Transcription
I would love to say that I am never wrong about anything, but as with every single other person on the face of the planet, I would be lying if I said so. But what about the Bible? Many modern Christians view the Bible as the infallible, inspired, inherent word of God. But what does that actually mean? Did the writers of the New Testament themselves hold that view? And are there passages that can be used to disprove this assertion? 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 bestselling 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.
Everyone is wrong sometimes. Except, but of course, as the Bible was written by humans, I think it's a reasonable statement to say that it can also be wrong. A statement many fundamentalists would take issue with. Today, we're talking about inspiration, interpretation, and whether the gospels can prove or disprove their own inherency. Before we get to that, but how are you doing today?
Well, you know, I've only been wrong three times today so far, so I think I'm doing pretty well. It's a good going, really. It's good. Yeah, yeah. No, things, things are pretty good right now. How, how about you?
I am good. I am good. I have lost count of how many times I've been wrong this morning. It's only noon when we're recording, and there are countless opportunities for me to be wrong for the rest of the day, so I am embracing that fully. Yeah, no, people, I, I think the big thing is people, people, you know, some people obviously never admit they're wrong. They just don't. And it's irritating, and it's not helpful. Not helpful for a person themselves, it's not helpful for society, and it's not, you know, for social relations. It's just better, you know, when you're wrong, just say you're wrong. I'm sorry, I was wrong. Absolutely. We, we are human, and we get things wrong sometimes, and that's okay. Yeah.
Now, you are leaving. We're recording this ahead of time because you are about to leave for Greece, which I'm very jealous about. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm actually, uh, when, when people are hearing this, I'm on the road. I'm going to Greece. So I'm going to, um, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, um, I'm doing this tour, um, in, uh, to the Greek Isles. Tough gig, uh, where I'm giving lectures. Uh, and so, uh, I'm going to spend a few days in Athens before, uh, getting there, just to, I want to look around at some things that, um, you know, many things I've seen before and a couple things I haven't before. So, yeah, on the road now.
What are you most interested in seeing in Athens?
Well, I'll tell you, I, um, you know, the Acropolis Museum is exciting and fantastic and and all that, and I do that. I'll go up on the Acropolis and, uh, but I want to see the Theater of Dionysus. And, uh, I want to, I've been reading and thinking a lot about Greek tragedy lately. We don't have the original theater there, but they have a remade one. And so, you know, when I do these trips, I do, I do several trips a year with, um, with tours where I, uh, give lectures. And this one is a pretty easy one because it'll be Greece, and that, you know, it's easy to lecture about the New Testament's relationship to Greece. But I do others too. I mean, this, um, this next, um, December, I'm doing one to Antarctica. I think I'll lecture on, you know, the, um, you know, the Bible's view of penguins or something. I don't know what I'm going to do, but penguins feature heavily in the Gospel of Mark, I think. But it's one of these fantastic tours that we'll be announcing, I guess, I just started to, but we'll be announcing eventually that, you know, people will be able to sign up for, uh, to go to Antarctica with me. And, uh, I, it's a place like I would just never go for my research, but it's a place I desperately want to go because it's supposed to be fantastic. And so, uh, yeah, so, so, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it would be very different from going to Greek Islands. It sounds very exciting though. Yeah, yeah.
Well, we should get into inspiration and inherency and and all of those other exciting things to start with. When someone talks about the inspiration of the Bible, what is it that they're talking about? What do they mean?
Well, it depends who they are, uh, and what their view is. Um, the word inspiration literally means to be, uh, breathed into. Uh, and the, the fundamental idea is that God has breathed into the Bible his word. Uh, and so the Bible is inspired because God has, uh, in some way, God is connected with the, uh, with what the Bible says. And so inspiration is, is a broad term that can be interpreted in a wide range of ways, and is interpreted in a wide range of ways by various Christians and various, uh, Christian denominations, various Christian, uh, theologians, and so, so forth. Um, some thinking that it is a very, very strict thing that these are actually God's words that he, he, he either dictated or made sure the authors wrote exactly what he wanted, um, to saying that the Bible is somehow conveys truths about God that are true and that, you know, in some kind of a broad way can inspire people to understand God better.
Are there any verses in the Bible that indicate it is inspired or was thought to be inspired by those writing it?
