At 1:10:30 it was my favorite philosopher, Epicurus: "Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
Great interview and glad it was released on my birthday. :) Thanks Michael Shermer for the great interviews and thanks Bart Ehrman for making New Testament history available to the average man.
A fascinating, enjoyable conversation between these two experts that starts to veer off the rails only when they descend into matters of contemporary electoral politics, naming names.
I love you both guys, you are really enriched my mind with knowledge. Dr . Shermer & Dr. Ehrman, all respect and appreciation for your honesty and strictness you put on yourself to give us highly purified authentic speech. My Best wishes.
*53:10** if you include all peoples of the book; it's a little nuts.* & 2B is pretty good. & include the masonic pagen heavy influenced (or mormon etal). it is all our known human-y history & present. like it or not. cry. gr8 interview. hes always good. hope youve gotten better at audio shermer. (= gr8 vid. JC
May i ask you? How did you come across Bart Erhman? Because over 2 years ago, i came across Bart . And he wasn't a thing back then. I think he was / is the diamand in the rough. Of all sides of Christianity and for religions, in general.
It's argued that Paul had no inkling of a real Jesus by how he wrote about Jesus, that his Jesus was ethereal and speaking to him as a voice. He did not relate any experiences, even second-hand, about a man behind the myth walking the earth and doing things. So, how can Paul be used as a source to testify to the existence of Jesus? I don't buy this "he knew Jesus' brother" argument from Bart. He mentioned a "James, the brother of the Lord" in Galatians. Who is to say this is even truthful and genuine? Who is to say that Paul, assuming he was being honest, was not hoodwinked? For crying out loud, you will not find a bigger bunch of liars and bullshitters than people establishing and leading a cult.
And then Bart goes on to point out that historians will not make statements and claims that other historians will not agree with, that they share various assumptions. I think this could be used to explain why Jesus is widely considered as historical by historians - too many of them do not question it and will be attacked for doing so. Also very importantly, the evidence for the negative is not necessarily compelling enough to allow a historian to argue convincingly enough to change historians' views on the matter. Dr. Carrier does a great job explaining the evidence for Jesus being mythical rather than historical, but what he has to go on is not compelling enough to make other people, especially historians, slap themselves on the forehead and say, _Of course! Why didn't I see that?_ No, it's just enough to cast doubt on the historicity of Jesus. It's not conclusive, and so historians will generally shy away from it entirely and go with the safe assumption.
ALSO, Bart is ignoring many clues in the scriptures themselves. Talking about the crucifixion, for instance, he assumes that people of the time were trying to come up with a theologically comfortable answer to how and why Jesus was crucified. Yet there are indications in the gospels that the story was allegorical from the get-go and actually referred back quite artfully to older traditions. Barabbas (a name meaning "son of the father"!) was released while Jesus was sacrificed, which mimicked the practice of heaping sins on a scapegoat which was then set free, while a symbolically innocent goat was sacrificed. He is also ignoring so much else, the solar imagery surrounding Jesus and the prevalence of sun worship at the time that included other such figures who symbolically died and were resurrected, which was representative of how the sun appears to die and be resurrected every year at Winter Solstice. So yeah, I can see why atheists "attack" Bart and Michael on the historicity of Jesus. They may be a little ungracious about it, I don't know, but there is significant information here that is being completely ignored or overlooked by these guys. I want to see these things be addressed by the "mainstream," which Bart Ehrman represents here.
If I told Bart I met a guy back in my hippie days who claimed to be the brother of one of the aliens who landed at Roswell, would he start believing in the Roswell aliens?
Paul said he met James and Peter. There’s no motivation to lie, and besides that, Josephus wrote that Jesus’ brother James was executed. Crucifixion was not theologically comfortable. It was the most humiliating experience anyone could go through.
You never met the guy who told Paul he was Jesus' brother. You have no idea what motivation he had to do anything. That's why hearsay evidence is not admissible in a court of law, and why real historians don't accept it either. Crucifixion was entirely in keeping with the "Suffering Servant" motif in Isaiah, which Christians mined extensively for quotes to take out of context.. The more humiliation, the more holiness accrues.
It's always interesting to listen to Prof Erhman. I am still trying to look for a good answer to his question: If God had really written a Book, why didn't care to keep it intact for us. No one among his debaters and critics William like Graig, James White, Bass, Price, etc have come with an answer. If any good believer could help me here, I'll be thankful.
Dauharry Rahman: Yep, that is what I have always wondered. Why would an all-knowing, intelligent entity leave a book to explain everything? Makes no sense.
Bart, I'm listening to your discussion of a starting point of Christianity where there are perhaps only 20 people who were followers and at that point didn't even call themselves Christians yet. By the way, they called themselves Nazarite, a small group that had split off from the Nazoraean sect, and not Christian. I'm thinking that if there were that few people, they hadn't had enough time to travel the distances to the churches, or establish them. Seven churches is an exaggeration, or even would go so far as to say an invention to make a reason for writing the 13 letters, 6 of which were dropped and 7 survived. Peter was probably one and only one follower Paul wrote to. That said, my feeling is that Peter and Paul were proto Peter and Paul. This is to say, there did exist Peter and Paul, but they were what the early church fathers would want to forget, because after them were written long letters to seven churches!! But they decided not to forget them, but to write in their name. What I'm saying is that Clement 1 expanded on their correspondence in the next century out of necessity. Irenaeus polished up Clement's expansions. Of course neither Clement or Irenaeus wanted anybody to know they were forgers of Peter and Paul. They didn't want anybody to know that they had "added a little leaven" to the original story which was very limited source material! They needed more discourse to explain the religion, so that's why they did it.
Your ignorance is showing. Carrier's PhD is in History, with an emphasis on philosophy, especially the philosophy of science of the ancient Mediterranean world. And, no, if a person hasn't actually studied religion, he or she is not an expert. But I suppose, not having any degrees yourself, you are unfamiliar with real scholarship.
