Is the New Testament Actually Greek Literature?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 ก.ค. 2023
- The New Testament is often studied in isolation, separated from other ancient writings. How did this division come about, and what do we lose by looking at it as something different? Dr. Robyn Walsh talks about what can be gained from placing the New Testament back into the canon of Classical Literature.
Hello everyone, this is Chris Huntley, director of marketing for Bart Ehrman. We appreciate your engagement and interest in Dr. Robyn Walsh's appearance on our channel. We'd like to kindly request that comments remain focused on the fascinating insights she shared during the interview. Dr. Walsh is a highly accomplished scholar, holding a Ph.D. in Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean and serving as an Associate Professor at the University of Miami. We're delighted to have her expertise contributing to our discussions. Let's continue the conversation with respect for her intellectual contributions and impressive scholarship. Thank you!
Sorry, I didn’t notice any “fascinating insights”. I only heard a lot of talking around the subject. I didn’t hear the subject actually addressed.
Yeah, true
Interesting--your comment is not doing the very thing you ask us to do.
She is also very pretty
@@bloopyscoopy3141you can’t be serious
Please keep us updated on whether Bart finds the Holy Grail.
If it ends up being anything like Mrs. Davis, for God's sake, Bart: please don't drink from it!
I've already got one. It's verra nice.
I like Bart Ehrman, but I love listening to Megan Lewis.
Has she physically transitioned yet? She's clearly more man than woman. I bet she does her "husband" with a strap-on, considering PIV to be oppressive.
I agree. The only thing that deters me from listening to Bart Ehrman, whose books have taught me so much about first-century Christianity, is the brief bursts of (nervous?) laughter that so repeatedly interrupt the flow of his words. Megan Lewis, though, draws him back quickly into a more fluid, less choppy approach, and I can listen (and learn!) to their conversations from beginning to end. It’s been such an improvement over Bart’s solo performances! 👍
I would love if they switched seats and she talk about her field of study and knowledge.
What perplexes me is how Megan is still a believer with the research her husband and her have done. My wife is a believer also, but she's not an assyriologist, nor is her husband. I do like her approach and open mindedness though.
@@JayBandersnatchPart of me wonders if there is a physiological component to belief? That we all are wired differently and that for most people, as Hume pointed out in an almost direct reference to Thomas Paine, there is an emotional component that can override logic? So no matter how much we can point out flaws, a person will be physically unable to let go?
This reminds me of Mayim Balick (spelling?) from Jeopardy and Big Bang Theory and how, dispite her being a PhD level neuroscientist with mountains of literature on the subject, still justifies believing in her own higher power. I don’t know…I could be mistaken, but I just think we are wired for it and it may be impossible for most people to give up. This is NOT a slam on believers (unless they are fundamentalists and fanatical).
Megan's variety of eyewear always adds some visual interest.
I find Dr. Walsh’s views highly insightful and helpful. When reading the gospels (as well as other religious literature), I usually think: Creative writers at work.
Dr. Ehrmans vast knowledge and expertise is endlessly fascinating, and keeps me hooked and coming back for more - the occasional guest keeps things interesting...and of course Megan's a gem! (Love the glasses).
Robin Walsh is awesome thanks for having her on the podcast
What a gift!!! As a pastor and person who went to seminary and LOVED this stuff, I am really loving the opportunity to be back in the weeds, if you will. Thanks!
Very insightful! Thanks Megan and Robyn!
To all the distracted guys: turn off the screen and stay with audio only 😂
Great episode. Love Dr. Walsh’s perspectives!
Dr. Ehrman is always a win!
But Meghan Lewis 😍, you are also a win!!
Dr. Walsh 😍, thank you for your time. This was nice and insightful. You're a win too!!!
Temple tantrum! 10/10. I really enjoyed this discussion and Dr. Walsh's ideas.
IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN A HOUSE OF PRAYER FOR ALL PEOPLE 👀❓️.
Dr. Walsh brings so much to the table. I could listen to her all day, so glad she’s on the podcast today
Those glasses confuse my brain.
Great interview! Both participants, are so easy to listen to. I always wonder where Megan gets her glasses. Such unusual! Love them!
