Bart Ehrman vs. Justin Bass on Whether Jesus Believed He was Divine

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00:02

And greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line on a

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Thursday afternoon on the, let's see, it is the 5th of November.

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Wow, this year has gone by fast. But I am not going to take time to talk about that today.

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I didn't put it up in here so I could read it, maybe we'll do it sometime, but having read a parody of you and I doing

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The Dividing Line, yeah, inaudible, Rich in the other room, ten minutes discussion of why 2015 passed so quickly, followed by, oh we're out of time, okay, we'll just get right to work, because evidently that's not something we're actually capable of doing.

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But it is, I have to admit, you'll notice I'm wearing a plaid shirt today.

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And it is a flannel plaid shirt, because it's actually, the high temperature today will be 6 or 7 degrees cooler than Christmas was last year.

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So there you go, there you go. And I ran this morning, I'm like, whoo, yes, okay, definitely not summer anymore, that's good.

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Anyway, had a lot of requests, by the way there was an interesting conversation this morning on Twitter, if you didn't see it.

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It was with a fella by the name of Brandon, who is, did

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I play, I don't remember if I played, Brandon Robertson, I'm not sure if I played any of the clips from the

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National Religious Broadcaster's discussion that Janet Parshall moderated, that had

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Michael Brown, Brandon, Justin Lee, couple other people on it, as I recall.

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Anyway, he wrote a really unfair, tremendously biased, inaccurate, inaccurate review of the

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Gagnon -Kirk debate. And I can say that because I was there at the Gagnon -Kirk debate.

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And so I mentioned that on Twitter, and he immediately responded. I took the time to look up, see if he had a

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Twitter handle, and he did. So we ended up having an interesting conversation, might end up leading to an exchange.

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I sent him links to the Graham -Codrington debate and to the debate with Abdullah Kunda. There are numerous others we could have sent, but those seem to be ones that might help him see what we are able to do and how we do it.

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So we'll see what comes of that. But we had a lot of requests on Twitter and on Facebook to review the

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Bart Ehrman debate with Dr. Bass from Dallas. And you know, we live in a culture of visual perception today.

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So it would be easier, faster, I guess, faster to put it into Audio Notetaker and just do blocks like I've done with other things.

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But we have the video. So it won't be as fast, and I'm not going to do it consecutively because we need to keep working on the

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Brownson stuff and, you know, major events take place. It's nice to be able to go there.

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I noticed that Dr. Ehrman has lost a fair amount of hair and weight since our debate.

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But he'd probably say the exact same thing about me, though I couldn't have lost any more hair. But I'm definitely, definitely a lot smaller than I was back then.

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And so I skip past where he does his polling of the audience. You know, how many of you are

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Christians? How many of you believe the other person's right? How many of you want to see me get creamed? Ha ha ha ha. OK, I skip past all the standard urbanisms at that point.

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And they didn't take up too much time. And we'll just pick up at that point. We're going to be responding as we're going along in the presentation, though, to be honest with you, some of the most important parts take place in the rebuttal and the cross -examination.

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And we'll get to that. I know one of the things I want to do, and I keep forgetting to put this into my.

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My notes and my reminders program, I need to pull up reminders, I wonder if I have it on this thing anyway.

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Yep, I do good. I want to also load the video of the atheist debate that I mentioned.

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What, about two weeks ago, there's an audience question there that I really, really want to get to, and I was reminded of that because as I was driving in today, guess who was on Michael Medved today?

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Dan Barker. I'll be honest with you, there is something there is something for me anyways, it's sort of cool to hear people you've debated when they're doing stuff like that and to know that they know to know that they know what it's like to to be on the losing end of of a of a debate thesis.

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So it does sort of help a little bit. But as most of you know, Bart Ehrman is the go to guy for unbelievers, whether they be religious unbelievers, as in Muslims or the secular unbelievers.

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And Bart Ehrman. His. Doctoral dissertation was in the development of the proto -Alexandrian text type, primarily based upon.

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A particular early church fathers, but others. Chronologically and geographically related to his text.

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That is his narrow focus, was his narrow focus, he's admitted that that's not really not what he deals with anymore.