Yeah, uh, it's, it's a little, it's a complicated thing because nobody, nobody ever writes a book and says, um, I mean, none of the biblical authors, some people do today where they say, God has told me this, you know, and they write it down and say, so this, you got to believe this. And so the biblical authors don't do it like that. They don't, um, in the, uh, in the Hebrew Bible, you will have prophets who declare the word of the Lord, uh, "Listen to the word of the Lord," and then they'll quote something. And presumably, they, they think this really has come, uh, straight from God. Um, and you, you certainly have authors who believe that what they're writing is what God has revealed to them. The one verse that everybody points to that we used to, um, point to when I was in, uh, in Bible school at, uh, Moody Bible Institute is, uh, 2 Timothy 3:16, which says that "All scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, reproof, and training in righteousness." Um, this, um, this, this passage that allegedly is written by Paul, um, Paul, the author of 2 Timothy, claims to be Paul. Um, the word for inspired there is a word that the author appears to have made up. It's, uh, it's *theopneustos*. So, *theos* from *theos*, God, like in theology, God, and *pneuma* from *pneuma*, which means spirit, like in a pneumatic mattress, you blow air into it, in spirit or air. And so, um, it's understood typically, uh, maybe more literally translated something like "God-breathed all scripture." "God breathed." Uh, and so that would be, that was the verse we always, uh, pointed to as being the, the one that showed that all scriptures inspire, every book of the Old and New Testaments.
So if that's inspiration, what then do we mean when we talk about a text being inherent or the Bible being inherent?
Well, part of the problem with this word "God-breathed" is it, one problem is that it doesn't explain exactly what it means because you could have something that's God-breathed that isn't necessarily, I mean, it could mean, it could mean a range of things. Um, and so that's why there are debates about what inspiration is within Christian communities. Um, another problem, this verse, by the way, there are lots of problems with this verse. One problem is that this author is not talking about the New Testament. Uh, for an author and the Christian author of the first century, there wasn't a New Testament yet. Uh, this author is referring to the Hebrew Bible and saying the Hebrew Bible is God-breathed. Um, another problem is that this book claims to be written by Timothy, by, by Paul to Timothy, but, um, modern scholarship is pretty convinced Paul didn't write it. And so you, it's this kind of funny situation where the author's claiming to be someone he's not in a book that he says "all scripture is inspired." So, right. So, uh, what, what would it mean? What would inherency mean?
Inherency is a, is one way to understand what inspiration is. It's the idea that every single thing in the Bible, on every level, is without an error. That if God breathed into this text, there can be no mistakes in it of any kind. No contradictions, no discrepancies, no factual errors, no scientific errors, no geographical errors, no mistakes of any kind. It is, uh, thoroughly inherent. Uh, and this was the view that, uh, we had when I was at, uh, at Moody Bible Institute. It's completely inherent.
Are the thoughts or the concepts of inherency, inherency and inspiration always connected when we're talking about, uh, Christianity and and how the Bible is viewed? What can you think about inspiration apart from and separate from inherency?
Absolutely. Throughout the history of Christianity, inherency has not been, uh, the, the idea that was pushed. It was always understood the Bible is inspired and speaks God's truth. But, um, the, the idea of inherency is actually a modern development. Most people have no idea about this because it's become such a prominent view among conservative Evangelical Christians that they just think this is what everybody's always thought, that the Bible is inherent. And if you don't think it's inherent, you can't be a Christian. And that's just nonsense in terms of the history of Christianity. Um, the reason inherency developed, actually, um, is because of very modern situations. With in the 19th century, um, conservative Christians, Evangelical Christians, after the Reformation, had always thought the Bible, of course, is the source of authority for what to believe and how to act. But when, but it wasn't that it's like every single syllable has to become straight from God kind of thing. That idea, um, arose in the 19th century, especially the second half of the 19th century, um, for a couple of reasons. One of which was the rise of science. Um, once you have Darwin in 1859, talking about, uh, survival of the fittest and the development of the species and rise of species, and you know, and natural, uh, natural selection leading to evolution of humans and such. And you have geologists who are realizing the Earth is not 6,000 years old, but it's, it's really a million, for them, millions and millions of years old. Um, once you realize that, then it calls into question, uh, narratives of the Bible, especially the creation narratives. And so what happened was the, the conservative Christians in England and then in America realized that they, they were not going to accept these, uh, scientific views. And so they doubled down on their views of inspiration and, and elevated them to a new level, claiming that everything in the Bible is completely inherent, and setting up then the conflict between that kind of Christianity and science. Um, and so that's where inherency came from, but it was a new development in the 19th century.
Does someone have to believe in inherency in order to be a Christian?
