Did Early Christians Believe in Reincarnation?

When I say reincarnation, your first thought probably isn't Christianity. But believe it or not, reincarnation was a theological concept for some early Christians. How does what early Christians taught about reincarnation differ from what we as modern people understand it to be? Was it a common idea, or did those who espoused it receive pushback and censorship from their fellow Christians? And why isn't reincarnation still a Christian concept? Stay tuned for all of that and so much more.

Welcome to Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman, the only show where a six-time New York Times best-selling author and world-renowned Bible scholar uncovers the many fascinating, little-known facts about the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the rise of Christianity. I'm your host, Megan Lewis. Let's begin.

Many people in the modern Western world view reincarnation as a belief predominantly from Eastern religions, especially Buddhism and Hinduism. Today, we're going to be talking about ideas of reincarnation in early Christianity and Origen of Alexandria, one of the concept's main proponents in the Christian world. Before we get into that, though, how are you doing today?

Uh, yeah, I'm doing, I'm doing all right. Um, we have, um, when this airs, we will have finished our New Insights into the New Testament conference. Uh, um, and, uh, we're moving on now to other things. And, uh, so this, uh, this online course thing, the, uh, Courses on Christian Origins is going great guns and it's very exciting. So I'm doing pretty well. Very pumped about the conference. So, uh, how are you doing?

Yeah, I am okay. Thank you. I am currently battling a cat who wishes to headbutt the microphone, which is adorable, but not very helpful for recording purposes. Uh, but no, I'm good. I'm good. And, um, I'm, you're finishing up organizing one conference. I'm about to start organizing another. Um, we're just starting to contact speakers and things for our third Hit Points in History AR gaming conference, which happens in, uh, March, April time. So, yeah, we're starting to ramp up organization stuff now.

Wow. Okay. Yeah, no conferences. Yeah. Okay. They take, they take a lot of work. People, I didn't realize, at least, but they take, take a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But reincarnation, is this something that you have really talked about or thought about a lot before now? Is there something that comes up a lot when you're talking and and teaching about early Christianity?

Uh, well, yeah, it does. And it actually, uh, sort of the, um, it came up the other day, actually, but not because of my teaching. I was actually watching one of my favorite movies, Bull Durham. When I moved to Durham, North Carolina, I had just seen Bull Durham, which is, you know, this Kevin Costner movie, Susan Sarandon, and it's, uh, my favorite baseball movie of all time. It's great. It's a great movie. But, but in this, Annie, who Susan Sarandon plays, is going on. She's always going on these kind of her ideas about things, and she starts telling Crash Davis, which is, uh, the, the figure that Kevin Costner plays, uh, about her reincarnation states, you know, and she starts talking about what famous people she had. And he just kind of said, finally says, why is that whenever anybody's reincarnated, it's always from somebody who is famous? Why? Why not just like, just some average person? Because surely most people were average people, like nobody ever heard of. Why is everybody somebody famous? It's, it is one of those kind of typical responses that people have. But, you know, yeah, no, reincarnated people, people subscribe to it, and I, I hear about it all the time. And I've, and I have dealt with it actually on an academic level.

So why do you think reincarnation and early Christianity is an important thing to talk about?

Well, you know, the, the views of the afterlife in early Christianity are one of its most distinctive features. Um, the place I talk about reincarnation is in my book, Heaven and Hell, where I'm trying to explain what, uh, different views early Christians had about the afterlife. Uh, and this was one of the views. And I, I know Christians today, uh, not, not many, but I know some Christians who still believe in, in some form of reincarnation. And as we're going to see, this actually was a, is a widespread view at some times and places, not never the majority view, but is fairly widely held at some times in, in Christianity.

Oddly enough, in the ancient world, was reincarnation a common view, or was it somewhat unusual?

