As an atheist, I am impressed with this gentleman. The world would be a better place for everyone if we all tried to live a little more like this guy. And I can see how the message of Jesus, the protector of the weak and poor could be accepted.
I agree with mugdays. I learn so much from Dr. Ehrman and never get tired of hearing him speak. It's awesome to listen to his debates. The magnificent use of sarcasm when debating fundamentalists like Michael Brown is hilarious.
ّّI hope that I can learn Bart's way presenting his thoughts and evidences His analysis is remarkable whether we agree with him or not Dr Ehrman forces you to listen to him by his attractive speech
I wondered why Bart was being interview about radioactivity but now I see he was being interviewed on the program Radioactivity. However, I'm sure some consider his ideas are a worse danger.
Looking forward to the debate with Robert Price. I'm under the impression that the 'vocal' mythicists don't assert Jesus didn't exist, they simply show that it is reasonable to think he didn't exist.
Very good interviewer, although I'm sure that Dr. Ehrman could get into more detail. The argument that most scholars believe in a historical Jesus is not necessarily the most convincing explanation and I'm not a hard core mythologist. Neither is Paul's quote, "James the brother of the Lord" a convincing nod to Jesus. How does an illiterate group of Aramaic speaking Jewish in fishing villages conversing with a Galilean messiah translate into Paul's very developed literate and sophisticated Christology that spread throughout Greece within twenty years? Weren't forms of Hellenistic Syncretic Judaism already widespread? Love thy stranger in funky temples? When Paul makes his case why does he always utilize OT examples "according to the scriptures" and not the sayings and life of Jesus? Why aren't Paul's writings chronologically first in the NT? Would that change the game? Could the issue be that historical Jesus scholars see a person in both the gospels and Paul's writings and Mythicists see no person in both the gospels and Paul's writings? I think a case can be made for a historical basis for the Jesus of the gospel's and leave Paul to a Jewish mystery cult. The two should have dated, but never married.
33:57 If you asked people to give an example of a misogynistic passage in Paul, I sincerely doubt that 1 Timothy would be the most common book cited. What about 1 Corinthians 14:34, among others? It's not convincing to argue that Paul wasn't misogynistic because he didn't write Timothy.
Bart is a very smart person and a good speaker. But people want him on one side or the other. If you really listen, he is on neither side. It is impossible to know what really happened then. It is all guess work. What Bart is saying that there PROBABLY was some kind of a preacher, or a dozen, that people talked about. We have them today. Some time latter, some of it was written down and, in many different versions. Hundreds of years lattes they collected some of these, that they agreed on, and put them in a book to influence the populace.
Bart is talking as an historian- on listening to him other matters and read a few of his books, he seems to have lost belief in the supernatural and says he knows the Jewish/Christian God isn't true but is agnostic on whether there is a prime mover
8 ปีที่แล้ว +1
I greatly respect Dr. Ehrman, but here the "evidence" he gave for the existence of Jesus is bleak (at best). He himself said a couple of times that some passages are fabricated, others modified. So, my question is: why should we believe some accounts and not others?
Being able to weight the accounts differently is where the real rigor of historical study takes place. If you're not well studied in the language of the period then you're probably not going to be equipped to appreciate how/why certain passages or authors have more value than others. This is what allows people to speak with some confidence on the date a particular book was written, or whether it was written by one person or several and later assembled. Imagine picking up an anthology of modern english authors writing on the same topic and trying to determine which pieces were written by the same authors - even as a contemporary to those authors and native speaker of the language, it would be difficult for the average person to tell them apart. This is where people whom specialize in the study of language enter the picture.
Also, how do we know that the original gospels were written in Greek if we don't have the originals? And if the names given to the gospels were just given to make them more authoritive why would they use names that were not first hand witnesses? One is just an associate of a disciple and one is an associate of Paul. No one ever asks him the good questions!
