♪[opening music]♪ ♪♪ >> Kate Peters:
We welcome you on behalf of UNCA's
Honors Program, the master of liberal arts program and the North Carolina
Center for Creative Retirement. Tonight's lecture is on Lost Christianities by Dr. Bart Ehrman of Chapel Hill. But before we begin, I'd like
to just set a few parameters. His talk will probably run for about an hour, and then we'll take questions
for about 30 minutes. We have a microphone
here in the middle aisle. And after his lecture is done,
we'll raise the microphone. If any of you have questions,
please come and stand in line. We'd like to encourage you to keep
your questions on the short side so that his answers can be long
[laughs] and substantive. That said, I'd like to go ahead and
introduce one of our honor students. Her name is Rebecca Skylar. She is a major in literature
with teacher licensure, and she is a sophomore at
UNCA, welcome Rebecca. [applause] >> Rebecca Skylar:
Our speaker tonight, Dr. Bart Ehrman, comes with a long list of accomplishments. He's earned his master's and
doctorate from Princeton Seminary. He has published almost 30
articles and over ten books. In fact, he wrote the book on our
topic tonight, <i>Lost Christianities:</i> <i>The Battle for Scripture</i>
and the- I forgot the rest- ah! [laughter] <i>Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture
and the Faiths We Never Knew.</i> He is currently the chair of
religious studies at UNC Chapel Hill, and he's won awards
there for his teaching. He's appeared on CNN, A&E, The History
Channel and National Public Radio. I could continue telling you
about all that he has done, but I'll let you hear from him. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Bart Ehrman. [applause] >> Dr. Bart Ehrman:
Well, thank you. Thank you very much, Rebecca. All right. Is this working all right,
can you hear me in the back okay? Sounds all right from here. Is there a way- were we
going to do the live thing or... that's a bad idea? OK. All right. Well, this overhead doesn't
matter very much, frankly. This overhead is what I'm going
to be talking about, and I like to do an overhead because it reminds
me where I'm supposed to be when I fall on my natural
tendency to be somewhere else. [laughter] So that's what this is. So. Well, I'm glad to be with you all this evening. I'm really honored to be asked to give this talk to you tonight. I've already talked with
several of you before we started up here, and I was actually- a couple of people ask me about this phenomenon,
courses on tape that I've done. Are you all familiar with
The Teaching Company? You all know what that is? You know they do- they do
courses on all sorts of things music appreciation, astronomy,
philosophy, history, religious studies, and I've done a
couple of these courses for them. And the- when people were to ask me
about these courses just now, it just reminded me how different it is
giving these courses on tape from doing this. Because in fact, when you
give these courses on tape, it seems like you're talking
to an audience like this. Have you- has anybody seen
these videos of these courses? They kind of pan the crowd, you know,
and the professors up there justiculating and, you know, looking
at people and things are going on. But in fact, it doesn't work that way. When you do these courses on tape,
you're actually in a TV studio and there are two cameramen
in there, kind of like this, only they're the only
two people in the studio. And the other thing that's in the
studio is a bright red digital clock that starts at 30.00 and your lecture is supposed
to be 30 minutes long. So the cameraman has his headphones on
and he's talking to the director outside and the director says, "OK, start."
The cameraman points at you and the clock starts ticking and you're supposed to
finish when it hits 000. And if you realize that you're five minutes short of material,
you can't stop and say, "OK, are there any questions?" [laughter]
There's nobody in there. And so, and what I always do, which I'm sure to do tonight
as well, what I always do is I get about two minutes
into one of these talks and I think, "Oh, no, I don't
have enough material." And so I start telling stories. And so I try to pack, you know,
just kind of pack it in a little bit and then I get five minutes left. I realize, "Oh, no, I've got ten
minutes worth of material here!" And so then I rush to the end, so I'll try not to do that tonight. This lecture is called, <i>Lost Christianities: The Battles of
Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew.</i> I did one of these courses on tape,
on this topic, I did twenty-four 30 minute lectures on this, and you're
getting all 24 lectures here in one hour. [laughter] [whistle] So, you know, so you don't need to
buy it, you're going to get it all here. You just get all the good stuff here,
and you won't have to worry about any of the fluff
that got put into the lectures. I want to begin by talking about
some modern archeological discoveries that are significant for the
understanding of early Christianity. Or perhaps it would be better
to say that these discoveries are important for the understanding
of early Christianities. Because Christianity was so
diverse in the early centuries that scholars have began to
talk about it in pluralistic terms that its Christianities, rather than just Christianity because
it was such a diverse movement. But I want to begin by saying something
about some archeological discoveries that have assisted us in understanding
the great diversity of early Christianity. And I'm going to talk about
just one, the most significant archeological discovery
for early Christianity. It took place in 1945. It was a year and a half before they
discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls. So... everybody has heard about
the Dead Sea Scrolls. They were discovered in
1947 in what is now Israel. The discovery I'm talking about
happened a year and a half earlier in 1947 and didn't happen in Israel, it happened in Egypt, in Upper Egypt, near a village that's called Nag Hammadi. There were seven field hands who were out digging for fertilizer near a cliff face near Nag Hammadi, Egypt in December 1947. The head of this group of seven, the
chief guy, was a person who was named memorably enough Muhammad Ali, [laughter] unrelated to our Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali and a couple of his
brothers and some friends were out digging for fertilizer. And Muhammad Ali's brother's
maddox hit the ground and it hit something hard underneath the ground. And they dug it out, and it turned out
it was an earthenware jar. That had a bowl over the top that was sealed. They were afraid to uh-
they're afraid to open up this jar because they thought there
might be an evil genie inside. On further reflection, they
realized there might be gold inside. [laughter] And so they smashed it to smithereens. But inside there wasn't
gold or a genie, inside there were simply a group
of leather bound books, 13 books bound in leather. This discovery took a long time for scholars to find out about
for a variety of reasons. It's actually... a complicated story. Muhammad Ali took these, took
these books back home with him. None of these people could read. They were seven illiterate Bedouin
who couldn't read, so they weren't sure what they were going
to do with these books. But Muhammad Ali took them back, depositing them in an out
building back behind his house. Apparently, that night, his mother
took some of the papyrus leaves and used them to start the evening fire. But I guess Muhammad Ali asked her not to do that
anymore, luckily, and... began to think maybe these books might be worth something,
maybe he could sell them. Now there's a little kind of twist
that happens in the story at this point. As it turns out, Muhammad Ali and
his family were involved in a blood feud. His father had recently been murdered. And they knew the family that was
responsible for the murder of the father and a few weeks after the discovery
of these scrolls, somebody told them that the fellow had murdered their father,
was sitting by the side of the road. And so Muhammad Ali and his brothers got their maddox and they
went out after this guy. They found him asleep next to a jar of
molasses, apparently that he was selling. And they hacked the
guy to death in cold blood, ripped open his chest, took
out his heart and ate it as an act of blood vengeance. Now, the downside of the story- [laughter] one of the downsides of the story is that this guy they murdered
was related to the local sheriff. So they knew there was going to be
a big police investigation, and they were the obvious targets
for this murder investigation. And Mohamed Ali by this time had decided
that these documents that he had, these books might really be worth something and
maybe they could make some money for it. So he gave the book, gave the books over to a local priest for safekeeping,
thinking that they, the authorities, would be searching
his house for clues about the murder, and he didn't want them to find
these books and confiscate them. And so he gave them over to this priest,
the local priest, to keep them. Now the priest- I'm sorry this gets
a little complicated, but so it goes. The priest had a brother in law [laughter] who was a traveling history teacher, and the brother in law was staying
with the priest, and the priest showed him one of these books, and the brother in law
realized this might be an ancient book. This, in fact, might get some
money on the black market. So he takes it into
Cairo and tries to sell it. Well, the authorities learn about it
and they confiscate the book, and there ends up being a
complicated set of negotiations. He actually gets paid
something for the book, and the book ends up in the Coptic
Museum of Cairo, and eventually all 13 books get to- are gathered together. They end up in the Coptic Museum
in Cairo, where eventually, after a couple of years, scholars
find out about these books. Scholars go, look at these books,
and it turns out these books are very important indeed. The books, the leather bound books themselves