Well, no. I mean, so, so as I say, I mean, it didn't exist before that, and presumably there were Christians before that. You don't need the Bible for Christianity at all. I mean, the, um, when Paul wrote the, um, Corinthians in the middle of the 50s of the Common Era, they didn't have a New Testament. They didn't have a Bible. They didn't have a New Testament at all. There were no gospels yet. They were still Christian. Well, so, you know, and so you don't have to have the Bible to be a Christian. The Bible never says you have to have a Bible to be a Christian. The bi, the, the creeds of the early church, the Nicene Creed, the Apostles' Creed, these are creeds that were, um, that were understood to be embodiments of what Christians have to believe. Uh, they were understood that way for centuries after century after century. They don't say anything about believing the Bible. So you don't even need the Bible, let alone an inherent Bible. This, this people have such a hard time getting their mind around this, you know, it's like, it's really hard because you, you tell somebody that and they say, well, how would you know about God if you didn't have the Bible? And, you know, but if you think about it, you believed in God before you'd ever read the Bible because somebody told you what to believe. And you weren't, you didn't acquire your faith by reading the Bible. Somebody told you. Well, where'd they get it from? Well, they got it from the Bible. Well, kind of, they got it from their parents. Where their parents, they got it from their. It just goes back like that. And so, um, the idea that you have to have the Bible at all, or the inherent Bible, is, is not historical. Um, it's a theological view that people use because it gives them a kind of solid base for how they think they, uh, are to live their lives and how they can have eternal life. It gives them this, this unmovable foundation, this inherent Bible. Um, but there are plenty of ways to believe, um, in Christianity without the Bible at all. There are plenty of ways to believe in the Bible that is filled with errors. There are plenty of ways to believe in the inspiration of the Bible without believing in inherency.
We will get to all of that in a moment, including what the gospels actually say about inherency, if anything. So stick with us. We will be right back.
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 Ehrman'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 gospels' 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 Ehrman.com/authors.
Thank you. So how then do you believe in an inspired Bible without necessarily believing in an inherent Bible?
Oh, well, you know, many, many millions of Christians do and have, um, and they, so there are, there are various views of inspiration. So let me just give you kind of, so the range, I suppose, is you have people who say it's completely inherent in everything it says. The world was really created in six literal days. There really was a physical Adam and Eve. They were the only, they're the first human. You have that group. You have people who would say, um, something that sounds familiar to outsiders, but it's not the same, that the Bible's infallible. Um, and so when I, when, as a Christian, when I moved away from the idea of inherency, I moved to the idea of infallibility, which itself is defined in a variety of ways. But at one point, I defined it as meaning that whatever the Bible, uh, claims to be true about God and salvation theology, that is infallibly true. Um, and so it's not that there can't be contradictions or there can't be, like, you know, the world didn't have to come into existence in six literal days, but when God, when the Bible's teaching about what to believe, that it is infallible. So what it affirms is infallible, what it assumes is not necessarily infallible. So that was one way. Um, later on in Christianity, I realized, as a Christian, I realized there were a lot of people who thought that the Bible was inspired, uh, in the sense that God speaks through it, that God, um, it's one way that God reveals himself. He can reveal himself in other ways as well, but the Bible is, is like, it, it, since it has God breathing into it, it breathes out his truth. And again, it doesn't mean that it's inherent or infallible. It could have mistakes in it, but you can still hear God's word in this book. So that the Bible is the word of God that speaks to you, but it's not necessarily the words of God. That's another view of inspiration. And so it's perfectly possible to believe in inspiration, and throughout history, the vast majority of Christians have, without believing in inherency.
I, so were there any church fathers who thought that there could be mistakes in the Bible?
Oh, yeah. Yeah. The, the, the idea of mistakes in the Bible is not this modern phenomenon that crazy scholars who teach at Chapel Hill came up with. This is like, this is like, this is like this. This goes way back. Goes all the way back. So one of, one of the most interesting theologians in early Christianity that we've, we've talked about some, but not at length yet, uh, is named Origen. O-R-I-G-E-N. Origen. He is, um, I think without a doubt, was the most influential theologian of the first four centuries of Christianity before, before St. Augustine. Um, and much of his theology was predicated on the idea that there are inconsistencies in the Bible and there are contradictions, uh, in the Bible. His view was the Bible was completely inspired by the spirit of God, completely inspired by the spirit of God. Uh, he also thought that the Bible had deeper meanings than you get if you just read at the surface level. You know, it's just not kind of surface-level stuff. God, since it's inspired by God, there are very deep meanings. And he argued that there are places where the Holy Spirit consciously, intentionally put in mistakes and contradictions because when you hit a contradiction, say, in a narrative like there are two versions of the same story between Matthew and Mark, and they're contradictory, he wouldn't deny that they're contradictions. He'd say the spirit put that in so that you'd realize that if you take this literally, it doesn't work. If you can't take it literally, then you need to find the deep meaning. The deep meaning is what matters. And so he was happy to have contradictions and mistakes, scribbled errors, he was happy with all of that because for him, it was a way of digging deeper into what God was trying to communicate.
Did other early Christians have different interpretations to explain these biblical difficulties?