We should bring on a glasses company as a sponsor! haha
maybe a facebookgroup dedicated to Megans glasses....
@@Duvan_och_Hoken Sign me up!
I'm a new subscriber and I wish I had come across this sooner. It would be good if more people exposed themselves to this kind of approach to these subject matters. very enjoyable and informative.
I also enjoy the range of glasses that Megan wears in different vids. the pair in this vid are fascinating.
I don’t understand why the idea that any author isn’t influenced by other authors is so taboo.
Particularly for the gospels this is because they are supposed to be inspired by God and a part of God's divine revelation. To say that these are influenced by Greco-Roman sources and that the gospels probably also borrowed from them almost feels like a type of apostasy and heresy if you come from a more fundamental or Evangelical point of view. Others though, may also still say that the reason that Greco-Roman text may also look like gospel text is because demons influenced and inspired the Greco-Roman text to look that way. I think that that is what Justin Martyr argues in his apologies from the 2nd Century and I have also heard personal friends use that very same argument.
Christianity is a greek-roman cult with a jewish flavour. We have only greek sources. They are written by greek authors for a greek audience using tropes from greek literature.
Robyn gives a good insight of how contemporary filters can stand in the way of a more factual understanding, how it REALLY was then! Her approach of the material is really refreshing and therefore her contributing has added value. At least to me.
I would love to share a pot of tea with these scholars! They are absolutely fascinating. Great chemistry!
This one was so good. I feel it tells something about how the formation of religion happened, the coexistence of elites and commoners, their folk literature. The Greek and other literature mixed up with scholastic skills of early apostles and forming a new religion! It shows how religions form, roughly. How it mingles with local culture and becomes mainstream through time. Then we are told to believe it as the only authentic narrative. Your analysis was great. I'm glad we are not making new religions now haha.. I might get the red book only if I could afford it :pp Thanks againn
Have you followed these ufo fanatics? They are definitely creating a new religion!
MAGA is a religion in the making.
18:44
"I'm glad we are not making new religions now haha.. " My boyfriend made a new religion. But he won't tell me about it. 😢
How about Scientology? Mormonism? Materialism? Communism? Scientism? Each ticks all the boxes of religious conceptualization of existence... a creation hypothesis, a "priest class" who tells you about what's real, and instructions on how you fit into it all.
“The Temple Tantrum” OMG! That’s the name of your next book Doc! Don’t know how many people have unpacked that part of the NT, but it deserves some unpacking 😊.
It would be almost impossible to over estimate the depth of insight that Dr Walsh brings to the subject... Thanks so much for the interview!! :)
Interesting new ideas. Megan did a fantastic job introducing us to Robyn's views, would love to listen to part 2 with Bart pushing back from his "german" perspective!
Very good scholarship from both ladies; thx!
Fantastic conversation. Interesting scholarship. I've heard for so long about the Jewishness of Jesus, Paul and early Christianity that seeing the gospels through a classics/Greco-Roman lens feels like a big switch...but I'm listening. This interview passed the Bechdel test with flying colors too, which was nice
Fantastic. Thank you both.
Very interesting conversation.
Hey Megan. I'm amazed at the variety and multiplicity of your spectacles. Are you unfortunate and breaking 😢 them and having to replace them or........
Fascinating approach! So much food for thought. I really appreciate looking at the literature as if nothing is known about it and then proceeding as with any newly discovered ancient text. I am now a retired pastor, but I have read mountains most of my life endeavoring to find out what actually happened and who were these people. It seems to me, without discovering more ancient texts that give pointed information, we may never know. Yet it is so important because these stories have had a huge impact on all of history that followed, on lives of real people, on hopes and fears, of control and freedom, etc.
We know as it is obvious for everyone who read Homer, Euripides, Vergil and knows greek philosophy. Greek authors produced greek-roman literature in greek for a greek audience. This is obvious for every greek in the 2nd century. The problem in when Americans in the 21 century imagine it is their story.
Robyn is my favourite. Loved her book
Love those glasses, Megan
Very refreshing approach to the text.
