Why Should We Think Luke and Acts Have the Same Author?

Hello everyone and welcome back to Misquoting Jesus. Today, we are talking about the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. Now, these two texts are widely understood to be a two-volume set written by a single author. Given that we've spoken before on Misquoting Jesus about just how difficult it is to identify an author of an ancient text, why are scholars so sure that these two are written by a single author? Who was that author, if we know? And why on earth would they write two books when they could have just written the one? Stay tuned for all of that and so much more on today's Misquoting Jesus.

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.

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Good morning, Bart. How are you doing today?

Yep, I'm doing, doing okay today. Think things are all right. How about you?

Yeah, also very good. Also very good. Looking forward to hearing about the Gospel of Luke and Acts of the Apostles if you're ready to tell us about them.

We'll see. I think so. I've been, I've been, I've been thinking about them for about 50 years, so I think I'm probably ready to talk about them. It's probably a good time to start the talking part of the process.

Do you remember when you first learned about this relationship between the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles?

Uh, yeah. Well, Acts, yeah. I, I certainly remember when I didn't know about the relationship. It sort of shocked my system because when, when I was 15, I had a, uh, I had a born-again experience and became an evangelical Christian. And I decided, well, okay, uh, I better read the Bible because, like, I'm a Bible-believing Christian now. So let's see what's in it. And so I had a, um, uh, I start, I started trying to read the King James. And man, that was too complicated. I, I couldn't understand these words. And it wasn't just the "and thousands," it's like the grammar. I just, oh man, this is hard. I didn't think the Bible would be hard. So I, so someone suggested I pick up a, a volume of a, a translation called, um, it's called "Good News for Modern Man." Back when we didn't realize that that was like, that was a problem generically and everything. So, so anyway, I picked it up and it was more kind of paraphrastic, more kind of a looser translation, and I could understand. So I, I read the Gospel of Matthew. I said, "Oh, this is great. You, the life, the birth, the life, the death, and resurrection of Jesus." Oh, this is interesting. I read Mark. "Oh, huh. Yeah, that's like the other one. It's like the life and death and resur." Read Luke. "Same. That's that's good. That's boy, it's more of more of the same." John. "Okay. Yeah, this is." And so I thought the entire Bible was that way. I had no idea. I mean, I didn't. I had been raised in the church. I was raised in the Episcopal church and was an altar boy, was active in the church, but I knew nothing about what was actually in the Bible. And I just thought, you know, I didn't know there were 27 books, but I knew there were a lot of them, and I thought they were all like books about Jesus. I get to the book of Acts. I, well, wait a second. This isn't about Jesus. I want to hear more about Jesus. Someone's missing. Where's Jesus? Here he starts out there, but then he goes up to heaven. Like, "Oh my God, what's gonna happen now? How can this be a long book?" And so, so I read Acts. And so I had no idea at that time. And I, uh, and I didn't realize that there were also like Epistles to come and then a book of Revelation. I, I really didn't know. But then, you know, two years later, I was enrolled at Moody Bible Institute, uh, which was an evangelical Bible college. And there I learned quite well what the Bible was. And among other things, we learned, um, there that that Luke and Acts were written by the same author. And this was, um, this was firmly taught there as it is, uh, almost everywhere. But the difference, of course, is that, uh, is that, uh, at Moody Bible Institute, um, every book was written by the same author. I mean, you know, it's the New Testament isn't 27 books, it's one book written by God. And so as I developed in scholarship, I came to realize, in fact, there are multiple authors and, and that these two books really do appear to be written by the same person.

So what is it about these books that leads authors to think that they have a single author?

Yeah, you know, I think the reason, I suppose it's widely known that that's the case, but I think a lot of people don't notice that or think about it for this kind of odd reason that in the canon of the New Testament, there's a book inserted between the two. The Gospel of John appears between Luke and Acts. And so you don't, you don't kind of read Luke and Acts as like as two volumes of a single work because you think it comes after John. And, um, and so you might not notice it. But if you read it closely, I mean, I should have noticed this as a 15-year-old, but I didn't. If you read it closely, the, um, the beginnings of these two books are a dead giveaway. It's not the only reason for thinking so, but it's something that should alert you to the fact that this author is the same person. Because in the first book, the, the Gospel of Luke, the author does not name himself. Says that there have been many others who have written accounts of the things that Jesus, uh, had said and done, the things have been accomplished among us. And now, uh, he's, he's, he is going to give an accurate account to. And he says, and he dedicates it to a man named Theophilus. So, "To you, Theophilus, I'm writing this account so you can know what really happened." That's in the, the very first four verses of the Gospel of Luke. When you get to the beginning of Acts, it begins by the author. Begins by saying, "So, Theophilus, in my first volume, I described the things Jesus said and did. Now I'm going to talk about." And so, like, when you read those two things, you realize, wait a second, this is, like, these guys, these are continuing the story. Now, and it does begin where Luke ends with the, with the, um, with the Ascension of Jesus.