I love listening to you and your take on historicity but I really wish you weren't so condescendingly dismissive of the serious mythicists like Carrier. I understand you don't agree and I do feel your side is more plausible but it feels as if you have contempt as opposed to just disagreement. Anyway, I look forward to more from you!
Ehrman comes across that way because of the Trump-style personal attacks and insults that have been hurled at him by the likes of Dr. Carrier and others.
One thing I get tired of hearing is people referring to the earliest writings being composed/dictated by one called Apostle Paul; this man, though clearly existed, was NOT an apostle, he self ordained himself based upon supposed visions/revelations. In fact, this Paul guy had serious issues with cultist Christians of the time, including Peter. This man was NOT an apostle (I guess you could call hi self annointed), any more than Joseph Smith received visions of golden plates (and other fun stuff). Why do people believe one and not the other?! lol Fools.
I think they believe it because Paul's version of Christianity is the one that survived. Whether he was a charlatan or not, he was incredibly smart and had the skills needed for success. Without him the Christian movement would have died out as just another Jewish apocolyptic/messianic sect. In fact the Jewish Christian movement did die out by the 5th century.
I understand about the suffering part but what about the vast majority of people (In the billions) who are not suffering? A consistent logic would make you stop and question.
Im Greek and i have an opinion regarding the brother of Jesus. In Greek when we say brother of lord/brother of the lord it means baptised! The monks use it to call each other, the Christians use it. Jesus didnt have siblings. Greek church, who read the originalss understands it best. Ο αδελφος του Κυριου, doesnt mean brother of jesus.if the Greeks understand it this way, then the evidence the Professor gave is not valid.
The Greek orthodox church have read all the letters and concluded that Jesus doesnt have a brother. This is from the Greek point of view. Yes we read it and understand the text perfectly. The writing is a little unusual but totally understandable. Paul repeats words again and again. Its easy to tell that his vocabulary is not of a native Greek speaker. In fact i write better English now than Paul wrote Greek. So to have an idea. Aristotle for example is a thousand times more complex, and requires effort to understand him..
Though you need to concede that the Greek Orthodox will always advocate that Jesus had no siblings so as to protect their tradition that the Virgin Mary is still a virgin after Jesus' birth. It's just not a big a deal among the orthodox churches than the Catholics. there are instances in the Gospel of Mark and Matthew which CLEARLY states Jesus had brothers AND sisters (Mark 6:3, Matthew 13:55-56) mentions MARY by name. The idea that jesus had no sibllings is basically church bias to protect their tradition.
***** not true because his father Joshep is not virgin after all, and the Greek orthodox church believes that he was married before. What Im saying here is the translation of the phrase brother of the lord, in the Greek language doesnt mean brother of Jesus, it means baptised. The monks use this exact phrase in the Greek monasteries when talk to each other. The word brother is everywhere in the Greek monasteries. So brother of the Lord in Greek it means baptised. This is how a native Greek speaker understands it. And we use it even in our days. The Hellenistic Greek, the dialect the gospels were written is EXTREMELY similar to the "modern" Greek dialect today. I can ready the gospels efortless, in an evening. No difficulty at all and even in the Greek churches they they leep the original text. If you go in to a Greek church on a Sunday morning during the mass, you will hear the gospels in the original version. Im 100% sure there is a mis understanding here, a wrong translation of non native Greek speakers. An expression, can mean many things just from the way the words are put together. If they wanted to state clearly that james was the brother of jesus, they had to say I met james which was, the brother of the Lord. Im not convived at all that James was the brother of Jesus. As a Greek I dont see that written clearly. Im not speaking as a scolar, Im speaking as a Greek reading a Greek text.
mlazos I get what you are saying, the references i gave were genealogical references made by the writers themselves. Mary is mentioned by NAME, as well as references to OTHER brothers and sisters. Re-read them. From the context you espoused it's impossible to apply them there like Galatians (of which i am presuming you are lifting your translation from.)