Yeah, so, uh, absolutely. You know, in, throughout the Middle Ages, there was a, there, there's a fourfold way of interpreting scripture, uh, where there are four, there, you get the literal interpretation, then you have three kinds of more kind of spiritual interpretations. That one, one of which would talk, say, what this, what this passage, you know, apart from what it's saying literally, what it really is talking about is the afterlife. Like, how's it talking about the afterlife? Or what it's really talking about is is a moral, a moral issue. What it's really talking about. And so what you do is you, you, you figure out the various ways that it can mean something. And the literal was understood to be kind of the least important because, you know, literal is just saying basically that, you know, what it says, it says. And, uh, in Greek, the word for that is *theoria*. It's a phrase, *theoria*, which means according to the word. So, I like, according to the word, it means this, but spiritually it means this, you know, and that's more important. And so if you have that frame of mind, um, then, then contradictions and things are really not significant for your understanding of, of theology. That frame of mind was in place for the vast majority of Christianity. It was, uh, Martin Luther and the Reformation that got rid of of it in the 16th century. So, it had been in place for nearly a millennium and a half. Martin Luther wanted to insist that the literal interpretation is the only valid interpretation. So you have to have a literal interpretation of the text. The reason he had that is because he found it dissatisfying that the Roman Catholic Church, which he had belonged to, um, used these other forms of interpretation to justify their doctrines. And he thought these, some of these doctrines were contrary to the literal meaning of the text. So he insisted only the literal meaning works. And this then leads into what happens with the Enlightenment, where they develop ways of interpreting texts where you're just focusing on literal interpretations. And that, that's become the dominant view now in the Pro, in Protestant circles, at least.
So if we think about the authors themselves, is there any way to know whether they believed that what they were writing was inherent?
Right. No. Yeah. So this is getting, this is getting into an area that I'm not sure I've ever seen a discussion of. There must be scholars who have talked about this, but I, I don't know of any. I'd say most, most people who are experts on the Apostle Paul seem probably think, and probably most people read Paul, think that he doesn't think he ever wrote anything wrong. And so, but that's more like what you were saying today, like earlier, when we were saying, yeah, I made him mistaken, you know, like, yeah, Paul just, he thinks that his, his views are a revelation from God, and he's, he's writing them down, and he doesn't seem to think he's wrong about much of anything. And if anybody disagrees with him, then they're disagreeing with God. Okay, so you'd have that kind of phenomenon. But it's really not quite the same thing as saying that he thinks that, you know, the spirit is moving his pen, or that, that he thinks he's writing the Bible. There's nothing in Paul's letters to make him think, to make us think that he thought he was writing the Bible. He was writing letters, and he thought he was writing what he said. But he wasn't writing scripture. Um, and, uh, the idea that Paul's letters are scripture just didn't come about for decades until after some of these letters have been collected together. Yeah.
So I was just going to say, Paul would be the closest thing, but I don't think any of these authors, there's nothing to suggest they thought they were being inspired.
How about the gospels? How even would we go about deciding if they thought what they were writing was inherent?
Well, there, you know, they never say anything about it. They never, they never talk about, you know, "I'm inspired by God to write this thing." They say things like, "Well, we heard these stories from people who passed them on by word of mouth." It's what Luke says, you know, "These stories started with eyewitnesses and people who were preaching the word, and now I'm going to write them for you." So he doesn't say anything about God telling him what to write. And that's true of all the gospels. So that, there's, what I would say is that there's no positive evidence that any of these authors, they, they don't claim it. There's no, no positive evidence to make you think that they thought it.
Do we have negative evidence about this question?
Well, we don't have negative evidence about, like, any one of the authors, um, because none of the authors ever says, "I'm not inspired." So you don't have that. But with the gospels, this is, this is the interesting thing. It, you know, one of the, one of the assured findings of scholarship since, you know, for the last 200 years is that the gospels have contradictions between them. Where they'll be just flat out, one author will say Jesus said this, and another says he said the opposite. Like, you know, in, uh, one gospel, Jesus will tell his disciples, "Don't take a staff with you when you go on this journey," and in the other gospel, he'll say explicitly, in the same passage, he'll say, "Take a staff with you when you go on this journey." It's like, it's the opposite. You know, so that, so you, people recognize that that creates problems for inherency because they both can't be right. So if you define inherency as, you know, it can't have a mistake, well, you know, you can't be, they both can't be right. Or when, when Mark's gospel, chapter 2, says that David went into the temple when Abiathar was the high priest to eat the showbread, and it turns out that when you read the story in, uh, in the book of Samuel, that it's not Abiathar who's the priest, it was his father, Ahimelech, who was the high priest. I mean, it's a mistake. It's just a mistake. So, um, so that is what leads scholars to start realizing that the Bible has contradictions and things, and that would naturally rule out inherency if there are contradictions to contra, they both can't be right. Um, but the question you're asking is, is there anything within the gospel writers themselves to suggest that they don't think that other authors are inherent? And this is the thing I haven't really seen people talk about, maybe they do all the time, I've just never heard them. But the reality is, scholars have known since the 19th century that Matthew and Luke are using Mark's gospel and changing it for their gospel. Um, so Mark was one of the sources for Matthew and Luke. They both copy out his stories and they change them in ways that are sometimes contradictory. Well, if it was inherent and they thought it was inherent, they wouldn't change it. The fact they change it shows they don't think that it's errant. They think it's a malleable text, not a fixed text, and that it can be improved and it can be corrected. That's, that is biblical proof against inherency, in my view.
