Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman

Five books, nearly a fifth of the New Testament, have the name John attached to them. Many Christians might think this is John the fisherman, the son of Zebedee, and that perhaps he was the "Disciple who Jesus loved." But the evidence is surprisingly murky. The Gospel never names its author. The letters are signed by someone calling himself only "the Elder." And the author of...

In the summer of 70 CE, Roman legions broke into Jerusalem and burned the temple. The sacrifices that had organized Jewish worship for centuries stopped, and never started again. Everyone in the early Jesus movement lived through it or grew up in its shadow, and every Gospel in the New Testament was almost certainly written afterward. Bart joins host Megan Lewis to look at wh...

As early christians wrestled with their beliefs and theologies surrounding Jesus, they both produced new texts and gospels, and edited existing ones to better fit with specific theological views. What were some of these early heretical beliefs? How did the Church Fathers fight against them? And can we see traces of that battle in the manuscripts of the New Testament? Today on...

The Bible's world is crowded and unsystematic: ghosts, familiar spirits, demons that cause illness, and the dead who can be summoned. And at times, this world breaks through in ways modern readers don't always appreciate. When the disciples see Jesus walking on the water, their first thought is that he's a ghost. After the resurrection, Jesus has to reassure them he isn't one...

Most Christians grow up believing that everyone is born a sinner, that when Adam and Eve ate the fruit, humanity inherited a broken nature and a guilt we can't escape. It's one of the most influential ideas in Western Christianity. But it isn't in Genesis, Jesus never taught it, and it didn't take its familiar form until four centuries after him.

Bart joins host Megan ...