♪ [Opening music]♪
♪  ♪
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>> Dr. Katie Peters: Dan
Brown's "The Da Vinci Code"
is set in contemporary
Paris but
throughout the novel Brown
appeals to history in
particular, he makes claims
about Jesus and the development
of early Christianity.
Should such historical
claims be taken seriously?
Dan Brown says that they should.
In an interview with the
Today's show Matt Lauer,
Brown was asked about his
historicity of his account.
He said that outside the
fictional main characters,
all of it, absolutely all
of it I quote was true.
Yet Historians and Biblical
scholars disagree.
To guide us through the fact and
fiction of "The Da Vinci Code"
we are pleased to welcome
Dr. Bart Ehrman,
the Bowman Gray Professor of
Religious Studies and Chair of
the Religious Studies Department
at UNC Chapel Hill.
Dr. Ehrman is a noted authority
on the historical Jesus,
the apostolic fathers and the
history of early Christianity.
And he is the author of "The
Truth and Fiction in the
Da Vinci Code".
Please welcome, Dr. Ehrman.
[applause]
>> Dr. Bart Ehrman: Ok
thank you very much.
This sounds loud to me, does
this sound loud to you?
No?
Ok.
How many of you have read
"The Da Vinci Code?"
[laughs]
Ok, how many of you
have read the entire
New Testament?
[laughs] Good.
That's okay, that's
about the same.
So, but I start my class at
Chapel Hill I teach a New
Testament class that has between
350 and 400 students in it and
this last year I decided to do
something I'd have never done
before and I am not
sure it was legal to do,
but I did it anyway.
I've got tenure and it would
be hard to get rid of me. So,
I start out by asking my
students in the class,
how many of you in here would
agree with the proposition that
the Bible is the inspired
word of god?
Voom the entire room
raises its hand.
So, then I said ok how
many of you have read
"The Da Vinci Code?"
Voom, a lot of the class
raises its hand.
So, ok, how many of you have
read the New Testament,
scattered hands.
[laughs] So I said alright, so
what you are telling me is that
you think god wrote the Bible,
you have no trouble reading a
book that Dan Brown wrote but
you haven't read a book that you
think god wrote.
[laughter]
If god wrote a book wouldn't you
want to see what he has to say?
And so, it goes, well the other
thing I do in this class which I
won't do here is I start my
class by giving them a pop quiz
on the New Testament and I- the
reason people take this class,
I have this huge class and the
reason is because it fulfills a
philosophy perspective
in the curriculum.
And so, students you know
can decide am I going to study
Emmanuel Kant or the
parables of Jesus.
You know well- which
might be easier,
well I went to Sunday school so
how hard can the parables be.
So, students take my class and
so I start off with a pop quiz
just to see how much they
actually know about the New
Testament and I tell them
there're eleven questions on
this pop quiz and I tell them
if you get nine of these right,
I will buy you dinner at
the Armadillo Grill.
In my eleven or twelve years of
offering this quiz to 350 or so
students I've so far
bought four dinners.
And these are not
hard questions.
I mean I start out: How many
books are in the New Testament?
Does anyone here happen to know?
Twenty-seven right.
I tell them this
isn't difficult,
it's three to the
third power.
Think about the trinity three,
three times three times three.
I don't know why it happened
that way but it just happened
that way. There were
twenty-seven books.
Then I ask them in what language
were these books written?
You know what most
of them think?
Hebrew.
Sorry to disabuse you in this,
in fact they were not written in
Hebrew, some of my students of
course think they were written
in English.
[laughter]
But they were written in
Greek and so it goes from there.
Alright well this lecture is
about the New Testament to some
extent but it's also primarily
about the Da Vinci Code based on
this book that just came
out "Truth and Fiction
in the Da Vinci Code".
And I've put an outline here,
don't worry if you can't read
this thing the point of the
outline is to make sure
I stay on track.
So that I can remind myself
not to do too many tangents.
I'm not sure- I'm not sure this
things going to take an hour,
we'll see how long it takes.
Let me start by talking
about the popularity of
the Da Vinci Code.
As evident from that show of
hands most of you have read it.
I think most people who are
alive and still kicking
have read it.
I don't know what the
recent sale figures are.
When I wrote my book- when I was
actually writing chapter 1 on
June 14th 2004 it was number one
on the New York Times Bestseller
list and had been for
sixty-three weeks.
It is still, I believe, I didn't
check last week but I believe
it's still in the top 10,
all these months later.
Earlier this year in February
there was an article in
Publishers Weekly which
indicated that it was selling at
a rate of 100,000
copies per week.
That's a lot of books and as you
may know it hasn't come out yet
in paperback.
So, he's rolling in it.
[laughter]
It's a very popular book.
I want to begin my lecture by
giving a synopsis of the plot of
"The Da Vinci Code", to refresh
your memory in case you've
forgotten it and in case
you haven't read it
so you know what it's about.
And I've decided that I'm going
to read this from my book- or
basically read it because it's
an intricate enough plot that
I want to make sure I don't
leave out anything important.
And so rather that adlib it let
me read these couple pages.
"The Da Vinci Code" has a
complex and intricately woven
plot which I'll give here
in only brief form.
There has been a mysterious
murder in Paris of the renowned
curator of the Louvre,
Jaque Saunière,
because of bizarre religious
symbols left at the scene of the
crime, drawn by Saunière himself
just before his death,
a master of religious symbology,
Robert Langdon a professor at
Harvard who is in Paris
to deliver a lecture,
is called in to investigate.
He is joined by a police
cryptographer,
Sophie Neveu, who happens to
be Saunière's granddaughter.
She and her grandfather have
been estranged for ten years.
What Langdon and Neveu do not
realize at first but eventually
come to learn is that Saunière
was the head of a secret
religious group known throughout
history as the Priory of Zion,
which has always guarded the
secret to the true nature and
whereabouts of the Holy Grail.
So, this is kind of a search
for the Holy Grail book.
A bizarre set of circumstances
sets Langdon and Neveu on a
search following clues that
Saunière has left behind with
the ultimate goal of
finding the mysterious
and long sought Grail.
Also in the pursuit, however
are those responsible for
Saunière's death.
Who evidentially have killed him
while attempting to learn the
whereabouts of the Grail.
These mysterious others have
used members of the fanatical
Catholic Order Opus Dei as
pawns to lead them to the place
of the Grail's hiding.
In the course of their
adventures Langdon and Neveu
meet up Sir Lee Teabing, a
wealthy aristocrat and expert on
the Grail who discusses
the historical background
to its mystery.
The Grail as it turns out is
not the cup of Christ but the
container that held his seed.
In fact, it is a person
Mary Magdalene,
who was Jesus wife and lover who
became pregnant by him and bore
him a daughter.
