Jesus, Interrupted Quotes

“One of the most amazing and perplexing features of mainstream Christianity is that seminarians who learn the historical-critical method in their Bible classes appear to forget all about it when it comes time for them to be pastors. They are taught critical approaches to Scripture, they learn about the discrepancies and contradictions, they discover all sorts of historical errors and mistakes, they come to realize that it is difficult to know whether Moses existed or what Jesus actually said and did, they find that there are other books that were at one time considered canonical but that ultimately did not become part of Scripture (for example, other Gospels and Apocalypses), they come to recognize that a good number of the books of the Bible are pseudonymous (for example, written in the name of an apostle by someone else), that in fact we don't have the original copies of any of the biblical books but only copies made centuries later, all of which have been altered. They learn all of this, and yet when they enter church ministry they appear to put it back on the shelf. For reasons I will explore in the conclusion, pastors are, as a rule, reluctant to teach what they learned about the Bible in seminary.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible & Why We Don't Know About Them

“[P]eople need to use their intelligence to evaluate what they find to be true and untrue in the Bible. This is how we need to live life generally. Everything we hear and see we need to evaluate—whether the inspiring writings of the Bible or the inspiring writings of Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, or George Eliot, of Ghandi, Desmond Tutu, or the Dalai Lama.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible & Why We Don't Know About Them

“The historical problems with Luke are even more pronounced. For one thing, we have relatively good records for the reign of Caesar Augustus, and there is no mention anywhere in any of them of an empire-wide census for which everyone had to register by returning to their ancestral home. And how could such a thing even be imagined? Joesph returns to Bethlehem because his ancestor David was born there. But David lived a thousand years before Joseph. Are we to imagine that everyone in the Roman Empire was required to return to the homes of their ancestors from a thousand years earlier? If we had a new worldwide census today and each of us had to return to the towns of our ancestors a thousand years back—where would you go? Can you imagine the total disruption of human life that this kind of universal exodus would require? And can you imagine that such a project would never be mentioned in any of the newspapers? There is not a single reference to any such census in any ancient source, apart from Luke. Why then does Luke say there was such a census? The answer may seem obvious to you. He wanted Jesus to be born in Bethlehem, even though he knew he came from Nazareth ... there is a prophecy in the Old Testament book of Micah that a savior would come from Bethlehem. What were these Gospel writer to do with the fact that it was widely known that Jesus came from Nazareth? They had to come up with a narrative that explained how he came from Nazareth, in Galilee, a little one-horse town that no one had ever heard of, but was born in Bethlehem, the home of King David, royal ancestor of the Messiah.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible & Why We Don't Know About Them

“In terms of the historical record, I should also point out that there is no account in any ancient source whatsoever about King Herod slaughtering children in or around Bethlehem, or anyplace else. No other author, biblical or otherwise, mentions this event. Is it, like John's account of Jesus' death, a detail made up by Matthew in order to make some kind of theological point?”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible & Why We Don't Know About Them

“Some people may think that it is a dangerous attitude to take toward the Bible, to pick and choose what you want to accept and throw everything else out. My view is that everyone already picks and chooses what they want to accept in the Bible...I have a young friend who whose evangelical parents were upset because she wanted to get a tattoo, since the Bible, after all, condemns tattoos. In the same book, Leviticus, the Bible also condemns wearing clothing made of two different kinds of fabric and eating pork...Why insist on the biblical teaching about tattoos but not about dress shirts, pork chops, and stoning?”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible & Why We Don't Know About Them

“In Matthew, Jesus declares, “Whoever is not with me is against me.” In Mark, he says,“Whoever is not against us is for us.” Did he say both things? Could he
mean both things? How can both be true at once? Or is it possible that
one of the Gospel writers got things switched around?”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible & Why We Don't Know About Them

“The Bible is filled with discrepancies, many of them irreconcilable contradictions. Moses did not write the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament) and Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John did not write the Gospels. There are other books that did not make it into the Bible that at one time or another were considered canonical—other Gospels, for example, allegedly written by Jesus’ followers Peter, Thomas, and Mary. The Exodus probably did not happen as described in the Old Testament. The conquest of the Promised Land is probably based on legend. The Gospels are at odds on numerous points and contain nonhistorical material. It is hard to know whether Moses ever existed and what, exactly, the historical Jesus taught. The historical narratives of the Old Testament are filled with legendary fabrications and the book of Acts in the New Testament contains historically unreliable information about the life and teachings of Paul. Many of the books of the New Testament are pseudonymous—written not by the apostles but by later writers claiming to be apostles. The list goes on.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

“Within three hundred years Jesus went from being a Jewish apocalyptic prophet to being God himself, a member of the Trinity. Early Christianity is nothing if not remarkable.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

“The authors of Job and Ecclesiastes explicitly state that there is no afterlife.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

“In the American South, where I live, Christianity is very much about the Bible. Most Christians come from churches that preach the Bible, teach the Bible, adhere (they claim) to the Bible. It is almost “common sense” among many Christians in this part of the world that if you don’t believe in the Bible you cannot be a Christian. Most Christians in other parts of the world—in fact, the vast majority of Christians throughout the history of the church—would find that common sense to be nonsense.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

