@bartdehrman discusses Jesus, the Bible, and Christianity (2021-12-19) #

0:00:02 good evening or good morning wherever
0:00:03 you are in the world hello and welcome
0:00:05 to blogging theology um i'm sure most of
0:00:08 our viewers will know who dr ehrman is
0:00:12 but in case some do not i'll just
0:00:14 mention that dr bye ehrman is an
0:00:16 american new testament scholar focusing
0:00:18 on textual criticism of the new
0:00:20 testament the historical jesus and the
0:00:22 origins and development of early
0:00:24 christianities written and edited over
0:00:27 30 books including three college
0:00:29 textbooks
0:00:30 and is currently the james a grade
0:00:32 distinguished professor of religious
0:00:33 studies at the university of north
0:00:35 carolina at chapel hill in the usa
0:00:38 you are most welcome to blogging
0:00:40 theology dr urman
0:00:42 thank you thanks for having me
0:00:44 pleasure and i understand i can call you
0:00:46 bart from here on so i will uh thank you
0:00:50 um now ba has kindly uh agreed to
0:00:52 discuss uh with us three areas first is
0:00:55 jesus and the gospels secondly textual
0:00:58 criticism of the bible and thirdly the
0:01:00 christianities after the new testament
0:01:04 so without any more ado we'll jump into
0:01:06 the first subject which is jesus and the
0:01:08 gospels and i would like to ask you
0:01:09 about if i can one of the reasons most
0:01:12 scholars
0:01:13 date the four canonical gospels matthew
0:01:15 martin luke and john to about 80 70 to
0:01:18 100. what are the reasons they have for
0:01:20 that well you have for that
0:01:23 yeah well uh it's
0:01:25 those are those are pretty much the
0:01:26 accepted dates the um
0:01:29 i think um
0:01:31 there there are different scholars have
0:01:32 different views of course and uh there
0:01:34 are there are some people who uh i would
0:01:36 say conservative evangelicals tend to
0:01:38 date them earlier maybe before 70 and
0:01:40 and there's a big movement now to think
0:01:42 about the gospel of luke as much later
0:01:43 like in the 120s or something so so
0:01:46 there there are a variety of opinions
0:01:48 but the reason for uh the dates is
0:01:50 almost everybody agrees that mark
0:01:52 was the first gospel
0:01:54 because it's if you actually do a
0:01:56 careful linguistic analysis of matthew
0:01:59 mark and luke it's pretty clear that
0:02:01 matthew luke both used mark as one of
0:02:03 their sources
0:02:05 and so and almost everybody has always
0:02:07 agreed that john is the last gospel and
0:02:09 so usually mark's thought to be first
0:02:11 john's thought to be last
0:02:13 um
0:02:14 scholars for a very long time i thought
0:02:16 that mark was written around or just
0:02:18 after the year 70.
0:02:20 and in part that's because
0:02:23 um he he appears to know that uh the
0:02:25 city of jerusalem has fallen and that
0:02:27 the temple has been destroyed um
0:02:30 because of because of the contents of
0:02:32 especially mark chapter 13
0:02:34 but for other reasons as well i mean for
0:02:36 one thing
0:02:37 the the only earlier writings we have of
0:02:40 that from mark would be the writings of
0:02:42 paul and paul who's well traveled
0:02:44 doesn't seem to know anything about
0:02:46 existing gospels and doesn't say
0:02:48 anything about them and so it looks like
0:02:49 maybe he didn't know about these gospels
0:02:51 and so uh usually it's not these things
0:02:53 are later it's around 70 makes sense
0:02:56 matthew and luke dated somewhat later
0:02:58 because they both used mark
0:03:00 and they show even clearer knowledge of
0:03:02 knowing about the destruction of
0:03:03 jerusalem
0:03:04 and then john is the last gospel it's
0:03:06 the most theologically developed gospel
0:03:09 uh it appears to many people to have uh
0:03:11 originated in some kind of different
0:03:13 community with them with different
0:03:14 christological views it seems to
0:03:16 presuppose situations later in the first
0:03:18 century and so it's usually dated to
0:03:20 around 90 or or 95. and so these things
0:03:24 are you know that it there's some
0:03:26 speculation involved but it's a lot of
0:03:27 educated guessing and it's it's where
0:03:29 most people come down
0:03:31 yeah you mentioned the highly developed
0:03:33 uh theology of the last gospel and
0:03:35 that's dating it quite late but is it
0:03:37 not the case that paul also has quite
0:03:39 highly developed theology or christology
0:03:41 and understanding who jesus was and he's
0:03:43 really early i mean you say he predates
0:03:45 the gospel so how much is a reliable
0:03:47 indicator of chronology uh given paul's
0:03:50 high theology and john's theology both
0:03:53 opposite ends of the scale
0:03:54 yeah it's not i wouldn't say it's a
0:03:56 decisive indicator at all
0:03:58 um
0:04:00 you know
0:04:01 even even in the early church going back
0:04:03 to clement of alexandria people talked
0:04:05 about john as being the last gospel to
0:04:06 be written right
0:04:08 and it is more theologically developed
0:04:10 john it's paul is a very interesting
0:04:12 case in point because paul of course is
0:04:13 writing earlier and especially in his uh
0:04:17 letter to the philippians in chapter two
0:04:19 where he quotes that that
0:04:22 poetic section about christ who uh he he
0:04:25 portrays christ as a pre-existent divine
0:04:27 being
0:04:28 who comes down in my reading of it's the
0:04:30 typical rehab who pre-exists in divine
0:04:33 being who who comes to earth as a human
0:04:36 and then gets exalted back up into
0:04:38 heaven the interesting thing about
0:04:40 paul's christology is that he
0:04:42 understands christ both to be somebody
0:04:44 who became a human but then also who is
0:04:47 exalted more highly after his
0:04:48 resurrection
0:04:50 and john doesn't have it that way
0:04:53 john is more strictly an incarnational
0:04:55 understanding that that uh that christ
0:04:58 is a pre-existent divine being came down
0:05:00 and then just returned to what he was
0:05:02 before uh
0:05:05 but it's no i said you mentioned about
0:05:07 philippians it's slightly off topic but
0:05:08 john uh philippians chapter two uh about
0:05:11 this uh uh the the jesus becoming uh
0:05:14 human and so on but is it not the case
0:05:16 at the very end uh paul kind of ends it
0:05:18 with the glo the doxology with the with
0:05:20 to the glory of god the father so is it
0:05:22 not the case that god still remains god
0:05:24 yahweh if you like and uh so jesus isn't
0:05:27 identified as god in that sense although
0:05:30 he is exalted to the highest possible
0:05:32 level maybe even equality with god but
0:05:34 ontologically he's not identified as
0:05:37 that being would that be
0:05:38 i would say that's right that he's not
0:05:40 so
0:05:41 for some reason people have started i
0:05:43 don't know how far back this goes i've
0:05:45 just recently heard of people saying
0:05:46 that jesus is yahweh and i don't know no
0:05:49 not in the new testament no not the
0:05:50 bible but certainly not here because god
0:05:54 so he he he's a separate being from god
0:05:56 he to begin with he's equal
0:05:59 it's he so to begin with jesus is in the
0:06:02 form of god even though he was in the
0:06:04 form of god he did not regard equality
0:06:07 with god something to be grasped this is
0:06:09 a very complicated verse because of the
0:06:11 greek yeah and it's not clear
0:06:14 whether it means it's not something he
0:06:15 wanted to hold on to or if it wasn't
0:06:18 something he wanted to reach for and i
0:06:20 think i think the word the greek word
0:06:22 mortality
0:06:24 to read is it more that means form
0:06:27 he's in the more faith
0:06:30 and he didn't regard equality with god
0:06:33 the esau
0:06:35 something to be grasped with grasp is
0:06:36 harpazzo which means to
0:06:38 like to you know grab something and i
0:06:40 think what it's saying is that before he
0:06:42 became a human
0:06:44 he was he was in a divine form he's a
0:06:46 divine being
0:06:47 but he wasn't equal with god
0:06:49 but at the end god highly exalts him and
0:06:52 gives him the name above every name
0:06:55 so that at the name of jesus every knee
0:06:57 shall bow and tongue pass that's taken
0:07:01 out of isaiah which said this is about
0:07:03 yahweh that to him only will every knee
0:07:06 bow and every time confess so it looks
0:07:07 like he's made him on it on a some kind
0:07:09 of equal level but but
0:07:12 is it
0:07:13 more honorary than for paul than logical
0:07:15 it's not like a metaphysical reality
0:07:17 it's kind of yeah he's his exalted
0:07:19 proposition rather than having that by
0:07:21 right all eternity yeah that's right
0:07:23 he's not he's not metaphysically i mean
0:07:26 paul wouldn't use these terms of course
0:07:27 not
0:07:28 physically god but he but god has has
0:07:31 has made him an equal at least in terms
0:07:34 of human worship goes uh for paul and
0:07:36 that coincides with what you get
0:07:38 elsewhere in paul like in first
0:07:39 corinthians 15 where where christ
0:07:43 everything is subject to christ and then
0:07:44 he subjects everything to god you know
0:07:46 and so it's there's still this kind of
0:07:49 almost a subordination and later later
0:07:52 you know theologians wouldn't talk about
0:07:53 subordinationism but but there is that
0:07:55 kind of leveling i think so pauline uh
0:07:58 well okay that's very helpful thank you
0:08:00 for the clarification just jumping back
0:08:01 coming back to earth a bit more my my
0:08:03 next question was
0:08:04 about the the many predictions we read
0:08:07 in the particularly the earlier gospels
0:08:08 the matthew mark and luke of jesus's uh
0:08:11 death and resurrection and almost at
0:08:13 random there's a a very uh clear example
0:08:16 in luke chapter 8 verses 31 where jesus
0:08:18 says you know he tells his disciples
0:08:21 that everything written about the son of
0:08:23 man by the prophets will be accomplished
0:08:25 he'd be handed over to the gentiles they
0:08:27 will mock him and insult him and spat on
0:08:29 him uh then they'll flog him and after
0:08:31 they've killed him on the third day he
0:08:33 will rise again and it's this is one
0:08:35 example and some very sometimes very
0:08:38 detailed predictions and and
0:08:40 but the question is um in terms of uh
0:08:45 the astonishment that is then shown by
0:08:48 the disciples the very same people in
0:08:50 luke 24 when the women come back from
0:08:53 the tomb they say look he's not there
0:08:54 he's risen and peter uh i forget the
0:08:57 greek word but it seems to be saying you
0:08:59 don't talk nonsense you're talking
0:09:00 nonsense
0:09:02 um
0:09:03 i mean did the historical jesus my
0:09:05 question is did the historical jesus
0:09:07 therefore really i mean supernaturalist
0:09:10 issues apart because you can still
0:09:11 predict your death and
0:09:12 you know just be human if you like you
0:09:14 don't have to have supernatural
0:09:15 anointing did jesus really predict his
0:09:18 death and resurrection or is this a a
0:09:20 retrospectively
0:09:21 inserted idea put in the gospels to tidy
0:09:25 up a narrative which otherwise would be
0:09:26 a bit unprovidential shall we say
0:09:29 yeah right yeah exactly that's exactly
0:09:31 the issue and it's um i think you
0:09:34 usually scholars look at the specificity
0:09:36 of those predictions
0:09:38 and and say you know this really you
0:09:41 know if if you
0:09:42 if you're pretty sure that early
0:09:44 christians are telling stories about
0:09:46 jesus and sometimes changing stories and
0:09:48 sometimes changing the way he says
0:09:50 things and sounds like putting words on
0:09:51 his lips which christians definitely are
0:09:53 putting words on his lips and we have
0:09:55 gospels from early christianity where
0:09:57 jesus says all sorts of things that
0:09:58 nobody thinks he really said i mean
0:10:00 christians aren't doing this
0:10:02 and so the question is which things are
0:10:04 they putting on his lips this is one of
0:10:06 the first things to go i think from the
0:10:07 gospel because the specificity of this
0:10:10 and especially predicting his own
0:10:11 resurrection i think is a clear
0:10:13 indication that this is something that
0:10:15 later put on his lips it does create
0:10:17 this delicious irony though that um you
0:10:19 first get it you actually get it first
0:10:21 in mark of course the first gospel where
0:10:23 jesus makes three explicit passion
0:10:26 predictions
0:10:27 and the disciples simply don't get it
0:10:32 and
0:10:32 a lot of that not getting its stuff gets
0:10:35 um
0:10:36 gets mitigated a bit in matthew and luke
0:10:40 but there are elements of it still
0:10:41 remaining where they just don't you know
0:10:43 they they're not expecting the
0:10:45 resurrection even though jesus is
0:10:46 spending his in luke he makes four of
0:10:48 these predictions
0:10:50 and then he's they still think that the
0:10:52 women are crazy because what are you
0:10:54 talking about
0:10:55 and the reader of course is saying yeah
0:10:57 well he's been saying it all along but
0:10:59 so
0:10:59 to clarify the reason that people are
0:11:01 historians are skeptical it's not
0:11:03 because of some alleged
0:11:05 anti-supernaturalist liberal bias it's
0:11:07 because the story doesn't make sense uh
0:11:10 and so it looks as if you know there may
0:11:12 have been tampering with the story is
