Who Changed the Bible, and Why?

[Music] welcome to misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman 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 welcome back to this special two-part launch episode of misquoting Jesus with Bart ehrmann Bart and I are going to be continuing our conversation about his best-selling book misquoting Jesus the story behind who changed the Bible and why this episode we're looking less at Bart's personal journey through faith and Academia and more of the actual scholarly issues at play here namely who changed the texts of the books of the New Testament and why did they do it uh before we get into that but Hi how are you doing I'm doing well thanks uh not bad I'm at my uh I've got this Mountain House in Western North Carolina that I Retreat to to write and thank so I'm spending my days writing and thinking how good can it get I was going to say that sounds absolutely perfect yeah so uh and Megan uh so uh last time you announced that you're in a seriologist who studies ancient things about Assyria like do you just like tell us what languages do you have to do uh yeah so for my Graduate Studies I did um I minded in Biblical Hebrew and my main language requirements with Sumerian and Acadian Sumerian educating okay yes yes okay lots of about those I have nothing to say it's been a while since I I really looked at them seriously so I'm not sure I'd have an awful lot to say either okay good um so over of minutes and explain to us why this is an important topic uh yeah well it's important for a couple reasons for for people of Faith um Christian faith it's obviously important to know what the Bible says and this entire study of uh that Scholars call textual criticism which is trying to reconstruct what the original texts said what the authors actually wrote this whole discipline is tried is designed in order to show what the authors wrote on the assumption that you know people want to know what the Bible says you gotta gotta know what the words are and you you can't know what the Bible means if you don't know what it says and so it's a it's a very fundamental basic uh and and the oldest it's the oldest discipline in biblical studies uh biblical studies is a very complicated set of uh disciplines but um trying to figure out what the words were was virtually the first thing that came along once they started once they invented printing in the in the 15th century they had to know which words to print and uh since different manuscripts had different wordings they had to make decisions and so that so for people of Faith who want to know what the Bible says obviously it's important to know the words but you know even for people who aren't people of faith um any time you're reading an author you want to know what the author actually wrote you don't know what you don't you're not interested in the mistakes that a public a printer made you know or uh or a copy editor or something you want to know what the author said and so that's why texture criticism is actually used it's not it's not unique to the New Testament or the Old Testament every book from the ancient world has Scholars who study it to try and figure out the words originally were and not just the ancient world but up into modern times up to 19th century authors and they you have textual critics trying to figure out what the the author actually wrote fantastic and you've kind of explained it as you're talking but what is textual criticism exactly so people get confused because uh I I get a lot of emails from people saying you know well you know textual criticism this there the other and they they think it means something like uh interpreting texts uh and that when you read a text if you're like a historian you apply textual criticism instead of just kind of using common sense or something and it it's not that uh textual prejudicism is not about interpretation uh or about understanding a text it's not about criticizing a text it's not about trying to figure out what historically happened behind the text it's none of those things it's a technical term referring to trying to establish what the text originally said and how it got changed uh and so with the New Testament it's trying to figure out when you're studying the Gospel of Luke it's not trying to understand what it means it's trying to figure out what what the what the early with the oldest form of the words are hopefully the words that the author wrote thank you and that when you've got as many manuscripts as we have for the New Testament that is quite the challenge well it is because um you know the we have we have so many manuscripts of the New Testament we have far more manuscripts than for any other book in the ancient world um and you know it's not surprising that we do because our books mainly through from Antiquity have been preserved to us through the Middle Ages and who was copying books in the Middle Ages in the west well it was monks and monasteries and so if given the choice of copying the uh the letters of Paul or the plays of plautus you know what which are they more likely to copy pick a lot of copies of Paul uh not to make copies of plow tests but that what that means is since you've got so many copies out there we've got over 55 700 complete or small fragments of the New Testament given that number then you're going to have a lot of differences uh because scribes make changes and so uh with that many differences you've got to figure out you know it's a little bit harder than if you have only two differences and you have to decide if you've got hundreds of different or thousands that complicates things thank you so um one of the maybe the byproducts of having so many copies of these manuscripts is that each time a manuscript is copied is a an opportunity for additions to be made or mistakes to be made or things to be taken away um from the texts what kinds of changes do we most commonly see in the New Testament manuscripts yeah um it's actually a fairly easy question to answer because you know there there's kind of a limited number of things you could look for and Scholars typically in a very broad sense differentiate between what are almost certainly just accidental slips of the pen accidental mistakes and what looked like they're probably made intentionally uh like if you have an entire story that is added in some manuscripts and missing from other manuscripts somebody's either taking it in or putting it and taking it out putting it in and it's a problem and there are some changes that they certainly look like they're intentional so these accidental changes are the ones that are usually the easiest to uh find and they're by far the most numerous probably the most numerous uh changes in our manuscripts are just misspelled words I mean and you know scribes can be forgiven of this because you know they they didn't have dictionaries let alone spell check my students yeah my my students turn in a paper with Miss dogs I just don't get it because you know your computer puts a red line under it it's not that hard to figure out whereas you know these scribes they they didn't that sometimes