“There were lots of early Christian groups. They all claimed to be right. They all had books to back up their claims, books allegedly written by the apostles and therefore representing the views of Jesus and his first disciples. The group that won out did not represent the teachings of Jesus or of his apostles. For example, none of the apostles claimed that Jesus was “fully God and fully man,” or that he was “begotten not made, of one substance with the Father,” as the fourth-century Nicene Creed maintained. The victorious group called itself orthodox. But it was not the original form of Christianity, and it won its victory only after many hard-fought battles.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

“Only in the latest of our Gospels, John, a Gospel that shows considerably more theological sophistication than the others, does Jesus indicate that he is divine. I had come to realize that none of our earliest traditions indicates that Jesus said any such thing about himself. And surely if Jesus had really spent his days in Galilee and then Jerusalem calling himself God, all of our sources would be eager to report it. To put it differently, if Jesus claimed he was divine, it seemed very strange indeed that Matthew, Mark, and Luke all failed to say anything about it. Did they just forget to mention that part? I had come to realize that Jesus’ divinity was part of John’s theology, not a part of Jesus’ own teaching.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

“One of my favorite apparent discrepancies—I read John for years without realizing how strange this one is—comes in Jesus’ “Farewell Discourse,” the last address that Jesus delivers to his disciples, at his last meal with them, which takes up all of chapters 13 to 17 in the Gospel according to John. In John 13:36, Peter says to Jesus, “Lord, where are you going?” A few verses later Thomas says, “Lord, we do not know where you are going” (John 14:5). And then, a few minutes later, at the same meal, Jesus upbraids his disciples, saying, “Now I am going to the one who sent me, yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’” (John 16:5). Either Jesus had a very short attention span or there is something strange going on with the sources for these chapters, creating an odd kind of disconnect.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

“Whether you are a believer—fundamentalist, evangelical, moderate, liberal—or a nonbeliever, the Bible is the most significant book in the history of our civilization. Coming to understand what it actually is, and is not, is one of the most important intellectual endeavors that anyone in our society can embark upon.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

“Similarly, some biblical views of women are superior to others. And so the apostle Paul’s attitude about women is that they could be and should be leaders of the Christian communities—as evidenced by the fact that in his own communities there were women who were church organizers, deacons, and even apostles (Romans 16). That attitude is much better than the one inserted by a later scribe into Paul’s letter of 1 Corinthians, which claims women should always be silent in the church (1 Corinthians 14:35–36), or the one forged under Paul’s name in the letter of 1 Timothy, which insists that women remain silent, submissive, and pregnant (1 Timothy 2:11–15).”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

“Why would God have inspired the words of the Bible if he chose not to preserve these words for posterity? Put differently, what should make me think he had inspired the words in the first place if I knew for certain (as I did) that he had not preserved them? This became a major problem for me in trying to figure out which Bible I thought was inspired. Another big problem is one that I don’t deal with in Misquoting Jesus. If God inspired certain books in the decades after Jesus died, how do I know that the later church fathers chose the right books to be included in the Bible? I could accept it on faith—surely God would not allow noninspired books in the canon of Scripture. But as I engaged in more historical study of the early Christian movement, I began to realize that there were lots of Christians in lots of places who fully believed that other books were to be accepted as Scripture; conversely, some of the books that eventually made it into the canon were rejected by church leaders in different parts of the church, sometimes for centuries. In some parts of the church, the Apocalypse of John (the book of Revelation) was flat out rejected as containing false teaching, whereas the Apocalypse of Peter, which eventually did not make it in, was accepted. There were some Christians who accepted the Gospel of Peter and some who rejected the Gospel of John. There were some Christians who accepted a truncated version of the Gospel of Luke (without its first two chapters), and others who accepted the now noncanonical Gospel of Thomas. Some Christians rejected the three Pastoral Epistles of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, which eventually made it in, and others accepted the Epistle of Barnabas, which did not. If God was making sure that his church would have the inspired books of Scripture, and only those books, why were there such heated debates and disagreements that took place over three hundred years? Why didn’t God just make sure that these debates lasted weeks, with assured results, rather than centuries?1”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

“In some parts of the church, the Apocalypse of John (the book of Revelation) was flat out rejected as containing false teaching, whereas the Apocalypse of Peter, which eventually did not make it in, was accepted. There were some Christians who accepted the Gospel of Peter and some who rejected the Gospel of John. There were some Christians who accepted a truncated version of the Gospel of Luke (without its first two chapters), and others who accepted the now noncanonical Gospel of Thomas. Some Christians rejected the three Pastoral Epistles of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, which eventually made it in, and others accepted the Epistle of Barnabas, which did not.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