Jake Kershaw Carrier has called Shermer a rapist and/or a sleaze while he himself has been accused of sexual harassment. So I don't think they will be talking to each other any time soon.
I love Michael and Bart both, and I would very much like to be able to spend a couple of hours with them to tell them that I DO have an explanation for suffering in the world (tho it would take too long to go into here.) What I'm more wanting to focus on for now is what their view of reality might be. Correct me if I'm wrong but I suspect that self-confessed "atheists" like Michael must be materialist in their world view - meaning they must believe that all there is, ultimately, is the material universe and its contents, and all there is to humans is their material bodies and conditions or properties that are explained purely by the existence and functioning of their bodies. (As Daniel Dennett would say, consciousness is merely what brains, or neurones, do.) In contrast, I believe that there is an underlying level of existence upon which our apparent world and its populations (human and others) are implemented as virtual realities, something like the virtual reality of a computer game and its "greater" reality of the hardware platform on which it is implemented. My proposed model works on the belief that there is a more REAL level of existence, which equates to the God being of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. I say equates to but there are a lot of differences; I too find a lot to disagree with in mainstream religions, even the more liberal versions of them, and I completely sympathise with anti-religious commentators like Michael who express frustration at many or even all religious beliefs, which to many scholars must be seen as untenable. All I want to say here is that, from the viewpoint of a model in which the apparent world is a mere virtual projection or manifestation, suffering assumes an eminently explainable phenomenon. The existence of a Jesus, more or less along the lines indicated in the Bible, becomes much more believable. And the Bible itself assumes much greater legitimacy than Bart or Michael would allow. Thanks very much for posting this video.
According to Theodor Mommsen, in the first century C.E. there were no fewer than 1,000,000 Jews in Egypt, in a total of 8,000,000 inhabitants; of these 200,000 lived in Alexandria, whose total population was 500,000. Adolf Harnack (Ausbreitung des Christentums, Leipzig, 1902) reckons that there were 1,000,000 Jews in Syria (which included Lebanon) and the areas east of the Euphrates at the time of Nero in 60's AD, and 700,000 in Judea, and he allows for an additional 1,500,000 in other places, thus estimating that there were in the first century 4,200,000 Jews in the world. Jacobs remarks that this estimate is probably excessive.[2] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jewish_population_comparisons Ignoring Persia that MIGHT be somewhere between 1 in 10 to 1 in 5 people in the Roman Empire was Jewish in the 1st Century A.D. About 20 of whom split to become Rabbinical Judaism (the rest 'becoming' Christian presumably).
There's a lot discussion on the origins and evolution of christianity but the theme is kept isolated as if it has grown on his own without the immense and real influence of other concurrent and past religions and mythological beliefs in the ancient world. Christianity did not evolve isolated from other mythological influences and religious thinking of the time, especially the significant influence of Egyptian, Persian and Sumerian mythology. Although Dr. Ehrman briefly mentions mythological beliefs in other religions such as the topic of the resurrection in roman mythology, the fact that they both leave other mythological influences, and astro-theological beliefs in the ancient world out of the question leaves an empty space in a better understanding of the evolution and foundation of christianity and why it gained so much power (apart from being imposed under penalty of death in many places throughout his history) in the history of the western world.
You're almost there, Bart. Not sure how anyone can read Paul's authentic letters without the known interpolations and think he is speaking about a real person in Jesus. Bart, why do you keep calling Peter a disciple? Paul never does.
Bart, please could you get a slightly better narrator for your audio books. Or even better read them yourself if you can find the time? Your voice is so much better, and you know how to pronounce the terminology. Would be greatly appreciated!
I'm one that does not believe Christ existed. Why - Ehrman is relying on old Saul of Tarsus who basically had a VISION of Jesus whilst on the road to Damascus Syria. Plus it was written between 80 and 90 CE. Tell me, what major events of your life do you remember after five decades?
kd1s I hear ya. The way I deal with the existence of a supposed Jesus is that he may have been a real figure who existed back then, but his life as far as the Bible goes was certainly an invention...a legend made to order. That Jesus was completely created out of fairytales and imagination.
1) Paul wrote between the the late 40's and mid-early 60's, definitely not "between 80 and 90 AD" as you claim. 2) Plus, Paul was in contact with Jesus' brother, James, as well as several of the apostles/disciples, including Peter. 3) Even if it were "five decades" (which it was not, it was
I with Hitchens on this; why did they bother lying about Bethlehem if he didn't exist? Wouldn't you just say he was born in Bethlehem and be done with it? The falsity of the story inversely proves they was a rabbi preaching absurd doctrines at that time.
ROMANISM'S JESUS HAS NOTHING IN COMMON WITH TORAH JESUS Jesus of Nazareth was a TORAH believer and condemned ORAL TRADITION aka TALMUD believers (Matthew 15:1-20; Matthew 23:1-39; John 8:43-47). He also condemned the blood sacrificial Temple system, as did the Prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 7:1-34). While Jesus condemned the religious system of his day, Saul of Tarsus reinvented it and created a Gentile version of Judaism. The followers of Jesus saw Saul of Tarsus as an enemy of TORAH and rejected him (2 Corinthians 11:5-15; The Epistle to the Galatians; The Epistle of James).
The problem with the "Historical Jesus" book was that Bart makes a whole series of logical fallacies to use as justification for his claims. This would immediately start to ring ALARM BELLS for skeptics. Bart starts off my telling us he is an historian with a PhD and we should listen to him and not skeptics. Really? But we got the book to listen to the arguments, not to listen to illogical arguments Bart trots out because he has a PhD. There is actually in NO EVIDENCE for Jesus existing. Before reading the book, I didn't have a view either way. After reading the book , because of Bart's continual logical fallacies , I was really starting to think, maybe Jesus didn't exist after all.
Did you read Bart's book? He says there are some stories, so those stories are as good as evidence for him. I dont consider rumors as evidence. What evidence are you referring too ?