Is there reason to think that, I mean, there obviously is reason to think that this is a single author, but why do people not view it as someone kind of adding to or like a forgery almost, writing in the, in the name to the same person? A sequel?

Yeah, yeah. You know, there, there actually are some scholars who argue that there are different authors. It's not a, I wouldn't say it's a widely held view, but it's held by a few scholars who, you know, who have that kind of view. If it's, if it's written by somebody else, it's someone who's trying to imitate the other. The, the reason that really has n caught on, I think, I don't think it's caught on a lot, is because, um, when you read through the books, even though they're about different things, one is about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the other is about the spread of Christianity throughout the Roman world after Jesus' death. And so the, the, the content is different, but the themes are consistent. Um, the kinds of things that happen in the Gospel of Luke that are thematically distinctive of Luke, uh, continue in the book of Acts. Um, and, uh, many things, um, and so there, it's set up, one of the ways it's interestingly set up is that the things that happen to Jesus in, and the things that Jesus does in the Gospel of Luke, are replicated by what the disciples experience and what they do in the book of Acts. Um, so that, that's another clue that, like, somebody has this continuity in mind. You could say, well, a forger could do that. The writing style is, is very similar, uh, between the two. The grammar is very similar, the vocabulary is very similar, the themes are very similar, the theology is very similar. Um, and so if you just, you know, if you're just kind of being dispassionate about and saying, is this by the same author? I mean, he doesn't come out and say, "I'm the same author," but basically he does. And it's the same thing all the way through. It tells a continuous story, and you can't do that with any of the other gospels in the book of Acts. And so it really looks like, you know, it could be somebody's forging it, but there's not really any evidence of it. And I, of course, I'm, I'm very big on forgery. You know, I, I love detecting forgeries, and I, I don't mind digging down deep to find them. I, I've written a couple of books on forgery, and I just don't think this is one of them because you don't have the evidence. You don't have the evidence.

I see. Thank you. Do we have any information? I, I always feel silly asking this question because the answer is always a resounding no. Do we know anything at all about who might have written these books?

Uh, the answer is resounding yes. What? Yeah. Well, I need to confess you or something. That's amazing. Get kind of. I'll take it. I'll take it. Kind of. Well, no. The, if you mean, do we know the name? The answer is no, sounding no. If you know, do you know who, what kind of person is this? What do we know about this person? Uh, there are several things. One thing, it's a person. Whoever is writing this is actually claiming to be somebody he's not. You wouldn't know this from the Gospel of Luke, but in the book of Acts, this author, um, who is describing the spread of Christianity, and whose major character through in Acts for most of the book of Acts, his major figure, his hero, is the Apostle Paul. On four occasions, this author implicitly indicates that he was one of Paul's companions because there are four passages where the author, um, starts talking not about what Paul and the others were doing, but but about what "we" were doing. And so these are called the "we passages" in Acts. And I, I don't think we're going to get into that at any depth here, but I'll just say it's an implicit claim that this person was a traveling companion of Paul. And, um, and these four passages, even though they seem kind of tucked away, and you kind of think, well, if the author really wanted to be claiming to be Paul's, you know, friend of Paul's, wouldn't he like come out and say it and really kind of stress it? And, yeah, you might think think so, but he just has these four little passages. And since then, for 2,000 years, everyone has assumed he's a companion of Paul. So he's like terrifically effective. But there are very, very good reasons, again, these are not things we're going to be talking about much here, but we will be later, um, for why we think that, um, that this author was not one of Paul's traveling companions. But we do know other things about him. Um, we know, for example, that he, um, he appears absolutely appears to be non-Jewish, because of very indications in both texts. He's a Greek-speaking Christian. He appears to be writing much later than Paul, decades after Paul's death. Um, we know that because the Gospel of Luke, his first volume, is dependent on the Gospel of Mark. It borrows a number of stories from Mark word for word. And Mark was almost certainly written around the year 70. And so Luke is usually dated to the mid-80s. And Peter and Paul would have died in the mid-60s. So, so anyway, so it's a Greek-speaking Christian living somewhere outside of Israel. He probably, he doesn't seem to know the geography of Israel particularly well. Um, he, um, um, he's a, he's a follower of Paul, even though he, there are things about Paul he doesn't know very well, apparently. And, um, so there are things about him we know. We just don't know who he is.