scholars eventually determined, are from the fourth century,
the fourth Christian century, about 300 years after the death of Jesus. The way they know that these
books date from the fourth Christian century is that... the spines of the book, the spines
of the book were strengthened with scrap paper, and
some of the scrap paper included dated receipts, you know, like a pound of
hamburger or a loaf of bread, April third 3:46, [laughter]
you know that kind of thing. So they're dated receipts that were dated
to the middle of the fourth century. So these books were manufactured
in the middle of the fourth century or so. But the date of the manufacturer
of the books doesn't tell you when the documents within the books were written, there are 52 different documents
within these 14 books. In other words, these books
are anthologies of texts. The books were manufactured
in the fourth century, the books inside them must have been composed
at an earlier date, just as this book here in my hand was actually
manufactured in the year 2003, but the documents in it
were written 2000 years ago. You see what I mean? These Nag Hammadi books were
manufactured in the fourth century, but some of the documents
in them were much older. How much older were they? Some of these books we know about by name by church fathers
living in the second century. Some scholars
think that some of these books were actually written in the first century. In other words, some of these books may be as old as books
as we have in the New Testament. That's significant because
these books in the Nag Hammadi Library are books
that stand at odds theologically with the books
that made it into the New Testament. These books are books that were written by
and for a group of heretical Christians, Christians who taught false teachings who are called Gnostics. I'll be talking about what
Gnostics believed in a few minutes. At this point, I simply want to
point out that here we had for the first time an entire collection. Sometimes this is called
an entire library of books written by the kinds of Christians who ended up losing the battles
for dominance in early Christianity. These were the outsiders who taught
beliefs that others said were false. Of course, the people who
were teaching these beliefs didn't believe that these beliefs were false. Now, these people are called
heretics, but what's a heretic? Well, a heretic is somebody who chooses. Chooses what? Well, you put the term heresy over
against another term orthodoxy. The term orthodoxy means “right belief.” What is a heretic? The word heretic comes from the Greek
word choice, which means you choose. What? You choose to believe something
that's not the right beliefs. So you get the Orthodox people who believe the right believes and the heretics
who believe the wrong beliefs. But you've got to realize that everybody
thinks they believe the right beliefs. [laughter] Nobody thinks they believe the
wrong beliefs because if they thought they believed the wrong beliefs,
they'd start believing the right beliefs. [laughter] So everybody thinks that
they are Orthodox by definition. Or, as some people say,
orthodoxy is my doxy and heterodoxy is your doxy. These heterodox or heretical documents
show us a community of Christians who believe things
that were quite different from what the believers who made our creed, such as the <i>Nicene Creed</i>
and the <i>Apostles Creed</i>, such as those believers believe,
who gave us our canon of scripture, who gave us the church that
came down through the Middle Ages through the Reformation down to today. These were believers who had other ideas. And what's striking
is they claim that their ideas were the ideas that were
taught by Jesus' own apostles. And by Jesus himself. Among these books found in the Nag Hammadi Library are other gospels, a gospel allegedly written
by Philip, Jesus' Disciple, a gospel allegedly written by Judas Thomas, Didymos Judas Thomas, Jesus' own brother, a gospel called <i>The Gospel of Truth</i>,
and a variety of other books found here that claim to be authorized
by Jesus own apostles. This discovery of the Nog
Hammadi Library showed us that early Christianity
was extremely diverse. Let me say something in general terms
about the diversity of early Christianity. Can you read this, by the way? [chatter] From where I'm standing, it's rather fuzzy. Kind of like the rest of this talk. [laughter] The diversity of early Christianity. Christianity today,
of course, is extremely diverse. If you count everybody who
calls themselves Christian in the mix, we have a wide range of belief
and practice in Christianity today. You can contrast what Episcopalian priests think with what Appalachia
snake handlers think. Contrast Roman Catholic nuns with Mormon
missionaries, seventh Day Adventists with Southern Baptists, all sorts of wide
ranging beliefs and practices. But the beliefs and practices
of Christianity today pale in comparison with the diversity that you can find in
the early Christian centuries, as we now know, because of archeological discoveries
and recent historical scholarship. Let me just talk about this
diversity first in broad terms. In terms of theology,
there were Christians in the second and third centuries,
so from about 100 years to 200 years after Jesus, there were Christians
who believe that there's only one God, just as Christians today
believe there's only one God. There were other people, though
other people who called themselves Christian, who said that
there were two gods. There were some Christians in the second and third centuries who
said there were twelve gods. We know of Christian groups
that maintained in the second and third century that there were 30 gods. We know of one group that insisted- [laughter] it's not going to clarify a thing I say. [laughter] There were Christians in the
second and third centuries who said there were 365 gods. They called themselves Christian? Yes, they called themselves Christian and they said that they represented
the teachings of Jesus himself. There were Christians in the
second and third century who said that this world was
created by the one true God. There were other Christians who said this world was a cosmic mistake. There are others who said that this world was created by an evil deity. That the material world we live in is evil itself. There were Christians in the
second and third centuries who said that the Hebrew Bible,
the Hebrew scriptures, were the word of God given by the one
God in control of all things. There were others who said that the Jewish
scriptures were inspired by a false God. And they are not to be accepted
as scriptural authorities. There are Christians
in the second and third centuries who said that Christ was both human and divine. He's both God and man. There were other Christians
who said Jesus was completely God, and since he was completely God, he's not a man. God can't be a man, any more
than man can be a rock. They’re are two different things. There were other people who said that
Jesus was a man, but he's not a god. There were other people who said
that Jesus Christ was two things. He was a man, Jesus, and he
had a divine element, "The Christ," two separate things. Jesus is one thing,
Christ is a different thing. They came together temporarily
during Jesus' public ministry. There are Christians in the
second and third century who said that Jesus' death was a death
that brought about salvation from sins. There were other Christians
in the second and third century who said Jesus' death had
nothing to do with salvation from sin. There were other Christians in
the second and third century who said Jesus never died. How could these groups be Christian? They claim to be Christian. Well, maybe their claim is false. Maybe they were just a bunch of heretics
who believe the wrong thing. They thought, though
they believe the right thing. Well, why didn't they just
read their New Testaments [laughter] to realize that it wasn't so? The short answer, as it appears you know, is that there was no New Testament. There was no New Testament? I'm not saying that the books of the New
Testament had not been written yet. The books had been written, but Christians did not agree on what books should be accepted
as scriptural authorities. Should we accept the <i>Gospel of John</i>? Should we accept the <i>Gospel of Philip</i>? What about the <i>Gospel of Truth</i>? What about the <i>Gospel of Matthew</i>? What about the <i>Gospel of Thomas</i>? What about the <i>Gospel of Mary Magdalene</i>? All of these are books claiming
to be written by Apostles of Jesus. And how do you know that the books
in your New Testament Matthew, Mark, Luke and John actually are apostolic books where Thomas, Phillip, Truth
and Mary are not apostolic books. How do you know that? Just because you can go to the bookstore and buy these things and you buy a Bible
and it has those four books in it? Who decided those four books should be in it? And how do you know that they were right? Christianity was extremely diverse, and that diversity created
conflict in early Christianity as one group competed
with another for converts. Only one of the groups ended up
becoming victorious and that victorious group
decided for all time what Christian creeds would be recited, what the Christian churches would be like and what the Christian New
Testament would contain. I'm going to give now some more detail about some of these forms of Christianity
that ended up losing out. Lost Christianities: Beliefs and Authorities. I've been speaking in kind of
general terms at this point. Now I want to talk specifically
about three Christian groups, three Christian groups that we know about
from the second and third centuries. And just kind of flesh
this out a little bit. So you get some idea of what specifically
some of these groups believed. And then I'm going to talk about the victorious party, the party
that ended up becoming dominant, calling itself Orthodox and then
deciding which books belonged in the New Testament. By the way, I should point out,
