Lost Christianities by Bart Ehrman

Lost Christianities by Bart D. Ehrman (March 25, 2022). Recorded in UNCA in April 1, 2004

Summary

In terms of theology, there were Christians in the second and third centuries, so from about 100 years to 200 years after Jesus (18:38–)

who believe that there’s only one God, just as Christians today believe there’s only one God.
who said that there were two gods.
who said there were twelve gods.
who said that there were 30 gods
who said there were 365 gods.
who said that this world was created by the one true God.
who said this world was a cosmic mistake.
who said that this world was created by an evil deity. That the material world we live in is evil itself.
who said that the Hebrew Bible, the Hebrew scriptures,vwere the word of God given by the one God in control of all things.
who said that the Jewish scriptures were inspired by a false God and they are not to be accepted as scriptural authorities.
who said that Christ was both human and divine. He’s both God and man.
who said Jesus was completely God, and since he was completely God, he’s not a man. God can’t be a man, any more than man can be a rock. There are two different things.
who said that Jesus was a man, but he’s not a god.
who said that Jesus Christ was two things. He was a man, Jesus, and he had a divine element, “The Christ,” two separate things. Jesus is one thing, Christ is a different thing. They came together temporarily during Jesus’ public ministry.
who said that Jesus’ death was a death that brought about salvation from sins.
who said Jesus’ death had nothing to do with salvation from sin.
who said Jesus never died.

How could these groups be Christian? They claim to be Christian. Why didn’t they just read their New Testaments to realize that it wasn’t so?

The short answer is that there was no New Testament.
The books of the New Testament had been written, but Christians did not agree on what books should be accepted as scriptural authorities.
Should we accept the Gospel of John?
Should we accept the Gospel of Philip?
What about the Gospel of Truth?
What about the Gospel of Matthew?
What about the Gospel of Thomas?
What about the Gospel of Mary Magdalene?
All of these are books claiming to be written by Apostles of Jesus.
And how do you know that the books in your New Testament Matthew, Mark, Luke and John actually are apostolic books where Thomas, Phillip, Truth and Mary are not apostolic books.
Who decided those four books should be in it? And how do you know that they were right?
Christianity was extremely diverse, and that diversity created conflict in early Christianity as one group competed with another for converts. Only one of the groups ended up becoming victorious and that victorious group decided for all time what Christian creeds would be recited, what the Christian churches would be like and what the Christian New Testament would contain.

Transcription

0.00♪[opening music]♪ ♪♪

1.13>> Kate Peters: We welcome you on behalf of UNCA’s Honors Program, the master of liberal arts program and the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement.

1.21Tonight’s lecture is on Lost Christianities by Dr. Bart Ehrman of Chapel Hill.

1.26But before we begin, I’d like to just set a few parameters. His talk will probably run for about an hour,

1.33and then we’ll take questions for about 30 minutes. We have a microphone here in the middle aisle.

1.39And after his lecture is done, we’ll raise the microphone. If any of you have questions, please come and stand in line.

1.46We’d like to encourage you to keep your questions on the short side so that his answers can be long [laughs] and substantive.

1.55That said, I’d like to go ahead and introduce one of our honor students. Her name is Rebecca Skylar.

2.00She is a major in literature with teacher licensure, and she is a sophomore at UNCA, welcome Rebecca.

2.09[applause]

2.15>> Rebecca Skylar: Our speaker tonight, Dr. Bart Ehrman, comes with a long list of accomplishments. He’s earned his master’s and doctorate from Princeton Seminary.

2.22He has published almost 30 articles and over ten books. In fact, he wrote the book on our topic tonight, Lost Christianities:

2.29The Battle for Scripture and the- I forgot the rest- ah! [laughter]

2.34Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. He is currently the chair of religious studies at UNC Chapel Hill,

2.41and he’s won awards there for his teaching. He’s appeared on CNN, A&E, The History Channel and National Public Radio.

2.48I could continue telling you about all that he has done, but I’ll let you hear from him. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Bart Ehrman.

2.55[applause]

Dr. Bart Ehrman

3.03>> Dr. Bart Ehrman: Well, thank you. Thank you very much, Rebecca. All right. Is this working all right, can you hear me in the back okay?

3.10Sounds all right from here. Is there a way- were we going to do the live thing or…

3.18that’s a bad idea? OK. All right. Well, this overhead doesn’t matter very much, frankly.

3.24This overhead is what I’m going to be talking about, and I like to do an overhead because it reminds me where I’m supposed to be

3.32when I fall on my natural tendency to be somewhere else. [laughter] So that’s what this is. So.

3.39Well, I’m glad to be with you all this evening. I’m really honored to be asked to

3.47give this talk to you tonight. I’ve already talked with several of you before

3.53we started up here, and I was actually-

3.58a couple of people ask me about this phenomenon, courses on tape that I’ve done.

4.05Are you all familiar with The Teaching Company? You all know what that is? You know they do- they do courses on all sorts of things

4.12music appreciation, astronomy, philosophy, history, religious studies, and I’ve done a couple of these courses for them.

4.19And the- when people were to ask me about these courses just now,

4.25it just reminded me how different it is giving these courses on tape from doing this. Because in fact, when you give these courses on tape,

4.32it seems like you’re talking to an audience like this. Have you- has anybody seen these videos of these courses?

4.38They kind of pan the crowd, you know, and the professors up there justiculating and, you know, looking at people and things are going on.

4.45But in fact, it doesn’t work that way. When you do these courses on tape, you’re actually in a TV studio

4.51and there are two cameramen in there, kind of like this, only they’re the only two people in the studio.

4.58And the other thing that’s in the studio is a bright red digital clock

5.03that starts at 30.00 and your lecture is supposed to be 30 minutes long.

5.10So the cameraman has his headphones on and he’s talking to the director outside and the director says, “OK, start.” The cameraman points at you

5.19and the clock starts ticking and you’re supposed to finish when it hits 000.

5.27And if you realize that you’re five minutes short of material, you can’t stop and say, “OK,

5.33are there any questions?” [laughter] There’s nobody in there.

5.38And so, and what I always do, which I’m sure to do tonight as well, what I always do is

5.44I get about two minutes into one of these talks and I think, “Oh, no, I don’t have enough material.”

5.52And so I start telling stories. And so I try to pack, you know, just kind of pack it in a little bit

5.57and then I get five minutes left. I realize, “Oh, no, I’ve got ten minutes worth of material here!” And so then I rush to the end, so

6.05I’ll try not to do that tonight. This lecture is

6.12called, Lost Christianities: The Battles of Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew.

6.18I did one of these courses on tape, on this topic, I did twenty-four 30 minute lectures on this, and you’re getting all 24 lectures here in one hour.

6.26[laughter] [whistle] So, you know, so you don’t need to buy it, you’re going to get it all here. You just get all the good stuff here, and you won’t have to worry

6.34about any of the fluff that got put into the lectures. I want to begin by talking about some modern archeological discoveries

6.43that are significant for the understanding of early Christianity. Or perhaps it would be better to say that these discoveries

6.51are important for the understanding of early Christianities. Because Christianity was so diverse in the early centuries

7.00that scholars have began to talk about it in pluralistic terms that its Christianities, rather than just Christianity because it was such a diverse movement.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1945

7.09But I want to begin by saying something about some archeological discoveries that have assisted us in understanding the great diversity of early Christianity.

7.17And I’m going to talk about just one, the most significant archeological discovery for early Christianity.

7.23It took place in 1945. It was a year and a half before they discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls. So…

7.34everybody has heard about the Dead Sea Scrolls. They were discovered in 1947 in what is now Israel.

7.40The discovery I’m talking about happened a year and a half earlier in 1947 and didn’t happen in Israel,

7.48it happened in Egypt, in Upper Egypt, near a village that’s called Nag Hammadi.

7.56There were seven field hands who were out digging for fertilizer near

8.02a cliff face near Nag Hammadi, Egypt in December 1947.

8.09The head of this group of seven, the chief guy, was a person who was named

8.15memorably enough Muhammad Ali, [laughter]

8.21unrelated to our Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali and a couple of his brothers and some friends were out

8.27digging for fertilizer. And Muhammad Ali’s brother’s maddox hit the ground and it hit

8.32something hard underneath the ground. And they dug it out, and it turned out it was an earthenware jar.

8.39That had a bowl over the top that was sealed. They were afraid to uh- they’re afraid to open up this jar

8.47because they thought there might be an evil genie inside.

8.52On further reflection, they realized there might be gold inside. [laughter] And so they smashed it to smithereens.

9.00But inside there wasn’t gold or a genie, inside there were simply a group of leather bound books, 13

9.09books bound in leather. This discovery took a long time for

9.18scholars to find out about for a variety of reasons. It’s actually…

9.23a complicated story. Muhammad Ali took these, took these books back home with him.

9.30None of these people could read. They were seven illiterate Bedouin who couldn’t read, so they weren’t

9.36sure what they were going to do with these books. But Muhammad Ali took them back, depositing them in an out building back behind his house.

9.42Apparently, that night, his mother took some of the papyrus leaves and used them to start the evening fire.

9.52But I guess Muhammad Ali asked her not to do that anymore, luckily, and…

10.00began to think maybe these books might be worth something, maybe he could sell them. Now there’s a little kind of twist that happens in the story at this point.

