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Loading...I had an interview with Nicholas Kristof, columnist for the New York Times, which appeared electronically this past Saturday. It was based on my book Love Thy Stranger (coming out in March) with a focus on Christmas.
These kinds of interviews are very frustrating because it is impossible to back up a single thing you say and if you say anything that needs backing up, it is just sitting there for someone to take a potshot at. Or at least when given as a bare statement seems really dubious. But, it’s the nature of the beast (kind of like being interviewed as a talking head for a documentary film/TV show; they interview you for three hours and then take ten or fifteen ten- or fifteen-second soundbites!)
So many of the comments the (NYT) interview has received show how many people in the world who have opinions about the Bible, Jesus, and early Christianity would really benefit from learning more. There are so many commonplaces out there that simply seem true to people because they’ve heard them, but have not been exposed to serious scholarship or have at least not thought about them very carefully. (Kinda like when I was a teenager and I’d hear grown-ups opposed to welfare from the government say: Well, the Bible says “God helps those who help themselves.”) (and that would be true, if Benjamin Franklin wrote the Bible….)
All that is rather frustrating, but that’s why we have the blog!! If you know anyone interested in the things we talk about here — tell them about the blog! Think of it as spreading the good news. 🙂
Here is the interview: What Would Surprise Jesus About Christmas 2025?
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Wouldn’t the thing most surprising to Jesus be that the world is still here, the Kingdom of God as unrealized as ever?
It certainly would have been deflating….
Fantastic interview Bart. I’m sure you’ve heard of John Fugelsang’s book “Separation of Church and Hate,” which does a great job of illustrating like you did how a lot of modern day conservative Christians misunderstand, ignore, and cherry pick the bible and Jesus.
Something I wanted to ask you is, if the inclination to help complete strangers in need came into the Western world through the teachings of Jesus, what do you say to those who think this is strong evidence that Jesus was divine? If Jesus wasn’t divine, where did he get the idea of helping complete strangers?
I don’t think a new ethical teaching is ever an indication of divinity. Moral thinkers for centuries have come up with ethical principles that were scarcely or rarely articulated before. (I don’t think someone would claim Kant was divine because he came up with “categorical imperatives,” for example; or that Diogenes was divine because he insisted on complete divestment).
I agree, no divinity required for coming up with new ethical principles. So if Jesus wasn’t divine, where do you think he got the idea of helping complete strangers? Was he just more empathetic than rabbis before him? Did he see this as something God required and, if so, what was his basis for concluding this? Some other explanation?
He got it from his Jewish tradition. In my book I argue that he radicalized and universalized the view, otherwise widely held in Judaism since Hebrew Bible days.
You said Jesus got the idea of helping complete strangers by radicalizing and universalizing the view otherwise widely held in Judaism since Hebrew Bible days. What widely held view in Judaism are you referring to here, do you mean things like the golden rule (Lev 19:18) and associated ideas?
Love your neighbor. Love the foreigner among you. Love the stranger. In the Hebrew Bible it’s not just love your family and friends.
Why do you think Jesus radicalized and universalized these Jewish ideas but nobody else did?
I don’t know that no one else did. There were hundreds of teachers in his day but we don’t have any record of what 99.9% of them said.
So if other Jewish teachers had the idea to radicalize and universalize Jewish ideas about caring for others like Jesus did, do you think it would be fair to say that some of the lay general Jewish population had the same idea but they just weren’t teachers preaching it in the streets?
We don’t know if other Jewish teachers did. Or if people on the street did.
In addition to helping complete strangers in need of care, how would you summarize the rest of Jesus’ ethical teachings?
Love. Give. Forgive. SHow mercy. Pratice justice.
Do you think Jesus also taught complete pacifism in response to violence and a less legalistic form of Judaism?
I think he was a committed pacificist, yes. And he certainly thought that the laws of Torah were to be observed — they were what God commands. But as with other Jewish teachers, he knew that sometimes a situation would arise in which someone would be forced to violate one law or the other because the principles they espouse were, in that case, at odds. And in those cases he thought that the “greater” laws (e.g. of love of neighbor and caring for those in need) were to trump the others.
Do you think the following is a pretty good summary of Jesus’ ethical teachings, or would you add or subtract or change something:
Jesus radicalized the golden rule and other empathy driven ideas: to care for complete strangers in need, treat even your enemies as you would want to be treated, give to others, accept the outcast, forgive, show mercy, react to violence with pacifism, and prioritize love and care of others when Jewish rules are in conflict. Jesus thought the end of the world was near and when it came the first would be last and the last would be first.
Are there any teaching that are NOT ethical in nature you would add to this list to give a nice summary of all of Jesus’ teachings?
Yup, I’d agree with that summary. And yes, Jesus taught many things other than ethics. Think of his parables, for example
Do you have a good summary of Jesus’ teachings that aren’t related to ethics?
I have a longer summary in my book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. For the virtually shortest summary possible: “The day of judgment is near: return to God before it’s too late.” (or just quote Mark 1:15 — everything else is exposition)
I really enjoyed this interview. One point that I wish had been included (and I don’t know whether it was made or not) is that these messages about helping strangers aren’t totally original to Jesus. They’re all over the Hebrew Bible. That strikes me as important as far as giving credit where it’s due.
Yes, I wish there were room for footnotes. I argue in my book that the “strangers” discussed in the Hebrew Bible are in every case strangers specifically among Israelites and those who immigrated into Israel, not those outside the community. For much of the Hebrew Bible, those people are to be slaughtered or otherwise dominated….
If Jesus were a divine being (God) prior to being born as a baby wouldn’t the authors of Mark, Matthew, and Luke have mentioned such an incredible thing?