they didn't care how it was spelled you know you'll get a word like you get the same word within two or three lines and sometimes they'll be spelled differently two or three times because and so so those are all they all count right they're all they're all changes and so that kind of change happens uh accidental changes happen a lot thank you and is this um do we see a change throughout time in what kinds of mistakes are made with manuscripts I understand that the earliest scribes were not professionals yeah so I think it's a little bit hard for people to get their mind around but when you when you're thinking about the early books of the the books of the New Testament you know and you have someone like um you say you've got somebody who writes the gospel of Matthew and whoever it is you know we call him Matthew we're not sure what his name was we he write he writes his account of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus long book for for us it's in 28 chapters they didn't use chapters and verses but it's but it's a long book so he writes this thing and um he probably writes it for his own Church community so that they'll have a written account of Jesus words and and deeds and so he does that um uh but then you know if somebody else wants a copy how do you get a copy well uh you know there's no you know they don't have photocopy machines you got you gotta make the copy and the other way to get a copy is for somebody to copy it by hand the author might make two copies or he might have a secretary makes a second copy or it may be that somebody from a local church comes in and sees they've got a written account of Jesus life Whoa We want that and so they make a copy but uh the earliest Christians making copies just happen to be the people who were literate in the congregation uh the Christian communities were small they were famously populated mainly by people without educations um and so if you have somebody in your church who can read and write that's that's the guy who does it uh it's only centuries later that you start getting something like professional scribes who actually are trained to do the job and naturally a professional scribe will do a better job than and then somebody just happens to be literate and so it does change over time do the professional scribes make different kinds of errors or changes to the manuscripts they tend to make fewer accidental mistakes although not always we have we have some manuscripts that that were done by what we would call professionals I mean technically I guess a professional would be somebody who gets paid for the job but I would consider monks and monasteries they're not actually they're not getting an hourly wage but I would they're trained to do this kind of work uh and so people who are trained tend to make fewer uh accidental mistakes and as time goes on um they start having a different view of the by What They're copying the earliest copyists whoever is copying you know so Matthew makes his gospel and somebody copies it because they wanted an account they're not thinking oh this is the Bible they they don't have a sense that this They're copying God's word now they just they've got a written account of Jesus life that's great and so but later on when you start thinking this is the Bible this is this is inspired by God then you take a little bit more care uh when you're that when you're copying so you're less likely to change it on the other hand since a lot of these uh later copyists um for example were monks uh or or Christians who were highly trained but were literate and uh intelligent and probably theologically educated they tended to make changes that would be more theologically important in other words if the text is saying something that they think that could be really misread you know or somebody might misunderstand that if they don't they they'll clarify by rewording it you know or sometimes they'll say you know uh this looks like boy a heretic could use this one and they'll uh they'll change it in order to make it clear actually it's not saying what this heretic might want it to say and so they they put it in other words and so that tends to happen when you've got more educated highly theologically trained scribes doesn't mean that we have um different manuscripts mainly espousing different theologies based on who has been copying them yeah um you know I wondered about that for a long time I my the first um kind of serious big book that I wrote for uh like a series scholarly audience uh my first couple books were were very technical books for the six people in my field of expertise who cared about and it was so I have a couple books that are really technical on this kind of thing but then once I wrote a book for kind of a broader audience but it wasn't it wasn't for like a you know Barnes and Noble crowd but it's for like scholars in New Testament and early Christianity and related fields who might be interested in this kind of thing my book was called the Orthodox Corruption of scripture and what I did was I tried to isolate every instance I could in our surviving manuscripts of places where it looked like the text had been changed in order to uh incorporate the scribes understanding of who Christ was you know is Christ is he is he really God if he's God is he really human if he's God and human is he two things or is he one thing or what he's there are all these disputes in early Christianity and so I tried to find every instance where where it looks looks like these were intentional changes it looks like they are that that certainly affect the understanding of Christ throughout so I went through the entire Bible and found all this I looked for manuscripts that had one leaning or another like is there is this manuscript done by somebody who believes that Jesus is so much God that he's not really human and so they change it or is this manuscript done by a scriber thinks Jesus is fully human and he wasn't really God in the sense that like he's always got and so they have these different views but we don't have manuscripts that line up that way what we have so we don't have manuscripts that are definitely this theological persuasion or that theological persuasion what we have are textual changes that are made at various times in various places by various scribes that happen to be surviving in our surviving manuscripts so there may have been at one time and and the early church fathers say that there were at one time manuscripts that were done by people by scribes of a certain theological persuasion where the Jews Like made a radical change throughout the match we don't have none of those manuscripts survive probably because later Christians didn't want to copy heretical manuscripts do those changes then make it into the New Testament as we have it as is currently read in churches oh definitely yeah lots of these changes do and there there are some of these changes that it's clear uh somebody's changed the text and it's not clear which way the change went how interesting you have two forms of the text right you have a versus saying one thing or versus saying a different