Bart Ehrman, a New Testament scholar and Professor of Religious Studies, became convinced of contradictions and discrepancies in biblical manuscripts that could not be reconciled. We discuss his book "Misquoting Jesus" which dives into these and other controversial topics.
Copyright 2023 by Letters to the Sky
Bart Ehrman, a New Testament scholar and Professor of Religious Studies, became convinced of contradictions and discrepancies in biblical manuscripts that could not be reconciled. We discuss his book "Misquoting Jesus" which dives into these and other controversial topics.
Copyright 2023 by Letters to the Sky
Stephan Downes:
Hi, I'm Steven Downes.
Adam Rizvi:
And, I'm Adam Rizvi.
Stephan Downes:
And, this is Letters to the Sky, a podcast about the metaphysical iconoclasts, philosophical visionaries, and religious leaders of the world.
Adam Rizvi:
Whether you consider yourself religious, spiritual, neither or something in between, we invite you to take a deep dive with us down metaphysical rabbit holes, and learn to see your life from a new perspective. Hey Steven.
Stephan Downes:
Hey Adam.
Adam Rizvi:
Well, we're back. Um let's talk a little bit about today's topic. This is a particularly exciting one for me. The name of the book that we're going to cover today is called Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart D. Ehrman. This is super exciting. I think this is one of the authors first books, at least, for the lay, public. I'm going to share a little bit about who this guy is, because I feel it will paint the picture of what we're about to listen to, and really what the book is about, and how it's filtered. Bart D. Ehrman, and if by some amazing miracle Professor Ehrman listens to this at some point, my sincerest apologies for any aspect of your biography that I'm butchering. It's largely from Wikipedia, so you can blame them. Bart D. Ehrman was born in 1955. He's an American New Testament scholar. He focuses on textual criticism of the New Testament, the historical Jesus, the origins and development of early Christianity, and has written and edited 30 books. He is a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and I think the aspect of his life story that is super interesting is that he was a born again fundamentalist Christian as a teenager, and the enthusiasm he had for the religion, and the words of the Bible, I think propelled him to study it formally, in many ways to study the Greek, to study the actual texts, go to college, and study the New Testament. And, in the process of doing so found out how much of the New Testament was changed over time by comparing various manuscripts, and that led him to a sort of a crisis of faith, I think, where he questioned the very foundations of the Word of God that he believed were immutable and inherent in the Bible, and as a result shifted his religious perspectives, and according to Wikipedia, he was a liberal Christian for 15 years, but then, later become an agnostic atheist after struggling with the philosophical problems of evil and suffering. so with that as the background to the book, let's get started. Steven, we have a guest today. Could you tell us-
Stephan Downes:
We do?
Adam Rizvi:
I sure hope we do. Tell us who we have on today.
Stephan Downes:
Our guest today, his name's John Golebiewski, and he is a New Testament scholar and theologian who's rooted in the Roman Catholic tradition. He studied at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, and then, at Weston Jesuit School of Theology, which is currently part of the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry. The focus of John's studies for the past two decades has been on the religions and cultures of the ancient Mediterranean and critical studies of the New Testament, as well as comparative studies across religious traditions, and he currently works as an editor at Shambala Publications in Boulder, Colorado, where he has worked for 10 years, and he actively works to promote the translation of sacred texts, and into religious understanding. John, are you there?
John Golebiewski:
I am here, hi.
Stephan Downes:
John, can you hear me?
John Golebiewski:
I can indeed.
Stephan Downes:
All right, good.
John Golebiewski:
So delighted to be with you guys, thank you so much.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah. We're glad to have you.
Adam Rizvi:
And, reading your bio, I think, it's safe to say you're probably a lot smarter than Stephan and I.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, and we have to bring John in, because neither of us know what we're talking.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, yeah if this lends any degree of credibility it's thanks to you, so thanks John.
John Golebiewski:
If I lend any degree of credibility it will be a miracle.
Stephan Downes:
All right. So um I think we should jump right into kind of a quick analysis of the book, and its key points. Adam, do you want to start with that or...?
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, so like we did in our last episode, Stephan and I, with John's help boiled down three major questions, three top questions that we had while reading this book, and this book is largely about analyzing the text of the New Testament and exploring how it got changed over time by scribes. We landed on three questions that I think are broad enough to allow us to explore the really awesome, and major topics that Professor Ehrman brings up. S without further ado, the first question is where does spiritual and religious authority come from? Is it a text? Is it a person? Is it an experience?