I'm not saying that the group that won is wrong and I'm not saying they were
right, I'm not taking a position on that. I'm just I'm just doing
this as a historian saying what happened
in early Christianity. All right, so Lost Christianities:
Beliefs and Authorities. I want to start with a group
that historians have called the Ebionites, just to give you an idea of what one
Christian group thought. I'll start with this group
called the Ebionites and calling these the Christians
who would also be Jews. We don't know why this group
was called the Ebionites. The word Ebionite probably
comes from the Hebrew word אביונים (ebyonim) which means poor Now, the opponents of the Ebionites said that they were called the poor
because they were poor in faith, which is probably not why
the Ebionites themselves thought they called
themselves the Ebionites. It may be that these Ebionites followed
the practice of Jesus and his disciples of voluntary poverty, of giving away all their goods for the sake of the poor, giving up their own possessions
for the sake of others. That may be why they're called the Ebionites. We're not really sure. What we are sure about
is that these Ebionites were Jewish Christians. They were Christians who were themselves,
were either Jews or converts to Judaism, who maintain that in order
to be a follower of Jesus, you had to be Jewish. Their logic was Jesus was the Jewish messiah sent from the Jewish God to the Jewish people in fulfillment
of the Jewish scriptures, so that if you're going to be a follower of
the Jewish messiah, you have to be Jewish. It's a Jewish religion. And so these people were culturally
and religiously Jewish. They kept the Sabbath. They circumcise their baby boys. They kept kosher food laws. They prayed facing Jerusalem. They engaged in
Jewish kinds of activities. These Ebionites, since they were so ardently Jewish, were very strict monotheists. They believe that there's only one God. As a consequence, they did
not believe that Jesus was God. Their logic was if Jesus is God and God is God, you've got two gods. You don't have one God. You've got two gods. And so they maintain that
if you're going to be a monotheist, you can't say that Jesus is also God. Well, who is Jesus, then? Jesus for these Ebionites
was a very righteous man. In fact, more righteous than anyone else. He was not somebody
who came into the world from a previous divine existence. He was not born of a virgin. He was a man who was born
to the sexual union of Joseph and Mary, born in the way everybody else is born, grew up righteous. And when he was an adult,
he got baptized by John the Baptist, and when he got
baptized, the heavens split up. The spirit descended upon Jesus and a voice came from
heaven, "You are my son. Today I have begotten you." At his baptism, Jesus was
adopted to be the son of God. God had a mission
for this most righteous of man. It was to die for the sake of others. Jesus then taught them, taught the crowds. He did miraculous deeds by God's
power, and at the end of his life, he fulfilled the mission
God had given him by dying on the cross. God then raised him from the dead
as a reward for his faithfulness and exalted him to his right
hand up in heaven. Jesus himself was not born of a virgin. He was not divine. He was a human,
although he was very righteous. He was the son of God,
the one chosen by God to be his child. Now, how did these Ebionites
come up with this idea? Well, they claim that this point of view was the point of view that
the earliest disciples of Jesus had. In fact, they claimed that their leader for their church
originally was none other than- James, the brother of Jesus, and that their teachings about
Jesus came directly from James. Moreover, they had a written authority
that supported their point of view. It was a gospel that looked a lot
like our <i>Gospel of Matthew.</i> This gospel that the Ebionites used
looked a lot like our Matthew. Some of you may know that the <i>Gospel</i> <i>of Matthew</i> in the <i>New Testament</i> is often
thought of as the most Jewish of the Gospels, in the <i>Gospel of
Matthew,</i> Jesus tells his followers that they have to keep the law even better
than the scribes and Pharisees. They have to keep the Jewish law
even better than the scribes and Pharisees that not the least bit of the law
will pass away before all is fulfilled, and that anyone who teaches
somebody not to keep the law will be least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But those who keep these laws
and teach others likewise will be great in the Kingdom of Heaven. "Don't think that I came to
abolish the law," says Jesus. "I came to fulfill the law," in Matthew. The Ebionites had
some form of Matthew's gospel, but without chapters one and two. For those of you who know
your New Testaments very well, you'll know why they didn't
have Matthew Chapters one and two. It's because those are the chapters
that talk about Jesus’ Virgin birth. So they had a form of Matthew without chapters one and two, it's
probably a form of Matthew without- that was actually written in Aramaic
rather than in Greek, which is the language of Matth- you know, some of you are looking tired,
so I'm going to tell you an anecdote. [laughter] I give- I teach a New Testament class every year
at Chapel Hill, and I start off every year by giving a pop quiz
the first day of class. I hand out a syllabus, then I give a pop
quiz and its got eleven questions on it. And I tell my students that
if anybody gets nine out of the eleven right, I'll buy them dinner
at the Armadillo Grill. I've got 360 students in there. I didn't buy a single dinner this year. These are not difficult questions. They're things like "What are the four gospels of the <i>New
Testament,</i>" Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? But I do ask them-
I start off by saying, "How many books are
in the New Testament?" Well, they don't know. It's actually an easy answer. It's 27, which is easy because it's three to the
third power, [laughter] see? Trinity, three times three, times three, 27. [laughter] So it's easy to remember that. So- but then my next question is in
what language were they written? You know what half of my students think? Hebrew, [laughter] Hebrew? Yeah. Some of them think Latin. About one third of them think English. [laughter] No, that's not true,
I made that up. [laughter] Three or four of them usually
do, but that's, that's another story. All right. Sorry. That was just a tangent to wake you up. So the Ebionites have this
Aramaic gospel rather than a Greek, a Greek gospel. Second group, Christians who proclaim the
second god, the Marcionites. The Marcionites were around
at the same time Ebionites were. We know why the Marcionites
were called Marcionites. It's because they were followers of a theologian philosopher
of the second century named Marcion, a very important figure in the history
of second century Christianity. Marcion understood... New test- Mar- Marcion understood earliest Christianity in light of
the teachings of the Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul, more
than anybody insisted that to be a Christian, you
don't have to first become a Jew. As you can imagine, the Ebionites didn't like the Apostle Paul,
the Ebionites thought Paul was a heretic. Marcion thought that
Paul was the greatest, was the one who knew the truth. Paul differentiated between the law of the Jews on the one hand
and the gospel on the other. Paul insisted that a person is
made right with God by faith in Christ, apart from doing
works of the Jewish law. Marcion took this teaching of Paul,
which you can still find in the letters of Paul in the <i>New Testament</i>,
such as <i>The Book of Galatians</i>. Marcion took this teaching of Paul
and took it to an extreme. You've got the law of the Jews on the one
hand and the Gospel of Christ on the other. Marcion insisted that this dichotomy was absolute. The reason there's a difference
between the law of the Jews and the Gospel of Christ is because there are two different gods
behind the law and the gospel. The Old Testament God is not the God of Jesus. Marcion wrote a book called <i>The Antithesis,</i> which means “the contrary
statements” in which he tried to prove that the Old Testament
God could not be the God of Jesus, and he had a number of proofs that continued to sound
convincing to some people today. What does the Old Testament God tell the children of Israel to do
when they're to take the Promised Land? Remember the story
about the city of Jericho? Joshua was supposed to lead
the children of Israel around the city once a... day for seven days. On the seventh day,
they go around seven times and on the seventh- when they
go around the seventh time, the walls all fall down
and God tells them what to do. Go into the city and kill every man,
woman and child in the city. Kill every man? That's what God tells them to do? Yes, that's what the God of
the Old Testament says. What is the God of the New Testament say? The god of the New Testament
says, "Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. If somebody strikes you on the right
cheek, turn to him the other also." Are you telling me this is the same God? It doesn't sound like the same God. In the Old Testament,
the prophet Elijah is walking along, and there's a group of boys who
start making fun of him, calling out- making fun of him because he's going bald. So they call out "Baldy Baldy." Well, Elijah did what any of
the rest of us would do. He called the wrath of God down upon them. [laughter] But in this case, what
happened is, two she-bears then come out of the woods
and maul and kill 42 children. [laughter] Is this the same God who says, "Let the little children come unto me?" It doesn't sound like the same God. Marcion went through the Old Testament
and showed time after time again that the things said about God
in the Old Testament don't correspond with things said about God
in the gospel of Jesus. Jesus' God is a god of love and mercy. The God of the Old Testament
is a God of hate and wrath. Marcion concluded that the Old Testament
