Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman

There are several resurrection stories in the New Testament - including, of course, Jesus himself, but what about the mass resurrection in the gospel of Matthew? Today, Dr. Bart Ehrman joins me to discuss why the righteous were raised from the dead when Jesus came for sinners, and what happened to them after their resurrection.

Marcion, founder of the 2nd century Christian group imaginatively called the Marcionites, had some beliefs that would be cause for stoning in the Life of Brian. This week, Dr. Bart Ehrman joins me to talk about what those beliefs were, Marcion's own personal gospel, and what other christians thought about it.

The gospel of John doesn't mention Jesus' birth from a virgin, doesn't show Jesus' baptism by John, and does absolutely nothing to keep his identity secret - not even don a pair of glasses. This week, Dr. Bart Ehrman joins me to explain why the gospel of John is so drastically different to the rest of the new testament gospels!

The Dead Sea Scrolls preserve the beliefs of the Essenes, an ancient Jewish sect that were, like Jesus and John the Baptist, expecting the end of the world. Dr. Bart Ehrman joins me today to talk about whether Jesus and John were actually Essenes.

If Genesis 1 is an account of the creation of the world, why is the world recreated in Genesis 2? Dr. Bart Ehrman joins me to talk about whether these accounts can be understood as one story, or if something else is going on.

Why on earth would someone study the scripture of a religion that they don't even believe in? Today, Dr. Bart Ehrman joins me to explore that very question!

Mary is known in the canonical gospels as the virgin mother of Jesus - but what else did early Christian writings say about her? Dr. Bart Ehrman joins me today to talk about the Proto-Gospel of James, and what it says about the mother of Jesus!

Have Christians always believed the Bible contains no errors or mistakes, or did this understanding develop over time? Dr. Bart Ehrman joins me to talk about the Christian view of biblical inerrancy!

Understanding where the writers of the gospels got their information is the foundation of source criticism - but how does that work when the original sources are hypothetical? Dr. Bart Ehrman is here today to talk about the Q source! 

Even though it was the religious text of Jesus, the Hebrew Bible is consistently overlooked by many Christians. Which is a shame, honestly, because it's a fascinating collection of literature and an incredible historical document. Luckily, today I'm joined by Dr. Joel Baden, expert in the Hebrew Bible, to talk about exactly what it is, and how a group of disparate texts were formed into the collec...

The first gospel recording Jesus life wasn't written until approximately 30 years after his death. Dr. Bart Ehrman is here to tell us why it took so long for pen to be put to paper, and how this impacts their use as historical documents.

If the accounts of Jesus' life found in the four gospels contain contradictions, how can we know what the historical Jesus actually said and did? Dr. Bart Ehrman explains how scholars sort historical truth from theological fiction!

As an historian, I'm pretty much always interested in ancient writing. Give me a document written a few thousand years ago, and I'll be entertained for hours. My guest today is similarly minded, except his passion for the Gospel of John has sustained him for the last decade. Today, Dr. Hugo Mendez joins me to talk about why he thinks the Gospel of John was written, and the ways the author tried to...

Just how many ways can one person explain how Jesus' death and resurrection saves humanity? In the case of the apostle Paul, the answer is probably more than you think! Why explain it in one way when you can confuse everyone and use exactly the same terms to mean totally different things? Today, Dr. Bart Ehrman is here to clear things up for me - and hopefully for you, too!

As an apocalypticist, Jesus was anticipating the end of the political system he was living under - but was he trying to hasten that end by plotting the violent overthrow of the Roman state? Does Jesus' outburst in the temple and eviction of the money-lenders indicate a willingness to embrace violence to enact change? Why were his companions armed if they weren't expecting violence? Today, Dr. Bart...

"But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed."  That's a passage from the book of Isaiah, and I can't read that without my brain screaming "it's Jesus!" to me… but does it actually predict Jesus' crucifixion, or did Jesus come to be understood as a sacrifice because of the familiarity...

Has Christianity been a net positive or negative for humanity? If you wander into an online debate between an atheist and a Christian apologist, you may hear an enthusiastic discussion on just this topic, with the Christian arguing that Jesus' teachings led to the development of charity, hospitals, and orphanages - among other things. Are claims like that correct? Today, Dr. Bart Ehrman and I cont...

Jesus' ethical teachings are often touted as being revolutionary in the ancient world. The pagan cultures that preceded Christianity are commonly understood as being immoral, full of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. Well, 2 out of three isn't bad… But just how close to historical reality are these views? Today, Dr. Bart Ehrman joins me for the first of a special two-part episode to dive into ancient...

One of the main tenets of Christianity is Jesus' divinity - most denominations hold him to be fully divine (and also fully mortal, but what's a whole other conversation). History is littered with humans who claimed to be gods - think Egyptian kings, for example. Is this something that applies also to Jesus? Was he walking around, telling people that he was, in fact, god? Today, Dr. Bart Ehrman joi...

What if everything you thought you knew about the origins of Christianity was just one version of a much wilder, more chaotic story? In this episode, Megan Lewis and renowned scholar Paula Fredrickson dive into the glorious mess of competing beliefs, hidden gospels, and theological squabbles that shaped the first 500 years of Christianity. From grumpy Church Fathers and outlaw texts to pagans, pro...

Visions of supernatural beings or places are relatively common in the bible and early Christian writings - from wheels within wheels, to visions of the risen Jesus, to trips to the afterlife, writers record a whole array of fascinating experiences. Today, Dr. Bart Ehrman joins me to talk about one of the less flamboyant, but nonetheless intriguing visions - Paul's trip to the "third heaven". We'll...

The Sermon on the Mount is probably one of the best-known speeches of Jesus, and if you've spent any time in a church service, then the odds are that you've heard at least part of it. It contains the beatitudes - "blessed are the meek" - the Lord's Prayer, and a whole host of teachings that are held sacred by Christians the world over. But… did the writer of Matthew fabricate the whole thing? Toda...

Today's title may seem a little bit odd - how many Jesuses are in the NT? I'm sure there are going to be several comments on YouTube from people who didn't stay to watch the episode because the answer is clearly "one". For those who want to see where we go with this, Dr. Bart Ehrman is going to be answering my questions on the different ways early Christians and writers of the NT viewed and unders...

If you have a passing familiarity with the Christian Bible, then you probably know that it's split into two parts - the Old and New Testaments. The New Testament is the part with all the stuff about Jesus, while the Old Testament is drawn largely from Jewish religious scriptures. Today, Dr. Bart Ehrman is joining me to talk about why early Christians insisted on keeping the Old Testament… despite...

In the modern Western world, monotheism is the rule, rather than the exception. Not so in the ancient past, where many cultures worshipped whole pantheons of gods, each one responsible for specific areas of the mortal experience. How does the one god of Israel compare to this myriad of deities, and can an understanding of how ancient mediterranean cultures thought about and interacted with the div...