Jesus calls self "Messiah" more than a dozen times. He also calls himself "son of god" a few times. And according to jesus he was sent by his Father. Jesus said that at least dozen of times. At one time jesus ask peter, "Who do you think i am?". Peter said, "You are the Messiah". Jesus asks peter not to tell anyone. But jesus never said he was birthed on Earth. So, where was he born and was he born if John is correct that jesus was eternal just like god. It seems that god sent god or his son from heaven and god or son of god turns to man, but when and where? Not while traveling thru space. So, even when brushing against a fig leafs he was still god and became man only after landing on ground? But why not remaining god while on a fig leaf and preached from it?
Living Bible, Jn 14:7, "If you had known who i am, then you would have known who my Father is. From now on you know him--and have seen him". Jn 6:46, "Not that anyone actually sees the Father, for only I have seen him". LB, Jn 14:20, "....I am in my Father.....". So, Mary birthed god?????
The study of history clearly isn't guided by a process where the burden of proof is on the historian to prove beyond any doubt that something happened rather than nothing at all, or that a person existed rather than not at all. The idea is to provide evidence for what *probably* happened at a point in history. The quality and quantity of evidence gets increasingly scant as we go back into the ancient world, so naturally the criteria for the strength of evidence scales with it. If you have written works which appear to be contemporary to a particular period and no compelling reason to assume that the author's testimony is false or otherwise untrustworthy, then that's a valid piece of evidence. Most of what we read in history books come from sources that would qualify as 'hearsay', but that doesn't mean we presume that all figures in history didn't exist or that we should feel completely dark on what was happening in the world prior to the advent of live broadcast media or sworn testimony in a modern court of law. So from a historian's perspective your task here would not be to merely say, 'Paul could be lying', but rather to cite some probability that Paul is lying and provide supporting evidence to establish how you came to that conclusion.
Or Paul could have been credulous. If I told Bart that I met someone who claimed to be the brother of one of the aliens who landed at Roswell, would he take that as proof the aliens really did land? Bart claims we can take Paul at face value here because James's family would have known whether he had a brother named Jesus. But did anyone in Jerusalem really care what a bunch of hicks out in the country said? Paul bases his whole Christology on revelation and scripture, not on personal witness. That alone gives us reason to be sceptical.
It's not probable that aliens landed at Roswell. It's not probable that Jesus was the son of God and rose from the dead. It is probable that a guy existed during that period named Jesus that preached a flavor of new age Judeo-apocalypticism because that trend wasn't unique to him during that period. The most improbable element of the history of Christianity isn't that a preacher named Jesus existed, or that he had a brother named James, or that Paul had met James, it's the fact that the religion happened to take hold of Europe as quickly as it did through happenstance.
hughJ25 It's also true that con men and rascals have existed in all times and all places. Just because someone told Paul "I'm the brother of Jesus" doesn't mean he was. Paul never met Jesus and had no idea about his family life. We know of many Jesuses in Palestine at this time. We have n o idea if any of them started the Christian religion. We have no evidence that Christianity spread as quickly as Christians have traditionally claimed. Rodney Stark has estimated that Christianity spread no more quickly than Mormonism in this age. commonsenseatheism.com/?p=95
Dr. Ehrman, I've heard your story so many times, but I never tire of hearing it! Great interview, as always.
As an atheist, I am impressed with this gentleman. The world would be a better place for everyone if we all tried to live a little more like this guy. And I can see how the message of Jesus, the protector of the weak and poor could be accepted.
His style presenting his thoughts and evidences is remarkable
I agree with mugdays. I learn so much from Dr. Ehrman and never get tired of hearing him speak. It's awesome to listen to his debates. The magnificent use of sarcasm when debating fundamentalists like Michael Brown is hilarious.