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My biggest concern is that Bart Ehrman makes theological statements and then hides behind,

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I'm not a theologian. To avoid really having to deal with the fact that when it comes to dealing with theology, he's not very good at it.

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He's just not. I mean, you read this last book about how Jews became

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God and there is a level of theological naivete that is amazing.

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It's explainable because Ehrman really doesn't think there's anybody who is his equal when it comes to this field of study.

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Christian history as a whole. But there is a level of naivete that is that is amazing, and there's a level of honesty where he admits, you know,

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I I always thought X, Y and Z and.

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I've come to discover that I've been wrong all along and some of the stuff that he will admit to having been wrong about basic, basic, basic, basic stuff.

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Really, really basic level stuff. Now, I'm glad that he's come along to say, well, you know, you know, he now in this debate will say numerous times all of the gospel writers believed that Jesus was

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God. Now, what he means by that is not what we mean by that. But he certainly doesn't mean what the

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Muslims mean by that, that's for sure. So. There is that,

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I suppose, and I suppose that's a somewhat positive move. But in this debate, once again, remember.

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Four years ago, we reviewed a really hard debate to listen to, it was the one he did with Mike Licona where Mike Licona had laryngitis.

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Oh, man. I remember listening to it myself on the ride, and it was just it was just.

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Hard to listen to. And believe me, I was almost there in Durban, so I know it's so.

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Frustrating. To prepare for something and then your body lets you down, and that really was what was taking place there.

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Anyway, remember. Right around that time period, we reviewed that debate and the debate that he did with William Lane Craig, also on the resurrection, and one of the things that we emphasized at that time.

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Is Ehrman's insistence that history can only be done naturalistically.

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Now, it's obvious that on one level there is some truth to that statement in that.

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You know, if a Mormon historian comes along. And says, well.

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Joseph Smith had the first vision. Simply because Mormon scripture says so.

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All right, I get how someone would say that's not really doing history, that's just repeating the dogmas of your religion.

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But there's a difference between that kind of naive. Approach to history.

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And the full blown secularism that Ehrman demands that we embrace.

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In excluding any possibility of the role of the supernatural in the natural realm.

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From his perspective, the only thing that can have anything to do with history is that which can be explained on a naturalistic basis.

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So in other words, God is completely factored out. So it can't be a resurrection because dead people don't rise from the dead.

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So even if you've got prophecy, even if you've got eyewitnesses, you've got to come up with something else because of the overriding supremacy of your worldview.

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And we pointed out what the problems with that kind of dogmatic naturalistic worldview and history really are.

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It's certainly, we can recognize that history has its parameters.

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It can't speak to things outside of what it can and cannot demonstrate. But the idea of analyzing and handling.

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Supernatural events and the life of Jesus is a supernatural event and Toto. In such a way that you simply dismiss all supernatural elements to it and hence argue that this is an illustration of myth making fables, whatever else.

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That kind of dogmatic naturalism, it's what Ehrman's all about. And we'll see it over and over again in this debate.

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But the question of the debate raises this very issue to our minds.

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And that is, did Jesus think he was

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God? Not that his disciples think he was God. Well, that immediately raises all sorts of issues.

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Because how do you know what Jesus did or did not believe? What are your sources?

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Jesus didn't write books. And if you've already dismissed the apostles as a relevant source, what are you going to do?

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Well, that allows him to drag this completely into the, well, we apply naturalistic methods of historical inquiry and the result of that is

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Jesus clearly didn't believe he was God. Well, I think you'll see where that comes apart. But one of the things we will see is that Ehrman is not really good with Trinitarian theology.

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He is extremely confused and we won't get to it today. So I didn't even bother bringing any of the quotes in.

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But we will get into the Jesus. If you say Jesus is

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Yahweh. And once again, I'll be happy to go to North Carolina and debate

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Bart Ehrman on the thesis. Did any of the

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New Testament writers identify Jesus as Yahweh? Because he says in this debate, none of them did.

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Happy to debate that on the campus. He didn't even have to go anyplace. And I'm sure that will still not happen.

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But anyways, we'll not get to that today. But that will come up in the course of the debate.