Do you have any examples of these changes?
Well, you can do it on a big level and a small level. I mean, on a big level, I mean, on a small level, for example, one that I like to use a lot is, um, uh, there's this story about, in, in, uh, Gospel of Mark, chapter 5, where there's this, this, this man named Jairus comes to Jesus and tells him, asks him to come because his, his daughter is very ill and he wants her to heal, he wants Jesus to heal her. But Jesus gets delayed, and before he can get there, messengers come from the house and say, "It's too late, she's died already." And so then Jesus goes and raises her from the dead. Mark 5. You get the same story in Matthew. Matthew, but in Matthew's version, it doesn't work like that. In Matthew's version, Jairus comes to Jesus and says, "My daughter has just died. Can you come do something about it? Come raise her from the dead." Well, wait a second. Did he come to say she's very sick and then she died later, or did she die before he came? Depends which gospel you read. So one time when I was in graduate school, I was, we had a, we had a guest speaker, um, from, um, from Europe, would come in, a New Testament scholar. That I, I was a graduate student. I had breakfast with him, just the two of us. And I was starting to doubt my view of inspiration, wasn't quite sure what to think. And he was a, he was a leading scholar in Europe in the New Testament who thought there weren't mistakes in the Bible, apparently. And so, so I gave him that story. I said, "So you have the story of Jairus." I said, "You know, so, so I just don't see how you can possibly, you know, it's, it's a contradiction." And I said, "How do you explain?" And he said, "Well, it happened twice. The first time Jairus came, his daughter was very sick, and then Jesus came, she died, and raised her. The second time, the girl had died, and he came to him and said, 'Could you raise her from the dead?' Jesus." So it happened twice. At that point, I started to think, man, I don't think I believe in inherency anymore if that's the explanation.
So, if people believe in inherency and they're familiar with these stories, are there other ways that they explain it aside from the, "Oh, it happened twice" explanation?
Yeah, well, the "happened twice" thing finally got too much for even some very conservative evangelicals. And there's a, you know, a friend of mine that I've debated publicly before, and this actually, there are recordings of this, videos of them. There was a kind of an event that he and I were both speaking at, Michael Licona. And this is about inherency and whether there are contradictions in the Bible. And this thing about the staff versus no staff came up, you know, like one gospel says, "Don't take a staff," the other says, "Take a staff." And the moderator of the thing asked both of us, and the other people who are there, "Do you think that, um, that that's, you know, is that a contradiction?" Oh, let me see. Yeah, yeah. "Is, does Matthew contradict Mark on this?" And Mike would say, "Well, yeah, yeah. Um, they, they both can't be right." And then the person, then the moderator says, "So is Matthew inherent if he's changed Mark?" And Mike said, "Yes, it's inherent." "Wait a second, Mike, you just said that it's a contradiction and both can't be true. So how is it inherent?" And he said, "Well, it's inherent because Matthew was simply taking the event and transforming it for a literary reason. He, he wanted to alter what the story said because it fit in better with his literary agenda." Um, and, uh, so, uh, I, you know, my response to that is, yes, that that probably is what's going on here. Matthew has changed the story for a literary reason. By doing that, he's created a contradiction. And if you want to know what actually happened, he can't be historically accurate in what he happened, what he says is historically wrong if he's changed it for literary reasons, if Mark is right. So it, it's not an error. But he, but he continues. Mike continues to say that he believes in inherency, even though he agrees there are contradictions. I just, you know, I don't think that that's, I don't, I don't think that's really right. I, I think you can't, you know, you can't have it both ways. I think you, you have to just come out and say, look, it's not, you know, it's a, it's a mistake.
So the example that you gave seems relatively minor. It doesn't change the course of, of the Bible or or of the story, or even change much about the picture of Jesus that's given. Are there, like, more crucial, more important changes that we see gospel writers making?