Did we read the same book? He wasn't appealing to his PhD as a argument from authority, he was very specifically pointing out that most of the people that are paid to study this topic full time for multiple decades are in a strong consensus that there was a historical Jesus. Even popular anti-theist Christopher Hitchens agrees that Jesus *probably* (because history is based off of probabilities, not certainties) existed, due to the "fabrication of Jesus of Nazareth"; the effort by Christians to pretend that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, even though we know he was born in Nazareth actually proves that there *must* have been some sort of "Jesus" that they were trying to turn into a prophet; because if he didn't exist, why not just have him born in Bethlehem and leave out all the Nazarene stuff? As Hitchens puts it "the very falsity of it, the very fanatical attempt to make it come right suggests that yes, there might have been a charismatic deluded individual wandering around at that time". One is in historical ignorance if they disagree or they better have a very strong case; just as if you were to disagree with leading physicists, your case has to be better than "I don't like his book".
I get so tired of you buffoons that argue against the historical Jesus. We have more evidence for the existence of the Jesus of Nazareth than we do Caesar.
Im curious just how many times and through what kind of times, the stories in the bible, were copied, memorized, translated. Is it not safe to think knowing human error and how good intentions end up, that a great deal can be , just left with holes in them? I am appealing to the critical thinkers like yourselves while skating on thin ice of dismissal, if you perceive I do not appreciate and admire scholars like yourselves. I do very much. It is precisely the scholar Im addressing as well as the boy who heard Adam and Eve for the first time.You are a rich resource reguarding Christian issues, events. Adam and Eve is a love story, ask God. It is a playlist on you tube, begins with a short description, then, " God First" speech with Denzel Washington is the first on the list of many different representations of Adams and Eves , the stories, of each other in God. Each item in the list represents why history , may have dropped some of the first story, and symbolism alone begs the question , whats missing here? Like my question put to me, "where was Adam?" God gave us many gifts. Is it not foolish to assume all the stories are actually, intact? I appeal to you exactly because, you are put with questions in your heart to search for. Thats God. Thank you for your time and attention and I hope you visit my playlist. If God is in conversation, why not start, from the beginning? Thank you . Have a nice day .
Simply not, "tons of sources." Paul, the gospels, and arguably a _single_ reference in Josephus. The argument that Paul knew Jesus' brother ignores the fact that everyone was a "brother in the lord." All christians consider each other brothers. Catholic tradition is explicit that Jesus had no full biological brothers, and this is the oldest tradition that we have. One of the explanations that have been used to explain the passages in Corinthians and Galatians that Dr. Ehrman refers to is that these are _spiritual_ brothers. I personally don't find Dr. Carrier or Price's arguments for mythicism convincing, but at the same time, maybe the best argument that they have is the disingenuousness of those arguing against them. The best argument that Dr. Ehrman has, the argument that he states is the best argument, is a very shaky one. I think Bart is correct, but I don't think he has much of case for his position beyond it just being the simplest explanation. Richard Carrier would argue that it isn't the most likely, but that's longer discussion. The impression that in the relatively short span of 2000 years that people act significantly different in terms of religion is misleading. We do not have a clear distinction between mono- and henotheists _today._ You have lots of people who make pronouncements like Gen. Jerry Boykin did that "my god is bigger than [their] god." Boykin is ambiguous within his statement as to whether there are multiple gods or just one. If you go back and look at Boykin's statements that he made at the beginning of the current war in the Middle East, he talks about their god being smaller and then calls their god (the muslim one, which he sees as distinct from the christian one) an "idol." Are "idols" gods? The distinction here is ambiguous. I don't think most religious people are clear on whether they believe in multiple supernatural beings or just one. Is the jewish god the christian one? The muslim one? The mormon one? If not, are the beings worshiped by these other faiths "gods?" Are they demons or a singular devil? If the argument is that mormons, to take one faith, worship a devil and that Joseph Smith's revelations were from a demon or devil then why not say the same thing about Paul's revelation? How does someone make an argument that Smith's or St. Paul's revelation is more credible than Mohammed's? You simply can't. Everyone accepts the religious traditions that they are born into. In the ancient world, as in the modern one, I suspect that the distinction has more to do with _piety_ than it does with a particular faith. I suspect that in the ancient world that people who worshiped Hercules or Osiris were not regarded as significantly different from each other or from followers of Jesus or Mithras. In modern America, we see catholics as being considered outside the faith of chrisitianity. I would argue that many or most American christians did not consider catholics to be of the same religion prior to John Kennedy. You see the same thing to a lesser degree with Mitt Romney and mormonism. Fifteen years before Romney ran for President most US christians would have considered him to belong to a "cult," and not the faith of mainstream christiainity. When Romney ran though, mormans began to be viewed as much more mainstream. After Kennedy the catholics became "pious;" after Romney, the mormons became accepted as the same. First-century christianity would have been viewed in much the same way that scientology is today. Later it became accepted by the fourth century, and we know that Constantine was a christian, _and_ at the same time, a polytheist who also worshiped Apollo. Dr. Ehrman presents a very traditionalist view of christian history that seems to ignore a lot of complexity. Religious belief is incredibly fungible, and it morphs a great deal over the space of decades and even more so over centuries and millennia. At the same time, people _don't_ change signifcantly over these spans of time. Human beings behave largely in the same ways that they have for at least tens of thousands of years. Bart saying that there weren't communities around "pagan" religions sounds incredibly dubious to me. The whole idea a burnt sacrifice a burnt offering comes from hunter-gatherer tribes congregating in a communal meal after a hunt. We see these behaviors, the burnt offering and the communal meal across multiple cultures and creeds. It's pretty clear that the community that he denies existing _precedes_ religion itself. The community exists prior to the behavior and the behavior exists prior to it being ritualized by religion. Early christian groups are regarded by the larger society of the time in the same way that we regard fringe religious groups today. Think of all the hindu-esque love cults of the sixities. What did everyone assume was going on? _Orgies,_ if you argue that, well, there _were_ often orgies going, that often the pastor/cleric/guru/cult leader _was_ using religion to take advantage of young, fecund female adherents, then I would argue probably the same thing was happening in early christianity. And if you further argue that this couldn't happen in the christian relgion I would point out that it happened at the people's temple and with the branch davidiots, both of which were christian cults. Always amazed at how Bart Ehrman's ideas about what Jesus taught are in line with what Dr. Ehrman thinks. Also, Bill O'Reilly's conception of Jesus's teaching, oddly, sounds very much like what Bill O'Reilly thinks. Even more, coincidentally, Reza Aslan's conception of Jesus, has Jesus thinking pretty much what Reza Aslan thinks. It's almost as if, and sure that these noted historians aren't doing this, it's almost as if they're _projecting_ their own views into their historical analysis. Truly puzzling. God damn, and who's to say that Hillary Clinton is "more christian" than Donald Trump. The Trump supporters, who also identify as christian would say the Trump is more christian than Hillary. What is the objective measure of this???? Who's to say, and it's disturbing as hell to see atheists and agnostics enter this argument, who's to say who's christianity (or islam or mormonism or swedenborganism or whatever) is the _real_ kind. No one, not secularists or any creed or denomination has any right to argue who has the best representation of christianity or religion in general. Drs. Ehrman and Shermer arguing that Hillary is _more_ christain than Trump presupposes that Bart and Mike have some particular insight that allows them to say what real christianity is. Bart may have some relatively unique insight into what early christianity was; he is lettered in the field, but Republican Jesus is as likely as liberal Jesus.