How about, uh, this character, Theophilus? Do we know anything at all about him? And why someone would be writing a book for him? Two books?

Well, there are two books. Yeah, there are two. There are two major theories about it. Uh, the most popular theory, I think, that was the one I was kind of taught, not just in, um, in Bible college, but actually through graduate school. What I think a lot of scholars assume is that this Theophilus was an actual human being. And he's called "most excellent Theophilus." That term "most excellent" might not sound like anything significant, but the other time, uh, the author of Acts uses it, it's in relationship to a Roman official, an administrative official. There are aspects of both Luke and Acts that look like the author is trying to emphasize, even more than other writers of the New Testament, that Christianity is not a threat to Roman society, that Jesus, uh, was not, um, killed for actually committing any crimes against the state, that he was completely innocent, and that the followers of Jesus don't do anything to violate state law, and that they're completely innocent. And so it looks kind of like this person is defending Christianity against charges leveled against them by non-Christians. And so the, the, this theory is that Theophilus is a local Roman administrator, uh, and that the author is writing to him to explain that he doesn't need to persecute Christians because they haven't done anything wrong, and in fact, they're good for society. So that's one theory, and it's, I would say, I, I suppose it's the most dominant. The, I don't know what the majority view is. The other view, and that's what I thought for a long time. The other view is one that I came to appreciate in graduate school and have held for many years, which is that Theophilus actually is not a, a real person, uh, but that the name Theophilus is symbolic. "Theo," the name Theophilus literally means, um, "Theos" means God, and, uh, "philus" comes from, um, "filia," which means love. And so it's a, it's the one who's beloved of God, God, or it's the lover of God, or both. Um, I don't think there's any way an author living in the 80s would think that a Roman official is going to pick up this massive two-volume book and read it to become convinced that Christians are innocent. Like, that's just so implausible. Uh, I think, uh, but it's these other books, the other gospels appear to be all written for the Christian communities of the authors, and I think that's what this author is doing. He's writing for his Christian community, those who are beloved of God, those who love God, and he's just, he's picking a symbolic dedication name, uh, so they'll realize this is written for them.

Excellent. Thank you. We're going to take a very brief break. We will be right back to talk about things like genre and the themes and materials that appear in both of these works.

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Welcome back, everyone. We are talking about the Gospel of Luke and Acts of the Apostles, and I'm going to open the second half of the interview by asking whether these two books are in the same genre. Are they both biographies? Are they both histories? What's going on with this?

Well, you know, there are a lot of debates about the genres of the gospels generally, um, or I guess I should say, there used to be a lot of debates. I'd say most scholars today would say that in terms of genre, in terms of kind of writing, the gospels are like ancient biographies. Um, uh, they're not like modern biographies where you get lots of names and dates, and you get a lot of research, and you, you see kind of the psychological development of the of the figure and the person, you know, from their influential, uh, you know, teachers and things like that. It's not like that. Ancient biographies were done very differently. But we have a number of ancient biographies by authors like Plutarch and Seneca, who are living right around the time when these books are being written. And so these look like biographies, accounts, lives of, uh, of an important, in this case, important religious figure, Jesus. So, um, the, um, the Gospel of Luke goes from his birth to his death and resurrection. And so it's an account mainly of his ministry and then his death and resurrection. And that, in terms of genre, looks like an ancient biography. Um, the book of Acts is not a biography because it's not about an individual. It's about, uh, the spread of Christianity. It does have individuals at the heart of it. Peter is the main figure in the first 12 chapters of, uh, of Acts. Paul, who converts in chapter 9, begins to be the key figure starting in chapter 13, and for the rest, the other two-thirds of the book. But it isn't really a biography of Peter or a biography of Paul. It's about how the Christian church came into being. Uh, and so the thing that's most like that in the Greek and Roman worlds are histories of peoples, uh, or histories, say, histories of a city, or history of a state, or history of an ethnicity, or something. And so it's like that. And those are sometimes called general histories. Uh, and so it looks like they're different genres, um, even though they're dedicated to the same person, probably written by the same person. Um, they, one is a biography and one is a general history.