Stephan Downes:
I guess I'm asking a rhetorical question here, but I want to dive in to what the book says, and specifically, in context of Christianity, and I think John, you can chime in here, but my reading of it, Dr. Ehrman goes on to talk about how Christianity is unique along with the ancient religions like Judaism. Well, specifically Judaism in this case, because it is a tradition that's based in text, as opposed to, I guess, not based in text, which for me reading this for the first time, I wasn't aware that that was a thing. You know, i'm someone who grew up in a loosely Christian household, so to speak, and the Bible was certainly a central feature, but I had no idea that it was uniquely central in the scope of ancient Christianity, like historical Christianity and Judaism. In other religions, that wasn't the case, and so, in Christianity, as in Judaism, the authority, the spiritual authority comes from the text. Is that how it's understood in ancient thought, John?
John Golebiewski:
Yeah. It's a bit reductive to say that it's-
Stephan Downes:
Thanks.
John Golebiewski:
... all right, well. I'm sorry my friend. No, what I mean by that is we have, at least Western people traditionally understand Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as the, "Three religions." quote, unquote, of the book that are particularly rooted in the authority of their sacred texts as the fundamental insight on reality, and how one is to live their life, and practice. There is something of a perceived division between that and more Eastern thought of religion as a practice, and that your practice is foremost, and that the texts are there to help you, but what you practice is what your religion is.
Stephan Downes:
Got it.
John Golebiewski:
And, that way of thinking is more traditional to the ancient world than a text-based religion on the whole, as far as the cultures of Europe, and North Africa, and the Near East. Their focuses are on different civic cults, and I use cult in the sense of just like practice ritual practice rather than, okay, here's our sacred texts. Let's all look at it, and try, and figure things out. You have a wide variety of polytheistic perspectives on Buddhist practice and theological vision.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. In the beginning of the, I think the intro of this book, Professor Ehrman says that the polytheistic traditions, for the most part didn't rely on written word, or written texts, and it could be partly because it wasn't available to them at that time, other than like you know cave paintings, or writing in the sand, but Christianity, and Judaism really were religions of the book. Like, that sacred text was there, and available to anyone who had the ability to read at the time.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, and that kind of setting up how Judaism, and Christianity, and then, later Islam are reliant, although, he doesn't talk about Islam, like that's not the focus of this book certainly, but he uses that example to set up the problems that he found, the problems that are inherent with an interpretation of the Bible where, and I'm rather new to Christian theological language, so John, you can help us here, but the idea of an errancy, and of the word being inspired, and when I read that, I took that for a lot of people, and especially, in his background, as someone who was a born again fundamentalist Christian, the words written down in the Bible will take, just put aside for a moment that there are many current versions of the Bible, but there are no errors there, and that they are there, because of the direct will of God. Yeah. They're an errant, there's nothing wrong with those words. So, the entire basis of this religion, and the authority in this religion is on a text that we then go on to, and I think the quote here from Dr. Ehrman is that, "We could go on nearly forever talking about specific places in which the text of the New Testament came to be changed. The examples are not just in the hundreds, but in the thousands." And so, this brings up the question, which is kind of central to the book, and Dr. Ehrman goes on to talk about a lot of this in detail, which we'll get to, is that if your interpretation of spiritual authority is based on a book that is supposed to be perfect, why are there errors in it? And, why are there a lot of errors? And so, is that correct, John? Am I thinking about that along the right lines?
John Golebiewski:
Yeah, basically. Yeah, and we're going to get into what are different sorts of errors and what constitutes an error, and if an error is in there, does it invalidate the authority of the text?
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah.
Stephan Downes:
Great. Should we dive in?
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, I'll do that. I was actually going to that in a little bit.
Stephan Downes:
I know
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, well I think-
Stephan Downes:
Take it away Adam.
Adam Rizvi:
Well, the question that I would like John to dive into a little bit is what do you think constitutes an error? So, it's clear to me when I read this that professor Ehrman was, actually, he says, I think it bears quoting, actually, let me see. He said, "In particular, as I said at the outset, I began seeing the New Testament as a very human book, as opposed to divine." I imagine, when I hear the word human, I feel like he's contrasting it to that, and for me, when he says error, maybe he's referring to when things don't match up, when there are grammatical errors, but there's also maybe errors in narrative, right? Like, he makes a big point to talk about the difference between Mark and Luke, and how Luke depicts Jesus's passion very differently than Mark. Maybe you can go into that a little bit, like how do Mark and Luke differ, but also, what is an error?