"Bart saying that there weren't communities around "pagan" religions sounds incredibly dubious to me. " I expect it would sound pretty dubious to Philip A. Harland, who has extensively studied such communities. Unlike Bart, he is an actual historian, having Phds in both ancient history and in religious studies. He has both a current blog and an extensive archive of free podcasts at the internet archive. Look for the podcasts that have "Associations" in the title.
"noted historians" Neither Ehrman nor Aslan has a degree in history from any institute of higher learning. In general, religious scholars are not historians. Both these men like to invoke historical method when they talk about the "historical" Jesus, and Aslan has actually called himself an historian ( a claim that has been challenged by actual historians - see his Wikpedia page). Both like to bolster their support of the "historical Jesus" by appealing to scholarly consensus. I note, however, that Ehrman rarely appeals to consensus of historians, just the more general "scholars". The fact is that historians generally don't study religious figures. I doubt that a consensus of actual historians even exists on the question of the historicity of Jesus.
Academia disagrees with you. As i pointed out, Reza Aslan's claim to be a historian is rejected by people with actual Phd. in history. Ehrmann does not specialize in one period of history. Richard Carrier does. David Fitzgerald does. They have actual expertise in using actual historic method. Religious studies programmes do not teach this. Ehrmann specializes in one text, and material relevant to that text. His wife is a Shakespear scholar. I'm sure she studies aspects of Elizabethan England that help understand his work. But that doesn't make her an historian. Neither is Bart.
I think that the Jesus who spoke the words in the Gospel of Thomas was, as it says, the living Jesus. The Gospel of Thomas IS the Q source. And the reason that John was written was to counter Thomas. To portray him as a doubter that came to see the "truth."Which is Hogwash!!! The Jesus in the canonical gospels could not possibly have been a savior for all mankind because of geography and tribal human nature, that and the fact that the man Jesus matters more than his words in the canon. But in Thomas the words are what matters and Jesus could have been anyone, anywhere in the world!
I can only believe that God is with us, while we are against him. God gave us free life and decisions, while "satan?" or whatever to call him. God allowed his control, while we have our free thinking and whatever we feel, within. God seems to be intervening at times, however we seem to strengthen, as people-together, while under traumatic experience. Give that to God's glory.. we don't have much for answers, unless you research as hardcore as Bart Erhman does. We need to research our beliefs, even if it becomes a kick in the gut. Even if truth disagrees with your beliefs. Be calm and allow. I feel lifting the world's inventions off of you, is key. We need to shut down these strict organized, "do what i tell you, believe what i tell you" things we are indoctrinated by. It only helps your ignorance, stuff. We're ignorant while believing higher man. Man lies, investigate real truth. Sorry for my rant onto text!😊
Good talk. Though at 1 hour and 10 minutes I think Bart is too polite. Michael states Jesus wanted us to make a better world in this life. Bart doesn't think that and you can see his discomfort. Bart thinks Jesus was an Apocalyptic teacher and Apocalyptic think the world is past redeeming and god is going to intervene to fix it (I'm simplifying for brevity). Bart squirms but is unwilling to say to Michael that his understanding of Jesus is fundamentally (in Bart's view) wrong so he reframes. Michael's view is a convenient for current political arguments view on what Jesus believed that doesn't square with my (admittedly incomplete and derivative) understanding of the historical Jesus.
At 1:10:30 it was my favorite philosopher, Epicurus: "Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
Great interview and glad it was released on my birthday. :) Thanks Michael Shermer for the great interviews and thanks Bart Ehrman for making New Testament history available to the average man.
A fascinating, enjoyable conversation between these two experts that starts to veer off the rails only when they descend into matters of contemporary electoral politics, naming names.
I love you both guys, you are really enriched my mind with knowledge.
Dr . Shermer & Dr. Ehrman, all respect and appreciation for your honesty and strictness you put on yourself to give us highly purified authentic speech. My Best wishes.
Finally, new Ehrman content!!!
I love Bart! ❤️
Thank you for the interview :)
Really enjoyed this, thanks for uploading
*53:10** if you include all peoples of the book; it's a little nuts.* & 2B is pretty good. & include the masonic pagen heavy influenced (or mormon etal). it is all our known human-y history & present. like it or not. cry. gr8 interview. hes always good. hope youve gotten better at audio shermer. (= gr8 vid.
JC
Great guest! My favorite Bible writer also!
