Who Says Mary Was a Virgin?

[Music] welcome to misquoting Jesus with Bart Man the only show where a six-time New York Times best-selling author and world-renowned Bible scholar uncovers the many fascinating little known facts about the New Testament the historical Jesus and the rise of Christianity I'm your host Megan Lewis let's begin hello everyone and welcome back to misquoting Jesus with Christmas Father approaching many people's thoughts are turning to the birth of Jesus which naturally brings to mind his parents the Virgin birth is probably one of the most well-known stories about Jesus but where did it come from and why is it recorded in the New Testament was this story important to early Christians and if not how and why did it become a central tenant of many denominations before we get into that though but good morning how are you doing today yeah I'm doing doing well I'm uh you know looking forward to a uh uh the Christmas break ahead um we'll be uh we'll be in England as we normally are with Sarah's family and um as is my want I'll be taking a bunch of books and so instead of like preparing for classes and preparing for podcasts and things I'll be uh uh reading for them my I'll be on leave next semester and so I'm hoping to get this next book written on um the ethics of Jesus and so I'm really looking forward to just having some time to read yeah so yeah how are you how me the the holidays here we are yeah no I'm good I'm good I'm I'm enjoying myself the kids are enjoying themselves we spent some time decorating the house so it looks more chaotic than normal but a very festive form of chaos uh and they all enjoyed that very much and um on the subject of books my parents always ask me what does Josh want for Christmas what does Josh want for birthdays and the answer is always he would like books or um monetary contrib towards books because academic volumes are not exactly cheap my mom is is I think about ready to just give up asking and and start sending cards for for bookstores yeah well the problem with buying books is that you never know if the person has it so they're either going to dictate their own present or you're G to get them something they have and so I gave up a long ago buying books for Sarah because it's like it's like it's hopeless and so go go for Plan B so yeah he his birthday is um the beginning of well middle of November and I asked um our 10-year-old what do you want to get daddy for his birthday and her answer has been the same I think for the past three years I want to get Daddy a book about the Bible there you go because he likes books about the Bible and I said sweetheart he would love a book about the Bible that's a great idea great answer right I know yes yeah EXC that's good yeah that's good so are you ready to talk about uh Mary and virgin birth and all of that exciting stuff yeah it's good stuff yeah okay so we're going to start out a little bit more General and then narrow down in the New Testament Jesus mother obviously is said to be a virgin do we have other religions from the same kind of time period that describe virgin births oh yeah no yeah so that's a good question because uh I of people often tell me that the Virgin birth of Jesus is rooted in uh Greek and Roman traditions of virgins giving birth and um I think that actually that's not true at all what what you do frequently get in Greek and Roman myth is the miraculous birth of a child whose uh whose mortal mother is made pregnant by a uh by a God and so Zeus will get get a a woman pregnant or um uh you know some some other God will get a woman pregnant and um so you you you get that sort of thing but in every case the woman has had sex and if nothing else she has sex with the God sometimes in quite graphic terms it's described uh about their sexual activity and so she's not a virgin and most of the time she's a married woman anyway and she's had been having sex the thing that makes the New Testament accounts different is that Mary um is has never had sex and uh and the accounts of her having birth are not explicit about it's not that God becomes a human and has sex with her and so it's different in that sense from he doesn't like turn into a swan or a bull he doesn't turn into a swan a bull or or in the appearance of her husband as happens in in Greek and Roman myth so do all of the canonical gospels show her as being a virgin or as this restricted to one or two accounts yeah well this is one of the really interesting things is um you get the Virgin birth story in both Matthew and Luke their stories of how it happens are quite different from each other uh people don't realize this because you know we're used to thinking of the Christmas Pageant and we see uh if you do a Christmas Pageant or you imagine the Christmas story or you read about it it's it's Matthew's stories combined with Luke's stories put into one big story but if you actually read Matthew carefully and then Luke carefully they tell completely different stories and in in places their their stories are at odds with each other they contradict each other in some key key ways people don't realize it unless they actually read them and compare them carefully uh but they both both are quite explicit that that Mary uh is a Virgin uh Mark says nothing about it Mark doesn't have a Virgin uh birth story and John which is later than Matthew Luke doesn't have a virgin birth story uh and no other book of the New Testament mentions the Virgin birth so the only places you find this are in Matthew chapters 1 and 2 and in Luke chapters 1 and 2 so you said that the accounts aren't explicit like we might see in classical accounts of of God's impregnating mortal women are readers supposed to understand that God physically impregnated Mary or is it framed more as a spiritual occurrence um so it it kind of depends on which gospel you read in fact it doesn't just kind of depend it depends Matthew is uh is not explicit at all about how it happens it's just the holy spirit will make her pregnant and we it's not the the process isn't described in Luke there is a verse that describes the process but it's ambiguous and people have read it in different ways uh in Luke chap 1 uh the angel Gabriel comes to Mary for the anunciation where he uh tell informs her doesn't ask her permission he informs her she's going to get pregnant and he says