Megan’s quirky glasses! I couldn’t focus 😄
I had the same problem!
There are audio only formats on other platforms, y'know.
I was reminded of the position held by scholar and translator Jacob Rabinowitz, who emphasizes in his rewarding 1998 book 'The Unholy Bible: Hebrew Literature of the Kingdom Period', that the Jews never lived in isolation from the larger sociocultural sphere of the eastern Mediterranean, and were significantly influenced by Greek thought and literature in the centuries of Hellenization throughout the Near East. This was evidenced not only by the Septuagint that came out of Alexandria, being the Greek translation of Hebrew scripture that incorporated new texts originally composed in Greek, but also Biblical texts originally composed in Hebrew which yet are suffused with ideas and positions rooted in Greek philosophy. Rabinowitz presents and translates Ecclesiastes and Job among his examples.
Rabinowitz's overriding conclusion is that ancient Judaism and its texts developed and existed in relation with the surrounding cultures of the eastern Mediterranean, and modern attempts to understand and honestly represent the tradition should acknowledge this.
Ancient Judaism is a confusing term because Judaism is actually slightly younger the Christianity. Confused? Allow me to explain, the movement, religion or whatever you want to call it that came into Place through Moses in the wilderness and guided the Israelites and then the kingdom of Judah and later Judaea was not Judaism. If you were to put a similar label on it it would be Levi-ism . Judah was a tribe. They ruled from David onwards but all religious matters, instructions and teachings were not only exclusively administered by the tribe of Levi, but that was there inheritance through the Law of Moses. Everyone else got land, Levites got service to the Most High, Judaism only became the de facto when the Temple was destroyed and the Levites have been reduced to singers and have the dubious honour of the first Torah reading everything else has been usurped by Jewish Rabbis and the beginnings of that is rooted in the influence of Greek thought or Hellenisation and the opposition to it which ended up producing two schools of thought Pharisees and Sadducees but if you read the travails of Moses any tribe outside the Levites that tried to gain religious power were destroyed and any Levites that tried to appropriate the priesthood that was only for the sons of Aaron, Moses brother were destroyed. The Jewish legend or mid rash that says that the Talmud, the oral law they are obsessed with came through Moses also, if it started in those times it was started by a bunch of Jewish (tribe of Judah) elders complaining in the tent, ‘let’s go back to Egypt this Moses is going to get us killed and what’s with the funny hats?’.
@@aural_supremacy The cult of Iesuos is a greek fueled movement that is a typical greek merge with a local belief system. So what we have is competing greek-roman literature using greek tropes from Homer, Vergil, Euripides and greek philosophy mixed with some jewish ideas.
Dr. Walsh is an amazing scholar. Love to learn from her. Entertaining
I love how Robyn links the Germanic folk tales and Brothers Grimm to the folk tales of the early Christians, Romans and Greeks. And she taught me a new word that I can work with as a writer "Paradoxography". Brilliant! Thanks, Robyn and Megan!
Great interview! Cannot recommend Dr. Walsh‘s Paul course highly enough
Will there be an audio version of Dr. Walsh’s new book?
Meghan's glasses are making me go cross-eyed.
When Dr Walsh speaks, I listen. Her new course is worth it, fellow scholars.
Already signed up for the ‘conference’ during Bart’s broadcast on Sunday.
Thanks Murph!
Love this. It's badly needed to bring a more Classical perspective on these books, because so many New Testament scholars only know Greek from studying Koine "New Testament" Greek which has led their translations and understandings to be circularly "theological." Yes, Pneuma can be translated (and usually was, in Classical texts ) translated as words other than "spirit" as Dr. Walsh says here!
Thank you.
It's not fair to the rest of us mortals that beings exist as breathtakingly beautiful and otherworldly brilliant as these two.
I have her book in my cart! Can't wait to read!
I loved this. Why wasn't the book title in the notes?
Excellent TY so much
Thank you
Excellent . Thank you !
Meghan Lewis and her AWESOME glasses!
Them Glasses are Banging! I Love them❤️
I love Bart, I love Robyn Faith Walsh, and I REALLY love Megan’s glasses!