May i ask you? How did you come across Bart Erhman? Because over 2 years ago, i came across Bart . And he wasn't a thing back then. I think he was / is the diamand in the rough. Of all sides of Christianity and for religions, in general.
If only you paid attention to audio. The secret of good video is good audio.
I'm an anti-theist and I love Ehrman. I love both these guys. Thanks for the upload
I’m addicted to Audible too and we can exchange the books we don’t want to keep..
I totally agree with the Waco comparison to early Christianity.
57:00 mysterious ways boys
It's argued that Paul had no inkling of a real Jesus by how he wrote about Jesus, that his Jesus was ethereal and speaking to him as a voice. He did not relate any experiences, even second-hand, about a man behind the myth walking the earth and doing things. So, how can Paul be used as a source to testify to the existence of Jesus? I don't buy this "he knew Jesus' brother" argument from Bart. He mentioned a "James, the brother of the Lord" in Galatians. Who is to say this is even truthful and genuine? Who is to say that Paul, assuming he was being honest, was not hoodwinked? For crying out loud, you will not find a bigger bunch of liars and bullshitters than people establishing and leading a cult.
And then Bart goes on to point out that historians will not make statements and claims that other historians will not agree with, that they share various assumptions. I think this could be used to explain why Jesus is widely considered as historical by historians - too many of them do not question it and will be attacked for doing so. Also very importantly, the evidence for the negative is not necessarily compelling enough to allow a historian to argue convincingly enough to change historians' views on the matter. Dr. Carrier does a great job explaining the evidence for Jesus being mythical rather than historical, but what he has to go on is not compelling enough to make other people, especially historians, slap themselves on the forehead and say, _Of course! Why didn't I see that?_ No, it's just enough to cast doubt on the historicity of Jesus. It's not conclusive, and so historians will generally shy away from it entirely and go with the safe assumption.
ALSO, Bart is ignoring many clues in the scriptures themselves. Talking about the crucifixion, for instance, he assumes that people of the time were trying to come up with a theologically comfortable answer to how and why Jesus was crucified. Yet there are indications in the gospels that the story was allegorical from the get-go and actually referred back quite artfully to older traditions. Barabbas (a name meaning "son of the father"!) was released while Jesus was sacrificed, which mimicked the practice of heaping sins on a scapegoat which was then set free, while a symbolically innocent goat was sacrificed. He is also ignoring so much else, the solar imagery surrounding Jesus and the prevalence of sun worship at the time that included other such figures who symbolically died and were resurrected, which was representative of how the sun appears to die and be resurrected every year at Winter Solstice.
So yeah, I can see why atheists "attack" Bart and Michael on the historicity of Jesus. They may be a little ungracious about it, I don't know, but there is significant information here that is being completely ignored or overlooked by these guys. I want to see these things be addressed by the "mainstream," which Bart Ehrman represents here.
If I told Bart I met a guy back in my hippie days who claimed to be the brother of one of the aliens who landed at Roswell, would he start believing in the Roswell aliens?
Paul said he met James and Peter. There’s no motivation to lie, and besides that, Josephus wrote that Jesus’ brother James was executed.
Crucifixion was not theologically comfortable. It was the most humiliating experience anyone could go through.
You never met the guy who told Paul he was Jesus' brother. You have no idea what motivation he had to do anything. That's why hearsay evidence is not admissible in a court of law, and why real historians don't accept it either.
Crucifixion was entirely in keeping with the "Suffering Servant" motif in Isaiah, which Christians mined extensively for quotes to take out of context.. The more humiliation, the more holiness accrues.
It's always interesting to listen to Prof Erhman. I am still trying to look for a good answer to his question: If God had really written a Book, why didn't care to keep it intact for us. No one among his debaters and critics William like Graig, James White, Bass, Price, etc have come with an answer. If any good believer could help me here, I'll be thankful.
God didnt write the book. There were some historical events and then came the human interpretations of these events.
Thanks. I think that's a reasonable explanation.
Thanks for your kind answer.
Dauharry Rahman: Yep, that is what I have always wondered. Why would an all-knowing, intelligent entity leave a book to explain everything? Makes no sense.
Educating. Thanks!
Bart, I'm listening to your discussion of a starting point of Christianity where there are perhaps only 20 people who were followers and at that point didn't even call themselves Christians yet. By the way, they called themselves Nazarite, a small group that had split off from the Nazoraean sect, and not Christian. I'm thinking that if there were that few people, they hadn't had enough time to travel the distances to the churches, or establish them. Seven churches is an exaggeration, or even would go so far as to say an invention to make a reason for writing the 13 letters, 6 of which were dropped and 7 survived. Peter was probably one and only one follower Paul wrote to. That said, my feeling is that Peter and Paul were proto Peter and Paul. This is to say, there did exist Peter and Paul, but they were what the early church fathers would want to forget, because after them were written long letters to seven churches!! But they decided not to forget them, but to write in their name. What I'm saying is that Clement 1 expanded on their correspondence in the next century out of necessity. Irenaeus polished up Clement's expansions. Of course neither Clement or Irenaeus wanted anybody to know they were forgers of Peter and Paul. They didn't want anybody to know that they had "added a little leaven" to the original story which was very limited source material! They needed more discourse to explain the religion, so that's why they did it.
Please talk to Richard Carrier!
And you think that's how he got his Phd in history? How did you get yours?
Your ignorance is showing. Carrier's PhD is in History, with an emphasis on philosophy, especially the philosophy of science of the ancient Mediterranean world.
And, no, if a person hasn't actually studied religion, he or she is not an expert.
But I suppose, not having any degrees yourself, you are unfamiliar with real scholarship.
Jake Kershaw Carrier has called Shermer a rapist and/or a sleaze while he himself has been accused of sexual harassment. So I don't think they will be talking to each other any time soon.
7:44 If there was no suffering and pain in the world, what would be the point of heaven?
OMG! You should totally have Shermer's name in the title of this video.