you'll uh you'll bear a bear a child bear a son and she says well but I've never known a man you know I've never had sex before and the angel then says and this is Luke Chapter 1:35 that the holy spirit will come upon you and the power of the most high will overshadow you so the one born of you shall be called holy the Son of God and so um this business of the spirit coming upon her and uh overpow over overshadowing her um some people read that as a kind of a physical description that in some way there's some kind of physical connection with the spirit um other people don't I think probably most people don't even notice it but but it can be taken as some kind of physical thing that's happening but it's not it's it's obviously it's not explicit so if we look at at Matthew and Luke in turn what do Scholars think is the significance of this this depiction this event like why would Matthew want to describe Jesus mother as being a virgin well that's another interesting issue because Matthew has a different view of it than Luke um I wouldn't say that they're contradictory views but they uh what Matthew says isn't at all what Luke says and vice versa Matthew um Matthew explains why she's a Virgin uh by quoting scripture Matthew thinks that Mary has to be a virgin because that's what was predicted in the book of Isaiah according to Matthew um Matthew says that she was a virgin in order to fulfill what was spoken of in the prophet and then he quotes Isaiah 7:14 in his quotation of it Matthew quotes it as saying a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and you shall call his name Emmanuel and so he's he's quoting Isaiah 7:14 in the in the Greek version of Isaiah 7 and um the reason Mary's a virgin is because Isaiah predicted that she would be a virgin this is one of the um one of the Fulfillment citations of Matthew on on a number of occasions throughout Matthew's gospel and only only in Matthew's gospel uh Matthew will say that Jesus said or did something or something happened to him in order to fulfill what was prophesied and so he he for example had to be born in Bethlehem because that was prophesied in Micah chapter 5 he had to go down to Egypt and then come back out of Egypt uh as an infant because uh Hosea chapter 11 said out of Egypt have I called my son and so throughout throughout Matthew's account whatever Jesus does especially in the birth narrative um is in order to fulfill scripture and so for Matthew that's the significance the significance is that Jesus the fact that he's born of a virgin shows that he's the one that was predicted we'll get to Luke in a second but I just wanted to talk a little bit about the Isaiah quotation in Matthew so Matthew isn't quoting the original Hebrew text he's quoting the Greek translation of it known as the septu agent but there's a bit of a difference linguistically between the Hebrew and the Greek could you talk a little bit about that yeah yeah you know it's not clear at all that Matthew knew uh Hebrew in fact I think the indications are he did not know Hebrew people think that's weird because wasn't Matthew the tax collector in Israel wouldn't he like no Hebrew but uh Scholars for reasons we've talked about I think another episode Scholars think that all the gospel writers are greek-speaking Christians from a from later generation a later generation living outside of Israel and uh Matthew doesn't claim to be Matthew the tax collector doesn't claim to be a disciple of Jesus doesn't claim to be from Israel and he he probably wasn't he's a high level speaking Greek and so um he would have read the Old Testament the Bible um in Greek translation as most Jews did who weren't living in Israel uh I don't think I don't know if Matthew is a Jew but whether it was or wasn't he was reading it in Greek so when he read Isaiah uh Isaiah in the Greek translation says pretty much what I just quoted a virgin shall a virgin shall conceive and bear a son you'll call his name Emanuel but there's a there's a problem there uh because the Greek translation of Isaiah 7 is not an accurate translation of what the Hebrew says um in the Hebrew um Hebrew does have a word for Virgin uh it's the word beula and it it means a woman who's never had sex um but there's a there's another Hebrew word Alma so in English I guess it'd be a l m a Alma Alma um means a young woman and uh many young women have never had sex uh but being an alma doesn't mean you've never had sex it just means you're a young woman so um so he does not use the word for Virgin Isaiah doesn't he used the word for young woman and moreover he indicates that the woman the young woman is already pregnant and so so in Isaiah the it's important when people read Isaiah 7:14 and they just read that verse right they don't read the whole chapter if they read the whole chapter they'd realize what's going on here and so if you don't mind I'm going to take a second because it makes makes a difference so the king the king of Israel is uh in in hot water because uh the city of Jerusalem is being surrounded by Foreign armies by two foreign armies and they're being laid they're laying Siege to the city and he's really upset because Jerusalem's going to be destroyed so he calls in Isaiah the prophet and says what does God say about this and Isaiah tells him don't worry about it because um uh God is going to solve this you're not going to be destroyed and he says God will give you a sign the sign is there you see this woman here who is pregnant she will bear a son and before the child is old enough to know the difference between right and wrong these armies will be dispersed and so it's a woman who's already pregnant who um who will bear a son and uh so she's pregnant now and will bear later when the so when the Greek translators were translating this for whatever reason they they used the word that becomes the Greek word for Virgin parthenos and they say a virgin has conceived and it's it's a bit of a mistranslation but that's what Matthew knew he didn't know the Hebrew so Matthew quotes it and he says well okay it's predicting the Messiah is going to be born of a virgin so it's not talking about anything in the days of Isaiah himself it's now talking about the future Messiah and so Matthew gets to that by his misreading by his quoting a misreading of the of the Hebrew and when when the seent was first composed