New York Times Bestselling "Misquoting Jesus," "God's Problem," and "Jesus Interrupted."

He is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of

North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and is a leading authority on the Bible and the life of Jesus.

He has been featured in Time and has appeared on NBC Dateline, The Daily Show with John

Stewart, The Colbert Report, CNN, History Channel, and other top media outlets. And

I found it very amusing that The Daily Show and The Colbert Report was then followed by

other top media outlets. And he lives in Durham, North Carolina. So, please join me in welcoming

Bart Ehrman.

[applause]

>>Bart Ehrman: Thanks. Thanks for coming out. So, this talk is based on the book that I

just did that I'm doing a little book tour on. The book is called "Forged: Writing in

the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are."

And so, the talk will be involving that. Right. It might help if I turned on the mic. OK.

Yes. That's working better. Good. Thanks. So, I'm on this book tour in the midst of

teaching full-time. I'm teaching at the University of North Carolina.

And at the University of North Carolina, most of my students come from very conservative,

evangelical churches because it's the Bible Belt. And so, when I start teaching my class,

as I did this semester, I have a pretty large class, 180 students in it, and I begin my

class, after handing out the syllabus, in explaining that this class is not like a church.

This is not a Sunday school. I'm not a preacher or evangelist. I'm a historian. And this class

will be taught from a historical perspective. So, the New Testament, not as a book of faith,

which it is of course, but the New Testament as a document situated in history. "And so,

this will be a different approach,"

I tell them from what they're used to, if they've been to church, which most of them

have. So, once I turn out the syllabus on the very first day of class, the first thing

I do is I give them a pop quiz, which they think is a little bit odd because I haven't

taught them anything yet.

But I give them a pop quiz. And part of the reason for the pop quiz is I want to know

how much they know about the New Testament before I start teaching. And I also want them

to know how much they know about the New Testament. And so, that's the point of the quiz.

So, this quiz has eleven questions on it. And I begin by telling them that if anyone

in the room can get eight out of the eleven right, I'll buy them dinner at the Armadillo

Grill. So, this year, out of 180 students, I bought one dinner because my students are

more committed to the Bible than knowledgeable about the Bible.

And so, and it's actually not that hard of a quiz. So, the first question on the quiz

is, "How many books are in the New Testament?" It's basic information if you think of somebody

to study the New Testament for 19 years or so. But no, in fact, my students don't know.

The answer it turns out is pretty easy. The answer is 27. And the reason that's easy is

because when you think about the New Testament, you think about God. You think about the Christian

God. You think Trinity. And what is 27? Three to the third power. So, it's a miracle.

[laughter]

So then the next question is, "In what language were these books written?" Now, this one really

stumped a lot of my students. About half of my students think that the answer is Hebrew.

And I've never quite figured that out. But I think it's because when you watch all these

Jesus documentaries on History Channel, Discovery Channel, they're always flashing up Hebrew

texts back behind. And so, people naturally think Hebrew, Jesus, and--. But that's wrong.

Normally, only four or five of my students think that the answer is English.

[laughter]

I'm kidding. The right answer is Greek, as it turns out, because Greek was the lingua

franca of the Roman Empire. It's what everybody spoke. Just like today, you go to Europe and

you need to get around Germany or France or Italy, if you speak English pretty much you

can get around. In the Roman Empire, if you spoke Greek you could pretty well get around.

And so, people who wanted to communicate broadly would write in Greek. And so, these books

are all written in Greek. So, these are the kinds of questions I ask--basic, factual information.

I do throw in a few curveballs because I don't wanna buy any dinners.

And so, one of my curveballs is, I ask, "What was the Apostle Paul's last name?" Well, right.

Somebody will always say "of Tarsis," Paul of Tarsis, but the point is people in the

ancient world didn't have last names unless they were upper crust, elite, Roman aristocracy.

Then, they had lots of names. But if they were just a normal person, they just had one

name, which is why in the New Testament, we have all these people with the same name.

And when people have the same name, then they give some kind of identifying feature to let

you know which one they're talking about.

So, you have all these Mary's in the New Testament. So, they're always identified: Mary, the mother

of Jesus; Mary of Bethany; Mary Magdalene. See, these are identifiers because they didn't

have other ways of identifying because they didn't have last names.

And I have to teach my students that because they naturally assumed that Jesus Christ,

Christ is his last name. So, I have to tell them, "It's not Jesus Christ born to Joseph

and Mary Christ." It's an identifying--. Christ means "Messiah." It's as saying Jesus is the

Messiah.

So anyway, so my students don't know basic information about the Bible, even though they

believe it, let alone scholarship about the Bible. And so, the class is really about scholarship

on the Bible, which they know absolutely nothing about because they've never heard any of this

stuff in church.

Even though, in many cases, their pastors will have known it because the pastors got

trained places that teach this kind of thing. One of the things that my students don't know

about is, what I'm talking with you about for the next 20 minutes or so, which is that

there are books in the New Testament that claim to be written by people who did not

write them.

Now, in a modern world, if somebody writes a book claiming to be someone famous when

they're not that person, we call that a forgery. And what I argue in my book, "Forged," is

that ancient people also thought negatively of this kind of literary activity.

They also thought it was a form of lying and deceit. And they didn't accept it. And I try

and show why it is that scholars, nonetheless, think that there are books in the New Testament

that were not written by the people who are named as their author's. So, I wanna talk

about that.

That's the main topic I wanna talk about, but to get there, I wanna talk about, just

to set the stage, by talking about a couple books that did not make it into the New Testament.

A couple books that didn't make it in, which are absolutely forgeries. So the first example

I wanna talk about is a gospel that allegedly is written by Jesus's disciple, Simon Peter,

the gospel of Peter. This book was lost for centuries. It was not

discovered until 1886. There was a French archeological team that was working out of

Cairo, Egypt, that was digging in a different part of Egypt. It's a place called Akhmim.

It's about halfway down the Nile in Egypt. And in Akhmim, they were digging up a cemetery.

And in this cemetery, these archeologists uncovered a tomb of somebody they thought

was a monk. They thought he was monk because he was buried with a sacred book, and it's

this book that I'm interested in. This book is a 66-page book that contains four documents.

So, it's a kind of anthology, ancient anthology of text. Four texts in it. The first one is

this one that I'm calling the Gospel of Peter. The first ten pages give this gospel of Peter,

but they don't give the entire thing. We don't have the whole Gospel of Peter. The book actually

begins in the middle of a sentence.

So, this is a fragment of the Gospel of Peter. And what I mean by that is I don't mean that

this book that we have is itself a fragment. It's an entire book. The first page is blank.

The second page has a cross drawn on it. The third page, at the top of the page in the

upper left-hand side it begins, but it begins in the middle of a sentence.

So, the scribe who was copying this book, probably in the 6th Century--. The 6th Century

scribe who was copying this book was copying what was a fragment. OK? So, the book isn't

a fragment. He was copying a fragment. The book begins with these words, "and none of

the Jews wanted to wash their hands, so Pilate stood up."

Now, that calls to mind a passage found in the New Testament. In the Gospel of Matthew,

where Jesus is put on trial before Pontius Pilate and Pilate declares Jesus innocent.

And to show that he thinks he's innocent, he washes his hands in front of the crowd

and says, "I'm innocent of this man's blood."

And the crowd, the Jewish crowd, cries out, "His blood be upon us and our children." So,

the Jewish crowd is taking responsibility for the death of Jesus. This is the verse

that we used for all of the papal, anti-Semitic purposes over the centuries. The Gospel of

Peter doesn't have that verse, but it does have a verse not found in Matthew, which is

"none of the Jews wanted to wash their hands."

Well, what happens in this account of Jesus's death is that the Jews are far more guilty

for Jesus's death, even than they are in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The Jews are more culpable

in the death of Jesus. And so that's one of the themes in this Gospel of Peter.

It's a very anti-Jewish form of the gospel. It is an account of Jesus going on trial,

being condemned, being crucified, and then being raised from the dead. Which, of course,

is an account that you get in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the New Testament as well.

But in this account, there are many differences from the others. The most stark difference

comes at the very end. The Gospel of Peter, unlike the other gospels that we have, do

not--. The Gospel of Peter narrates an account of Jesus being raised from the dead.

And in a way, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John narrate Jesus being raised from the dead,

right? No, they don't. In Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Jesus is crucified. He's dead. And

then he's buried. On the third day, the women go to the tomb and they find the tomb empty.

In other words, Jesus has been raised from the dead, but you're not given a story of

it happening.

There's no story of Jesus coming out of the tomb. But there is a story like that in the

Gospel of Peter. And it's a terrific story. What happens is, according to this Gospel

of Peter, the authorities sent a guard at the tomb of Jesus to make sure nobody comes

to steal the body.

And as the guard is guarding the tomb, they look up and they see the heavens rip open.

And two angelic beings descend from Heaven. And as they descend from Heaven, the stone

in front of the tomb rolls away by itself. They come down. They enter into the tomb.

And then, as the guard is watching, three people come out of the tomb. Two of them are

so tall that their head reaches up to the sky. The third is so tall that they're supporting

him. His head reaches up above the sky. And after they come out of the tomb, behind them

from the tomb emerges the cross.

And a voice comes from Heaven and says, "Have you preached to those who are asleep?" And

the cross replies, "Yes." So, here we have a giant Jesus and a walking, talking cross.

[laughter]

How this thing got lost for centuries, I don't know. You'd think this would be one you'd

wanna keep, but it eventually got lost. Well so, the whole thing is metaphorical, of course.

I mean, the reason these two angels are as tall as skyscrapers is because they're angels.

They're superhuman. And so, superhumans are really big. And Jesus is taller than them

because he's even more superhuman. He's the son of God. So he's really tall.

And the cross walking out, that's a metaphor for--. The question is, did the message of

the cross of Jesus go to those who were already dead? Have you preached to those who are asleep?