VicTheVicar It couldn't get any more there 😄
I love Michael and Bart both, and I would very much like to be able to spend a couple of hours with them to tell them that I DO have an explanation for suffering in the world (tho it would take too long to go into here.) What I'm more wanting to focus on for now is what their view of reality might be.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I suspect that self-confessed "atheists" like Michael must be materialist in their world view - meaning they must believe that all there is, ultimately, is the material universe and its contents, and all there is to humans is their material bodies and conditions or properties that are explained purely by the existence and functioning of their bodies. (As Daniel Dennett would say, consciousness is merely what brains, or neurones, do.)
In contrast, I believe that there is an underlying level of existence upon which our apparent world and its populations (human and others) are implemented as virtual realities, something like the virtual reality of a computer game and its "greater" reality of the hardware platform on which it is implemented.
My proposed model works on the belief that there is a more REAL level of existence, which equates to the God being of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. I say equates to but there are a lot of differences; I too find a lot to disagree with in mainstream religions, even the more liberal versions of them, and I completely sympathise with anti-religious commentators like Michael who express frustration at many or even all religious beliefs, which to many scholars must be seen as untenable.
All I want to say here is that, from the viewpoint of a model in which the apparent world is a mere virtual projection or manifestation, suffering assumes an eminently explainable phenomenon. The existence of a Jesus, more or less along the lines indicated in the Bible, becomes much more believable. And the Bible itself assumes much greater legitimacy than Bart or Michael would allow.
Thanks very much for posting this video.
Carrier vs Ehrman when?
According to Theodor Mommsen, in the first century C.E. there were no fewer than 1,000,000 Jews in Egypt, in a total of 8,000,000 inhabitants; of these 200,000 lived in Alexandria, whose total population was 500,000. Adolf Harnack (Ausbreitung des Christentums, Leipzig, 1902) reckons that there were 1,000,000 Jews in Syria (which included Lebanon) and the areas east of the Euphrates at the time of Nero in 60's AD, and 700,000 in Judea, and he allows for an additional 1,500,000 in other places, thus estimating that there were in the first century 4,200,000 Jews in the world. Jacobs remarks that this estimate is probably excessive.[2]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jewish_population_comparisons
Ignoring Persia that MIGHT be somewhere between 1 in 10 to 1 in 5 people in the Roman Empire was Jewish in the 1st Century A.D.
About 20 of whom split to become Rabbinical Judaism (the rest 'becoming' Christian presumably).
Michael needs to work on his audio
I know you have to pay the bills but a 3 minute add for audible???
There's a lot discussion on the origins and evolution of christianity but the theme is kept isolated as if it has grown on his own without the immense and real influence of other concurrent and past religions and mythological beliefs in the ancient world. Christianity did not evolve isolated from other mythological influences and religious thinking of the time, especially the significant influence of Egyptian, Persian and Sumerian mythology. Although Dr. Ehrman briefly mentions mythological beliefs in other religions such as the topic of the resurrection in roman mythology, the fact that they both leave other mythological influences, and astro-theological beliefs in the ancient world out of the question leaves an empty space in a better understanding of the evolution and foundation of christianity and why it gained so much power (apart from being imposed under penalty of death in many places throughout his history) in the history of the western world.
You're almost there, Bart. Not sure how anyone can read Paul's authentic letters without the known interpolations and think he is speaking about a real person in Jesus. Bart, why do you keep calling Peter a disciple? Paul never does.
Shermer, talk to polymath, Richard Carrier.
Bart, please could you get a slightly better narrator for your audio books. Or even better read them yourself if you can find the time? Your voice is so much better, and you know how to pronounce the terminology. Would be greatly appreciated!
The Lord, Jupiter Olympus (summer - crop production) gives, and the Lord, Jupiter Stygus (winter - food consumption) takes away.
then now could you take a look at Islam now for the other option?
It's a shame Bart had to conduct the interview from inside an aquarium.
I'm one that does not believe Christ existed. Why - Ehrman is relying on old Saul of Tarsus who basically had a VISION of Jesus whilst on the road to Damascus Syria. Plus it was written between 80 and 90 CE. Tell me, what major events of your life do you remember after five decades?
kd1s I hear ya. The way I deal with the existence of a supposed Jesus is that he may have been a real figure who existed back then, but his life as far as the Bible goes was certainly an invention...a legend made to order. That Jesus was completely created out of fairytales and imagination.
Sure but he's not relying on that supernatural account to do so. He rejects all supernatural miracles.
1) Paul wrote between the the late 40's and mid-early 60's, definitely not "between 80 and 90 AD" as you claim.
2) Plus, Paul was in contact with Jesus' brother, James, as well as several of the apostles/disciples, including Peter.
3) Even if it were "five decades" (which it was not, it was
I with Hitchens on this; why did they bother lying about Bethlehem if he didn't exist? Wouldn't you just say he was born in Bethlehem and be done with it? The falsity of the story inversely proves they was a rabbi preaching absurd doctrines at that time.
kd1s Paul wasn’t the first Christian, and he was dead by 80 CE.
ROMANISM'S JESUS HAS NOTHING IN COMMON WITH TORAH JESUS
Jesus of Nazareth was a TORAH believer and condemned ORAL TRADITION aka TALMUD believers (Matthew 15:1-20; Matthew 23:1-39; John 8:43-47). He also condemned the blood sacrificial Temple system, as did the Prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 7:1-34).
While Jesus condemned the religious system of his day, Saul of Tarsus reinvented it and created a Gentile version of Judaism.
The followers of Jesus saw Saul of Tarsus as an enemy of TORAH and rejected him (2 Corinthians 11:5-15; The Epistle to the Galatians; The Epistle of James).
The problem with the "Historical Jesus" book was that Bart makes a whole series of logical fallacies to use as justification for his claims. This would immediately start to ring ALARM BELLS for skeptics. Bart starts off my telling us he is an historian with a PhD and we should listen to him and not skeptics. Really? But we got the book to listen to the arguments, not to listen to illogical arguments Bart trots out because he has a PhD. There is actually in NO EVIDENCE for Jesus existing. Before reading the book, I didn't have a view either way. After reading the book , because of Bart's continual logical fallacies , I was really starting to think, maybe Jesus didn't exist after all.