That's interesting. So the, the books are aimed at the same people, they have a lot of continuity in terms of of theme, which we'll get into a little bit later, but they're different genres. Why do people think the author chose to switch genres between the volumes?

Yeah, you know, it's, it's an interesting thing because there's, there aren't a lot of books like that in the ancient world, two-volume works where the two volumes are different genres. We have lots and lots of multi-volume works from the period, you know, I mean, Josephus, you know, we have a 20-volume Antiquities of the Jews, and we have a six-volume account of the Jewish War, and we have, you know, just people write multi-volume works. But two genres? What? And I, I think the reason is pretty obvious actually, although I'm, I'm not sure a lot of scholars even talk that much about it, but it seems kind of obvious to me. If you're going to write about the life and death of Jesus, you write a biography. You're writing about, you know, an individual. But Acts, Acts is trying to take the story forward by talking about how Jesus' influence spread throughout the world. And so the topic now is about the beginning of the Christian church. And so in, there's absolute coherence between these two, in terms of interest and theme and theology. But, uh, because of the different content of what it involves, he had to write in two different genres. And so it's a little bit odd, but I think it's pretty clear that's why it had to be that way.

So you mentioned in one of your previous questions that, or in one of your previous answers, that the book of Acts takes events in Jesus' lifetime and kind of, uh, recreates them through the apostles. Can you give some examples along those lines of how the two books complement each other?

Yeah, so, uh, you know, when you see the life of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, I, there, there are a number of very interesting things. I mean, Luke, more than the other gospels, emphasizes the role of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, in the life of Jesus. Um, the, the Spirit, uh, comes upon him, the Spirit drives him into the wilderness, the Spirit is the one who, who tells him what to preach, the Spirit inspires his miracles. I mean, it's like, Spirit, Spirit, Spirit, a lot more than the other gospels. And when you get to the book of Acts, it's all about the Spirit. Just as the Spirit came upon Jesus, that is baptism, that comes upon the disciples on the day of Pentecost. Just as it led Jesus to do miracles, it leads the apostles to do the miracles. Uh, the, just as it told Jesus what to preach, it tells the apostles what to preach. Just as it directed Jesus' life, it directs the apostles' life. And some of the things are very common. I mean, Jesus does certain miracles, um, he heals the sick, he casts out demons, he raises the dead. And the apostles do the same thing. They heal the sick, they cast out demons, they raise the dead. And so, and so you have you have that kind of, uh, you have that kind of thematic continuity between the two. Jesus ends up being, uh, persecuted by Jewish authorities in Jerusalem, um, who punish him. And the apostles start out being persecuted by the same Jewish authorities in Jerusalem and get punished by them. Um, Jesus' mission is not going to fail because it's all according to the plan of God. This is a theme in Luke about the divine plan, how it's necessary for these things to be. And the whole thing in the book of Acts is going according to the plan of God. These things are necessary to be. And so, so that, that, that kind of thematic similarity, um, is something you get precisely between Luke and Acts, and you wouldn't be able to trace it out nearly as well in between, say, any of the other gospels and Acts.

What message is this continuity really being used to portray to the the audience?

Um, you know, the, the revolutionary thing about the Christian message, one of the, one of the very big revolutionary things was that it was claiming that this new understanding of the God of the Jews, that, um, it's not just about God of the Jews and his chosen people, the Jews, but that he has taken the message of salvation, uh, not, he didn't take it away from the Jews, but it went from the Jews to the Gentiles. And that God now has inaugurated a new thing with Jesus, that an unexpected thing. In Jesus, most Jews at the time, historically, so not, not in terms of the the writings or the stories, but in historically, most Jews of the time simply thought that the Christian message was contrary to their understanding of the God of the Jews from scripture. And Christians wanted to emphasize, "No, in fact, there's continuity. This is what God planned all along." And Paul preaches that message, and other apostles preach that message. The book of Acts, the book of Luke, and the book of Acts try to demonstrate that the continuity is to show that Jesus really is the Messiah predicted by scripture. And the, uh, the entire point of, uh, the predictions of the Messiah is that the Messiah would bring salvation not just to the Jewish people, but to all people. And that this was God's plan from the very beginning. And so it's trying to emphasize there's not discontinuity with, like, this weird new thing coming along claiming to be the truth. Is that this was, this was the idea from the outset.

Excellent. And so then that continuity between early, uh, Judaism and Jesus leads into continuity between Jesus and the apostles, which you see in, in, in the book of Acts.

That's exactly right. I mean, it's, the Hebrew Bible leads up to the, uh, the prophets of the of the Jews who predict Jesus, who comes exactly as he was predicted in Luke. And, uh, that the, uh, that in fact, from the beginning, God had planned that this coming of Jesus would lead to the apostles, which would lead the spread to Christianity, which would lead to the salvation of the world. And so it goes from, like, the creation of the world to the salvation of the world, and it's all right there in the story of Luke and Acts.

Do we know how persuasive ancient peoples were finding this argument of continuity?

Well, the argument of continuity was mainly, um, in some ways, it was mainly directed toward Jews to emphasize, you know, that you, this is a fulfillment of what you, you believe. Whether it seems unusual to you, you look at it, you'll see this was a fulfillment. And that argument was not very persuasive to most Jews. I mean, most Jews actually rejected the Christian message and said, "No, that's not what the Messiah is supposed to be. Jesus clearly was not chosen by God. He got crucified as a public criminal." And the things that you all, the Christians, are preaching, that that God now has moved from the chosen people, the Jews, who keep his law, to Gentiles who have nothing to do with his law, that you're saying that you're the people of God, you're not even circumcised, you don't keep kosher, you don't observe the Sabbath, you don't keep the festival. What do you mean you are the people of God? And so, so most Jews rejected this message. But it did become a kind of a rallying point for Gentiles who then identified with the God of the Jews and realized that in fact, they were something special in the history of the world. The history of the world had been pointing to them. And so, uh, for some, some reasons we can speculate about, Gentiles found this message more persuasive than, than the Jews to whom it was directed.

Can you share some of those speculations with us? Why were Gentiles finding this persuasive and important?

It's, you know, it's a strange phenomenon that many people haven't thought of. I mean, most people agree that, you know, Christianity became primarily a Gentile religion. Um, I think most scholars think that didn't happen till the second or third centuries, and I, I think that's just wrong. I think by the end of the first century, the, the vast majority of people who are converting to Christianity are Gentile. Um, but it, you know, in from one perspective, it seems a little bit weird that Gentiles would convert more easily than Jews because for, uh, Jews, it's a one-step process, and for Gentiles, it's a two-step process. All Jews have to do is agree that Jesus is the Messiah because they, they continue worshiping the God of the Jews, and they, they continue believing the Hebrew Bible, and they, they have one thing to do: agree that Jesus is the Messiah. But Gentiles, man, they have to go back to the beginning. These are polytheists. They have to give up all their other religions just to believe that there's only one almighty God. That's a huge step. And then once they got that, then they have to agree that Jesus is the Messiah. So why would two steps be easier than one step? It seems like it'd be twice as hard, but it's like a hundred times easier, apparently. And I think it's because, um, the, um, for, for Jews, this was just a huge stumbling block. As Paul says in the book of First Corinthians, that the crucifixion of Jesus is the stumbling block. Jews simply are not going to accept that a crucified criminal is the savior of the world sent by the God of the Jews. Are you crazy? But Gentiles didn't have that reaction because they, so what happens is the Gentiles become convinced that the God of Jesus, uh, can do greater miracles than their own gods, that the God of Jesus is more powerful than all their other gods, that the God, they come to believe that once they believe that, then it, it's not a problem thinking Jesus is the Messiah. And so the trick is getting them to give up on their polytheism. Once that happens, it's easy to think about Jesus as the Messiah because they don't have the stumbling block that Jews have.

Excellent. Thank you. So my final question, just to wrap up the interview for today, you mentioned in one of your earlier answers that you don't think the author of Acts and the book, uh, the Gospel of Luke was actually a traveling companion of Paul. So if he wasn't, where do you think he got his information from?

