The Bible Geek Show

A Christian was saying that Justin Martyr was listing parallels between the Jesus story and earlier pagan stories to somehow woo pagans to the Christian faith. I said no, Justin was responding to common objections raised by Trypho and others about comparisons they were making against Jesus by comparing him to similar themes found in pagan god stories. Which is true? Where does the Augustine/Calvin...

Which of three explanations for the Messianic Secret do you prefer? Dr.  Price in your experience, was Robert W. Funk's work with the Jesus Seminar in any way related to his tendency (on display in his A Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic Greek) to strike out on his own and redo the scholarship in a way that was new ? Could Isaac be an alternate name for Ishmael?   Perhaps an attempt...

What do you think of Roger Parvusâ??s theories on the identification of â??Ignatiusâ?? with Proteus Peregrinus and the possibility that Theophilus of Antioch had been a follower of Apelles? What support does the New Testament provide for the importance of the nuclear family in raising children?   Whatâ??s your view on who all the gospel â??Marysâ?? are and why Jesusâ?? mother pops in and out of t...

Examples of the growth of urban legends as â??oral tradition.â?? Paul both engages in â??boastingâ?? and warns against it. A contradiction? Do you think the city of Nazareth existed before the time of Jesus, and why?   Why is it easier to trace a family tree of â??hereticsâ?? and Gnostics than to reconstruct a succession of orthodox teachers and thinker? What do we know about the origins of the t...

Why we cook meat: revisited. What does the Bible tell us about singing vs. instrumental music? What do we know from other sources about first-century worship?   Any thoughts about the proof-text method of arguing and teaching, and its place in church history?   Is it wrong to believe that even with Roman roads, communication between churches would have been slow and spotty and thus uniformity of...

Mustnâ??t God be condemned for crimes against humanity, e.g., the murder of the Egyptian firstborn in Exodus? In the Garden of Eden did animals have the ability to achieve immortality if they had access to the Tree of Life? Why were they punished with death due to the misdeeds of Adam and Eve? In the flood stories, why did Yahweh cause so much death and suffering among animals? Since animals are i...

About Jesus' supposed 'harrowing of Hell' - the time between his death and resurrection when he supposedly traveled to Hades/Hell and freed the poor captive spirits there: why were there any spirits in Hades/Hell anyways?   Christian dogma says souls go to Hades/Hell only after the Day of Judgement which won't occur for more than a thousand years after Jesus returns to Earth so there shouldn't ha...

Hereâ??s how Catholics harmonize the liturgical date of Christ's conception with the date of His birth. What should I be looking for in Deuteronomy to show that it was written last and used the first four books of the Pentateuch? Could the Ark of the Covenant could have been a drum? How did the Queen of Sheba get to be a judge of "this generation" in Matthew 12:42? Is it true that some (many? most...

The fact that the character of Aaron exists in the Bible is fairly confusing to me. If Moses had a speech impediment why not just heal him instead of roping one more guy into the whole plot? How do Christians handle the holy pregnancy? The celebratory date of the conception is in early December and the birth in the end of the same month. Was it a super quick or really long pregnancy?   What does...

In your latest Bible Geek podcast, you wondered if there were cobras in the ancient Near East. Sure there were! How does Marcion factor into the Q hypothesis?   In Job 42 God rewards Job with 7 sons and 3 daughters. In verse 14 the daughters are named and in verse 15 it says "nowhere in the land were there found women as beautiful as Job's daughters and their father granted them an inheritance al...

Could you speak more to the differences between monolatry and henotheism? Could you explain the clues scholars use to date ancient texts but with modern examples? The Gospel of Philip says, "When we were Hebrews we were orphans, with only a mother, but when we became Christians we had a father and a mother."  It doesn't make much sense that a Valentinian Gnostic would regard the god of the Hebrew...

2 Samuel 12:14 says God killed the newborn son of David & Bathsheba to punish Dave for engineering Uriahâ??s death. But Deuteronomy 14:16 declares that no one will be killed for his parentsâ?? sins! How do apologists explain this contradiction? What is the origin of Mandaeaism? What do they believe? Do they have scriptures? Did the lack of spaces between words cause much potential for confusion? H...