"There is actually in NO EVIDENCE for Jesus existing."
This is enough to demonstrate the ignorance of your comment... Sorry.
Did you read Bart's book? He says there are some stories, so those stories are as good as evidence for him. I dont consider rumors as evidence. What evidence are you referring too ?
Brom Ponie Read Richard Carrier's book, On The Historicity of Jesus.
Did we read the same book? He wasn't appealing to his PhD as a argument from authority, he was very specifically pointing out that most of the people that are paid to study this topic full time for multiple decades are in a strong consensus that there was a historical Jesus. Even popular anti-theist Christopher Hitchens agrees that Jesus *probably* (because history is based off of probabilities, not certainties) existed, due to the "fabrication of Jesus of Nazareth"; the effort by Christians to pretend that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, even though we know he was born in Nazareth actually proves that there *must* have been some sort of "Jesus" that they were trying to turn into a prophet; because if he didn't exist, why not just have him born in Bethlehem and leave out all the Nazarene stuff? As Hitchens puts it "the very falsity of it, the very fanatical attempt to make it come right suggests that yes, there might have been a charismatic deluded individual wandering around at that time". One is in historical ignorance if they disagree or they better have a very strong case; just as if you were to disagree with leading physicists, your case has to be better than "I don't like his book".
I get so tired of you buffoons that argue against the historical Jesus. We have more evidence for the existence of the Jesus of Nazareth than we do Caesar.
Just leave a comment on where the Commercial stops and the lecture begins, Then I'll fast forward past all of the BS and watch it...
Im curious just how many times and through what kind of times, the stories in the bible, were copied, memorized, translated.
Is it not safe to think knowing human error and how good intentions end up, that a great deal can be , just left with holes in them?
I am appealing to the critical thinkers like yourselves while skating on thin ice of dismissal, if you perceive I do not appreciate and admire scholars like yourselves. I do very much.
It is precisely the scholar Im addressing as well as the boy who heard Adam and Eve for the first time.You are a rich resource reguarding Christian issues, events. Adam and Eve is a love story, ask God. It is a playlist on you tube, begins with a short description, then, " God First" speech with Denzel Washington is the first on the list of many different representations of Adams and Eves , the stories, of each other in God.
Each item in the list represents why history , may have dropped some of the first story, and symbolism alone begs the question , whats missing here?
Like my question put to me, "where was Adam?" God gave us many gifts. Is it not foolish to assume all the stories are actually, intact?
I appeal to you exactly because, you are put with questions in your heart to search for. Thats God.
Thank you for your time and attention and I hope you visit my playlist. If God is in conversation, why not start, from the beginning?
Thank you . Have a nice day .
Simply not, "tons of sources." Paul, the gospels, and arguably a _single_ reference in Josephus. The argument that Paul knew Jesus' brother ignores the fact that everyone was a "brother in the lord." All christians consider each other brothers. Catholic tradition is explicit that Jesus had no full biological brothers, and this is the oldest tradition that we have. One of the explanations that have been used to explain the passages in Corinthians and Galatians that Dr. Ehrman refers to is that these are _spiritual_ brothers.
I personally don't find Dr. Carrier or Price's arguments for mythicism convincing, but at the same time, maybe the best argument that they have is the disingenuousness of those arguing against them. The best argument that Dr. Ehrman has, the argument that he states is the best argument, is a very shaky one. I think Bart is correct, but I don't think he has much of case for his position beyond it just being the simplest explanation. Richard Carrier would argue that it isn't the most likely, but that's longer discussion.
The impression that in the relatively short span of 2000 years that people act significantly different in terms of religion is misleading. We do not have a clear distinction between mono- and henotheists _today._ You have lots of people who make pronouncements like Gen. Jerry Boykin did that "my god is bigger than [their] god." Boykin is ambiguous within his statement as to whether there are multiple gods or just one. If you go back and look at Boykin's statements that he made at the beginning of the current war in the Middle East, he talks about their god being smaller and then calls their god (the muslim one, which he sees as distinct from the christian one) an "idol." Are "idols" gods? The distinction here is ambiguous. I don't think most religious people are clear on whether they believe in multiple supernatural beings or just one. Is the jewish god the christian one? The muslim one? The mormon one? If not, are the beings worshiped by these other faiths "gods?" Are they demons or a singular devil? If the argument is that mormons, to take one faith, worship a devil and that Joseph Smith's revelations were from a demon or devil then why not say the same thing about Paul's revelation? How does someone make an argument that Smith's or St. Paul's revelation is more credible than Mohammed's? You simply can't. Everyone accepts the religious traditions that they are born into.
In the ancient world, as in the modern one, I suspect that the distinction has more to do with _piety_ than it does with a particular faith. I suspect that in the ancient world that people who worshiped Hercules or Osiris were not regarded as significantly different from each other or from followers of Jesus or Mithras. In modern America, we see catholics as being considered outside the faith of chrisitianity. I would argue that many or most American christians did not consider catholics to be of the same religion prior to John Kennedy. You see the same thing to a lesser degree with Mitt Romney and mormonism. Fifteen years before Romney ran for President most US christians would have considered him to belong to a "cult," and not the faith of mainstream christiainity. When Romney ran though, mormans began to be viewed as much more mainstream. After Kennedy the catholics became "pious;" after Romney, the mormons became accepted as the same.
First-century christianity would have been viewed in much the same way that scientology is today. Later it became accepted by the fourth century, and we know that Constantine was a christian, _and_ at the same time, a polytheist who also worshiped Apollo. Dr. Ehrman presents a very traditionalist view of christian history that seems to ignore a lot of complexity. Religious belief is incredibly fungible, and it morphs a great deal over the space of decades and even more so over centuries and millennia. At the same time, people _don't_ change signifcantly over these spans of time. Human beings behave largely in the same ways that they have for at least tens of thousands of years.