ّّI hope that I can learn Bart's way presenting his thoughts and evidences
His analysis is remarkable whether we agree with him or not
Dr Ehrman forces you to listen to him by his attractive speech
love it thanks bart
I wondered why Bart was being interview about radioactivity but now I see he was being interviewed on the program Radioactivity. However, I'm sure some consider his ideas are a worse danger.
[Note to editor, not Dr Ehrman]: It's called "The book of Revelation", not "Revelations". Sigh.
What could Ehrman have to say about radioactivity? Oh, that's the name of the show.
I'm an Apologist and I agree with Ehrman
Looking forward to the debate with Robert Price. I'm under the impression that the 'vocal' mythicists don't assert Jesus didn't exist, they simply show that it is reasonable to think he didn't exist.
Very good interviewer, although I'm sure that Dr. Ehrman could get into more detail. The argument that most scholars believe in a historical Jesus is not necessarily the most convincing explanation and I'm not a hard core mythologist. Neither is Paul's quote, "James the brother of the Lord" a convincing nod to Jesus.
How does an illiterate group of Aramaic speaking Jewish in fishing villages conversing with a Galilean messiah translate into Paul's very developed literate and sophisticated Christology that spread throughout Greece within twenty years? Weren't forms of Hellenistic Syncretic Judaism already widespread? Love thy stranger in funky temples? When Paul makes his case why does he always utilize OT examples "according to the scriptures" and not the sayings and life of Jesus? Why aren't Paul's writings chronologically first in the NT? Would that change the game?
Could the issue be that historical Jesus scholars see a person in both the gospels and Paul's writings and Mythicists see no person in both the gospels and Paul's writings? I think a case can be made for a historical basis for the Jesus of the gospel's and leave Paul to a Jewish mystery cult. The two should have dated, but never married.
33:57 If you asked people to give an example of a misogynistic passage in Paul, I sincerely doubt that 1 Timothy would be the most common book cited. What about 1 Corinthians 14:34, among others? It's not convincing to argue that Paul wasn't misogynistic because he didn't write Timothy.
Bart is a very smart person and a good speaker. But people want him on one side or the other. If you really listen, he is on neither side. It is impossible to know what really happened then. It is all guess work.
What Bart is saying that there PROBABLY was some kind of a preacher, or a dozen, that people talked about. We have them today. Some time latter, some of it was written down and, in many different versions.
Hundreds of years lattes they collected some of these, that they agreed on, and put them in a book to influence the populace.
Bart is talking as an historian- on listening to him other matters and read a few of his books, he seems to have lost belief in the supernatural and says he knows the Jewish/Christian God isn't true but is agnostic on whether there is a prime mover
I greatly respect Dr. Ehrman, but here the "evidence" he gave for the existence of Jesus is bleak (at best). He himself said a couple of times that some passages are fabricated, others modified. So, my question is: why should we believe some accounts and not others?
Being able to weight the accounts differently is where the real rigor of historical study takes place. If you're not well studied in the language of the period then you're probably not going to be equipped to appreciate how/why certain passages or authors have more value than others. This is what allows people to speak with some confidence on the date a particular book was written, or whether it was written by one person or several and later assembled.
Imagine picking up an anthology of modern english authors writing on the same topic and trying to determine which pieces were written by the same authors - even as a contemporary to those authors and native speaker of the language, it would be difficult for the average person to tell them apart. This is where people whom specialize in the study of language enter the picture.
And why do we believe Paul did not lie about meeting James?
Indeed!
Yeah...I've been hoping to hear an explanation of this also. No one ever asks him!
Also, how do we know that the original gospels were written in Greek if we don't have the originals? And if the names given to the gospels were just given to make them more authoritive why would they use names that were not first hand witnesses? One is just an associate of a disciple and one is an associate of Paul. No one ever asks him the good questions!
I love listening to you and your take on historicity but I really wish you weren't so condescendingly dismissive of the serious mythicists like Carrier. I understand you don't agree and I do feel your side is more plausible but it feels as if you have contempt as opposed to just disagreement.