Yup! If they knew about it, anyway.
Wow. That was certainly not a very balanced interview. The interviewer seemed to be much more focused on getting statements from you that supported his personal religious and political views rather than asking you to clarify views that you make in your book. If the ‘worthiness’ of a book is purely tied to how far left or right on a political spectrum one is, then I can see how much more work is needed in teaching people how to think (and how to ask better, deeper questions.)
Thank you Dr Ehrman. I’m looking forward to reading your book.
Off topic – I often think about one of your earlier books, God’s Problem, which deals with why we suffer if there is a loving God. It is a very powerful and convincing book. However, two recent explanations I’ve come across, which I don’t think you’ve specifically dealt with (apologies if you have) are –
Human ideas of fairness and justice are peculiar to us and may not be shared by higher beings.
And the other one (from a priest at a church I happened to attend yesterday – Christmas Eve) was that God does not want to act as a dictator, even a benevolent one, but to work co-operatively with us, which I guess is a variation on the Free Will argument.
Do you have any views on these explanations?
Yes, I have. I deal with the first in my forthcoming book. The people who say that our ethical views are not shared by God are typically the same people who claim that the fact of consistent human morality is a proof for the existence of God, since how else would you explain it; and the Bible DOES tell us to be more Godlike (if God favored injustice then we should too then!). So I don’t think it works. and yes, the second is a variant on the free will argument.
The majority of comments are more about the person making the comment than discussing the points of the article. Yes, you are completely right about how ignorance and bad information seem to rule the day. Yet here we are, almost 2026 with access to greater volumes of data, scholarship, and information than at any time in human history.
Great interview! Look forward to reading your new book.
That interview made me feel very Christmasy indeed.
Bart D. Ehrman,
Just checking with you that you have no posts on the Apochryphon of John also known as the Secret Book of John: The Gnostic Gospel (Nag Hammadi). I also checked your YouTube channel, Bart D. Ehrman but did not see anything there. I did see a M. David Litwa video on Gnostic Informant.
But I wanted your take on the Nag Hammadi text. Can you say a little something about that text?
Steefen
It’s a mind blower. It provides us with the most detailed account of a gnostic myth, and oh boy is it detailed. Not an easy text to follow. It, or something much like it, was known to Irenaeus. We have several manuscripts of it that have come down to us. If you’d like an introduction, look at Nicola Denzy Lewis’s book, An Introduction to Gnosticism. For most readers this kind of explanation of it makes better sense than the work itself!
Thank you.
Hello Dr.Bart Ehrman
In all of the gospels and in Pauls letters Jesus appeares to all of the deciples. Also in all of these stories it is said that The deciples doubted, it seems like these stories are multibly attested. So it seems these stories are not made up so did the 12 see a group hallutcination or something?
I try to explain how I think it happened in my book How Jesus Became God. Short story: I don’t think we know how many of the disciples actually claimed to see Jesus; certainly by 25 years later Paul indicates they all did. I think by then that was widely thought. If they all did “see” him at once then the choices are that they really did all see him raised from the dead or that they all *thought* they did. That would not necessarily have been a hallucination (though group hallucinations to happen); it could have been that as a group they saw someone off in the distance and one of them said, Hey, that’s Jesus, and they all said then, “We saw Jesus.” I.e. a mistaken identity. My personal view is that one or more of them thought they saw Jesus, told the others, and most of them were convinced and then the word got out that “they” had seen him. But hte fact that the doubt tradition is so dominatn in all the Gsopels and Acts suggests to me that even some of the disciples at the time didn’t believe it.
When discussing the “new ethical principles” attributed to Jesus and their origins, Bart Ehrman argues that these principles were rooted in Jewish tradition and refers to the Hebrew Bible. After reading Israel Shahak’s Jewish History, Jewish Religion, however, I learned that many of the ethical principles found there—such as Leviticus 19:18, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”—are presented as applying only to fellow Jews, not to so-called Gentiles. According to Shahak, Jews are not obligated to extend these moral duties to non-Jews. He also claims that traditional Jewish law prescribes lighter punishments for crimes such as murder theft … committed against Gentiles than for those committed against Jews. From this perspective, Hebrew morality would seem to apply primarily within the Jewish community itself. Is Shahak correct in this assessment?
To some extent. But the Hebrew Bible is clear that Love your neighbor ALSO applies to gentile immigrants who move into Israel and join the community. Jesus took it further though: ethnicity, religion, location, national identity didn’t matter; loving the neighbor meant taking care of anyone who was in need.
Did you see the article from TY Kerley in the Desoto Times-Tribune? He misspells Occam’s Razor (kh instead of cc? Hmm), introduces somebody named Michael who isn’t mentioned anywhere else in the article (Michael B Ehrman, maybe?), and spends a significant majority of his post explaining that most of the differences between manuscripts are fairly irrelevant as if that’s something you haven’t been pointing out in debates and discussions for decades, as you know.
It’s all a wildly disingenuous piece that ignores that the differences that DO matter REALLY matter, and he basically ignores or pays short shrift to those significant differences.
Can see why you’d feel as you do: damned if you do or don’t depending on the audience/interviewer.
After reading the blog this last year and listening to your lectures during long drives on audible I found myself biting my tongue during the holidays on social media posts from conservative Christian friends and family on social media. Not the same as your adventure but felt incredibly frustrating for sure.
But, being able to speak with a higher degree of competence (I hope!) because of you when speaking with open minded folks has been invaluable.
Thanks! Yes, it’s always frustrating to hear objections that are more reactionary than substantive. But, it’s the way of the world!