thing so something's changed it and they could be rap mean radically different things and uh and the Bible's a print one of those obviously they don't print both of them and so um uh I'll just give you I'll give you an example can I give you an example uh this is one of my favorite examples it was uh the subject of one of the first articles I ever wrote um people are used to this phrase uh sweating blood oh boy sweating blood uh where does that come from it comes from Luke chapter 22. as it turns out in in Luke chapter 22 you have the account of Jesus going to the Garden uh to Garden to pray right after the last supper and before he's arrested where he goes and asks God to to remove this cup from him because he doesn't he doesn't want to go through with if he doesn't have to and and um in uh in some manuscripts what it says is that Jesus went into deep Agony and he starts sweating and his sweat was like great drops of blood falling to the ground and an angel came and comforted him so that's Luke chapter 22 verses 43 and 44. um you'll find it in most Bibles there are a number of manuscripts including our oldest and best manuscripts that don't have those verses about Jesus sweating blood and an angel comforting him and so Scholars have to decide did somebody add those verses to an account that did not have them or to describe take away those verses delete them from an account that did have them this is a running debate among Scholars and it's it's never been satisfactorily resolved in the sense that everybody agrees although everybody who takes a stand on this thinks that it has been satisfactorily resolved to their View and I'm one of those and so this article I wrote uh I wrote in grad I wrote in graduate school it's one of the first things I wrote but it got published in a journal and and it shows up again I expanded in my book Orthodox corruption scripture I argue what happened is that uh the oldest and best manuscripts don't have these verses they're at odds with other parts of the Gospel of Luke they don't fit in the context very well I argue for a lot of reasons that the verses were not original and that the person who added them wanted to add them in order to show that Jesus was fully human he's sweating blood he's really upset and so it's trying to promote the humanity of Jesus against people who are saying that he was so Divine he didn't really suffer much that's really interesting thank you and for people who are want to know more about this we will get into it we're planning episodes on on all of the gospels individually so yes we will revisit that um at a later date when you have this kind of debate how do you go about trying to determine the original meaning do you just go with the oldest manuscript do you go with um the majority view what kinds of things play into that argument yeah so you know you're trying to decide were these verses in there or not and you know there's no question that somebody changed the manuscript yeah so people say how do you know people change their marriage you're just saying they're changing manuscripts all you're just making that up not making it up you got two minutes so you got to explain it Something's Happened Here and so um so I'm going to take a minute to explain this because it's a little bit uh it's kind of a lengthy thing it's so what Scholars do is they they people who are experts in this field divide the kinds of evidence that they look at into what they call external evidence and internal evidence um uh so the external evidence is what what kinds of manuscripts support having the verses and which ones support not having the verses and when you're looking at all kinds of manuscripts you've got all sorts of questions in mind for example you might want to know how many you know how many manuscripts have one reading but not another reading um and so for example you might you might think off the top of your head yeah well majority rules right I mean suppose you guys you suppose you've got a uh you've got 600 manuscripts that have the verses and five manuscripts that don't have the menus don't have the verses well you say 605 that's a that's a noble reader right except it's not and the reason it's not is this suppose the original suppose Luke wrote his thing and there were two copyists of the ma of Luke's original okay so you got the original and then you've got subscribe a and Scribe B and they both make a copy okay one of them and the two copies differ about whether those verses are in so one of them added it and the other or one either one of them added it or one of them took it away okay so you've got copy a copy B and okay suppose copy a is copied by 30 scribes and copy b gets destroyed in a fire before anybody just copies it [Music] then you've got one of the readings in 30 manuscripts and the other and not so it's 30 to zero right yeah but that's uh you know uh you can't just count because it's not 30 to zero it's one to one right and so you can't so scribes have known for centuries you can't just count the manuscripts so they look at other things they look how old are the manuscripts if you've got if these five manuscripts that have it are from the third and fourth centuries and the and uh however many I said 600 after what I said however many do have it our 600 have it but they're like from the 13th and 14th centuries like they're a thousand years later well that should that does matter and so you look at the no you you might want to look a little bit at the number but you have to think about the number but you look at the age of the manuscript you look about whether one reading is found in only one locality oh this is found only in manuscripts copied in Italy whereas this other one's found everywhere in the Christian world and you look at some manuscripts are better than others I mean there are places where it's obvious this mask has made a lot of mistakes well if you get a reading that's found in manuscripts that make a lot of mistakes generally and you've got another reading that's found in meds because generally don't make many well that tips the balance okay so I'm going to stop with that that's just the external evidence now would you like me to talk about the internal because this is where it actually gets a little more interesting for me and for a lot of people is you not only look to see which manuscripts uh have these things you also look uh to see you look to see which reading makes the best Sense on internal grounds so external evidence is what what Witnesses what manuscripts have internal grounds is what makes better sense of which reading so you've got two manuscripts two different readings um say uh and and you ask a number of questions one question is if you've got a reading that is um like seems to be problematic like you know you've got you got a you've got a verse in Matthew that you have the same person mark but Matthew's form comes in two different forms you got one some ask your word at one way some word it another way and the ones that word it the other way actually contradict what Mark says okay and the other agree with Mark says so a scholar asks herself uh okay