Anyway, I look forward to more from you!
Ehrman comes across that way because of the Trump-style personal attacks and insults that have been hurled at him by the likes of Dr. Carrier and others.
He's just applying science. As he does regarding theologians.
so much insight. tight slap on the face of christianity and Christian myths
I cringed every time the host referred to the four gospels as "the New Testament" or "the four books of the Bible."
what is our problem with that?
One thing I get tired of hearing is people referring to the earliest writings being composed/dictated by one called Apostle Paul; this man, though clearly existed, was NOT an apostle, he self ordained himself based upon supposed visions/revelations. In fact, this Paul guy had serious issues with cultist Christians of the time, including Peter. This man was NOT an apostle (I guess you could call hi self annointed), any more than Joseph Smith received visions of golden plates (and other fun stuff). Why do people believe one and not the other?! lol Fools.
I think they believe it because Paul's version of Christianity is the one that survived. Whether he was a charlatan or not, he was incredibly smart and had the skills needed for success. Without him the Christian movement would have died out as just another Jewish apocolyptic/messianic sect. In fact the Jewish Christian movement did die out by the 5th century.
you fool,what the hell ,do you think "an apostle" mean?
I understand about the suffering part but what about the vast majority of people (In the billions) who are not suffering? A consistent logic would make you stop and question.
48:00 I think of this sometimes. Jesus as a Robin Hood like quasi mythical figure.
34:20 - HAHA!
What did he say? I can't make it out!
Tim Tucker
Not sure what that guy that called said, it was just funny how the host appeared to know who that was and still answered it.
Im Greek and i have an opinion regarding the brother of Jesus. In Greek when we say brother of lord/brother of the lord it means baptised! The monks use it to call each other, the Christians use it. Jesus didnt have siblings. Greek church, who read the originalss understands it best. Ο αδελφος του Κυριου, doesnt mean brother of jesus.if the Greeks understand it this way, then the evidence the Professor gave is not valid.
The Greek orthodox church have read all the letters and concluded that Jesus doesnt have a brother. This is from the Greek point of view. Yes we read it and understand the text perfectly. The writing is a little unusual but totally understandable. Paul repeats words again and again. Its easy to tell that his vocabulary is not of a native Greek speaker. In fact i write better English now than Paul wrote Greek. So to have an idea. Aristotle for example is a thousand times more complex, and requires effort to understand him..
Interesting take.
Though you need to concede that the Greek Orthodox will always advocate that Jesus had no siblings so as to protect their tradition that the Virgin Mary is still a virgin after Jesus' birth. It's just not a big a deal among the orthodox churches than the Catholics. there are instances in the Gospel of Mark and Matthew which CLEARLY states Jesus had brothers AND sisters (Mark 6:3, Matthew 13:55-56) mentions MARY by name. The idea that jesus had no sibllings is basically church bias to protect their tradition.
*****
not true because his father Joshep is not virgin after all, and the Greek orthodox church believes that he was married before.
What Im saying here is the translation of the phrase brother of the lord, in the Greek language doesnt mean brother of Jesus, it means baptised.
The monks use this exact phrase in the Greek monasteries when talk to each other. The word brother is everywhere in the Greek monasteries.
So brother of the Lord in Greek it means baptised. This is how a native Greek speaker understands it. And we use it even in our days.
The Hellenistic Greek, the dialect the gospels were written is EXTREMELY similar to the "modern" Greek dialect today. I can ready the gospels efortless, in an evening. No difficulty at all and even in the Greek churches they they leep the original text. If you go in to a Greek church on a Sunday morning during the mass, you will hear the gospels in the original version.
Im 100% sure there is a mis understanding here, a wrong translation of non native Greek speakers.
An expression, can mean many things just from the way the words are put together.
If they wanted to state clearly that james was the brother of jesus, they had to say I met james which was, the brother of the Lord.