John Golebiewski:
Yeah. Well, let's talk about those two things a little bit separately, so we're going to about what constitutes an error, and then, we'll look at that specific example. So as far as what is an error, if you're saying that there are errors in the texts, this presumes that there is some sort of platonic form of what the text is supposed to be. Like, this is the original and Dr. Ehrman very adeptly touches on the problems with that perspective. When you have a text that derives from to some extent oral traditions that were carried on from first disciples, who themselves had different perspectives on what they were seeing, different scribal types of errors later on, just in terms of copying problems, people, scribes, again, down the line who looked at texts, and thought they were correcting errors in the original texts like, "Oh, this person wrote X word when they probably wrote that wrong." Because this is a barely literate society that we're talking about, and then, you have different tiers of quote, unquote, "Theological corrections." where you have folks who are imposing theological positions on the text, writing brand new elements to it later on.
Stephan Downes:
And, these are during times specifically when there wasn't any sort of, I mean, it happened in professional transcription as well, but we're talking about before Christianity was some sort of state religion where there were people actively funding professional copying. We're talking about people who were doing their best out of a service and devotion to the faith, and who aren't trained professionals, right?
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, amateur scribes-
Stephan Downes:
And so, even in that time-
John Golebiewski:
For the first few centuries of tradition, yeah.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, even for BC centuries, yeah, and so, even in that time, there were people who were editing it based on their own theological positions, and there was no sort of professional body of transcribers to correct them.
John Golebiewski:
Yeah, that's right, that's right. So I don't know if I have an answer to whether there could be, or should be an original text that we're working with. I think Dr. Ehrman deals with that throughout the book, and it's something that's hard to land on a definitive conclusion about. I don't think that I can answer that for us here, but we can continue contemplating that as we talk. It's a really interesting thing to think about, and informative, I think, to people for their own faith perspective, or not faith perspective. If you're coming to this from a position of Christian practice or Christian belief, these are topics that I think are enriching to your self understanding, and how you engage with the tradition, and if you're not, it's still worthwhile to think about how a tradition has grappled with its textual basis, and how Christians understand themselves, and we can kind of help each other develop deeper understandings together, but before I move on to the Mark, Luke question, did I cover the error question, or did I drift us off to sea?
Adam Rizvi:
And, no, I agree. I think you did. What I would um highlight is that there're so many different categories of errors that Professor Ehrman talks about, and it also depends on, I'll say for me, when I think of error, I often interpret it as an intentional error with maybe some mal-intent, but that's not the case. In many times, scribes see things on the margins of manuscripts that they believe sincerely were meant to be in the text, and were copied incorrectly by a previous scribe, and then, they insert it into the texts where they believe it should be. Like, I think there are many types of errors like that, that are well-meaning, that have over the course of time led to significant changes from one manuscript to the next.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, and I was just going to go to a kind of, as a metaphor for this in case people are still like, not quite sure the significance of it. Like, if I can go to like a biological physiological metaphor Adam, since you're a doctor, like the idea of how DNA, how the body fixes errors in DNA. If there's an error from some sort-
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, that's very interesting.
Stephan Downes:
... it could be anything, right? The body has mechanisms in place to fix it, and if those mechanisms happen correctly, which they do a lot of the time, the error just gets fixed and the next time the DNA is copied. Like, when a cell is replicated, then the DNA's copied, there's no change, right? The error has been corrected-
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah.
Stephan Downes:
... and it's appropriate, but there's times when that doesn't happen, and that error is basically put into a new cell, and then, the new error detecting mechanisms of that new cell don't recognize it's an error, and so, you get this error that no one, even down the line, 10 cell divisions later, or even 10 transcriptions later, like no one remembers that it was an error anymore, and when this happens, and Dr. Ehrman goes on to talk about how, as we've said, like this didn't just happen maliciously. This happened when somebody who maybe doesn't speak the original language of the Bible, like slightly misinterprets the etymological meaning of a word, and then, makes it slight change, and in certain places that you could argue that it doesn't really change the meaning of the text, but in certain places it actually does, and furthermore, if you are basing your entire faith on the divine authority of this text, but there are clearly errors in it, like what is actually the authority? Like, what is the authority?
John Golebiewski:
Oh, that's a beautiful-
Adam Rizvi:
I just got to jump in really quickly.
John Golebiewski:
... question. Yes Adam.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, this is really good, John, you're up next. I just wanted to say really quickly, Steven, what you shared regarding the DNA. It reminded me of something that Professor Ehrman talked about at very beginning. There was someone, gosh, I forget his name now, and I'd have to look into the book for the detail, but he was given an example of a town scribe who was copying his name down. Actually, he was copying down the phrase of, "I, the scribes so and so hereby testifies..."