God is the God who created this world. It says in Genesis, he created this world. This world belongs to this other God. He created this world. He called Israel to be his people. He gave his people there the law. The problem is, nobody can keep that law,
and since they don't keep it, they get a just penalty,
which is they have to die. Everybody therefore has to die because they break
the law of the just God. But there's another God, a god of love
and mercy who has come into this world to save us from the wrathful
God of the Jews. He comes in the person of Jesus. Jesus represents this other God. Since he represents this other God,
the God who did not create the world. Jesus cannot be a part of this creation, which means he cannot
have a material body, which means Jesus could not have
been born in the normal way. According to Marcion, Jesus
didn't really have flesh and blood. He descended from heaven in an adult form, and he only appeared
to have flesh and blood. He only seemed to be human,
but he wasn't really human. He was divine because if he were human,
he'd belong to the other God. But he came to save people from that God. He came from the true God. Jesus then goes through his ministry,
and he apparently dies on the cross, which is the penalty that the
Old Testament God requires. And so the Old Testament
God then releases anybody who has faith in Jesus
from the demand of death. Jesus brings salvation then. Marcion then had a view that
Jesus was God, but he wasn't human. It's fairly easy to differentiate
Marcion's two gods based on the distinctions
found in the Old Testament and in the writings of the New Testament. Well did Marcion have the writings
of the New Testament? Yes and no. Marcion had certain books that
he claimed were sacred authorities. In particular, he had the writings
of the Apostle Paul, who was his hero. He had all of Paul's letters
that we have in the New Testament, except for first and second
Timothy and Titus. He had the other ten letters. Paul talked about his gospel, well what is his gospel? Well, for Marcion, Paul's
gospel was an actual gospel book that looked very much like
what we have in our <i>Gospel of Luke.</i> Luke's gospel was the gospel of Marcion, so he had Luke
and ten of Paul's letters. In other words, and he didn't have
any of the Old Testament, none of that was part
of his canon, his canon. So he had an eleven book canon. So it's fairly easy to
differen- to distinguish between the Ebionites on the one hand
and Marcion on the other hand. The Ebionites are Jews
who try to keep the Jewish law. Marcionites are against everything Jewish. The Ebionites have the Hebrew scriptures. The Marcionites
reject the Jewish scriptures, the Ebionites maintain that there's only one God. Marcion maintains that there are two Gods. The Ebionites say that Jesus is
fully man, but he's not divine. The Marcionites say he's fully
divine, but he's not man. For the Ebionites, Paul is a heretic. For The Marcionites,
Paul is the greatest apostle. For the Ebionites, they have the <i>Gospel of Matthew</i>,
the Marcionites have the <i>Gospel of Luke</i>. They're just as different
as you can imagine right down the line, and they both claimed to
represent true Christianity. Marcion had huge success. The Ebionites, frankly, didn't
have huge success in converting people for a reason that you might imagine. In order to convert,
the men had to get circumcised, and so they weren't really
lining up for the operation. [laughter] Marcion, on the other hand, Marcion had huge success, established
churches throughout Asia Minor, a modern day Turkey, in Rome and various places. In some places, there were
more Marcionite Christians than any other kind of Christian
in the second century. And Marcionite Christianity
continues on today because, I mean, I saw some people nodding their heads
when I was saying that the Old Testament God is a God of wrath and the
New Testament God is God of love. Some of you were saying, "Yeah, yeah,
yeah." Well, OK, that's Marcion. So, you know, heresies are still among us
today, [laughter] and some of you are suspect. [laughter] I want to talk about a third group now Christians in the know, a group called the Gnostics. It is exceedingly difficult to summarize what the Gnostic
stood for in five minutes, but I'll do my best. The word Gnostic comes from the Greek word gnosis, g-n-o-s-i-s, gnosis. That's a bad habit- spelling it
just because I teach [laughs] and usually students want to
know if it's on the final exam. So sorry, [laughter] just-
it just happens sometimes. So OK. It comes from the Greek word gnosis,
which means knowledge. Why are these people called Gnostics? Because they're the ones
who know, they have gnosis. They have knowledge. Well, what do they know? What knowledge do they have? Gnostics know who they really are. They know who they are,
where they came from, how they got here and how they can escape. That was pretty good, I'm going to do that again. They know who they are, how they got here, where they came from
and how they can escape. They have self knowledge, a knowledge that can bring salvation
from this evil material world. Gnostics maintain that this world we live in was not created by the one true God. It was created as a cosmic mistake. This material world is itself
evil, created not by the true God, but by evil deities in order to trap an element of the divine here. An offshoot from the Divine
Realm created this world. This offshoot is a false God or an unjust God or an ignorant God. Different Gnostic said different things. Sometimes this unjust, ignorant
God was called Yaldabaoth, which I will not spell for you. [laughter] Yaldabaoth was a misformed divine
being who created this world in order to capture part of
the divine and trap it here. He captured another divine being who's called Sophia, which is a Greek word for wisdom. In fact, Sophia was his own mother. He captured his mother. He divided her into a million pieces and he trapped her in this material world. How did he trap her? By creating human kind. Human bodies are the prison for a divine element within. Some people feel like- some people feel like
they don't really belong here, that this world just doesn't make sense to them. I felt this way since the last election. [laughter][applause] I just- I just live in an alternative universe
and things that make sense to the majority of my compatriots
just don't make sense to me. And I don't understand, and
it just doesn't work for me anymore. And so I just feel I don't belong. Why is it that some people really
don't feel like they belong? Because some people don't belong here. They originated in heaven and they've been trapped
here, trapped in the material body. They've forgotten their true origin
and they need to escape. They need to acquire the knowledge
necessary for salvation. How can they get this
secret knowledge, though? It's not open to just anybody because not
everybody has the spark within. Only some people have the divine spark. How do you get the secret
knowledge that can set you free if you don't belong here? Somebody has to come from the divine realm and come down and reveal the truth to you. Well, who is this one
who reveals the truth that will bring liberation
from your imprisonment? For Gnostics, the one who reveals
the truth is Jesus Christ. And you shall know the truth
and the truth shall make you free. Jesus is not a human being or if he is a human being for
some Gnostics, he's a human that a divine element comes
into an inhabits temporarily in order to reveal the truth. This truth gets revealed to his disciples. Jesus’ disciples, he teaches the crowds
publicly in parables, but that's just the public stuff. What he really teaches his disciples is a secret knowledge,
and they pass this along by word of mouth. The secret knowledge
that can set you free. Well, what is that secret knowledge? What do you need to know? Well, this is only for the insiders. [laughter] So if I were more sure of
more of you, I might tell you. [laughter] But as it is, I do have my doubts. So... buy me a drink afterwards. [laughter] This secret knowledge can set you free. Many Gnostics then thought that
Jesus was actually two things: a human being, Jesus and
a divine element Christ. They had books that supported
their points of view. Books that they claim were written
by Apostles, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary. All books discovered in fairly recent times, which revealed to us
what these Gnostic were saying, including the books of the Nag
Hammadi Library, which are a collection of 52 documents
found in these 14 leather bound volumes, which were written by Gnostics and
for Gnostics to reveal Gnostic knowledge. You can buy these books, by the way,
in English translation today, somebody just was showing me a copy
they brought with them tonight. They're available in English translation. If you want to read them,
they're really very interesting. The book is called the <i>Nag
Hammadi Library in English</i>, so you can get a sense of
what these Gnostics were all about. Those then are three groups
of Christians in early Christianity. Let me talk about a fourth group,
the victorious party, which... most people simply call
the Orthodox group. As I pointed out earlier, though,
it's a little bit problematic using the term Orthodox because Orthodox
means that these people are right, and I'm not taking a stand on
whether they were right or not. I'm simply saying that they
were the group that won out. The Victorious Party
stood over against the Ebionites, the Marcionites, the Gnostics
and other Christian groups that were around in the
second and third centuries, the victorious party had very
set beliefs and authorities. In terms of their beliefs, they disagreed with the Ebionites,
that Jesus was human, but not divine. They said, "No, he's also divine,"
but they disagreed with the Marcionites who said he's divine but not human,
because, "No, he's also human," because they were fighting
both things at once, they were kind of caught in the middle and they ended up saying,
"Yes, he is fully human. Yes, he's fully divine."