And why not the conference link in the notes?
Megan's glasses are great!
English glasses rule the waves ! ;)
These two ladies are awesome!!!...👍🤔🤗✨🤟😎...
Walsh makes an interesting point. We approach the Bible as the story of one of the most popular religions on the planet. When it was written, Christianity was a Jewish cult. The majority of people in the second century would have thought of Christianity in the same way as we think of fringe cults today.
That is true. I also think that early christanity attracted my talented people who laid the theology and this religion became mainstream.
It is a greek-roman cult with a jewish flavour. We have greek-egyptian merge gods and Iesous is the jewish-greek variant.
Great episode as usual but, I just have to say: Your new glasses are awesome. 😃👓
Megan, are you reselling your frames every week at a mark-up and giving the proceeds to charity? I’ve watched dozens of episodes already and I swear I have never seen you wear the same pair of glasses twice… and they’re eye-catching every single time!
Which other text in koine greek from the period is most similair to the gospels?
Here in Hawaii God has waved his hand and Exempted all churches from trash pick-up fees another great example is they'll form an exempt organization and never paid taxes net profit after they steal every dollar they can out of the exempt Foundation
And we all ask; why does God need money? 😏
@@bubbercakes528you cannot worship God and mammon (money)…. But give as much mammon to God as possible
Where does Megan get her glasses I MUST know.
What's the betting the holy grail he's after is Cornwall's best pasty?
Your glasses are giving me crazy eyes.
Tqvm 😅
Okay...I just started watching. I don't want to miss saying this though... *_those eyeglasses are boss, Megan!_* Love them.
So my critique if you can call it that concerns paradoxology. I will preface the critque with this. We cannot be absolutely certain when editing occurred to the gospels. Although now it seems likely that Luke is second century and bits and pieces of the gospel of John are being added in the third century. Having said that.
Paradoxollogy? Seriously. Most of what we have on this genre is after the third century. The only exception to this is On Marvelous things Heard, which is more or less a dirty laundry list of things added to a presumptive Aristotle, officially called Psuedo-aristotle and widely considered psuedepigraphy.
I wish Robyn would go into more detail about subversive biographies, both extrabiblical and biblical.
What I see in the gospels are stories that pushback on the pagan gods' powers attributed to them. The gospels give their character magical powers that are equal to the many ancient gods people were very fond of. It's also obvious they used a great deal of stories from more ancient writers like Homer, changing bits here and there and repurposing them for their purpose. Also, there were lots more written than the 4 in the NT.
"there were lots more written than the 4 in the NT"
So true! And I wish they would get more attention. After all, the 4 were only differentiated from those others and given a uniquely special authority after more than 200 years had passed and they had undergone numerous revisions. It seems inappropriate to approach the subject of early Christianity as if all those other writings weren't also pivotal in shaping and expressing the views of the people at that time.
@@fepeerreview3150 That's not really true though. There were certainly other Gospels, but all the evidence is that they were all later and usually more fanciful as time went on. Even in the earliest references that we can trace to the canonical 4, they're clearly seen as the most important and thus would always have had more effect on shaping the growing religion. Formal canonization was later, but just reflected what had already been long understood.
@@jeffmacdonald9863 Every single source claims to be the only authority. So John showed how false the others were as did every other single author. They considered themselves as the ONLY true story. So to compile stories must have been done long after the death of them.
Woah I love those glasses
They are amazing!
This approach on the gospels must be applicable on the Quran too?
Would love to hear Bart’s thoughts on this these views.
"I was raised Catholic, I was a terrible student."
Too bad we weren't in the same school, hah!
P.S. Megan your glasses look absolutely ridiculous this time.
An unwelcome distraction. Speaks of a mental/psyhological imbalance.
My hope was to find an answer to the question: Is the New Testament Actually Greek Literature? Yes, No or Maybe. At the end of the video I am more confused that ever about this. The discussion is not structured and has no answer.
I agree. I'm going to have to actually read her book instead of relying on YT interviews. She leaves a lot unsaid about her findings. Probably intentional to stoke interest.