Um, yeah, I, I don't, you know, in, in the Greek and Roman worlds that I focus on, so the kind of the, the foundation of our culture, it was never, you know, the prevalent view at all. But it had been around for a long time by the time Jesus came along. It, uh, I think the, the person normally attributed with first really kind of pushing it as on, on intellectual grounds was, was the Greek philosopher Pythagoras, back in the, you know, I mean, we're talking before Socrates, so we're talking like 500 years or so before Jesus. Um, and then you have, you have Greek philosophers who stated, and it's actually in Plato. There's, in Plato's largest book, The Republic, uh, in book 10, he has a, um, a, a figure who comes back from the dead to explain what he's seen, and he describes how, uh, people get rewarded or punished, uh, and then they come back to have a second shot at it, then a third shot. It just goes on like that. And even in, in Roman circles, where you might not expect as much, because they aren't quite as philosophically oriented, but Virgil in the Aeneid has an account of, of reincarnation in his description of the afterlife. And so it's very much in the air, uh, in various different kinds of of groups. But it was never the majority view. Most, most, uh, pagans, people who were polytheists, didn't believe in any afterlife. They thought that you died and the end of the story. And those who did believe in some kind of ongoing existence tended to think that everybody went to Hades, and they didn't, there wasn't much to do down there. But they, they didn't come back. And, and Jews didn't believe in reincarnation by and large, and a few did, but, um, so, yeah, it was never a majority view.

Do, do any of these ancient concepts of reincarnation differ substantially from what we might understand the word to mean today?

Um, the basic concept is similar, which is that you, you're living now, and you lived before this, and when you die, you'll come back, uh, as a different person. Most of them, um, also think that how you live now will determine how you come back then. Um, some of these, uh, some of these, uh, views that we we saw have written evidence of in Greek sources, for example, maintain that you could come back as a human being of, um, you know, in, in really good circumstances if you've been good in this life, in really horrible circumstances if you've been bad in this life. But, you know, you can also come back as some other kind of animal. And, you know, if you're not really a good person, you might come back as a slug or a cockroach, you know, or you can come back as a plant. You know, you may end up being a toadstool next time around. And so, and so in most of these systems, the idea is that you're going to get a chance for the next life. And so what you do in this life is going to affect what happens in your next life. And so it, in almost, almost all these these systems, it's an incentive to live properly, to live a good life, not, not a life where it's just all about pleasure, not good in that sense, but good in the sense that you're doing good and being a good person.

Thank you. We are going to take a brief break, but when we come back, we'll be looking at specifically Christian ideas of reincarnation.

Think you've got Jesus' parables all figured out? Think again. These aren't just simplistic, moralistic tales. They're some of the most enigmatic and provocative teachings in all of scripture. But if you're only seeing them through a modern lens, you're missing half the story. Rediscover these stories as they were originally understood in their historical and cultural context with New Testament and Jewish studies scholar Dr. Amy Jill Levine in her intriguing course, The Parables of Jesus: Jewish Insights into Gospel Ethics, Humor, and Provocation. You'll explore the teachings of Jesus, examining the social, ethical, and economic implications that are often overlooked today. If you're ready to dive into the real meaning behind the Good Samaritan, The Prodigal Son, and more, this four-lecture series will take you deeper than you've ever gone before. Visit BartEhrman.com/parables, that's P-A-R-A-B-L-E-S, to learn more or sign up today. And don't forget to use discount code MJ podcast for a special offer.

So, if reincarnation was maybe not a common idea in the ancient world, but did definitely exist, did any Christian, early Christian groups or thinkers believe in it? And do you also see competing ideas about reincarnation within early Christianity?