10.08As it turns out, Muhammad Ali and his family were involved in a blood feud.

10.14His father had recently been murdered. And they knew the family that was responsible for the murder of the father

10.22and a few weeks after the discovery of these scrolls, somebody told them that the fellow had murdered their father, was sitting by the side of the road.

10.30And so Muhammad Ali and his brothers got their maddox and they went out after this guy. They found him asleep next to a jar of molasses, apparently that he was selling.

10.39And they hacked the guy to death in cold blood, ripped open his chest, took out his heart and ate it

10.48as an act of blood vengeance. Now, the downside of the story-

10.54[laughter] one of the downsides of the story is that this guy they murdered was related to the local sheriff.

11.04So they knew there was going to be a big police investigation, and they were the obvious targets for this murder investigation.

11.10And Mohamed Ali by this time had decided that these documents that he had, these

11.15books might really be worth something and maybe they could make some money for it. So he gave the book, gave the books over

11.23to a local priest for safekeeping, thinking that they, the authorities, would be searching his house for clues about the murder,

11.31and he didn’t want them to find these books and confiscate them. And so he gave them over to this priest, the local priest, to keep them.

11.38Now the priest- I’m sorry this gets a little complicated, but so it goes.

11.43The priest had a brother in law [laughter] who was a traveling history teacher,

11.50and the brother in law was staying with the priest, and the priest showed him

11.55one of these books, and the brother in law realized this might be an ancient book. This, in fact, might get some money on the black market.

12.04So he takes it into Cairo and tries to sell it. Well, the authorities learn about it and they confiscate the book,

12.13and there ends up being a complicated set of negotiations. He actually gets paid something for the book,

12.18and the book ends up in the Coptic Museum of Cairo, and eventually all 13 books get to- are gathered together.

12.26They end up in the Coptic Museum in Cairo, where eventually, after a couple of years, scholars find out about these books.

12.33Scholars go, look at these books, and it turns out these books are very important indeed.

12.40The books, the leather bound books themselves scholars eventually determined,

12.46are from the fourth century, the fourth Christian century, about 300 years after the death of Jesus.

12.52The way they know that these books date from the fourth Christian century is that…

12.58the spines of the book, the spines of the book were strengthened with scrap paper, and some of the scrap paper

13.06included dated receipts, you know, like a pound of hamburger or a loaf of bread,

13.12April third 3:46, [laughter] you know that kind of thing. So they’re dated receipts that were dated to the middle of the fourth century.

13.20So these books were manufactured in the middle of the fourth century or so. But the date of the manufacturer of the books doesn’t tell you when the

13.29documents within the books were written, there are 52 different documents within these 14 books.

13.37In other words, these books are anthologies of texts. The books were manufactured in the fourth century, the books inside

13.44them must have been composed at an earlier date, just as this book here in my hand was actually manufactured in the year 2003,

13.53but the documents in it were written 2000 years ago. You see what I mean? These Nag Hammadi books were manufactured in the fourth century,

14.01but some of the documents in them were much older. How much older were they? Some of these books we know about by name

14.08by church fathers living in the second century. Some scholars think that some of these books

14.13were actually written in the first century. In other words, some of these books

14.19may be as old as books as we have in the New Testament.

14.24That’s significant because these books in the Nag Hammadi Library are books that stand at odds

14.31theologically with the books that made it into the New Testament. These books are books

14.39that were written by and for a group of heretical Christians, Christians who taught false teachings

14.46who are called Gnostics. I’ll be talking about what Gnostics believed in a few minutes.

14.53At this point, I simply want to point out that here we had for the first time an entire collection.

15.00Sometimes this is called an entire library of books written by the kinds of Christians

15.07who ended up losing the battles for dominance in early Christianity.

15.13These were the outsiders who taught beliefs that others said were false. Of course, the people who were teaching these beliefs

15.21didn’t believe that these beliefs were false. Now, these people are called heretics, but what’s a heretic?

15.26Well, a heretic is somebody who chooses. Chooses what? Well, you put the term heresy over against another term orthodoxy.

15.35The term orthodoxy means “right belief.” What is a heretic?

15.41The word heretic comes from the Greek word choice, which means you choose. What?

15.46You choose to believe something that’s not the right beliefs. So you get the Orthodox people who believe

15.53the right believes and the heretics who believe the wrong beliefs. But you’ve got to realize that everybody thinks they believe the right beliefs.

16.00[laughter] Nobody thinks they believe the wrong beliefs because if they thought they believed the wrong beliefs, they’d start believing the right beliefs.

16.07[laughter] So everybody thinks that they are Orthodox by definition. Or, as some people say, orthodoxy is my doxy

16.15and heterodoxy is your doxy. These heterodox or heretical documents show us a community of Christians

16.24who believe things that were quite different from what the believers who made

16.29our creed, such as the Nicene Creed and the Apostles Creed, such as those believers believe, who gave us our canon of scripture,

16.38who gave us the church that came down through the Middle Ages through the Reformation down to today.

16.44These were believers who had other ideas. And what’s striking is they claim that their ideas

16.51were the ideas that were taught by Jesus’ own apostles. And by Jesus himself.

Gospels written by Philip, Judas Thomas, The Gospel of Truth, and others

17.00Among these books found in the Nag Hammadi Library are other gospels, a gospel allegedly written by Philip, Jesus’ Disciple,

17.09a gospel allegedly written by Judas Thomas, Didymos Judas Thomas, Jesus’ own brother,

17.17a gospel called The Gospel of Truth, and a variety of other books

17.22found here that claim to be authorized by Jesus own apostles. This discovery of the Nog Hammadi Library showed us

17.31that early Christianity was extremely diverse. Let me say something in general terms about the diversity of early Christianity.

17.40Can you read this, by the way? [chatter] From where I’m standing, it’s rather fuzzy.

17.46Kind of like the rest of this talk. [laughter] The diversity of early Christianity.

17.53Christianity today, of course, is extremely diverse. If you count everybody who calls themselves Christian in the mix,

18.01we have a wide range of belief and practice in Christianity today. You can contrast what Episcopalian priests

18.09think with what Appalachia snake handlers think. Contrast Roman Catholic nuns with Mormon missionaries, seventh Day Adventists

18.18with Southern Baptists, all sorts of wide ranging beliefs and practices. But the beliefs and practices of Christianity today pale in comparison

18.28with the diversity that you can find in the early Christian centuries, as we now know, because of archeological discoveries and recent historical scholarship.

There were other Christians in 100–200 CE who said

18.38Let me just talk about this diversity first in broad terms. In terms of theology, there were Christians

18.46in the second and third centuries, so from about 100 years to 200 years after Jesus, there were Christians who believe that there’s only one God,

18.55just as Christians today believe there’s only one God. There were other people, though other people who called themselves

19.00Christian, who said that there were two gods. There were some Christians in the second

19.05and third centuries who said there were twelve gods. We know of Christian groups that maintained in the second

19.11and third century that there were 30 gods. We know of one group that insisted-

19.18[laughter] it’s not going to clarify a thing I say.

19.25[laughter] There were Christians in the second and third centuries who said there were 365 gods.

19.34They called themselves Christian? Yes, they called themselves Christian and they said that they represented the teachings of Jesus himself.

19.41There were Christians in the second and third century who said that this world was created by the one true God.

19.49There were other Christians who said this world was a cosmic mistake.

19.55There are others who said that this world was created by an evil deity. That the material world we live in is evil itself.

20.04There were Christians in the second and third centuries who said that the Hebrew Bible, the Hebrew scriptures,

20.10were the word of God given by the one God in control of all things. There were others who said that the Jewish scriptures were inspired by a false God.

20.20And they are not to be accepted as scriptural authorities. There are Christians in the second and third centuries who said

20.26that Christ was both human and divine. He’s both God and man.

20.33There were other Christians who said Jesus was completely God, and since he was completely God, he’s not a man.

20.40God can’t be a man, any more than man can be a rock. They’re are two different things.

20.47There were other people who said that Jesus was a man, but he’s not a god.

20.52There were other people who said that Jesus Christ was two things. He was a man, Jesus, and he had a divine element, “The Christ,”

21.00two separate things. Jesus is one thing, Christ is a different thing. They came together temporarily during Jesus’ public ministry.

21.09There are Christians in the second and third century who said that Jesus’ death was a death that brought about salvation from sins.

21.17There were other Christians in the second and third century who said Jesus’ death had nothing to do with salvation from sin.

21.24There were other Christians in the second and third century who said Jesus never died.

There was no New Testament, only anonymous scriptures

21.31How could these groups be Christian? They claim to be Christian.

21.36Well, maybe their claim is false. Maybe they were just a bunch of heretics who believe the wrong thing.

21.42They thought, though they believe the right thing. Well, why didn’t they just read their New Testaments

21.49[laughter] to realize that it wasn’t so?

21.54The short answer, as it appears you know, is that there was no New Testament.

22.02There was no New Testament? I’m not saying that the books of the New Testament had not been written yet.

22.08The books had been written, but Christians did not agree on

22.13what books should be accepted as scriptural authorities. Should we accept the Gospel of John?

22.20Should we accept the Gospel of Philip? What about the Gospel of Truth? What about the Gospel of Matthew?

22.26What about the Gospel of Thomas? What about the Gospel of Mary Magdalene? All of these are books claiming to be written by Apostles of Jesus.