After his crucifixion Mary and
her child fled to France and
there the divine ancestral line
of Christ was continued down
through the ages.
There were secret documents
kept about the existence of this
bloodline of Christ.
These documents celebrate the
feminine principal in early
Christianity and include a
number of early gospels that
came to be suppressed by
Christianity in the fourth
century, specifically by
the emperor Constantine.
Constantine destroyed the eighty
some gospels that were vying for
a position in the New Testament.
He elevated Jesus from being a
mere mortal to being the son of
God and he completely silenced
the tradition about Mary and the
divine feminine, demonizing
the feminine in Christianity and
destroying its true nature
as a celebration
of the feminine deity.
But the Priory of Zion has for
centuries known the truth about
Jesus and Mary and has long met
in secret in order to celebrate
their holy union and to
worship the divine feminine.
This celebration involves
nocturnal sex rituals which is
one of the things that
makes this a steamy book.
This secret society of which
Jaque Saunière was the most
recent head has kept the tomb of
Mary Magdalene and the hundreds
of documents that told the
truth of the divine feminine.
Other famous people had
headed the Priory of Zion and
celebrated the truth of the
marriage of Jesus and Mary
including notably
Leonardo Da Vinci.
Hence the name
the Da Vinci Code,
who painted Mary Magdalen in his
famous fresco The Last Supper.
So, when you look at Da Vinci's
Last Supper which I've got part
of the painting
here on the cover,
the person to Jesus'
right, if you look,
in fact it's supposed
to be a disciple
but it sure looks like a woman.
I mean you don't notice this
until somebody points it out to
you, look and say
wow that is a woman.
Well in fact it is.
It's Mary Magdalene according
to "The Da Vinci Code."
So, Da Vinci painted The Last
Supper and he gave hints of the
truth of Jesus and Mary in many
of his other works of art there
for those with the knowledge of
the truth to see and revel in.
Langdon and Neveu with the help
of Sir Lee Teabing gradually
unravel the mystery surrounding
the Grail and the secret
documents that reveal its
true power as they follow an
intricate maze of cryptograms
that lead them from one place
and puzzle to another until they
are arrive at the truth of the
Grail and the place
of its final hiding.
I'm not going to tell you
kind of what they find.
If you haven't read the book
you need to read the book
to get that.
I am going to be dealing with
the rest of the story not with
the conclusion of it.
When I first read "the Da Vinci
Code" I actually liked it
very much. I do like it as a
mystery murder novel.
It's a real page turner,
it's a good read for the beach.
As a scholar of early
Christianity though I noted
numerous statements in
"The Da Vinci Code" that are
historically false and as a
professional historian this
somewhat bothered me.
I'm not quite sure
why it bothered me,
I guess you know professional
historians when they read
something that's a fictional
account and the facts are all
wrong for some reason it just
kind of grates on their nerves
and so that was
kind of my reaction.
There are some statements that
are- you just wonder why he says
them because they add nothing
to the plot really and they're
absolutely wrong, for example
one of the statements that gets
made repeatedly is that
among the recent discoveries of
ancient documents is the
discovery of the dead sea
scrolls which is true, which
contain some of the earliest
accounts of Jesus, what?
The dead sea scrolls have
nothing to do with Jesus.
There are no gospels in
the dead sea scrolls,
Jesus is never mentioned
in the dead sea scrolls,
there's nothing Christian
in the dead sea scrolls;
the dead sea scrolls are
a group of Jewish books,
not Christian at all.
So why does he say that they
contain the earliest accounts
of Jesus?
Well, that's okay as a statement
to make if you're writing
fiction which he's writing the
problem is that he begins his
book with the front page
contains a fact sheet where he
indicates which things in the
book are factual as apart from
the fiction and he
says in this fact sheet,
there's a line where he
says all discussions of art,
architecture, sacred rituals
and documents are true.
Well they're not true, there're
a lot of pieces of wrong
information in
"The Da Vinci Code",
a number of disputable claims
made there and I'm going to
spend this lecture telling you
what some of these disputable
claims are.
I've listed six disputable
claims that I will be talking
about, maybe disputable
isn't really the right word.
These aren't even
disputable claims,
they're wrong, in fact there's
not much dispute about them.
[laughs] But as happens people
started asking me about
"The Da Vinci Code" and
they wanted to know,
is it true that Jesus was
married to Mary Magdalen?
Is it true that Constantine
decided to get rid of these
other gospels?
Is it true that Jesus wasn't
thought of as divine until the
fourth century when Constantine
called the Counsel of Nicaea,
are these things true?
Well I'm sorry to say that
despite the fact that they make
for very good fiction they don't
make for very good history.
And so, six- six?
Yes, six disputable
claims in "The Da Vinci Code".
I wonder what those six are
since I've only got five,
well we'll figure
it out as we go.
Disputable claim number one,
there were eighty gospels vying
for a place in
the New Testament.
Let me read a quote from
"The Da Vinci Code,"
as I quoted in my book.
This is a quotation from Lee
Teabing the British aristocrat
who's talking to Sophie Neveu
the police cryptographer and he
tells her, "Jesus Christ was a
historical figure of staggering
influence, perhaps the most
enigmatic and inspirational
leader the world has ever
seen, his life was recorded by
thousands of followers
across the land,"
that's false by the way.
That's not the disputable
claim I'm going to talk about,
but the idea that Jesus had
thousands of followers who were
writing down the things he said
and did is absolutely wrong.
For one thing, we don't know if
he had thousands of followers
you might think he did if
you watch too many movies,
but it's actually not clear
how many followers he had.
He certainly didn't have
thousands traipsing around after
him in Galilee and the people
who were following him,
we've learned from the New
Testament itself our only source
about such things were
lower class, illiterate
peasants from Galilee.
They weren't writing
anything down;
these people couldn't write.
So I mean that's
just one of the claims,
okay, it goes on.
"More than eighty gospels were
considered for the New Testament
and yet only a relative few
were chosen for inclusion,
Matthew, Mark, Luke
and John among them",
page 231.
That's a funny way of
putting it by the way,
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are
among the gospels included in
the New Testament, well actually
they're the only gospels
included in the New Testament.
So, there aren't any
others, that's it Matthew,
Mark, Luke and John, but is
it true that there were eighty
other gospels that were
vying for a place in the
New Testament.
That's a very funny
way of putting things.
For one thing, we don't know
how many gospels were written in
early Christianity, we have
no idea what the number is.
At present, we know of a
couple of dozen other gospels,
because about two dozen have
been discovered mainly by- well
some by archeologists who
have been looking for them,
and some by rummaging Bedouins
in Egypt who just happen to have
found them.
Probably about two dozen or
so are known to us today.
It's not true to say as is said
in "The Da Vinci Code" that the
emperor Constantine in the
fourth century decided which
gospels to include.
In fact, Constantine had nothing
to do with the formation of the
cannon of the New Testament.
Church authorities for centuries
had debated which books to
include in the New Testament.
We know of debates already in
the second century just to put
us on the same chronological
page here for a second,
something historians like to do.
Jesus probably died
around the year thirty.
There's this kind of unusual
thing that Jesus probably was
born around the year four B.C.
because- I mean that's a little
strange that Jesus was born four
years before Christ, but the
reason is because the guy who
came up with our calendar in the
middle ages miscalculated some
things and so now people
basically think that Jesus was
born sometime around
the year four B.C.E.
but that he- and he died
around the year thirty C.E.
or thirty A.D.
The gospels were written about
thirty or forty years after
that, the New Testament gospels.
Other gospels were written
later in the second and third
centuries, so starting about a
hundred years after Jesus death,
people started debating,
which gospels are to be
authoritative scripture?
Already by the end of the second
century so by about the year 180
or so, prominent church leaders
throughout Christendom were
claiming that the four gospels
of Matthew, Mark, Luke and
John were the only gospels
to be accepted as scripture.
This happened a hundred and
forty years before Constantine
that a large chunk of the church
had agreed on the four gospels.
The New Testament as a whole
the entire twenty-seven books
weren't finalized as a
cannon of scripture until after
Constantine's death.
It wasn't until the end of the
fourth century that Christians
finally decided on which books
were going to be included in
scripture totally, so we come
up with our twenty-seven books.
But my point is Constantine had
absolutely nothing to do it- to
do with it so this is a faulty
claim in "The Da Vinci Code"
that there were eighty
gospels vying for attention and
Constantine squelched
seventy-six of them. Simply
it's not true, Constantine
had nothing to do with it.
Second disputable claim, some of
the gospels outside of the New
Testament are more reliable
than those that are in
the New Testament.
What I mean- say reliable, I
mean historically reliable.
Can we trust that there are
other gospels that survive that
give us more reliable
information about who Jesus was
and what he said
and what he did.
Other gospels provide more
reliable information about that
than the gospels in
the New Testament.
Well once again I will quote
from "The Da Vinci Code".
This is Lee Teabing
speaking again,
"Because Constantine upgraded
Jesus status almost four
centuries after Jesus' death
thousands of documents already
existed chronicling his
life as a mortal man."
Okay one of the thesis in the
book is that Constantine decided
that Jesus had to be divine not
human and so Constantine called
a council, called the Council of
Nicaea in order to settle that
Jesus was divine.
That's absolutely not true, I
mean it is true that Constantine
called the Council of Nicaea,
but it's not true that the
council decided
that Jesus was divine.
Everybody who went to the
council and virtually every
other Christian in the entire
world at the time knew that
Jesus was divine or they
claimed that he was divine.
The question was
how is he divine?
In what sense is he divine?
Everybody agreed
that he was divine,
this wasn't something
that Constantine dreamt up.
"To rewrite the history
books," back to my quotation,
"Constantine knew he
would need a bold stroke.
From this sprang the most
profound moment in Christian
history, Constantine
commissioned and financed a new
Bible," that's false he didn't.
"Which omitted those gospels
that spoke of Christ's human
traits and embellished those
gospels that made him god-like.
The earlier gospels
were outlawed,
gathered up and burned."
It's not true, Constantine did
not stage any book burnings that
we know of at all, certainly not
any Christian gospels and it's
not true that these other
gospels outside the New
Testament were excluded because
they portrayed Jesus as more
human than divine.
The thesis of "The Da
Vinci Code" is that Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John were chosen
because they portrayed Jesus as
divine the other gospels were
excluded because they portrayed
him as human and these other
gospels are the ones that are
right. This is wrong
on every point.
It's not true that Matthew,
Mark, Luke and John
portrayed Jesus as divine,
but not human, in fact
especially Matthew, Mark
and Luke portray him as
very human indeed in fact you're
hard pressed to find anything
about Jesus being divine at all
in Matthew, Mark and Luke.
Jesus is born, he gets
hungry, he gets tired,
he can bleed, he can die, he's
completely human in these books
and it's not true that the other
gospels portray him as more
human. The irony is it's
just the opposite,
the gospels outside the New
Testament portray him as more
divine than human, consistently
as a rule virtually every one of
them, so he got it reversed.
Some of these other gospels
are extremely interesting but I
don't know very many historians
who would say that there are
more accurate than Matthew,
Mark, Luke and John.
You need to understand, I'm
not saying this for religious
reasons. It's not that I'm
saying look I'm a Christian
I believe Matthew, Mark, Luke
and John are the accurate ones
and the others are
completely bogus.
I'm talking simply as a
historian without any religious
axe to grind on this particular
point the gospels of the New
Testament are our earliest and
best historical records of what
Jesus said and did.
I don't think even that
these gospels are historically
accurate in their details in
fact there are a lot of things
that are inaccurate in Matthew,
Mark, Luke and John.
I spend a good deal of my New
Testament class showing students
what the problems are with
these gospels, historically.
But even though they are
problematic historian-
historically they're none the
less the best things that we
have historically, the other
gospels are of almost no use,
historically. Let me give you
an example of another gospel
not found in the New Testament.
There's a gospel it's one of
our earliest ones called the
Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
It's an interesting gospel
because it's driven by the
question if Jesus was a miracle
working son of God as an adult,
what was he like as a kid?
Well it's an interesting
question,
what was Jesus like as a kid?
Well the Infancy Gospel of
Thomas gives you stories about
Jesus starting out when
he's a five-year-old.
It turns out that as a
five-year-old Jesus had all the
power that was his as the son of
God but he had a streak of-
he had a kind of a
mean streak in him,
he was mischievous as a child.
If a playmate bugs
him or gets in his way,
he zaps them on the spot.
[laughter]
There's a story about-
and he goes through this
thing whenever a kid runs up
bumps into his shoulder and he
says you'll go no further on
your way and the kid falls down
dead. [laughter]
At one point Jesus father
decides that he's got to
get this kid under control and
so he decides well you know the
way you solve a
problem is education.
Education solves all problems
and so he sends Jesus off to
this teacher to learn how to
read and write and so this
teacher decides well okay I'm
going to teach him Greek and
then I'll teach him Hebrew.
So, he sits Jesus
down and he says,
"Ok Jesus repeat the
Greek alphabet after me,
alpha, beta, gamma, delta.
Repeat after me Jesus,
alpha, beta, gamma, delta."
Jesus doesn't say anything.
Teacher gets upset, "Jesus
why don't you respond to me,
repeat alpha, beta,
gamma, delta."
Jesus says- finally
responds and says,
"If you will tell me
the power of the alpha,
I will tell you the
power of the beta."
Teacher thinks that's a
smart aleck response,
smacks him upside the head.
Single largest mistake of an
illustrious teaching career.
[laughter]
Jesus withers him on the spot
[laughs] and so it goes.
Eventually Jesus gets control of
his powers and starts doing
good things.
He raises from the dead
everybody that he's previously
zapped.
He heals the blind and he- he
proves to be remarkable handy
around the carpenter shop, his
dad mis-cuts a board Jesus is
there miraculously to lay
on hands and to fix it
and so it goes.
So, this is the Infancy Gospel
of Thomas one of these other
gospels. It's a terrific book, I
teach this book in my classes.
I think it's a wonderful set of
stories but would you want to
say that it's more accurate
historically than the ones that
got in the New Testament?
I don't think so.
Most of the new- most of
the gospels outside the
New Testament are
late and legendary.
They start showing up a hundred
years after Jesus' death and
they continue on for centuries
after that we have gospels,
but they become especially
prominent in the second,
third and fourth centuries
but these are hundreds of years
after the events that they're
narrating and they are by and
large legendary accounts.
It is the accounts in the New
Testament that provide us with
the best historical information
about Jesus even though the New
Testament gospels themselves are
historically problematic they're
the best things we have, so
that's another disputable claim
in "The da Vinci Code."
Claim number three, oh yeah
that's why I have six there and
five here, claim number three,
the New Testament gospels were
chosen because they portrayed
Jesus as divine rather than
human, again it's
wrong on all points.
First of all, they don't portray
him as more divine that human.
The Gospel of John does
portray Jesus as divine,
but John stands out among the
four gospels as the only one
that makes explicit claims
about Jesus' divinity.
These New Testament gospels
were not chosen because they
portrayed Jesus as divine they
were chosen because they were
the earliest gospels available
and were widely used throughout
the church and because people
came to think that they were
written either by apostles of
Jesus or by companions of the
apostles of Jesus.
The way it breaks down is
this, you have Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John, Matthew
and John are allegedly disciples
of Jesus, Matthew
the tax collector,
John the beloved disciple.
Mark is thought to be the
secretary of the apostle Peter
and Luke is thought to be
the travelling companion
of the apostle Paul.
So, you have two disciples
and two friends of the apostles
writing these books.
Unfortunately, none of these
books claims to be written by
Matthew, Mark, Luke or John.
When you read these books,
this doesn't occur to people,
but do it sometime read through
the entire book any one of these
books and you'll see that
nowhere in any of these books
does the author make any
self-identification claim.
None of these authors
identify themselves.
It wasn't until the second
century that somebody started
saying this is the gospel
according to Matthew.
Now we have titles in
our English bibles,
the gospel according to Matthew,
but those titles were added by
later editors. The titles are
not part of the book,
see what I am saying?
This is somebody telling you
that this is Matthews version
of the gospel. It's not Matthew.
If Matthew wanted to give his
book a title he wouldn't call it
the gospel according to Matthew.
See that's somebody else
telling you who wrote the book.
And so, these titles are added
later and nowhere in these books
do the authors talk
in the first person.
No where do they say, well
one day Jesus and I went up to
Jerusalem and we
did such and such.
These books are all
written in the third person,
about what other people did
even the gospel of Matthew talks
about Matthew, the person
Matthew in the third person,
as somebody else.
What we do know about the
authors of these gospels is that
they were literate Christians
who were fluent in Greek living
near the end of
the first century.
They're written in good Greek.
The followers of Jesus spoke
Aramaic and were lower class
illiterate peasants according
to Acts chapter four verse
thirteen, John and
Peter were both illiterate.
They couldn't write.
Now it's theoretically
possible that John,
just to take John as an example,
it's theoretically possible that
John, a lower class illiterate
peasant who was a fisherman in
Galilee after Jesus resurrection
decided to go back to school.
And he went to school and he
learned Greek and then he took
Greek composition classes and he
got pretty good at writing and
he ended up writing a gospel.
I mean in theory
that's possible,
but most scholars
don't think so,
especially because John doesn't
claim to be written by John.
That's a later assertion
about the authorship.
By the end of- by the second
century though Christians
started saying that these
books were written by Matthew,
Mark, Luke and John and
that's how we get our titles.
They were not chosen because
they portrayed Jesus as divine
though, they were chosen because
these were the most widely read
gospel accounts in
the early church.
Fourth claim, now we get
into the really hot stuff about
whether Jesus was
married to Mary Magdalene.
The question that I get asked
most frequently when anybody
asks me about
"The Da Vinci code."
According to "The Da Vinci Code"
it was contrary to Jewish custom
for a man like
Jesus to remain single.
Let me quote from "The
Da Vinci Code" again,
page 120 in my book, this is
a quotation in which Robert
Langdon is talking, "Jesus as
a married man makes infinitely
more sense than our standard
view of Jesus as a bachelor.
Why Sophie asked, because
Jesus was a Jew," Langdon said.
"According to Jewish customs
celibacy was condemned and the
obligation for a Jewish father
was to find a suitable wife
for his son.
If Jesus were not married at
least one of the Bibles gospels
would have mentioned it and
offered some explanation for his
unnatural state
of bachelorhood."
This is absolutely wrong.
The idea that it was condemned
to be celibate in early Judaism
is false.
We in fact know of first century
Jewish men who remained
single and celibate.
The group we know best about is
the group that produced the
Dead Sea Scrolls.
This is a group of Jews that
historians call the Essenes.
The Essenes lived in a
monastic-like community
near the Dead Sea.
It was a monastic-like community
where they followed very strict
rules of membership
and initiation
and in their lives together.
The Dead Sea Scrolls contain a
number of different kinds of
books including fragments and
full copies of some of the books
of the Hebrew Bible.
But also, they include books
that describe the life of this
Jewish community.
The Dead Sea Scrolls were
discovered in 1947 and so we've
had a long time to study them
and there are experts in the
Dead Sea Scrolls.
One of the striking things
about this group of Essenes that
produced the Dead Sea Scrolls is
that everyone in this community
was a single celibate man.
This community, comprised of
single celibate men believed
that the end of the
age was very near,
that God was soon going to
intervene in history and
overthrow the forces of evil
to bring in his good kingdom.
That sounds very much like what
Jesus himself preaches in the
gospels of the New Testament,
especially Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John.
The kingdom of God is near,
repent and believe
in the good news.
Jesus believed that God would
soon intervene in history and
overthrow the devil and the
demons and all the forces of
evil and bring in
Gods good kingdom.
In basic terms this is very much
like what the Essenes thought.
There are also major differences
between Jesus and the Essene
community, but they are
basically similar in that both
of them- both held to what is
called an apocalyptic world
view, a world view that the end
of the age was imminent and God
was soon to intervene to
overthrow the forces of evil.