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All right. So let's just let Bart see it.

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The problem with doing the video way is I can't speed it up. I can't speed it up. I can't do 1 .2

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or whatever else. But maybe people remember a little bit more because they get to see good old

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Bart speaking. So, all right. Here we go. My work cut out for me.

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All right. But the reality is I'm not going to win this debate. And so we might as well just face that up front.

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I'm not going to convince most of you. I hope I say some things that make some of you think.

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It's more important for me that you think about whatever it is you believe or don't believe.

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I personally don't care if you are a rabid fundamentalist, a committed evangelical, a wide -eyed liberal

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Christian, or a crazy agnostic. I don't really care what you are or if you're

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Muslim or Jewish. What I do care is that you think about it.

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That you have a reasoned position for your view. And that you don't simply accept the view that somebody else has fed you.

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And that you don't simply listen to people because they say things that you agree with.

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But that you're willing to disagree with what you learned in your home, from your parents, from your teachers, from your preachers, from your

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Sunday school teachers. That you are willing to disagree because you thought it through and you come to think, you know,

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I think I was wrong. That is a very painful thing to do. I myself have done it.

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I applied myself to study at Dallas Theological Seminary back when

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I was a conservative evangelical Christian. Revival is our middle name.

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And so, being mean -spirited,

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I changed my mind because I thought I was wrong. Very difficult.

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So, I'm not urging you to follow my path. The question is, did Jesus consider himself to be divine?

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Now, I'm in a real handicap here. Handicap here because it's quite clear that Jesus in the

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New Testament does declare himself divine. The clearest proof of that is John chapter 15, verse 1.

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Jesus explicitly says, I am divine, you are to branches. Okay, well, there you go.

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Somebody on Twitter said that they involuntarily laughed when I told that joke on the last dividing line.

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I think my timing was better on the last dividing line. But give him credit.

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He was interrupted because they could tell they're having sound problems. And so, some guy walks up and, hey, at least the lights didn't go out.

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That, you know, we do. Evidently, red didn't make it to this debate.

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So, at least the lights didn't go out. And that's probably a good thing. But there is, yeah, there's the evidence.

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I am divine, and you are to branches. Saw that one coming from a mile off.

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But as long as you get laughs, I guess you just keep using it. Right. How much time have

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I spent already? How much time have I wasted already? Okay. Okay, I think it's very important for us to be on the same page.

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Now, what we're not debating before I get to what I think we are debating. We are not debating the question, is

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Jesus God? Now, most of you think that he is God. And I'm not debating that.

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I'm not saying that Jesus was not God. I'm an agnostic. I personally don't believe

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Jesus was. That's not what we're debating. Okay, just so you understand. Secondly, we're not asking, did the writers of the

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Gospels think Jesus was God? I think the answer is yes. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, in different ways, thought that Jesus was

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God. But that's not what we're debating. Okay, so very important. Catch that right there.

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All my Muslim friends, did you hear what Bart Ehrman just said?

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If you're going to quote Bart Ehrman in the future, make sure you just heard him say, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all thought

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Jesus was God in different ways. But they all thought he was God. This idea that they all thought he was just a prophet or something.

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Don't quote this guy as being supportive of your position. He's not. He's wrong on that too.

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But the point is, at least accurately represent that. But what he's saying is the

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Gospel writers did believe this. And that's going to be part of his argument. They did believe it.

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And therefore, the evidence they give for it must be dismissed. Because they did believe it.

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That ends up becoming evidence that Jesus didn't believe it. Think that one through and you'll see how it works out later on.

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We're debating, did Jesus claim to be God? We're also not debating, does

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Jesus claim to be God in the New Testament? We're not debating that.

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Because in the New Testament, Jesus does claim to be God. He doesn't claim to be

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God in any of the passages that Justin just mentioned. As you may have noticed if you paid careful attention.

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Jesus, in none of those passages, does Jesus say, I am

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God. Now there was Bart Ehrman channeling

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Akhmedida. In none of these passages did Jesus say, I am

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God. Well, again, they're going to get into Mark chapter 14, the

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Son of Man statement. Ehrman's going to do his. There's just so many books on the subject of the

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Son of Man. And it's just very complicated. And everybody thought they had it figured out 100 years ago.