would pathos have meant virgin or is this um a meaning that was more common in in Matthew's time in uh so in Greek Greek like every language is a little bit tricky because words words can mean different things in different times you know words like in Shakespeare's day uh often mean something different today uh and so parthenos is a word that can mean young woman uh it eventually comes to mean young woman who's never had sex and so Matthew's taking it to mean a young woman who's never had sex and um if the Greek translators may have just been using it in the in the idea of young woman because it can mean that it can mean just like maiden something like that but um definitely the early Christians took this to mean that she's a person who's never had sex that kind of paros so if that's if that's what Matthew is doing with this he's he's kind of reading prophecy Jewish prophecy slightly falely but reading Jewish prophecy uh and using it as a as a prophecy about Jesus what is the Gospel of Luke doing what is the significance of a virgin birth and how does it differ from the gospel of Matthew this is this is really interesting because I because Luke doesn't quote Isaiah and doesn't say that it's to fulfill scripture and uh that it's not related to that at all uh for Luke uh Jesus is born of a virgin but he gives a very different reason and it's the reason uh in that verse I just quoted Luke chap 1 verse 35 where the holy spirit will come upon you the power of the most high will overshadow you so that the one born of you will be called holy the Son of God for Luke Jesus is literally the Son of God God gets Mary pregnant and so uh so it's to show that Jesus has a divine origin um and so Matthew's concerned about Jesus fulfilling the prophecy and Luke's concerned about him having a divine origin and that's kind of interesting just for understanding both of the two gospels because when you read through all of Matthew uh Matthew's very emphatic about Jesus fulfilling scripture uh many people have considered Matthew to be the most Jewish of the gospels whatever that means but I mean he certainly is invested in the uh in the scriptures and in in Matthew Jesus as an adult says that you're supposed to observe the Jewish law and you have to observe it better than the scribes and the Pharisees and you know it's all emphatic about the jewishness of Jesus and Luke is um Luke has a very big uh interest in the Gentile World he's interested in how Jesus message ends up going to convert Gentiles and so when he describes the Virgin birth it's really more in terms of these unique births of in Greek and Roman mythology it's not the same thing because Mary Mary's a virgin but the idea that the god gets a mortal pregnant so that the one born is a is some kind of divine being uh and so that's how you get the birth of you know of uh Hercules for example Heracles is the union and so Jesus is is being portrayed like that as the union of the Divine and human is it significant that neither Mark which is the earliest um canonical gospel or John the latest seem to know about or speak about the Virgin birth I think it's hugely significant and um I think I guess later we're going to be talking about uh this next course I'm doing in in a little bit but I'm gonna be dealing with this a good bit because Mark Mark and John uh both assume that Mary is the mother and that Joseph is the father and and in fact there are passages in both Mark and John that make make best sense if they not only say that but they also their passages make best sense if they don't know anything about of Virgin birth and they just assume Joseph is the father or they or else they know that Joseph is the father and it's it's it's it'd be understandable with Mark because Mark is our first gospel and it may be that stories of the Virgin birth just hadn't been circulating yet so maybe Mark just doesn't know um Matthew and Luke used Mark but they have their own they Matthew and Luke have different virgin birth stories as I said so they didn't get it from one another John knows the latest gospel and you know You' probably think that John would at least have heard of the Virgin birth but um there's no no evidence that he does in John Jesus there's Jesus is an incarnate Divine being he he he comes down from heaven as a Divine being who comes to reveal the truth that can bring Salvation to people so that people would believe in him and his message they can have salvation but there's nothing about him coming down into a virgin and so what ends up happening is that later theologians take the idea of the virgin birth from Matthew and Luke and they take the idea of the Incarnation of a god becoming human in John and they combine them together into into a teaching found in none of the gospels which is which is in the the Creed that he became incarnate through the Virgin Mary you well you say that in the Creed and you think that's biblical and it kind of is because you get the Incarnation from John you get the Virgin birth from from Matthew and Luke but in Matthew and Luke Jesus is not pre-existing he he comes into existence when he's conceived in Matthew and Luke and in John he's not born of a virgin it's not the conception it's the Incarnation that matters and so this again is kind of the theologians combining different passages I see do we do we see the Virgin birth in other New Testament books or is it is it just in Matthew and Luke it's nowhere else um there uh in the New Testament there's not a lot about uh Jesus birth at all there is this curious statement in the writings of Paul in uh Galatians chapter 4 um Paul gives us one of the few comments that he makes about the historical Jesus Paul doesn't Paul doesn't say much about Jesus life you know he's very interested in Jesus death and Resurrection this is the core of his message and it's what he's he's particularly uh intrigued by and he thinks is of ultimate you know ultimate unversal you know significance is his death and Resurrection but he he makes very few comments about jesus' life in Galatians chapter 4 though he does say that Christ was born of a woman and born under the law and you think well that's not telling you much because he says he's born of a woman well what options do we have here I mean if you're gonna be born but he says that but it is interesting that he doesn't say born of a virgin