0:11:14 that is that fair assessment i'd say
0:11:16 it's i say it's a combination of things
0:11:18 i think it's that you we we know
0:11:21 look we know that the christians are
0:11:22 putting things on jesus lips there are
0:11:24 things that christians want that what
0:11:25 would like jesus to say
0:11:27 we know we've got these very very
0:11:30 specific predictions you can imagine
0:11:32 jesus knowing that his time was up and
0:11:34 saying you know i'm going to be arrested
0:11:36 and killed but when you look at what
0:11:38 specifically and then and then you're
0:11:40 right the story doesn't the whole story
0:11:42 doesn't make sense anymore then uh
0:11:44 because
0:11:45 he keeps telling the disciples this and
0:11:47 you know either they were idiots or they
0:11:49 weren't listening or somebody's like you
0:11:51 know
0:11:52 or luca luke says and not just lucas oh
0:11:55 their understanding they were kept from
0:11:56 understanding as if jesus told them this
0:11:59 and then that they were prevented by god
0:12:01 or someone from understanding what was
0:12:02 the whole point of them telling them in
0:12:03 the first place that they're going to
0:12:04 have the understanding taken away from
0:12:06 them
0:12:12 now there's a big question did jesus
0:12:14 think he was god and how do we establish
0:12:17 this on an historical basis because i'm
0:12:19 not asking historians to look inside the
0:12:22 mind of a man from 2000 years ago in
0:12:25 downtown palestine but in terms of the
0:12:28 evidence how could we possibly know uh
0:12:31 if jesus thought he was god or not what
0:12:33 were the indicators do you think well i
0:12:35 would say you know technically of course
0:12:37 you can't know you you can't know what
0:12:39 anybody thinks you know i don't know
0:12:41 what you think about yourself you don't
0:12:42 know what i think when we're talking to
0:12:43 each other so and you know with jesus
0:12:46 we're we're speaking of somebody's you
0:12:47 know 2 000 years ago we don't have any
0:12:49 recorded words from him that he wrote
0:12:52 and so we only have later and so we have
0:12:54 to base it on what he's recorded as
0:12:56 saying
0:12:57 and determining what the things that
0:12:59 he's recorded to say are things that he
0:13:00 probably really said
0:13:03 so
0:13:03 most historians think that matthew mark
0:13:06 and luke
0:13:07 as our earliest gospels are um
0:13:10 they're closer to the time uh they're
0:13:12 based on older sources um
0:13:16 matthew and luke both had some other
0:13:18 sources
0:13:19 your readers your hearers might know
0:13:21 about the q source which is a source of
0:13:24 sayings of jesus that would have been
0:13:25 available to matthew luke that
0:13:27 dates before them pro maybe before mark
0:13:30 i don't know they have other sources of
0:13:32 information matthew has some of his own
0:13:34 sources for sayings that he are only in
0:13:36 matthew luke has sources for other
0:13:38 sayings in in luke and so you've got at
0:13:40 least for the matthew mark and luke you
0:13:42 at least you've got mark q m l which are
0:13:45 these four sources
0:13:47 it's really interesting when you read
0:13:48 these four sources
0:13:50 jesus never calls himself god
0:13:54 in matthew mark and luke and so it means
0:13:56 he never calls himself a god and mark q
0:13:58 morel
0:14:00 um people say well yeah he does things
0:14:01 that show that he's god and that you
0:14:03 know so yeah you do get these stories
0:14:05 and the gospels that you have to take
0:14:06 into account but if you ask did what did
0:14:09 he say about himself
0:14:11 the only place he calls himself or
0:14:14 he doesn't actually quite call himself
0:14:16 god but he he he describes himself as a
0:14:18 divine being only in the gospel of john
0:14:21 our last gospel
0:14:23 and i think historically that's very
0:14:25 interesting because um
0:14:28 if it's true that jesus was going around
0:14:31 saying that he was god he was telling
0:14:33 his disciples he's telling people that
0:14:34 he he actually is god come to earth if
0:14:36 that were the case how is it
0:14:39 that three of our gospels don't mention
0:14:41 it
0:14:42 i mean you you would think this would be
0:14:44 a rather important point
0:14:47 of all of us
0:14:48 this would be the one you'd want it but
0:14:50 they don't say it so that's why that's
0:14:52 why
0:14:53 most critical scholars suspect that this
0:14:56 is a view that develops later
0:14:58 and that uh that you find in the gospel
0:15:00 of john but it's not historically
0:15:02 something that jesus himself was saying
0:15:04 okay that's very clear
0:15:06 dr um dale martin who i've had the
0:15:08 privilege of speaking to on several
0:15:10 occasions i know he's a friend of yours
0:15:12 um
0:15:12 Music
0:15:13 has said in his view one of the most
0:15:15 securely historically reliable passages
0:15:17 in these synoptic gospels is the passage
0:15:19 found in mark 10 verses 17 18 and 19 a
0:15:22 man comes to jesus says good teacher
0:15:25 what must i do to inherit eternal life
0:15:26 jesus says why do you call me good
0:15:28 there's no one good but god alone obey
0:15:30 the commandments etc
0:15:32 and the reason seems to be that here we
0:15:34 have an apparent denial by jesus on the
0:15:36 lips of jesus in mark i know it's
0:15:38 slightly different in matthew um that he
0:15:40 is in any way identifying himself as god
0:15:43 or the divine being you know why do you
0:15:45 call me good there's no one good but god
0:15:47 alone now did you share uh if i can put
0:15:49 it in this personal way do you share
0:15:51 dale's uh
0:15:52 um the confidence that this is a a very
0:15:54 reliable
0:15:55 episode in the gospels
0:15:57 yeah we've had a number of arguments
0:15:58 about these verses
0:16:03 we do we do agree we both agree that
0:16:05 this this does look like something
0:16:07 that's historical that jesus said right
0:16:09 and it actually is important that
0:16:10 matthew changes it yes because matthew
0:16:13 changes it so jesus no longer says what
0:16:16 he says in mark
0:16:17 so in mark the man comes up and says a
0:16:20 good teacher what must i have for you to
0:16:22 do for eternal life and why do you call
0:16:24 me good
0:16:25 god alone is good in matthew
0:16:28 you have the word good still but it puts
0:16:30 in a different place in matthew
0:16:33 um
0:16:34 uh
0:16:34 matthew the man comes up to jesus and
0:16:36 says teacher
0:16:38 what good thing must i do for eternal
0:16:41 life so he is good but now it's not
0:16:43 applied to jesus it's applied to the
0:16:45 thing he has to do yep and it ends up
0:16:47 making nonsense of what jesus replies
0:16:49 because then jesus replies why do you
0:16:51 ask me about the good well you're the
0:16:53 messiah you should know about these
0:16:54 things
0:16:56 but in in in mark he does say this the
0:16:58 argument that dale martin and i have had
0:17:00 about it is what is jesus denying
0:17:03 he says why do you ask why do you call
0:17:05 me good god alone is good dale thinks
0:17:08 that's a denial that he's god and i
0:17:10 think he might he might be right about
0:17:12 that he i think that's a perfect that's
0:17:14 a very good way of reading it but
0:17:17 another way of reading is that he's
0:17:18 denying being good
0:17:20 why do you call me good
0:17:23 only god is good
0:17:25 so it might those two things might kind
0:17:27 of gel together
0:17:29 yeah
0:17:31 there's um humble jew you know he's not
0:17:33 glorifying himself he's saying look why
0:17:35 do you this word only really belongs and
0:17:38 it's true significance with god himself
0:17:40 he's being very humble doesn't mean that
0:17:41 he's a a terrible sinner or he's saying
0:17:43 oh i'm a bad person he's just saying use
0:17:46 that language of god maybe some
0:17:47 spiritual pious motif there or something
0:17:50 yeah it could be and it's so but so i
0:17:53 think it might be a denial that he's god
0:17:55 but but it's not a it's not a uh
0:17:58 cut right case for for me
0:18:01 so if if um if jesus is not denying he's
0:18:04 god that what would be the motive in
0:18:05 matthew changing the words of jesus uh
0:18:08 then to remove that what's matthew
0:18:10 removing is it just the sense that jesus
0:18:11 is being denying he's good then i
0:18:13 suppose
0:18:14 yeah it's it's one or the other it's
0:18:16 either that matthew's
0:18:18 or both but uh but matthew doesn't like
0:18:20 the idea that jesus is somehow claiming
0:18:23 either not to be good or not to be god
0:18:25 or possibly both
0:18:27 and so uh so he changes it uh luke keeps
0:18:30 it uh but you know matthew had a problem
0:18:33 with
0:18:34 matthew one of things you have said i've
0:18:36 noticed uh if i've understood you
0:18:37 correctly on on videos i've seen is that
0:18:40 you you state that um yeah in john's
0:18:43 gospel jesus clearly called god in some
0:18:45 sense uh but he's also called god in
0:18:47 some sense in matthew mark and luke as
0:18:49 well and that i suspect is often
0:18:52 misunderstood by some people um to mean
0:18:55 that uh matthew martin luke and john are
0:18:57 all saying jesus is god in the christian
0:18:59 sense and um is it but maybe you want to
0:19:01 say something about the the way language
0:19:04 of divinity is used in that was used in
0:19:06 the ancient greco-roman world and even
0:19:07 within judaism when even human beings
0:19:10 can be addressed as theos for example
0:19:12 psalm 45 as you know
0:19:15 the dead sea scrolls and in other places
0:19:17 in the bible that this was a title could
0:19:19 be used perhaps in a more honorific
0:19:20 sense or symbolic or figurative it
0:19:22 wasn't necessarily in the harder
0:19:24 metaphysical sense of this person is
0:19:26 yahweh if you saw what i mean
0:19:30 when we map our own preconceptions on
0:19:32 this terrain we end up thinking that
0:19:34 you're saying that mark for example
0:19:36 who's just had jesus deny that he's good
0:19:38 or god nevertheless mark also believing
0:19:41 that he is yahweh and you're not quite
0:19:43 saying that are you
0:19:45 no i'm definitely not saying that i
0:19:46 don't think any i don't think any early
0:19:48 christian thought jesus was yahweh i
0:19:50 mean i think i think you know this is a
0:19:52 smart concern i'm not sure where people
0:19:53 come up with this but it's not it's not
0:19:55 in the bible i just but but he i also so
0:19:59 it's a very complicated question because
0:20:02 i do think that matthew mark and luke do
0:20:04 think that jesus is god in some sense
0:20:06 but
0:20:07 the the issue is in what sense um
0:20:10 exactly and the problem we have so you
0:20:12 know i wrote a book called how
0:20:15 how jesus became god where i had to deal
0:20:18 with this whole thing it took a long
0:20:19 time to deal with this question because
0:20:20 it's there it is okay
0:20:23 you can buy now through amazon worth a
0:20:24 read yeah
0:20:26 so
0:20:27 part so there are several things going
0:20:29 on here and so let me just talk about
0:20:30 two kind of things that are going on one
0:20:32 is in in antiquity generally among uh
0:20:37 greeks romans jews christians
0:20:41 in the kind of western world their
0:20:42 understandings that divinity and
0:20:46 understandings of what divinity is that
0:20:47 are different from today's
0:20:48 understandings
0:20:50 today when people think about god they
0:20:52 think about this transcendent being who
0:20:54 is so far beyond anything for us that
0:20:58 there's god up here and there's us down
0:21:00 here and there's this chasm and there's
0:21:02 no like you know it's like
0:21:04 we're just beyond that god is god but in
0:21:07 the ancient world in all these in all
0:21:09 these
0:21:10 belief systems it was the divine world
0:21:13 was more like a pyramid where you you
0:21:15 have different levels of divinity and so
0:21:19 in in greek and roman religion for
0:21:20 example often there will be some kind of
0:21:22 head god who's the head person but then
0:21:24 below that god would be like the gods of
0:21:25 mount olympus very famous gods of the
0:21:27 myths and below them will be the gods of
0:21:29 the cities and the and the towns and the
0:21:31 streams and the forests and the meadows
0:21:33 and then below them there will be these
0:21:34 these other lower level dynamonia and
0:21:36 there
0:21:37 there's this level and there can even be
0:21:39 humans that are kind of semi-divine with
0:21:41 the very bottom of this pyramid and so
0:21:44 um
0:21:45 uh jews held that view view as well so
0:21:48 that in judaism you have you know you
0:21:50 have yahweh but then below yahweh you've
0:21:52 got you've got angels and archangels and
0:21:54 principalities powers and cherubim and
0:21:56 seraphim you got these other things and
0:21:58 and so
0:21:59 um and christianity also had that view
0:22:03 that there are other divine beings
0:22:06 god i mean god is god
0:22:09 but it's possible for a human being to
0:22:11 be made into a superhuman being into a
0:22:14 divine being in all of these religions
0:22:16 and the way the way it typically works
0:22:18 in greek actually greek roman and jewish
0:22:20 faiths is that a per a person who's a
0:22:23 really really righteous or there's
0:22:26 something special about them uh like in
0:22:28 greek in greek religion it's because the
0:22:30 person is like so incredibly powerful or
0:22:32 so unbelievably beautiful or so
0:22:35 incredibly smart like there's something