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But now nobody really knows. And again, if you listen carefully, what he's going to say is, oh, yeah, there are plenty of places where Jesus identifies himself as the

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Son of Man. But then there are these others that, given his theory of who

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Jesus was and given his theory of how the gospel writers are self -contradictory and how they're myth -making and making stuff up.

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See, the idea that you could actually go the New Testament, go, who is the Son of Man? Well, you put these together and you harmonize them.

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No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Naivete, pre -critical thinking. No, no, no, no, no. the critical thinker says you can't harmonize no no you you guilty until proven innocent is is our motto and so who the son of man is that's gonna come up he's gonna admit that in John Jesus says he's got he says

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John a 58 clear series yet for Abraham was I am but she is clearly didn't say that in fact the very last words that he utters in this debate because he got the last word was the vast majority of modern

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New Testament scholars do not believe that anything in the Gospel of John's historical that's that's the last claim that he makes so he but so given his standards there's no way that dr.

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Bass could even make an argument we don't know what Jesus said from his perspective and therefore cannot affirm that Jesus ever claimed to be

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God and it's easy way to get to the end point of your debate

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I guess but not overly useful the first passages he mentioned were from the writings of the Apostle Paul Jesus was not speaking elsewhere

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Jesus talked about being the son of God we're asking Jesus the son of God we're asking did

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Jesus call himself God he does in some places in the New Testament Abraham the

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Christian John 10 a 38 Jesus says before Abraham was

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I am the Jews know perfectly well what he's saying they put out stones to stone him to death

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I am the father are one John 10 30

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I'm ambiguous now by the way um unambiguous now again

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I'd like I'd like my Muslim friends yeah I I know you're listening I'd like you to hear we're gonna

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Bart Ehrman John a 58 John 10 30 unambiguous claims that Jesus Christ is

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God you're the guys that quote from John 14 and 16 to prove that Muhammad is prophesied in the

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Bible now you realize you got a real problem if you keep quoting Bart Ehrman right you do realize that well some of you don't care you evidently like the fella

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I mentioned the last program double standard who cares what matter you can't talk about that that's great anyway unambiguous well if it's unambiguous in John 10 30 the

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Jesus being identified as God and I've said many many times

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John 10 30 is not one of my favorite deity texts it does teach the deity of Christ but you have to understand why it teaches the deity of Christ which is says

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I and the father we are one the context is in one in providing eternal life to the people of God and so really to to lay a foundation for John 10 30 to be really understood properly as teaching the deity of Christ you have to look at how

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Yahweh is the Savior of his people in the Old Testament and see how that language is being brought in and hence the oneness of the father and the son if they're in me then they're in the father no one can snatch that out of my hand no one can snatch them out of the father's hand

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I and the father we are one in the provision of that salvation no mere creature could ever make that claim and that's where the weight of the claim comes from this is not a bare assertion of ontological oneness this isn't just Jesus isn't engaging in some kind of contextless discussion of ontology here there is a context and I am tired of hearing

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Christians quoting John 10 30 without showing any knowledge of what the context is and hence making a proper meaningful argument as to what's really going on here but it does teach deity of Christ I don't think as unambiguously as even

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Bart Ehrman thinks but it does but that's because I think we're trying to be a little more careful in our approach than what what

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Bart Ehrman is saying but point is these he's willing to say unambiguously there are texts that teach this they're just not true they're just not historical they don't pass the historical litmus test that's what his argument is is all about he has seen the father

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John 14 9 he prays in John chapter 17 father glorify me with the glory that I have in your presence before the world existed he is claiming to have pre -existed with God before the universe came into existence you will note something about these four quotations and I could add a couple more all four of these come from the

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Gospel of John why don't I have any say from Matthew Mark and Luke our earliest gospels because Jesus did not make these plans in our earliest do you now see why about two years ago in that summer period where I have a couple

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Sundays in a row to preach PR BC I did a whole series of sermons on the deity of Christ in the

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Gospel of Mark and then I I think the debate that I do is