you know he if he knew about the Virgin birth he certainly could have said born of a virgin but he doesn't mention the Virgin birth in the one place he mentions the birth um and so he doesn't and he doesn't say anything about Jesus birth anywhere else and neither does the rest of the New Testament that's particularly interesting when you uh when you deal with the book of Acts because the book of Acts was written by the same author as Luke the Gospel of Luke Luke wrote both books and it's interesting that in Acts you get a number statements about Jesus ministry and his life and the significance of Jesus while he was alive but the book of Acts never says anything about him being born of a virgin moreover when you think about it when that occurs to you then you read the rest of Luke so you have the Virgin birth in Luke chapters 1 and two but the rest of the book says doesn't ever refer back to Jesus birth it refers back to his baptism as a significant moment one reason that's significant we should probably do a whole episode on this there are a lot of Scholars who think that Luke's virgin birth story Luke chapters 1 and two were not originally part of the Gospel of Luke that what we think of Luke's gospel originally started what with what is now chapter 3 verse one uh and that the chap the two chapters about the Virgin birth story may have been added later and it's a very interesting idea and there's there's some good evidence to support it that is really interesting so if there's nothing in the New Testaments uh except in Matthew and Luke about the Virgin birth do we have anything in the non-canonical writings that talk about either a virgin birth or explicitly state that Mary wasn't a virgin um well you don't yeah well you do I mean in in Christian writings um after this uh it's it's almost always assumed that Jesus was born of a virgin because Christians had access to Matthew and Luke and they simply accepted their accounts as as authoritative you do have uh Fuller story iies of it in some of the uh the non-canonical uh gospels uh most especially in uh a book called The Proto Gospel of James which is one of the infancy gospels um that I'll be uh I'll be doing an episode with it on this uh maybe in a week or two I forget which uh with a uh with a former student of mine Christopher pringus who wrote a book on the gospels that are outside of the New Testament about Jesus young life and and cluding his birth and in the Proto Gospel of James we have this account of of Jesus being born to Mary who absolutely a virgin and to demonstrate it a midwife to to find out if it's true the Midwife comes in and gives her an internal exam after she gives birth to see if her Heyman is still intact and it is and it's like whoa so this is really going out of its way to say man she was really a virgin and so you so you get you you get this uh later Christian Traditions you also though get Traditions from uh non-Christian sources that maintain that she was not a virgin and that in fact uh there's this tradition that you find in both Jewish and uh Pagan sources about Jesus birth that indicate that Mary was in fact uh impregnated by a Roman soldier um and that it was an illegitimate birth um that's that's something I'll be dealing with in my course about where that tradition came from what that's all about but it's it's emphasizing his his unusual uh coming into the world I wanted to go back briefly to the Proto Gospel of James if if the Midwife gives Mary an internal exam and she is in fact still a virgin after she's given birth to Jesus Is this where the idea of Perpetual virginity comes in what is that and and how does it work with Jesus having siblings yeah yeah yeah yeah right okay so there are there are several terms that uh many many people especially Protestants uh get wrong that that are applied to this and so uh so let me go through the there are actually four of these terms that so I always lecture my class and my my undergraduate students tend to be Baptist from North Carolina they're say whoa really huh I had no idea yeah so uh the new te technically the New Testament itself does not narrate the Virgin birth of Jesus it narrates the virginal conception of Jesus Mary conceives as a virgin she hasn't had sex but she gets pregnant vir birth is a term that refers to Mary remaining intact after giving birth so what that means is that her himman is still intact even though a child has come through the birth canal that's what you get in the protog gopel of James you get the idea that uh that she's still you know intact and I think the the logic as in a lot of lot of cultures in Antiquity and still today is that um if a woman is intact somehow she's more Pure or something like that um so uh the third so you got the virginal concession in the New Testament virginal birth where she still intact and then the the uh Perpetual virginity of Mary is the the doctrine that um she never does have sex and she remains a virgin her entire life this became an important Doctrine in the third into the fourth centuries and especially early in the fifth century when Church fathers were insisting that the true people who were truly saintly um did not cave into the bodily desires but lived aesthetic lives and that included uh Chastity so that um the the body is uh it's you know it's material it belongs to this world but our real home is up in heaven and so we should lead a spiritual existence instead of being concerned for the needs of the body and that means people who are saintly don't have sex and so this becomes a very big movement at the end of the fourth into the fifth centuries and on onward it's why priests are still supposed to be celibate today in the Catholic tradition and and so forth um but if that's the case then Mary could not have had um other children and so she was the Perpetual uh virgin and so then you're right uh if you if you say that you've got a problem because the New Testament says that Jesus had brothers and sisters so how does the church once this idea of Perpetual virginity comes into play how does the church account for these siblings ah right so uh you know when I taught at ruter University uh I got different reactions from my students than the reactions I get when I teach in Chapel Hill in North Carolina at ruter I had very few uh Evangelical Protestants Bible believing Christians