So, if we're talking about earliest Christianity, that would be the period of the New Testament. And in that period, basically, the New Testament are the books we have. But oddly, one would not expect this, but there are some passages in the New Testament that can be taken to support the idea of reincarnation. Um, uh, and for people who know their Bibles, these are fairly familiar passages, but you just don't think about them this way. When, when, uh, when Jesus is, uh, shows up on the scene, uh, King Herod, uh, wants to know, uh, wants to know who he is, and other people want to know who he is. And the, and Jesus knows people wondering who he is. And so he, he asks his disciples, who do people say that I am? And some people say, well, some people say that you're Elijah come back from the dead. And some people say you're John the Baptist. This is after John the Baptist was dead. So, like, so, wait, how do that work exactly? That, so these would be Jews thinking that he's Elijah means Elijah has has come back to life as Jesus? Well, that's reincarnation. And so that's, that's a passage. In, in another passage in the Gospel of John, which was written later, but in the Gospel of John, the Jewish leaders come up to John the Baptist and they say, who are you? And, you know, and he denies that he's Elijah. So again, you have this idea, Elijah is coming back again or something. But in some ways, the most interesting one is in, uh, the Gospel of John, a passage that I studied for decades before this had ever been pointed out to me. There's a man in chapter 9 of John who was born blind, that Jesus is going to heal. And he's, you know, he's suffering, he's blind. And the disciples, uh, see the man and they ask Jesus, who sinned, uh, this man or his parents, that that that he should be blind? Wait a second. How could this man have sinned so that he was born blind? He'd have to be, have to have sinned before he was born. And so the question presupposes reincarnation. And so, so those are three passages, anyway, that it's not that they had a full-fledged understanding of reincarnation, but it does show that people were kind of thinking that someone might come back as someone else.

Do we see any maybe Christian sects or groups who kind of take this reincarnation idea and really embrace it?

Well, there are, and, uh, we don't know a lot. We don't have a lot of groups. But the, the one we know best is, uh, it's, it's actually, this is a group mentioned in, um, Irenaeus. So Irenaeus is this Church Father writing around 180 or 185, so, you know, about a century after most of the New Testament was written. He was a, he was the bishop of the Church of Gaul, uh, in Lyon, which is France. Lyon, France, is where he, but France was called Gaul then. He was the bishop of Gaul and, uh, prolific writer. We have five books of his attacking heretics, and the books together are called Against Heresies. And he talked, he talked about one group, uh, in particular, that believes in reincarnation. Uh, they're called the Carpocratians. They're called Carpocratians because their, the guy who founded the sect was named Carpocrates. And so apparently, Carpocrates taught, or, uh, his followers, anyway, taught that, um, that this world is an evil place, and that, uh, we are trapped here because there, we are actually spiritual beings who are trapped in our bodies, and we have to escape our bodies so that we can have salvation. And so Irenaeus is painting Carpocrates and his followers, the Carpocratians, as Gnostic Christians who believe that the material world is evil, that needs to be escaped. But Carpocrates had a particular slant on this, which was that in order to, to be liberated from your, from your body, your body has to have every possible human experience before you can be liberated from it. And Irenaeus interpreted this in sexual terms, that the Carpocratians are saying you have to have every conceivable sexual experience before you can escape your body. And Irenaeus says that they're actually, you know, practicing this and kind of engaging in this during their worship services. It's part of the ritual because, you know, look, the goal of salvation is to get out of your body, so you, you got to experience everything. So, okay, here's the list. Say, oh my God. So the thing, you know, we don't know if that's right. We kind of doubt, in fact, we really doubt that that's right. But it's what Irenaeus was imagining these people were saying, anyway. And maybe it was right, maybe.

Now, who was Origen of Alexandria, and how does he enter into this reincarnation conversation?

