Why Doesn't Bart Believe in God?

[Music] welcome to misquoting Jesus with Bart ehrmann 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 today we're going to be covering a more personal topic than usual we're going to be looking at Bart's Faith journey and deconversion from Evangelical Christianity a person's a person's reasons for deconversion to agnosticism or atheism is something that many Christians speculate wildly about misunderstand or simply refuse to believe but those reasons can be varied and complex and I think are worth spending some time investigating but before we get into the heavy stuff but how is your week going uh yeah so uh my week is my my week is going uh well this is a uh uh big week for me my book has uh come out today and so congratulations uh March 21st is the date and uh you know when you write a book you never know when it's going to come out because the publisher decides and you have no say in it um books on religion they like to come out uh either before Christmas or before Easter and people people kind of like accuse me like being cynical by doing it that way he's like I had no choice in this matter if it were my this thing was ready to come out October last October as far as I was because so but uh yeah so it's a big day books released and so yeah Life's good how's your life that's good yes good actually March tends to be a little on the busy side we have several birthdays so uh my daughter's birthday was yesterday she turned 10 and my mom actually went back to the UK yesterday as well so it's been a busy week but very pleasant well ten you know the thing about 10 is that you know you're going to be in double digits for uh the next 89 years of your life so I think it's a big deal she was very excited I bet okay well I hope I hope she did well in the birthday haul she thinks so which is yeah okay she thinks so good yeah so we're not talking like I said and like you said last week we're not talking about biblical studies or early Christian history today we're talking about you um and your personal life and we spoke in some detail I think in the very first episode of this podcast on your religious background but a refresher might be helpful for people who have joined us since then could you just take a minute or two and tell us about what your religious background was prior to deconversion yeah so um yeah so the quick story is I was raised in a Christian household uh my uh my parents who Chris she and my mom was fairly devout um they weren't uh they weren't like overly conservative at all uh but you know they we would say grace before meals and such and we would um we went to the Episcopal church and I was an altar boy um and um when I was uh in high school when I was 15 I had a born-again experience uh the uh led by an Evangelical uh fellow who ran a uh Youth for Christ club that I was in and uh you know I committed my life to Christ I asked Jesus into my heart committed my life to Christ and and went off and After High School went to Moody Bible Institute and was a very uh hardcore conservative uh Christian uh who believed in evangelizing and uh defending the faith I was interested in apologetics and interested in evangelism and I wasn't sure what I was going to do with my life I ended up um taking Greek in college and was good in it and went off to Princeton Theological Seminary where I studied biblical studies but also Theology and a number of other things and started changing my views I eventually left Evangelical Christianity when I started thinking the Bible in fact was not the infallible word of God for because of my studies and eventually years later after I was teaching already at Chapel pill so I I think it's yeah so it would have been the late I mean late 80s or so when I started really questioning my faith and I ended up leaving leaving the faith altogether and now can and considered myself an agnostic and now I consider myself an agnostic and an atheist which is confusing to people but then we can explain it so I think it's fair to say that a lot of people have heard you speak about or read your writing on how your relationship to the Bible changed as you went through graduate education and following that came to the conclusion they themselves came to the conclusion that it was the contradictions and textual problems in the New Testament that led to your deconversion this isn't the case and we'll get to the actual reason in the moment but what impact did learning about the Bible and seeing these textual contradictions have on your religious convictions well I had I had uh as a conservative Evangelical who had gone to Moody Bible Institute where as we said when we were there Bible is our middle name I was a big Bible guy and I and I was convinced that there you know that it was the word of God and it wasn't just the word of God it was the words of God I didn't have a theory that God had like dictated the books to the authors but I I thought that he had made sure that the right words were written somehow and um which meant there couldn't be any contradictions but as I started studying the New Testament in Greek fairly intensely and started reading the Old Testament in Hebrew I started looking very very carefully ways that people don't normally read the Bible they kind of read you know like they read novel they get through a page as quickly as they can and so I started reading it very very carefully and I started noticing things that were just I thought I got to a point where I just said look you know if I'm just being honest with myself this is a contradiction and once I admitted that um it made a big difference to me when when I heard like when I had friends or liberal professors or something who would have these kind of big contradictions you know Mark has