“And so we have one of the great ironies of the early Christian tradition. The profoundly Jewish religion of Jesus and his followers became the viciously anti-Jewish religion of later times, leading to the horrific persecutions of the Middle Ages and the pogroms and attempted genocides that have plagued the world down to recent times.6 Anti-Semitism as it has come down to us today is the history of specifically Christian reactions to non-Christian Jews. It is one of the least savory inventions of the early church.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

“It took at least three hundred years of debate before the question of the canon even began to reach closure. The decisions that were eventually made were not handed down from on high, and they did not come right away. The canon was the result of a slow and often painful process, in which lots of disagreements were aired and different points of view came to be expressed, debated, accepted, and suppressed.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

“What I want to show is that because of the very nature of the historical disciplines, historians cannot show whether or not miracles ever happened. Anyone who disagrees with me—who thinks historians can demonstrate that miracles happen—needs to be even-handed about it, across the board. In Jesus’ day there were lots of people who allegedly performed miracles. There were Jewish holy men such as Hanina ben Dosa and Honi the circle drawer. There were pagan holy men such as Apollonius of Tyana, a philosopher who could allegedly heal the sick, cast out demons, and raise the dead. He was allegedly supernaturally born and at the end of his life he allegedly ascended to heaven. Sound familiar? There were pagan demigods, such as Hercules, who could also bring back the dead. Anyone who is willing to believe in the miracles of Jesus needs to concede the possibility of other people performing miracles, in Jesus’ day and in all eras down to the present day and in other religions such as Islam and indigenous religions of Africa and Asia.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

“The approach taken to the Bible in almost all Protestant (and now Catholic) mainline seminaries is what is called the “historical-critical” method. It is completely different from the “devotional” approach to the Bible one learns in church. The devotional approach to the Bible is concerned about what the Bible has to say—especially what it has to say to me personally or to my society. What does the Bible tell me about God? Christ? The church? My relation to the world? What does it tell me about what to believe? About how to act? About social responsibilities? How can the Bible help make me closer to God? How does it help me to live?”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

“Most of the people who are trained in Bible scholarship have been educated in theological institutions. Of course, a wide range of students head off to seminaries every year. Many of them have been involved with Bible studies through their school years, even dating back to their childhood Sunday School classes. But they have typically approached the Bible from a devotional point of view, reading it for what it can tell them about what to believe and how to live their lives. As a rule, such students have not been interested in or exposed to what scholars have discovered about the difficulties of the Bible when it is studied from a more academic, historical perspective.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

“My overarching point is that the Gospels, and all the books of the Bible, are distinct and should not be read as if they are all saying the same thing. They are decidedly not saying the same thing—even when talking about the same subject (say, Jesus’ death). Mark is different from Luke, and Matthew is different from John, as you can see by doing your own horizontal reading of their respective stories of the crucifixion. The historical approach to the Gospels allows each author’s voice to be heard and refuses to conflate them into some kind of mega-Gospel that flattens the emphases of each one.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

“This is how readers over the years have come up with the famous “seven last words of the dying Jesus”—by taking what he says at his death in all four Gospels, mixing them together, and imagining that in their combination they now have the full story. This interpretive move does not give the full story. It gives a fifth story, a story that is completely unlike any of the canonical four, a fifth story that in effect rewrites the Gospels, producing a fifth Gospel. This”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

“The problem comes when readers take these two accounts and combine them into one overarching account, in which Jesus says, does, and experiences everything narrated in both Gospels. When that is done, the messages of both Mark and Luke get completely lost and glossed over. Jesus is no longer in deep agony, as in Mark (since he is confident as in Luke), and he is no longer calm and in control as in Luke (since he is in despair as in Mark). He is somehow all things at once. Also,”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

“7. This is a consensus view among scholars today. For one thing, Matthew used Mark as a source for many of his stories, copying out the Greek word for word in some passages. If our Matthew was a Greek translation of a Hebrew original, it would not be possible to explain the verbatim agreement of Matthew with Mark in the Greek itself.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

“4. To cite one well-known example of this ignorance of Jewish customs: Mark 7:3 indicates that the Pharisees “and all the Jews” washed their hands before eating, so as to observe “the tradition of the elders.” This is not true: most Jews did not engage in this ritual. If Mark had been a Jew, or even a gentile living in Palestine, he certainly would have known this.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

“This is how readers over the years have come up with the famous “seven last words of the dying Jesus”—by taking what he says at his death in all four Gospels, mixing them together, and imagining that in their combination they now have the full story. This interpretive move does not give the full story.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

“As we will see, there are lots of other discrepancies in the New Testament, some of them far more difficult to reconcile (virtually impossible, I would say) than these simple examples. Not only are there discrepancies among different books of the Bible, but there are also inconsistencies within some of the books, a problem that historical critics have long ascribed to the fact that Gospel writers used different sources for their accounts, and sometimes these sources, when spliced together, stood at odds with one another.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

“The Greek word apocalypsis means a “revealing” or an “unveiling.” Scholars have called this view apocalyptic because its proponents believed that God had revealed or unveiled to them the heavenly secrets that could make sense of the realities they were experiencing—many of them nasty and ugly—here on earth. One”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible