Interview with Bart Ehrman (Jesus, ritual, Moses, Earth, gospel)

[Rex]

[Q] I see a lot of interest lately in the historical Jesus and in tracing the history of the concept of Jesus' divinity. It seems that the trend today amongst liberal Christians is to try to bring Jesus back to the level of a human being who understood and taught spiritual truth. At best, he is seen as a prophet.

My concern is that in reducing Jesus to a human who lived 2000 years ago, we destroy the concept of a living Christ who is still engaged in the world today. It seems to me that the strength of Christianity comes from this belief in God's active love continually expressed through the Son. And this may be the reason why orthodox Christianity has been so successful. How does one portray Jesus as a person without destroying that personal relationship that Christians feel they have with God? Wouldn't reducing Jesus to the historical person also reduce Christianity to a form of Judaism?

[A] I don't think that it's degrading to say that Christianity was
originally "a form of Judaism"! On the contrary -- it was! Jesus was a
Jew, as were his earthly followers; he kept the Jewish Law, followed
Jewish customs, kept Jewish festivals, worshipped the Jewish God.
Whatever else he was, Jesus was certainly Jewish!

It's a very good question, though, how one balances the historical
understanding of Jesus as a human who lived nearly 2000 years ago with the
theological understanding of him as the Son of God. My own view is that
historians are well equipped to indicate what Jesus actually said and did
while alive; but historians are no better equipped than anyone else to
make statements about what God did in Christ -- these are theological
issues that are best reserved for theologians.

I'm personally a historian, not a theologian, and so my interests
are what we can know about what Jesus really said and did. That may not
be interesting to someone who cares only about Jesus as the living Son of
God, but it is certainly interesting to those of us with historical
interests! I hope this answers the question.

[Q]Who authored the epistles and books of the New Testament? Should they be considered eyewitnesses?

[A]Many of the books of the New Testament (including the Gospels) are
anonymous; some of them are written by authors whose name we know, such as
Paul; others are homonymous, meaning that they were written by someone
with the same name as someone famous (e.g., the epistle of Jude, a book by
someone named Jude, but who does not claim to be Jesus' brother Jude -- it
was a common name); and others are probably pseudonymous, that is, written
in the name of someone famous by a follower, rather than by the person
himself (e.g., 2 Peter and 1 Timothy)

None of the authors of the *Gospels* claims to be an eyewitness;
Paul, writing in his own name, of course, was an eyewitness to his own
life!

[Q]Do you agree with Perrin that the pastorals are inauthentic?

[A]I agree that they were not written by Paul; I give evidence for
this widely accepted view in my book The New Testament: A Historical
Introduction.

[Q]Do you consider the anti-Pharisee stories credible, as opposed to being later polemical additions?

[A]I tend to see them as having been generated, for the most part,
after the days of Jesus, by followers who were themselves in controversy
with Pharisees. But some of them must certainly go back to Jesus himself
-- they are such a common strain in the Gospel traditions!

[Q]What is the likelihood that any of the Jesus dialogue has been correctly attributed and accurately conveyed?

[A]Certainly *some* of the sayings of Jesus in the New Testament are
accurately ascribed to him. I deal with this entire question on a simple
level, for the interested non-scholar, in my book Jesus: Apocalyptic
Prophet of the New Millennium.

[Q]How about the difference in order between the old testament books and the books of the Tenach. In the Tenach God has a one on one physical relationship with his creation, then he speaks to humans from a distance, then he speaks through representatives (prophets), then he is silent. I think that has a great deal of significance concerning Gods relationship with mankind.

[A]Yes, there is a different sequence between the Christian Old
Testament and the Jewish Tanak. But it's worth emphasizing that they
contain the *same books* -- they are just numbered and arranged
differently.

[Q]Why do they only transliterate "baptism"?

[A]It's simply one of those words that came from Greek, ultimately,
into English. But it's not actually a transliteration, since the
transliterated Greek word would be "baptisma"

[Q]What are your views on the "lost books" of the bible?

[A]Well, most of them are still lost! But some have been found. I
have a collection of them in my recent book: Lost Scriptures: Books that
Did Not Make it Into the New Testament

[Q]What was the relationship between NT authors and the Jerusalem sect, and is this relationship fairly treated in the works of Paul and Luke?

[A]It's a difficult question to answer: we have so little hard
evidence to say! Paul obviously knows the Jerusalem community, and seems
to stand at some tension with them (cf. Gal. 2); Luke seems to want to
smooth over the tensions, making Paul and the Jerusalem Christians see eye
to eye on all important topics (cf. Acts 15). My hunch is that Paul is
probably more correct about himself than Acts is.