a different view of Jesus than John you know or Genesis contradiction you know I could reconcile all that stuff no problem but the problem was that you get down into some nitty-gritty little thing and you know and so the one thing the one that got me was in Mark chapter 2 when Jesus says that David entered the temple to eat the show bread when uh when Abi author was high priest and I realized in fact I'll be author wasn't the high priest it was a himalayka's father I tried as well as I could for a long time I finally said look it's a contradiction but what once you open that Floodgate right if you have that kind of mindset that fundamentalist mindset that there can't be any contradiction once you find one then it opens the flood game then you say well maybe this too and then you this tune this tune and then so it builds up but for me it started very small as a little in the armor and then uh and then so but I remained a Christian I just didn't think that wasn't a fundamentalist anymore well then did truly prompt you to leave Christianity and how long had you been wrestling with the problem before you realized that it wasn't one that you could solve right so um I um when I when I moved toward a more kind of liberal understanding of Christianity I still believed in God I still believe Christ was the son of God I thought that that um somehow his death had brought about salvation and as time went on I had I developed my views more and more I suppose I became more and more liberal as I became a little bit um I I couldn't quite get my mind around the doctrine of the atonement that God required somebody to to be tortured to death for my salvation why couldn't he just forgive me what you know I don't I don't require people to torture others to I mean forgive them and so so I started I started having doubts about you know the atonement and then about whether Jesus really is God or is you know in some and I saw I ended up with a fairly liberal view that the Bible in my view taught truth that needed to be considered as other books do but the Bible especially in my tradition and but I still believed in God I believe there is a God and I believe Jesus manifested God and showed me who God was God is one who gives of himself to others uh one who uh one who loves others enough to sacrifice for others Christ himself sacrifice for others and that if I want to be a good person I it's not that I'm going to go get crucified for someone but I will I will love others and try to help those who are in need and and that that that's what God in Christ showed me as as the way of God but this is predicated on the existence of God um what ended up getting me uh wasn't the contradictions it wasn't the biblical problems the historical mistakes anything like that or even the doctrine of the atonement or and what got me was whether I really believe that there was a god who's active in this world who intervenes in this world to help those in need um is there is is there a god like that in the world um and what ended up getting me to think not um was the age-old problem of suffering that there's so much suffering in the world that it's I I came to a point where I thought it was impossible to uh explain it if if there really is an act of God in the world was that a us that led you to finally say no I don't I don't think so or was it or a culmination of of thought and reflection over several years it was a long process it took years there were painful years emotionally very painful for me because it meant leaving the faith that I loved and it meant um leaving my community my Christian Community uh and so forth in some ways the process for me started um early on in my teaching career I was teaching at Rutgers in New Jersey and I was just I was an adjunct there um and I was asked by my department chair to teach a class that was called the problem of suffering in the biblical traditions and at the time I thought this would be great class to teach because um I had long thought even as a you know as a Christian I long thought that the authors of the Bible wrestled with why they're suffering and that they wrestled with it in different ways and had different ways of understanding why they're suffering and by this point I was a I was a fairly liberal Christian at this point and I'd come to think that you know some of these views of suffering are not consistent with each other what one author says isn't the same as another and so you have you have people like you know the prophets of the Old Testament say that the reason they're suffering is because the people of God have disobeyed him and he's punishing them and so in the Book of Amos you know God God starves people and he brings uh drought and he brings epidemics to in order to make them repent he kills some of them in order to make them repent and so the the they're the solution is that people people have to pay for their sins and God punishes that's why they're suffering um other people like the author of the book of Job completely disagree with that they don't think it's because people or are wicked um part of the Book of Job um indicates that uh that it's not that at all that in fact God can do whatever he wants and he's not going to tell you why he's not going to tell you why they're suffering but it's not because of that uh and so you get other you get other authors who think that suffering is supposed to um make you appreciate the good times and you look for a silver lining and sometimes suffering leads to a good sometimes there's Redemptive value in suffering that's obviously the teaching of the Cross is that suffering can bring Redemption um you have other people other authors who think that uh suffering becomes because there are other Wicked people in the world who are doing nasty things