Bart D. Ehrman

Today we are talking about how the Hebrew Bible actually became the Hebrew Bible and what version of that Bible someone in Jesus's day could have had access to.

I'm Megan Craig on the Bart Ehrman team, and I'm joined again by Hebrew Bible scholar, Dr. Joel Baden.

We also have a special segment today where Joel is going to give a hot take about the Hebrew Bible.

So stick around for that.

This has been an episode of Misquoting Moses with Joel Baden.

I'm your host, Megan Craig, and we're excited to bring you more episodes of silliness, snark, and scholarship on Fridays.

So be sure to subscribe to Bart Ehrman's YouTube channel so you don't miss them.

Thanks for listening.

fantastic book.

And I know that a lot of people now, there's lots of influences, lots of voices, people like Bart Ehrman and others that raise questions over the integrity of the canon.

I would just point anybody to Michael Kruger.

What he's got is really helpful.

Biblical scholars have long noted it was common for executed criminals, especially those of sub-elite status such as Jesus, to be thrown in mass pit graves or left for scavengers on the cross when crucified.

This has led some scholars such as John Dominic Crossan and Bart Ehrman to suggest that Jesus is unlikely to have received any formal burial.

Others argue that the burial of Jesus, as depicted in the Gospels, does match with what we know about Jewish practice at the time and is the more likely historical outcome.

Though, as I say in another video, even this position is split between scholars that hold the traditional view, that the body ended up in a proper family tomb, and others who argue Jesus probably received a burial, but a dishonorable burial in a tomb reserved for criminals.

And so they're not to worry about.

So it doesn't in any way, those pieces, those parts, um, And as Bart Ehrman would say, those verses that are not found in the Bible, not actually in your Bible, they don't undermine the integrity of the text we do have one bit.

In fact, they increase the integrity because what it demonstrates is we have the tools, the materials, the skills to find the mistakes where they're made.

Mm-hmm.

Anybody who knows anything about this understands about long ending Mark and also that passage in John, what, 6 and 7.

But it's—or maybe it's 7 and 8.

In any event, Bart Ehrman takes a lot of liberty with his popular pieces that he does not take in his academic pieces because he knows other academics are looking over his shoulder.

But nevertheless, maybe that article will help.

And then in So that got me sort of interested in reading a little bit about early Christianity.

And I started reading initially, actually, some of like atheist books by atheist historians on the New Testament, especially Bart Ehrman.

And one of the things Bart Ehrman discusses there is how he would debate Christians about the resurrection of Jesus.

And to me, this was such an absurd idea because I thought religion was this cultural thing, but it really didn't have any truth value, that it was sort of opposed to science and opposed to rationality.

And I thought, oh, this is actually really interesting that there are people out there arguing from reason that Jesus rose from the dead.

mostly gnostic texts and so i decided the best thing was to contact them directly and ask them questions you know that's what we used to do 20 years ago right uh call them email them all that yeah i loved your work and this uh i have questions but then i decided well as uh they say uh in alcoholics anonymous if you get it you got to give it away or you could say if you have no it's not gnosis until you give it away it has to be expressed it has to be shared not you're not there to save anybody convert somebody but help somebody wake up i think that's the goal we can't wake others up but we can provide them with the means if they so choose to so i said well yeah i'm going to ask them these questions why don't i record them this is before the podcast era And I said, at least I'll have this stored and I'll put it on my website and it could be valuable for somebody.

And somehow I kept calling these scholars again, the translators of the Nag Hammadi Library, Bart Ehrman, Elaine Pagels, and they kept agreeing.

And I kept doing these chats and recording them.

And then I called it coffee, cigarettes and gnosis back then.