Well, there's some that are big and some that are huge. I mean, a big one, I think, is, um, when, uh, when the Gospel of John tells you which day Jesus died on. It's during a Passover week, and he tells you which day of the week that Jesus dies on. He explicitly says that it's the day of preparation for Passover. So that means it's the day on which they're preparing the meal that they'll eat that evening, the Passover meal they'll eat that evening. So, John 19:14 is quite clear. Jesus is crucified afternoon on the day of preparation for the Passover. Mark's gospel, the first gospel, um, chronologically, uh, also dates when Jesus died during that week. In Mark's gospel, but not in John's, Jesus, um, lives through the day of preparation. That evening in Mark, but not in John, he eats the Passover meal and he's arrested after the meal and he is put on trial the next morning. He's arrested that night, the next morning he's put on trial, and he's crucified the morning after the meal was eaten at 9 o'clock in the morning. So John has him die at noon on the day before the meal is eaten. Mark has him die at nine on the cross at 9 AM the morning after it was eaten. That's a, that's a straight-out, it doesn't, it doesn't work. And I've had, I've had a hundred people tell me their explanation for it, and I tell you, I've looked at all of them very carefully and thought about them before I thought there were contradictions in the Bible, and I just don't. They're not right. That he dies on different days. And for a specific reason, because the day of preparation, when John has Jesus die, is when they're killing the lambs in the temple for the Passover. And in John's gospel, John is the only gospel that insists that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. He wants Jesus to die precisely at the same, on the same day, at the same time, and at the hands of the same people, the chief priests, as the Passover lamb, in order to make his point that Jesus is the Lamb. So he's changed a historical datum in order to make a theological point. But to, so he's got a literary reason for it, but it creates a contradiction.
Thank you. We're going to, we've got two more questions and then we will be wrapping up. But I wanted to ask you, do we even need, does Christianity need, really, an inspired Bible?
Um, I think it's useful for Christianity to have an inspired Bible, uh, because the Bible has inspired, uh, many great things and it has motivated people to live in in good ways, and, um, it's provided hope for people, and it helps people to think, "Well, God has provided this to me." And so that, that can be helpful. Theologically, it's also done a lot of damage, the Bible, and continues to do a lot of damage. Um, and, um, so it's, it's a mixed bag when it comes to that. But it doesn't need an inspired Bible because it hasn't always had an inspired Bible. Um, before there was a New Testament, there were Christians, and they weren't worse Christians than the people after them. They were, they were based on what they had heard. Christianity, in large measure, is far more about what people hear about God and Christ and salvation and ethics from people, from their families, from their communities, than than it is about what they read in the Bible. Most people don't master the Bible at all. They simply trust that it's there. So, uh, it doesn't do any harm, but I don't think you need it. I don't think you need to have the inspired Bible.
What would you say then is the point of the Bible? There's a, a very strong, um, reliance or importance of biblical supremacy for a lot of, of fundamentalist Christians. What's the point? But if we don't need it for, for the faith to, to continue and to be, um, meaningful to people?
Well, I think, you know, I think fundamentalists need it because it gives them ammunition. Um, and so, and so they use it as ammunition to, uh, to prove that they're right about something in our current context, uh, to prove they're right about social issues that they approve of or political agendas that they approve of. Uh, the irony is often the Bible gets used in harmful ways to promote these agendas. Um, and, um, social agendas from, you know, and, um, for example, the kind of movement of, of, uh, of white nationalism, the, the Bible gets used to to support white nationalism, which is a movement that often manifests itself in real hatred and violence. And, um, so I don't think that's so, I don't think that that's good. I think that that's bad. Um, and so, um, I will say though that for, um, people who are not violent and who are not self-centered and are not hateful of the other, all of which the Bible opposes, even though people use the Bible to justify those activities, but for people who really are sincere, well-meaning people who look for, um, guidance in life and who look for direction and who look for hope, the Bible has been and continues to be a real source of hope. And, and, and so it has a very, very good effect for some people. The problem, in my view, isn't the Bible as an inherent thing. The problem is how it gets used. And the problem is that it gets used by people, and people come of very sorts. And if, if we're everybody were like me and thee, we'd be fine, but regrettably, they're not.
Well, thank you, Bart, very much for sharing, uh, your knowledge and information about this. We are going to take a quick ad break, and then we'll be back with news of what is going on in Bart's world. 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.
And we are back. Now, we're kind of getting to the time of year when you were organizing the New Insights into the New Testament conference in 2023. So I wanted to ask you, planning on bringing that back for this year?