22.36And how do you know that the books in your New Testament Matthew, Mark, Luke and John actually are apostolic books

22.43where Thomas, Phillip, Truth and Mary are not apostolic books.

22.49How do you know that? Just because you can go to the bookstore and buy these things and you buy a Bible and it has those four books in it?

22.55Who decided those four books should be in it? And how do you know that they were right?

23.02Christianity was extremely diverse, and that diversity created conflict in early Christianity

23.11as one group competed with another for converts. Only one of the groups ended up becoming victorious

23.19and that victorious group decided for all time what Christian creeds would be recited,

23.26what the Christian churches would be like and what the Christian New Testament would contain.

Lost Christianities: Beliefs and Authorities

23.34I’m going to give now some more detail about some of these forms of Christianity that ended up losing out.

23.43Lost Christianities: Beliefs and Authorities. I’ve been speaking in kind of general terms at this point. Now I want to talk specifically about three Christian groups,

23.52three Christian groups that we know about from the second and third centuries. And just kind of flesh this out a little bit.

23.58So you get some idea of what specifically some of these groups believed. And then I’m going to talk about the victorious party, the party that ended up becoming dominant,

24.08calling itself Orthodox and then deciding which books belonged in the New Testament.

24.15By the way, I should point out, I’m not saying that the group that won is wrong and I’m not saying they were right, I’m not taking a position on that.

24.23I’m just I’m just doing this as a historian saying what happened in early Christianity.

1. The Ebionites

24.29All right, so Lost Christianities: Beliefs and Authorities. I want to start with a group that historians have called the Ebionites,

24.37just to give you an idea of what one Christian group thought. I’ll start with this group called the Ebionites and calling these the Christians who would also be Jews.

24.46We don’t know why this group was called the Ebionites. The word Ebionite probably comes from the Hebrew word

24.52אביונים‎ (ebyonim) which means poor Now, the opponents of the Ebionites said

25.00that they were called the poor because they were poor in faith,

25.05which is probably not why the Ebionites themselves thought they called themselves the Ebionites. It may be that these Ebionites followed the practice of Jesus and his disciples

25.15of voluntary poverty, of giving away all their goods for the sake of the poor,

25.21giving up their own possessions for the sake of others. That may be why they’re called the Ebionites. We’re not really sure.

25.28What we are sure about is that these Ebionites were Jewish Christians.

25.35They were Christians who were themselves, were either Jews or converts to Judaism,

25.40who maintain that in order to be a follower of Jesus, you had to be Jewish.

25.48Their logic was Jesus was the Jewish messiah sent from the Jewish God to the Jewish people in fulfillment of the Jewish scriptures,

25.56so that if you’re going to be a follower of the Jewish messiah, you have to be Jewish.

26.02It’s a Jewish religion. And so these people were culturally and religiously Jewish.

26.07They kept the Sabbath. They circumcise their baby boys. They kept kosher food laws. They prayed facing Jerusalem.

26.14They engaged in Jewish kinds of activities. These Ebionites, since they were so ardently

26.22Jewish, were very strict monotheists. They believe that there’s only one God.

26.29As a consequence, they did not believe that Jesus was God. Their logic was if Jesus is God

26.37and God is God, you’ve got two gods. You don’t have one God. You’ve got two gods.

26.44And so they maintain that if you’re going to be a monotheist, you can’t say that Jesus is also God.

26.50Well, who is Jesus, then? Jesus for these Ebionites was a very righteous man.

26.56In fact, more righteous than anyone else. He was not somebody who came into the world

27.02from a previous divine existence. He was not born of a virgin. He was a man who was born to the sexual union of Joseph and Mary,

27.12born in the way everybody else is born, grew up righteous.

27.17And when he was an adult, he got baptized by John the Baptist, and when he got baptized, the heavens split up.

27.25The spirit descended upon Jesus and a voice came from heaven, “You are my son.

27.31Today I have begotten you.” At his baptism, Jesus was adopted to be the son of God.

27.40God had a mission for this most righteous of man. It was to die for the sake of others.

27.47Jesus then taught them, taught the crowds. He did miraculous deeds by God’s power, and at the end of his life,

27.54he fulfilled the mission God had given him by dying on the cross. God then raised him from the dead as a reward for his faithfulness

28.03and exalted him to his right hand up in heaven. Jesus himself was not born of a virgin.

28.10He was not divine. He was a human, although he was very righteous. He was the son of God, the one chosen by God to be his child.

28.18Now, how did these Ebionites come up with this idea? Well, they claim that this point of view was the point of view that the earliest disciples of Jesus had.

28.26In fact, they claimed that their leader for their church originally was none other than-

28.32James, the brother of Jesus, and that their teachings about Jesus came directly from James.

28.39Moreover, they had a written authority that supported their point of view. It was a gospel that looked a lot like our Gospel of Matthew.

28.49This gospel that the Ebionites used looked a lot like our Matthew. Some of you may know that the Gospel

28.54of Matthew in the New Testament is often thought of as the most Jewish of the Gospels, in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells his followers

29.03that they have to keep the law even better than the scribes and Pharisees. They have to keep the Jewish law even better than the scribes and Pharisees

29.12that not the least bit of the law will pass away before all is fulfilled, and that anyone who teaches somebody not to keep the law

29.20will be least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But those who keep these laws and teach others likewise will be great

29.26in the Kingdom of Heaven. “Don’t think that I came to abolish the law,” says Jesus.

29.32″I came to fulfill the law,” in Matthew. The Ebionites had some form of Matthew’s gospel,

29.38but without chapters one and two. For those of you who know your New Testaments very well,

29.44you’ll know why they didn’t have Matthew Chapters one and two. It’s because those are the chapters that talk about Jesus’ Virgin birth.

29.52So they had a form of Matthew without chapters one and two, it’s probably a form of Matthew without-

29.58that was actually written in Aramaic rather than in Greek, which is the language of Matth- you know,

30.08some of you are looking tired, so I’m going to tell you an anecdote. [laughter]

30.14I give- I teach a New Testament class every year at Chapel Hill, and I start off every year

30.20by giving a pop quiz the first day of class. I hand out a syllabus, then I give a pop quiz and its got eleven questions on it.

30.27And I tell my students that if anybody gets nine out of the eleven right, I’ll buy them dinner at the Armadillo Grill.

30.36I’ve got 360 students in there. I didn’t buy a single dinner this year. These are not difficult questions.

30.42They’re things like “What are the four gospels of the New Testament,” Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? But I do ask them- I start off by saying,

30.49″How many books are in the New Testament?” Well, they don’t know.

30.54It’s actually an easy answer. It’s 27, which is easy because it’s three to the third power, [laughter] see?

31.03Trinity, three times three, times three, 27. [laughter] So it’s easy to remember that.

31.08So- but then my next question is in what language were they written? You know what half of my students think?

31.15Hebrew, [laughter] Hebrew? Yeah. Some of them think Latin. About one third of them think English.

31.22[laughter] No, that’s not true, I made that up. [laughter]

31.28Three or four of them usually do, but that’s, that’s another story. All right. Sorry. That was just a tangent to wake you up.

31.34So the Ebionites have this Aramaic gospel rather than a Greek, a Greek gospel.

2. The Marcionites

31.42Second group, Christians who proclaim the second god, the Marcionites. The Marcionites were around at the same time Ebionites were.

31.49We know why the Marcionites were called Marcionites. It’s because they were followers of a

31.55theologian philosopher of the second century named Marcion, a very important figure in the history of second century Christianity.

32.05Marcion understood… New test- Mar- Marcion understood

32.12earliest Christianity in light of the teachings of the Apostle Paul.

32.18The Apostle Paul, more than anybody insisted that to be a Christian, you don’t have to first become a Jew.

32.28As you can imagine, the Ebionites didn’t like the Apostle Paul, the Ebionites thought Paul was a heretic.

32.34Marcion thought that Paul was the greatest, was the one who knew the truth.

32.41Paul differentiated between the law of the Jews on the one hand and the gospel on the other.

32.47Paul insisted that a person is made right with God by faith in Christ, apart from doing works of the Jewish law.

32.56Marcion took this teaching of Paul, which you can still find in the letters of Paul in the New Testament, such as The Book of Galatians.

33.04Marcion took this teaching of Paul and took it to an extreme. You’ve got the law of the Jews on the one hand and the Gospel of Christ on the other.

33.14Marcion insisted that this dichotomy was absolute. The reason there’s a difference between the law

33.21of the Jews and the Gospel of Christ is because there are two different gods behind the law and the gospel.

33.30The Old Testament God is not the God of Jesus.

33.36Marcion wrote a book called The Antithesis, which means “the contrary statements” in which he tried to prove

33.44that the Old Testament God could not be the God of Jesus, and he had a number of proofs that continued to sound convincing to some people today.

33.52What does the Old Testament God tell the children of Israel to do when they’re to take the Promised Land?

33.57Remember the story about the city of Jericho? Joshua was supposed to lead the children of Israel around the city

34.05once a… day for seven days. On the seventh day, they go around seven times

34.12and on the seventh- when they go around the seventh time, the walls all fall down and God tells them what to do. Go into the city and kill every man, woman and child in the city.

34.24Kill every man? That’s what God tells them to do? Yes, that’s what the God of the Old Testament says. What is the God of the New Testament say?

34.31The god of the New Testament says, “Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.