to you and that's why they're suffering you know and you end up with apocalyptic thinking to think it's it's it's none of the above it's because there are forces of evil in the world that are creating havoc on Earth and God's against it he's not for that's the opposite of the prophetic View and so um so I was going to teach this class right so I I taught the class uh so this is like in 19 like 85 or something and students in college Back Then basically they were in college so they can go off and get a job at IBM and make a ton of money so they're taking this class just because they needed you know and they weren't really interested in I had a real trouble so the course was called the problems suffering in the biblical Traditions I had trouble getting them convinced there was a problem with suffering and so like this is a problem if you if you if you're religious this how do you explain this and I had to resort to things like um I would this was during the time I'm not sure if it was 85 it was right in there is is when one of these Ethiopian uh famines were happening that ended up uh killing two million people starved to death and I would uh come into class with a front page of the New York Times they would have a picture of a woman who was clearly starving to death with an infant on her breast who wasn't getting any nourishment and was starving to death I pointed this picture and say look if you believe in God this is a problem how do you explain this and so of course I you know and I I knew the biblical answers I knew what the philosophers were saying I read around I read about theologians saying what popular preachers say you know I read and that started though that started my that started me thinking more and more about it and it was it was really only years later that I got to a point where I said I just don't I don't think any of these explanations are right what did you find any of the explanations maybe more convincing more comforting than others or were they just all substantially lacking so it's I have to say anybody listens to this I'm I know I'm going to get about 300 emails explaining why they're suffering outside I wrote a I wrote a book on this my book is called God's problem um and it deals with the biblical understandings of suffering and I got a lot of email when I was um when I was a Christian the uh solution that satisfied me the most was that there were powers of evil that were beyond our comprehension that were uh that were creating problems on Earth creating human suffering and I continued to think that even as a liberal Christian even as a liberal Christian I just thought um uh that in the end good is going to Triumph and I really liked this hymn this is my father's world that has this line in it that though the wrong be oft so strong God is the ruler yet you know I always really liked that and I liked that idea um the the two I think that you know I I don't believe in the devil anymore I I think the two uh best explanations are one of course everybody says well look we have free will and free will you know if I've got free will I can I can punch you in the face as well as give you 20 bucks and so you know I can choose which to do and so I think that's you know that's kind of obviously true I I mean I'm not on philosophical grounds I don't know I think Free Will is actually a problematic category but certainly I can decide to do things and do them that can hurt people so that that can account for a lot of things up to the Holocaust I mean although when you get to the Holocaust you're dealing at the level of evil that seems so immense that it's really kind of hard just as well it's free will you know it seems a little there's a lot more going on there but um the other thing is just it's a nasty world out there um you know which uh not just human beings but I mean we're we're in a brutal and uncaring universe and the universe gets in the way and so you get volcanoes and earthquakes and things and so it's not God's fault other than the fact that he he made it this way there is that and um you know the Free Will argument I'll tell you this about the Free Will argument people for some reason people think oh that solves everything and but when you press them about it and they say yes they say well look if you didn't have free will you couldn't love God willingly and so God if God Made You Without free will you know it's the robot after you you'd be a robot God didn't want robots he wanted people freely to love them and if you can freely love God I mean you can freely hate God and if you can freely love another you can freely uh you you know and so you can use your free will either way and so there's got to be suffering people always say this there has to be suffering and my response sometimes is okay so there has to be suffering and um it's because we have free will and then I'll ask do you think that when you die and go to heaven will you have free will and they say well yes of course so but there won't be any suffering in heaven right he said well no I said so it is possible to have free will and no suffering you get this silence like uh huh yeah but that's different why is it different well because we're sinful oh we're sinful okay so the problem is that free will the frog is sit so I mean you kind of so like yeah so the free will the robot thing doesn't work too well for me anymore you said um when you were explaining what did finally lead you to deconvert that it was a long and painful process and that you lost a lot during that process how did you go about filling the void of the lack of faith the lack of community it was really rough you know when people you know I think a lot of people think that people who deconvert become these kind of uh these kind of cynic unfeeling types or