Yeah, Origen is the key figure. Uh, uh, we've talked about Origen a little bit before, uh, on the podcast. Uh, the short story is that Origen was the most important and historically significant theologian of Christianity for the first 300 years of Christianity. He was an incredibly, uh, intellectual, uh, Christian. He is from Alexandria, Egypt. He grew up in the church there. His father had been martyred, and he was became a church leader there of sorts, but he wasn't, he wasn't like a bishop of the church. He was an intellectual who's who was involved in educating Christians, uh, in Christian philosophy. And so he was a philosopher and a theologian and an extremely prolific author, wrote thousands of things, and we don't, we, we don't have nearly everything that he wrote. And a lot of what we've written, he's written so much, we have a lot of it's not even translated into English. You have to read Latin and Greek to read a lot of it because just so much, nobody's got around to translating this. He was a, he was the first Christian that we know of who tried to organize Christian thought into a systematic understanding of what the faith was all about. We have a kind of a pry of this in, he's got a four-volume book we have called On First Principles, where he lays out major aspects of his theological system. But, um, so that's who he was. He was living in the early, mainly active in the mid, in the early, uh, to mid-3rd century. He was, uh, he was especially writing around the 220s, 230s, 240s. He was martyred, uh, ended up being arrested during a persecution in the year 251 and died of the torture that he underwent then. So that, that, that's who he is, basically, a very major early Christian theologian before the Council of Nicaea, before any of that.

So what did he teach about reincarnation?

So in his day, Origen was understood to be a leading spokesperson for the proto-orthodox group, or the orthodox Christians. He was opposed to Gnostics, he's opposed to, uh, people who, uh, who believed he had to keep the Jewish law, he was Christians, he, he was opposed to, he's opposed to groups that later came or during his day were declared heretical. And so he did have, or what were considered the orthodox views of the time. But he was trying to figure out things that were on the margins of the majority Christian beliefs, as he understood them. So Christians agreed that there's one God, they agreed that Jesus was his son, God had created the world, Jesus, uh, was, uh, the son who became incarnate, who became a human, who died for the sins of the world, was physically raised from the dead. Origen knew all of these things, he agreed with all of these things. But there's so many things that need to be explained, um, that are not just kind of the central teachings. And so a lot of his theologizing was about these, these other kinds of themes. And one of the things that he was really interested in was the question of how it is that, um, that God could be sovereign over the entire world, like God could be Lord, he could be Almighty, and that that he could have a world where some people could perennially disobey him. Because if God's will is to save the world, then eventually everybody has to agree with him, because God certainly want, his will is to save the world. Well, how can that happen? Because people die in their sins. And so Origen developed the idea that, uh, that people, uh, here on Earth were actually the, the spirits of people actually go way back. He believed in the pre-existence of the soul. That's in the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, and he created the angels, He created other souls, uh, and created millions of souls. And these souls' sole function was to worship God. But, you know, that's why God created them, so they would worship him, they'd live in eternal bliss worshiping him. But there was a fall, much like people think about the fall of Satan today, that he used to be an angel and became an evil figure. These other souls kind of followed suit, and they all fell from the divine realm and they became humans. Uh, and the goal of these humans is to return back to the bliss of worshiping God forever. But most people don't get it in this life. Most people don't turn back to God. They die. Well, God doesn't give up on them. And so what ends up happening in Origen's understanding of things is that this world we live in now, this age we live in now, is one age, but there will be thousands and thousands of ages. And everyone will come back. Everyone will come back until they recognize the truth of God and they turn to God and then are saved. So God's patient, he's got infinite, infinite amounts of time. There'll be need to be, there could be infinite number of ages. Eventually everybody's going to get it. And so until you get it, you get reincarnated. And so reincarnation happens and happens and happens until in the end, everybody gets saved.

How widely accepted were these ideas? I know you said that he was a member of the proto-orthodoxy, which is kind of what we, what developed into what we would recognize as modern Christianity. We obviously don't have reincarnation generally speaking, so was this something that was accepted by, um, the rest of the proto-orthodoxy, or not so much?

Um, it wasn't accepted by the rest of the proto-orthodox community, but it was accepted by a lot of people, including some famous theologians of the, um, of the fourth and fifth centuries, um, who continued to subscribe to these views. Actually, the end of the third and into the fifth centuries. And, um, they, uh, and some, uh, were famous. We, there's a group of theologians, um, who are called the Cappadocian Church Fathers in the 4th century, and they helped develop the, what ends up becoming the doctrine of the Trinity. And one of them, named Gregory of Nyssa, was a very strong advocate of, um, Origen's views and maintained that, in fact, reincarnation is right. Um, and this became a very big issue, uh, over time, because there were, it ends up getting rejected, vehemently rejected. And it ends up being rejected because when Origen said everyone's going to get saved, he meant everyone, including the devil. And that was too much for people, for people later, like St. Augustine. Man, he was all over that. And, uh, and so he ended up, so Origen ended up being declared a heretic over a century after his death. H, but during his day, it was a plausible view because there weren't, you know, it was, it was a smart view and made sense and made sense of a lot of things, and a lot of people accepted, including theologians.