John Golebiewski:
Yeah, this is a very early scribe.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, "I testify to this document." Or something. He was the town's scribe. The thing is in the early manuscript that shows him copying down that phrase, there's a letter that gets dropped off in that phrase, and then, all the subsequent lines of copying actually don't contain the letter, which is really striking, from what professor Ehrman said, it tells you that he actually didn't know what he was reading. He was writing down each line, copying the shapes of the letters, and he was supposed to have been the town's scribe, so this begs a question that we may or may not be able to get into, but like literacy at that time was a huge spectrum. You know, you could have someone that's barely able to recognize shapes and copy them, and they are the town scribe, or someone who can read whole manuscripts, and understand what's being said by just sight reading. I think we take it for granted in modern society what that literacy means you can read anything, but really literacy meant a whole spectrum of capability back then.
John Golebiewski:
That's a really good point Adam.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, that's very good point.
John Golebiewski:
Yeah, and I'm glad that you guys are bringing up the topic of linguistic issues in the early tradition, given that what we have received as the New Testament is conceived of as having being originally written in Greek, but what does that mean when you have, let's take the gospels, and the teachings of Jesus. Jesus, we are understanding is that his primary language was probably Aramaic. He probably had some Hebrew, and he might've had some Greek as well since the Greek empire was pervasive throughout the Mediterranean, and Greek language and culture, I guess, is what I'm getting at, but his disciples carried on Jesus' words, and they understood them in their own languages, and then, it's got interpreted later by other folks who are understanding these things in their own languages. So, you have Aramaic, to Greek, and then, as Ehrman gets at in the book, you have a later translation into Latin as Christianity spreads in the Roman empire, and there becomes a desire for a colloquial, a common language version of the text, and you have the development of the Vulgate with Jerome
Adam Rizvi:
And, just for the listeners, what's the Vulgate?
John Golebiewski:
Yeah, the Vulgate was a Latin translation of the Bible that was a commissioned translation and Jerome who in the, at least the Catholic tradition is referred to as St. Jerome was the primary person responsible for overseeing that translation into the common language at the time, and that's where the word Vulgate comes from, is the people's language, the folk language.
Adam Rizvi:
Which was a very difficult task for him when he had only certain texts available.
Stephan Downes:
I think the point that we're getting to, is that we're kind of demystifying the idea of, as you said, John, a platonic version of-
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, I love that.
Stephan Downes:
... the original text, which is somehow the superior version and the definitive version, and what we're kind of realizing when we we're reading this book is that there is no such thing, and to meet any sort of like actual standard of knowledge for the original version would be, you would have to have been listening to Jesus at the time, and recorded it directly, which did not happen.
John Golebiewski:
That's actually a good segue into the question that you were asking before about Mark and Luke.
Stephan Downes:
Great. Take it away.
John Golebiewski:
Well, the reason I say that is because from the beginning you have disciples hearing Jesus in different ways, so aside from the linguistic issues, you have different understandings of what Jesus' story is, what he's saying, how the significance of his life and teaching is interpreted. So scholars now understand that Mark is probably the earliest of the gospel compositions, so in that sense, you could think of it as the platonic form of scripture, but as Mark, just one of many perspectives that is his, the canonical one, and everyone else is drawing different theological conclusions based off of Mark, and Mark-like ideas, I guess you'd say, or are they equally valid, or something like that, but not exactly? These are difficult questions.
Adam Rizvi:
I'm going to jump in here just really briefly, and I want to read something from Professor Ehrman's conclusion, and then, John, I'd love for you to finish your thought. I think in page 213 here, he says, "Mark, for example, portrays Jesus as in deep agony in the face of death, telling his disciples that his soul was sorrowful unto death, falling on his face in prayer, and beseeching God three times to take away the cup of his suffering. On his way to be crucified, he is silent the entire time, and he says nothing on the cross when mocked by everyone, including both robbers until the very end, when he calls out in anguish, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' He then utters a loud cry and dies." That is Mark's portrayal of Jesus, and yet Luke is very different. Maybe you can talk about that a little.