something like no that wasn't it for me um it was a very difficult uh transition for me um and the void the void was in there were there were there were numerous aspects of the Void one was um I think I mentioned that you know I really I had to give up my my community um so I was a member of a church I was a an Episcopalian uh here in Chapel Hill and um uh there's a um there's a church here that I was a member of that's right next to our campus and so um and a lot of professors go there and a lot of you know it's it's really a nice church but so I'm there I'm there one Sunday morning and having all these doubts and thinking I don't really believe in God anymore and and I'm we're saying the Nicene Creed and uh you know I believe in one God the Father Almighty Etc and uh Jesus Christ his son and I realize you know there's the only line I can say in this Creed is he suffered under Pontius Pilate was dead and buried only thing I can honestly say that I believe and I thought you know I just I don't belong here anymore because it's not just that I feel out of place it's not I didn't think it felt honest for me to be in a church worshiping with people who do believe this while they're confessing their faith and the part of the problem is I was a known figure you know I'm a professor at the University right next door so this church is called The Chapel of the Cross so I mean it's right virtually on the campus and um so I I finally said I just can't do it and so I stopped going and that created a huge void and the kind of irony is that the church it's a great it's a really good church and it's it's got really smart and interesting people in it and uh and people would keep saying look just come on back it's okay I said no man I don't believe I just I don't feel right they said oh no we really want you to come I said I just you know because I just felt like people be in there looking what's he doing in here and it's like okay so so I lost that community so what do you do to replace that well it's not easy because there there aren't alternatives for agnostics atheists agnostic or atheists or people like me who are both um there's no altern you know there are alternatives but you know there are groups of people like me who get together every week to talk about big issues and uh you know you can have a book club or something I guess um you can but it's not the same because in the in the church you get the fellowship you get people you don't know very well who support you uh who share your concerns you can talk with about big issues you can have education together you worship together there's like there's very little like that out there otherwise and so a void like that you just I I think I think what I what I did is I started investing a lot more time and energy into my family and friends uh and developing friendships and things like that that became kind of the the replacement for me thank you I I have an awful lot of friends who are atheists and I think that's that's a way that a lot of them have filled that void and found a community that is not faith-based but you you're right and it's something that um I've certainly noticed if if you don't if you're used to that faith-based community it's you can't just like leave and walk into like you said a book club or or a sports club it's it's very different it really is yeah so um you you've mentioned this a couple of times now and I I think people would probably appreciate um maybe a definition or an explanation what do you mean when you say you're an agnostic atheist yeah okay so right so when I when I became um when I became an agnostic I thought about these terms the way almost everybody I know still thinks about them which is that um somebody who stops believing or somebody who's never believed is either an agnostic or an atheist and the idea is that these are two degrees of the same thing that that agnostics say uh you know I don't know if there's a God an atheist says there is no God and those are two degrees and when I became an agnostic I was really kind of amused because I hadn't realized this because I thought they're basically the same thing but one's more certain than the other but uh when you become one it turns out that you know some agnostics are really quite militant uh and some atheists are really quite militant about what they what they think and so the atheists typically think that agnostics are just wimpy atheists they're really atheists but they just can't bring themselves to say it like they think that's going too far like maybe they will go to hell if they say that you know so like they can't they can't bring themselves to go that far and so they think that agnostics are wimpy atheists and the agnostics think that atheists are just arrogant agnostics because they don't know how would they know and so they're saying they know something they can't know so that's what it makes and so they're two degrees right of certainty and I don't think that anymore so it's somebody uh it was a it was a former student who actually convinced me that they're actually not two degrees of the same thing they're two different things and so I think they're two different things but you can be in both at once the the two things are agnosticism comes from the Greek word gnosis which means knowledge in Greek if you put an A in front of a word it means not so uh gnosis is a knowledge and an agnostic is someone who says they don't know so if you ask me you know do you know if there's a superior being in the universe who's you know in control uh do do you know I'd say no I don't think there is no I don't I don't know I don't think so I don't know how could I know I mean how could I possibly not really I mean like can a rock know that humans exist if not then how can humans know whether a God exists I mean it's like you know when my so uh yeah I don't know um but the atheism I think is not about knowledge it's about belief theism is a form of belief and if you ask me do you believe there's a superior being in the universe no I absolutely don't believe so I don't believe so do you know so no I don't know I don't know or believe but so I'm I'm an atheist in what I believe who don't believe eminent agnostic by what I don't know and I I like continuing to claim the agnosticism because I think there's just kind of a sense of humility about it that not not that anybody's accused me of humility but but uh but but you know there is a sense of like recognizing that this is a big world and to claim that we know things that we can't possibly know is is a mistake and so I I don't I really don't know but I don't think anybody else does either even though 300 people can write me emails telling me why they know I get letters like that every week I believe it I absolutely that and I'm welcome those I mean I'm fine with them this is why I have no problem with people who do believe because I don't think you know I think I think all of us believe lots of things that are just in 100 years people can think of ridiculous and so including me and so I don't I I don't have a problem with people being believing Christians or whatever they are as long as they're not hurting other people my bottom line is hurting other people if you're Christianity is making you hurt other people then I'm not for you but if it you know if you're trying to do good for people I mean great great why not on the the point of of not trying to deconvert others I'm sure you've been told that the real reason that you write all of your books and speak in public and run your blog is because you are just on a mission to deconvert the faithful um and in God's problem you and here you've made the point of saying that you've absolutely no interest in deconverting anyone you have no problem with people holding religious belief your wife is the Christian why do you do this work why do I do the work yeah um well it's it's always been important to me personally to understand the Bible for example and to understand where Christianity came from and understand what Christian theology came from that for me it was important originally because I believed it and I wanted to know everything I could about it um before I became a born-again Christian um I was not really academically interested I was smart enough and did fine but I mean it's only when I became a uh born again Christian that became like just crazily interested in studying and so like I was just I went crazy hip booty Bible oh God and it's just it remains hugely interesting to me [Music] um but not for reasons of personal faith and not so I can help other people get to heaven or uh it's because so it's just personally interesting but also I think historically and culturally and socially it's hugely important uh not just the Bible but the history of Christianity you know there are eight billion people in the world and two billion of them worship Jesus and believe in the Bible and the other eight billion whether they know it or not have been seriously influenced by people who believe in Jesus I mean the Western world there's been no institution more powerful in western civilization than the Christian Church nothing's close nothing's close and and you know the the Bible is the most important book in western civilization and Jesus is the most important figure in the history of the world in my opinion people I mean people come try to come up with Alternatives I'm telling you you don't have that two billion people worship between someone else let alone all the other influences and not just I mean cultural influence you think about music and art and philosophy and literature without Christianity and so it's like culturally historically it's just as important as you can get and so that's why I just passionate about it because I think it's it's part of who we are as people especially if we live in the west it doesn't matter if you're an agnostic or an atheist or both or a Believer or anything else it's really important thank you let me say by the way you know people ask me this all the time why do you study the Bible you don't even believe in it and you know you know welcome to a university um just Rising us because my wife Sarah you're like she she started out as a medievalist so she would teach classes on Chaucer she didn't believe Chaucer it's like she doesn't believe in child I've got friends who teach Marxism you know and they're not Communists people teach criminology they're out robbing banks you know they're just you know it's like you don't believe that you don't teach in a university you teach knowledge you don't teach what you believe it's so it's a secular research you know it so that's why I I've I've I'm interested in the knowledge that's why sorry no no I my husband has been asked that question multiple times because he does an awful lot of work on the Old Testament you're not a Christian anymore why do you keep talking about it I was like well I don't believe in Marduk but I still talk about the enuma aylish myth ad nauseam if someone lets me it it zero to do zero to do with belief um I have just one more question uh before we move on and like I said this is a really personal topic for a lot of people and certain groups of Christians seem to have a real problem with it my husband's Josh had a very similar Faith journey to yourself he was a chaplain in the Air Force and a pastor and then through his educational Journey he ended up leaving the religion and he's now told with disturbing regularity that he was never a real Christian or never really saved or he just left because he