Oh, boy, are we. You know, so this, this thing, so we call it NINT, New Insights into the New Testament. Um, we, you know, we had high hopes for it last year. We did a, we did this thing. We had 10, uh, speakers on the gospels who, each did a different presentation on some aspect of the Gospels. It was, how it was, um, you know, scholarship for non-scholars. And, um, and, uh, we made sure that they presented things that a level the people could understand, that were based on solid scholarship, usually things people hadn't thought of before, didn't know about. And everybody did things, and there was Q&A, and there's discussion, and man, two-day conference, it was fantastic. We didn't know how it would go, but it did. It went really well. And, you know, about 20 seconds after it's over, I said, "Man, we're doing this one again." And so we're going to do it again. It's going to be a completely different topic. Um, this year, uh, we've decided we're going to do, instead of doing the gospels this year, we're going to do Paul, the life and writings of Paul. And we'll have 10 scholars there. And, um, and it'll be set up similarly, but now we've, we're actually going to develop it even more, and it's going to be even better, and it's going to be bigger. And, uh, we had probably about 3,000, uh, people last time, and we're expecting more because the word's getting out. And these are all going to be fantastic scholars about Paul, some of them the same as last year's, and some different. And, uh, so, uh, it'll be in the fall. We haven't announced it yet, although once again, I guess I'm saying something about it, but something for people to think about and to look forward to, uh, when we announce it. We'll announce it in a big way. We'll announce it here on the podcast, but we'll announce it in lots of other ways and try and get a large audience. Remote, it'll be all remote. And, uh, and it, it's going to be a highlight of the year for us.
That sounds really, really exciting. I'm looking forward. I have lots of questions, and I'm not asking you because it hasn't been announced, but I have questions and I will be getting answers from you in future episodes. So everybody, please, uh, stay tuned for more information on that. And now we are going to go to our listeners' questions segment of the podcast. And please remember, if you do have questions for Bart, you can send them into us at www.bart Ehrman.com/askbart. Please be patient. We have a lot of questions, and it is taking me a little while to get through all of them, but we are doing it.
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 Ehrman.com/askbart.
All right, then. First question. Even though we know the gospels weren't written until several decades following Jesus' life, the widespread circulation of Mark to be referenced by Matthew just a few years later still seems like quite an achievement. Was it common for religious texts to take root that quickly, or is this unique to Christianity?
Ah, good question. So, um, it kind of depends how you date things to begin with. So, um, the Gospel of Mark is usually dated to around 70 of the Common Era, just probably just a little bit after the year 70 for various reasons. Matthew is usually dated about 15 years later. Um, so if Mark was, Mark was composed wherever it was composed, the tradition is is composed in Rome, but we don't know. Suppose it was composed in Rome, um, then, uh, you know, would it be unusual for it to be known in some other community 15 years later? I think the answer is no. Um, Christians are traveling. You know, Christians with funds are traveling, business people or slaves or are traveling around going to various places for various reasons. And if they're Christians, they're taking communications between churches. This is something that made Christianity distinctive in the Roman world. Other religions didn't have this sense that we are all part of the same thing. So when you had, you had worshippers of Zeus everywhere throughout the Roman Empire, but there was no sense like, "We're all doing the same thing." They were all local cults. Christianity understood itself as a universal religion. And so when Christians went from one place to another, they would carry letters, they they'd talk, they'd communicate, see what's going on. So the idea that somebody in Rome might travel off to, you know, Antioch, say, and for business, and, um, and take a gospel with them, knowing that this other church may want something, that that wouldn't, that wouldn't be weird. And yes, we do know of related texts that circulate, uh, broadly, not just within Christianity, but outside of Christianity, but within Christianity, it's a special thing because of this unique aspect of the religion.
Thank you. Second question. When Luke calls Adam the Son of God, is he giving him equal status with Jesus? Is he suggesting that Jesus is Adam reincarnated, in the same sense that John the Baptist was the reincarnation of Elijah?
Uh, again, a really good question. Um, it's impossible to know what's in his mind. Um, the thing about the genealogy of Luke is that he's trying to show, uh, Jesus' descent, uh, not just from Abraham. Matthew has a genealogy that goes back to Abraham, the father of the Jews, and that's where it stops. Um, but that's to show for Matthew that Jesus is, um, is Jewish. He goes back to the beginning of Judaism and so goes back to David, back to Abraham, Jewish. Um, Luke wants to maintain that Jesus is not the sa, you know, not the savior just of Jews, he's a savior of the entire world. And so he traces the lineage not just back to David, then to Adam, but all the way back to Adam, the father of the human race. And so that's why he goes back to Adam. But why does he say Adam is the Son of God? Um, what's usually thought is that in a way, he's trying to emphasize the variety of ways in which Jesus is the Son of God. So in the genealogy, well, before the genealogy in Luke, actually, Luke's genealogy is in chapter 3, after Jesus is baptized. It's kind of a strange place for a genealogy. But the, but the, the birth narrative begins with Jesus coming into the world through Mary because the spirit has gotten her pregnant, so that her child will be the Son of God. And so he's the Son of God because of how Mary conceives. Then in the genealogy, is conceived the Son of God because he directly descended from God, God to Adam to Seth and down all the way. So he's directly a descendant of God that way. And then right before that, at the baptism, the voice from heaven comes and says, "You are my Son, today I have begotten you." So birth, baptism, I mean, it's like all of these ways. Gene, so, so this is Luke kind of doing overkill. Jesus really is the Son of God. I don't think that it's necessarily taking the Pauline view that Jesus is like the second Adam. There's nothing in Luke's gospel that I'm, I've ever not or thought about or seen or heard anybody talk about that that uses that kind of understanding of Jesus. But it's, it's an interesting question, but I don't think it really works in Luke's gospel itself.