John Golebiewski:
Yeah. At least when you look at the Greek text of Mark it has a lot of the hallmarks of someone who, for whom Greek isn't really their first language, or they don't feel very comfortable in. Luke, however, seems quite a bit more comfortable composing Greek, so he's probably from a more cosmopolitan Greek position, and in the Greek world to have someone who's identified with God be so emotive, and to in fact die so unceremoniously, and horrifically is a bit scandalous. So Luke is trying to grapple with that amongst various other things that Luke is trying to deal with, but Luke is trying to understand this story, and I should say that Luke isn't necessarily one person, but whoever is composing this text Luke, understand the story in terms that compute for his own worldview, and his own Greek understanding of reality of what gods are, of what even just a good person is. Ehrman gets a little bit into some of the prevailing attitudes in the Greek world, like stoicism is a significant philosophical tradition at the time, cynicism as well, and there're scholars who deal in the idea of Jesus as a kind of student of the cynic tradition, that's a separate topic, but Luke has his own kind of Greco perspective on the tradition he receives. Does that mean it's wrong? Not necessarily.
Adam Rizvi:
Right, actually what you just shared, that was very helpful to consider that Luke, I hadn't realized came from a different perspective, and maybe was more facile with the Greek ethos. I think you could put it that way. The way of seeing the world from that perspective, and for those who are unfamiliar with really what Luke says, just for the sake of thoroughness, I'm going to read here the high level of what Luke shares with us according to Professor Ehrman, "Luke removed Mark's comment that Jesus was highly distraught, as well as Jesus' own comment that he was sorrowful unto death. Rather than falling on his face, Jesus simply kneels, and instead of pleading three times to have the cup removed, he asks only once, prefacing his prayer with, 'If it be your will.' He's not at all silent on the way to his crucifixion, but speaks to a group of weeping women telling them to grieve, not for him, but for the fate to befall themselves, and while being crucified, he is not silent, but asks God to forgive those responsible for they don't know what they're doing." That's a very different, for me, it's pretty striking difference between-
Stephan Downes:
No, that sounded kind of exactly the same.
John Golebiewski:
What's compelling, just very briefly, is that as it coalesced in the first few centuries of the Christian movement, there were decisions made to include all of these gospels rather say, this one is the right one, and these other ones are wrong. The decision was made, "In our canon we're going to keep multiple perspectives." And, that has really significant and interesting ramifications.
Stephan Downes:
It does, that's a whole other thought, and so, when you're reading those two passages, Adam, I'm kind of left with, if I am someone who is actively what? Let's say I'm a pastor or I'm a priest, and I see these two differing versions of this story, this same in all story in the New Testament, the meaning of the New Testament, what do I do with that, right? Like, what do I do with the fact that one portrays Jesus weeping and not really being okay with the fact that he's going to die, and the other has been portrayed very stoically. John, I don't know, in your experience of going through seminary, if there is a discussion about the active, like the modern day use of these kinds of stories, and if there is any sort of, I may you use the word like scholarly integrity, even though I know that certainly not everyone who's a pastor is a scholar, but is there any sort of like unified, codified integrity on like how we deal with this problem?
John Golebiewski:
So, I mean when you're talking about pastors and churches, this is its own very difficult can of worms, because there's so many different denominations with their own approaches, and then, church, to church, to church, you're going to have different approaches.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah. I'm more looking if you have any, in your education, if what you came across, because you're obviously educated in specifically the Roman Catholic, a specific type of Roman Catholic tradition.
John Golebiewski:
Sure, right, exactly. I'm glad you point that out.
Stephan Downes:
I'm more just looking for, you're someone who's much closer to the way this is carried out in the real world than I am, as far as like educating people about Christianity and choosing which stories have what meaning and how those are shared with a lay audience.
John Golebiewski:
Yeah. Well, I can at least speak to the Catholic tradition as far as the yearly cycle of readings at Sunday masses. There's a gospel reading at each mass, at each celebration of the Eucharist, and each week is going to have a different reading from a different gospel, and you kind of get hit with all of these different perspectives. This itself is kind of part of the spiritual training as it were. There isn't really this mandated, like in my experience at least, there aren't priests who sit down and say, "Okay, now we're going to reconcile these four gospels, and I'm going to tell you how they all agree." It doesn't work like that. It's more of a process of contemplation of very similar to, if you have different Christians who today you ask them who they understand Jesus to be, what being a disciple of Jesus means to them, and how they practice being a disciple? Each one is going to give you a different view, and taking all of these different views together is kind of the point.
Adam Rizvi:
Professor Ehrman, in the book itself, whether he intends to do this or not, actually, offers the reader interpretations to Mark and Luke, both the discrepancy. If I remember correctly, he says the author of Mark may have intended the reader to know that salvation, I think, he uses the word redemption, redemption occurs in the gritty, and the painful, and the sorrowful, and even in anguish and despair, the idea was Jesus was supposed to truly feel what it meant to be human in all of its in glory, if that's a word, but just to really feel that, and in that, in the depth of despair, so to speak, comes redemption, whereas, the interpretation he offers for Luke is that for those who are suffering on the path, for those who are martyrs, at least at the time of the gospel, they could look to Luke's interpretation of the passion of Jesus, which is, as you said, very stoic, as inspiration for how to face their own persecution.