0:22:37 like not human about them
0:22:39 they can be taken up to heaven at the
0:22:40 end of their life to live with the gods
0:22:42 so they never die
0:22:44 they
0:22:45 they are made immortal and in greek and
0:22:48 roman religions immortals just another
0:22:50 word for the gods and so humans can be
0:22:52 made divine beings and even in judaism
0:22:56 uh you get this uh
0:22:58 not in the not in the old testament
0:23:01 per se but some passages might suggest
0:23:03 this but but in other in apocryphal
0:23:05 writings you have beings who can be made
0:23:08 into a divine like enoch can be made
0:23:10 into a divine or elijah so
0:23:13 um when christ the early matthew
0:23:15 mark and luke believed that jesus got
0:23:17 raised from the dead
0:23:18 and when he got raised from the dead he
0:23:20 didn't have a near-death experience you
0:23:22 know he didn't just kind of come back
0:23:23 for a few years and die again he he was
0:23:26 raised and taken up into heaven
0:23:28 which means he was made an immortal
0:23:30 right for them so
0:23:32 for you that's the crucial point the
0:23:34 christian belief in the resurrection
0:23:35 when he
0:23:36 uh
0:23:37 rose from the dead ascended into heaven
0:23:39 at that point and indeed paul seems to
0:23:41 suggest this perhaps the beginning of
0:23:42 romans at that point he was designated
0:23:44 or became divine
0:23:46 is that what you're arguing yeah i think
0:23:48 that's the earliest christian belief and
0:23:50 i think it predates paul i think the
0:23:53 earliest disciples of jesus when they
0:23:55 believed in the resurrection
0:23:57 they didn't have you know in our minds
0:23:59 we have jesus getting raised and then 40
0:24:02 days later going up to heaven and we
0:24:04 have that because of the book of acts
0:24:06 the only place that narrates that the
0:24:08 earliest christians appear to have
0:24:09 thought that jesus was raised but he
0:24:11 wasn't raised back to earth he's he went
0:24:14 up to heaven and then he would come down
0:24:16 you know make some appearances to show
0:24:17 that it happened but he he was in heaven
0:24:20 and so he's the divine being and so mark
0:24:23 would have no problem saying that jesus
0:24:24 is the son of god and mean that he's
0:24:26 actually in some sense the divine being
0:24:28 but it's not that he pre-existed you
0:24:31 know and it's not that he was god become
0:24:33 flesh
0:24:34 there's no incarnation in these books
0:24:37 it's that he was a human who was exalted
0:24:39 and became a divine being i think it's a
0:24:41 very important point
0:24:42 many scholars have noticed this in
0:24:43 luke's gospel chapter 1 verse 35 where
0:24:47 the language in the greek seems to just
0:24:49 or seems to exclude i should say any
0:24:51 understanding this is the uh the virgin
0:24:53 so-called virgin birth story of jesus in
0:24:55 the womb of mary of course it seems to
0:24:57 exclude any understanding of incarnation
0:24:59 it seems to be that the son jesus this
0:25:01 being
0:25:02 came into existence not incarnation but
0:25:05 came into being itself
0:25:07 in the womb the mary at that conception
0:25:09 um there's no pre-existence no
0:25:11 incarnation in luke of all places and
0:25:14 luke's identified particularly in
0:25:15 catholic spirituality is you know the
0:25:17 gospel about mary you know the
0:25:20 great disciples so is that do do you go
0:25:22 along with that there's no incarnation
0:25:24 in luke and in matthew and i do i do
0:25:27 agree with that and i think that's the
0:25:28 right reading of it i think people get a
0:25:30 little bit confused because if they're
0:25:31 if they're raised christian you know if
0:25:33 they're in the anglican church or the
0:25:34 catholic church and they say a creed you
0:25:37 know and it talks about uh christ coming
0:25:39 down from heaven being made incarnate
0:25:41 through the virgin mary
0:25:44 you know it sounds like it's all like
0:25:45 the same thing
0:25:46 but when you but the incarnation is a
0:25:49 doctrine found in john's gospel where
0:25:51 there's no virgin birth
0:25:53 and the virgin birth is found in matthew
0:25:55 and luke where there's no
0:25:56 concussion
0:25:57 so it's like it's combined these two but
0:25:59 yeah the luke passage is especially
0:26:01 interesting it's during the annunciation
0:26:03 the angel gabriel comes to mary
0:26:06 and he says you know you're going to
0:26:07 conceive and she says how i've never had
0:26:09 sex and he says the holy spirit
0:26:12 shall come upon you the power of the
0:26:13 most high shall overshadow you
0:26:16 so that the one born of you shall be
0:26:18 called holy the son of god
0:26:21 in other words the reason jesus is the
0:26:23 son of god is because his mother's a
0:26:25 virgin and god is the one through the
0:26:27 spirit who gets her pregnant so he's
0:26:29 literally the son of god and so
0:26:32 that so there's no incarnation here this
0:26:34 is him coming into being as the son of
0:26:36 god
0:26:37 that's remarkable okay um if we could
0:26:40 just uh we're still on jesus in the
0:26:42 gospels uh our next subject would be uh
0:26:44 textual criticism of the bible the last
0:26:46 one with uh jesus in the gospels um is
0:26:49 to do with jesus
0:26:51 are the followers of jesus we've
0:26:52 mentioned these already and paul i mean
0:26:55 it seems to me if you look at say um the
0:26:57 earliest disciples family members like
0:27:00 james the brother of jesus jesus had a
0:27:02 brother according to our records and he
0:27:04 ended up heading up the church in
0:27:05 jerusalem the jerusalem church
0:27:07 um axe mentions him in passing it seems
0:27:10 to me that these folk
0:27:12 were jewish christians obviously they
0:27:14 were jews
0:27:15 who were tall observant who were good
0:27:17 jews basically you know what we
0:27:19 understand today by jews the temples
0:27:21 existed and they went to the temple and
0:27:23 it says in acts that they went to the
0:27:24 the temple at the hour prayer to pray
0:27:26 which was the hour of sacrifice it
0:27:28 wasn't like a church where you go and
0:27:30 just pray it was had a function as a
0:27:33 sacrificing temple um but to juxtapose
0:27:36 that or contrast that it seems to me
0:27:39 with paul and and the kind of
0:27:41 hellenistic christian gentiles perhaps
0:27:44 associated with the churches he founded
0:27:46 um were there any conflicts between
0:27:49 these two that we can see historically
0:27:51 or they all agreed about jesus mission
0:27:54 christology law observance and the whole
0:27:56 the whole thing do you think
0:27:58 you know it completely depends on
0:27:59 whether you uh read the book of acts or
0:28:01 if you read the letters of paul
0:28:04 because in the book of acts they are
0:28:06 completely simpatico they agree on
0:28:08 everything
0:28:09 they have a council to decide everything
0:28:11 there's nothing to decide they all agree
0:28:13 and so like and so um in acts is really
0:28:17 very trying very hard to show that they
0:28:18 are in agreement on on everything
0:28:21 paul tells a very different story
0:28:23 especially in his uh letter to the
0:28:24 galatians
0:28:26 where it's quite clear that he has uh
0:28:28 disagreements
0:28:29 with uh with james and peter the
0:28:32 disagreement is not about christology
0:28:34 and it's um
0:28:36 it's
0:28:38 in one sense it's not really about
0:28:39 soteriology it's not about salvation per
0:28:41 se they all agree that jesus death and
0:28:43 resurrection is what puts a person into
0:28:45 a right standing before god
0:28:47 yeah they'll agree on that what peter
0:28:50 and james think though
0:28:51 is that for a person to be a follower of
0:28:53 the jewish messiah
0:28:55 they have to be jewish
0:28:57 that in other words i mean
0:29:00 christ is the jewish messiah he was sent
0:29:02 from the jewish god
0:29:03 in fulfillment of the jewish law to the
0:29:05 jewish people
0:29:07 and so if you're going to be a follower
0:29:08 of the jewish messiah you've got you got
0:29:10 to become a jew which means you've got
0:29:12 to be a male has to be circumcised they
0:29:14 have to they have to um they need kosher
0:29:16 foods
0:29:18 and there there was a range of opinions
0:29:20 about this
0:29:21 um paul paul
0:29:24 paul may have come up with this idea
0:29:26 that you know he says that he was given
0:29:28 his gospel by christ
0:29:31 uh and i don't think he means by that
0:29:32 that he was given the idea that jesus
0:29:34 died and was raised from the dead people
0:29:36 were saying that already that's why paul
0:29:38 was persecuting people is because the
0:29:40 christians are saying the messiah has
0:29:42 been crucified and raised from the dead
0:29:44 and paul thought they were nuts so he he
0:29:46 he got that but at when he when he had
0:29:49 his vision of christ whatever that was
0:29:52 the gospel that was
0:29:53 revealed to him is that jews and
0:29:55 gentiles can both be saved by the death
0:29:57 or resurrection of jesus and they don't
0:30:00 the gentiles don't have to be jews
0:30:02 this is this was the revelation paul got
0:30:05 and so paul was quite insistent
0:30:07 gentiles do not have to follow the
0:30:10 jewish law i mean he
0:30:12 he says he says that repeatedly in
0:30:14 romans and galatians but what he means
0:30:16 by that apparently is that there there
0:30:19 are some things in the jewish law that
0:30:20 make jews jewish like circumcision and
0:30:22 kosher and sabbath and things
0:30:24 there are other things that are just
0:30:25 like you know you're not supposed to
0:30:26 murder people you're not supposed to
0:30:28 become an adult
0:30:29 all that still applies
0:30:31 but
0:30:32 gentiles did not have to convert to
0:30:34 judaism
0:30:35 the issue came up comes up that then are
0:30:38 jews and gentiles really the same they
0:30:41 are they equal are jews superior or can
0:30:44 they really fellowship together because
0:30:46 if they fellowship together if jews are
0:30:48 hanging out with gentiles that means
0:30:50 they're gonna have to break their kosher
0:30:51 laws and so the jews shouldn't associate
0:30:54 in the church that was pete
0:30:56 james and peter's view apparently yeah
0:30:58 uh paul really rejected that so it's all
0:31:02 about whether jews and gentiles are
0:31:03 completely equal in christ or not but
0:31:05 what role does torah observant then play
0:31:08 for jewish christians in paul's thought
0:31:10 it seems i mean i'm not an expert at the
0:31:11 end of galatians it looks like the torah
0:31:14 has been replaced by
0:31:15 living according to the spirit or
0:31:17 following christ or something it doesn't
0:31:18 seem that torah observant is central
0:31:20 anymore and and indeed was it not the
0:31:22 case that later on that century in a
0:31:24 gentile-dominated church anyway after
0:31:26 the fall of jerusalem that tour
0:31:28 observance really became something of an
0:31:30 anachronism and now it was just focused
0:31:33 on other things
0:31:35 um it's a complicated question because
0:31:37 paul never never says
0:31:39 um
0:31:40 he he never tells jews to stop keeping
0:31:43 the torah
0:31:45 and he does say that he himself lived
0:31:47 like a jew when he was among jews
0:31:49 which means
0:31:50 he wasn't though there's no that's the
0:31:51 point is that sorry just interrupted
0:31:54 wasn't it he didn't follow it now what
0:31:56 jew would not follow the torah
0:31:59 that's right paul does when paul so he's
0:32:02 a jew among jews and a gentile among
0:32:03 gentiles as he said first yesterday
0:32:06 and that that means that he's not torah
0:32:08 observant in the way that most jews
0:32:09 would think of torah observance but it
0:32:11 does mean that when he's among jews he
0:32:13 is he is for observant which makes me
0:32:15 think that he thinks that jews who are
0:32:17 believers in jesus they're perfectly
0:32:18 welcome to keep following the torah you
0:32:20 know if you're if your ox gore is the
0:32:22 next door neighbor you still have to do
0:32:24 what the torah says about it but but for
0:32:27 the jews and it's i don't think he
0:32:29 condem he doesn't condemn circumcision
0:32:31 for jews or kosher food laws for jews he
0:32:34 says some do some some chris apologies
0:32:36 some do some don't i think he was fine
0:32:38 with jews keeping the torah
0:32:40 but he did not think that put a jew in a
0:32:42 better standing with god
0:32:44 keeping the torah is not going to help
0:32:46 your standing with god if it did you
0:32:48 wouldn't need jesus and so since you got
0:32:50 jesus you know so so i so i don't think
0:32:53 that paul was opposed to torah
0:32:54 observance he was opposed to thinking
0:32:56 the torah observance mattered for
0:32:58 salvation that's right which is a
0:33:00 different thing you know at one point a
0:33:02 couple points in his letters he says it
0:33:04 tells us gentile fathers including
0:33:05 galatians that you should love your
0:33:07 neighbor as yourself because love
0:33:10 fulfills the law
0:33:13 that indicates that the law should needs
0:33:15 to be fulfilled
0:33:17 that's why you have to love one another
0:33:18 but but it's not by doing these things
0:33:21 that jews do as their you know they're
0:33:24 observant customs
0:33:25 but there are a couple of pastors surely
0:33:27 on there in the in his letters which
0:33:29 suggests that for example the kosher
0:33:30 laws the food laws this whole thing of
0:33:32 clean and unclean food that distinction