but I had a lot of Roman Catholics and in Chapel Hill I have very few Roman Catholics but I've got a lot of Bible believing where people grew up in B Bible churches and and in Chapel Hill students get upset because I talk about you know they start realizing there are contradictions in the Bible for example or discrepancies and they find that upsetting at ruter that nobody found that upsetting almost nobody what they found upsetting I got complaints about every year where students said you know Professor IR said that Jesus had Brothers Jesus didn't have brothers how he only child he was an only child and like he was like these others like and so so there were there were two theories about this that developed in early Christianity that have come down till today the book we're talking about earlier the Proto Gospel of James indicates that these um that Jesus has uh has Step Brothers because Joseph had been previously married and um he was an old man when he and uh he was when Mary was given to his protection he had had he had older children already and he had sons and daughters and so when it talks about Jesus Son brothers and sisters in the New Testament it's talking about children from Joseph's uh previous marriage that's why by the way when you see all the artwork from the Middle Ages uh about when you see like the Nativity scene Joseph is normally portrayed as an old man why is that well because of this tradition that he it's his second marriage because his wife had died he was a widower and uh and then took and then married Mary but they never had sex so that was one explanation and that was a popular explanation um until about the fourth or fifth century um right when uh people like the Church Father Jerome were saying that Mary could never have had sex because she's a saint and Saints don't have sex they started saying well you know Joseph was a saint too if Joseph is a saint then he couldn't have had sex either well then who are these people who are the brothers if they're not children from a previous marriage and Jerome came came up with the argument that they were his cousins that they're the cousins of Jesus and uh Jerome had an advantage because he's advocating this in the western part of the church where they speak where they spoke Latin and uh but Jerome could read Greek and he let them know that the word brother in Greek can also mean uh cousin um which technically I suppose might be right but there is a word for cousin in Greek ansos as opposed to and that's not the word used and so it's G Mary shows up with his brothers and sisters say in John 6 or you have the brothers of Jesus I mean in Mark 6 and the brothers of Jesus in John 7 and you know it says brothers and so the normal assumption is that they were brothers so one final question before we move on uh for the show from what you're saying the Virgin birth was not necessarily an original um or necessarily as important in early Christianity as it has become in modern Christianity it doesn't appear in in Mark and John and there are reasons to believe that those authors thought that Joseph was was Jesus father when do we think the Virgin birth did become a central tenant of Christianity and why do you think it became so important um yeah and so I um my you know this is just guesswork but I would guess that if Mark knew about a virgin birth he probably would have said something about it or if Paul knew about it he would have said something we don't you know maybe not but the I think the the the common way of figuring out when it came into existence was that it sometime after Mark wrote his gospel and before Matthew wrote his so maybe in the 70s or 80s people started saying that that he was born of a virgin and both Matthew and Luke have heard different stories this means by the way that when when when modern Christians say you have to believe in the Virgin birth or you can't be a Christian it sort of makes you wonder I mean was Paul a Christian was Mark a Christian I mean was there were they followers of Jesus and said well yeah sure well they didn't believe they don't appear to have believed in the Virgin birth so so then the question is when did it become a big deal and it starts it starts becoming a big deal in the second and third centuries because it's a it is a proof that Jesus is fulfilling scripture and it's a proof that he is a special human being um I'd say it becomes a very very strong Doctrine starting in the 4th Century especially when you have this emphasis that um that um sex may be necessary to propagate the human race but really um it's not you you really should abstain from sex as much as you can and that Saints do abstain from sex and so Mary then becomes the model of that um Mary becomes the model of the person who then abstains from sex and it's kind of interesting interesting that two models emerge eventually over Christianity two models of women one is Mary who's the Virgin and the other is Mary Magdalene who ends up being called a prostitute um she's not a prostitute in the New Testament but um she's understood as The Prostitute who repents and so throughout the Middle Ages these are two of the major figures and uh are these are this is what it means to be a woman I guess you either don't have sex or you're you know you're prostitute repents and it's like it's not not a great image but um those are the you know those so throughout the Middle Ages and it becomes very important because of that and then down into the modern period when uh fundamentalists began asserting their strength at the end of the 19th century into the 20th century it became one of those uh Cardinal doctrines one of those fundamental doctrines that make a fundamentalist a fundamentalist they holded this fundamental Doctrine she was literally a virgin thank you very much that was really really interesting and I've uh it's one of those things that you are told in church and you don't necessarily stop and really think about so uh uh no fascinating especially uh detangling the Luke and the Matthew yeah accounts because they're told in conjunction intertwin so often absolutely I tell you people listening to this they you know I I I don't I don't tell my students this at Chapel Hill or anywhere else I just say okay here's your assignment list everything list on paper everything that happens in Matthew's gospel in the first two