Does the NT ever call Jesus â??Godâ??? If not, why are supposed â??Biblicistsâ?? so adamant that you must believe he is? Is Acts 14, 12, where Barnabas is called Zeus and Paul is called Hermes, based on a well known story among the gentiles? Why didn't Jahve just cure Moses of his speech impediment? Isnâ??t Aaron a useless addition since it is not he who leads the people into the promise land but...

Producer's Note: This episode cuts off abruptly at around the 39 minute mark due to some technical difficulties, my apologies. Is Bart Ehrman minimizing the piety of pagans as well as the extent of Christian persecution of them? Does the NT ever call Jesus â??Godâ??? If not, why are supposed â??Biblicistsâ?? so adamant that you must believe he is? Is Acts 14, 12, where Barnabas is called Zeus and...

A very special episode of the Bible Geek as Dr. Price interviews author and new testament scholar Dr. Bart Ehrman on his new book The Triumph of Christianity. Dr Ehrman is currently the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and you can find more of his work at his wonderful blog: https://ehrmanblog.org/

How do we verify any early church claims since the gospels and the epistles along with "Church history" all point towards being propaganda? Why didn't Jesus stone Mary Magdalene?    I know Jesus calls out the stone throwers  (John 8:7), but wouldn't Jesus be without sin and therefore be able to throw the first stone?   Would it be a sin in His fatherâ??s eyes not to follow the laws of the OT...

How strongly did Platonism influence Paulâ??s understanding of the Fall? Which scholars propose a mid to late second century date for the Gospels and Pauline letters? Might Jesus have been a Samaritan or influence by them? Is it possible that Jesus and/or his followers knew about the 70 weeks prophecy in Daniel and took it as a Messianic prophecy and expected the Messiah around that time (see Luke...

Evangelicals and fundamentalists interpret the veil of the temple being torn in half as a symbolic transition from God dwelling in the physical temple built by humans to God dwelling within believers' hearts in spirit. Special note was made in regard to the veil being torn from top to bottom, a feat that only God could accomplish, as a human would need to tear it from the bottom to the top. Is thi...

Do you agree that the experience of encountering the transcendent/sacred/numinous/ineffable, or of trying to induce that encounter, is the original or ultimate goal of the religious impulse? If something like this idea is true, do you think it is legitimate to talk about the "true" meaning of religious language in these terms, even if religious people (ancient or modern) would not necessarily reco...

How much of what we think of as Christmas is biblical and how much of it is some kind of syncretism? Someone claimed that the Talmud is a 4th faith/is not a Jewish text. What could this mean? Does Numbers 5:11â??31 describe an abortion?   Whence the notion of Peter as the bouncer at the Pearly Gates? Does Mark 4:11-12 contradict Mark 4:22? Does the Jerome Bible Commentary really say that Romans 9...

Do we have any concrete sources or proof that Romans chapters 9-11 were not original? What is the point of Matthew 22:1-14, the Wedding Banquet? Isnâ??t â??Itâ??s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brownâ?? filled with biblical allusions to end-times and second coming prophecy and the Delay of the Parousia? In the Tower of Babel story God seems to lamenting the fact that humanity decided to work together a...

Doesn't it strike you as a bit strange that the person of the Trinity involved in the conception of the human Jesus is not the Father, but the Holy Spirit? Mark 1:14 says "After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God." Does the lack of any context or detail about John being put into prison mean that he assumed readers knew about John's fate without being...

You said that some of the early patristic writers believed that John the Baptist was a heretic and even the spiritual mentor of Simon Magus and Dositheus. Might this version imply the canonical gospels had not yet been written? Why do you think Matt changes Mark to make the fig tree wither away immediately rather than over the course of a day?   If Mark is a Paulinist Gospel how can the baptism b...

My question comes from the book of Numbers, chapter 5:11-31. The Test for Adultery. What is going on here? Also, what is this â??spirit of jealousyâ?? that comes upon the man? Why does Catholicism making itself over into Protestantism? Doesnâ??t 2 Samuel 7:5-6 imply that there was a Yahweh temple before the Exodus? How might we account for traditions of Jesus that clearly do not fit with the Chris...

Does the first sentence of the Naassene Fragment refer to the creation story in Genesis? You've mentioned that Matthew tends to double the characters and events of Mark. Could this same thing be going on in Matthew's genealogy, where it says there were fourteen generations between Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Babylonian exile, and fourteen from the exile to Christ, double the lucky...