which is it which is more likely for a scribe to have done is a scribe likely to have created a contradiction with Mark or result or is described more likely to resolve the contradiction well you know this guy's more likely to resolve the country okay that means that uh the reading that harmonizes is less likely original which seems backwards but it's that's how but it's been proved time and time again that that's right so you look at that you look at what what things what which reading subscribes be more likely to create you look at the ver you look at the wording itself does this wording is this wording like this often normally words things does it use the vocabulary he normally uses does it use the grammar he normally uses does it fit within its context or does it not fit in it because the author you know it's probably going to write like the author and so if you get verses in there that doesn't sound like the author that's a suggestion that somebody else wrote them and so what you end up doing is you look at this external evidence then you look at these kinds of considerations on the internal level and what you hope is that you get a match that that the external evidence and the internal evidence agree and that's when when that happens pretty much people say okay that's that what happens generally though is that you get different kinds of evidence different kinds of external different kinds of internal and they go different directions and that's where it gets interesting for Scholars because then you can make an argument that's when you write an article to argue which way is it based on you know what you think is more compelling is it then um helpful to have so many different manuscripts so you can go and check different readings or does that complicate the picture more uh it's it both it's helpful and it creates headaches because if you had for a lot of texts from the ancient world we don't have lots of manuscripts we have a lot of authors from the classical world uh you know I mean just famous famous authors I mean you know Plato Homer's got a lot of manuscripts but Plato and you know euripides or the Greek dramatism thing you got or even like into Latin so like Cicero and stuff some sometimes we have a work in only one manuscript uh and then what textual criticism does is just try to get rid of things that are obvious mistakes and try to figure out what it originally says kind of get into highly informed guesswork but if you've got two manuscripts then you know you can compare them and you can decide well this one's more likely right or that one more likely right or you could say you know they both look wrong and then you come up with some conjecture about it um but if you've got like you know 800 manuscripts of the Gospel of John or whatever then you thought wow you got to find them all and so it takes a long time to collate those manuscripts which means you find all the differences and then to figure out which or which thank you um so you mentioned earlier that scribes would change or add to the New Testament based on their own theologies make things clearer make things uh less available to people they would view as Heretics do you see similar changes um based on their social concerns and the world they were living in yeah this is a this is a big issue after I wrote the uh if I wrote my book uh the Orthodox Rapture scripture that was just about a theological controversy it's affecting the text and specifically controversies over who Christ was um in the first several centuries uh but then I thought afterwards that I I would write another book and I really wanted to and I didn't get around to about onto other things um but other some people have written these other books that involve things a lot you know there are all sorts of controversies in early Christianity it's one of the reasons I just love the study of Christianity starting with Jesus but going up you know for the first three or four hundred years is basically what I do and I one of the reasons I love it is because there's just so much controversy there's obviously controversy with there's controversies with non-christians with pagans uh you know Gentiles who are polytheists there's controversies with Jews whose controversies with uh within Christianity that aren't related to theology directly and so my idea for this next book was going to be I was going to look at these very social issues where I'd have a chapter for example on um scribes changing the text um because of their views of women uh scribes you know and so like putting making changes in order for example to lower the status of women as it was getting lowered within this Christianity progressed over the centuries early on women had a fairly Central role in the early Christian churches but it wasn't long before their voices got squashed and uh and so did that affect scribes or what about Jewish Christian relationships you know Christians are in conflict with Jews and uh did the anti-judaism that you find in some Christian circles affect scribes who might have been anti-jewish or you know and and I even got into interested in stuff like magic um uh people people are actually using biblical manuscripts uh for as kind of as magical uh props you know actually to do that and so like did that affect scribes did they did that lead them to change so so I had all these I was gonna give me a chapter in each one some of those some of those things have been written on by others Scholars I have a student named I had a student named Kim Haynes eitzen who is now she's been chair of the religion department at Cornell for a long time I think maybe she left that position but she's still at Cornell but she wrote a book on women and house scribes are altering things with women I've got a PhD student now who's writing a book on scribal changes affecting Jewish Christian relations and that kind of thing so yeah the answer is yes thank you and I'm assuming the the same answer that these changes are Incorporated and remain in the New Testament manuscript well the New Testament translations that we use today well let me give you let me give you one let me give you two examples can I do that okay so let me get the one that involves a Jewish anti-jewish Christian relationships I find is very interesting uh and it's a it's a passage that people know if they know much about the Bible it when Jesus is being crucified if this is only in the Gospel of Luke when Jesus is being crucified in Luke's gospel only he prays to God he says father forgive them for they don't know what they're doing um that verse is missing from some manuscripts interesting and it's a question why why would a scribe take that out that's the kind of that's the kind of thing I'm really interested I'm interested not only what was the original text of course I'm interested in that but also why would somebody take that out was it an accident like did they just like skip a line did their I skip or something or is there something else and what's really interesting is that in early Christianity that verse was taken to refer to Jesus forgiving Jews for uh having him crucified not