0:33:34 has just
0:33:35 been done away with now that no food is
0:33:38 unclean in itself unless you can eat it
0:33:41 and that would surely wouldn't that be a
0:33:42 direct abrogation of at least some parts
0:33:45 of the levitical laws and in that sense
0:33:47 he was
0:33:48 not upholding the torah for everyone
0:33:50 because in christ there is no clean or
0:33:52 you know that all these things are now
0:33:54 possible
0:33:55 without the idea of this yeah i mean
0:33:58 it's hard you know as you know there are
0:34:00 very big books written on paul in the
0:34:01 law by scholars who spent 30 years
0:34:08 i was studying this i was getting a long
0:34:10 bibliography about this very issue and
0:34:12 you had all the views on the spectrum i
0:34:14 said well i'm supposed to make up my own
0:34:15 mind what's what's the answer please oh
0:34:17 no no you gotta write the essay okay so
0:34:20 i'll tell you my answer to it is that
0:34:22 that paul did not think that torah
0:34:24 observance would make a jew right with
0:34:26 god or would make a gentile wrath god
0:34:29 and if the gentiles started following
0:34:30 the torah that meant that they thought
0:34:32 that would make them right with god
0:34:34 means they completely misunderstood that
0:34:36 the god that that salvation comes only
0:34:38 through christ
0:34:39 but i think that paul had no problem
0:34:42 with jews keeping their customs
0:34:44 and then he saw torah observance as a
0:34:47 jewish custom to make jews jewish
0:34:48 they're the chosen people god gave them
0:34:50 these rules these of course they should
0:34:52 follow those but you know it's got
0:34:53 nothing to do with your salvation so
0:34:55 when he says that all things are you
0:34:57 know if he says it's okay you know some
0:34:58 people observe us today and other people
0:35:00 don't some people say it's okay to eat
0:35:02 things other people don't you know like
0:35:03 that's not what really matters i think
0:35:05 it means for salvation uh but it's
0:35:08 perfectly fine for jews to keep kosher i
0:35:10 mean i think i think that's his view
0:35:12 yeah okay and uh and jesus himself of
0:35:14 course uh according to matthew anyway
0:35:17 his reading of the situation didn't
0:35:19 really abrogate or abolish the laws he
0:35:21 has jesus saying i've not come to
0:35:22 abolish the law
0:35:24 and you know not one jostle tittle of
0:35:26 the law has been done away with and
0:35:28 initial righteousness exceeds that of
0:35:29 the other pharisees and the scribes you
0:35:31 will not blah blah blah
0:35:33 in matthew 23 you know he says the
0:35:35 pharisees sit on moses see do whatever
0:35:37 they tell you and obey but don't do what
0:35:39 they do because a bunch of hypocrites
0:35:40 that's not exactly he's not on message
0:35:42 is he really matthew when it comes to
0:35:44 the gospel if you compare him at all
0:35:47 well yeah he's not a message with paul
0:35:49 that's for sure i tell him
0:35:51 i sometimes have told my students that
0:35:53 you know i would be interested in having
0:35:54 paul and
0:35:56 matthew locked up in a room and not be
0:35:58 allowed to emerge until they come up
0:35:59 with a consensus view of the law
0:36:02 i think i think you'd find their
0:36:03 skeletons in the death grip because i
0:36:05 don't i just think
0:36:07 but it's very interesting though because
0:36:09 matthew matthew's a complicated case
0:36:11 because um
0:36:13 you know it's people always think of
0:36:14 matthew as jewish and that he's talking
0:36:17 to and
0:36:18 i don't know
0:36:19 but you know when when he does say you
0:36:21 have to keep the law better than the
0:36:23 scribes and the pharisees and you have
0:36:24 to keep
0:36:25 jot and tittle and all of that he goes
0:36:28 on then to explain what it means in the
0:36:30 uh antithesis yeah and the way he
0:36:32 explains it he has he has a number of
0:36:34 these
0:36:35 six of these antithesis where he'll say
0:36:37 you know you've heard it said you shall
0:36:38 not murder but i say don't get angry
0:36:40 with somebody you've heard it said don't
0:36:42 commit adultery i say don't don't even
0:36:44 lust after a woman in your heart
0:36:46 the things that he specifies are all
0:36:48 things that that are not these things
0:36:50 i'm talking about kosher and festivals
0:36:53 and your ox goring somebody so he
0:36:55 doesn't
0:36:56 you know for example he doesn't say you
0:36:58 know you've heard it said uh you shall
0:37:00 be circumcised but i say to you he
0:37:02 doesn't like make that more extreme and
0:37:04 so like he's not he's not taking these
0:37:06 things and just saying you know
0:37:08 and so
0:37:09 so i don't i don't really
0:37:11 i mean i've thought about for years and
0:37:13 years and years and i don't know whether
0:37:16 matthew wants his gentile followers
0:37:19 to keep uh kosher and to keep um
0:37:22 um
0:37:23 to keep sabbath and i don't know uh
0:37:27 i could see it either way
0:37:29 yeah i know dale martin has the view
0:37:30 that uh you know uh matthew is in fact
0:37:32 probably suggesting the gentiles also
0:37:35 follow god as well okay that's fine
0:37:37 moving on to textual criticism of the
0:37:39 bible if we may thank you um do we have
0:37:42 the original
0:37:43 surely we must have let me refer you
0:37:45 this way the written manuscripts of the
0:37:47 gospels the letters of the apostles paul
0:37:50 peter and john we have them i've got a
0:37:52 bible here that
0:37:54 shows me the letters that they wrote
0:37:56 yeah one and two peter so we must have
0:37:58 them surely
0:38:00 yeah
0:38:01 i wish we did
0:38:02 i wish we had any original writings from
0:38:04 the ancient world uh we don't have the
0:38:06 original so who
0:38:09 whoever wrote the book of amos sat down
0:38:11 one day and still wrote things we don't
0:38:13 have that thing that he wrote
0:38:14 and whoever wrote the gospel of mark sat
0:38:16 down one day he had sources available to
0:38:18 him and he heard stories and he sat down
0:38:20 and he wrote something we don't have
0:38:22 that thing he wrote
0:38:23 um
0:38:24 but the things were books were not
0:38:27 mass-produced
0:38:28 uh there was no mechanical ways of
0:38:30 reproducing them books to be
0:38:33 circulated had to be copied by hand
0:38:36 uh
0:38:36 until the invention of the printing
0:38:38 press in the 15th century and so
0:38:41 throughout throughout all of antiquity
0:38:43 down to the 15th century copies were
0:38:45 made of books
0:38:46 and different people would make
0:38:48 different copies and that's true the new
0:38:50 testament
0:38:51 and so we don't have we don't have we
0:38:53 don't have paul's letter to the
0:38:54 galatians
0:38:56 that he wrote we don't have a cop the
0:38:58 first copy made of it we don't have the
0:38:59 copy of the copy made of it we don't
0:39:01 have copies for you know for a very long
0:39:03 time
0:39:04 our um
0:39:07 the we have more copies of the books of
0:39:09 the new testament than for any other
0:39:10 book from the ancient world
0:39:12 it's not even close uh we have lots more
0:39:16 but most of these copies of the new
0:39:17 testament
0:39:19 that we have are from century many
0:39:21 centuries later most of them are from a
0:39:23 thousand years later and later so that
0:39:25 um we don't have any if you just take
0:39:28 with mark for example
0:39:29 our earliest our earliest copy of mark
0:39:32 if mark was written in the year 70
0:39:34 the earliest surviving copy we have of
0:39:36 mark is not a complete copy it has
0:39:39 portions of eight of the 16 chapters
0:39:42 just portions of these eight chapters
0:39:44 and none the other eight and it dates
0:39:46 from around the year 200.
0:39:48 so it's about 130 years 130 years okay
0:39:52 okay we've got 50 of that gospel about
0:39:55 enough eight or so
0:39:58 no we've got about a third
0:40:01 at what point then in history do we have
0:40:03 a hundred percent of the gospel of mark
0:40:05 extant today that we can say there it is
0:40:08 first copy is the uh in the middle of
0:40:10 the fourth century it's a either codex
0:40:12 sinaiticus or codex vaticanus from
0:40:14 around the year 370. so the first
0:40:17 complete copy we have of mark is 300
0:40:19 years
0:40:20 after mark so after that we start
0:40:23 getting copies and we get more and more
0:40:24 copies in the middle ages so when you
0:40:27 get to the middle ages you know pretty
0:40:29 well what people are reading when
0:40:30 they're reading the gospel of mark
0:40:32 because you've got all these copies
0:40:34 but what did mark look like before 370.
0:40:38 or what did it look like in the year 150
0:40:41 well it's complicate it's complicated
0:40:43 but this is what textual critics do
0:40:45 they they try to figure out what the
0:40:48 what the author wrote
0:40:50 based on surviving copies that are all
0:40:53 different from each other so when i say
0:40:55 they're all different from each other
0:40:57 mark has
0:40:58 the mark that comes down to us has 16
0:41:00 chapters in it
0:41:01 um
0:41:02 and
0:41:03 it's not that some gospels of mark have
0:41:06 24 chapters would have had 24 chapters
0:41:08 you know we're not thinking that
0:41:08 somebody added
0:41:10 eight chapters or somebody took out you
0:41:12 know three chapters or anything like
0:41:13 that
0:41:14 but there are
0:41:15 you know the last 12 verses in most
0:41:18 bibles of mark
0:41:20 were almost certainly added later by a
0:41:22 scribe
0:41:24 the two the two manuscripts i just
0:41:26 mentioned the two oldest manuscripts we
0:41:28 have don't have the last 12 verses
0:41:30 and neither do others sir then so uh so
0:41:33 that's a big chunk but most of the time
0:41:35 we're talking about wording getting
0:41:37 changed
0:41:38 um so that somebody's copying galatians
0:41:41 3 3 and he miscopies a word or he thinks
0:41:44 like ah that word's wrong and it changes
0:41:46 the word or he adds a line or he takes
0:41:48 out a line and you get you get lots and
0:41:51 lots of that lots of it i just want to
0:41:53 say for the viewers uh this is a one of
0:41:56 my favorite books by
0:41:57 the orthodox corruption of scripture the
0:41:59 effect of early christological
0:42:01 controversies on the text of the new
0:42:03 testament this is actually different
0:42:04 from the point you're making you're
0:42:05 talking about describable errors copying
0:42:07 and whatever here you're talking about
0:42:09 deliberate theologically motivated
0:42:11 changes to the new testament itself to
0:42:14 the manuscripts anyway to further
0:42:16 particular oh
0:42:18 jesus couldn't have said that he must
0:42:19 have meant that i'll change it here or
0:42:21 paul couldn't have said that it must
0:42:22 have made something different and you
0:42:24 you identify uh quite a few uh orthodox
0:42:27 in other words this is what we would
0:42:28 call the christian church today
0:42:30 when they uh changed the manuscript
0:42:33 yeah you know that
0:42:35 we obviously we can't get into a
0:42:36 scribe's mind to know what he was
0:42:38 thinking uh they're all he's by the way
0:42:41 throughout the that we know of it there
0:42:42 might have been some female scribes but
0:42:44 it's hard to tell but the we don't know
0:42:46 what they were thinking but there are
0:42:48 some changes uh of our manuscripts that
0:42:51 that almost certainly are intentional i
0:42:54 mean who added whoever added the last 12
0:42:56 verses of mark it wasn't by a slip of
0:42:58 the pen
0:42:59 but somebody thought oh i need to add
0:43:01 this and so we get things we get things
0:43:03 like that my book the orthodox
0:43:05 corruption of scripture is about changes
0:43:07 that affect
0:43:09 how
0:43:10 how the bible how different passages of
0:43:12 the bible understand christ and so they
0:43:15 involved with the christological
0:43:16 controversies of the second and third
0:43:18 centuries when you have um
0:43:22 you have controversies about is jesus is
0:43:24 he human and then he became god or was
0:43:27 he like all human the whole time or was
0:43:29 it god did he become a human is he god
0:43:31 and not human is he human not god is he
0:43:32 like somehow two things if he's two
0:43:34 things is he like 50 of each what is he
0:43:37 and so these debates are going on and
0:43:39 it's it's interesting that scribes
0:43:42 change their manuscripts and places that
0:43:44 really affect the controversies and that
0:43:47 seem to that appear to reflect the
0:43:48 controversies and so that's what my book
0:43:50 is about is how scribes would sometimes
0:43:52 change the text to make it more amenable
0:43:55 to the orthodox understanding of jesus
0:43:58 okay um just moving on if i just change
0:44:00 the subject slightly um the significance
0:44:02 of the dead sea scrolls now i'm often
0:44:05 told often hear from christians who say
0:44:07 the dead sea scrolls they really took us
0:44:10 much further back in time you know got
0:44:11 much earlier manuscripts and it confirms
0:44:14 the old testament we always had it's the
0:44:16 same books the same content isaiah is
0:44:19 just the same jeremiah's just the same
0:44:21 um
0:44:23 is a is this true or not i mean what
0:44:25 what's really going on here is it more
0:44:27 complicated than that yeah no it's a
0:44:28 very important it's a very important
0:44:30 thing uh the dead sea scrolls are huge
0:44:32 hugely important for all sorts of
0:44:33 reasons um not just not just the copies
0:44:36 of the bible by the way but also the