John Golebiewski:
That's right, and we haven't talked about Matthew or John yet, but they have their own emphasis, and they touch the heartstrings of different audiences in their own ways, and resonate with readers in different ways, and I think, significant ways. Now, does the fact that there're all these different perspectives mean that, "Oh, anything goes, and you can just put together any texts about Jesus, and it's all legit?" I'm not going to answer that question, but that's kind of what Ehrman is grappling with, how significant are these issues of textual criticism, and how do they inform our understanding of Jesus, and Christian practice?
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, yeah. This might be a good time for us to dive into our second question. Steven, could you do us the honors of reading our second question?
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, so I think the second thing we wanted to investigate today after reading this book is what our thoughts were on, if it's possible to connect to some sort of original authority as the word John used originally, like some sort of platonic authority um, such as an original text, and that if even one like, John, you're someone who can read, who spent time reading and translating ancient Greek and ancient, I don't know if ancient is the right word here, but like very, very old New Testament Greek. Is it possible for someone who is a Christian to meaningfully connect with some sort of original texts that leaves them feeling like there's a reason why this is the inerrant and inspired word of God?
John Golebiewski:
That's a beautiful question.
Stephan Downes:
You have 10 seconds to answer.
John Golebiewski:
To be fair, the questions we're bringing up are questions that we've been grappling with for centuries, so we're not going to solve these problems.
Adam Rizvi:
Still 10 seconds.
Stephan Downes:
Oh, shut up. Five seconds left. Does this make me a New Testament scholar?
John Golebiewski:
Yes, it does.
Stephan Downes:
Okay. I'm going to put that in my bio.
John Golebiewski:
Good.
Adam Rizvi:
Okay. So let's take a step back. Steven, can you succinctly reiterate your question just so we can get back on the bearings of that?
Stephan Downes:
I think my question succinctly is, is it possible taking the idea as a Christian, that the Bible is, specifically, the New Testament, although, I'm sure the Old Testament goes along with this, that the Christian Bible is the inerrant, and inspired word of God, meaning that it is the word of God, and that it is perfect as is? Is there a way to connect to the text in such a way that leaves on feelings that one can actually do that, that the word can be inspired, that the word of the Bible can be inerrant, and the context, I think, and now, this isn't succinct, because it's the same length of the previous time I asked this question, but you know, you're someone who speaks and reads ancient Greek.
Adam Rizvi:
Reads at best, yes.
Stephan Downes:
... reads it. Like, you're further along that than many Christians. Is that something that's ever talked about?
John Golebiewski:
Uh, sure. I specifically remember going through school, and jokingly arguing with my teachers, "Oh, everyone should be reading the Greek New Testament. It's so beautiful, and remarkable, and you get so many other nuances out of it." And, their responses to me were like, "Yeah, good luck. Have fun with that." And, for a good reason, I think. So I think I need to cycle back to the first part of your question, but as far as the connecting to the quote on quote, "Original languages." goes, no, you can go back, and read various manuscripts that were composed in Greek of the New Testament scriptures. If you're a Hebrew, Aramaic scholar, you can connect with the Torah and the scriptures of the Hebrew Bible, the Jewish Bible, and a particular way that brings out nuances of meaning, and really you just tap into the text in a very particular way, but-
Adam Rizvi:
I'm just going to interrupt here.
John Golebiewski:
Yeah.
Adam Rizvi:
Steven, we have a chat going on here Steven and I, is saying that John looks like a nun in a habit, and-
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, we're on video chat.
Adam Rizvi:
We're on video chat, and-
Stephan Downes:
He's wearing white headphones and he has a black chair behind him above his head, so Sister John, please continue.
Adam Rizvi:
See, you're a very good looking nun.
John Golebiewski:
Thank you.
Adam Rizvi:
I just got to say.
John Golebiewski:
I'm actually honored to have that be ascribed to me.
Stephan Downes:
Is this how we treat our guests Adam?
Adam Rizvi:
Yes, it is.
John Golebiewski:
I've got nothing on nuns. They dedicate themselves to this stuff much more deeply than I do.