34.38If somebody strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” Are you telling me this is the same God?

34.45It doesn’t sound like the same God. In the Old Testament, the prophet Elijah is walking along,

34.52and there’s a group of boys who start making fun of him, calling out- making fun of him because he’s going bald.

34.59So they call out “Baldy Baldy.” Well, Elijah did what any of the rest of us would do.

35.05He called the wrath of God down upon them. [laughter] But in this case, what happened is, two she-bears

35.13then come out of the woods and maul and kill 42 children. [laughter]

35.19Is this the same God who says, “Let the little children come unto me?”

35.26It doesn’t sound like the same God. Marcion went through the Old Testament and showed time after time again

35.32that the things said about God in the Old Testament don’t correspond with things said about God in the gospel of Jesus.

35.39Jesus’ God is a god of love and mercy. The God of the Old Testament is a God of hate and wrath.

35.46Marcion concluded that the Old Testament God is the God who created this world. It says in Genesis, he created this world.

35.54This world belongs to this other God. He created this world.

35.59He called Israel to be his people. He gave his people there the law.

36.04The problem is, nobody can keep that law, and since they don’t keep it, they get a just penalty, which is they have to die.

36.13Everybody therefore has to die because they break the law of the just God.

36.19But there’s another God, a god of love and mercy who has come into this world to save us from the wrathful God of the Jews.

36.27He comes in the person of Jesus. Jesus represents this other God.

36.32Since he represents this other God, the God who did not create the world. Jesus cannot be a part of this creation,

36.39which means he cannot have a material body, which means Jesus could not have been born in the normal way.

36.47According to Marcion, Jesus didn’t really have flesh and blood.

36.52He descended from heaven in an adult form, and he only appeared to have flesh and blood.

36.59He only seemed to be human, but he wasn’t really human. He was divine because if he were human, he’d belong to the other God.

37.06But he came to save people from that God. He came from the true God.

37.11Jesus then goes through his ministry, and he apparently dies on the cross, which is the penalty that the Old Testament God requires.

37.20And so the Old Testament God then releases anybody who has faith in Jesus from the demand of death.

37.26Jesus brings salvation then.

37.31Marcion then had a view that Jesus was God, but he wasn’t human. It’s fairly easy to differentiate Marcion’s two gods

37.41based on the distinctions found in the Old Testament and in the writings of the New Testament. Well did Marcion have the writings of the New Testament?

37.49Yes and no. Marcion had certain books that he claimed were sacred authorities.

37.56In particular, he had the writings of the Apostle Paul, who was his hero.

38.01He had all of Paul’s letters that we have in the New Testament, except for first and second Timothy and Titus.

38.07He had the other ten letters. Paul talked about his gospel, well what is his gospel? Well, for Marcion, Paul’s gospel was an actual gospel book

38.16that looked very much like what we have in our Gospel of Luke.

38.21Luke’s gospel was the gospel of Marcion, so he had Luke and ten of Paul’s letters.

38.28In other words, and he didn’t have any of the Old Testament, none of that was part of his canon, his canon.

38.33So he had an eleven book canon. So it’s fairly easy to differen- to distinguish

38.40between the Ebionites on the one hand and Marcion on the other hand. The Ebionites are Jews who try to keep the Jewish law.

38.48Marcionites are against everything Jewish. The Ebionites have the Hebrew scriptures.

38.54The Marcionites reject the Jewish scriptures, the Ebionites maintain that there’s only one God.

39.01Marcion maintains that there are two Gods. The Ebionites say that Jesus is fully man, but he’s not divine.

39.08The Marcionites say he’s fully divine, but he’s not man. For the Ebionites, Paul is a heretic.

39.13For The Marcionites, Paul is the greatest apostle. For the Ebionites, they have the Gospel of Matthew, the Marcionites have the Gospel of Luke.

39.20They’re just as different as you can imagine right down the line, and they both claimed to represent true Christianity.

39.29Marcion had huge success. The Ebionites, frankly, didn’t have huge success in converting people

39.36for a reason that you might imagine. In order to convert, the men had to get circumcised, and so they weren’t really lining up for the operation.

39.42[laughter] Marcion, on the other hand, Marcion had huge success, established churches throughout Asia Minor,

39.51a modern day Turkey, in Rome and various places. In some places, there were more Marcionite Christians

39.59than any other kind of Christian in the second century. And Marcionite Christianity continues on today because, I mean,

40.07I saw some people nodding their heads when I was saying that the Old Testament God is a God of wrath and the New Testament God is God of love.

40.13Some of you were saying, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Well, OK, that’s Marcion. So, you know, heresies are still among us today, [laughter] and some of you are suspect.

3. The Gnostics

40.21[laughter] I want to talk about a third group now Christians in the know,

40.28a group called the Gnostics. It is exceedingly difficult

40.34to summarize what the Gnostic stood for in five minutes,

40.39but I’ll do my best. The word Gnostic comes from the Greek word gnosis, g-n-o-s-i-s, gnosis.

40.49That’s a bad habit- spelling it just because I teach [laughs] and usually students want to know if it’s on the final exam.

40.56So sorry, [laughter] just- it just happens sometimes. So OK. It comes from the Greek word gnosis, which means knowledge.

41.04Why are these people called Gnostics? Because they’re the ones who know, they have gnosis.

41.10They have knowledge. Well, what do they know? What knowledge do they have?

41.15Gnostics know who they really are. They know who they are, where they came from,

41.23how they got here and how they can escape.

41.28That was pretty good, I’m going to do that again. They know who they are, how they got here,

41.34where they came from and how they can escape. They have self knowledge,

41.42a knowledge that can bring salvation from this evil material world.

41.47Gnostics maintain that this world we live in was not created by the one true God.

41.54It was created as a cosmic mistake. This material world is itself evil, created not by the true God,

42.03but by evil deities in order to trap an element of the divine here.

42.10An offshoot from the Divine Realm created this world. This offshoot is a false God

42.18or an unjust God or an ignorant God. Different Gnostic said different things.

42.24Sometimes this unjust, ignorant God was called Yaldabaoth,

42.30which I will not spell for you. [laughter] Yaldabaoth was a misformed divine being who created this world

42.39in order to capture part of the divine and trap it here.

42.44He captured another divine being who’s called Sophia, which is a Greek word for wisdom.

42.50In fact, Sophia was his own mother. He captured his mother. He divided her into a million pieces

42.58and he trapped her in this material world. How did he trap her? By creating human kind.

43.06Human bodies are the prison for a divine element within.

43.12Some people feel like- some people feel like they don’t really belong here,

43.19that this world just doesn’t make sense to them. I felt this way since the last election.

43.26[laughter][applause] I just-

43.32I just live in an alternative universe and things that make sense to the majority of my compatriots just don’t make sense to me.

43.40And I don’t understand, and it just doesn’t work for me anymore. And so I just feel I don’t belong.

43.45Why is it that some people really don’t feel like they belong? Because some people don’t belong here.

43.52They originated in heaven and they’ve been trapped here, trapped in the material body.

43.58They’ve forgotten their true origin and they need to escape. They need to acquire the knowledge necessary for salvation.

44.05How can they get this secret knowledge, though? It’s not open to just anybody because not everybody has the spark within.

44.13Only some people have the divine spark. How do you get the secret knowledge that can set you free

44.20if you don’t belong here? Somebody has to come from the divine realm and come down and reveal the truth to you.

44.27Well, who is this one who reveals the truth that will bring liberation from your imprisonment?

44.35For Gnostics, the one who reveals the truth is Jesus Christ. And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.

44.43Jesus is not a human being or if he is a human being for some Gnostics, he’s a human that

44.50a divine element comes into an inhabits temporarily in order to reveal the truth.

44.57This truth gets revealed to his disciples. Jesus’ disciples,

45.02he teaches the crowds publicly in parables, but that’s just the public stuff. What he really teaches

45.08his disciples is a secret knowledge, and they pass this along by word of mouth. The secret knowledge that can set you free.

45.16Well, what is that secret knowledge? What do you need to know? Well, this is only for the insiders.

45.23[laughter] So if I were more sure of more of you, I might tell you.

45.29[laughter] But as it is, I do have my doubts. So…

45.34buy me a drink afterwards. [laughter] This secret knowledge can set you free.

45.45Many Gnostics then thought that Jesus was actually two things: a human being, Jesus and a divine element Christ.

45.52They had books that supported their points of view. Books that they claim were written by Apostles, the Gospel of Philip,

46.00the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary. All books discovered in fairly recent times,

46.07which revealed to us what these Gnostic were saying, including the books of the Nag Hammadi Library,

46.15which are a collection of 52 documents found in these 14 leather bound volumes, which were written by Gnostics and for Gnostics to reveal Gnostic knowledge.

46.25You can buy these books, by the way, in English translation today, somebody just was showing me a copy they brought with them tonight.

46.32They’re available in English translation. If you want to read them, they’re really very interesting. The book is called the Nag Hammadi Library in English,

46.40so you can get a sense of what these Gnostics were all about. Those then are three groups of Christians in early Christianity.

4. The Orthodox group (the victorious party)

46.48Let me talk about a fourth group, the victorious party,

46.53which… most people simply call the Orthodox group.

46.58As I pointed out earlier, though, it’s a little bit problematic using the term Orthodox because Orthodox means that these people are right,

47.05and I’m not taking a stand on whether they were right or not. I’m simply saying that they were the group that won out.