0:44:39 that tells us a lot about this group of
0:44:41 jews who were in these kind of monastic
0:44:43 like communities uh these they have
0:44:46 scenes um but some some of the dead sea
0:44:48 scrolls are biblical manuscripts and
0:44:49 they were a huge find
0:44:51 the reason is because the hebrew bible
0:44:54 that we use today the people who use the
0:44:57 hebrew bible actually in hebrew and that
0:44:59 are translating the hebrew bible
0:45:01 are basing
0:45:03 their uh their translations on a
0:45:05 manuscript that was written around the
0:45:07 year one thousand of the common era
0:45:09 around one thousand of the common era
0:45:11 it's uh it
0:45:13 came from leningrad and so it's called
0:45:14 codexes
0:45:17 um jewish scribes in the middle ages
0:45:19 when they copied a manuscript
0:45:22 they would destroy it
0:45:24 because now they had a perfect copy of
0:45:26 it and they made sure the copy was
0:45:27 perfect
0:45:29 they had ways of doing that through the
0:45:31 middle ages
0:45:33 the problem is what were scribes doing
0:45:35 before the middle ages before they had
0:45:36 these rules
0:45:38 well we had to guess they were getting
0:45:40 it right and so
0:45:42 the dead sea scrolls were discovered in
0:45:43 1947
0:45:45 and they have
0:45:46 they include
0:45:48 portions of every book of the hebrew
0:45:50 bible except for
0:45:52 except for the book of uh esther esther
0:45:56 yeah um because yeah it turns out god is
0:45:59 not named in esther and so that for some
0:46:01 reason that book's not among the dead
0:46:02 sea scrolls most of the scrolls we have
0:46:04 are not complete scrolls
0:46:06 the isaiah scroll is a virtually
0:46:08 complete scroll and it is very very
0:46:12 close in wording to the codex blending
0:46:14 groudensis
0:46:15 right so that concept
0:46:17 but that confirms the bible we have
0:46:18 today was historically accurate it was
0:46:21 accurately
0:46:22 transmitted no no it's got nothing to do
0:46:23 with it and so so i need to explain
0:46:25 several things here because there's
0:46:26 several points that some people like
0:46:27 overlook
0:46:29 which is the first one people overlook
0:46:31 that's true the isaiah scroll but it's
0:46:33 not true of other dead sea scrolls
0:46:36 there are other dead sea scrolls the the
0:46:38 scroll of jeremiah that we have
0:46:40 is
0:46:42 has a has differences from our jeremiah
0:46:45 and the differences
0:46:47 from our jeremiah are like the
0:46:49 differences that come to us from the
0:46:50 greek translation of jeremiah in the
0:46:53 septuagint in the greek greek bible that
0:46:56 version of jeremiah is 15
0:47:01 shorter
0:47:02 than the leningrads
0:47:04 15
0:47:06 uh so that's not very accurate
0:47:09 and so so it's not that everything is
0:47:11 like the isaiah scroll the isaiah
0:47:13 scrolls like the isaiah scroll it
0:47:14 doesn't prove that's why he's mentioned
0:47:16 showcase oh look at isaiah is exactly
0:47:18 the same look at the perfection of
0:47:20 transformation
0:47:22 that's my first point that this this
0:47:24 manuscript by isaiah was written a
0:47:25 thousand years before leningrad says
0:47:27 it's accurate but the others are not the
0:47:28 same second point
0:47:30 um
0:47:32 isaiah the prophet
0:47:33 was writing isaiah jerusalem was living
0:47:35 in the 8th century bce
0:47:38 so
0:47:40 that means we don't have any manuscripts
0:47:42 for the first over 700 years
0:47:46 so the fact that you have a manuscript
0:47:48 that from say say the year one
0:47:51 to the year 1000 you can show that
0:47:53 isaiah was copied accurately but our
0:47:55 question is what about between the year
0:47:57 700 bce and one
0:48:00 now there's 700 years we have no
0:48:02 evidence
0:48:04 in hebrew no hebrew text so you can't
0:48:06 say this is exactly what isaiah wrote
0:48:09 how would you know how much it got
0:48:10 changed between 700 and the the dead sea
0:48:13 scroll copy there's no way to know
0:48:15 there are ways not good ways no no um so
0:48:19 that's that's second third thing
0:48:23 even if even if we had
0:48:26 everything that was accurate in either
0:48:28 any book the new testament or the new
0:48:30 testament or old testament even if we
0:48:32 had a manuscript even we had the
0:48:33 original suppose we had the original of
0:48:36 mark or suppose we have the original of
0:48:39 joshua we have the original
0:48:41 that would have no bearing on the
0:48:44 question of whether it's accurate or not
0:48:48 it would only have a bearing on whether
0:48:50 we know what the author wrote
0:48:52 so the way i usually illustrate this is
0:48:55 we have we have
0:48:57 millions of copies
0:48:59 of mineconf
0:49:02 and they are accurate
0:49:05 they i mean
0:49:07 they might not be active with what
0:49:08 hitler actually wrote but they don't
0:49:10 they don't have any differences we know
0:49:12 what the first printed copy looked like
0:49:15 does that mean that it's accurate no
0:49:19 it doesn't mean that it's right it just
0:49:20 means you know what he wrote
0:49:22 the fact you know what somebody wrote
0:49:24 doesn't mean that what they wrote is
0:49:25 right that's a different thing so those
0:49:27 are three really big points that shows
0:49:29 that this argument just doesn't hold and
0:49:30 any one of those three shows that
0:49:32 they've been hold three together forget
0:49:34 it
0:49:34 Music
0:49:37 yeah it's not worse than that because a
0:49:38 good example of eyesight is now commonly
0:49:40 accepted that yeah maybe the first 39
0:49:43 chapters of isaiah were written by this
0:49:45 prophet
0:49:46 in isaiah from downtown jerusalem but it
0:49:49 was added to by maybe a second scribe or
0:49:52 maybe a third scribe or scribes so we
0:49:54 don't even even if you dig up
0:49:56 the book of isaiah that we have it today
0:49:58 from 500 years ago 600 years ago it
0:50:01 doesn't mean we had the prophet isaiah's
0:50:03 own words which many scholars were added
0:50:05 to anyway yeah yeah no it's very common
0:50:08 to think that i isaiah
0:50:10 and if there's really good reason for
0:50:12 this isaiah jerusalem wrote most of
0:50:13 chapter 1 to 39 and then someone 150
0:50:16 years later wrote 40 to 50 55
0:50:19 50 yeah 55 then the other 56 and on and
0:50:22 so you know it's a compilation uh no
0:50:24 matter what but even if you have
0:50:26 isaiah's words again it doesn't it
0:50:29 doesn't mean that he's right he might be
0:50:31 right i mean
0:50:33 but that's a different it's a different
0:50:34 question the fact you have an accurate
0:50:36 manuscript is not evidence that what the
0:50:38 person said is accurate
0:50:41 okay that's fine um let's move on to the
0:50:43 last part then uh christianity after the
0:50:47 new testament or christianities after
0:50:49 the uh new testament you've written a
0:50:51 superb um book here after the new
0:50:53 testament a reader in early christianity
0:50:56 published by oxford university press uh
0:50:58 which is a wonderful anthology of uh
0:51:00 texts from the early centuries of uh the
0:51:04 church or the church is i suppose um
0:51:07 just to clarify a few things uh the
0:51:09 traditional picture one we get from the
0:51:11 church historian eusebius for example is
0:51:13 that jesus founded the church
0:51:15 his disciples were the pillars of the
0:51:17 church they went out preach the message
0:51:18 with paul and and you know yeah the
0:51:21 church encountered heretics and uh and
0:51:23 problem groups and so on what you might
0:51:26 call the ebionites or the martianites or
0:51:28 the gnostic or whatever you want to call
0:51:29 them but basically
0:51:31 christ founded the church and it went
0:51:33 through time through history right up to
0:51:35 uh the present day but
0:51:37 do we not now know that we see jewish
0:51:40 christianity we've got churches founded
0:51:41 by paul we've got the ebionites we've
0:51:43 got martian in the second century
0:51:45 uh and and these are quite quite a wide
0:51:47 spectrum of different christian groups
0:51:49 all identifying as
0:51:52 christian you know these are people who
0:51:54 believe what they believe is true
0:51:56 um firstly this is astonishing isn't it
0:51:58 when you really get the sense of the
0:51:59 diversity uh the big differences between
0:52:02 these christian groups and my second
0:52:03 question connects to that which of these
0:52:05 early movements most closely resembles
0:52:07 do you think the faith of jesus own
0:52:10 disciples if it's possible to make that
0:52:12 connection
0:52:14 yeah so again it's it's a very
0:52:15 complicated issue and it's um
0:52:18 so
0:52:19 eusebius so eusebius uh as many of your
0:52:23 heroes will know is was is called the
0:52:26 known as the father of church history
0:52:28 he's the first one to write a sketch of
0:52:29 the history of christianity from the
0:52:31 time of jesus up to his own day around
0:52:33 the year 300 so the first 300 years of
0:52:35 christianity
0:52:36 and
0:52:37 one of his he's got a lot of he's he has
0:52:39 a lot of motifs driving
0:52:42 his work as he describes a lot of
0:52:43 earlier authors a lot of earlier views
0:52:46 he talks about persecutions and
0:52:47 martyrdoms and heresies and he you know
0:52:49 he gives the history of the church
0:52:51 church leaders
0:52:52 his view of the relationship of heresy
0:52:54 and orthodoxy
0:52:56 so orthodoxy for him would mean the
0:52:58 correct belief the the the true faith
0:53:01 that that that people in his day had
0:53:04 uh and heresy would be a false teaching
0:53:06 of some kind his view was that jesus
0:53:08 taught orthodoxy to his disciples taught
0:53:11 taught them basically what we would
0:53:13 think of as the nicene creed or the
0:53:15 apostles creed he taught and taught the
0:53:16 truth to his disciples who passed it
0:53:18 down to their successors and passed down
0:53:20 their successors and there's always been
0:53:22 this main body of truth
0:53:24 it has held
0:53:25 been the mainstream the whole time it's
0:53:27 always been the majority opinion and
0:53:29 every now and then you get some heretic
0:53:30 coming along
0:53:31 who is willful or mean-spirited or
0:53:34 inspired by a devil
0:53:36 is motivated by bad intentions
0:53:39 good girls just got a different idea
0:53:40 they're always malicious individuals
0:53:42 i've never seen they're malicious and
0:53:44 demon inspired and they come up with
0:53:46 something like they'll say oh actually
0:53:48 there are two gods there's not one god
0:53:49 you know or or there are 36 gods or
0:53:52 salvation isn't by christ's death jesus
0:53:54 didn't even die you know
0:53:56 they
0:53:57 and these are all offshoots they're
0:53:59 secondary offshoots from the mainstream
0:54:01 that's always been there in eusebius's
0:54:04 presentation
0:54:05 that view of eusebius held
0:54:09 all the way up to the beginning of the
0:54:11 20th century uh this is just what church
0:54:13 historian said so if you read a church
0:54:15 historian from the 19th century this is
0:54:17 how they'll paint what happened in early
0:54:19 christianity it all changed in uh in the
0:54:22 1930s with the publication by a german
0:54:26 scholar walter bauer who wrote a book
0:54:28 that his english translation is called
0:54:30 orthodoxy and heresy in earliest
0:54:32 christianity
0:54:34 bower argued that if you actually look
0:54:37 at the surviving evidence
0:54:38 region by region so you look you go to
0:54:41 egypt and you look at our oldest records
0:54:43 of what christianity was like in egypt
0:54:45 or you go to antioch up in syria or you
0:54:48 go to asia minor you go to these places
0:54:51 where we actually have records the
0:54:53 earliest records in almost every place
0:54:55 is something that later was called a
0:54:56 heresy
0:54:58 bauer argued that in fact it wasn't that
0:55:00 there was like this mainstream orthodoxy
0:55:02 with heretics coming off everywhere that
0:55:04 in fact there were lots of different
0:55:06 groups of christians as far back as we
0:55:08 have records and they were fighting for
0:55:10 converts and eventually one of the
0:55:12 groups ended up winning out
0:55:15 and it got more converts and it wiped
0:55:18 out the opposition and then it rewrote
0:55:20 the history
0:55:21 and you you see this as a rewritten
0:55:23 version of what actually was the truth
0:55:25 which is that there was a wide diversity
0:55:28 so bauer so that's bauer's that's
0:55:30 bauer's view
0:55:31 he came out with this in 1934
0:55:34 um unfortunately it wasn't translated
0:55:36 into english into the late 1970s
0:55:40 and american scholars didn't pay enough
0:55:42 attention to it but it has it has become
0:55:45 a very much the critical opinion of the
0:55:47 critical historians today
0:55:49 and it's interesting
0:55:51 that archaeological discoveries have in
0:55:53 almost every instance verified what he
0:55:56 had to say before so i mean for example
0:55:58 the discovery of the nag hamadi library
0:56:01 in 1945
0:56:03 just a year and a half before the
0:56:04 discovery of the dead sea scrolls the
0:56:06 nakamadi library are the gnostic gospels
0:56:08 as they're sometimes called which
0:56:10 you know every time there's some kind of
0:56:12 gospel that shows up it's always
0:56:14 something that is not orthodox you know
0:56:17 more recent example of the gospel of
0:56:19 judas yeah and so
0:56:21 it looks like in early christianity
0:56:23 there were these various views of things