This one group that we know
about- this apocalyptic group of
Essenes were
single celibate men.
It's not at all strange
to think that Jesus,
who also was an apocalyptic Jew
was also a single celibate man.
We know of another single
celibate Jewish apocalyptic man
by the way from
the ancient world,
his name is Paul,
the apostle Paul,
who started out as a Jewish
pharace who had an apocalyptic
view of the world and after
he became a believer in Jesus,
continued to have an
apocalyptic view on the world.
He thought that Jesus was coming
back in heaven to destroy the
powers of evil here and to setup
Gods kingdom and Paul thought he
would be alive
when this happened.
First Thessalonians
chapter four, First Corinthians
chapter fifteen.
Paul thought it was going to
happen very soon and he tells
his church in Corinth, in the
book of First Corinthians that
it is better to remain single
and celibate as he is
than to get married.
Was it condemned to be
single and celibate, no.
Apocalyptic Jews sometimes
did remain single and celibate.
So, the Essenes were
single and celibate before ,
Jesus, Paul was single
celibate after Jesus.
Fifth claim, the other
non-conidial gospels indicate
that Jesus was married
to Mary Magdalene.
Is it true that in these other
gospels Jesus has said to have
been married and to have
sex with Mary Magdalene?
Let me read you a quotation
from "The Da Vinci Code,"
"As I mentioned Teabing
clarified, the early church
needed to convince the world
that the mortal prophet Jesus
was a divine being.
Therefore, any gospels that
described earthly aspects of
Jesus' life had to be
omitted from the Bible.
Unfortunately for the
early editors one particularly
troubling earthly theme
kept recurring in the gospels,
Mary Magdalene. He paused.
More specifically, her
marriage to Jesus Christ."
Do the other gospels indicate
that Jesus was married to
Mary Magdalene?
In point of fact, no other
gospel, no gospel at all
indicates that Jesus was
married to Mary Magdalene.
There's no mention
of this in Matthew,
Mark, Luke and John.
There's also no mention of
it in the Gospel of Mary,
the Gospel of Phillip, the
Gospel of the Ebonite's,
the Gospel of Peter, the
Gospel of the Nazarene's,
the Gospel of the Hebrews,
pick any gospel from the ancient
church, any gospel or any book
of any kind and no source at all
is there any, ever a reference
to Jesus being married to
Mary Magdalene.
It's just absolutely false.
One of the gospels that's
appealed to in "The Da Vinci
Code" interestingly as
support of this is the
Gospel of Phillip.
Now we've know the Gospel of
Phillip since 1945 when it was
discovered in Egypt.
There's a passage in the Gospel
of Phillip that gets quoted a
couple of times in "The Da Vinci
Code" where it says that
Mary Magdalene was the
companion of Jesus.
And according to one of the
characters in "The Da Vinci
Code," Lee Teabing says now as
any Aramaic scholar will tell
you the Aramaic word for
companion really means "spouse".
One problem with this claim is
that the Gospel of Phillip was
not written in Aramaic.
The Gospel of Phillip is written
in Coptic an Egyptian language,
not written in Aramaic.
Aramaic had nothing
to do with it.
Moreover, this word for
companion in the Gospel of
Phillip is a Greek loan word.
It's actually the word
"coinanos" if you know the word
"coinania" means fellowship.
Coinanos is a word
which means companion,
it does not mean spouse,
there's another word for spouse.
So, it's an absolutely
false claim.
Now there's another actually
interesting passage in the
Gospel of Phillip, which is
quoted in "The Da Vinci Code" as
well, but it is a problematic
passage and I don't think
Dan Brown knew it was a
problematic passage.
The reason it's problematic
is because like a lot of other
ancient books that
have been discovered,
the Gospel of Phillip is a
manuscript that has holes in it
in places because it's worn
out or been eaten by worms in
places, and so there places
where the words are missing
because there's a
hole in the manuscript.
And this effects one of the
passages that gets quoted in
"The Da Vinci Code" that
pertains to Mary Magdalen and
Jesus, it says, "Jesus loved
Mary and he frequently used to
kiss her on the" and there's
a hole in the manuscript.
[laughs] So we don't know
where he was kissing her.
[laughs] Some editors restore
the word mouth and maybe that's
right or maybe its cheek or
maybe it was something else
I don't know what it
was, we don't know.
But the Gospel of Philip never
indicates that they were married
and it never indicates
that they had sex.
Jesus kissed her, but he also-
it also states in the Gospel of
Philip that he loved his other
disciples too his men disciples.
What do we know
about Mary Magdalen?
As it turns out even though Mary
Magdalen has become hot property
these days and people write
books about Mary Magdalen and
there's all sorts of- I'm always
amazed when somebody can write a
book on something
like Mary Magdalen,
because you could put on a three
by five card what we know about
Mary Magdalen.
Mary Magdalen is mentioned
only thirteen times in the New
Testament and that includes
parallel passages by which
I mean when you have a story
that's found in Matthew,
Mark, and Luke and Mary
Magdalen's name occurs three
times in the story that's
nine occurrences,
see what I mean?
So I mean it's the same story
so thirteen times isn't much.
The Apostle Peter- Peter's name
occurs over ninety times
for example.
She's not said to be a
prostitute in the New Testament.
The idea that Mary Magdalen was
a prostitute even though it's
become popular
and it's in films,
so for example if you watched
"The Last Temptation of Christ,"
Barbara Hershey I think she's
the best Mary Magdalen on film.
She is clearly a prostitute in
"The Last Temptation of Christ"
and she has this kind of funky
tattoo thing going on there too,
which is kind of cool, but
unrelated to anything
historical. [laughter]
But it's a movie [laughs]
"The Da Vinci Code" is
a work of fiction and so
people need to realize
that these are fictional.
So, the idea that she was a
prostitute first came about in
the sixth century, five hundred
years after the woman had died,
somebody started identifying
her as a women of ill repute.
Her name- her name Magdalen,
Mary Magdalen the reason she's
given the last name is to
differentiate her from other
Mary's in the New Testament,
so you have Mary of Bethany,
you have Mary the mother
of Jesus and you have
Mary Magdalen.
The word Magdalen comes from
an Aramaic word Magdala
which means tower.
She's called that because she
came from the village of Magdala
which it was a town actually it
had a large tower and so it was
called Magdala.
She's identified as Mary of
Magdala to differentiate her
from other Mary's and so that's
why she's called Mary Magdalen.
She only appears in one story
of Jesus' public ministry in the
entire New Testament.
It's in Luke chapter eight,
she shows- she's mentioned along
with two other women Joanna and
Susanna and Mary Magdalen and
all we learn in this story
is that she was somebody who
accompanied Jesus on some of
his travels and like these other
women contributed to their funds
so they'd be able to buy food to
eat. She gave some money to
Jesus and his followers.