wanted to sin which personally bothers me and I'm always fascinated that all of these perfect strangers know his mind and reasons better than he does and I'm sure you've had very similar responses and probably many more I was wondering if you've had any thoughts on why someone else's decision to leave a religious tradition seems to be so very threatening to other people especially when like in your case like in Josh's case the person who is left is making no effort to deconvert anyone else and has no interest in other people following their path yeah yeah yeah these people say that to Josh not only know his mind and reasons they know his morality right and you know needs just to sit I'll tell you I'm going to tell you that I go before I answer your question which is when I when I was thinking about um leaving the faith when I was thinking you know really not sure I believe anymore I was my my one of my major concerns was was it were issues of morality because I had been raised to think that if there's no God there's no reason to be moral you know if there's no afterlife Sail on you know let's party and um and so that's what I you know I I guess I just thought that must be right because like why would I why would I be it turned out you know that I thought you know I'd have no moral compass because without religion why would you have a moral come why would you care and boy that turned out to be wrong I mean I was really worried about it but it's just completely wrong Kong I'm just as moral as him or immoral as I ever was and for me it had just the opposite effect because it made me realize it made me realize that this life is all we have I don't believe in an afterlife I think this is it which means that I want to live life for as much as I can get out of it because other people also this is it and if they're suffering now there's not going to be a payback you know they're not going to get it back and they act like there's no I don't believe that and so it's not you know you suffer now so you'll be rewarded later no that is garbage that's just an excuse not to help people if this life is if all there is we should be out helping people and so for me I just I've I relish life more than I did before uh and I throw myself into life more I enjoy it more I'm happier more and I'm not worried about people's afterlife or my afterlife and I I am helping interested in helping people just the opposite effect I'll just say that why do people get upset um well a lot of times when it happened when a lot of times they're afraid that the person who's left the faith might be right and that they're concerned that they might be they might be barking up the wrong tree um I in because it's it doesn't the the vitriol you get doesn't make sense otherwise you know if you um you know if you stop some other aspect of your life you know if you if you you know stop watching baseball and start watching football nobody cares you know but if you if you decide that you know you're not going to if suppose you're uh suppose you're English and you decide to become an American citizen you know you don't have people at least my wife doesn't have people you know yelling at her and writing her nasty letters about becoming something else you know if you become a lawyer you used to be a doctor and you decide to go to law school people don't yell at you for leaving the profession and so and in philosophical traditions you know you used to you know you you used to have a certain view of the world you changed your view of the world um and so you know people don't yell at you but boy do people yell at you about religion and I think it's because it's like so important to people and so much as writing on it for them that and especially someone like Josh or me I don't know Josh yet but but you know we are experts in this in this field of things that people believe in and being an expert in the field and knowing really knowing this material I mean really knowing it and and not believing it for people who don't know it and believe it it's really disturbing because it's their eternal life is based on it and so that's I think that's that's why it's it's so important to them and they think it's important for the world because I think in the Christian tradition they think that actually this has Eternal consequences thank you very much for sharing your thoughts and sharing your life with us it has been a pleasure to hear more about it um we're going to take a brief break and then we'll back with Bart's weekly updates and then some audience questions 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] you're back with Bart's weekly update this is Bart's weekly update where we get to catch up on all the latest about Dr ehrmann's book releases speaking engagements hermanblog.org happenings and online course launches [Music] but what's in your world this week well this week so this day is the day my book came out right and so all right yeah so uh this was a good day for me and a good week ahead I've got um I'm doing some book readings and um the uh and doing interviews and podcasts and trying to promote the book um and luckily most people think you know if you write a book and you go on a on a book tour that oh well isn't that wouldn't that be glorious you know that's so now man that's high living it's oh my God book book authors hate booktubers hate them if all you gotta do is want and so like I'm not they don't do book tours much anymore with social media and so I am going regionally though I'm around North Carolina and maybe a few other places on the East Coast but I'm not doing the big book tour anymore thank God so but so it's good it's great interviews and uh podcasts and uh so a few book readings in the area so it's all good so yeah that's what they had well