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Shabir Ali at the University of Pretoria in South Africa was really important because I demonstrated in that debate that the earliest sources that we have so Mark James the primitive traditions that we find in first Corinthians 8

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Philippians chapter 2 so early traditional sources that are quoted by Paul almost creedal sources like first Corinthians 8 is that these all present to us the deity of Christ so that the earliest strata the earliest level of revelation we have in the

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New Testament is rich with passages on the deity of Christ so here you have

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Bart Ehrman and he says hey it's all John now if it's in Matthew now if it's in Mark now if it's in Luke and the nature of the claims that Jesus makes in John does differ from that in Matthew Mark and now they're obviously places where you know you're familiar with Matthew 11 it's the section called the the

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Gospel of John in Matthew where Jesus speaking to the father in very

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Johan in language says I thank the father you've hidden these things from the wise and learn you've revealed them unto babes and and you know blinding and revealing concepts and and no one knows the son except the father no one knows the father except the son those whom the son wills to reveal him

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I mean just the exact same kind of language you have in John it just poof pops out of Mark someplace

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Matthew someplace where'd it come from but we're how'd that get there and then you have these texts in Mark from the very beginning mark chat and a lot of the folks in the audience will bring this up during the audience questions but again audience questions can never really get you where you need to go because you can't redirect you can't cross you can't whatever the guy says he's gonna say and you just sort of have to trust that people are gonna be able to see that he did or did not answer the question in a meaningful fashion and unfortunately these days you really can't count on that as far as the audience is is concerned but there are all these statements all these actions all these events starting in the beginning of mark make the way straight for whom you go back to Isaiah it's

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Yahweh now I can guess the arguments well it's just the representative of Yahweh who is

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BT you know you've got the the Sheliak and all the rest is kind of stuff I mean there's there's a way around anything if you want to get around anything all you got to do is be selective in the factual material that you will let into your interpretation there's and I've said this before sometimes

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I I encounter Christians who think that as long as you know enough about the

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Bible maybe as long as you know both the original languages that you'll be able to shut down every excuse answer every objection to any position just not true it's not unless the

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Spirit of God places within a person's heart a willingness to be obedient to the Word of God and to listen to the entirety of the

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Word of God doesn't matter it does not matter what you do and I have

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I have seen in people's eyes I've seen in people's eyes a disappointment and even a questioning of their own faith when they realized that there are objections that unbelievers can raise that in that particular narrow context cannot be refuted what do

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I mean by that I remember once a friend asked me about a claim that a

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Jehovah's Witness had made about how a particular text in the

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Holy Spirit could be translated I looked at text and said yeah it could be translated that way it's like well then what do we say

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I said God's truth has never been it's never been a part of our belief that God's truth is encapsulated in every single verse of the

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Bible God's truth is found in taking all of what

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Revelation says together and so in this one particular text you might be able to argue well you could translate this way in an unorthodox fashion but the conclusion you would come to then would be inconsistent with what is found elsewhere in Scripture on the same subject and so a lot of people really do think that what you need is a knockout blow on every single point sometimes it's there

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I mean how many times in this program have we played somebody making a claim making a statement and it's just simply 100 % factually wrong and boom there's there's the evidence it's done but that is not always the way it's going to happen and I start seeing

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Christian maturity in a person's life when they start recognizing not only that they don't need to have a knee -jerk reaction answer right now that God's truth is big enough to allow them to do some study and maybe even do some wrestling with an issue but that God's truth is bigger than any one particular text every particular text is a part of that truth but I start seeing real maturity when people recognize and realize that it's not finding everything in every single verse but allowing all those verses again it's that illustration

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I've used many times with the tapestry those beautiful threads of truth that are woven through they go all the way through it takes time to trace those things out and sometimes that particular part of the tapestry you're looking at might not have everything you need and so that little semi -sermon was for somebody out there

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I don't know who I'm not gonna sit here and go Oh spirits telling me there's someone named Bob that you know and now

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Bob needs to send in $69 and I'm just practicing for a little

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TBN shot there not not not going over huh yeah well that Paula White chick did it and look at look the money she's brought in still not gonna fly huh yeah all right we'll go back to Bart Ehrman doesn't work for him either why is that we're not debating whether Jesus claims to be

