Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman

The conversion of Emperor Constantine to Christianity is often pointed to as a turning point in the history of the religion - but would Christianity have continued on its upward trajectory without this conversion? Was Constantine's conversion one of genuine religious conviction, or was it motivated by something else? Has his conversion been co-opted and over-emphasized by later Christian authors?

The New Testament is often studied in isolation, separated from other ancient writings. How did this division come about, and what do we lose by looking at it as something different? Dr. Robyn Walsh talks about what can be gained from placing the New Testament back into the canon of Classical Literature.

Many Jews and Christians today are uncomfortable with the views of slavery in the Bible; the practice is simply assumed, it is normally condoned, and it is never condemned. Even so, some Christian apologists argue that the Bible actively disapproves of slavery and was instrumental in opposing it in the modern era. But is that right? In this episode I interview one of the premier experts on the question, Dr. Josh Bowen, who has written two books on the matter; in our discussion he explains what the Bible really says about slavery and how we can put it's statements, assumptions, and laws in its own context instead of thinking that it fits comfortably in ours. To Order Josh Bowen's Book Click Here

Readers of the Bible are familiar with the stories of creation in Genesis 1-2, but far less familiar with similar tales from much earlier times in the world surrounding Israel. In this special edition of the podcast Bart interviews Joseph Lam, an expert on the languages, religions, and cultures of the Ancient Near East (and Bart's colleague at UNC), who has just produced a Wondrium Course on the Creation Stories in the Ancient World. Among other things they talk about the reasons for thinking Genesis contains two very different creation stories (side by side) and how other older stories from Mesopotamia appear to have influenced the author(s) of Genesis.

Biblical scholars who approach the Bible from a historical perspective are often accused of working hard to deconvert the faithful. Is that true? Do undergraduates widely abandon their faith once they learn the historical realities behind it? Are professors and authors generally interested in urging their students and readers to abandon their religion? And is there any positive result for faith that can come from understanding historical scholarship? Is it crucial to faith to understand the Bible, or just an unnecessary add-on?

By far the most mysterious, intriguing, and widely-interesting ancient "heresy" was Gnosticism. But what exactly is it and why does it matter? In this episode we consider the basic ideas that lay behind the Gnostic religions and explore just how radically different they are from the views that came to be regarded as orthodox. How could these religions be considered Christian if they didn't think Jesus' death mattered? How could they consider the God of the Old Testament to be a lower level and inferior divinity, and this material universe to be a cosmic disaster? Did Gnostics have their own Scriptures? Did they use the books that later became the New Testament? If so, why didn't they just admit their views were wrong? We will address these and other issues in this exploration of the highly unusual world of Christian Gnosticism.

Lots of informed readers know that scribes changed their texts of the New Testament -- but do the changes really matter for anything? In this episode we take the unusual approach of looking at textual changes in just one book of the New Testament, the Gospel of Luke, to see how slight (and not so slight) variations in the text can have an enormous impact on understanding the author's message -- involving such things as the virgin birth, the understanding of whether Jesus' death brought an atonement, whether he was fully human.

Should the administrators of universities, their alumni, or their boards of trustees have any say in what teachers teach -- for example, in classes about religion? Should they be able to control the classroom in any way? What about the argument that university professors are brainwashing their students to follow their liberal agenda, while hiding behind "academic freedom"? Does the U.S. system of tenure allow professors to say whatever they want, safe in the knowledge that they can never be fired? What IS tenure anyway, and why does it matter? These are some of the key issues we'll be addressing in this discussion of academic freedom and tenure.

One of the central tenets of many denominations of modern Christianity is that Jesus is God. The Nicene Creed describes him as "of one being with the Father"...but just how old is this idea? If you asked Jesus' disciples if he was a human or God, would they have affirmed his divinity, or accused you of blasphemy? And if Jesus was divine, then was he considered to be God made flesh, a human who was turned into a divinity, a "super-human" with some divine features…or what?

Scholars have long argued that the Gospel of John -- named after Jesus' disciple John the Son of Zebedee -- was in fact written by someone else. Only later in Christian tradition was it ascribed to John. In that view, the author himself is not a "forger" -- that is, he did not claim to be a famous person knowing he was someone else. The book was *anonymous*: the author never names himself and so can't be blamed for later readers mistaking his identity. But in fact *is* there evidence that the author wanted his readers to think he was one of Jesus' closest disciples, and that he left hints for them in the book. If so -- and if he wasn't who he intimated he was -- isn't John a forgery?