That's the only time she appears
in the account of Jesus' life
in the gospels.
She does show up in the passion
narratives the crucifixion and
the resurrection, she's one of
the observers of the crucifixion
and she's the first one to
discover Jesus' empty tomb.
Well that makes her
highly significant,
she's obviously significant, she
found the empty tomb I mean she
was the first witness
to the resurrection.
But there's nothing about her
being married to Jesus in these
gospels of the New Testament
or in any other gospels.
So, it's not true to say that
these other gospels portray her
as married to Jesus, but
that leads to the sixth point.
Was she married- was
she married to Jesus?
Apart from the fact that
none of the gospels say so,
there's the historical question,
was Jesus probably married to
Mary Magdalen?
Well "The Da Vinci Code"
presupposes that she was,
in fact that they had sex and
had a baby and that was the
beginning of the royal line
in France, is it true?
Were they married?
There are compelling reasons
that scholars have deduced over
the years for Jesus not only
being single but particularly
not being married
to Mary Magdalen.
If Jesus was married to Mary
Magdalen why would no source
from the ancient
world mention it?
Not just the New Testament
gospels but none of the other
writers of the New Testament,
none of the writers of any of
the gospels, no ancient source
at all mentions her being
married. If she was
married to Jesus,
why wouldn't a source say, so.
Secondly, why is that she's
never mentioned during Jesus
public ministry if
she was his spouse?
Wouldn't she be
mentioned some place,
during his ministry, instead
of just at the end when he's
crucified and raised
from the dead?
Third point, why would she be
identified as Mary Magdalen to
differentiate her
from other Mary's?
If the thing that really made
her special wasn't that she came
from Magdala, but that she
was actually married to Jesus,
wouldn't that be- if you wanted
to differentiate her from Mary
the mother of Jesus and Mary of
Bethany wouldn't you identify
her as- oh yeah that's the
one that was married to Jesus.
And maybe the most
convincing point to historians,
why is it that Jesus' other
relatives are mentioned?
The gospel writers have no
trouble mentioning the other
relatives of Jesus.
His mother, Mary is mentioned.
His father Joseph is mentioned.
His 4 brothers are mentioned
including James and Joses,
2 others. His sisters
are mentioned.
Why would all of his other
relatives be mentioned but if
he's married his wife
wouldn't be mentioned?
Don't you think that would be
an important point to make.
But in fact, even though all
of his other relatives are
mentioned his wife is not.
Historians have therefor
concluded- I mean mainly that
they conclude this, because
we have no indication in any
ancient record that he was
married to Mary Magdalen,
so there is no reason
to think he was.
But even apart from that,
these other reasons are fairly
compelling to scholars to
conclude that Jesus in fact was
single and celibate and
particularly was not married to
Mary Magdalen.
Let me just wrap up, just saying
a point or two in conclusion
about truth and fiction
in "The Da Vinci Code."
As I pointed out in his opening
statement Dan Brown indicates
that all discussions of
documents in his books
are factual.
My main point is that in fact
his discussions of documents
are not factual.
That wouldn't really be a
problem if he would simply
acknowledge that he's writing
historical fiction and that the
whole thing is fiction.
Because as it turns out the
facts that he sites aren't
facts, they're
part of the fiction.
And so, as a work of fiction
I have no problem with
"The Da Vinci Code."
I think it's a wonderful
page turner.
I mean it's not going to be the
classic of the 21st century or
anything, but you know in 50
years people will not read
"The Da Vinci Code."
They still won't be reading the
Bible either but the Bible will
be considered a classic.
But "The Da Vinci Code" is
fiction and should be treated as
a work of fiction and not be
used as a book from which to
derive history lessons.
It's unfortunate that people
learn history in the ways that
they do sometime.
It's unfortunate from a
historian's point of view.
And maybe it's not a big deal,
but those of us who spend our
lives working in the history do
think that the history matters
sometime and there are- there
are arguments to be made that
history really does matter.
In our current
political situation,
it becomes quite clear that
understanding history and
knowing what actually
really did happen matters.
This applies of course
to the modern world.
I mean it matters whether
weapons of mass destruction were
discovered or not.
It matters whether the
holocaust happened or not.
History matters.
Some history maybe doesn't
matter as much as other history
but it's a good thing to
know history and to know what
actually happened as opposed
to knowing what fiction writers
claim happened and so it is
with "The Da Vinci Code."
It's fine if you take it as a
work of fiction but it's not the
place to turn if you want to
know about the history of early
Christianity, Jesus, Mary
Magdalen and the Emperor
Constantine. Thank you.
[applause]
>> Peters: Ok, I know that
many of you need to get to
your next class and so we're
going to have a moment while
those of you who need to leave,
may and if you're sitting at the
back and would like to move
forward you're welcome to.
And we're going to set up the
microphone in this center aisle.
Any of you who have questions
please line up behind the
microphone and Dr. Ehrman
will take questions
for about 30 minutes.
>> Question: Have you thought
about writing about the truth in
fiction in the Bible or is that
too politically hot for even a
tenured professor?
>> Ehrman: Yeah well, I
wouldn't call it that.
I actually have a textbook
on the New Testament,
that deals with the issues of
what's historically accurate and
what's historically inaccurate
in the New Testament.
And I have a book on the
historical Jesus and the entire
book is about how you know
what's accurate in the gospels
and what isn't accurate.
But I- yeah, you know you
can't really get in trouble as a
tenured professor
by writing books.
You can get in trouble
for other things.
But even so I don't think truth
and fiction in the New Testament
would fly that well with- at
least with my students
at Chapel Hill.
>> Question: Having read
the gospels on a number of
occasions, I'm left with the
impression that Jesus as well as
the authors in the New Testament
were fairly vague about the time
that the apocalypse would occur.
What historical document
leads you to believe that Jesus
believed the apocalypse was
going to happen in his lifetime
or soon thereafter as you
mentioned when you were talking
about the asseences
and all that?
>> Ehrman: Okay good, thank
you. That's a good question.
Jesus is recorded as saying in
the gospels that of that day and
hour no one knows, not the
angels in heaven not even the
son but the father only.
When I moved to Chapel Hill in
1988 some of you may remember
this, there is book that was
circulating that was having
quite a big influence in
fundamentalist Christian circles
called "88 Reasons Why the
Rapture Will Occur in 1988."
[laughter]
Now as you know the
rapture is the time when Jesus
comes back from heaven and the
dead in Christ rise up to meet
him in the air and then the
living Christians rise up to
meet him and so they- so
everybody's up there in the air
in the kingdom of God
comes and that's the rapture.
And this guy had 88 reasons why
the rapture would occur in 1988.