Did people have other problems with this view of reincarnation apart from the devil being saved, or, or was that really the sticking point?

Well, that was the major sticking point. I mean, it's kind of like, um, you know, if you're a, if you're a presidential candidate and you've got 100 really good points, but like there's one thing they can stick you on, you know, it's just like that one thing, like just derails you. And so, uh, it's kind of like that with some theologians, you know, they've got like everything which is just really quite amazing. They have this one view, like, oh my God, no. And so then you end up, they end up, yeah. So it was, it was mainly that. But also, I think the idea of the pre-existence of the soul was considered to be problematic. It, it's a related thing, but, you know, if we pre-exist, I mean, how, really? I mean, and there were biblical passages that would suggest that, in fact, everything came into existence at one time, that God created Adam and Eve, and that he breathed the soul into Adam, Adam, and it's not that there were souls waiting around to come down here. And so they could point to biblical passages about the pre-existence of the soul. But especially the idea of the devil, I mean, it's like today, when people, people say, I think we've mentioned this earlier on a podcast, people say they believe, well, everyone will be saved because God is merciful. But then they'll say, well, except Hitler. You know, there, it's like, there are some people who are really too evil. And it's like that with the devil. It's like, no, not the devil. But since the logic of the system requires the devil to be saved, then the whole system has to be abandoned.

When did Christian theologians stop arguing The Reincarnation is a Christian doctrine? Is this something that just died with Origen of Alexandria?

No, um, it didn't. Um, because, as I said, people continued. There were followers of his who continued to believe in. Most significantly, Gregory of Nyssa. And interestingly, Gregory of Nyssa had a sister who was a famous theologian, Melania the Younger, and she also believed in reincarnation. We have a dialogue between Gregory and his sister, who is his kind of his mentor. She was a brilliant, brilliant woman who was a Christian theologian, and, uh, where she explains why reincarnation probably was is the right understanding of things. And people like that could cite biblical passages. When, when Jesus said, when Paul says about Jesus in Philippians chapter 2, that, uh, at the end of time, every knee shall bow to Jesus and every tongue shall confess that Jesus is Lord. Origen and Gregory and, um, and Melania said, every means every. It means every tongue. So every creature will confess Jesus. And so everyone will be saved eventually. And so that did, that did, uh, uh, it held on for a while. But there, in the, in the 4th century, there they developed a controversy called the Origen controversy, is an or debate over Origen and his status. That many of the main theologians, including Jerome, were involved in. And this controversy involves features like this. And after this Origen controversy, Origen ends up being declared a heretic. And after that, people who subscribe to, um, ideas of reincarnation, then they have to, and, you know, they have to go in hiding, basically. So it exists on the margins, and still does down till today.

Have there been any modern attempts that you know of to reintroduce reincarnation to Christianity, or is it, like you said, just something that remains a marginal thing?