And to the Gnostic, they said, “But he's not two beings, he's one being.” Fully human, fully divine, one being, not two. Thus develop the paradoxical christology
of the victorious group that Jesus is both a man
and God simultaneously. This, of course, is what ultimately leads
to the doctrine of the Trinity, the way the doctrine of the Trinity
develops, the doctrine of the Trinity is that the Godhead is in three persons. There are three persons,
father, son and spirit who are all the one God. But it's not that there are three gods. There's only one God, but God is manifest in three persons who are
distinct from one another. So there's not just one-
there is just one God, but there are three persons, all of whom
are equally and completely God. I mean, how does that work exactly? Well. Christians were driven
to this point of view because they wanted to insist
that Jesus was divine and they wanted to insist
that they were monotheists. And then what do you do about the spirit who is also portrayed
as divine in scripture? Well, you come up
with the doctrine of the Trinity and you call it a mystery, [laughter] which means you can't understand it. [laughter] And if you can't understand
it, you've got it wrong. So it's a Christian mystery,
which you know is, I mean, it's a serious theological
term, mystery, because in fact, this is deep, petty stuff
that gets developed. That comes out of these debates
about who Jesus really is. They understand, then,
that Jesus is one being. They understand that God is the God
who created this world. And there's only one God. There aren't 30 gods,
like in some Gnostic systems, or twelve gods there are not two
gods like there are for Marcion. There's only one God and the God of the Old Testament is
the same God as God of the New Testament. Jesus represented
the God who created this world. Paul represented
the God who created this world. There's only one God who's
to be worshiped and adored. There's one God. Jesus is his son. Jesus brings salvation. Not by delivering secret knowledge
to those who are simply insiders. Jesus gives salvation to everybody
by dying on the cross. It's the death of Jesus
that brings salvation for the world. It's his real death. It wasn't an imaginary death, as Marcion
may have thought, it was a real death, and it was precisely that death that brought about salvation,
not the delivery of secret teachings. So these are some of the beliefs of the group
that we might want to call the Orthodox. If you call them Orthodox,
what you really are saying is that they are the group
that ended up winning. Well, how did they end up winning? Why did this group emerge
as victorious versus the other groups? There were a lot of disputes in early
Christianity between these different groups. For centuries, we only had one side of the argument because the Orthodox people who- the Orthodox group that won these debates. After they won the debates, they rewrote the history of the engagement so that all that survive
were the history's written by the Orthodox people and what they said
in their own historical sketches. What they said was that they
had always been in the majority, that the heretics were always
just small minority little groups who never had any big
impact at all, who were just little pestiferous mosquitoes
that got swatted on occasion and that the Orthodox had always been
in the majority and had always been right. Those were the church
histories that were read for centuries down to the modern period until we started discovering other things. And when we started discovering other gospels, other writings such as
the <i>Nag Hammadi Library</i>. But we realized that in fact,
it wasn't that way at all. One of the most interesting things
in the Nag Hammadi Library are two books, one of them is called <i>The
Apocalypse of Peter</i> because it was allegedly written by Simon
Peter, Jesus' disciple, and a second book that's called- the second- it's called<i>
Second Treatise of the Great Seth</i>. So funny title,
but that's what it's called. What's interesting in these two books
is that both of these books argue vehemently against the heretics. But when they talk about the heretics,
it's clear who they're talking about. They're talking about the Orthodox. So even these Gnostics had their their own heresiologists, their own people who combated heresies. There were battles between these groups. The group that ended up winning appears to have been the group
that was best organized, that was... better funded... and that was better located. The group that ended up winning out,
we know about best from writings that involve the City of Rome. These were Roman Christians. It's not an accident that
the Roman form of Christianity became the dominant form of Christianity since Rome was the capital of the Empire. Now, this form of Christianity
was in other places as well. You could find it in Antioch, for example. You could find it
in some places in Asia Minor, but we know of it best from the city of Rome. As Christianity grew, it was this Roman
form of Christianity that ended up becoming dominant and establishing
itself as the form of Christianity. So the other views got wiped out,
their books got burned. And it's only because of accidental
discoveries like the Nag Hammadi Library that we have firsthand accounts. Well, how did this Orthodox group
go about deciding which books belonged in the canon
of scripture, the New Testament? I'll quickly go through this. The proto Orthodox people,
when I use the word proto orthodox to refer to the Orthodox people
before they were Orthodox. So I call them proto orthodox
because, you know, when you're a university professor,
you're supposed to use big words. So if one doesn't exist, you make it up. So I made up the word proto orthodox. These are the people who believe
orthodoxy before it becomes orthodoxy. How did the proto Orthodox decide
which books they wanted in their canon of scripture? When you read their discussions,
there are four criteria that seem to get applied to books. Number one: a book had to be
ancient in order to be accepted as part of the scripture, even if a book was really
good reading otherwise, I mean, even if it were <i>The Da
Vinci Code</i>, it wouldn't matter. [laughter] It had to be a book that was ancient that went back to the days of
Jesus around that time. Secondly, books had to be apostolic,
meaning they had to be written by people who were apostles
or companions of the apostles. In the New Testament, we have
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. If you read Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John carefully, you will notice that those four books
actually are anonymous. Their authors don't claim to be people named Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The titles, Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John were added to those books
in the second century. They weren't originally part of the book,
the titles, which makes sense, of course. I mean, if Matthew wrote a
gospel, he's not going to call it "The gospel, according to Matthew." That's somebody else telling you
that, Matthew wrote the gospel. Matthew is not going to call it that. He's going to call it something like
the gospel or the gospel of Jesus Christ. He's going to give a title to it. Whoever called it the gospel,
according to Matthew, is somebody telling you
that Matthew wrote it. These titles are not original. They're anonymous. Well, why are they called Matthew,
Mark, Luke and John then? Because in the second and third centuries,
when Christians wanted to know which books to include in the canon,
they had to have apostolic books. These anonymous books were acceptable,
but they were anonymous, and so they had to be
given apostolic names. Hence the four gospels we've got. So books had to be ancient. They had to be apostolic. Third, they had to be widely used
among proto orthodox churches. If books aren't used very much,
then they don't function as scripture for the communities,
they have to be widely used. Fourth, the books have to be Orthodox, meaning they have to support
the right point of view. Books that support the wrong
point of view, such as the <i>Gospel of Peter</i> or the <i>Gospel of Thomas</i> or the<i>
Gospel of Philip</i>, are excluded from use. Following these four criteria, the proto orthodox began shaping what would become the New Testament
already in the second century. But it's a striking fact of history that the first time anybody, anybody listed our 27 books as the 27 books of scripture,
the first time that happened was in the writings of an
Egyptian Bishop named Athanasius. Athanasius was a bishop of
the city of Alexandria, Egypt, who in the year 367 sent a letter to his churches in Egypt in which he gave them
some pastoral advice. Included in this pastoral advice was a list of the books
that were accepted as scripture. And this list of books contains
our 27 books and only our 27 books. These are the scriptures,
according to Athanasius. That didn't settle the issue,
but it is interesting that it took 300 years before anybody came
up with our list of books. Before that, there were debates
even in proto orthodox circles, and even after Athanasius Day,
people continued to debate which books ought to be included
until the fourth and fifth centuries, so that the canon didn't
just kind of descend from heaven one day near the time after Jesus died. The canon was- is a group of
books that got collected over a very long period of time and agreement
wasn't reached for centuries. One last thing to say about
this letter of Athanasius. Athanasius was a very powerful bishop who had control
over the churches of Egypt. Those books discovered near Nag Hammadi. There's an Orthodox monastery
just a few kilometers away from where these books were discovered. The books were made
in the middle of the fourth century. Athanasius wrote this letter in 367. Somebody appears to have buried the books in the wilderness soon thereafter. Why did somebody bury the books? Is it because there was
pressure from on high to conform to a certain view
of which books belong in scripture so that this Orthodox monastery
cleaned out its library? Possibly. But why didn't they burn the books
if they were heretical? Is it that whoever buried these books
actually liked these books and hoped that the