he wasn't praying forgiveness to Romans according to this early Christian church praying for forgiveness for Jews and so uh I've written a little bit about this but I've argued that you know why would a scribe want to take those verses out you know what Jesus praying for forgiveness for Jews God didn't forgive the Jews God destroyed Jerusalem because what they did to Jesus he didn't forget so Jesus obviously is not going to pray for forgiveness and God's not going to ignore his prayer and so it looks like somebody's taking these verses out this verse out in order not to have Christ pray for forgiveness for Jews and so that's interesting with the women thing another one this one's interesting because um in this case it's hard to know whether you can argue that there's any external evidence for it uh so infer but it matters for uh Paul's understanding of women uh as you probably know Paul is sometimes classified as a real misogynist by um by people today as being somebody who's really opposed to women and I I think it's a misreading of Paul I don't think Paul was a misogynist in in the way that people label him in part there are passages that tell women be quiet in the churches one of them is in the book of First Timothy that claims to be written by Paul but I don't think Paul wrote it and I'm not alone in that most most critical Scholars don't think Paul wrote but we'll probably have uh yeah we'll probably have a session on that one but but there is a passage in First Corinthians that Paul did write in First Corinthians chapter 14 verses 33 and 34 Paul tells the women in Corinth to stop talking in church but to be silent and that if they've got any questions ask their husbands at home and he tells them you know that's not not appropriate for them to be talking so women are not allowed to speak in church which is a verse that of course gets used to say you can't have women preachers you know or let alone priests and so uh but the thing is there's very good reason for thinking Paul did not write those two verses all the manuscripts have them versus but some manuscripts don't put them in the same place some Mayors could put them in a different place in First Corinthians 14. and so some Scholars have argued that uh what's happening is these started out as a note in a margin by somebody who was like you know Paul's forbidding something's happening in church and some scribe also adds and you know women be quiet in terms you got any questions just that it puts it as a marginal note next scribe comes along says Ah My predecessor left those verses out put them in the it sticks them back in then that manuscript gets copied and all of a sudden they're part of the Bible but so it would be it would be and so there are good reasons for thinking that uh that that's what happened uh but it would be a you know it'd be a scribal error rather than something Paul really wrote interesting do you either um other instances where notes like that are then incorporated into a manuscript that the actual text of the manuscript there are places where it's suspected um it's always very difficult to prove and so it's as uh you know the thing about doing history is I've said I've said in our first episode I'll probably say virtually every episode is that it's about it's about establishing probabilities what's the most probable explanation for this and probability would certainly be helped if when you've got like a passage that looks like it's been put in or that some manuscripts actually do put in it'd be helpful if you also happen to have it in a manuscript that's in an earlier manuscript that where it's in the margin but even though we have thousands of manuscripts We There are tens of thousands of manuscripts hundreds of thousands we don't have and so we just we almost never get the Smoking Gun that's the problem thank you um how were the earliest printed editions of the New Testament put together um you go into that in some detail in in misquoting Jesus but did uh did the scholars doing that work rely on like a couple of manuscripts or did they try and get access to as much as they possibly could so when so um as most people know uh the um the printing printing with movable type was invented by Gutenberg in the 15th century and the first the first thing he printed was a copy of the Latin Bible uh and so the Gutenberg Bible is a very important book that uh took several years to print because it was hard to set print back then so uh but you know this is happening in Western Europe and in Western Europe Latin is the language of the Bible um Greek is for the easterners so even though the Bible is really written nobody in the west reads Greek basically except for really trained classicist and so uh but some years later in the early 16th century Scholars realized you know the Bible was written in Greek we need to have we need to go to Regions and so um the the first one who actually had a Bible uh produced and printed and available to the public was a uh was a classical scholar named Erasmus whose New Testament came out in 1516. 1516. um he was he was racing against the clock because he he was a um he knew he was a he was a Protestant and he knew that Catholics were coming up with their own addition and he wanted to be the first and so um he was very good at Greek and everything but he um he knew he wanted to print you know a Greek nut but how are you supposed to do it well you've got to have some manuscripts right he basically had a 12th century manuscript that he had access to um that for the gospels and he he kind of hunted around and a couple you know he got a few manuscripts together he had to borrow a manuscript of the Book of Revelation from one of his friends who happened to have a Greek manuscript of Revelation but it was missing the last page the last six person and so harassment so he basically he takes his manuscripts and he did his copy editing notes and gave it to a printer and said here print this and so and so he did and um it was um it was kind of rough it was rushed out as he himself admitted uh based on a very late manuscript we we now have manuscripts that are probably at least a thousand years old not full manuscripts but our earliest fragments go about a thousand years earlier than that and we have full manuscripts from the fourth Century now this one's from the 12th century so you know it's late and it's got a lot of changes from the original text in it that earlier manuscripts don't have but the thing is since it was the first one to come out printers started reprinting it and everybody then started reprint and he made a couple more additions he made a few Corrections here and there is a real problem for the end of Revelation he's didn't his manuscript didn't have the last six verses so what he did is he took the Latin version The Vulgate the Latin Vulgate and he translated the Latin into Greek and he printed that as the ending of Revelation he came up with like wording that's not found in any Greek magic of Revelation but you know it's found this thing was printed so much that after a century or so people were calling this thing the textus recaptus