Bart saying that there weren't communities around "pagan" religions sounds incredibly dubious to me. The whole idea a burnt sacrifice a burnt offering comes from hunter-gatherer tribes congregating in a communal meal after a hunt. We see these behaviors, the burnt offering and the communal meal across multiple cultures and creeds. It's pretty clear that the community that he denies existing _precedes_ religion itself. The community exists prior to the behavior and the behavior exists prior to it being ritualized by religion.
Early christian groups are regarded by the larger society of the time in the same way that we regard fringe religious groups today. Think of all the hindu-esque love cults of the sixities. What did everyone assume was going on? _Orgies,_ if you argue that, well, there _were_ often orgies going, that often the pastor/cleric/guru/cult leader _was_ using religion to take advantage of young, fecund female adherents, then I would argue probably the same thing was happening in early christianity. And if you further argue that this couldn't happen in the christian relgion I would point out that it happened at the people's temple and with the branch davidiots, both of which were christian cults.
Always amazed at how Bart Ehrman's ideas about what Jesus taught are in line with what Dr. Ehrman thinks. Also, Bill O'Reilly's conception of Jesus's teaching, oddly, sounds very much like what Bill O'Reilly thinks. Even more, coincidentally, Reza Aslan's conception of Jesus, has Jesus thinking pretty much what Reza Aslan thinks. It's almost as if, and sure that these noted historians aren't doing this, it's almost as if they're _projecting_ their own views into their historical analysis. Truly puzzling.
God damn, and who's to say that Hillary Clinton is "more christian" than Donald Trump. The Trump supporters, who also identify as christian would say the Trump is more christian than Hillary. What is the objective measure of this???? Who's to say, and it's disturbing as hell to see atheists and agnostics enter this argument, who's to say who's christianity (or islam or mormonism or swedenborganism or whatever) is the _real_ kind. No one, not secularists or any creed or denomination has any right to argue who has the best representation of christianity or religion in general. Drs. Ehrman and Shermer arguing that Hillary is _more_ christain than Trump presupposes that Bart and Mike have some particular insight that allows them to say what real christianity is. Bart may have some relatively unique insight into what early christianity was; he is lettered in the field, but Republican Jesus is as likely as liberal Jesus.
Brother is used with two different meanings in the Bible.
"Bart saying that there weren't communities around "pagan" religions sounds incredibly dubious to me. "
I expect it would sound pretty dubious to Philip A. Harland, who has extensively studied such communities. Unlike Bart, he is an actual historian, having Phds in both ancient history and in religious studies. He has both a current blog and an extensive archive of free podcasts at the internet archive. Look for the podcasts that have "Associations" in the title.
"noted historians"
Neither Ehrman nor Aslan has a degree in history from any institute of higher learning. In general, religious scholars are not historians.
Both these men like to invoke historical method when they talk about the "historical" Jesus, and Aslan has actually called himself an historian ( a claim that has been challenged by actual historians - see his Wikpedia page). Both like to bolster their support of the "historical Jesus" by appealing to scholarly consensus. I note, however, that Ehrman rarely appeals to consensus of historians, just the more general "scholars".
The fact is that historians generally don't study religious figures. I doubt that a consensus of actual historians even exists on the question of the historicity of Jesus.
Ehrman is specialized in one period of history. So yes, he is a historian too.
No historian is expert in every period of human history.
Academia disagrees with you. As i pointed out, Reza Aslan's claim to be a historian is rejected by people with actual Phd. in history.
Ehrmann does not specialize in one period of history. Richard Carrier does. David Fitzgerald does. They have actual expertise in using actual historic method. Religious studies programmes do not teach this.
Ehrmann specializes in one text, and material relevant to that text. His wife is a Shakespear scholar. I'm sure she studies aspects of Elizabethan England that help understand his work. But that doesn't make her an historian. Neither is Bart.
I think that the Jesus who spoke the words in the Gospel of Thomas was, as it says, the living Jesus. The Gospel of Thomas IS the Q source. And the reason that John was written was to counter Thomas. To portray him as a doubter that came to see the "truth."Which is Hogwash!!!
The Jesus in the canonical gospels could not possibly have been a savior for all mankind because of geography and tribal human nature, that and the fact that the man Jesus matters more than his words in the canon. But in Thomas the words are what matters and Jesus could have been anyone, anywhere in the world!
I can only believe that God is with us, while we are against him. God gave us free life and decisions, while "satan?" or whatever to call him. God allowed his control, while we have our free thinking and whatever we feel, within. God seems to be intervening at times, however we seem to strengthen, as people-together, while under traumatic experience. Give that to God's glory.. we don't have much for answers, unless you research as hardcore as Bart Erhman does. We need to research our beliefs, even if it becomes a kick in the gut. Even if truth disagrees with your beliefs. Be calm and allow. I feel lifting the world's inventions off of you, is key. We need to shut down these strict organized, "do what i tell you, believe what i tell you" things we are indoctrinated by. It only helps your ignorance, stuff. We're ignorant while believing higher man. Man lies, investigate real truth.
Sorry for my rant onto text!😊
There is one God. Jesus Christ did exist as the son of God.
Good talk. Though at 1 hour and 10 minutes I think Bart is too polite. Michael states Jesus wanted us to make a better world in this life. Bart doesn't think that and you can see his discomfort. Bart thinks Jesus was an Apocalyptic teacher and Apocalyptic think the world is past redeeming and god is going to intervene to fix it (I'm simplifying for brevity). Bart squirms but is unwilling to say to Michael that his understanding of Jesus is fundamentally (in Bart's view) wrong so he reframes. Michael's view is a convenient for current political arguments view on what Jesus believed that doesn't square with my (admittedly incomplete and derivative) understanding of the historical Jesus.
Barter Man
To paraphrase Dostoevsky, Bart and Michael want to replace God with themselves.
We already have been since the Enlightenment and humanity is better for it. Get over it and get used to it because were not going away.