I felt like the answer was clear enough, but it depends on your criteria for whether a question is answered. If you want a firm “yes” or “no”, you should avoid any academic topics, since such plain answers are only available for base principles. For complex cultural processes among the vast variety of human activities and interactions in the real world, the answer is “both,” which means the purpose of this discussion is to understand how our views of the subject matter change when we tentatively accept the proposal that the answer is “yes.”
@@davidk7529 I do not think so. After 2000 year of studying the NT we should be able to answer to this question. Probably some other people can answer. Not the lady in the video. As regarding academic topics, this channel is so appreciated due to the fact that can transmit clear ideas and messages to the people in cases of complex Biblical texts. Of course the answer is not 100% sure but within a confidence interval a specialist may say YES or NO. The NT has 27 books and the authors are anonymous except the 7 letters of Saint Paul. My expectation was to do at least a sort of literary analysis of the 4 Gospels, Acts and Revelations. The Letters are probably difficult to interpret from the point of Greek language but not impossible and many interesting ideas could emerge. Instead we have learned a lot about how difficult the text is, about German Romantic era and so on.
Intriguing conversation! I like her rebellious approach! -- Consistent with the Digital Hammurabi motto "How do you know that?"
For clarification, on the question of Gospel authors' relationship to a community (or communities), is it plausible to assume that one of their main sources on the life of Jesus was oral traditions circulating in Christian communities? And wouldn't Christian communities be their likely intended audience?
If so, how much or how little does Robyn Walsh think this relationship influenced their writings? And is the idea Robyn is challenging simply the notion that the Gospel authors didn't have their own perspective or agenda apart from, or above and beyond, the Christian circles? And so, is her goal exploring how the wider Greco-Roman culture influenced them, and how this influence has been overlooked? Sounds very interesting! It is certainly something I haven't thought about much. I've got homework to do!
I think she “over-corrects” to a pretty significant degree but you have a good read on why she’s an important scholar. Essentially, emphasizing the way Greco-Roman literary conceits influenced the construction of these texts.
In answer to your question yes, you are spot-on. If you haven't read book one of Livy's histories, then I highly recommend that. You will be unable to not notice how the Ascension of Romulus mirrors Jesus Ascension in the gospel of Matthew. And yet Livy wrote approximately 100 years before Matthew did. I think this type of analysis is what Robin and others are getting to.
These "communities" were at best people showing up sometime or move on to other religions or take part in several at a time. They jnew nothing about anything and have some hearsay. We have greek authors who write for a greek audience in greek using tropes from Homer, Vergil, Euripides and grerk philosophy. It is a typical merge cult and here is greek-jewish god mix as we have greek-egyptian god mix.
I’d trade every manuscript of the Bible for one new Sappho poem.
Holy crap those glasses make me dizzy😂
An interesting talk though it would be interesting to get Bart's view, Does it affect his models / interpretations? History is an arts subject and not a science where you decided decisively between 2 hypotheses. You get these different schools of scholars and there is no clear winner, (I started to feel queasy when studying OT literature and hearing about Black or liberation theology etc )
Robyn's approach sounds promising ... does it mean they should ditch research based on communities or are the Arts pluralistic?
I’ve tried to start some discussions here but nobody is biting 😁
I don’t think you can ditch the community model because even if you assume the author is an outsider writing these texts solely for profit (which Walsh doesn’t) you’d still have to ask, “profit from whom”? Any argument that the intended audience isn’t Christ groups is ultimately going to fail because of the nature of these texts. Consider the juicy gossip that must have been going around about this strange-to-the-point-of-absurdity demigod and his followers - yet we see none of that.
Mark itself has a lot of issues later writers felt compelled to correct, but the best explanation for those issues is that it presupposed belief from the people who interacted with it. Similarly imo the strongest reading about Simon, Alexander and Rufus, is always going to be the face-value one: that they were members of a community for whom the literature was written to engage with.
With any text we have to ask questions about the social, cultural, political motivations for its creation. And from this question, the discussion about Christian communities arises. Even from a profit-based perspective, they are “the market”.