which is a Latin for meaning the received text it was the text that everybody thought was the Greek New Testament including the King James translators they translated erasmus's textus rekeptus uh and so that's why the King James has readings in it that Scholars today don't think are original because it's not based on a very good manuscript tradition that's really interesting so as new manuscripts have been uh discovered made available to Scholars and academics has the New Testament again for the translations that people use in churches has that been updated did translators go back and update based on new manuscripts or do they just kind of stick with what they have what ended up happening is uh this Texas recaptus was around Forever Until basically it was around until the 1880s which when two English Scholars who are two of my uh personal Heroes uh John Fenton Anthony Hort and uh Brooke Wescott Wisconsin court uh they um they did a new edition of the Greek New Testament that looked at the newer manuscripts and and so basically today uh there are Scholars who are always working on making it better and better there's not much to make better because it's about as good as it's ever going to get given their manuscripts but translators today who produce a new translation or a new revision of the translation follow the new Greek versions that are available the only exception is we have some translators that insist that the King James was closest to the original and so they might update the King James so you have the new King James Bible which doesn't really change the manuscript basis it it updates the language a little bit but other translations the NIV the nrsv the whatever I mean just you know the English new English they're they're all based on Modern scholarship of the manuscripts excellent thank you very much uh we have one more question before we go to our break um if you could pick just one book of the New Testament that you would most like to have the autograph the original manuscript of what would it be and why and do you think the discovery of autographs would influence or change biblical studies um so um I'll answer the second one first uh because it's easy to answer do I think having autographs have changed I don't know but I sure would love to find out because we don't know what was in them you know so you know and we think we're pretty close and I think even those of us who talk about you know the the hundreds of thousands of differences in the manuscripts almost all of us think that basically we have a pretty good idea what Mark wrote uh you know there are places we're going to disagree we're going to disagree about the sweating blood we're going to there are there are hundreds of places we're going to disagree but but you know basically we think we've got the idea of pretty pretty down pretty well and maybe we'll find a magic so I'm it's hard for me to answer the first question but I I would love to have the Gospel of John and I'll tell you why um the Gospel of John has long been suspected as having gone through various Editions when you read the first 18 verses fantastic beginning I'm sure we'll have a whole episode on this in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the Word was God and then it goes on to saying the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have beheld his glory Gloria is the only begotten before the father this is talking about Christ is the word of God this pre-existent being that becomes human but the writing style and the Theology of these 18 verses is so different from the rest of the Gospel in many ways in many ways it's similar in many ways it's different some Scholars have suspected that the original Gospel of John didn't didn't have it that it was added as a second edition and also the last entire chapter there's more consensus about this there's a lot of Scholars this might even be a consensus among historical Scholars thing that chapter 21 was added on that it wasn't originally there the the Gospel of John ends of course with Jesus being raised from the dead and appearing to his women disciples but then you have a chapter 21 which has a whole another chapter of Jesus showing up and talking to his followers but there are very good reasons for thinking it wasn't originally there so I would love to have the autograph of John the question is how do you know it's an autograph in other words we could have a long talk about this because even if you found the autograph they're going to be people there will be large debates and it'll be almost impossible to show that this is the autograph we should definitely talk about that another time because that isn't excellent question um thank you very much we will take a very brief break uh but we will be back in a minute with Bart's weekly update [Music] if you're enjoying the misquoting Jesus podcast you'd probably like my online courses as well I produced a number so far with multi-lecture courses on the New Testament gospels and the books of the pentateuch Standalone lectures on the Christmas story and the earliest Christian views of Jesus and a six-hour debate on whether Jesus was actually raised from the dead if you're interested check them out at barterman.com you'll receive a discount on your purchase simply by entering the code MJ podcast [Music] are you interested in learning about important academic topics but don't want to go back to school you need to check out wondering the services streams University level courses taught by top Scholars who are also skilled communicators I've done nine courses for them and can tell you for high level adult learning there's really no other game in town for a free trial go to barterman.com wondering if you decide to subscribe to wondrim this podcast will receive a referral fee but that'll have no effect on the cost of your subscription and you'll be supporting our show this is bot's weekly update where we get to catch up on all the latest about Dr ehrman's book releases speaking engagements hermanblog.org happenings and online course launches so but what is happening in your world professionally and with courses and all the exciting things yeah well um uh so I've got an exciting thing going on with the course that I'm doing and so so some people listening to this might know that I've started doing online courses um that are available on my my personal website barterman.com and these are these are courses that you can you can uh purchase and and listen to they I've done a course called the unknown gospels for example and the unknown gospels in this course are Matthew Mark Luke and John and so but I'm doing a new course now and one of my real interests that I've had since I was 17 years old is not just the New Testament but the Old Testament the Hebrew Bible and so I've done a course on Genesis for my uh as one of my courses a six lecture course just on the Book of Genesis explaining again what Scholars say about it why they say it and that was so much fun but now I'm doing another course it's just as much fun uh that's going to be out um uh we're going to publish this course uh well I'm going to do it