Well, it's definitely a marginal thing. Um, but as I said, I do know Christians who subscribe to it. I don't know, you know, people might correct me on this in the comments to this, because I, I actually haven't looked into this, but there may be some small denominations that groups of churches that subscribe to this and talk about it. But the mainline churches, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, have have all rejected that. The more traditional idea has become prominent, that that a person lives once. You know, the book of Hebrews says it's appointed but once for a person to live, and after this the judgment. And so people tend to subscribe more to that idea that you've got one chance, and that when you die, your chance is over, and then you face judgment. And so, no reincarnation. I will say, though, that there is a, there's not so much move toward reincarnation. Although some people are moving that way, but the bigger move is towards some some other kinds of universalism. Because in a way, Origen's doctrine of reincarnation was a way of expressing how God's power ultimately will dominate, that you cannot stop God. You might try, you might resist, but you can't. And in the end, you too will be convinced. And in Origen's, Origen's, you know, God's not forcing you to agree, you know, he's not just over time, you know, after a few million ages, you're going to realize you're wrong because you are wrong. And so it is, so God's being merciful. But this modern universalist movement is, is really a lot more about that, that it's, that it's not just for God to say, look, okay, you, you died, now time's up, boom, okay, heaven or hell. You know, why don't you get more chance? Why not? Why not after death? Or why isn't God merciful? Why does he, why does he torture you for trillions of years for 20 years of sin? You know, just doesn't make any sense. And so people are moving toward more of a universalist model, even evangelical Christians. Many, I know evangelical thinkers, apologists, theologians who who are moving in that direction. But reincarnation tends not to be the way of doing it. And it may be because it just has that kind of, kind of fuzzy, New Agey feeling to people. It's like, you know, this isn't serious theology. This is like, uh, you know, people who are into crystals or into reincarnations, I don't know, you know, people, the theologians tend not to to move that direction.

Thank you very much. That is all I have for you this week. We're going to take a brief break, but then we will be back with some news on upcoming events, a very exciting course coming up, and then a Bart's Soap Box.

This is Bart's weekly update where we get to catch up on all the latest about Dr. Ehrman's book releases, speaking engagements, blog.org happenings, and online course launches. Okay, today we are announcing a Synoptic Gospels course, which will be taught by none other than Dr. Mark Goodacre. This is going to be 16 lessons and is starting, I think, next week, so the week of October 7th and going through the middle of December. So actually, not next week, but the following week. Um, this is for $249, or you can sign up for a 14-day free trial as a special introductory offer. Um, and I'm going to let you talk a little bit about this, Bart, because you're launching a brand new Biblical Studies Academy, which sounds amazing, and I definitely think you're better qualified to talk about that than I am.

Yeah, no, this is, this is a really good, this is a really good development. You know, when we started doing, when I started doing these courses online, that we now call the, we just call them Courses in Christian Origins, CCO, the original idea was, you know, like I do a couple lectures, you know, we call that a course. Where then I started doing these eight-lecture things on a weekend, Saturday, Sunday, I'd give eight lectures. And we're, we're going to continue doing those because those are, they're great fun for me, and they are, um, they're, it's, it's so, it's people, people really appreciated these things. And so our company has grown, and we, we're moving into new models and not giving up the old models because the old models are fantastic. But this new model is this Biblical Studies Academy, and this will be university-level courses spread out over a semester, a semester. Um, so the first one we're doing is kind of a truncated one because we wanted to get one in in the fall. And so it's going to be eight weeks. And this will be, it'll be like a university course for outsiders, where we, uh, there'll be reading that you can do, uh, there'll be two lectures a week with Mark Goodacre, who is, by the way, one of the leading scholars in the world on the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. He's going to give, so two lectures a week with Q&A, uh, and, uh, reading that you can do and quizzes if you want to take them. And you can take this course, and it's like taking, he teaches at Duke University, which, as you probably know, is like ranked as one of the top universities in the English-speaking world. And he, he's the guy teaching, one of the guys who teaches New Testament there. And so this will be like taking a course at Duke University. Uh, and so it, what can I say? I mean, so we're going to start doing this. We're going to, we're going to, every, we're going to have a course going like this. Um, we're going to be doing probably three courses like this year. Only most of them are going to be longer. And so this one, we wanted to get it in the fall, uh, and so we're starting it after the, after our conference. And so, yeah, so people should look into this because this is, uh, this is going to be great. It's, it's presenting cutting-edge scholarship on Matthew, Mark, and Luke, on every issue connected with them, in one course by one person who's not me. And so you'll get a different perspective from things you might have learned from me, but also one that is by a top scholar in the world. So I'm really, I'm very, very excited about this Biblical Studies Academy, and I'm really excited Mark agreed to do this first course on the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

And really, it sounds like a fantastic place to start a more advanced dive into New Testament studies. I mean, the Synoptic Gospels are, I don't want to say they're it, but they're pretty foundational.