Yeah, well, it's an important question because he, you know, he, he records the life of Jesus from his birth to his death and his resurrection, and records, um, the, he records the history of Christianity from the beginning. It's our, it's our first and only, you know, history of Christianity for hundreds of years. And so, and he begins with the very beginning of the church and goes up for the next 30 years with, you know, most of that time being taken up with Paul. So the question, where's he getting his information from? If he had been a traveling companion to Paul, then, you know, you could see where he'd get a lot of that. But so where, where does he get his information? And the answer seems to be that he has sources of information for all of these things. There are very good reasons that we'll talk about in other episodes about why he wasn't Paul's traveling companion and why some of the things he says about Paul were wrong, but he certainly knows things about Paul and Paul's life. Some, a lot of the general things he says about Paul were right, and a lot of things he says about Jesus are the things found in other gospels. So it's usually thought in terms of the gospels, this author had access to earlier sources of information. He wasn't, doesn't claim to be a follower of Jesus during his lifetime, but he had read the Gospel of Mark, and he uses Mark, and he had other sources, probably this Q source that we talk about, and other sources of information. And it appears that he had sources of information for Paul. He, there's very little to suggest he actually knew Paul personally, uh, in fact, whenever he says something in detail about what Paul said and did, if it's something that Paul himself also talks about in one of his own letters, they're at odds with each other. And so, and even basic major things, he doesn't seem to have really understood what Paul's actual preaching was about, for example, as we, as we'll talk about in other episodes. So, um, it looks like he has sources of information, and people have speculated that there were written documents, there might have been some travel logs floating around, there's certainly stories about how Christianity spread to places, uh, throughout the, uh, throughout the empire, and lots of stories about Paul floating around. He's heard stories, possibly he's read stories, and so it's all based on second, third, fourth-hand information, but he puts all together into these two coherent volumes that tie together. And so it's a, it ends up being a beautiful story. And I, I don't think we mentioned this, but we probably should. When you, when you ask people who wrote most, most of the New Testament, people who know something about the Bible will typically say Paul because he wrote all those letters. But in fact, if you look at the volume, the, uh, the author Luke, we call him Luke, we don't know what his name was. He wrote more than anybody, a lot more than Paul did. The two volumes, Luke and Acts, take up about a fourth of the entire New Testament. And so, so he's a very important author, and he's provided kind of a coherent account that's a beautiful account when you go from beginning to end.

Thank you. We're actually going to be guessing into, uh, the characterization of Paul a little more in future episodes, so I'm going to cut it here, and we'll, uh, we'll get back to that in a couple of weeks. Um, and we are going to take the briefest of breaks, then we're going to be back with news and updates, and also some listeners' questions. 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. So next week is our live anniversary recording. I'm very excited.

Yeah, me too. We did that last year, we had a blast. And so, uh, yeah. Well, you know, it's, it's kind of hard to believe that I was just thinking the other day, I, you know, I get emails from people, friends, like I haven't been in contact with in forever, and they write me, say, "Oh, yeah, I'll listen to your podcast." And, uh, really, it's, it's like, it's just been so great because we're able to, to, you know, to reach people that otherwise we wouldn't, we wouldn't be able to reach. And, and so it's been great fun. But the two-year anniversary thing, this anniversary thing is great because we started out, um, thinking, you know, I think the last one we did, we, we're thinking like, "Okay, first year, you know, maybe we'll have like, you know, 100 questions for first year, you know, 200." But, you know, that ain't going to work because we keep doing this thing forever. So this will be a live thing, and people will ask questions, and I'll answer them, uh, and, um, and hope I don't get stumped on too many of them. It's going to be fun. It was an awful lot of fun last year. And if people are interested in asking a question, you can just go to, uh, www.b.com/askbart. Put your question in there. Make sure you tag it as being for the live anniversary recording. Uh, and I will get back to you. Uh, you do obviously need to be available to come on to our stream to ask the question on the evening of, uh, the 22nd, so make sure you can actually attend, uh, before you send in your question. And, uh, yeah, we'll, we'll get back to you with organizational details. And if you're not going to ask a question, or your question isn't selected, please just join us live on YouTube, um, and listen along, and you can leave your comments, and it'll be a wonderful evening. Um, we also have another course coming up, which is the reason that we've been talking about Acts today. I mean, that, and the fact that you've been thinking about it for the last 50 years.

What kinds of things are you going to be covering in the course?

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to this one. You know, I was just, I was actually walking my dog today thinking about what I would want to do in this course, and there's like so much you can do. But it'll be an eight-lecture course, a weekend course, a Saturday-Sunday thing in November. And I'm going to talk about what Acts is all about, uh, what we know about the author and such, and when he wrote, and that kind of thing. But mainly about the, the kind of themes in Acts. It's, it's our first account of the spread of Christianity, and the main character in Acts is somebody we have writings from, letters from, so we can compare what Acts says with what Paul himself says. And so part of my thing is going to be literary, just showing how very powerful this literature is. People bypass it because they're just think they're reading about what happened in the past, instead of understanding like the, the message this, this author is trying to convey is really pretty interesting. But also like, how does it compare with Paul? I mean, do they contradict each other? Is it like in tiny little things? Is it in big things? Is it like in major things? What is it? And so it's going to be all of that kind of wrapped up in an eight-lecture [Music] course.

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 BartEhrman.com/askbart.

[Music]

But are you ready for some listeners' questions?

I, I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready for the questions. I don't know if I'm ready with the answers.

First up, in the modern versions of the Bible, Christians call their God "God," basically using a common noun as a proper noun. Was that practice also common in early versions of New Testament books?

Uh, yeah. So, um, the word for God in Greek is "ho Theos." "Ho" is actually the definite article "the," and so if you want, normally they call like God, capital G, God, "ho Theos." "Theos" is God, like in theology, the study of, of God. And, um, there's not a personal name for God used in the New Testament. Um, when they refer to God, capital G, God, it's, it's God. Uh, God has various designations, uh, Father, Father Almighty, the Lord, the Lord Almighty, etcetera. But, uh, there's not a personal name. In the Hebrew Bible, there's a personal name, the name Yahweh, is, uh, which is the, it's the Tetragrammaton, the four letters, uh, in English, it'd be YHWH, and we don't, not sure how it was pronounced. We think it's something like Yahweh. That's actually God's personal name. Uh, but in the New Testament, they don't use that name. Um, when, and it's kind of a tricky issue because Yahweh in the Old Testament, if you read it in English Old Testament, and you read the word "Lord," L-O-R-D, the L capitalized, L-O-R-D, it's just the, it's the Hebrew word for Lord, like master. But if you read it, capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D, that's the English word for Yahweh. Okay? So they would pronounce the, if they read the name Yahweh out loud, they weren't supposed to because it's the sacred name, the Tetragrammaton. So they had to say something else instead of Yahweh. So they would say "Lord." They'd say "Adonai," the word for "my Lord." And in translation, then it came into "Lord." So in the New Testament, when they're talking about the Lord God, that's that would be Yahweh. It's all very confusing, isn't it? But I do want to make, make the point that that the personal name of God is not used in the New Testament, and that personal name refers to what Christians end up calling God the Father. And many Christians, for some reason, these days think that Jesus is being portrayed in the New Testament as God the Father, Yahweh. And no, that's not right. He's not God. He's not Yahweh in the New Testament. Right. Sorry, that was a long answer to a simple question.

Perfect answer, and not a simple question at all. What was the historical Jesus' understanding of the Jewish law, and how did it differ from other Jewish sects, such as the Pharisees, for example? Did he believe that converts to Judaism had to follow the law?

Uh, so that, that would require a book. Um, uh, but, uh, I can say a few things about it. It's actually central to the book I'm writing now, a central issue, uh, because I'm writing this book on Jesus' ethics, and Jesus, Jesus' views of of ethics, closely related to his understanding of the Jewish law. Every Jew that we know of from Jesus' time understood that God had given the law to Moses, but different groups had different understandings of what the main emphasis of the law was, what the point of the law was, um, what God expected with Jews with respect to the law. And so it isn't like just Jesus against the Pharisees. Pharisees have a view, Sadducees have a view, Essenes have a view, common folk have probably a bunch of different views. Jesus has a view. Other teachers have views. Jesus' view of the law appears to be that the main point of the law is, uh, is that you are supposed to love God with all your heart, soul, and strength, which is found, like, a summary of, uh, the law in Deuteronomy chapter 6, um, and that you are supposed to love your neighbor as yourself, Leviticus chapter 19, verse 18. That the entire law is summed up in these words: you should love God with everything you've got, and you should love your neighbor. In, in the Old Testament, that means your fellow Israelite, as as well as you love yourself. If you feed yourself, you should feed your neighbor. If you clothe yourself, you should clothe your neighbor. If you house yourself, you should help the homeless. You, this is, you, you love them, you know, like the way you love yourself. You treat yourself, even if you don't like yourself, you treat yourself well. If you don't like your neighbor, you ought to treat your neighbor well. The difference with Jesus is that Jesus thought your neighbor was not just your fellow Jew, it was anybody who's in need. Um, so Jesus emphasized that. And he thought that if love, uh, of God or neighbor ended up making you violate one or another of the other laws, that love triumphs. Uh, love triumphs the other laws. People like the Pharisees, Pharisees were very devout people. They were not born to be hypocrites. They didn't have to, I tell my students, they didn't have to take a hypocrite's oath. It's not that they were all hypocrites, but the Pharisees did think that you had to keep the laws rigorously, and they devised, uh, they devised oral laws that are not found in the Torah that would help make sure that people didn't break the written law. Um, and other groups of Jews, like the Sadducees, Essenes, didn't really subscribe to these laws. Jesus didn't subscribe to these laws, and he thought it really wasn't the point. The point isn't knowing exactly which things to tithe. Uh, the point is to love your neighbor as yourself. And so that, so that was Jesus' view. Did he think that converts to Judaism should keep the law? Yeah, he probably thought everybody should keep the law. But, but it didn't mean like, you know, I mean, you know, of course, I mean, he kept Sabbath, he, um, you know, he was circumcised, and Jesus probably kept kosher, and yeah, he probably thought people following the God of the Jews, of course, you do what you're supposed to love him. If he tells you to do this, you're going to do it.

Excellent. Thank you very much. We know that Gnostic Christians had disagreements with other sects of Christians, but do we have examples of one Gnostic group arguing with another Gnostic group?

Oh, now that's a very good question. One Gnostic group arguing with another Gnostic group? Um, nothing comes to mind, uh, because we have so few, um, we don't have things like essays and treatises by, uh, Gnostics for the most part. Most of our Gnostic writings are of a different kind of thing. Uh, we do have Gnostic writings that are attacking other kinds of Christians. Uh, two of them in the collection called the Nag Hammadi Library. Um, these are sometimes they're grouped together and just called the Gnostic Gospels, even though this discovery of texts, the discovery was made in 1945, most of these texts, um, are not gospels, but they, they just call them the Gnostic Gospels sometimes. But we have two of these texts, um, um, one is called "The Apocalypse of Peter," uh, and, uh, that "Apocalypse of Peter" attacks Christians with false views. But the Christians that it attacks are not fellow Gnostics. They are, uh, the Christians that we would call the proto-orthodox, the Christians who are supporting views that became standard Christianity. They are attacked by the Gnostics for example for believing, you know, believing in a dead man and, and for, uh, for having theology that was completely inadequate. Uh, so I don't know of attacks by Gnostics on other Gnostics. There may be some out there. I'm just not thinking of right now.

Thank you. And final question for today. In the Hebrew Bible, many men had multiple wives. Was this still happening by Jesus' time?

Um, if it was, we don't hear about it. Um, to my knowledge, certainly not in the major writings of Judaism at the time. Um, Judaism, uh, had by this time become, um, um, become monogamous in its understanding of marriage. Some Jews were not married at all, of course. Jewish men, there were Jewish men who were married for various reasons, but we don't have records of, uh, that I know of, that I can think of, of people having multiple wives. Um, and so that appears to have been, uh, you find those traditions especially in the older traditions of the patriarchs, but in later, um, in later Jewish traditions in the Hebrew Bible, like when you get to the prophets, that's not, that's not a practice that we hear about, at least as a legitimate, as a legitimate practice. Whether people were doing it is another question. I don't know about that, but, but, but yeah, it was not acceptable practice.

Thank you so much. Audience, thank you all for your questions. As always, fantastic. Spot on. Now, but before we finish for the week, would you mind just summarizing what we talked about today?

Yeah, we're talking about this two-volume work, Luke and Acts. And, um, and it's an interesting phenomenon. They take up about a fourth of the entire New Testament, apparently written by the same person. And we're just, we were talking about why is it that it looks almost certain that these are two books written by the same person, uh, even though they're different genres, one is a biography, one is a kind of a history of Christianity, but they appear to be co-, to coalesce with each other. And so that's that was the topic of our conversation today, and it'll be the, uh, a major topic that I deal with in this future course of mine that I'll be doing.

Audience, thank you all for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don't miss future episodes. Remember, you can use the code MJPodcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.BartEhrman.com. Misquoting Jesus will be back next week, but what are we talking about next time?

Ah, yeah. Well, next week is a bit of fun. We're going to do our, we're going to do a live show. Uh, everybody is welcome to come, and everybody's welcome to submit a question. This will be all a Q&A. People will submit questions, and, um, we will choose. I won't choose. I'm not going to know what the questions are. Megan will choose which questions, uh, we'll be asking. And the person who, the people whose questions are are selected will themselves have the opportunity to ask me directly, and I will try to answer them directly. It'll be a lot of fun. Please join us then. 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.