0:56:25 and you can trace the diversity actually
0:56:27 back into the new testament just as you
0:56:29 were talking earlier about matthew and
0:56:31 paul having different views of the law
0:56:33 that's a pretty significant difference
0:56:35 and there and everywhere you know almost
0:56:38 every time paul writes a letter he's got
0:56:39 these christian enemies
0:56:41 you know he has more enemies than
0:56:43 friends and that's in his day we don't
0:56:45 have the writings of his enemies
0:56:47 we wish we did so the idea is it's very
0:56:49 diverse all the way back
0:56:51 what would be the form that would be
0:56:52 most like the view of jesus
0:56:54 well uh i suppose you mentioned the
0:56:56 ebinites the ebinites are there there
0:56:59 might be several groups of jewish
0:57:01 christians who remain torah uh faithful
0:57:04 they they keep the torah they're jewish
0:57:07 or they're jewish converts in converts
0:57:09 to judaism and they believe in in being
0:57:12 jewish keeping the torah and believing
0:57:14 that jesus is the jewish messiah and
0:57:17 that would that would be much closer to
0:57:19 what jesus himself said than uh what the
0:57:22 gnostics were saying or what martian was
0:57:24 saying or what the what the orthodox
0:57:26 people ended up saying uh so the irony
0:57:29 is that the the group that's probably
0:57:30 most in alignment with say the teachings
0:57:33 of peter and james and then jesus
0:57:35 himself is the group they got declared a
0:57:37 heretic heresy
0:57:39 right so the irony is the the the faith
0:57:41 of the original disciples ultimately got
0:57:43 branded as a heresy in the christian
0:57:46 church this is the irony of history
0:57:48 surely
0:57:49 it's an irony of history that keeps
0:57:50 replicating itself because as time goes
0:57:53 on uh in the second century you have
0:57:55 orthodox theologians who have views that
0:57:57 become the standard view that later
0:57:59 centuries later become declared heresy
0:58:02 origin in the third century is a
0:58:04 component of orthodoxy it's declared
0:58:06 heretic and it's just it's it's it's how
0:58:09 christianity developed over time
0:58:11 to clarify one point which some some may
0:58:14 be confused about
0:58:15 surely we can just look at the letters
0:58:17 that peter himself wrote one and two
0:58:18 peter in the bible surely we can just
0:58:20 look at one two three
0:58:21 letters of john look there by john the
0:58:23 apostle john my bible says there by the
0:58:25 apostle john so what why you know and
0:58:27 these are christians as mainstream uh
0:58:29 orthodox eusebian views you know the
0:58:32 views that eusebius would have improved
0:58:34 so surely this this is a problem for
0:58:36 your thesis
0:58:37 yeah yeah right so yeah here's another
0:58:40 thing about critical scholars in the new
0:58:41 testament
0:58:43 um we have we haven't you know most of
0:58:45 the books in the new testament are named
0:58:47 after an apostle in one way or another
0:58:50 uh some of those books are not are
0:58:51 actually anonymous matthew mark luke and
0:58:53 john don't claim to be written by people
0:58:55 named matthew mark luke and john they're
0:58:57 they're anonymous the authors don't tell
0:58:58 us who they are but later people said
0:59:00 they're written by matthew mark luke and
0:59:01 john uh there are other books that claim
0:59:03 to be written by people first peter
0:59:05 claims to be written by peter
0:59:06 second peter claims to be written by
0:59:08 peter
0:59:09 an eyewitness that two peter actually
0:59:10 says he actually says in chapter two i
0:59:12 think i was there i witnessed these
0:59:14 things i saw them the life of jesus the
0:59:16 transfiguration so clearly
0:59:21 um scholars are pretty convinced and uh
0:59:24 except for very conservative evangelical
0:59:27 christian scholars uh scholars as a rule
0:59:30 are convinced that second peter was not
0:59:32 written by the same person as wrote
0:59:33 first peter
0:59:35 and the reason is because the writing
0:59:36 style is extremely different not
0:59:39 different in the way that you and i
0:59:40 might write you know one letter one way
0:59:42 and write a different letter but
0:59:44 different in a way this is not the same
0:59:45 author um it'd be kind of like reading
0:59:48 uh you know james joyce and mark twain
0:59:50 and thinking yeah okay he's probably not
0:59:52 the same guy
0:59:53 but and there are there are lots of
0:59:55 other reasons uh whoever wrote second
0:59:57 peter was claiming to be peter even
0:59:59 though he wasn't
1:00:00 you're saying this is a forgery are you
1:00:03 saying two peters of forgery i call it a
1:00:05 forgery i mean because that's what it is
1:00:07 ancient people debated about it by the
1:00:09 way
1:00:18 which is much better much better book
1:00:20 this the other one uh the rise of the
1:00:22 use of literary deceit in early
1:00:24 christian polemics and what i found
1:00:26 interesting um is that until well maybe
1:00:29 it's still the case maybe you can
1:00:30 clarify it was a popular view at least
1:00:32 an english speaking scholarship that
1:00:34 i've read that look this is not a
1:00:35 problem look peter people were honoring
1:00:38 peter's memory they were writing in his
1:00:40 tradition like a school of petra a
1:00:42 petrine school they weren't falsifying
1:00:45 his name they weren't writing forgery oh
1:00:48 no no no no no this was a recognized
1:00:50 literary convention in the ancient world
1:00:53 now what you've done in this critically
1:00:55 acclaimed book the reviews on the back
1:00:57 uh from top scholars who specialize in
1:00:59 this area speak for themselves including
1:01:01 someone called dale martin i think he's
1:01:02 a a mate but anyway well apart from one
1:01:04 mate of course no he's also a specialist
1:01:07 no is that this clearly debunks the
1:01:08 whole idea doesn't it there's absolutely
1:01:10 no evidence that this was a an accepted
1:01:12 literary convention that you could write
1:01:14 you could in write in someone else's
1:01:16 name a famous person that was perfectly
1:01:18 okay
1:01:20 yeah yeah well we we all learned that
1:01:22 when we were in graduate school or
1:01:23 seminary that that was okay
1:01:25 and that yeah uh you know you as an act
1:01:28 of humility you know
1:01:30 i'm not you know i'm not the great
1:01:32 apostle paul you know but this is what
1:01:34 he would have said if he were alive now
1:01:35 so i'll put it in his name because i
1:01:37 don't want to claim any credit for that
1:01:38 you know and so we we all learned that
1:01:40 we learned that in philosophical schools
1:01:42 they would do that that if you're not if
1:01:44 you're not really socrates you know you
1:01:46 claim to be socrates or whatever and um
1:01:49 yeah so i looked into it at uh
1:01:52 it's been a long time i looked up every
1:01:54 reference i could find in every greek
1:01:56 and every greek latin reference i could
1:01:59 find to this phenomenon and there's a
1:02:01 lot of evidence there's a lot of
1:02:02 discussion of it in the ancient world
1:02:04 and it is not approved
1:02:06 it is there's no there are no
1:02:09 the
1:02:10 yeah so i go i talked for a very long
1:02:12 time about this to show that in fact
1:02:14 ancient people condemned this as a
1:02:15 practice
1:02:17 i have a lot of people even scholar and
1:02:19 every time they talk every time they
1:02:20 evaluate it they condemn it
1:02:22 i've had a lot of people tell me even
1:02:23 scholars tell me well you know people
1:02:26 wouldn't do it if it was condemned
1:02:29 okay
1:02:30 how how well do you know that human
1:02:32 nature are you kidding me you mean
1:02:34 people don't do things that other people
1:02:35 say you shouldn't do
1:02:37 what beautifully it's a beautifully
1:02:39 naive argument
1:02:41 it's almost touching
1:02:43 oh it was critical no no you see why
1:02:45 because
1:02:46 i get this
1:02:47 these are christians they're good folk
1:02:49 they would never do it that's the kind
1:02:50 of the logic we're thinking do you know
1:02:52 any christians i mean do you know about
1:02:53 human nature
1:02:55 well i actually you know at the end of
1:02:56 my book i do explain how i how i imagine
1:02:59 they rationalize it to themselves
1:03:00 because i think you know it's the
1:03:02 ancient world in the ancient world when
1:03:04 they took called this when they talked
1:03:06 about this practice
1:03:07 of writing a book they weren't speaking
1:03:09 english so they didn't use the word
1:03:11 forgery but they did use other words
1:03:13 that were that are similarly condemning
1:03:17 most commonly they were called they were
1:03:18 just called pseudo which means lies
1:03:21 a book like that was called a lie
1:03:24 or they were called nother
1:03:26 uh no no thon was an illegitimate child
1:03:30 um that uh and it's because the author
1:03:32 is not who you think he is and so it's
1:03:34 an illegiti so the father isn't who you
1:03:36 think it is and so it's an illegitimate
1:03:38 child and it has all the conversations
1:03:40 of like nasty words meaning illegitimate
1:03:42 children in english and so they were not
1:03:43 one of these nice things the second
1:03:46 peter even
1:03:47 uh even the fourth century
1:03:50 a a a
1:03:51 famous church teacher named didymus the
1:03:54 blind in alexandria said that it was an
1:03:56 othon on it it was uh it's really
1:03:59 it wasn't written by peter
1:04:01 and so you get a lot of that and the
1:04:03 thing is in the new testament their
1:04:05 scholars today are pretty much agreed
1:04:07 that the first second peter certainly
1:04:09 not but um there are a lot of you know i
1:04:12 go through my book you know six letters
1:04:14 of paul are doubted by most scholars
1:04:16 today it's not being by paul even though
1:04:17 they claim to be written by paul and
1:04:19 first second third john are probably not
1:04:21 written by and so and so on and so on
1:04:23 just a quick point i mean it's not
1:04:25 really an issue though
1:04:26 just for the sake of the record really
1:04:28 uh christians often say that two peter
1:04:30 uh explicitly used the author says that
1:04:33 there was a secretary uh involved so it
1:04:36 could not be like an analogy was given
1:04:38 to me once by a catholic priest like
1:04:40 contemporary pa as anachronistic i know
1:04:42 but contemporary papal encyclicals the
1:04:45 pope riots and encyclical really well
1:04:48 perhaps ratzinger might be an exception
1:04:50 rarely do popes actually write these
1:04:51 things themselves because they're just
1:04:54 they have the time or whatever whatever
1:04:56 so why can't it be like a papal
1:04:58 encyclical written in his name with his
1:05:01 authorization but someone else wrote it
1:05:03 yeah
1:05:04 so the the line is um
1:05:07 it might be first peter
1:05:08 i think it's maybe first peter five but
1:05:10 but he says that he's writing this
1:05:12 letter through sylvanas
1:05:14 uh dia
1:05:16 then the names sylvanas so through
1:05:18 sylvanas and people say see so he's
1:05:20 riding through somebody which means he's
1:05:21 using the secretary yeah
1:05:23 actually when you see how that phrase
1:05:26 gets used when somebody's writing a book
1:05:28 diaz somebody it means through
1:05:31 you you can you can trace this through a
1:05:34 lot of literature which i talk about in
1:05:36 my book and it always means that that's
1:05:38 the person who's the letter carrier
1:05:41 he's the person who's taking the letter
1:05:43 so you're writing it through another i'm
1:05:45 communicating through sylvanus who's
1:05:47 taking you the letter
1:05:49 um
1:05:50 i spend a lot of time not a lot of time
1:05:52 i spend a number of pages talking about
1:05:54 whether it's plausible that secretaries
1:05:57 wrote first and second peter or other
1:05:59 books
1:06:00 and so you know the idea would be that
1:06:02 peter like dictated something to a
1:06:05 secretary who wrote it down or peter
1:06:08 said uh yeah just you know this is what
1:06:10 i want to say just you know come up with
1:06:11 something that's send it off
1:06:13 something like that
1:06:14 so i i go through all of the evidence we
1:06:17 have for secretaries in the ancient
1:06:19 world and how secretaries functioned and
1:06:21 i show that they never function that way
1:06:24 we have no instance we have discussions
1:06:26 of secretaries in the age we have people
1:06:28 talk about their own secretaries um and
1:06:31 and secretary's talking about things and
1:06:32 people taking dictation talking about
1:06:34 things and it is never the case that
1:06:36 somebody is um
1:06:39 is right composing a treatise in
1:06:43 somebody else's name as the secretary
1:06:45 right the way secretaries worked was by
1:06:47 dictation
1:06:48 and um
1:06:50 part of my argument in this book is that
1:06:52 peter almost certainly didn't know greek
1:06:54 if he didn't know greek he didn't know
1:06:56 how to compose in greek let alone you
1:06:58 know dictate composition in greek and so
1:07:01 you know this is not written by people
1:07:02 another way i think it talks about
1:07:04 participating in the divine nature which
1:07:06 is a lovely hellenistic metaphysical
1:07:09 philosophical term very commonly used by
1:07:11 galilean fishermen in first century
1:07:13 exactly
1:07:14 uneducated galleries
1:07:19 just to conclude that point uh just my
1:07:21 personal interest
1:07:23 your research is
1:07:24 i do commend you for this this