And some of them were
really interesting reasons.
For example, in the
Gospel of Matthew,
Jesus says, "From the fig
tree learn this lesson."
When the Figtree puts forth its
leaves you know summer is near,
so also when these things take
place you know the end is near.
Truly I tell you this generation
will not pass away before all
these things take place.
So, in this book "88 Reasons Why
the Rapture Would Occur in 1988"
this author, a guy named
Edgar Weisenant,
pointed out that this
is a symbolic statement.
What is the fig
tree in the Bible?
Well the Bible- for the Bible
the fig tree sometimes used as
an image of Israel?
Now when the fig tree puts forth
its leaves what does that mean?
That's the fig tree
coming back to life.
When does Israel
come back to life,
in 1948, when they again
establish themselves as a
sovereign state?
This generation will not pass
away before all these things
take place, how long has a
generation in the Bible,
40 years.
1948 plus 40, 1988.
That was one of the
88 reasons. [laughs]
Now somebody responded to
him, to Edgar Weisenant
and said look, Jesus- his idea
was that Jesus was going to come
back during the festival of,
uhm, -what festival? I forget.
Oh, Rosh Hashanah.
We're going to come back
on Rosh Hashanah in 1988.
Somebody said, look Jesus
says no one knows the day
or the hour.
And Edgar Weisenard responded,
"I don't know the day or the
hour I just know which week."
[laughter]
Of course, it didn't happen
and so then he had to
write another book in 1989 in
which he pointed out that he'd
made a miscalculation because
he forgot that there was no year
zero. You see you went
from 1 BC to 1 AD and
there is no year zero,
he miscalculated because
he had the wrong year.
So, now it's going
to happen in 1989.
That didn't happen either but
by this time he'd sold so many
million books it didn't
matter to him anyway.
[laughter]
Are there indications
in the gospels that Jesus
thought it would happen
in his own generation?
I think that the answer is yes,
including the statement that
this generation will not pass
away before all these things
take place. I think he meant it.
He's talking to his disciples
and he's saying this generation.
Another place he says in
Mark chapter 9 verse 1,
some of you standing here will
not taste death before they see
that the kingdom of
God has come in power.
I don't think he's talking about
you know some people are going
to die and go to heaven because
that wouldn't make sense.
Some of you standing here won't
taste death before they see the
kingdom of god having
come in power.
And I don't think he means that
the Church is going to arrive.
The old saw goes that Jesus
proclaimed the kingdom but what
he got was the Church.
In other words, the kingdom that
he talks about in the gospels in
fact is an actual kingdom on
earth where God is going to rule
supreme and people will either
enter it or be kicked out of it.
Those who enter will have an
eternal life in this kingdom of
god here on earth.
Jesus thought some of his
disciples would live to see it
at least that's what
he says in Mark 9 1.
So, I think Jesus did expect the
end to come and that he was very
much like the Essenes and like
other Jewish apocalyptics from
the first century that we know
about including Paul who thought
he was going to be
alive when it came.
I map all that out and give the
fuller argument for in my book
on the historical
Jesus. So, yes.
>> Question: In the book he
talks about the society
of the Zion- and also
>> Ehrman: I'm sorry, the what?
>> Question: the society of
Zion, Zion, you mentioned it.
>> Ehrman: Oh yeah.
The priory of Zion.
>> Question: Priory, okay. Is
that really an organization?
And also, is there that fanatic
Catholic society that was
flagging themselves
all the time?
Are those two parts true?
>> Ehrman: Oh, okay yeah.
Opus Dei and the
Priory of Zion.
I don't know if the
Priority of Zion exists
but does somebody else know?
>> Audience member:
Never heard of them.
>> Ehrman: Me either.
He got his information about the
Priory of Zion from- he got a
lot of his information including
the information about Mary
Magdalen and Jesus was married
to her and had sex with her and
had a baby with her and this
baby became the first of the
Merovingian Dynasty in France
and all of that complicated
subplot he borrowed wholesale
from the book called Holy "Blood
Holy Grail" which is a book
that was popular in the 1970's.
It was a conspiracy
theorist's dream this book,
it was fantastic if you're
really into the conspiracy
theories, Vatican
cover-ups and all that.
But there's no historical basis
for those claims that I know of.
The Opus Dai is actually
a Catholic- a group,
a Catholic confraternity
I think you would call it,
which is popular in
some parts of the world.
There's nothing to suggest that
it engages in very stringent,
ascetic practices such as having
metal stakes digging into your
thighs all day long so that
you remember who you are,
which is what happens
in "The Da Vinci Code".
And I know of no evidence to
suggest that the Opus Dai has
assassins for hire to kill
people that the Vatican
doesn't like.
I mean it's you know
it's possible I guess,
but I somewhat doubt it, so.
>> Question: Hi, this is- this
is something I've sort of heard
in passing and the
validity of it I'm not sure,
but maybe you can comment on
whether there- whether there was
eighteen years unaccounted
for in Jesus' life in the New
Testament and I've heard
assertions that maybe he
travelled in Asia and
was educated there.
>> Ehrman: Okay, yeah.
The New Testament of course
in Matthew and Luke you have
accounts of Jesus being born
and the next thing you know is
thirty years later he's
being baptized by John.
The only story we have of Jesus
in the New Testament gospels
that is in the intervening
years is in Luke chapter two,
there's a reference to-
there's a story of Jesus as a
twelve-year-old in the temple
of Jerusalem and so it's a brief
story, but it's about
Jesus when he's twelve.
And so, there's no story about
what happens between the time
he's twelve and the time he's
thirty and so those are the
eighteen years.
And so, you get
these- these traditions,
these legends floating around
that Jesus travelled to India
and that's where he got his
wisdom or he travelled- you know
he went back to Egypt and he
talked to wise men in Egypt
or something.
There's no, there's no evidence
at all that that's the case.
The historical record seems
to indicate that he grew up in
Nazareth, which was a
very small little hamlet,
maybe two hundred people
lived in it- in Nazareth,
it's a very small town.
It's so small that it's not
mentioned in any source
prior to the New Testament.
It's not mentioned
in the Old Testament.
It's not mentioned by the
Jewish historian Josephus.
It's not on any ancient
map, nobody had even
heard of Nazareth.
I mean it's just this tiny,
little place where they had-
I mean they had no
modern conveniences,
modern for the ancient
world you know.
They- they didn't have paved
roads or paved floors or I mean
there's just a bunch- you
know fifty huts kind of place.
If- in only one of the gospels
is it said that Jesus was a
carpenter, Mark
chapter six verse three.
Unfortunately, this reference is
a bit problematic because what-
the Greek is that
he was a tekton,
and the word tekton can mean
carpenter but it can also mean
anybody that works
with his hands.