47.13The Victorious Party stood over against the Ebionites, the Marcionites, the Gnostics and other Christian groups

47.20that were around in the second and third centuries, the victorious party had very set beliefs and authorities.

47.30In terms of their beliefs, they disagreed with the Ebionites, that Jesus was human, but not divine.

47.38They said, “No, he’s also divine,” but they disagreed with the Marcionites who said he’s divine but not human, because, “No, he’s also human,”

47.46because they were fighting both things at once, they were kind of caught in the middle and they ended up saying, “Yes, he is fully human.

47.54Yes, he’s fully divine.” And to the Gnostic, they said, “But he’s not two beings, he’s one being.”

48.02Fully human, fully divine, one being, not two. Thus develop the paradoxical christology of the victorious group

48.12that Jesus is both a man and God simultaneously.

48.18This, of course, is what ultimately leads to the doctrine of the Trinity, the way the doctrine of the Trinity develops, the doctrine of the Trinity

48.25is that the Godhead is in three persons. There are three persons, father, son and spirit

48.31who are all the one God. But it’s not that there are three gods. There’s only one God, but God is manifest

48.39in three persons who are distinct from one another. So there’s not just one- there is just one God,

48.46but there are three persons, all of whom are equally and completely God.

48.51I mean, how does that work exactly? Well. Christians were driven to this point of view

48.57because they wanted to insist that Jesus was divine and they wanted to insist that they were monotheists.

49.05And then what do you do about the spirit who is also portrayed as divine in scripture? Well, you come up with the doctrine of the Trinity

49.12and you call it a mystery, [laughter] which means you can’t understand it.

49.19[laughter] And if you can’t understand it, you’ve got it wrong. So it’s a Christian mystery, which you know is,

49.29I mean, it’s a serious theological term, mystery, because in fact, this is deep, petty stuff that gets developed.

49.37That comes out of these debates about who Jesus really is. They understand, then, that Jesus is one being.

49.44They understand that God is the God who created this world. And there’s only one God.

49.49There aren’t 30 gods, like in some Gnostic systems, or twelve gods there are not two gods like there are for Marcion.

49.56There’s only one God and the God of the Old Testament is the same God as God of the New Testament.

50.01Jesus represented the God who created this world. Paul represented the God who created this world.

50.10There’s only one God who’s to be worshiped and adored. There’s one God. Jesus is his son.

50.16Jesus brings salvation. Not by delivering secret knowledge to those who are simply insiders.

50.23Jesus gives salvation to everybody by dying on the cross. It’s the death of Jesus that brings salvation for the world.

50.31It’s his real death. It wasn’t an imaginary death, as Marcion may have thought, it was a real death,

50.38and it was precisely that death that brought about salvation, not the delivery of secret teachings.

50.46So these are some of the beliefs of the group that we might want to call the Orthodox.

50.52If you call them Orthodox, what you really are saying is that they are the group that ended up winning. Well, how did they end up winning?

50.59Why did this group emerge as victorious versus the other groups? There were a lot of disputes in early Christianity between these different groups.

51.09For centuries, we only had one side of the argument

51.15because the Orthodox people who- the Orthodox group that won these debates.

51.21After they won the debates, they rewrote the history of the engagement

51.28so that all that survive were the history’s written by the Orthodox people and what they said in their own historical sketches.

51.37What they said was that they had always been in the majority, that the heretics were always just small minority little groups

51.45who never had any big impact at all, who were just little pestiferous mosquitoes that got swatted on occasion

51.52and that the Orthodox had always been in the majority and had always been right.

51.58Those were the church histories that were read for centuries down to the modern period

52.03until we started discovering other things. And when we started discovering other gospels,

52.09other writings such as the Nag Hammadi Library. But we realized that in fact, it wasn’t that way at all.

The Best Organized, Funded and Located ended up winning

52.14One of the most interesting things in the Nag Hammadi Library are two books, one of them is called The Apocalypse of Peter

52.22because it was allegedly written by Simon Peter, Jesus’ disciple, and a second book that’s called- the second- it’s called Second Treatise of the Great Seth.

52.32So funny title, but that’s what it’s called. What’s interesting in these two books is that both of these books argue

52.38vehemently against the heretics. But when they talk about the heretics, it’s clear who they’re talking about.

52.46They’re talking about the Orthodox. So even these Gnostics

52.52had their their own heresiologists, their own people who combated heresies.

53.00There were battles between these groups. The group that ended up winning appears

53.06to have been the group that was best organized, that was…

53.12better funded… and that was better located. The group that ended up winning out, we know about best from writings

53.21that involve the City of Rome. These were Roman Christians.

53.27It’s not an accident that the Roman form of Christianity became the dominant form of Christianity

53.34since Rome was the capital of the Empire. Now, this form of Christianity was in other places as well.

53.40You could find it in Antioch, for example. You could find it in some places in Asia Minor, but

53.46we know of it best from the city of Rome. As Christianity grew, it was this Roman form of Christianity that ended up

53.53becoming dominant and establishing itself as the form of Christianity. So the other views got wiped out, their books got burned.

54.04And it’s only because of accidental discoveries like the Nag Hammadi Library that we have firsthand accounts.

The canonised New Testament

54.10Well, how did this Orthodox group go about deciding which books belonged in the canon of scripture, the New Testament?

54.17I’ll quickly go through this. The proto Orthodox people, when I use the word proto orthodox

54.24to refer to the Orthodox people before they were Orthodox. So I call them proto orthodox because, you know,

54.30when you’re a university professor, you’re supposed to use big words. So if one doesn’t exist, you make it up.

54.36So I made up the word proto orthodox. These are the people who believe orthodoxy before it becomes orthodoxy.

54.43How did the proto Orthodox decide which books they wanted in their canon of scripture?

54.49When you read their discussions, there are four criteria that seem to get applied to books. Number one: a book had to be ancient in order to be accepted

54.58as part of the scripture, even if a book was really good reading otherwise, I mean, even if it were The Da Vinci Code, it wouldn’t matter.

55.06[laughter] It had to be a book that was ancient that went back to the days of Jesus around that time.

55.13Secondly, books had to be apostolic, meaning they had to be written by people who were apostles or companions of the apostles.

55.21In the New Testament, we have Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. If you read Matthew, Mark, Luke and John carefully, you will notice

55.28that those four books actually are anonymous. Their authors don’t claim to be

55.34people named Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The titles, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were

55.40added to those books in the second century. They weren’t originally part of the book, the titles, which makes sense, of course.

55.48I mean, if Matthew wrote a gospel, he’s not going to call it “The gospel, according to Matthew.”

55.54That’s somebody else telling you that, Matthew wrote the gospel. Matthew is not going to call it that. He’s going to call it something like the gospel or the gospel of Jesus Christ.

56.01He’s going to give a title to it. Whoever called it the gospel, according to Matthew, is somebody telling you that Matthew wrote it.

56.07These titles are not original. They’re anonymous. Well, why are they called Matthew, Mark, Luke and John then?

56.12Because in the second and third centuries, when Christians wanted to know which books to include in the canon, they had to have apostolic books.

56.20These anonymous books were acceptable, but they were anonymous, and so they had to be given apostolic names.

56.26Hence the four gospels we’ve got. So books had to be ancient. They had to be apostolic.

56.32Third, they had to be widely used among proto orthodox churches. If books aren’t used very much, then they don’t function

56.40as scripture for the communities, they have to be widely used. Fourth, the books have to be Orthodox, meaning

56.47they have to support the right point of view. Books that support the wrong point of view, such as the Gospel of Peter

56.54or the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Philip, are excluded from use. Following these four criteria,

57.01the proto orthodox began shaping what would become the New Testament already in the second century.

57.08But it’s a striking fact of history that the first time anybody, anybody

57.15listed our 27 books as the 27 books of scripture, the first time that happened

57.23was in the writings of an Egyptian Bishop named Athanasius.

57.30Athanasius was a bishop of the city of Alexandria, Egypt, who in the year 367

57.37sent a letter to his churches in Egypt in which he gave them some pastoral advice.

57.43Included in this pastoral advice was a list of the books that were accepted as scripture.

57.50And this list of books contains our 27 books and only our 27 books.

57.55These are the scriptures, according to Athanasius. That didn’t settle the issue, but it is interesting

58.03that it took 300 years before anybody came up with our list of books.

58.10Before that, there were debates even in proto orthodox circles, and even after Athanasius Day, people continued to debate

58.17which books ought to be included until the fourth and fifth centuries, so that the canon didn’t just kind of descend from heaven

58.25one day near the time after Jesus died. The canon was- is a group of books that got collected over

58.31a very long period of time and agreement wasn’t reached for centuries.

58.37One last thing to say about this letter of Athanasius. Athanasius was a very powerful bishop

58.44who had control over the churches of Egypt.

58.49Those books discovered near Nag Hammadi. There’s an Orthodox monastery just a few kilometers away

58.58from where these books were discovered. The books were made in the middle of the fourth century.

59.06Athanasius wrote this letter in 367. Somebody appears to have buried the books

59.13in the wilderness soon thereafter. Why did somebody bury the books?

59.19Is it because there was pressure from on high to conform to a certain view of which books belong in scripture

59.26so that this Orthodox monastery cleaned out its library?

