and he bleeds so much it puts out the fire and a dove comes out of his side and flies up to heaven whoa so uh yeah so he but he doesn't want to be he doesn't want to be fixed uh to the state because he wants to show his fortitude fantastic thank you uh second question in his letter to the sman congregation the apostolic father Ignatius of Antioch calls certain opponents those who hold heretical opinions about The Grace of Jesus Christ what are the heretical opinions um so let me see I think in the smans the heretical opinions are docetic understanding of Jesus that he was um uh that he was that he was divine but not human the answer given by the question is that they failed to acknowledge that the Eucharist was the Flesh of Christ I don't know the source material what offet yeah yeah no that that's right so the so the dose so um The docetic View so that's spelled doce uh TI I docetic come from the uh comes from the Greek word Doo which means to seem or to appear and Dost said that Jesus wasn't really a flesh and blood human being uh he's so Divine that he can't be uh that he can't be human and one of the uh implications of that is that when you take the Eucharist you're not consuming the real flesh and blood of Jesus because he didn't have didn't have any and so so uh this is one of the earliest uh accounts we have of somebody who's attacking Dosa Ignatius so this is the letters of part of Ignatius the writings of Ignatius who's who like polycarp is a is one of the writers and the apisto fathers and Ignatius wrote a letter to the smans when polycarp was the bishop there uh and he wrote a separate letter to polycarp and we have both of those letters these letters are sent around the year 110 10 later polycarp himself writes a letter that we have and then we have the martyrdom of polycarp that's why I said that we have so much about polycarp as opposed to most other people at the time but so this is a letter written about 11 but it's it's one of the very earliest attempts to show that Jesus had to be a flesh and blood human being thank you I'm I'm going to say that is two out of two uh in how many books of the New Testament is pilate mentioned oh he's definitely mentioned Matthew Mark Luke and John uh yeah no this is a really good question because I should definitely know the answer to this and uh I think he's mentioned an acts and it seems like he might be mentioned in something like first Timothy say six yeah 1 Timothy 613 613 oh my god oh okay congratulations okay I knew the answers to none of those questions so all right definitely doing better than I would have done um thank you everybody for sending in your questions they are as always fascinating and challenging before we finish for the week Bart would you mind just summarizing what we talked about uh we were talking about um Joseph uh in the New Testament uh the uh husband of Mary to whom Jesus is born which is how Matthew puts it because Matthew thinks that Jesus was born of the Virgin that Joseph didn't get Mary pregnant and Luke says the same thing that Matthew and Luke both have the Virgin birth they tell the stories in different ways uh Joseph is a figure in those accounts and he's named in those accounts um he's also referred to uh in Mark uh and in the Gospel of John but otherwise he's not a major figure in the New Testament he's not a major figure actually in the new New Testament outside of the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke uh and so we were talking about what we can say about this figure Joseph is it possible that he actually was the father of Jesus and apart from that what what can we say about him I mean if he was was he a was he a carpenter and what would that entail at that time and what would his relationship to Mary have been as a married couple and as a father of his family and so basically we're we're exploring what Joseph uh what and obviously historically Joseph would be a very important figure because whether he's actually Jesus father or his stepfather um you know it's significant a significant role and so people don't know much about him and we talked also about some of the apocryphal Tales told about him audience thank you all for listening I hope you enjoyed the show if you did please subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don't miss future episodes remember you can use the code MJ podcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.b.com that code is also good if you want to hear more about today's topic you can get access to Bart's two-part course at www.b.com for Joseph misquoting Jesus will'll be back next week but what are we talking about next time uh next time we're talking about whether uh the uh disciple John John the son of Zebedee uh could have written the Gospel of John uh John's attributed the gospel of John's attributed to to John the disciple and we're going to be talking about whether there's actual EV in the gospel or outside the gospel whether uh whether that's that could be historically right or not thank you so much thank you all for listening and goodbye this has been an episode of misquoting Jesus with Bart man we'll be back with a new episode next Tuesday so please be sure to subscribe to our show for free on your favorite podcast listening app or on BART Herman's YouTube channel so you don't miss out from Bart Herman and myself Megan Lewis thank you for joining us

Channel: Bart D. Ehrman

Views: 69,371

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Id: Px7q4EhdhWg

Length: 48min 1sec (2881 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 26 2023