Adam Rizvi:
There's something you said at the very beginning of this episode John, which was clearly, Professor Ehrman had a massive crisis of faith over the course of a decade or two. One could interpret everything he's saying, and have it destroy their faith, and not be able to rely on the Bible as a source of inspiration. I should say, source of divine inspiration. My question for you, which might be similar to Steven's is, is there a way to not interpret what Professor Ehrman is saying and have it mean that, I can't be inspired by the Bible anymore? Can I look past that, and understand that, yes, there's still a possibility to be inspired by the Bible, despite the fact that massive changes have been made according to him and textual scholars?
John Golebiewski:
Right right, so the answer to that is that if you're taking this sort of scholarship seriously, and I think that it's worthwhile to do so, the way you come out the other side is to re-contextualize what you understand as divinely inspired, and what you understand as the word of God as it were. Meaning, if you think of the Bible as a text that was literally composed by God, as there are texts in some traditions that make that claim, if you re-imagine the composition of scripture, other than that, rather than being like one coherent text that was dictated by God, but instead think of it as a human book that has a variety, a very wide variety of perspectives despite the fact that it's a single canon, and then, hold that with the idea that this is divinely inspired at the same time, that becomes a contemplation that I would leave to folks individually to answer for themselves, and in prayer, and thought, and to grapple with that way. I think, that in some ways it's comparable to the ways that from the very beginning followers of Jesus in the Christian movement were grappling with the idea that Jesus is human, and Jesus is divine at the same time. What does that mean? There are groups that couldn't handle that. It kind of broke their minds, and some said, "Well, he couldn't have possibly been divine if he was human, so he's just human." Or maybe, he was two different beings that were somehow conflated for a time in a single being, or maybe he was just purely divine, and he only seemed to be human. These are questions that are only asked at risk of sounding cheesy in one's heart, so for me, I can relate to professor Ehrman in many ways as someone who grew up, a practicing Catholic Christian, and with a fairly limited understanding of what that meant. And then, I cared very much about who this person Jesus was, and what his teachings were, and I wanted to learn more, so I pursued further studies to try and approach those questions, and then, learning about these textual critical issues, learning about the social historical contexts in which they're written. It does kind of break your assumptions about what these texts are, and what they mean, and how you use them, but as you break them that you kind of take some of those pieces, and you start to reconstruct them into something that's perhaps as powerful, if not more powerful, and I've found that transformative for me.
Adam Rizvi:
That's very helpful. I-
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, thank you, John.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, yeah and thank you for sharing also where you're at personally with that. There's something about the idea of divine inspiration that is an important topic, I think. I imagine for me, if one can live their life, and be divinely inspired by you know, a hummingbird flying in front of them briefly, or the shape of a cloud, or some stranger saying something briefly, a snippet of a conversation, and yet it hits you in a particular way that shifts your perspective on a challenge you're facing. Like, these sort of ways that we are day-to-day inspired right? Means that it is possible to be inspired by a human book. If that's what we're saying the Bible is, and that's not exactly a takeaway, but if indeed a lot of it is changed by scribes over time, that for me, this is my personal opinion, doesn't preclude the possibility of being inspired by their interpretations of Jesus and his life.
John Golebiewski:
You hit it.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, I would agree. I mean, we start to get into the question of, so full disclosure, like Adam and I have had lot of different conversations about spirituality, and faith, and practice, because we're both legitimately interested in those things in our own personal lives, and we're approaching this book in the context in which the book was written, which is Dr. Ehrman's like own struggles with his faith, and how it related to the accuracy of the written word of the Bible, but I mean, for me, John, when you talk about that, I'm just immediately thinking of like the entire point of faith, right? Even in Christianity, let alone just the generic word, but the challenge to be doubtful, and then, to overcome that doubt, and because at the end of the day, it feels like for a lot of people, and a lot of people who are like religious in the West, that it is about their own personal relationship with that, whether in Christianity to be Jesus, or God, or Allah, that it comes down to a personal decision. And so, the idea of, "Spiritual authority" with air quotes, I think it's an interesting one to talk about, it's an interesting one to discuss, but I think that every single practitioner, even if there's someone who relies heavily on the authority of a text would still admit when pushed that it is their own belief that makes it so.
John Golebiewski:
Yeah. I don't know if there's a way around that. If we're all to be honest with ourselves, I don't know if there's a way around that.
Stephan Downes:
Adam what's rule number one?
Adam Rizvi:
Oh God, it sounds better from your mouth Stephan.
John Golebiewski:
This is now a quiz show?
Stephan Downes:
No, but I love it when you curse, but you got to do it in French.
Adam Rizvi:
In his own, God in French.
Stephan Downes:
We got time here.
John Golebiewski:
[French 00:42:18].