1:07:26 particularly for this book i i think is
1:07:28 a model a fantastic scholarship how what
1:07:30 how has it been i know it's been
1:07:32 reviewed by some scholars but has it
1:07:34 been a game changer in the
1:07:35 english-speaking world of scholarship or
1:07:36 has it just been ignored or what was it
1:07:38 still too early to gauge the effect of
1:07:40 this i know the german scholarship you
1:07:41 say
1:07:42 this is this is accepted but in the
1:07:44 english speaking world it hasn't been
1:07:46 hitherto before at least
1:07:48 so i'll tell you i've you know i've
1:07:49 written um i've written a number book
1:07:51 for scholars and um
1:07:54 they've all had gratifying uh receptions
1:07:57 um
1:07:59 i'm perplexed by this book um
1:08:02 this this is the only book in english
1:08:05 that gives a full analysis of the
1:08:07 phenomenon of pseudopigraphy in early
1:08:09 christianity yeah
1:08:11 the only one ever written
1:08:13 there are lots of people who write an
1:08:14 entire book on the authorship of
1:08:16 colossians or the authorship of
1:08:19 ephesians or the authorship whatever
1:08:21 i covered that like as you can see it's
1:08:23 a very big book and um
1:08:26 i it doesn't seem people i don't know
1:08:29 people aren't reading it or they're not
1:08:31 they're not it's like they're ignoring
1:08:33 it i don't know why uh
1:08:35 could it be then if they are ignoring it
1:08:37 then i'm very i'm generally disappointed
1:08:39 and sorry to hear that they are because
1:08:41 it's good scholarship uh the the only
1:08:43 conclusion i can guess is that christian
1:08:46 um new testament scholars is still
1:08:48 dominated mostly i think by christian
1:08:49 believers
1:08:51 and your scholarship really doesn't fit
1:08:53 with their world view and it's not
1:08:54 really welcomed so maybe it's just been
1:08:56 quietly ignored
1:08:58 it's again that could be that could be
1:09:00 it but you know liberal christians would
1:09:01 have no problem with this i mean i
1:09:03 believed a lot of this when i was still
1:09:05 a christian and um you know you
1:09:07 mentioned dale martin he's a he's a
1:09:09 practicing yeah
1:09:10 no i don't know i had lots of friends
1:09:12 who who you know who are christians i
1:09:14 think i think people don't want to be
1:09:16 bothered with actually getting down into
1:09:17 the weeds this book does get into the
1:09:19 weeds i mean this book gets into the
1:09:21 weeds more than any book i've ever
1:09:22 written it's the book i'm proud of stuff
1:09:24 i mean this is like really interesting
1:09:26 oh my god and it's like it's like there
1:09:29 was so much work
1:09:31 it is i mean i i will tell you i'm so
1:09:33 privileged i i have actually read every
1:09:35 word of this book i'm wow i'm not aimed
1:09:38 to boast okay i haven't read the the
1:09:40 index i didn't read every word at the
1:09:41 end
1:09:42 but all of the narrative every single
1:09:44 note i read it all because i really
1:09:46 wanted to suck the juice the marrow out
1:09:48 of this subject so um and it is an
1:09:50 academic book and i do nevertheless
1:09:52 recommend it extremely highly it
1:09:55 it also presents really uncomfortable
1:09:57 questions perhaps not for liberal
1:09:58 christians but for more traditional
1:10:00 christians about you know why are there
1:10:02 forgeries in my new testament you know i
1:10:04 mean what do we do with that uh it's
1:10:06 it's a a real
1:10:08 explosive issue uh perhaps as you say
1:10:10 not for dale martin and uh like-minded
1:10:12 people but for others it certainly is
1:10:14 you know i do but you know i do deal
1:10:16 with it at the end as you know because i
1:10:18 i try to show that you know we
1:10:21 we have this idea that lying is always
1:10:23 wrong
1:10:24 and what i show in this book is that
1:10:26 that that idea weirdly to most people
1:10:28 that idea did not come about until
1:10:30 augustine
1:10:31 i was going to say augustine is really
1:10:33 hot on lies he goes on and on about it
1:10:35 he said he cannot lie under any
1:10:36 circumstances you can't lie you could
1:10:39 if if you're going to save your your
1:10:42 child from torture
1:10:44 you cannot lie in order to make it
1:10:46 happen you can't do it
1:10:48 and so like oh my god really and he
1:10:50 wrote two treatises on this he's very
1:10:51 strong on this and yeah
1:10:53 i know it's quite extraordinary because
1:10:55 anyway we're going to augustine's
1:10:56 viewers online that was augustine the
1:10:58 reason he had to come out so strongly is
1:11:00 because most christians didn't think
1:11:01 that
1:11:02 most christians and we have account of
1:11:04 course christians think it's okay to lie
1:11:06 sometimes if you have to lie to save
1:11:08 somebody's life of course you're going
1:11:09 to lie and there are there are a lot of
1:11:11 advice your wife says is my you know
1:11:13 does my ex look big in this no dear it
1:11:15 looks lovely you you usually exactly
1:11:17 okay
1:11:20 dear take it off and put a sack on you
1:11:22 don't say that you say yeah you look
1:11:24 lovely dear right exactly no people and
1:11:28 and in the bible there are lies and
1:11:30 people justified lying in early
1:11:31 christianity and there are sometimes
1:11:33 reasons to lie and for for most people
1:11:37 who lie the means
1:11:39 just
1:11:39 the the ends just by the means
1:11:42 yeah and if you've got if you've got a
1:11:43 truth that is really really important
1:11:46 that you want to convey and you want
1:11:47 people to read it
1:11:48 uh then you um
1:11:50 you know then you sign that
1:11:53 you know you write in somebody else's
1:11:54 name
1:11:55 and so that's that's why i you know
1:11:57 wrote this book and uh signed it richard
1:11:59 dawkins
1:12:02 oh controversial
1:12:04 bringing
1:12:05 the final question we got um 15 minutes
1:12:07 left um is actually an academic question
1:12:10 um so and i've written it down because
1:12:12 uh it's i want to get the the nuance
1:12:14 right so forgive me but um over the past
1:12:17 two decades or so the criteria approach
1:12:20 to the historical jesus has increasingly
1:12:22 been seen as problematic you know this
1:12:24 is a criteria multiple association and
1:12:26 so on you know what the criteria
1:12:28 obviously dale allison a fellow american
1:12:31 uh academic uh in new testament studies
1:12:33 in his book constructing jesus also
1:12:36 expresses dissatisfaction with the
1:12:38 criteria approach arguing that many
1:12:41 times good arguments can be made for and
1:12:44 against authenticity of a particular
1:12:46 passage using the criteria approach he
1:12:50 argues instead he advocates a more
1:12:53 generalist approach whereby we consider
1:12:55 an element as probably authentic
1:12:58 if it is present in multiple genres by
1:13:01 parables narrative miracle stories
1:13:03 apocalyptic material etc
1:13:05 it seems the main objection is that the
1:13:07 problem of sub the problem of
1:13:10 subjectivity with the criteria
1:13:12 only the criterion of multiple
1:13:15 independent attestation seems to escape
1:13:17 the clutches of subjectivity
1:13:20 but it does not necessarily indicate
1:13:22 authenticity of material and we are not
1:13:25 always confident in knowing whether or
1:13:27 not we are indeed dealing with
1:13:29 independent sources anyway
1:13:31 the question is
1:13:33 what is your assessment of this
1:13:35 situation today and is there really a
1:13:37 better way forward to venture behind the
1:13:40 gospels so this is a purely a scholarly
1:13:42 question yeah well as you might imagine
1:13:44 i have a lot to say about it
1:13:46 and
1:13:47 um so i don't know if your listeners
1:13:49 will know what the criteria are should i
1:13:51 explain them briefly yeah perhaps
1:13:52 briefly yes sorry
1:13:54 um
1:13:55 so the criteria so different different
1:13:57 historians of the historical jesus have
1:14:00 different criteria they use two of the
1:14:02 most common are what you say multiple
1:14:04 independent attestation
1:14:06 the idea is that if you've got multiple
1:14:08 sources that say something similar about
1:14:11 jesus independently of one another so
1:14:13 they haven't gotten it from each other
1:14:14 um so for example that jesus has
1:14:16 brothers
1:14:17 you know you get jesus brothers and mark
1:14:20 and john doesn't seem to use mark and so
1:14:22 he also has the brothers and
1:14:25 paul mentions the brothers and you get
1:14:27 the brothers and acts and so you know so
1:14:28 these are independent they all mention
1:14:30 brothers well that makes it more likely
1:14:32 jesus had brothers whereas if you've got
1:14:34 if you've got something that's found in
1:14:35 only one source
1:14:37 it may be authentic but you don't really
1:14:39 you know there's no it's not good
1:14:40 evidence if it's only one source like
1:14:42 the parable of the good samaritan it's
1:14:44 in luke
1:14:45 and so well you know maybe jesus said
1:14:47 but you can't prove he said you don't
1:14:49 have much evidence because
1:14:50 maybe luke made it up you know or
1:14:52 something like so multiple independent
1:14:54 helps establish what probably happened
1:14:56 the second one people call by various
1:14:58 things and sometimes they differentiate
1:15:00 but sometimes it's called the criterion
1:15:02 of dissimilarity sometimes it's called
1:15:03 the criterion of embarrassment sometimes
1:15:05 people differentiate between those two
1:15:07 but the basic idea is
1:15:09 that if you've got if you've got
1:15:10 something in the gospels that sure looks
1:15:12 like something a christian writer would
1:15:14 not want to say about jesus
1:15:17 then probably he's saying it because
1:15:19 it's something that happened rather than
1:15:20 something that he made up
1:15:22 we mentioned mark 10 earlier on mark 10
1:15:25 17 18 where jesus apparently denies
1:15:27 either he's god or he's good and this
1:15:29 was so embarrassing to their later uh
1:15:31 evangelist matthew that he changed the
1:15:33 words of jesus to remove that problem so
1:15:37 yeah so there we have an example of
1:15:38 embarrassment be an example that's a
1:15:40 good example it's a good example or even
1:15:42 something like jesus being baptized
1:15:43 people say well you know in early
1:15:45 christianity the person who's the
1:15:47 spiritual superior baptized the inferior
1:15:50 so who would come up with it
1:15:52 with us who would make the story that
1:15:54 john the baptist baptized jesus that
1:15:56 showed that john batman superior did you
1:15:58 nobody's gonna make that up you know so
1:16:00 all right so
1:16:02 um
1:16:02 and so there are so those are the two
1:16:04 ones that people mainly talk about but
1:16:06 there's also things but it has to fit
1:16:07 into this historical context and there
1:16:09 are various things people have gotten
1:16:13 people have tried to um
1:16:17 they've argued against these criteria uh
1:16:20 and so they're saying that they're
1:16:22 unsatisfactory
1:16:24 and so let me tell you my
1:16:26 point about that my view of this and
1:16:27 then i'll tell you what i think about
1:16:28 dale allison's view um dale allison by
1:16:31 the way is one of the truly fine new
1:16:33 testament scholars in the world he's
1:16:34 extraordinary extraordinary
1:16:37 on this channel and he's a a lovely
1:16:39 human being as well to be honest he's
1:16:41 the real deal so i'm not going to
1:16:42 disagree with him down the line but i do
1:16:44 have some basic disagreements my my
1:16:49 my view of this is that people have
1:16:51 fetishized
1:16:52 the criteria
1:16:54 right in ways that have become
1:16:56 problematic and people have recognized
1:16:59 that they're problematic
1:17:01 but
1:17:03 if you're going to do history
1:17:06 there is no objective method
1:17:09 and so you shouldn't say these are
1:17:10 subjective as if there's some
1:17:12 alternative there is no alternative
1:17:14 because history is a subject
1:17:16 all of the humanities are subjective
1:17:18 professions
1:17:20 my view of the criteria are
1:17:23 i don't know why more people haven't
1:17:24 pointed this out
1:17:25 these criteria
1:17:27 are how everybody figures out what
1:17:30 happened in the past
1:17:31 it's just they don't call them these
1:17:33 names
1:17:34 suppose you're suppose you're a criminal
1:17:36 investigator suppose you're
1:17:38 you're in a court case
1:17:40 you've got a court case and somebody's
1:17:42 on trial for you know stealing something
1:17:45 from a store
1:17:47 and you've got five people who
1:17:49 independently say i saw him do it
1:17:52 that's good evidence
1:17:54 if you've got one person who said he did
1:17:56 it that's not as good
1:17:59 so you look for independent you look for
1:18:01 independent evidence witness is saying
1:18:03 something right
1:18:05 or suppose you've got somebody on the
1:18:07 witness stand
1:18:09 who
1:18:10 who's been questioned about the guy's
1:18:11 alibi
1:18:13 and the guy and the person the witness
1:18:14 stand being questioned about the alibi
1:18:16 is the guy's mother his beloved mother
1:18:19 who would do anything for him and their
1:18:21 cross-examination she had missed the
1:18:23 alibi doesn't hold up that's what you
1:18:26 would want to say
1:18:28 that means that probably the alba does
1:18:30 not hold up
1:18:32 that's the criterion of dissimilarity
1:18:34 and so this is just how we figure out
1:18:36 what happened in the past it doesn't