live actually so if anybody's listening to this before it goes live I'm going to be doing this course live on November 12th and 13th and whether you hear this before or after that anyone can purchase the course after um you know because the whole thing is to have these courses available off my website so this course is on the rest of the pentateuch uh Exodus Leviticus Numbers and Deuteronomy and I'm calling it finding Moses and so the issue there are lots of really interesting issues would be one is kind of the obvious one was there really a Moses did he exist and if he did exist what can we say about him but there's also issues like did The Exodus happen and if so is there archaeological evidence for it if so is there do ancient people talk about it uh or is it just the Bible if it's just the Bible could it and what about the Jewish law most of the pentatives filled up with the law what's that law all about I mean you know are Jews these legalists who think you gotta like if you don't obey God he's going to send you to hell you know you break the Ten Commandments forget it I mean what what is the law and so this this is an eight lecture course on uh that's called finding Moses and so I've I'm really pumped about this because I was just uh you know I'm working on it now coming up with the lectures and I think it's going to be a lot of fun I can tell it sounds really exciting um and it's uh it's kind of like getting access to a university level education without having to pay for University level fees highly recommended this is the kind of thing you would get in a university and it's uh and so yeah yeah right yep that's the idea make it make it available to people who aren't scholar you know so it's not just available to scholarly the Nerds like you and me but the regular nerds I was about to object to being called a nerd but I really can't that would be very dishonest lay people are really interested in this stuff and sometimes they get interested without knowing they're going to be interested whoa I didn't know that and so oh yeah so it's that kind of course it's it's one of the funny things I find about Academia is this um we tell each other that no one is interested in our own little branch of of esoteric knowledge but then you get out on YouTube you start podcasting you start doing online lecture series and actually most people are interested in your small corner of ancient history so yes I think the problem is that I think a lot of I like a lot of Scholars have never learned how to talk to a normal human being yes they can talk about they can talk about football or they can talk about what they're going to do at the store or they but they can't talk about what they do because well that's too complicated no it's not just trying to figure out how to communicate yeah that's what this podcast is about you know how do you communicate with normal people about things that are that actually are fairly complicated oh wonderful thank you now it's time for questions from listeners where Bart answers real questions submitted by misquoting Jesus fans if you'd like to submit a question for future segments please visit barterman.com askbars [Music] but we have some quick and we've asked people for just questions about um misquoting Jesus if they read the book and they have questions for you this is the Forum to send them to um so without further Ado how common was dictation in the days of Jesus and his disciples Ah that's that's a question that's very important and interesting and complicated I'll give you the short story uh dictation was very common um for people who wanted to write something like a book but uh we're not did not have writing literacy uh and so uh or more commonly uh that that kind of thing happened on occasion what more commonly happened is people who did have writing literacy didn't want to go to the trouble of writing things by writing literacy I mean you know you know how to write um and so typically what would happen is if you were like an elite person with an education and you wanted to um you wanted to write something like your Cicero and you want your secretary to write a letter you dictated to him Paul dictated his letters we have good evidence for that in the New Testament itself that Paul dictated his letters uh and so people writing books would often dictate and describe would write it down the thing is when they dictated the Scribe wrote down what the person dictated many people have been mistaken understanding that like it'd be kind of like today I say yeah Megan I'm thinking about writing an article about uh you know about women in early Christianity and so here's what I like to say would you come up with that for me you know that's not dictation dictation is when I say okay write these words down so that did happen in the ancient world it did not happen outside of educated circles so Jesus would not have had somebody to dictate to uh or the disciples so it it did happen and it did affect the New Testament but it you can't explain you know a lot of historical Jesus stuff with it this is a just a personal follow-up question from that with the people writing have been um slaves trained in reading and writing or would they have been professional scribes well this is a great question for a number of reasons and we may want to have an episode on slaves and sometimes because slavery in the ancient worlds is a very real uh and in some ways just a disturbing phenomenon but it was very different from what we think of as slavery because of our experience uh in the west especially in America in the Americas uh the the phenomenon in Rome the Roman world's very different one difference was slaves were trained and educated and sometimes were high kind of I mean they had high status and some were some were philosophers and some were tutors and some were ensembled scribes and so sometimes you did have scribes you would copy you also had people who were professional scribes who were were free they weren't slaves but they made a living off of it and so especially that was prominent Less in literary circles than um in legal circles because you know you've got to have a land deed or you've got to need a marriage certificate or a divorce certificate or you need an inhere a will drawn up you can't write and so you get you know you got that's the guy who the Lord players the guy who can write thank you um a second question um are there any particular difficulties in translating the world the word Paul uses to make mendem homosexuality okay we're kind of a great ideas for episodes here yeah um the word translated in some Bibles as homosexuality um is a word that Paul may have made up the word is arsenicoites it doesn't occur before Paul it's found in First Corinthians 6. it shows up a couple times in Paul's letters uh where Paul says that arson nikoitai will not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven um it's a word that is made up of two Greek words one of which means male an adult male and the other is a word that mean is the word coitus from having having sex so it's that so the word has something to do with males having sex