theological winds would shift and they'd be able to go out later
and retrieve them? That's equally possible. The canon then wasn't closed
until after Athanasius Day. It's finally, of course, today
everybody agrees on the 27 books of the New Testament because
the Orthodox Party ended up winning the debates and giving us the
books that we now call the New Testament. All right, thank you. [applause] >> Kate Peters:
All right, well, we have 30 minutes for questions, and again, the microphone is
here in the center aisle. And are you all going to raise
the microphone? OK? And after the question answers again, which will end at 8:30,
out in the atrium foyer. We have a book table malapropisms here
and they have some of the additions, some copies of <i>Lost
Christianities</i> available for sale. And then also there are some light hors
d'oeuvres, a light reception out there. So if you would like some punch
and help yourself to a snack, so thank you all so much. All right. Anyone have a question for Dr. Ehrman? >> Dr. Ehrman:
[whispering] Would it be easier- would people feel less intimidated if they
didn't have to come up to the mic? [more murmuring] >> Audience member:
With the popularity of the <i>Da Vinci Code</i> and all the information
about Mary Magdalene, would you please give us a little information about the scripture,
according to Mary Magdalene? >> Dr. Ehrman:
About the <i>Gospel of Mary</i>? Yeah, yeah. I thought maybe I wouldn't
get the <i>Da Vinci Code</i> until the third question
or so [laughter] there... I'm going to- by the way, I'm going
to tell you about these courses on tape. They've asked me to give-
they normally do courses, but they're going to
do something different. They've asked me to give two lectures
on tape on the <i>Da Vinci Code</i>, just on the <i>Da Vinci Code</i>. So I'm going to do that like next month and talk about sort of the historical
background about Mary Magdalene and Jesus and whether they were married and,
you know, that kind of stuff. But the question specifically
is about the <i>Gospel of Mary</i>. The <i>Gospel of Mary</i> is a Gnostic document
that was not discovered at Nag Hammadi. It was actually discovered in 1896 in a- in a book that's called the <i>Berlin Codex</i>. The <i>Gospel of Mary</i> is a very interesting book
because in it, Mary indicates that Jesus has revealed to her the
secret knowledge necessary for salvation and the men disciples get all upset about this,
because why did he tell it to a woman? And they have this argument about
telling to a woman and she says, "No, he told me." And then she gives
them- gives the revelation. Unfortunately, this manuscript we have of
the <i>Gospel of Mary</i> is incomplete. It's... fragmentary. And so we don't have the entire revelation. But it appears to be a description
of how the human soul will ascend up through the heavens and-
to return to its heavenly home. So that's the <i>Gospel of Mary</i>. I should say we have other
documents that mention Mary and Mary and Jesus, including this gospel. I mentioned the <i>Gospel of Philip</i>
in the <i>Nag Hammadi Library,</i> like some of these other books in the <i>Nag Hammadi Library</i>, the <i>Gospel of Philip</i>, it's a complete gospel,
but there are holes in the manuscript in places where you know, worms have eaten
or it's just worn out or something. So there's this one passage
where it's very interesting, important passage and relevant to what
to what you're asking, where we're told that, "Jesus loved Mary more than anyone else. And he used to kiss her on the-"
And there's a hole in the manuscript. [laughter] So we don't know where he kissed her. [laugher] OK, yes, please. >> Audience member:
I've wondered, as I've been reading some about the differences in early
Christian thought and practice why it became so important to define what was "right?" It seemed like for a
while it didn't matter. And if you read the gospels,
the disciples never had it right? [laughter] You know? So I mean, but that wasn't important. I mean, Jesus tried to show them. I'd like to know more about what made this need to define what was right
and throw out what was wrong? >> Dr. Ehrman:
Yes, thank you very much. It's a very good question.
Did you all hear the question in the back? OK? She asked, what in Christianity made-
what was driving this movement to insist that there be a
right side and a wrong side? It's a very good question. And in part, it's an interesting phenomenon that Christians ended up doing this because the idea that we're right
and somebody else is wrong was almost completely absent
from other religions in the Roman Empire. one of the striking things about all the pagan religions,
the polytheistic religions is that they were very embracing
of other religions so that if you wanted to start worshiping a new God,
you didn't have to give up your old God. You just added a new god
to the gods that you worship because you already
worshiped multiple gods. But Christianity develops
an exclusivistic, kind of emphasis, and why is that? In part, it's because, I think, the proto
Orthodox Christians insisted that there's only one way
to have salvation with God. And it's through the death of Jesus. If there's only one way
to be right with God, then everybody else is wrong with God. And so the kind of proto Orthodox Christianity insisted on exclusivity. It made it completely unique, completely unique, [laughter]
as if you could be incompletely unique. [laughter] It made it unique in the Roman
Empire in that they- and this actually- this actually helped Christianity expand, I think. In a very strange way,
this is what really helped Christians who are trying to convert other people. And what happens is this,
just let me just take a second to kind of impact this
because it's kind of interesting. Christian Missionaries of the Proto
Orthodox persuasion insisted that their views were right,
and if you didn't agree with their views, you were going to,
you were going to roast in hell. And so there was no middle ground. We're right. Everyone else is wrong. That made Christianity
particularly successful because it was the only
religion claiming this. And the reason it made it successful
is, suppose you had two evangelists, one who represented say,
who's trying to convince, convince you that you need to worship the God, Aries and the other trying to convince you that
you need to worship the Christian God. Suppose, suppose you're a group of pagans. OK, let's say there's 300 of you in here. You're pagans and I'm a Christian evangelist and the other guy is
an evangelist for Aries. Suppose the two of us are equally successful. OK, we are equally convincing. So we each convince half of you. That means paganism loses 150 people and gains no one. And Christianity gains
150 people and loses no one by being equally successful. See how that works? No? Some of you do some of you don't. Because the pagans are already pagans,
they already worship multiple gods. If they get convinced to worship
the God Aries, well, then they continue worshiping
their gods and they're still pagan. Whereas if you become a
Christian, you have to give up worshiping your other gods. And so you can't be pagan anymore. So Christianity destroyed
the other religions in its wake. That's one of the reasons
Christianity succeeded. And it may be why proto Orthodox
Christianity in particular succeeded. But the answer to your question is, I think
the proto orthodox are the ones who did this. Yes? >> Audience Member:
I was wondering what you considered to be some of the more interesting controversies
brought forth by the Nag Hammadi texts? >> Dr. Ehrman:
What are some of the more
interesting- you mean among scholars? >> Audience member:
Yeah. >> Dr. Ehrman:
What are some of the more
interesting controversies among the- among scholars
about the Nag Hammadi texts? There are a couple of very
big controversies right now among scholars of Nag
Hammadi and of Gnosticism. One very fundamental debate that is... that is becoming more and more
heated among scholars is whether we can even talk about Gnosticism
as a set of religions or not. There are scholars of
Gnosticism who are claiming that we can no longer
talk about Gnosticism because- I gave you a kind of a five
minute sketch, but it was kind of a- kind of a broad sketch that covered
a lot of religious traditions. And some scholars think that
these religions that we're calling Gnostic were so different from each other
that it doesn't make sense to call them Gnostic any longer. I've noted that the people who think that continue to use the word Christian. Which is, you know, and the word Jew, in other words, they use words
that are umbrella terms for big things. And so I mean, so I'm
sympathetic with the idea that Gnosticism was a much bigger thing
than we thought, but- and a related thing is a lot of people-
the most interesting document for some people from the Nag Hammadi
Library is the <i>Gospel of Thomas</i>. And there are a number of scholars now who are arguing that Thomas should not be
understood as a Gnostic gospel, including Elaine Pagels,
who wrote the book <i>The Gnostic Gospels</i>, largely
about the <i>Gospel of Thomas</i> now is saying that she doesn't think
you can really call it Gnostic anymore. So those are a couple of
the big, big debates. >> Audience member:
I was wondering if you could
talk a little bit about... the influences Manichean and
Zoroastrian influences on Gnosticism. >> Dr. Ehrman:
Manichean and Zoroastrian? Yeah. Well, yeah. Manichean and Zoroastrian. The relationship of those things to
Gnosticism is a very interesting question. Manicheanism actually came after Gnosticism, and so there's- if there's influence
it went the other way, that probably Gnosticism probably
influenced Manicheanism As many of you know, both Manicheanism
and Zoroastrianism are highly dualistic, believing in two principles
of good and evil, light and darkness, and the Gnostics have- are dualist too,
believe that matter is evil and spirit is good. And so there's a question
what the relationship is. Did Zoroastrianism affect Gnosticism or is it sometimes put, did
other kinds of Eastern traditions- Eastern religions affect Gnosticism with this kind
of dualism of matter and spirit? And that's entirely possible. What a lot of scholars have thought,
and this is another controversial issue. What a lot of scholars,