59.32Possibly. But why didn’t they burn the books if they were heretical? Is it that whoever buried these books actually liked these books

59.41and hoped that the theological winds would shift and they’d be able to go out later and retrieve them?

59.48That’s equally possible. The canon then wasn’t closed until after Athanasius Day.

59.54It’s finally, of course, today everybody agrees on the 27 books of the New Testament because the Orthodox Party ended up

1.00.01winning the debates and giving us the books that we now call the New Testament. All right, thank you.

1.00.07[applause]

30 Minutes for Questions

1.00.18>> Kate Peters: All right, well, we have 30 minutes for questions, and again, the microphone is here in the center aisle.

1.00.26And are you all going to raise the microphone? OK? And after the question answers

1.00.32again, which will end at 8:30, out in the atrium foyer. We have a book table malapropisms here and they have some of the additions,

1.00.41some copies of Lost Christianities available for sale. And then also there are some light hors d’oeuvres, a light reception out there.

1.00.47So if you would like some punch and help yourself to a snack, so thank you all so much. All right. Anyone have a question for Dr. Ehrman?

1.00.55>> Dr. Ehrman: [whispering] Would it be easier- would people feel less intimidated if they didn’t have to come up to the mic? [more murmuring]

Question: The Scripture of Mary Magdalene

1.01.08>> Audience member: With the popularity of the Da Vinci Code and all the information about Mary Magdalene, would you please give us

1.01.14a little information about the scripture, according to Mary Magdalene? >> Dr. Ehrman: About the Gospel of Mary?

1.01.21Yeah, yeah. I thought maybe I wouldn’t get the Da Vinci Code until the third question or so [laughter] there…

1.01.30I’m going to- by the way, I’m going to tell you about these courses on tape. They’ve asked me to give- they normally do courses,

1.01.36but they’re going to do something different. They’ve asked me to give two lectures on tape on the Da Vinci Code,

1.01.42just on the Da Vinci Code. So I’m going to do that like next month and talk about sort of the historical background about Mary Magdalene and Jesus

1.01.51and whether they were married and, you know, that kind of stuff. But the question specifically is about the Gospel of Mary.

1.01.58The Gospel of Mary is a Gnostic document that was not discovered at Nag Hammadi. It was actually discovered in 1896 in a-

1.02.07in a book that’s called the Berlin Codex. The Gospel of Mary is

1.02.12a very interesting book because in it, Mary indicates that Jesus has revealed to her the secret knowledge necessary for salvation

1.02.22and the men disciples get all upset about this, because why did he tell it to a woman? And they have this argument about telling to a woman and she says, “No,

1.02.31he told me.” And then she gives them- gives the revelation. Unfortunately, this manuscript we have of the Gospel of Mary is incomplete. It’s…

1.02.41fragmentary. And so we don’t have the entire revelation. But it appears to be a description of how the human soul

1.02.49will ascend up through the heavens and- to return to its heavenly home.

1.02.54So that’s the Gospel of Mary. I should say we have other documents that mention Mary

1.03.00and Mary and Jesus, including this gospel. I mentioned the Gospel of Philip in the Nag Hammadi Library,

1.03.06like some of these other books in the Nag Hammadi Library, the Gospel of Philip, it’s a complete gospel, but there are holes in the manuscript

1.03.14in places where you know, worms have eaten or it’s just worn out or something. So there’s this one passage where it’s very interesting,

1.03.20important passage and relevant to what to what you’re asking, where we’re told

1.03.25that, “Jesus loved Mary more than anyone else.

1.03.31And he used to kiss her on the-” And there’s a hole in the manuscript. [laughter]

1.03.39So we don’t know where he kissed her. [laugher]

Question: What in Christianity made to insist that there be a right side and a wrong side?

1.03.46OK, yes, please. >> Audience member: I’ve wondered, as I’ve been reading some

1.03.51about the differences in early Christian thought and practice

1.03.57why it became so important to define what was “right?”

1.04.02It seemed like for a while it didn’t matter. And if you read the gospels, the disciples never had it right?

1.04.09[laughter] You know? So I mean, but that wasn’t important. I mean, Jesus tried to show them.

1.04.16I’d like to know more about what made this need to define what was right and throw out what was wrong?

1.04.24>> Dr. Ehrman: Yes, thank you very much. It’s a very good question. Did you all hear the question in the back? OK? She asked,

1.04.30what in Christianity made- what was driving this movement to insist that there be a right side and a wrong side?

1.04.40It’s a very good question. And in part, it’s an interesting phenomenon that Christians ended up doing this

1.04.47because the idea that we’re right and somebody else is wrong was almost completely absent from other religions in the Roman Empire.

1.04.56one of the striking things about all the pagan religions, the polytheistic religions is that they were very embracing of other religions so that if you wanted

1.05.04to start worshiping a new God, you didn’t have to give up your old God. You just added a new god to the gods that you worship

1.05.10because you already worshiped multiple gods. But Christianity develops an exclusivistic, kind of emphasis,

1.05.19and why is that? In part, it’s because, I think, the proto Orthodox Christians insisted

1.05.24that there’s only one way to have salvation with God. And it’s through the death of Jesus.

1.05.30If there’s only one way to be right with God, then everybody else is wrong with God.

1.05.36And so the kind of proto Orthodox Christianity insisted on exclusivity.

1.05.41It made it completely unique, completely unique, [laughter] as if you could be incompletely unique.

1.05.48[laughter] It made it unique in the Roman Empire in that they- and this actually-

1.05.55this actually helped Christianity expand, I think. In a very strange way, this is what really helped

1.06.02Christians who are trying to convert other people. And what happens is this, just let me just take a second

1.06.08to kind of impact this because it’s kind of interesting. Christian Missionaries of the Proto Orthodox persuasion insisted

1.06.15that their views were right, and if you didn’t agree with their views, you were going to, you were going to roast in hell.

1.06.22And so there was no middle ground. We’re right.

1.06.27Everyone else is wrong. That made Christianity particularly successful

1.06.34because it was the only religion claiming this. And the reason it made it successful is, suppose you had two evangelists, one who represented say, who’s trying to convince, convince

1.06.44you that you need to worship the God, Aries and the other trying to convince you that you need to worship the Christian God.

1.06.52Suppose, suppose you’re a group of pagans. OK, let’s say there’s 300 of you in here.

1.06.58You’re pagans and I’m a Christian evangelist and the other guy is an evangelist for Aries.

1.07.04Suppose the two of us are equally successful. OK, we are equally convincing.

1.07.10So we each convince half of you. That means paganism loses

1.07.15150 people and gains no one. And Christianity gains 150 people and loses

1.07.24no one by being equally successful. See how that works?

1.07.30No? Some of you do some of you don’t. Because the pagans are already pagans, they already worship multiple gods.

1.07.36If they get convinced to worship the God Aries, well, then they continue worshiping their gods and they’re still pagan. Whereas if you become a Christian, you have to give up

1.07.43worshiping your other gods. And so you can’t be pagan anymore. So Christianity destroyed the other religions in its wake.

1.07.50That’s one of the reasons Christianity succeeded. And it may be why proto Orthodox Christianity in particular succeeded.

1.07.55But the answer to your question is, I think the proto orthodox are the ones who did this. Yes?

Question: What are some of the more interesting controversies among the scholars about the Nag Hammadi texts?

1.08.01>> Audience Member: I was wondering what you considered to be some of the more interesting controversies brought forth by the Nag Hammadi texts?

1.08.07>> Dr. Ehrman: What are some of the more interesting- you mean among scholars? >> Audience member: Yeah. >> Dr. Ehrman: What are some of the more interesting controversies among the-

1.08.15among scholars about the Nag Hammadi texts? There are a couple of very big controversies right now

1.08.21among scholars of Nag Hammadi and of Gnosticism.

1.08.26One very fundamental debate that is… that is becoming more and more heated among scholars is whether

1.08.35we can even talk about Gnosticism as a set of religions or not.

1.08.40There are scholars of Gnosticism who are claiming that we can no longer talk about Gnosticism because-

1.08.47I gave you a kind of a five minute sketch, but it was kind of a- kind of a broad sketch that covered a lot of religious traditions.

1.08.55And some scholars think that these religions that we’re calling Gnostic were so different from each other that it doesn’t make sense

1.09.01to call them Gnostic any longer. I’ve noted that the people who think that

1.09.07continue to use the word Christian. Which is, you know, and the word Jew,

1.09.16in other words, they use words that are umbrella terms for big things. And so I mean, so I’m sympathetic with the idea

1.09.22that Gnosticism was a much bigger thing than we thought, but- and a related thing is a lot of people- the most interesting document

1.09.30for some people from the Nag Hammadi Library is the Gospel of Thomas. And there are a number of scholars now

1.09.37who are arguing that Thomas should not be understood as a Gnostic gospel, including Elaine Pagels, who wrote the book

1.09.44The Gnostic Gospels, largely about the Gospel of Thomas now is saying that she doesn’t think you can really call it Gnostic anymore.

Question: The influences Manichean and Zoroastrian influences on Gnosticism

1.09.52So those are a couple of the big, big debates. >> Audience member: I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about…

1.10.01the influences Manichean and Zoroastrian influences on Gnosticism.

1.10.06>> Dr. Ehrman: Manichean and Zoroastrian? Yeah. Well, yeah. Manichean and Zoroastrian.