but it doesn't say what it doesn't say what and so that tells me males having sex with males and it yeah it might mean that some people think it means male prostitutes for example or some people you know so there are actually there are large there some some people pointed out that this term when it does start occurring in Christian text after Paul it's used in economic contexts and so you know because you know and so somebody getting paid for and and so there anyway we don't we don't exactly know what it means but homosexual is not the right word not the right word it is completely the wrong the reason it's wrong isn't just because Paul made up this word we're not quite sure what he meant by it the reason it's a wrong word is because in English day when we talk about homosexuality we are talking about our general idea is that some people have a variety have different orientations and different people have different ideas about this even though there's pretty good consensus among but among scientists but but people do have different some people are inclined towards people their own sex and sometimes the opposite and if somebody's inclined their own sex and has sex with people with their own sex because of this inclination that orientation they are homosexual in the ancient world they never had a concept of orientation this is a post-freudian understanding that is so commonplace in our heads we think it's just natural of course beautiful orientation so in the age world people had same-sex relations as much as people do today um and people had what we would consider to be inclination but they didn't they didn't think in terms of sexuality they didn't think and so Paul's not condemning an orientation or acting out in orientation because he doesn't know people have orientations and so homosexual is just completely the wrong world word for it interesting thank you I've had absolutely no idea about any of that um welcome to my podcast see it's great I learned something the audience learns something is perfect um okay one more audience question and then we will uh we will do our summary for the day uh would you have become an agnostic if you had not become a Biblical scholar that's a really good question I don't know the answer to it um I uh I don't know what I would become if I had not become a Biblical scholar I I had like nobody in the world thought I'd become a scholar period he led a lot of biblical scholar so I don't know what would have happened to me generally the reason I became an agnostic is a long story that's probably another thing but it's not because of my biblical scholarship as I said in my our last thing it um the short answer which I know I'm going to get a lot of email now so I probably shouldn't say it but the the the short answer is I left I left off believing in God because I came to a point where I could no longer believe that there was a powerful and loving God who was in control of the world who answers prayer who intervenes when people are in need and is in any way active uh and I came to that view not because of the Bible but because of my uh recognition of the amount of horrible horrible suffering that is ongoing in our world and people praying praying that God will do something and nothing happens and just the horrible suffering me and I you know I know what the Bible says about it I wrote I wrote a book about what the Bible says about it that we'll probably deal with at one point and I know what philosophers say I know what religious Scholars say I know what preacher saying what do you mean I know what they all say I just got to a point I didn't believe it anymore would I have gotten to that point if I weren't a Biblical scholar okay my guess is I probably would have I I would guess so because I think it's part of my innate nature to be concerned for people who are suffering and at some point I think it would have just said you know it just doesn't make sense to me anymore well thank you very much for sharing an audience excellent questions thank you for submitting them um if you have a question you would like BART to answer during our next listeners questions please submit it at www.erman.com forward slash ask Bard uh but before we wrap up do you want to give a quick summary of what we've talked about today yeah well so this is uh this is for me this is this is fundamental stuff this is what I most got interested in when I first learned about the Bible what do we know what the words are uh we've got these thousands of manuscripts and but we've got hundreds of thousands of differences in the management and sometimes most of the time these differences don't matter for anything but sometimes they affect how we understand the Bible I mean the one thing we didn't get into is the only passage in the New Testament that explicitly says that there are three Divine beings who are one is in two verses that were in this Edition that are asked me that they're in the Texas recaptus and uh they weren't originally there and so that might matter I'm not saying that you wouldn't believe in the Trinity now but there are passages that really are affected by which words there are and Scholars have to figure it out and it's not easy I have friends who spent 40 years working on this stuff uh and they can't agree among themselves uh about and they're complete experts and so it's pretty important to if you want to it's it's it's important for many people to know what the the what the Bible teaches but you can't know what the Bible teaches if you don't know what the Bible's words were and so this is a very important topic in my opinion thank you uh audience thank you also for joining us today for the second part of our very first episode uh it's been an absolute pleasure for both of us and hopefully you enjoyed it too if you did remember to subscribe um to the podcast to make sure you catch all future episodes and again if you have questions for Bart submit them at www.bartburman.com forward slash ask about uh and if you are interested also in the courses that Bart was talking about earlier you can visit barterman.com and use the code MJ podcast for a special discount on all of the courses misquoting Jesus will be back next week but what are we going to be talking about we're going to talk about how we got the New Testament you get these 27 books why did we get those what about the others I mean there were other gospels written and Epistles and acts of Revel up who decided when did they decide I mean whoa uh that's a big one and so that's that's that's one that I think a lot of people ask these days and so I'm really really eager to talk about it with you you and me both thank you so much thank you audience uh and goodbye this has been an episode of misquoting Jesus with Bart um 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 bar turman's YouTube channel so you don't miss out from Bart Hermann and myself Megan Lewis thank you for joining us

Channel: Bart D. Ehrman

Views: 139,631

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Id: 6_SYtc98cTY

Length: 59min 23sec (3563 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 01 2022