have thought more recently, is that where Gnosticism gets its dualism
from is from certain strains of platonic philosophy
that were circulating, that were independent of Manicheanism
and Zoroastrianism, but were prominent in philosophical circles
in the second century. A group of philosophers
that history has called the Middle Plattenists had very similar views
of how the world came into being as the Gnostics did,
and they may have been more influential on the dualism found in Gnosticism
than, say, Zoroastrianism was. So thank you. >> Audience member:
I was wondering what texts have Honi the Circle-Drawer
and the other sons of God, >> Dr. Ehrman:
The other sons of God? >> Audience member:
Yeah. >> Dr. Ehrman:
OK. What texts have Honi the Circle-Drawer
and the other sons of God? I'm suddenly feeling like I'm
in my PhD exam committee again. [laughter] Let me think now, Honi the circle- yeah, those are actually from a rabbinic texts. Honi The Circle-Drawer and Hanina ben Dosa are both famous Jewish miracle workers from about the time of Jesus,
who both came from Galilee, who were both thought, who were both sometimes called
the son of God and who could do miracles. And so they're sometimes
appealed to as types of Jewish people
who are kind of like Jesus. But the accounts of them are found in rabbinic materials,
specifically in the <i>Talmud.</i> I don't know chapter and
verse of the <i>Talmud</i> for that. Does that answer your question? Yeah. >> Audience member:
OK. I've been taking a New
Testament course this year, and we were discussing the Egyptian
and other people who have prophesied about the destruction
of the temple before it actually happened. And I was wondering
exactly why we can't consider the allusions in the Gospels,
why they aren't prophecies instead? And if they are prophecies,
then wouldn't it give a little bit more credence to lesser known synoptic traditions regarding methey and priority? >> Dr. Ehrman:
Wow. OK, thank you. [laughter] Where are you taking this class? [laughter] >> Audience member:
ETSU, under Dr. Greene. [laughter] >> Dr. Ehrman:
Did he set you up for this? [laughter] >> Audience member:
No. >> Dr. Ehrman:
OK, well, let me just ask before
I get into an answer, when you say, why couldn't we consider the allusions
in the gospels as prophecies? You mean that Jesus actually did
know it was going to be destroyed? >> Audience member:
Yes. >> Dr. Ehrman:
I see, OK. Let me- I'll try and answer this. I'm not sure- I’m not sure I'm going to
get everything you asked. So if I don't- why don't you
stay there in case I don’t? >> Audience member:
Okay. [laughs] >> Dr. Ehrman:
She's asking about- actually, it's similar to the question-
are you in the same class? Yeah, [laughs] OK. Yeah, OK. So you got Honi the
Circle-Drawer and the Egyptian. [laughter] OK, so she's referring to another Jewish prophet that we know about
from the writings of Josephus. He's actually- Josephus is this first century
Jewish historian who tells us a lot about what was happening
in first century Jewish Palestine. And so his writings are useful for establishing the context
for the historical Jesus. And he mentions a fellow
named the Egyptian, who predicted that the temple
was going to be destroyed. And he got a big following around him,
and the Romans got nervous about this guy predicting a destruction of the temple
and nervous about him having a following. So they sent out the troops
to kill this guy and his followers. He's connected both in Josephus
and in the <i>Book of Acts</i> with somebody who's called
Theudas, who is another guy who predicted that there's
going to be a destruction in Jerusalem. And the Romans sent out the troops
to kill the guy and his followers and historians have frequently pointed
to these two people Theudas and the Egyptian
as people who are kind of like Jesus, who came into Jerusalem and predicted
that the temple is going to get destroyed. And he got arrested
and he got killed by the Romans. So that this idea that Jesus is
like the only one who's doing this isn't, you know, there are these other people
who are kind of like him. And then you've got other people
who are miracle workers like Honi The Circle-Drawer and Hanina
ben Dosa and these other people. So... my own take on this is that Jesus really did
think the temple is going to be destroyed. So I mean, I think Jesus thought, I don't know what you're
learning in your class, but my own thought about Jesus
is that he anticipated that God was going to intervene
in this evil world and overthrow the forces of evil
and set up a good kingdom on Earth. And then when God overthrew
the forces of evil, part of what was going to happen
is the temple was going to get destroyed. And he predicted this and then
when he went into the temple, you know how he turns over the tables of the money changers and he
drives out those who are selling animals? I mean, the gospel of Mark says that he shut down the temple sacrificial cult
because that's what Mark says. But there's no- there's no- the temple was huge. You could fit what is 20 football
fields inside the walls of the temple. So, you know, one person turning over a few tables
isn't going to shut the thing down. So what's really going on? Probably what's going on, I think, is that
Jesus is enacting a prophecy, that Jesus is predicting
the temple is going to be destroyed, and it's like he's doing an
object lesson by enacting a kind of destruction and then
that's what gets him in trouble. The Sadducees, who are
the leaders of the- leaders of the Jewish temple, decide
that he's gone too far. And as he starts gathering
followers around him during the course of that week, they decide
that he needs to be taken care of. And Pontius Pilot wants nothing-
doesn't want a troublemaker. So Pontius pilot orders him executed. Does that answer your question? >> Audience member:
I think so. Just in clarification, so you do believe that what is in the gospels
is more prophecy rather than allusion? >> Dr. Ehrman:
I think he's prophec- I think he's actually predicting
the temple is going to be destroyed. >> Audience member:
OK. >> Dr. Ehrman:
But he does so by quoting the book of Jeremiah. So, I mean, it's allusion
in that sense that he's- I mean, Jeremiah also predicted
the temple was going to be destroyed. He also got in trouble for it. So, yeah. >> Audience member:
I had another clarification question. In the canon of the Marcionites, were those the letters
just that Paul wrote? Or were they the ones that we attribute
to Paul as writing nowadays? >> Dr. Ehrman:
Yes. they were seven- this is for the New
Testament class over here in this corner. [laughter] They're the seven undisputed
Pauline epistles and the three Deutero-Paulines of second
Thessalonians Colossians and Ephesians. But they did not include the pastorals
of first and second Timothy and Titus. >> Audience member:
Thank you. >> Dr. Ehrman:
You're welcome. >> Audience member:
One of the tensions that I see in the Gospels is between the teachings
of Jesus as embedded in a community of justice and
peace, and the death of Christ. And it seems like at least
from my reading of the Gospels, that people in the- got into
the community as a result of some radical change
in their life, whether it be, you know, something about
their socioeconomic status or their, you know, their health changed. So I'm wondering at what point in the history of- what point
in this early period of Christianity did the death of Christ take precedence over the teachings
of peace and justice? >> Dr. Ehrman:
Good question. >> Audience member:
And secondly, just very briefly. And secondly, what is- we talk about a lot about the historical Jesus and actually the Jesus behind the Gospels. I'm curious as to what was the church behind the <i>Book of Acts</i>
as you understand it? >> Dr. Ehrman:
OK, good. Thank you. Let me deal with the first question, is there a tension between the teaching-
the focus on the death of Jesus and the focus on the teachings of Jesus
is actually a very interesting question because... as you may know, the Apostle Paul focuses a lot of attention on the death
and resurrection of Jesus. But he scarcely ever
quotes the words of Jesus. He does a few times. He quotes the words at the Last Supper, and he quotes the saying
that you shouldn't get divorced. And he quotes the saying that you ought to pay your preacher [laughter]
and that's about it. Why didn't Paul quote the words of Jesus? Well, for Paul, the death and
resurrection were everything. That's what really mattered. I mean, I don't know what Paul thought
about the teachings of Jesus, but at least in those letters,
he doesn't emphasize that. Contrast that with another document
that probably existed in the early church that we no longer have the document
that scholars have called Q. Some of you've heard of the Q Source. The Q source is a hypothetical source. We don't, we don't have it, but
we have reason to believe it once existed. The way it works is this, we've got three gospels Matthew Mark and Luke. Scholars since the 19th century have realized that Matthew and Luke
got a lot of their stories from Mark. But Matthew and Luke have
other stories that are identical word for word the same
that are not found in Mark. Where did they get those stories? They had to get them
from some other source. Or either, Luke could have gotten it
from Matthew could've gotten it from Luke. But the reasons for thinking
that didn't happen. Their reasons for thinking that they
got them from some other source. And by the way, if you've got
word for word agreements between two documents,
there has to be copying going on. [laughter] Some of my students
aren't convinced of this. [laughter] So what I do every semester when I'm doing my class on this,
I, I come into class a little bit late to make sure everybody's there and I start fidgeting around up in front of the class
and do things with books and stuff. And then then I tell everybody
to take out a piece of paper and a pen and to write down everything they've seen me
do since I came into class. And then I collect four at
random and we do a comparison. And I say, "Okay, we're going to see if any sentence is exactly the same among these four," and I start reading them
and I say, "And all of you. Let's- see if you have any of these sentences exactly the same."