1:18:38 matter if you talk about abraham lincoln
1:18:40 or winston churchill or julius caesar
1:18:43 you look from multiple sources
1:18:45 you hope that they're near the time
1:18:47 you hope they're independent of one
1:18:49 another
1:18:50 they say if they collapse if they
1:18:52 corroborate each other's stories without
1:18:54 collaborating
1:18:56 and if sometimes they say stuff is
1:18:58 absolutely not what the author would
1:18:59 wanted to say or anybody who's then
1:19:02 that's more likely historical
1:19:04 but i do not think you can throw out the
1:19:06 criteria without throwing out the
1:19:07 possibility of doing history period
1:19:11 don't agree that multiple attestation is
1:19:13 not subjective it also subjective for
1:19:16 the reason that you mentioned
1:19:18 how do you know these sources are
1:19:20 independent
1:19:21 you have to make evaluation evaluation
1:19:23 means subjectivity
1:19:25 so dale allison's approach
1:19:28 i like very much
1:19:29 i think that is i think that it does get
1:19:32 you to many of the very important things
1:19:35 about jesus but i don't think that you
1:19:38 can throw out the criteria that you need
1:19:40 to throughout the criteria
1:19:41 but people need because you you can get
1:19:43 more than dale allison gets
1:19:46 and i think
1:19:48 i think the deal is this
1:19:50 doing history involves a probability
1:19:54 judgment
1:19:56 always involves a probability judgment
1:19:59 i
1:20:00 i
1:20:01 i think that it is virtually certain
1:20:04 that joseph biden won the election
1:20:07 well i know that these americans who
1:20:09 would not agree with you i'm afraid
1:20:11 exactly it's a probability and the fact
1:20:14 is you can show it i think obama was
1:20:16 born in america
1:20:19 i think i think that i think that
1:20:21 abraham lincoln was assassinated i think
1:20:24 that julius caesar was assassinated i
1:20:26 mean i think
1:20:28 these are probability judgments i think
1:20:29 we landed on the moon but you can find
1:20:32 people who say no
1:20:34 and it's because you can't prove it you
1:20:36 can't prove it because history is not
1:20:39 like chemistry
1:20:40 chemistry
1:20:42 you can repeat the experiment over and
1:20:43 over again you didn't get the same
1:20:45 result if you control the variables
1:20:47 you'll get the same result what that
1:20:49 does in chemistry is it allows you then
1:20:51 to predict what will happen next
1:20:54 in history we're not predicting what's
1:20:56 going to happen next we're trying to
1:20:57 figure out what happened before and you
1:20:59 can't repeat the experiment
1:21:02 so you have other kinds of evaluation
1:21:05 the evaluations are not meant to prove
1:21:08 in a scientific way they are meant to
1:21:10 establish more probability
1:21:12 and some things are more probable than
1:21:15 others
1:21:16 and so that's what you do and you can't
1:21:18 do it statistically you can't say that
1:21:20 this is 93
1:21:21 probable it's just like you know it's
1:21:24 it's fuzzier than that but there are a
1:21:26 lot of things about jesus that you could
1:21:27 say that are really highly probable and
1:21:30 other things that are pretty probable
1:21:31 and
1:21:32 some things i think you can say for
1:21:34 certain highly probable probable kind of
1:21:36 probable yeah not so probable possible
1:21:38 yeah maybe yeah not so much so you kind
1:21:40 of you know you got to scale and that's
1:21:43 how i think you have to do it i think
1:21:45 that's very helpful thank you for that i
1:21:46 i think one of the things i've noticed
1:21:48 when i you read different biblical
1:21:50 scholars so you read
1:21:51 i don't know tom wright and then you
1:21:53 read jimmy dumb and then you read you or
1:21:55 dale martin or the list goes on and on
1:21:57 and on is it very often scholars uh
1:22:00 assert their confidence that this is the
1:22:02 case that this particular passage is
1:22:04 authentic you know that passage now this
1:22:06 is how we this is the correct historical
1:22:08 regret no this is what jesus really this
1:22:10 and they say it was such absolute
1:22:12 confidence and yet this is the kicker
1:22:15 they all disagree with each other i mean
1:22:16 on everything but on very often on key
1:22:19 passages and i think maybe what
1:22:21 um
1:22:24 um is reacting against this over
1:22:26 competence dare i see yeah
1:22:28 on behalf of historians who confidently
1:22:30 assert and yet they're all disagreeing
1:22:32 with each other where is the layman
1:22:34 where the layman's left with bewildering
1:22:36 range of christologies and
1:22:37 reconstruction of the historical jesus
1:22:39 using criteria which is supposed to give
1:22:41 us results how can this be the case so
1:22:43 you're using advocating a much more
1:22:45 humble uh
1:22:47 keep the criteria don't throw the baby
1:22:48 out with the bath water you know we've
1:22:50 got to have something we've got to do
1:22:51 history
1:22:52 but we're dealing with probabilities
1:22:54 rather than this is the case and this is
1:22:56 the case and everyone disagrees with
1:22:57 what is the case
1:22:58 yeah
1:22:59 i i completely agree and dale allison is
1:23:01 very good with that you know he he
1:23:03 admits what he doesn't know and he
1:23:04 admits what the problems are he's very
1:23:06 good with that you know and i i wrote a
1:23:08 book on the historical jesus
1:23:10 um too in my movements my first general
1:23:13 audience book and basically i i tried
1:23:16 what upsets me about what most of the
1:23:18 authors do is they lay this stuff out
1:23:20 and they say these certainty things but
1:23:22 they don't show you how they got there
1:23:24 yeah yeah yeah and you know i i tried to
1:23:27 show like how i got there and my view of
1:23:28 jesus is really very close to dale
1:23:31 allison's view
1:23:32 we we both understand jesus is an
1:23:34 apocalypticist
1:23:36 uh and um you know it's very similar
1:23:39 even though we we take slightly
1:23:40 different paths but i think that he's a
1:23:42 you know a lot of a lot of the a lot of
1:23:44 the jesus scholars they just throw stuff
1:23:46 off and you just you know where are they
1:23:48 coming up with that you know
1:23:51 what
1:23:52 there was an uncanny tendency for the uh
1:23:54 the religious convictions and the
1:23:56 christology of the writer to end up in
1:23:58 the pages of the book they're writing
1:24:00 about the historical jesus and jesus
1:24:02 ends up being pretty much in alignment
1:24:04 with what the the author himself
1:24:05 actually believes about jesus in the
1:24:06 first place
1:24:09 it's quite amazing and he has spiritual
1:24:11 instances what a coincidence so tom
1:24:12 writes jesus looks remarkably like the
1:24:14 sort of jesus an anglican christian
1:24:16 theologian we're quite happily believing
1:24:18 but it's not the case with allison
1:24:20 actually he he mentions this point that
1:24:22 his jesus is not the kind of jesus
1:24:24 perhaps that he would have wished to
1:24:26 have been the case uh if he had believed
1:24:33 the jesus that i think is historical is
1:24:35 not not the one i would want it's very
1:24:37 interesting though you know because what
1:24:38 what people typically do is they start
1:24:40 off describing jesus by talking about
1:24:42 albert schweitzer who says that
1:24:44 every generation of scholars paints
1:24:46 jesus in its own image and then they
1:24:48 then they say so we don't want to do
1:24:50 that but then by the time you get to the
1:24:51 end of the book
1:24:57 especially in the 80s it was so funny in
1:24:59 the 80s and 90s get all these jesus
1:25:01 books by these guys who grew up in this
1:25:02 they're all guys who grew up these guys
1:25:04 i'm talking about who all grew up in the
1:25:05 60s and were counter cultural types and
1:25:08 jesus ends up doing this counter
1:25:09 cultural types
1:25:11 yeah yeah and guess what marxist
1:25:13 historians ended up with the jesus who
1:25:14 was a counter-revolutionary who was
1:25:16 remarking like che guevara actually hmm
1:25:19 what are the chances of that
1:25:20 and uh and and giza vermish the the
1:25:23 great jewish historian uh at
1:25:25 oxford here his jesus ended up being
1:25:27 pretty like a sage charismatic rav
1:25:29 rabbinical teacher figure pretty much
1:25:32 like giza vermish himself actually
1:25:35 um anyway
1:25:36 gitovo did some amazing work on jesus
1:25:38 the jewish um
1:25:40 okay well we're running out of time now
1:25:42 so um
1:25:43 do you any i don't cut you short but in
1:25:45 the remaining few minutes do you have
1:25:47 anything you just wanted to add or
1:25:48 elaborate on what you said so far
1:25:51 um well no these are really interesting
1:25:54 topics and i was thinking you know my
1:25:56 i you know i'm 66 now i'm kind of
1:25:58 thinking back with my stuff and
1:26:00 i've been
1:26:01 yeah so the stuff i've been interested
1:26:04 in are things we've covered you know my
1:26:05 i think my whole career has really been
1:26:07 about the text the manuscripts of the
1:26:09 new testament and how they're varied
1:26:10 from each other and jesus is an
1:26:12 apocalyptic prophet and how you use the
1:26:14 gospels to get to the apocalypse and the
1:26:16 diversity of early christianity those
1:26:18 are all things that were so this it's
1:26:20 right on for me i would like to say for
1:26:22 your hearers though that if they don't
1:26:23 if they don't know that i have a blog
1:26:26 where i talk about all this stuff all
1:26:27 the time
1:26:28 so just look up the bart urban blog it's
1:26:30 a it's a it's i raise money for charity
1:26:33 people have to pay a small
1:26:34 membership fee to be honest but i get
1:26:36 i'd only die myself
1:26:38 i give it all the way to charity the
1:26:40 dealing with hunger and homelessness but
1:26:42 i post five times a week like a thousand
1:26:44 twelve fourteen hundred words a day five
1:26:46 times a week and i've been doing it
1:26:48 since
1:26:48 2012. with archives people can see so
1:26:51 like if people are interested in this
1:26:52 stuff uh you know they should they
1:26:54 should think about just look up
1:26:55 barterman blog and they'll see what's
1:26:57 available there's a good idea so i meant
1:26:59 to ask you i forgot are you working on
1:27:00 any projects now in terms of books that
1:27:02 you're writing i just finished a uh so
1:27:04 i've got it so you know i tend to have
1:27:07 multiple things going on i've got a book
1:27:09 coming out in april from yale university
1:27:11 press
1:27:12 that deals with journeys to the
1:27:15 afterlife
1:27:16 uh so people pre in the christian
1:27:18 tradition people being given guided
1:27:20 tours of heaven and hell starting the
1:27:22 apocalypse of peter outside the new
1:27:24 testament almost made it in the new
1:27:25 testament going up through the fifth and
1:27:27 sixth centuries and what these tell us
1:27:29 about
1:27:29 what
1:27:30 how people understood not just heaven
1:27:32 and hell but how they understood their
1:27:33 world and what was important in life and
1:27:35 so
1:27:36 so but i just finished a trade book uh a
1:27:39 week ago
1:27:40 uh for a broad audience on the book of
1:27:42 revelation
1:27:44 and uh and uh and how people
1:27:47 most people avoid revelation
1:27:49 uh
1:27:50 uh because it's too weird and bizarre
1:27:52 and they can't figure it out the only
1:27:54 people who really pay attention to
1:27:56 revelation most most of people pay
1:27:58 attention to it are people think it's
1:27:59 predicting our near future that's a
1:28:01 blueprint for what's going to happen
1:28:02 americans seem to quite like it yeah
1:28:06 and but even the brits who read it tend
1:28:08 to like attend like this and so
1:28:11 and i show my book why that that is
1:28:13 completely what the problem is with that
1:28:15 reading that that reading is not the way
1:28:16 to read revelation and then i spend a
1:28:19 good part of the book talking about what
1:28:20 revelation really does tell us
1:28:22 and um
1:28:24 uh even about i mean about important
1:28:26 things not just like what it's just not
1:28:28 like not technical interpretation
1:28:30 but like what its view of god in the
1:28:32 world in humans is and it's actually
1:28:34 rather disturbing it is it's a
1:28:36 fascinating text great well that's very
1:28:38 i look forward to reading that well
1:28:40 thank you very much indeed dr bart
1:28:42 ehrman for your time and i i'm sure the
1:28:45 audience uh will have learned a great
1:28:46 deal i do uh recommend um just a quick
1:28:49 couple of recommendations there's not
1:28:51 the latest edition but but new testament
1:28:53 the new testament and historical
1:28:54 introduction to the early christian
1:28:57 writings uh is uh i think it's one of
1:28:59 the uh the textbooks that are used in
1:29:02 university i do uh recommend that along
1:29:04 with forgery counter forgery and um the
1:29:08 orthodox corruption of scripture these
1:29:10 are more scholarly works i know there
1:29:12 are other more popular ones but i'm not
1:29:13 going to mention them because they
1:29:15 always get mentioned
1:29:15 Music
1:29:17 i want to mention something else for a
1:29:19 change um so thank you very much indeed
1:29:21 but for your time enjoy your time in
1:29:23 london um
1:29:25 uh because i know you're here in london
1:29:26 uh with us and um happy happy holidays
1:29:29 as they say okay thanks you too thanks
1:29:31 thank you too until next time