Adam Rizvi:
That's french.
Stephan Downes:
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Adam Rizvi:
For everyone listening, Stephans got a list of rules that he abides by and his life.
Stephan Downes:
It's true.
Adam Rizvi:
I think it's less the power of the rules themselves, but really Stephan's life, and how it's manifesting itself.
Stephan Downes:
That's right. My life manifests itself in everyone being full of shit, including me.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. It is important to levity in these sort of things. It can get pretty darn heavy, especially, when one's sense of identity is so deeply tied to these conversations.
John Golebiewski:
Yeah, and that's a really good point, Adam, because that's kind of at the heart of what Professor Ehrman's dealing with in this book, is that you take all of these textual issues, and that leaves you in a very uncomfortable position if you want to settle your life on something that you think is rock solid. Like, I can rely on this in some sort of literal fashion, or I can take everything that comes out of this assuredly from what my priest tells me, or my pastor tells me, or my family tells me, or you name it. If you take away that solid comfort, you're left in a difficult position, which I think is to your point, Steven, where faith comes in, and that's really where the juice of spiritual practice lies, is being in that uncomfortable position.
Adam Rizvi:
Amen brother, amen.
John Golebiewski:
... and trying to grapple with it, but you know even folks who are willing to be uncomfortable will grapple with that over and over and over again, and they will resist the feeling of discomfort.
Stephan Downes:
I don't know. It's more of a one-time thing.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, that was really well said. I think we're about time to wrap up here, and I think my last thoughts are just on the book itself, and obviously, as with all of the books that we've talked about so far, there is a lot more depth that we did not get into the bulk of our conversation, and always ends up being about our thoughts on the matter combined with the matter itself, but I will say that as a standalone book, it definitely felt like Professor Ehrman's voice was heard loud and clear, and a lot of it was through sort of his interpretation of his own faith, and his own journey, and that being said, he didn't just say, "I had a crisis of faith and this is all like wrong and crap." He went on to provide an immense amount of sources, which with lots of footnotes that I'm sure are easily corroborated. He's a well-known Christian theologian, and so, he went on to provide a lot of fantastic resources for anybody who's looking into learning more about not only the history of Christian thought, and how the Bible, the New Testament specifically was shaped, but also, anyone who is interested in learning how culture and language play a role in the transmission of important ideas over time, which is a whole other topic, but I think, that's kind of how it summarize my feelings about the book.
Adam Rizvi:
I'll summarize by reading from the end of the book in Professor Ehrman's own words, because I think it speaks to how we can approach the matter ourselves, "As the years went by, and I continued to study the text of the New Testament. I gradually became less judgmental toward the scribes who changed the scriptures they copied. Early on, I suppose I was a bit surprised, maybe even scandalized by the number of changes these anonymous copyists of the text had made in the process of transcription, as they altered the words of the texts, putting the text in their own words, rather than the words of the original authors, but I softened my view of these transcribers of the text as I, in parentheses, (slowly came to realize that what they were doing with the text was not at all different from what each of us does every time we read a text.)" I thought that was a very well put way of expressing how we approach any written word, whether it's a fiction book, whether it's nonfiction book, but even more importantly, when it comes to sacred text. Coming from two Judeo-Christian lineages myself, the importance of sacred text is paramount, and if I treat it with the kind of rigidity and fear that some do, it's painful, but if I just softened my view, as Professor Ehrman would say, and allow myself to interpret the text as it's coming through me and my life experience, I think the overall experience of growing and learning with sacred text is a much better one.
John Golebiewski:
Amen, amen.
Stephan Downes:
Thank you, John. Do you want to take us out?
John Golebiewski:
I'm really grateful for the two of you to engage in these topics, and really, I think, it's probably best in this case to have Ehrman have the last word, because he says it so nicely. That's the challenge that all of us are faced with, and I think it's a worthwhile challenge, and I'll also say, just in general reflection on the book that anyone who is interested in textual issues with the Bible, and specifically, the New Testament, since that's the focus of the book, this is a great little survey of the issues at play. Professor Ehrman gets at so many issues in a very compact book, and covers so much territory in that space, so I really appreciate that, and I recommend it.
Adam Rizvi:
Awesome.
Stephan Downes:
Cool.
Adam Rizvi:
Thanks-
Stephan Downes:
Well-
Adam Rizvi:
... John
Stephan Downes:
... I think this episode's done, and I think now we're going to wind down with 20 minutes of jazz. Thank you everyone.
Adam Rizvi:
Awesome. Thanks John.
John Golebiewski:
Thank you very much, gentlemen.