They're hugely foundational. And, uh, you know, I've done, I've done eight-lecture courses on, uh, Matthew and Mark. I'm going to be doing another one on Luke. And those are, those are great, great fun. This is going to be very different. And people, and, you know, it's one reason to have somebody else doing it because it'll be a different perspective. Mark and I disagree on some key things. For one thing, Mark, Mark Goodacre doesn't believe in the Q source. He spent a good lot of his career trying to show that there was no Q, that actually so that Matthew and Luke were not dependent on some other lost source. And I'm, I'm a big believer in Q. He's a big disbeliever in Q. And so you'll be hearing that side of it. But also he's just like, he's, he's like unbelievably knowledgeable about these books. And so this, yeah, yeah, so, uh, it's a good one to start with. It's the first three books of the New Testament.

Absolutely. And people can learn more at BartEhrman.com/MML. MML for Matthew, Mark, and Luke. So that's pretty easy to remember. And you can always use the code MJ podcast when you check out for an additional discount on your first month. So go take a look, see if it's something that you think you'll be interested in. We are going to go now to a Soap Box. So just stick with us.

Take cover, fundamentalist Christians and mythicists. It's time for Bart gets on his Soap Box, the segment where Bart exposes the belief systems and social constructs that frustrate him most.

So, but it's been a while since your last Soap Box. We've kind of added in some additional bonus features. What are you soapboxing about today?

Yeah, well, this one is less of a rant and more of a kind of a puzzle, puzzlement for me. It's, it probably will turn into a rant, knowing me. But I mean, so I'm always confused by people who, um, are highly intelligent people who use a certain level, certain kinds of rationality in their lives, and they apply that rationality to everything except their religion. And I don't understand it. Um, I mean, I understand that religion is a matter of faith, and I, you know, so I get that. But there's still things that you're asked to believe that you ought to have reasons for believing, and they ought to be, it seems to me, they ought to be rational reasons for believing rather than irrational reasons for believing. And so, so again, I, I don't want this to be a rant, but I'll just give you an example. This, this is kind of what made me think of it. A few weeks ago, I was talking with somebody who, uh, happens to be, if in his career, he's a prosecuting attorney. So he's, he's a lawyer who prosecutes, you know, in court. And we were talking about religion and faith issues, and we're talking about Christianity. And he, he was a Christian, so of course, I, no, no problem at all with. And but he, but he said that he thought that he had, you know, he had good proof that that Jesus did miracles. And I said, I said, oh, I was interested because I'm interested in this topic. I said, well, what's the proof? He says, well, I know miracles happen. So, okay, how do you know that? And he says that he was, he was in a church some years ago that had wheelchairs hanging on the wall. They're like a huge wall with a huge number of wheelchairs. And these were put there by people who had been lame, who were unable to walk, who were healed and able to walk. And so it convinced him that in fact, these people had been healed. And I, I was puzzled. I said, what, I mean, did you talk to any of these people who put the wheelchairs on the wall? No, no, no. But they were hanging on the wall, and they hang there because they'd been lame, the healed. Well, how do you know that? How do you know that's why the wheelchairs are there? Well, that's what they told us. That this church. Well, did anybody there tell you they saw any of these things happen? No. How, I mean, how do you know they're telling the truth? How do you, I mean, how do you know? I mean, I said, I'm not, I'm not saying they're lying. I'm not just, or that, you know, but how do you know it's not just like a story floating around? How do you know? And he says, well, because these wheelchairs were hanging on the wall. I say, I get this. But like, if you're in a court of law, and somebody says something, you just believe it because they say it? I mean, like somebody says this happened. Do there, there surely criteria for deciding how things happen in a court of law. And so how, how, why do you do that in a court of law, but not, see, I'm starting to rant. I mean, it's like, it's like, why, why, why is this evidence that these people were actually healed? And then I told him a story. You know, when I was an evangelical Christian, I believed these things happened almost always on hearsay. And sometimes I saw miracles happen. I saw miracles. I saw a guy who was virtually blind healed. I did. I mean, I did. I was 19. And the next week, he wasn't healed anymore. And so, like, and so, you know, so I don't, this is not evidence. And so, so I'm not saying that people have to have evidence for, you know, their faith. I mean, faith is not a matter of evidence per se, but if you're claiming you have evidence, shouldn't the evidence be the kinds of evidence that you accept in other situations? Because it's not evidence otherwise, it's faith. And faith is fine. If you want to believe these people got healed, that's fine. If you want to believe that, but don't tell me you have evidence for it. So anyway, I, I just, I don't know. Something about that just kind of gets me a little bit upset. And because I just think that, you know, if you, I think people should believe. I'm happy for people to believe what they want, as long as they're not hurting somebody through their faith. Um, I think that it's good to have reasons for what you think, even if it's just personal experience that you just, what you personally think, and there's like no hard evidence against it. Okay. But, but to think that you really are being rational and claiming evidence for why you believe something when in fact, it's not evidence at all, that I think that, I don't think that's good. I don't, I don't think it's good for us to behave that way when it comes to religion, but not behave that way in every other part of our lives.