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God in the New Testament we're asking did the historical Jesus himself the man who walked in Galilee and was crucified in Jerusalem did he during his lifetime say that he was

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God my view of this is not a weird view of a particularly liberal agnostic who happens to teach in Chapel Hill it is that but it's not only that the view that I'm going to set forth now is the view that is the dominant view among New Testament scholars throughout the known universe yeah

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I love that only one word would help to make that a more meaningful statement

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I'm believing and even then

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I don't know that I would accept the statement but at least it would make it a little bit more accurate unbelieving and why anyone wants to be a

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New Testament scholar who doesn't actually be able the New Testament says but it almost it almost leads you to accept the conclusion of conspiracies when you hear the repetition of the argument like you have here this is argumentum ad populum we're right because we're in the majority and that can be questioned that Jesus the historical

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Jesus the man did not declare himself now the fact that you know this is the kind of standard view among scholars doesn't make it right it doesn't make it wrong but it is the standard view

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I just want you to realize this is just not one of my weird things I can come out a few of my weird things later if you want but this isn't one of them this is this is standard stuff

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Jesus does claim to be God in the

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New Testament especially in the Gospel of John and so doesn't that prove that Jesus claimed to be

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God well I'm going to give a little bit of a more of a direct reputation of what what

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Justice said when I get around to the to the rebuttals because I didn't know what he was going to say and so I didn't prepare

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I'm going to I'm going to try and say some things directly about that but what I want to point out just as a preliminary to that is that Justin did cite several verses from the

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New Testament where Jesus for example claimed to be the Son of God or the Son of Man but he didn't do what historians do when they approach the

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New Testament which is established that those verses actually were things that the historical

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Jesus said now here you go here's fundamental issue at hand here is how do you know what the historical

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Jesus said and most liberal quote -unquote

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Christian theologians and historians are already so thoroughly compromised on this issue that this is sort of a home run swing because they they've already pretty much accepted the foundations of this concept and the idea is that the

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Jesus of faith and the Jesus of history two completely different things and they look down their noses they honestly do they look down their noses at the the simple wild -eyed fundamentalists who actually think that the

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Jesus of faith and the Jesus of history had anything to do with one another let alone the silly naive people think they're actually the same thing that Jesus actually was

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God that he actually made the statements he didn't John you know all the right you're what you will not be invited to have a seat at the table and I think it might be worthwhile to play the cross -examination period where Bart goes after bass and basically says so what in the

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New Testament would you agree Jesus didn't actually say and basically establishes his position by arguing that way and if you're once again left with the preponderance of the evidence points the greater probability that Jesus may have said something that might have indicated that he had some sense of divine mission or calling or nature whatever you know that's all that's all urban needs that that's all that's all he needs and we may play some of those sections because it does again illustrate the difference and again speaks to us about this issue of if you want to be accepted in the academy there are certain things you don't question and from apologetic standpoint and I would say from a orthodox and historical standpoint some of the things you simply have to accept our death to any meaningful orthodoxy and foundation of orthodoxy but just thought we would mention that in passing if you believe that everything in the gospels that is recorded on Jesus lives is exactly what

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Jesus said because you believe that God inspired Bible and so the Bible says Jesus said something that he really said it if that's what you personally believe then then nothing

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I say to change your mind there to me anyways is an admission from Ehrman's perspective that you have to abandon the highest view of Scripture if you hold the highest view of Scripture that the debates over if you actually believe that what the

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Bible says is true then you should believe in the deity of Christ and the whole argument is but no one can really do that anymore no one can really believe these things anymore and whether he will present a meaningful defense of that we'll see but that's not how historians go about establishing what the historical

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Jesus really said and did and I need to spend the rest of my time explaining why so just just keep in mind the claim is a claim to supernatural nature however no supernatural explanation can be allowed only naturalistic information can be allowed to speak to whether a supernatural claim actually existed just keep that in mind would have been nice if at some point they had been brought out but that's how he's functioning now you might say well it doesn't have to be a supernatural claim that Jesus just could have been nuts well okay but the point is even