[Q]How do you view the relationship between the Ebionites and Paulianism?

[A]The Ebionites saw Paul as an arch enemy, because he taught that
salvation comes apart from keeping the Law of Moses, by having faith in
Christ's death and resurrection, whereas the Ebionites taught that one had
to keep the Law as well as have faith. They obviously lost out on that
argument!


He was pressed for time, so if you want him
to flesh these out a little more I can ask him to do so.

[Rex]

BART D. EHRMAN
Chair, Department of Religious Studies

Summary of Curriculum Vitae

• Ph.D. Princeton Theological Seminary (magna cum laude), 1985
• M.Div. Princeton Theological Seminary, 1981
• B.A. Wheaton College, Illinois (magna cum laude), 1978

Principal Areas of Research Interest: New Testament Interpretation; History of Ancient Christianity (first three centuries), especially Orthodoxy and Heresy, Formation of the Canon, NT Manuscript Tradition, Historical Jesus, and Apostolic Fathers;

Secondary Areas of Interest: Jewish-Christian Relations in Antiquity; Greco-Roman Religions; Christianization of the Roman World.

Bart Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He came to UNC in 1988, after four years of teaching at Rutgers University.

Prof. Ehrman completed his M.Div. and Ph.D. degrees at Princeton Seminary, where his 1985 doctoral dissertation was awarded magna cum laude. Since then he has published extensively in the fields of New Testament and Early Christianity, having written or edited thirteen books, numerous articles, and dozens of book reviews. Among his most recent books are a college-level textbook on the New Testament, two anthologies of early Christian writings, a study of the historical Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet (Oxford Univesity Press), and a Greek-English Edition of the Apostolic Fathers for the Loeb Classical Library (Harvard University Press).

Prof. Ehrman has served as President of the Southeast Region of the Society of Biblical literature, chair of the New Testament textual criticism section of the Society, book review editor of the Journal of Biblical Literature, and editor of the monograph series The New Testament in the Greek Fathers (Scholars Press). He currently serves as co-editor of the series New Testament Tools and Studies (E. J. Brill) and on several other editorial boards for monographs in the field. Winner of numerous university awards and grants, Prof. Ehrman is the recipient of the 1993 UNC Undergraduate Student Teaching Award, the 1994 Phillip and Ruth Hettleman Prize for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement, and the Bowman and Gordon Gray Award for excellence in teaching.

Click Here to See Professor Ehrman's Full Curriculum Vitae

[Jayhawker Soule]

Originally Posted by Rex_Admin

My own view is that historians are well equipped to indicate what Jesus actually said and did while alive; but ...

I would love to see this supported.

[lilithu]

Originally Posted by Rex_Admin

[Q] I see a lot of interest lately in the historical Jesus and in tracing the history of the concept of Jesus' divinity. It seems that the trend today amongst liberal Christians is to try to bring Jesus back to the level of a human being who understood and taught spiritual truth. At best, he is seen as a prophet.

My concern is that in reducing Jesus to a human who lived 2000 years ago, we destroy the concept of a living Christ who is still engaged in the world today. It seems to me that the strength of Christianity comes from this belief in God's active love continually expressed through the Son. And this may be the reason why orthodox Christianity has been so successful. How does one portray Jesus as a person without destroying that personal relationship that Christians feel they have with God? Wouldn't reducing Jesus to the historical person also reduce Christianity to a form of Judaism?

[A] I don't think that it's degrading to say that Christianity was
originally "a form of Judaism"! On the contrary -- it was! Jesus was a
Jew, as were his earthly followers; he kept the Jewish Law, followed
Jewish customs, kept Jewish festivals, worshipped the Jewish God.
Whatever else he was, Jesus was certainly Jewish!

Who said anything about it being degrading??

It's a very good question, though, how one balances the historical
understanding of Jesus as a human who lived nearly 2000 years ago with the
theological understanding of him as the Son of God. My own view is that
historians are well equipped to indicate what Jesus actually said and did
while alive; but historians are no better equipped than anyone else to
make statements about what God did in Christ -- these are theological
issues that are best reserved for theologians.

I'm personally a historian, not a theologian, and so my interests
are what we can know about what Jesus really said and did. That may not
be interesting to someone who cares only about Jesus as the living Son of
God, but it is certainly interesting to those of us with historical
interests! I hope this answers the question.

OK.

[Jayhawker Soule]

All in all, I found the interview sadly underwhelming.

[lilithu]

Originally Posted by Deut. 32.8

All in all, I found the interview sadly underwhelming.

I dunno. Out of 10 questions, he managed to plug three different books of his. That's pretty impressive.

[Jayhawker Soule]

Exactly.