1.10.13The relationship of those things to Gnosticism is a very interesting question.

1.10.19Manicheanism actually came after Gnosticism, and so there’s- if there’s influence it went the other way, that

1.10.26probably Gnosticism probably influenced Manicheanism As many of you know, both Manicheanism and Zoroastrianism are highly dualistic,

1.10.35believing in two principles of good and evil, light and darkness, and the Gnostics have- are dualist too, believe that matter is evil and spirit is good.

1.10.45And so there’s a question what the relationship is. Did Zoroastrianism affect

1.10.51Gnosticism or is it sometimes put, did other kinds of Eastern traditions- Eastern religions affect Gnosticism with this kind of dualism of matter and spirit?

1.10.59And that’s entirely possible. What a lot of scholars have thought, and this is another controversial issue.

1.11.06What a lot of scholars, have thought more recently, is that where Gnosticism gets its dualism from is from certain strains

1.11.12of platonic philosophy that were circulating, that were independent of Manicheanism and Zoroastrianism, but were prominent

1.11.20in philosophical circles in the second century. A group of philosophers that history has called the Middle

1.11.27Plattenists had very similar views of how the world came into being as the Gnostics did, and they may have been more influential

1.11.34on the dualism found in Gnosticism than, say, Zoroastrianism was. So thank you.

Question: What texts have Honi the Circle-Drawer and the other sons of God?

1.11.43>> Audience member: I was wondering what texts have Honi the Circle-Drawer and the other sons of God,

1.11.49>> Dr. Ehrman: The other sons of God? >> Audience member: Yeah. >> Dr. Ehrman: OK. What texts have Honi the Circle-Drawer and the other sons of God?

1.11.57I’m suddenly feeling like I’m in my PhD exam committee again. [laughter]

1.12.02Let me think now, Honi the circle- yeah, those are actually from a rabbinic texts.

1.12.09Honi The Circle-Drawer and Hanina ben Dosa are both famous Jewish miracle workers

1.12.16from about the time of Jesus, who both came from Galilee, who were both thought, who were both sometimes called the son of God and who could do miracles.

1.12.24And so they’re sometimes appealed to as types of Jewish people who are kind of like Jesus.

1.12.32But the accounts of them are found in rabbinic materials, specifically in the Talmud.

1.12.38I don’t know chapter and verse of the Talmud for that. Does that answer your question? Yeah.

Question: Why couldn’t we consider the allusions in the gospels as prophecies?

1.12.45>> Audience member: OK. I’ve been taking a New Testament course this year,

1.12.51and we were discussing the Egyptian and other people who have prophesied about the destruction of the temple before it actually happened.

1.12.58And I was wondering exactly why we can’t consider the allusions in the Gospels, why they aren’t prophecies instead?

1.13.08And if they are prophecies, then wouldn’t it give a little bit more credence to

1.13.15lesser known synoptic traditions regarding methey and priority?

1.13.20>> Dr. Ehrman: Wow. OK, thank you. [laughter] Where are you taking this class?

1.13.26[laughter] >> Audience member: ETSU, under Dr. Greene. [laughter]

1.13.31>> Dr. Ehrman: Did he set you up for this? [laughter] >> Audience member: No. >> Dr. Ehrman: OK, well, let me just ask before I get into an answer, when you say,

1.13.39why couldn’t we consider the allusions in the gospels as prophecies? You mean that Jesus actually did know it was going to be destroyed?

1.13.45>> Audience member: Yes. >> Dr. Ehrman: I see, OK. Let me- I’ll try and answer this. I’m not sure-

1.13.51I’m not sure I’m going to get everything you asked. So if I don’t- why don’t you stay there in case I don’t? >> Audience member: Okay. [laughs]

1.13.59>> Dr. Ehrman: She’s asking about- actually, it’s similar to the question- are you in the same class?

1.14.04Yeah, [laughs] OK. Yeah, OK. So you got Honi the Circle-Drawer and the Egyptian.

1.14.10[laughter] OK, so she’s referring to another Jewish

1.14.18prophet that we know about from the writings of Josephus. He’s actually- Josephus is this first century Jewish historian who tells us a lot

1.14.26about what was happening in first century Jewish Palestine. And so his writings are useful for establishing the context for the historical Jesus.

1.14.34And he mentions a fellow named the Egyptian, who predicted that the temple was going to be destroyed.

1.14.40And he got a big following around him, and the Romans got nervous about this guy

1.14.46predicting a destruction of the temple and nervous about him having a following. So they sent out the troops to kill this guy and his followers.

1.14.54He’s connected both in Josephus and in the Book of Acts with somebody who’s called Theudas, who is another guy

1.15.02who predicted that there’s going to be a destruction in Jerusalem. And the Romans sent out the troops to kill the guy and his followers

1.15.10and historians have frequently pointed to these two people Theudas and the Egyptian as people who are kind of like Jesus,

1.15.18who came into Jerusalem and predicted that the temple is going to get destroyed. And he got arrested and he got killed by the Romans.

1.15.26So that this idea that Jesus is like the only one who’s doing this isn’t, you know, there are these other people who are kind of like him.

1.15.32And then you’ve got other people who are miracle workers like Honi The Circle-Drawer and Hanina ben Dosa and these other people. So…

1.15.41my own take on this is that Jesus really did think the temple is going to be destroyed.

1.15.46So I mean, I think Jesus thought, I don’t know what you’re learning in your class,

1.15.52but my own thought about Jesus is that he anticipated

1.15.58that God was going to intervene in this evil world and overthrow the forces of evil and set up a good kingdom on Earth.

1.16.04And then when God overthrew the forces of evil, part of what was going to happen is the temple was going to get destroyed.

1.16.10And he predicted this and then when he went into the temple, you know how he turns over the tables of the money changers and he drives out those who are selling animals?

1.16.19I mean, the gospel of Mark says that he shut down the temple sacrificial cult because that’s what Mark says.

1.16.30But there’s no- there’s no- the temple was huge.

1.16.35You could fit what is 20 football fields inside the walls of the temple.

1.16.42So, you know, one person turning over a few tables isn’t going to shut the thing down. So what’s really going on?

1.16.49Probably what’s going on, I think, is that Jesus is enacting a prophecy,

1.16.54that Jesus is predicting the temple is going to be destroyed, and it’s like he’s doing an object lesson by enacting

1.17.00a kind of destruction and then that’s what gets him in trouble. The Sadducees, who are the leaders of the- leaders

1.17.09of the Jewish temple, decide that he’s gone too far. And as he starts gathering followers around him during the course

1.17.16of that week, they decide that he needs to be taken care of. And Pontius Pilot wants nothing- doesn’t want a troublemaker.

Question: What is in the gospels more prophecy rather than allusion?

1.17.24So Pontius pilot orders him executed. Does that answer your question? >> Audience member: I think so. Just in clarification,

1.17.29so you do believe that what is in the gospels is more prophecy rather than allusion?

1.17.36>> Dr. Ehrman: I think he’s prophec- I think he’s actually predicting the temple is going to be destroyed. >> Audience member: OK. >> Dr. Ehrman: But he does so by quoting the book of Jeremiah.

1.17.43So, I mean, it’s allusion in that sense that he’s- I mean, Jeremiah also predicted the temple was going to be destroyed.

1.17.48He also got in trouble for it. So, yeah. >> Audience member: I had another clarification question.

1.17.54In the canon of the Marcionites, were those the letters just that Paul wrote?

1.18.00Or were they the ones that we attribute to Paul as writing nowadays? >> Dr. Ehrman: Yes.

1.18.05they were seven- this is for the New Testament class over here in this corner.

1.18.11[laughter] They’re the seven undisputed Pauline epistles and the three Deutero-Paulines of second Thessalonians Colossians and Ephesians.

1.18.19But they did not include the pastorals of first and second Timothy and Titus. >> Audience member: Thank you. >> Dr. Ehrman: You’re welcome.

Question: What point in this early period of Christianity did the death of Christ take precedence over the teachings of peace and justice? And, what was the church behind the Book of Acts?

1.18.27>> Audience member: One of the tensions that I see in the Gospels

1.18.32is between the teachings of Jesus as embedded in a community of justice and peace, and the death of Christ.

1.18.41And it seems like at least from my reading of the Gospels, that people in the- got into the community as a result

1.18.48of some radical change in their life, whether it be,

1.18.54you know, something about their socioeconomic status or their, you know, their health changed.

1.19.00So I’m wondering at what point in the history of- what point in this early period of Christianity

1.19.08did the death of Christ take precedence over the teachings of peace and justice?

1.19.13>> Dr. Ehrman: Good question. >> Audience member: And secondly, just very briefly. And secondly,

1.19.19what is- we talk about a lot about the historical Jesus

1.19.25and actually the Jesus behind the Gospels. I’m curious as to what was the church

1.19.32behind the Book of Acts as you understand it? >> Dr. Ehrman: OK, good. Thank you.

Answer to the first question

1.19.37Let me deal with the first question, is there a tension between the teaching- the focus on the death of Jesus

1.19.45and the focus on the teachings of Jesus is actually a very interesting question because…

1.19.52as you may know, the Apostle Paul focuses a lot of attention on the death and resurrection of Jesus.

1.20.00But he scarcely ever quotes the words of Jesus. He does a few times.