I think Robyn’s model is entirely unidirectional, just in the opposite direction the model she’s critiquing is. This is to say: Jesus’s story isn’t being dictated to Christ groups by these authors, nor is it being dictated to authors by these Christ groups!
😮 My alma mater. She must be new there!
I apologise for being blunt, but the Elton John glasses theme is really starting to get to me…
❤
The human brain/genome really has very few (repetitive) tropes, motifs and themes it responds to. Religion has branded the most powerful ones, eg, life after death, etc. It is worthwhile for anyone working with story telling and behavior, inlcu biz folks, artists etc - to dig into the sources.
The academic professionals are doing us alla services to uncover how these magical-religious stories were cobbled together. I am studying Dr. RFW's book and others closely.
Well o was here ao i dont think i require further information. Merci
Must. Buy. Book.
Love the glasses Megan
❤❤❤❤❤
Yeah Robyn is so very pretty 🤩
how can i not watch this🙂
She’s really smart and pretty 😍
Robyn is indeed🤩
Megan's husband stole the Holy Grail when he was here last time and now Bart is away looking for him.. great episode once again! Nice glasses Meg.. we approve that also 😄
13:40 - Maybe the early 1900s expositors had the attitude "I do want to seek truth, but we mustn't offend the church too much".
Is there a Coin B Greek?
hahaha
Please explain the joke to us lay folk 🥺
@@davidk7529 the New Testament was written in Koine Greek. This is a dialect of Greek used by the common people. This is opposed to Ionic Greek which things like Homer were written in and had a more complicated grammer. The joke is that Koine is pronounced in the US as KOY-nay which sounds like coin A; and if there is a coin A, does that imply the existence of coin B?
Isn't it the coin's backside ?
THAT would "B"
a telling
TAIL !
:D
Bart…Bart…Bart who???
Omg sine wave glasses. I need a pair. Both of you bring real scholarship to the table and I don’t mean to imply anything by such a superficial comment but I teach electricians and think the glasses are rad.
I really want to know if there’s a story behind the frames changing every week, and I’m hoping it involves reselling them to fans for a mark-up that goes to charity 🥰
Its for comparison. As i said its an experiment. Why would tou think it was done?
No cause as Nietzsche said "it's not even good Greek". The lacking of literary quality points to the fact that literary quality was not the goal of the authors. It was instead a message to the masses.
👏👌😊
One other important aspect I disagree with - the urge to place an overwhelming emphasis on “The Author”, which is itself an antiquated and romanticized conceit! And with the gospels this is especially dangerous - for example, Mark Bilby argues each gospel has 2 or 3 distinct layers of composition over a period of 50ish years. Luke being an especially powerful candidate for this conceptualization.
Sorry Megan, but those glasses are giving me motion sickness.
Great interview! I realize Professor Robyn has to detach her faith biases from her scholarly studies but, setting aside the literary aspects of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, I would be interested to hear what she thinks about the central theme that a common Judean man had challenged the Pharisees and Sadducees on the very real potential to replace Roman-appointed Herodian kings with that of someone entirely Jewish. I don't see that as being an idea that is out of the realm of political possibilities.
The second challenge by Jesus to the Pharisees and Sadducees was his claim that they were practicing demonism -- not Judaism -- a point that seemed to find widespread agreement among the Jewish population.
Jesus proved his point that instruction in the first two commandments of the Law was not being delivered to the populace by the Jewish authorities. When Jesus began teaching the Jews how it was they were to perform the first and second commandments, they followed him by the droves because they never knew how to exhibit their love for God or how to love their neighbors. Once the Jews began putting Jesus' teachings into practice, following the first two commandments, their behaviors attitude and demeanor changed, and they consciously made those changes themselves.
Jesus' followers then looked like a different kind of civilized group of people that everyone else around them could see.
Jesus was always respectful to the authorities, but he openly criticized them about their assumed station in life and lack of religious performance. They simply were not performing their jobs satisfactorily.
Jesus taught the common man how to successfully challenge political authorities.
What credible evidence do you have that this "Jesus" actually existed? Remember, claims are not evidence.
Were is Bart, looking for the Holy Grial... Monty Python?