congratulations I hope you uh enjoy your read things and I'm glad that you don't have to do a full book tour because frankly those do sound absolutely exhausting they're miserable and you know the thing is the book the book called Armageddon and it's about you know worth of the world is coming soon and the end of the world's coming soon I'm just glad that the end didn't come before my book came out it didn't come that soon always a good thing always a good thing and now we have some questions from our audience 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] so we have just a selection of questions no theme no topic this week just whatever was in the email inbox that we haven't addressed already so question one how in the world is it that the story of the New Testament that's what's released in the gospels is as detailed as when it's um recounting speech what people said was someone following Jesus around with a pen and paper to write it down if that's not the case which I suspect our listener knows is not the case how could anyone remember what was said for long enough for someone else to then write it down yeah no it's a really good question I think a lot of people don't think very carefully about this question with my students um I uh so this the semester I was teaching them about dealing with this issue about how you know how how are the Jesus in The Sermon on the Mount goes through chapter five six and seven of Matthew three chapters full of saying saying saying you know Parable saying I mean it's like three chapters full so I tell my students I ask my students you know how How could somebody well you know people can remember things if they're paying attention so so I say okay so um Biden gave his uh inaugural address two years ago would you write it down for me did you hear it oh yeah I heard okay what did he say okay tell me what themes he said okay so suppose you know Matthew's written um 50 years later and uh by somebody who wasn't there and so so how did they they didn't they didn't remember uh is the answer we know from uh Greek historians uh thucydides that um that people who write narratives of figures who give speeches have to make up the speeches and the way they do it is they try to facility says they try to do it by thinking what would be appropriate for this person to have said and then they have the person say it there's no other way so that's how they did it perfect no tape recorders uh backwards no tape recorders no iPhones record anything no stenographer standing by and some of the sayings of Jesus I will say this there are sayings of Jesus that I and most Scholars Think Jesus really did say and what ended up happening is if Jesus repeated a saying you know the meek shall inherit the earth and he said that if you know a number of times and the disciples heard him then they would tell their disciples and if it's like a pithy saying you can remember that but you're not going to remember uh you know the farewell discourse and gospel John which is five chapters long you just you're not going to do it and people are not sitting around memorizing things the way everybody says that they weren't and we have good research on all of this stuff so yeah pithy sayings and maybe a parable you know a memorable Parable you can you can get some things back to Jesus but a lot of things yeah it's what we think Jesus would have said but he wouldn't have said yeah would have said yeah so next question one of the reasons the Bible is the most quoted book of all time is because it's very poetic in its use of language The Listener says they have only read the Bible in English but are curious if it is just as poetic in the original Greek or is it this is this the result of translates to the Bible trying to make the text sound as Majestic and epic as possible um I'm afraid it's uh it's translators making the Bible Majestic but it's also that there is a long tradition of uh of the Bible being available in the public sphere in in America and in England um and the King James Bible is uh widely quoted even by people who don't know their their quoting it they'll quote a lie like a well-known line and so there there's a kind of a resonance to the Bible that has infiltrated our culture which was a very good thing but it means that when you hear something that sounds biblical it sounds elevated by the fact that it's part of our cultural discourse the the Greek of the New Testament is usually not elegant at all in some places it's terrible uh The Book of Revelation as we've pointed out on the podcast before is really bad Greek and there are others that are not good uh but most of it's pretty good but in in Antiquity though when when uh non-christians were starting to look at the New Testament they were struck by how inelegant it was in comparison with really high level Greek and so it is usually understood that the Greek of the New Testament is often good and often very pleasing uh and rhetorically satisfying and but it's it's never thought to be highly literate Creek except for in a few places uh and it's um and it would have been read you know not as having a kind of particular power to it uh as far as the rhetoric goes by people who aren't committed to the words already we have a slightly related question there asking about a class structure in Palestine in the first century and the listener is asking how is it that literate Greek speakers were inspired to write the books that we have in the New Testament how are they inspired to write them by people who were illiterate Aramaic speaking peasants possibly not on the same social structure as they were yeah uh it's again a really good question because the um the followers of Jesus were lower class people uh who were not educated and who spoke Aramaic and the