1.20.06He quotes the words at the Last Supper, and he quotes the saying that you shouldn’t get divorced.

1.20.12And he quotes the saying that you ought to pay your preacher [laughter] and that’s about it.

1.20.19Why didn’t Paul quote the words of Jesus? Well, for Paul, the death and resurrection were everything.

1.20.25That’s what really mattered. I mean, I don’t know what Paul thought about the teachings of Jesus,

1.20.30but at least in those letters, he doesn’t emphasize that. Contrast that with another document that probably existed in the early church

1.20.39that we no longer have the document that scholars have called Q. Some of you’ve heard of the Q Source.

1.20.46The Q source is a hypothetical source. We don’t, we don’t have it, but we have reason to believe it once existed.

1.20.54The way it works is this, we’ve got three gospels Matthew Mark and Luke. Scholars since the 19th century have realized

1.21.01that Matthew and Luke got a lot of their stories from Mark.

1.21.06But Matthew and Luke have other stories that are identical word for word the same that are not found in Mark.

1.21.14Where did they get those stories? They had to get them from some other source. Or either, Luke could have gotten it from Matthew could’ve gotten it from Luke.

1.21.21But the reasons for thinking that didn’t happen. Their reasons for thinking that they got them from some other source.

1.21.27And by the way, if you’ve got word for word agreements between two documents, there has to be copying going on.

1.21.33[laughter] Some of my students aren’t convinced of this. [laughter]

1.21.39So what I do every semester when I’m doing my class on this, I, I come into class a little bit late

1.21.46to make sure everybody’s there and I start fidgeting around up in front of the class and do things with books and stuff.

1.21.51And then then I tell everybody to take out a piece of paper and a pen and to write down everything they’ve seen me do since I came into class.

1.22.01And then I collect four at random and we do a comparison.

1.22.06And I say, “Okay, we’re going to see if any sentence is exactly the same among these four,” and I start reading them and I say, “And all of you.

1.22.13Let’s- see if you have any of these sentences exactly the same.” I read through these four and they never have any that’s exactly the same.

1.22.20And I say, “OK, now what would you think if I picked up two of these and they had an entire paragraph that was word for word the same?”

1.22.26[laughter] “Well yeah, somebody copied.” and I said, “Yeah, exactly right.” And I said, “Suppose we don’t do this today, suppose we wait 40 or 50 years.”

1.22.35[laughter] which is the distance between Jesus and the Gospels. And suppose I don’t ask you to write it.

1.22.43Suppose I ask friends of yours about what happened in class that day. And I collect two of them and their word for word to same?

1.22.49Well, well, you know, obviously somebody is copying from somebody. So scholars are convinced that Matthew and Luke copied from Mark,

1.22.55but they have other stories like the Lord’s Prayer and the Beatitudes that are not found in Mark that are found-

1.23.02well, where? In another source, the scholars who came up with this theory were German.

1.23.07They called this other source “The Source”, German quelle, which means source and spelled with a Q.

1.23.14And so they just call it for short- They call it Q. Q appears to have been a list of Jesus’ teachings,

1.23.21a collection of Jesus’ teachings. Possibly, probably, without any reference

1.23.26to Jesus death and resurrection, the community that produced Q apparently thought the teachings mattered.

1.23.34Paul’s community seemed to think that the death and resurrection matter. The gospel writers, starting with Mark,

1.23.41took the sayings idea and took the death and resurrection idea and put them together so that in the Gospels you get both.

1.23.51So my answer is that I think what happened is that the gospel writers especially are responsible for conflating those two interests.

Answer to the second question

1.23.59Then quickly, your other question about the church line behind the Book of Acts. My view is that the Book of Acts is about as reliable for the early church

1.24.08and Paul, for example, as the Gospels are reliable for Jesus,

1.24.13which means they get the general picture right. But a lot of the details are historically problematic.

Question: What did proto Orthodox say about the inspiration of 27 books that were circulating then?

1.24.21Yes? >> Audience member: Yes, that leads into what I have to ask you, by the way, thanks for that interview on National Public Radio, that was terrific-

1.24.27>> Dr. Ehrman: You’re welcome. >> Audience member: Your proto Orthodox,

1.24.32did they have any sense of the authority and inspiration of those 27 books that were circulating then?

1.24.37And what does that have to say, if anything about inerrancy on the one hand and the Bible is just another book on the other?

1.24.45>> Dr. Ehrman: Good. Thank you. Good. Very good question. What did these proto Orthodox say about the inspiration of these books?

1.24.53They- the proto Orthodox, did believe that these books contain words from God,

1.24.59and they were the word of God. But it’s very hard to think that they understood these books to be inerrant

1.25.09the way that modern evangelicals or fundamentalists would say that these books are inerrant, I guess modern fundamentalists.

1.25.18The idea of- in the inerrancy of scripture that idea actually doesn’t have a very long history to it.

1.25.26It starts becoming a big issue in the 1920s. And before that, it’s not really that big of an issue.

1.25.33So that throughout the history of the church, people have thought that these books are, of course, the word of God,

1.25.38but they’ve had other understandings of it other than that they are inerrant.

1.25.45In the early church, there were people who acknowledged that there were contradictions in these books. One of the most famous scholars of early Christianity,

1.25.52probably the foremost scholar of the first three centuries, was a guy named Origin who believed that the Bible was filled with contradictions.

1.26.02What the contradictions do for you, according to Origin, is they tell you, you cannot take the text literally.

1.26.08You have to take it figuratively, wherever there’s a contradiction. And so he loved the contradictions.

1.26.14He didn’t pretend they didn’t exist. He thought they were fantastic because they allowed him then to use his creative imagination

1.26.19in coming up with figurative interpretations of the text. So there are probably a range of understandings of scripture

1.26.26among these early people, but that’s one of the prominent ones is that they do contain the word of God,

1.26.31but not in the sense that these are inerrant documents.

Question: About dating gospels Luke and John

1.26.37>> Audience member: In two of the gospels, Luke and John, you have Jesus coming back

1.26.42and he’s talking to his disciples and in John, he talks to Thomas and he makes sort of an anti-docetic claim talking about, you know, “Feel my hands.

1.26.51Make sure that I’m real.” And in Luke, he does the same sort of thing.

1.26.57He expresses hunger and he wants to eat. I wonder if that places both of them around the same time,

1.27.03because that’s I think in your book, it said that that was part of the reason that we date John a little bit later.

1.27.09And if they both do that, then shouldn’t we date Luke a little bit later as well? >> Dr. Ehrman: Good. Thank you. Are you in this class, too?

1.27.16>> Audience member: Yeah. [laughter]

1.27.22>> Dr. Ehrman: Yeah, it’s a really- it’s a really good point. You know,

1.27.29part of the problem is that this is going to get technical for a second. Part of the problem is that the Luke passages

1.27.36that are most anti-docetic appear to be textual corruptions.

1.27.42Have you all talked about textual criticism in your class in the kind of variations? Most of these Luke and anti-docetic passages are- appear

1.27.51to be anti-docetic changes that have been put into the text in the second century.

1.27.58Even saying that though, even without those, though, Luke does seem to have an emphasis on-

1.28.04emphasizing the physicality, the bodily resurrection of Jesus. I’m not sure that Luke’s emphasis is anti-docetic

1.28.11per say. Luke’s hero was Paul,

1.28.18Paul was very emphatic that the resurrection of Christians was going to be a future bodily resurrection.

1.28.24And the reason, Luke- the reason Paul knew that- Paul was writing against people

1.28.30who believe- in first Corinthians, the book of first Corinthians. Paul is writing against people

1.28.35who think that once they were baptized, they had already been given the spirit and they were already enjoying a kind of heavenly existence

1.28.42that they had already begun to enjoy the full benefits of salvation. They were already living in the heavenly places and a kind of a spiritual way

1.28.51because they’d already been spiritually raised from the dead. They died with Christ when they’re put into the water

1.28.57and they were raised with Christ when they came up out of the water, and now they have this heavenly spiritual existence.

1.29.03Paul in first Corinthians is very much against that point of view.

1.29.09Paul thinks that people have not yet been raised with Christ. He thinks people have died with Christ when they got baptized.

1.29.16But he thinks people will not be raised with Christ until Christ returns in glory. Paul thinks Christ is going to return very soon, and when he returns,

1.29.25people who believe in Christ are going to be transformed and be given resurrection bodies like Jesus’ body.

1.29.34They’ll have immortal bodies that won’t die anymore. Paul knows that the resurrection is not a past event,

1.29.40but a future event, because for Paul, the resurrection has to be a future- it has to be a bodily event.

1.29.46And the way he knows it’s a bodily event is because he believes Jesus was bodily raised from the dead.

1.29.51He believes Jesus was bodily raised from the dead because he claimed he saw Jesus after his resurrection. OK, so this is all kind of circles within circles, but

1.29.59Luke is Paul’s- Paul is Luke’s hero. I think Luke emphasizes the bodily resurrection of Jesus precisely

1.30.06because he’s adopting Paul’s understanding about the bodily resurrection, rather than it being kind of an anti-docetic thing.

1.30.13Sorry, that was kind of a long answer. I think- I think my time is up. [applause]

1.30.21Thank you all for spending your evening with us. Please help yourself to some refreshments…[voice fades]

1.30.28♪[closing music]♪

1.30.34♪♪