I read through these four and they never have any
that's exactly the same. And I say, "OK, now what would
you think if I picked up two of these and they had an entire paragraph
that was word for word the same?" [laughter] “Well yeah, somebody copied."
and I said, "Yeah, exactly right." And I said, "Suppose we don't do this
today, suppose we wait 40 or 50 years.” [laughter] which is the distance between
Jesus and the Gospels. And suppose I don't ask you to write it. Suppose I ask friends of yours
about what happened in class that day. And I collect two of them
and their word for word to same? Well, well, you know, obviously
somebody is copying from somebody. So scholars are convinced that Matthew
and Luke copied from Mark, but they have other stories
like the Lord's Prayer and the Beatitudes that are not found in Mark that are found- well, where? In another source, the scholars
who came up with this theory were German. They called this other source “The Source”, German quelle, which means
source and spelled with a Q. And so they just call it
for short- They call it Q. Q appears to have been a
list of Jesus’ teachings, a collection of Jesus’ teachings. Possibly, probably, without any reference to Jesus death and resurrection, the community that produced Q
apparently thought the teachings mattered. Paul's community seemed to think
that the death and resurrection matter. The gospel writers, starting with Mark, took the sayings idea and took
the death and resurrection idea and put them together
so that in the Gospels you get both. So my answer is that I think what
happened is that the gospel writers especially are responsible
for conflating those two interests. Then quickly, your other question about the church line behind the <i>Book of Acts</i>. My view is that the <i>Book of Acts</i>
is about as reliable for the early church and Paul, for example,
as the Gospels are reliable for Jesus, which means they get
the general picture right. But a lot of the details
are historically problematic. Yes? >> Audience member:
Yes, that leads into what I have to ask you, by the way, thanks for that interview on National Public Radio,
that was terrific- >> Dr. Ehrman:
You're welcome. >> Audience member:
Your proto Orthodox, did they have any sense of the authority and inspiration of those 27 books
that were circulating then? And what does that have to say,
if anything about inerrancy on the one hand and the Bible is
just another book on the other? >> Dr. Ehrman:
Good. Thank you. Good. Very good question. What did these proto Orthodox
say about the inspiration of these books? They- the proto Orthodox, did believe
that these books contain words from God, and they were the word of God. But it's very hard to think that they
understood these books to be inerrant the way that modern evangelicals
or fundamentalists would say that these books are inerrant,
I guess modern fundamentalists. The idea of- in the inerrancy of scripture that idea actually doesn't
have a very long history to it. It starts becoming a big issue in the 1920s. And before that, it's
not really that big of an issue. So that throughout
the history of the church, people have thought that these books
are, of course, the word of God, but they've had other understandings
of it other than that they are inerrant. In the early church, there were people who acknowledged that
there were contradictions in these books. One of the most famous
scholars of early Christianity, probably the foremost scholar of the first
three centuries, was a guy named Origin who believed that the Bible
was filled with contradictions. What the contradictions do
for you, according to Origin, is they tell you, you cannot
take the text literally. You have to take it figuratively,
wherever there's a contradiction. And so he loved the contradictions. He didn't pretend they didn't exist. He thought they were fantastic because they allowed him
then to use his creative imagination in coming up with figurative
interpretations of the text. So there are probably a range
of understandings of scripture among these early people, but that's one of the prominent ones
is that they do contain the word of God, but not in the sense that
these are inerrant documents. >> Audience member:
In two of the gospels, Luke and John, you have Jesus coming back and he's talking to his disciples
and in John, he talks to Thomas and he makes sort of an anti-docetic claim
talking about, you know, “Feel my hands. Make sure that I'm real.” And in Luke, he does the same sort of thing. He expresses hunger and he wants to eat. I wonder if that places both
of them around the same time, because that's I think in your book, it said that that was part of the reason
that we date John a little bit later. And if they both do that, then shouldn't
we date Luke a little bit later as well? >> Dr. Ehrman:
Good. Thank you. Are you in this class, too? >> Audience member:
Yeah. [laughter] >> Dr. Ehrman:
Yeah, it's a really- it's a really good point. You know, part of the problem is that this is
going to get technical for a second. Part of the problem
is that the Luke passages that are most anti-docetic appear
to be textual corruptions. Have you all talked about textual criticism
in your class in the kind of variations? Most of these Luke and
anti-docetic passages are- appear to be anti-docetic changes that have been
put into the text in the second century. Even saying that though, even without those, though,
Luke does seem to have an emphasis on- emphasizing the physicality,
the bodily resurrection of Jesus. I'm not sure that Luke's
emphasis is anti-docetic per say. Luke's hero was Paul, Paul was very emphatic
that the resurrection of Christians was going to be
a future bodily resurrection. And the reason, Luke-
the reason Paul knew that- Paul was writing against people who believe- in first Corinthians,
the book of first Corinthians. Paul is writing against people who think that once they were baptized,
they had already been given the spirit and they were already enjoying
a kind of heavenly existence that they had already begun
to enjoy the full benefits of salvation. They were already living in the heavenly
places and a kind of a spiritual way because they'd already been
spiritually raised from the dead. They died with Christ
when they're put into the water and they were raised with Christ
when they came up out of the water, and now they have this
heavenly spiritual existence. Paul in first Corinthians is very
much against that point of view. Paul thinks that people have not yet
been raised with Christ. He thinks people have died with Christ
when they got baptized. But he thinks people will not be raised
with Christ until Christ returns in glory. Paul thinks Christ is going to return
very soon, and when he returns, people who believe in
Christ are going to be transformed and be given resurrection bodies
like Jesus' body. They'll have immortal bodies
that won't die anymore. Paul knows that the resurrection
is not a past event, but a future event, because for Paul,
the resurrection has to be a future- it has to be a bodily event. And the way he knows it's a bodily event is because he believes
Jesus was bodily raised from the dead. He believes Jesus was bodily raised from the dead because he claimed he
saw Jesus after his resurrection. OK, so this is all kind of
circles within circles, but Luke is Paul's- Paul is Luke's hero. I think Luke emphasizes
the bodily resurrection of Jesus precisely because he's adopting Paul's
understanding about the bodily resurrection, rather than it
being kind of an anti-docetic thing. Sorry, that was kind of a long answer. I think- I think my time is up. [applause] Thank you all for spending your evening with us. Please help yourself to some
refreshments...[voice fades] ♪[closing music]♪ ♪♪