chapters boom boom boom boom boom boom boom Now list everything happens in Luke's chapter chapters one and two boom boom boom boom boom now compare your lists and not not only notice what's different but see if there's anything you cannot reconcile and I'm telling you there's stuff you cannot reconcile so they do it themselves and they realize oh my God yeah I know I know I didn't problem well we are going to take a quick break and then we will be back with Bart's weekly update and more information about that course he mentioned have you ever wondered where the New Testament gospels really came from were the books actually written by Matthew Mark Luke and John as everyone seems to say the answers to these questions may surprise you in fact what you discover May challenge everything you thought you knew about the gospels if you're ready to learn the historical truth then you won't want to miss Bart er's free webinar did Matthew Mark Luke and John actually write Matthew Mark Luke and John in this 50-minute talk with Q&A you'll learn answers to some of the most intriguing questions surrounding the gospel's authorship such as why did early Christians say the gospels were written by Matthew Mark Luke and John if they're Anonymous what's the best evidence that the gospels were written by the apostles were the apostles of Jesus educated well enough to write books and last if the apostles did not write the gospels who did and where did they get their information don't miss your chance to uncover the truth behind the gospels sign up now for free lifetime access to did Matthew Mark Luke and John actually write Matthew Mark Luke and John at bart.com authors thank you this is Bart's weekly update where we get to catch up on all the latest about Dr er's book releases speaking engagements man blog.org happenings and online course launches so but you every year or at least for the past two years have done special Christmas courses and you've mentioned a couple of times today that you are planning another one can you tell us a little bit about uh what you'll be talking about for this one well it's closely related to what we just discussed um and uh but it it's man something I've never given a lecture on before and weirdly I've never thought about it at length before until just recently and it's the New Testament evidence that in fact uh that that new testament authors thought that Joseph was jesus' father and and that apart from the New Testament authors themselves that e that even Matthew and Luke have heard the story that Joseph was the father and that uh that so there are what I'll be looking at I'll be looking at all the New Testament evidence uh and there's more to it than I I would have imagined until I started thinking about it that these authors thought that Joseph was the father assumed he was the father said he was the father and that even Matthew and Luke you can look at things in Matthew and Luke themselves which shows that they also uh know about this that Joseph was the father and so wow and so this is It's kind of a controversial thing because I mean it's not just saying that you know I don't believe in the Virgin birth it's saying that actually there's evidence from the New Testament that goes against the idea of the Virgin birth which as we just said is found only in Matthew and Luke but not even throughout Matthew and Luke and so that's what it's going to be about it's gonna be a two- lecture course about whether Joseph was the actual father of Jesus fantastic and uh I believe the first one will be recorded on the 10th of December we'll both be recorded then okay fantastic two lecturer course on December 10th that's right fantastic and if if people are interested if you want to learn more or or sign up for that you can go to bart.com Joseph of course use the code MJ podcast uh to get your podcast discount and if you can't attend on the 10th of December it will be available to watch afterwards in your own time so uh don't worry if you can't make that specific date um but no it sounds sounds really good and we'll be talking not in as much detail we'll be very briefly going over uh Joseph as potentially Jesus father um in I think two episodes or three episodes time so that'll give you a little teaser if you haven't yet signed up uh for the course uh we are going to do some listen questions now which is always one of my favorite parts of the show because you all ask such fantastic questions 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 bart.com askart okay Bart are you ready for listen questions bring them on okay first up are there Clues you can see in the text in the New Testament or in any non-canonical sources which helped explain the order in in which the stories in the Bible became established what I'm trying to understand is once Jesus came back to life and was recognized as a God or the hero in the story was it necessary to then go back to his early life and rework things to help explain later events uh yeah so that's that's a great question it's a complicated question and um to answer it requires um a fairly thorough study uh of the Gospel because there um when you when you read the gospels you know you you actually do find uh indications that the stories have been formed in light of the later knowledge of Jesus death and Resurrection there are some kind of obvious points for that for at least from for most critical Scholars including Jesus repeated uh predictions that he's going to die and be raised from the dead those are called passion predictions you find three of them in the gospel of Mark uh four of them in Luke uh where he explicitly says it uh and he's talking about it all the time in the Gospel of John um but you also get subtle references to it where he doesn't come out and say I'm going to go to Jerusalem and die and be raised from the dead but where he talks about the bridegroom being taken away from you he's the bridegroom he'll be taken away from you and and so there there are things like that there are also uh far more subtle references even including um you know we were talking earlier about Luke chapters 1 and two where you have the birth narratives in Luke 1 and two the end of end of Luke 2 you have the story of Jesus uh in the temple in Jerusalem teaching uh the uh the Jewish teachers this is kind of a foreshadowing of what's going to happen