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Jesus's argument it's gonna be you're not the scriptures say the scriptures cannot be broken and prophets spoke about me etc etc etc all that has just been but that's not how historians put together the historical

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Jesus well that's a really good explanation of why every single historical

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Jesus scholar has a different Jesus I forget what the quote was it's funny you get old and your memory goes wonky but there are some things that don't go wonky when it comes to memory same debate the debate with that was addressing specifically the historicity reliability of the

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Gospels of John Dominic Crossan where red tried to turn lights out and my son by the way was the one that rescued us from darkness was my son's fast movement that brought the light back and I just I'd mentioned that red was the bringer of darkness my son was the bringer of light so just whatever that means we'll just let that go but I remember with incredible clarity

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I was using it probably wasn't wise to have done this but I was using a palm pilot to have my notes on and man it just barely worked

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I just barely I barely pulled that one off so many things could have gone wrong there but there was a quote that I had and it specifically had been written about John Dominic Crossan and people like him and it was something along the lines of historical

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Jesus scholars like Crossan look deeply into the well the Gospels and hence should not be overly surprised that the

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Jesus they see staring back at them looks amazingly like themselves and the historical

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Jesus the quest for the historical Jesus that has been so much a part of the

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Enlightenment is little more than a recognition that if you don't have a supernatural word from God you cannot have a supernatural

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Jesus the problem is the only Jesus we've got is a supernatural Jesus and therefore if you're going to reject all of that the results gonna be a mess the results gonna be well all the weird no you've got the socialist

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Jesus and the communist Jesus and the fascist Jesus and the vegetarian Jesus and you know you just get all this weird wild wacky stuff because you can't come up with a historical

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Jesus using naturalistic methodologies it just doesn't work

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I mean you can you can put together an outline of historical events you know

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Ehrman would admit the Muslims are completely out to lunch when it comes to the crucifixion of Jesus okay so there's a historical event but a historical events don't tell you much about the person and so this question historical

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Jesus well scholars love it because what do you what do you have to do to get to be a scholar you've got to gotta be published you gotta come up with a new a new slant on things that's gotta do wow this is this books come out every year someone's come out with a new slant and you see him in the media scholar so -and -so has come up with a new theory that Jesus was actually a space alien vegetarian and news at 11 and yeah and what

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Christmas is right on the corner so matter of days we're gonna have some new story this could come out someone never heard of before who's trying to sell a and it'll be about the birth of Jesus or the non birth of Jesus or whatever for some reason

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I like the spring better Easter seems to be the time that you always get all the really wild wacky stuff but there's always something right around this time you just watch it'll be there happens every single year every single year and the reason for this is once you don't have a certain word to address the subject it's a free -for -all and as long as man has an imagination and man has an imagination they'll come up with all sorts of wild and crazy and fun stuff pretty easy pretty easy that's that's how it works probably did not actually say that's the issue if Justin disagrees with that that he's going to have to explain how it is that all the sayings in the

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New Testament are historically exactly the things Jesus said. In other words, if we're talking about the historical

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Jesus, we're not talking about what he personally believes about Jesus. We're not talking about his theology. We're not talking about his religious belief.

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We're talking about history. How do you establish... Catch that? Catch that? You can't, you can't have.

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See, he wants to build an impenetrable wall between history, theology, personal belief, whether Jesus actually was

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God or not. An impenetrable wall that could only exist in a naturalistic universe.

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He has to. He's a naturalist. But he's dealing with supernaturalistic documents and he's dealing with a person who is represented in those documents as not believing that wall exists.

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The result's going to be predictable, but it's the essence of where Ehrman is.

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...somebody in the past actually said on historical grounds. If you can't establish something as Jesus actually said it, then you don't know whether he said it or not.

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Let me explain more fully. The Gospels as historical sources. The Gospels are certainly expressions of the faith of the early

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Christian authors. Matthew, Mark, and Luke were writing down their views of Jesus.

