Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman

Jesus is usually credited with starting the Christian movement, but were his ideas orignally his? It appears that John the Baptist preached a similar message and that Jesus was originally a follower of his. So who started Christianity? In this episode we consider what we can know about John, why he engaged in his ministry, and what influence he had on his follower Jesus. If John started the moveme...

On today's episode, we explore how people use and, oh so frequently misuse, ancient texts of Scripture to promote their agenda, and consider the question of whether it might help to read the Bible before claiming to know what it says. 

On this week's Misquoting Jesus, we're turning the metaphorical table and Bart is interviewing Megan! Everyone watching is familiar with Dr. Bart Ehrman, renowned New Testament scholar and New York Times bestselling author…but who on earth is Megan? How did she make her way from the study of ancient Mesopotamia to host a New Testament and Early Christianity podcast? If she's an academic, why doesn...

Today we take it for granted that an important and influential person can write. Not so for the ancient world. Would a fisherman from rural Galilee have been able to write well enough to compose whole texts?

For a country that was apparently founded on the separation of church and state, US politics seems to be deeply enmeshed with Christianity. Now, Louisiana classrooms are required by state law to display the ten commandments…which definitely seems to be blurring the lines between church and state! Today we're talking about what the separation of church and state actually means, whether it's a conce...

Were Jesus and Paul were on different pages when it came to the most important issue for them both, how a person can be saved? In this episode, Bart and Megan explore Gospels and the letters of Paul to see where these two pivotal figures share many similar views and yet appear to stand completely at odds on the major question. If they did, then is Christianity the religion Jesus proclaimed or the...

In this episode, Bart and Megan dive into the ancient doctrine called the "Harrowing of Hell," which is still believed by millions today. But what are we to make of idea that Jesus' salvation was universal? Literally everyone gets saved?

Most of us think of early Christian monks moving into the desert to escape the chaos and noise of civilization to lead the quiet contemplative life. In a fascinating study by Kim Haines-Eitzen we learn that in fact the desert was and is unexpectedly filled with sound. Based on her high-tech own recordings in some of the major deserts of the world, Haines-Eitzen, professor of Early Christianity at...

Many modern Christians view the Bible as the inspired, inerrant word of God. Is that what its own authors thought? Did the author of Matthew, for example, think the Gospel of Mark was infallible? If so, why did he change it? In this episode we look at the views of the Gospel writers about the inerrancy of other Gospels -- even those also found in the New Testament. 

Many modern Christians think Christians are inherently more moral than non-believers. Non-Christians, as a rule, don't think so. What about in the ancient world? Why is it that the most widely attested view among ancient pagans was the opposite, that Christians were dangerously immoral reprobates? Why weren't they seen as stalwart proponents of family values?

Did Jesus himself think or talk about his imminent sufferings—did he predict his own brutal end, or have those parts been creatively interpreted by later authors to fit a theological agenda? This episode offers a chance to uncover the layers of historical, religious, and philosophical complexities surrounding these ancient texts.

We are all familiar with the disturbing parts of the Bible, with it's divinely sanctioned violence from the destruction of Jericho in the Old Testament to the destruction of the world in the New, from the passages that justify slavery to the patriarchal views of ancient Israel and the writings in the name of Paul. How have evangelicals tried to salvage these disturbing passages in order to make th...

All the Gospels agree that on the day Jesus was crucified, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body and took it from the cross to bury in a tomb. What almost no one realizes is that this would have been unprecedented, so far as we know, in the Roman world, where part of the humiliation of crucifixion was for the corpse to be left on the cross to decompose and be ravaged by scavenging birds fo...

The Gospels agree that Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus, even if they don't agree on why he did it. But is their view about *what* he did plausible? That he told the authorities where they could find Jesus without any crowds around? There are, in fact, reasons for thinking that Judas did something far more sinister, that he revealed a key teaching of Jesus gave to his closest followers but he did not...

Most readers don't realize, however, that the vast majority of the book comes from a different author who has a completely different view of why people suffer.

Most people think that everyone has a soul that is resident in the body. The vast majority of Christians believe the soul lives on after the body dies. But ironically the vast majority of people -- even devoted readers of the Bible -- have never noticed what the biblical writers actually say about it. In this episode we look at views of the soul found in the Hebrew Bible, the teachings of Jesus, a...

This week Bart will be interviewing New Testament scholar and public intellectual Candida Moss, on her new book, God's Ghostwriters: Enslaved Christians and the Making of the Bible. In the book, Dr. Moss (Professor in the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham) maintains that parts of the Bible may have been written by slaves (Mark, possibly); or co-authored by them (e...

In an absolutely shocking turn of events, Bart has learned of a first-century Gospel that will overturn everything scholars think they know about Jesus, showing that he was a charlatan exposed by the Roman government for duping the Jewish crowds by sophisticated works of magic. The Gospel, set to be published this week by the NY Times, details how Jesus deliberately faked his famous miracles in an...

Jesus' closest disciple was Simon, whom henicknamed "Peter" -- that is "The Rock." But in the Gospels and the writings of Paul, Peter is fickle, clumsy, and unreliable, less like a rock than shifting sand. After the New Testament we have numerous writings both about and allegedly by him. In looking over all these records, what can we say about the one on whom Jesus allegedly "built his church"? Is...

Jesus' followers have always called him the "messiah," from the earliest days of the religion -- so much so that "Christ" (the Greek word for Messiah) became his second name. But most Jews, both then and now, rejected the claim, pointing out that Jesus in fact was nothing like the messiah. Do they have a point? If so, why did Jesus' early followers call him that? Did they begin thinking so during...

Why do so many seem to overlook or ignore many of Jesus' key teachings? Surely they know what he said about loving the enemy and the foreigner? Why do they claim that Jesus said things he never, actually, talked about (many of the most pressing social questions fundamentalists are keen on)?

Some evangelical preachers claim that Jesus is walking all over the pages of the Old Testament. The Old Testament, of course, doesn't say so. But believing Christians all the way in antiquity claimed that the Jewish Scriptures not only predict Jesus but also portray him, as a person involved with the creation of the world and the history of Israel. Where would they get such an idea? And how do the...

In this special episode Bart interviews one of the world's leading archaeologists of ancient Israel, Jodi Magness, whose discoveries are regularly covered in National Geographic. The interview is a prelude to an interesting four-lecture remote course Jodi is giving on March 2-3, called "Archaeology in the Time of Jesus" (available at  bartehrman.com/timeofJesus) . In the interview Bart and Jodi ta...

The Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts were both allegedly written by a companion of Paul, Luke "the gentile physician." But the books never name their author. So why Luke? Are are there any good grounds for naming him in particular? Or any grounds at all? Were the books probably written by a doctor? Was he probably a gentile? *Was* there a Luke? If picking his name was just guess-work -- would i...