Thank you. Question number three. When did the idea of original sin become mainstream in Christian?
I thought I heard it was invented by Augustine. You know, people have different ideas about what original sin is. I'd say most Protestants think that that means something like, you know, we're just born sinful and, um, you know, nothing we can do about it. It's the original sin. Um, and or or sometimes they'll say the original sin is Adam's sin, uh, and that that's the original sin. Um, the question is, right, that Augustine is the one who most fully developed the idea that became the standard, and it became standard after, uh, after Augustine developed it. So, fifth century is when it starts becoming the standard view because of Augustine's authority. In Augustine's view, um, what happened is that when Adam sinned, um, he, he passed on who he was to the next generation, and it got passed on through the sex act. Everybody who's descended from Adam sexually inherits his DNA, and in his D, in our terms, Augustine didn't know about DNA, but, but he inher, they inherited Adam's nature, and the nature is the nature to sin. And so everybody gets, and they get it through the sex act when the man, the man passes it on to the woman in the sex act, in the semen. And so everybody has original sin. And so a person has to be washed of their original sin, um, before they can be forgiven of the actual sins they commit. They have a propensity to sin because of original sin, which they can't help. Uh, they have to be washed with that. So baptism gets rid of that, so that then they can through Christ be forgiven of their sins. So that idea became dominant throughout the Middle Ages down to the Reformation, and it does, it does come into prominence right with Augustine.
Thank you. Final question for today, and it has Greek. I'm going to butcher it. I'm really sorry. What does the word *aionios* actually mean when Jesus says it? I've read that this is the Greek word, uh, literally meaning age or eon. Is there evidence that it actually means in eternity in the context of the verses when it's translated that way?
Um, yeah, so it, uh, it is a difficult question. Um, um, the, um, there have been scholars who have debated about whether it actually means life that goes on forever, um, or eternal punishment. Does it go on forever? Uh, and so the word *aionios*, um, uh, can mean, it does come from the word *aion*, and the word *aion* is sometimes translated age. And so is it just for this age? I think when you actually read the passages in context, it's quite clear that Jesus is talking about, uh, life that will never end and death and a punishment that will never end. Uh, and so I think it really does mean what we would think of as eternal life, never ending. Um, um, the, uh, the, the issue, I'll raise it, it wasn't raised by the question itself, is people tend to think then if people, some people live forever, then some people are tormented forever because it's either torment or life. And actually, I don't think it means that. He never talks about eternal torment. Jesus, uh, he talks about eternal punishment. The punishment is destruction, and it's called eternal because it's never reversed. So people are annihilated, and there's no chance of becoming coming back to life again. So it's eternal punishment, but it's not eternal torment, um, even if it's a torturous death. So, but I think, yeah, I think when you actually look at the words in context, it, it, it does mean something that never ends. I'll talk about this a little bit in my book, *Heaven and Hell*, for what it's worth. But thank you so much.
Now, before we finish for the week, would you mind summarizing what we spoke about today?
Well, we're talking about the, uh, the idea of the inerrancy of the Bible, that there are no errors in the Bible of any kind whatsoever. I tried to, try to explain that this is a modern development that started arising in the 19th century, end of the 19th century. It's not the view Christianity has always had. It's not the view the vast majority of Christians have ever had, and so it's not a view you have to have. Um, uh, but I also, we also looked into the interesting question about whether the New Testament ever claims to be inerrant. No. Does any author claim to be inerrant? No. Are there any authors who might suggest that inerrancy is not right? Yes, when the gospel writers change what other gospel writers say, that shows they don't think that they're inerrant. And, uh, and so if they, if something has no errors, you don't, you don't alter it to create a contradiction. And so, uh, I think the Gospels themselves show that inerrancy is not a biblical doctrine.
Audience: Thank you all for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. And 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 over at www.bartheman.com. Misquoting Jesus will be back next week.
Bart: Bart, what are we talking about next time?
Bart: Well, next week we're talking about a, uh, an idea that was long in Christianity that some people have heard of, but many people don't know what it means, and it's really interesting. It's called the harrowing of Hell. Uh, the reason it sounds kind of weird, but what it's, the idea that when Jesus died, he went down to Hades and got people out of there. Is that in the Bible? And if not, where'd it come from? And what's it all about? So we're gonna, there, it's a very, very interesting topic that in my Protestant circles, we never talked about, but it's really, really interesting. Make sure you join us next week. Thank you all. And [Music] 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.