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They are expressions of faith that are valuable to us as Christians, and they're valuable to us as Christians, and they're valuable to us as Christians, and they're valuable to us as Christians, and they're valuable to us as Christians, and they're valuable to us as Christians, and they're valuable to us as Christians, and they're valuable to us as Christians, and they're valuable to us as Christians, and they're valuable to us as Christians, and they're valuable to us as Christians, and they're valuable to us as Christians, and they're valuable to us as Christians, and they're valuable to us as Christians, and they're valuable to us as Christians, and they are valuable for people of faith today. Of course, the

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Gospels are where you turn to understand who Jesus was, what he meant, and what he means for you.

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They are expressions that are valuable for your faith, but that doesn't make them historically accurate.

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The Gospels as history. Let me talk about how historians go about establishing what really happened in the past.

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If historians have ancient sources, how do they know if those sources are reliable? This is the same question that we have today.

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Whenever you read an account in the newspaper, you have to ask, not, is it in the newspaper, but is it reliable or not?

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What do ancient historians want when it comes to ancient sources? They want sources that are numerous.

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If you've got stories about Alexander the Great, or about Julius Caesar, or about Caesar Augustus, or about anyone else from the ancient world, or from the

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Middle Ages, or from the Renaissance, you want numerous sources. Now remember, now,

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I did not hear Bart Ehrman retract this, but Dan Wallace said that he at least amended it.

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The fact is he said it. Remember the amazing statement that was made at the end of,

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I think it was the last debate with Wallace. I think it was the Wallace debate where Dan jumped the gun on the

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Green Project and talked about the early papyri, which we still haven't seen.

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In fact, when was it that those CNN stories broke?

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They weren't that long ago. Well, it was about six or eight months ago.

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At that time we were being told, real soon, real soon, here we are coming up on the end of 2015, and still don't have anything at all.

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Anyway, it was at the end of that debate, someone asked audience question of Bart Ehrman, all right, what would it take?

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What level of evidence would you need to believe that Mark wrote

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Mark, and that what Mark wrote is true?

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Is, was historically relevant and accurate? And I need to go back and track this down, but as I recall, it was something like 10 copies of the

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Gospel of Mark, notarized to have been written within, what was it?

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Six weeks? May have been six months, the outside of the original, notarized to have been copied within a very brief time after the original itself, at least 10 copies.

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And I commented at the time that any historian of the ancient world that would hear that statement would find it next to impossible to stifle absolute laughter at the absurdity of it, at the absolute absurdity of it, because there is nothing.

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There is no fact of history, nothing that could even come close to fulfilling that standard of evidence, nothing.

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There's nothing today. I mean, given CGI and Photoshop and, and everything we can do today,

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I mean, that would be like saying for me to believe, for me to believe that Bernie Sanders said these things that would cost $18 trillion or whatever it was,

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I would need to have 10 different video angles with no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, notarized documentation that I have the original footage from each of the 10 different recording devices provided to me within 30 minutes after the event for me to believe the

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Bernie Sanders said, Bernie Sanders said that. And any historian recognizes that is a gross transplanting of modern standards backwards upon a an ancient context that is laughably naive, absolutely laughably naive.

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And so that's why I have identified Herman as a radical skeptic, a radical skeptic, not just an apostate, which is a factual description of the man's spiritual standing that I, I know he'd object to, but would have no grounds to object to it.

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But he is, he is radical. There could not have been any meaningful progress in history and in the study of history.

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If Bart Ehrman's standards had been used from the beginning, it never happened.

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We would simply have to say that we, we have a vague idea that there might've been something called a civil war, but you're not really getting into the ancient mists of time.

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At that point, we really don't have any reliable sources. Don't worry about the battlefields and physical stuff like that.

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We got to be a real radical skeptic here. And he is a real radical skeptic.

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And that's what we're dealing with here. Well, we got, we got partway into his presentation and have covered some good stuff.

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So we've got this, we've got Brownson. I want to get to that to audience question from the presuppositional debate a couple of weeks ago, and who knows what's going to happen over the weekend.

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Oh, and I also have a radio -free Geneva sermon that we need to do in the future too.

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Not too long down the road. Maybe, maybe even next week. We'll see. We'll see. We may have to do an extra dividing line just to catch up.

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Who knows? But anyways, thanks for watching dividing line today. Lord willing, we'll see you next

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Tuesday. Maybe next Monday. I don't know. We'll see. Keep watching.