because his his parents have G gone home they they've been to Jerusalem for a you know for a a festival and they go home in the Caravan up to Galilee and after three days they realize their son's not with them whoops we thought he was with some oh my God where is he and so they start looking for him and Mary finds him in the temple in Jerusalem talking about the law with the uh Jewish teachers so it's on accident that that happens that they find out that he's gone on the third day so it's the third day of the resurrection and you know and the idea in Christianity is that Jesus will return to the temple uh in his second coming and uh then he will certainly be schooling the Jewish Authority and so so so you get all sorts of stuff like that and so I think the answer is yes I think the entire uh gospel narratives are framed around the idea that they're leading ultimately to Jesus death and resurrection and that that climax has affected how the earlier stories are told somewhat related to that uh the next question asks why did Jesus several times say that he was he would die as it was written of him unless he had found some kind of Hebrew writing expressing that he would die as willed by God um is there somewhere other than Isaiah 53:10 that he could have found that kind of scriptural um prediction my view is that Jesus himself did not predict his death uh that he wasn't planning to die he wasn't expecting to be crucified um certainly when you read the gospels he expects that and says that that's what's going to happen but again those are I think those are reports of Jesus sayings that are coming long after his death by people who were his Bel his followers who were pretty sure he was not caught by surprise and that um but I think that Jesus himself was predicting that God was soon going to intervene and send a cosmic judge from Heaven the son of man to destroy the evil forces aligned against God and bring in a kingdom on Earth and Jesus would be made the King Jesus thought he'd be the future king of the kingd Kingdom and I don't think he was expecting to be crucified he was expecting to become the king um so I think these are words put on his lips later by followers which happened a lot we have lots of later gospels where all sorts of words are put on his lips and I think it happened in the earlier gospels too the question the the root of this question though is what passag were they thinking of that could indicate that a messiah would die and that's um that's a really good question uh because it was the major bone of contention between Jews and Christians uh after Jesus death the followers of Jesus who are Jews claimed that the death of Jesus was predicted and the um uh and the Jews who were not followers of Jesus said that's not at all what the Messiah is supposed to be and so Christians had the followers of Jesus had to search around and so yes Isaiah 53 was probably uh a key passage for many uh Christians where you have a description of the suffering uffing servant of the Lord who suffers for the sake of others you have Psalm 22 which uh begins with my God my God why have you forsaken me and sounds to be describing a uh somebody who is who is uh suffering horribly and so what they did is they found passages in the Hebrew Bible that talked about a righteous person's suffering and they said that those are referring to Jesus and after a while they got I mean he got really um um it was pretty amazing what people could find and uh over time just about everything in the Old Testament is taken to be a reference so that for example I mean just back in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve uh you know they they eat the wrong fruit and they and they make fig Le make fig Lees for themselves to cover their genitals and then God finds out he gets all ticked off but he makes them he gives them uh animal skins he gives them clothing out of animal skins and later Christians and Middle Ages would say so he had to sacrifice an animal that's foreshadowing the sacrifice of Jesus uh to cover your sins and so so yeah so there are all sorts of possibilities for people but uh I think some of the key ones in the prophets and the Psalms were the ones that they turned to first thank you um somewhat related again after stating that Jesus predicted predicted a god willed death several times how could the author of Mark have written a Gethsemane scene in which Jesus expressed strong qualms about fulfilling God's will unless the scene represents something that actually happened oh well that's an unusual take at the end you mean he couldn't he couldn't have said that unless it actually happened well but I mean uh it sounds like this person is saying that I thought he was starting off saying that Geth couldn't happen because Jesus was earlier saying that he understood think I think say there's a contradiction but he solves the contradiction by saying one of the two things happen I I'm not quite sure I understand but um so I think it works like this um Mark Mark definitely um has points of view that he's trying to get across in his gospel about Jesus that he thinks are of serious importance the major thing for Luke is that Jesus contrary to expectation uh died according to the will of God and that as he had to die as the Messiah no Jew was expecting the death of a messiah or resurrection of the Messiah and so Mark knows that Jesus died and believes he was raised from the dead and so he has to explain how it is that a messiah could die and rise again his gospel is oriented toward that um at the same time Mark is trying to say something about uh what this death of Jesus meant and uh and and to tell something to his audience about the significance of Jesus facing death and in Mark's gospel Jesus not just get semane but the crucifixion scene itself Jesus is appears to be portrayed as in deep Agony and despair uh and in Gethsemane he doesn't understand why he has to do it and at the end in mark this is only in Mark the only thing Jesus says on the cross in Mark's gospel unlike the other gospels but in mark the only thing he says is his last words GE my my God my God why have you forsaken me he he feels Forsaken and Abandoned and he's being mocked by everybody and he doesn't know why he has to go through with it and I think that the author of Mark is trying to say that when it came to it Jesus didn't understand but the reader understands because right when he dies the curtain rips in half of the temple so that now God is Not isolated from his people God lives in the holy of holies and Jesus death makes God available to everybody so that God is working behind the scenes and I think the author is telling his persecuted readers you may be persecuted now you may not understand why this is happening to you but God has a purpose even Jesus couldn't understand at the end and yet God was using his death for a for a good purpose for salvation of the world and your persecution too can lead to good things so I think Mark has competing you know things that he's trying to to say about Jesus and it ends up leading this kind of confusing thing that throughout the gospel Jesus knows he has to die but in the end he doesn't he doesn't want to die or doesn't understand why he has to die and so I think that's what leads to the tension I I don't think that indicates that it really happened I mean the go the The Prayer in the Gethsemane of Jesus in Gethsemane we're told explicitly that um Jesus Took Peter James and John and left the other other disciples behind and then he left Peter James and John and went off by himself and prayed this privately and right after that he was arrested they fled and he was crucified so where would Mark get the information about what he prayed because there was nobody there and so I think I don't think that that you know that's an indication of historicity I think it's an indication of very good storytelling thank you at final question isn't it odd that neither the Apostles Creed nor the Nan Creed mentions scripture did Christians in the first three centuries not take written texts seriously uh it's odd and often not noticed I wouldn't say it's odd I'd say it's Pro it's significant in a way many uh Christians in my part of the world now in the South say that if you don't believe in the Bible you can't be a Christian and um that's a view that came about with fundamentalist Christianity uh in the 1890s and then came into Power really in the you know the last 50 years or so um and it's but it's you know it's kind of a strange statement that you have to believe in the Bible the weird thing is that even non-christians say that now too even non-christians say well you don't believe in the Bible you can't be a Christian where you getting that from well that's what everybody says uh well the nyine Creed lists the things and the Apostles Creed list of things that Christians are to believe and it says nothing about the Bible so it doesn't say you have you know I believe in God the Father Almighty you maker of heaven and Earth I believe in Jesus Christ his only son and I believe in the Holy Bible That's inherent no it doesn't say that and so um and so why is that so for one thing it shows that belief in the Bible was never historically taken to be the Criterion for being a Christian but secondly the the nine creed and the Apostles Creed are presented not not in the Creeds themselves but they're formulated on the basis of the church father's understanding of the Bible and so they are rooted in biblical un biblical interpretations um they're not really rooted in biblical statements in other words the statements in the nyine Creed or the Apostles Creed are not statements that you find in the New Testament but they are theological views that emerge among Church fathers who were studying the New Testament who were trying to make sense of God and Christ and the spirit and Sal and so uh they they're meant to be rooted in the Bible but they're not meant to be uh indications that it's necessary to believe in the Bible per se the Bible is the guide for understanding the truth but uh but it's not the thing to be revered and worshiped thank you very much for that before we finish for the week bot would you mind summarizing what we talked about and let people know what they can find out more yeah we're talking about the very interesting uh issue about the Virgin birth as found in the the New Testament and we talked about how it's how it's found actually in only two of the authors Matthew and Luke and even in Matthew and Luke it's only found in their first two chapters their their presentations of the Virgin birth are different from each other in significant ways um and they think different things about the Virgin birth um Matthew thinks that it's to fulfill the scripture to show that Jesus really is the Messiah and Luke thinks it's in order to show that Jesus really is the Son of God literally uh so we talked about that and about and about whether the other authors of the New Testament Think Jesus was born of a virgin and if so why they didn't say so uh it's a particularly relevant topic now as we're heading into Christian since the Virgin birth of course is a central uh Central feature of the Christmas celebration thank you very much audience thank you all for listening I hope you enjoyed the show if you did please subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don't miss future episodes remember you can use the code MJ podcast for a discount on all all of Bart's courses over at www.b.com that includes his upcoming course on the 12th no the 10th of December on whether the New Testament authors thought Joseph was Jesus father you can find more information at www.b.com Joseph Miss quoting Jesus will be back next week and our running order is a little bit out of uh alignment next week we will be talking about meaning in a world without God I think we advertised that last week but that's coming up next week the following week B will be talking with Dr Christopher fingos again and the week after that I am back and we will be talking about Jesus uh and Joseph and the relationship there so please join us for all of those it's going to be a lot of fun thank you all and goodbye this has been an episode of misquoting Jesus with Bart man we'll be back with a new episode next Tuesday so please be sure to subscribe to our show for free on your favorite podcast listening app or on BART Herman's YouTube channel so you don't miss out from Bart Herman and myself Megan Lewis thank you for joining us

Channel: Bart D. Ehrman

Views: 75,837

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Id: BFNU5NeWsMk

Length: 55min 7sec (3307 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 06 2023