I would agree. You need some kind of criteria.

Well, you know, why, why this instead of that? You know, if you want, if you believe one thing, it means you're choosing not to believe other things. So which, you know, why, how are you? Is it because you're raised that way? Well, then just say I was raised that way. Okay. But then do you believe everything you thought when you're four? You know, it's like, what? So anyway, yeah, I mean, I know I'm a bit of a rationalist, but it does seem to me that, uh, you know, and I'm not opposed to people having faith just because they really, this is how they resonate with the world, and I, I get that. But, um, even then, you can still be rational about it.

Well, thank you for sharing those thoughts. I'm sure that, uh, the commenters will have some things to say about it. They always do. A lot of people just generally come on and say that they agree with you and they appreciate what they appreciate what you're doing.

So, all right, well, that's good too. But they should have reasons to agree with me. I tell my students, just agree with me is not the point. That's, in fact, contrary to the point. You're supposed to come up with reasons yourself.

Okay, now before we finish for the week, would you mind just summarizing what we talked about?

Well, we're talking about this interesting idea of reincarnation. I mean, um, uh, do people come back again? And, um, there are arguments against that, of course, in the modern world, you know, rational arguments against it. There are people who absolutely believe it who are completely rational people otherwise. And so the people, some people believe in reincarnation, most people don't. But the question we were dealing with is, was this idea around in early Christianity? And one might not expect there to have been, but there was. And, uh, there were Christians, including Christian theologians, who fervently believed in reincarnation, and it became a debating point, uh, in the third and fourth and then fifth centuries. Uh, and so there always have, probably always have been Christians who believe in reincarnation, but it never was the majority view. People sometimes tell me they think that reincarnation used to be the majority view of Christianity. It was not. Definitely was not. But it was a minority of view that's worth knowing about.

Thank you so much, Bart. 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 that you can use the code MJ podcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses and Mark Goodacre's upcoming course over at www.bart Ehrman.com. Missquoting Jesus will be back next week. But what are we talking about next time?

We're talking about one of the, uh, most interesting, um, apocryphal works that I'd say most Christians have never heard of these days, called The Acts of Pilate. It's a, it's an alternative account of what happened at the, uh, trial of Jesus before Pontius Pilate that is linked closely to Pilate's own views. And, and so, uh, so we're going to talk about that one next time.

Thank you all and goodbye.

This has been an episode of Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. 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 Ehrman's YouTube channel so you don't miss out. From Bart Ehrman and myself, Megan Lewis, thank you for joining us.