um the books of the New Testament are written by Highly Educated literate people who wrote Greek and so that's a kind of a basic and kind of a simple way of putting that probably the the followers of Jesus were not the ones who wrote these books and what happened is Jesus Jesus taught his disciples and then he died and the disciples spread his teachings and spread stories is about him and they converted people in Judea and in Galilee and and then started converting people who were Greek speaking people by the time the New Testament is written most people who have converted are Greek speaking people living in other countries uh with other backgrounds non-jewish most of them and they're the ones who write the Books and so uh it's not the Aramaic followers of Jesus it's people who've heard stories that were many of which many of which were started by those aramaics Aramaic followers through Jesus thank you and the the previous listener has an additional question that is 90 joke but I appreciated it so I wanted to share it with you and they asked will bot combine his literary Works into one massive volume and call it the bartonomicon yeah you know Bart sometimes looks up an article he wrote once years ago and says wow I don't remember that I've been so you can trust me I am not going to do that I definitely will not be doing that some people have asked me some people have asked me to um in fact I've had editors ask me to take all my blog posts and um and combine them into a book and uh just on my blog uh God I don't know I've written several million words I was gonna say that's that's a lot there's no way in the world I'm gonna re-read those things could you imagine editing that down no thank you though thanks for this again well before we finish for the week would you mind just summarizing and again this was a personal episode so it's going to be slightly different to normal but just summarize what we spoke about and why it's simple yeah this was this is really more about my faith Journey it wasn't about um scholarship per se except insofar as that that has him had an impact on my on my faith Journey leading me away from being a fundamentalist Christian at least to being a liberal one who had a more kind of open view about the Bible and uh and the Christian faith I eventually left that because um I just got to a point where I don't didn't think we can explain how there can be a God in the world in a world who intervenes in the world who's active in the world when there are so many people who are desperate for divine intervention plead for intervention not just not just people off in some other country but Christians who committed Christians who have horrible horrible lives and there's no intervention and uh and God doesn't answer prayer and unless the answer is usually no and so I I just got to a point where I just I just didn't believe it anymore I thought it was it was probably made better sense to think that there's not a god who's active in the world and that's how I left the faith but I still you know I'm still uh deeply interested in the Bible and knowing about the Bible knowing about early Christianity I'm not opposed to somebody else being Christian or uh you know and I don't try to deconvert anybody but my belief is that in fact we are all we are and we all we're all we have and this life is all we have and we should live it for the most we can and love others and try and help them because uh there's no after life to make right all the wrongs that are here now thank you very much and thank you for sharing audience thank you all for listening I hope you enjoyed the show if you did please subscribe to the podcast and make sure you don't miss any future episodes remember that you can use the code NJ podcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.boterman.com his new book is now out um it's I want to say it's called Armageddon Armageddon good what does the bible really say about the end I should have written that down I was convinced Armageddon was right and then I came to to say it and thought Oh God Megan have you got the right thing yes I did beautiful so but this new book is out today um highly recommended and I hope people who are interested will go and find a copy for themselves and have a read it's fascinating misquoting Jesus will be back next week but without me but who are you talking to and what are you talking about one of my closest friends uh is also an academic uh professor emeritus of New Testament at Loyola Marymount University named Jeffrey seiker uh Jeff and I are going to have an interview I'm going to interview him he's written several uh books on the issue of homosexuality in the Bible he does not believe that the Bible condemns homosexuality uh and we're gonna we're gonna hear why why he thinks that he's got I agree with him actually and we're going to find out why uh that will be a surprise to some people some people say well it's in there it's just like it doesn't apply anymore no we don't think it's in there I'm gonna let him I'm gonna let him explain why that is if you think the comments and letters and emails that you're going to get off the back of this episode are bad I suspect next week is going to be something else entirely and I suspect it will also be one of the most listened to episodes that we've done so far well I'll I'll forward the uh I'll forward the notes to Jeffrey soccer perfect perfect he's retired he's he's got the time for it well thank you again Bart thank you audience and goodbye [Music] 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 [Music]

Channel: Bart D. Ehrman

Views: 159,487

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Id: e6DUD1KHEnk

Length: 49min 42sec (2982 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 21 2023