Im not convived at all that James was the brother of Jesus. As a Greek I dont see that written clearly. Im not speaking as a scolar, Im speaking as a Greek reading a Greek text.
mlazos
I get what you are saying, the references i gave were genealogical references made by the writers themselves. Mary is mentioned by NAME, as well as references to OTHER brothers and sisters. Re-read them. From the context you espoused it's impossible to apply them there like Galatians (of which i am presuming you are lifting your translation from.)
Jesus calls self "Messiah" more than a dozen times. He also calls himself "son of god" a few times. And according to jesus he was sent by his Father. Jesus said that at least dozen of times. At one time jesus ask peter, "Who do you think i am?". Peter said, "You are the Messiah". Jesus asks peter not to tell anyone.
But jesus never said he was birthed on Earth. So, where was he born and was he born if John is correct that jesus was eternal just like god.
It seems that god sent god or his son from heaven and god or son of god turns to man, but when and where? Not while traveling thru space. So, even when brushing against a fig leafs he was still god and became man only after landing on ground?
But why not remaining god while on a fig leaf and preached from it?
Living Bible, Jn 14:7, "If you had known who i am, then you would have known who my Father is. From now on you know him--and have seen him". Jn 6:46, "Not that anyone actually sees the Father, for only I have seen him".
LB, Jn 14:20, "....I am in my Father.....".
So, Mary birthed god?????
@3:05 Seriously? At best that's hearsay.
The study of history clearly isn't guided by a process where the burden of proof is on the historian to prove beyond any doubt that something happened rather than nothing at all, or that a person existed rather than not at all. The idea is to provide evidence for what *probably* happened at a point in history. The quality and quantity of evidence gets increasingly scant as we go back into the ancient world, so naturally the criteria for the strength of evidence scales with it.
If you have written works which appear to be contemporary to a particular period and no compelling reason to assume that the author's testimony is false or otherwise untrustworthy, then that's a valid piece of evidence. Most of what we read in history books come from sources that would qualify as 'hearsay', but that doesn't mean we presume that all figures in history didn't exist or that we should feel completely dark on what was happening in the world prior to the advent of live broadcast media or sworn testimony in a modern court of law.
So from a historian's perspective your task here would not be to merely say, 'Paul could be lying', but rather to cite some probability that Paul is lying and provide supporting evidence to establish how you came to that conclusion.
Or Paul could have been credulous. If I told Bart that I met someone who claimed to be the brother of one of the aliens who landed at Roswell, would he take that as proof the aliens really did land? Bart claims we can take Paul at face value here because James's family would have known whether he had a brother named Jesus. But did anyone in Jerusalem really care what a bunch of hicks out in the country said?
Paul bases his whole Christology on revelation and scripture, not on personal witness. That alone gives us reason to be sceptical.
It's not probable that aliens landed at Roswell. It's not probable that Jesus was the son of God and rose from the dead. It is probable that a guy existed during that period named Jesus that preached a flavor of new age Judeo-apocalypticism because that trend wasn't unique to him during that period. The most improbable element of the history of Christianity isn't that a preacher named Jesus existed, or that he had a brother named James, or that Paul had met James, it's the fact that the religion happened to take hold of Europe as quickly as it did through happenstance.
you nailed that one
hughJ25 It's also true that con men and rascals have existed in all times and all places.
Just because someone told Paul "I'm the brother of Jesus" doesn't mean he was. Paul never met Jesus and had no idea about his family life.
We know of many Jesuses in Palestine at this time. We have n o idea if any of them started the Christian religion.
We have no evidence that Christianity spread as quickly as Christians have traditionally claimed. Rodney Stark has estimated that Christianity spread no more quickly than Mormonism in this age. commonsenseatheism.com/?p=95
The Tanach is the only true word of God.
You are pendantic. .. makes you deny Cristos, it's a...d...a...m Dude
Phil Phil you are an imbecile
Bart's very own YT channel, Yay! Instant sub!