So, he could've
been a stone mason,
a blacksmith, anybody who
worked with his hands would be
considered a tekton.
Usually a tekton would be
somebody who was a lower-class
peasant who was apprenticed
for example to his father.
So, if Joseph really was a
carpenter and made plows and
yolks and things we're not
talking about fine cabinetry
here, we're talking about
making big wooden implements,
then Jesus was probably
apprenticed to him and there's
nothing to indicate that
he travelled more widely.
In fact most of the indications
are that he grew up in an
agricultural setting.
If you notice his parables, his
parables are often about seeds
and harvest time and planting
and reaping and farmers and
things like that or fishermen
and think their kind of simple
things that he would've known
about as a peasant from Galilee.
So, I think there's nothing
to indicate that he actually
travelled to Asia or anything.
Thank you for the question.
>> Question: Hi, could you
comment on a few other things in
the book like the Knights of
Templar and that where is it
Fibonacci's Sequence
and the other thing
about the proportion this-
>> Ehrman: The proportion.
I can comment to say that I
know nothing about these things.
[laughter]
The sequence, what is it?
Is it a mathematician-
yeah that's an actual thing.
The proportion thing,
I don't know about.
What was the first
thing you asked though?
>> Question: Knights of Templar.
>> Ehrman: Knights of Templar.
He got all of the Knights of
Templar stuff from "Holy Blood
Holy Grail," which
is I mean there were,
there actually were these
Templar knights but the idea
that they had discovered the
remains of Mary Magdalen under
the temple of Solomon's Stables
all of this stuff comes from
"Holy Blood Holy Grail" and
doesn't have any historical
basis to it.
Sorry I don't know
about the other matters.
>> Question: You mention
many times during your lecture,
you asked the question why
wasn't the marriage or sex
between Mary Magdalen and Jesus
documented at all and to me it's
omission seemed kind of obvious.
Do you think perhaps if it was
included it could potentially
ruin the Christian idea of
Jesus' divinity if he's going
around having sex
with Mary Magdalen?
>> Ehrman: [laughs]
It was probably good sex.
[laughter]
[laughter]
Yeah, well part of the problem
is that the earliest gospels,
Matthew, Mark and Luke don't
portray him as divine,
they portray him
as the son of god,
they call him the son of God.
But for ancient Jews being the
son of God didn't mean that you
were personally a divine being,
being a son of God meant 
you were a human being, because
in the Old Testament the word
son of God gets used a lot.
Who does it gets used of?
It gets used of Moses,
it gets used of the
King of Israel principally.
Second Samuel chapter
seven or first Samuel Seven,
no Second Samuel Seven, Second
Samuel chapter seven verse
fourteen where David is told by
God that David's son will be the
son of God, it's
referring to Solomon.
Solomon was the son of God,
Psalm chapter two the king is
the son of God.
The idea of son of God in
ancient Israel was that there-
the son of God was a human being
who stood in a particularly
close relationship with God, so
that God communicated with this
person and this person could
communicate God's will to other
people and there was no
trouble with the son of God
being married.
Solomon the son of God had so
many wives and concubines that
if he spent a night with each
one it would take him three
years before he got a repeat.
So, according to the Old
Testament I mean that's a
paraphrase, but I mean it
tells you how many wives and
concubines he had and
it was over a thousand.
So, so I don't know it seems to
me that the earlier gospels if
he were married there'd be
some hint of it someplace and
especially to Mary Magdalen, but
there's nothing- there's nothing
to make you think Mary Magdalen.
I mean if you were going to be
married why not marry Bethany
for example or why not Joanna
or Susanna or someone else?
I mean there's absolutely
nothing in the gospels or any
other record to make you think
it was this particular person.
So, it could be he was married
I mean you know there's a guy
named Philips who's actually a
New Testament scholar who wrote
a book claiming
Jesus was married.
And so I don't
think it's impossible,
but it does strike me as
interesting that we know of
other people who were preaching
a very similar message to Jesus
the Apostle Paul
on the one hand,
the Essenes on the other hand,
and what's striking is that
their own sexual ethics were
that they wanted to remain
single and celibate, and since
they're so much like Jesus it
seems plausible to me
that Jesus too was celibate.
Thank you for your question.
>> Question: I liked your
statement about good sex with
Mary Magdalen.
We're talking about
Jesus having sex,
heterosexual sex.
Don't you want to say something
real controversial that will get
us in the paper and so on, about
the possibility of Jesus being
gay, loving his disciples
and running around with
a bunch of men.
>> Ehrman: Okay,
good thank you yes.
[laughter]
Why not? I'm leaving
town this afternoon.
[laughter]
There was a controversial book
written in the 1970's by a
Columbia professor
named Morton Smith.
There were actually two
controversial books written by
Morten Smith in which it became
clear that Morten Smith thought
that Jesus was actually gay and
engaged in sex rituals with his
followers, nocturnal sex rituals
that they would be physically
united in the sex act and
that this unity with Jesus would
allow them to experience
the kingdom of God,
which is another way
of saying good sex.
Experience the kingdom.
[laughter]
The claim was based on a
gospel that Morten Smith
claimed he had discovered, that
has since been called the
Secret Gospel of Mark.
He published this
Secret Gospel of Mark,
it's actually just a couple of
paragraphs and as it turns out
there's actually nothing in this
Secret Gospel of Mark that says
that Jesus had sex
or that he was gay,
but Morten Smith's
interpretation of this was that
Jesus was gay.
I personally don't think that
the Secret Gospels of Mark ever
existed in the ancient world.
I think Morten Smith may
have forged it actually,
but that doesn't answer the
question about whether Jesus
might have been gay and some
people have pointed out look his
companions are all men,
they spend time together,
it says that he loved them,
is it possible that they were
involved in a gay relationship?
Again, I mean it is of
course it's within the realm
of possibility.
A certain percentage of the
population is gay and Jesus was
a part of the population and
so I mean it's theoretically
possible that Jesus
was gay, of course.
But one has to ask
what evidence is there?
And I would say
there's no evidence.
There's no evidence either
way, the evidence that exists
suggests that whether he was gay
or straight he was celibate and
so even if he were gay I don't
think that he was engaging in
gay sex, because I think
that he like the Essenes
and Paul was a celibate.
I was going to say
something else about it,
but that's what occurs
to me in the moment, okay.
>> Question: In the south
of France there are a lot of
legends that are kept alive
regarding Mary Magdalen and
there of course she's
very highly revered as
Saint Mary Magdalen.
Dan Brown doesn't refer to it
in his book and I've meant to
contact him to actually asking
him why he hasn't referred to
the cave at Sainte-Baume.
About an hour north of
Marseilles there is the supposed
cave of Mary Magdalen where
you know there's great reverence
paid to her.
There have been pilgrimages
there since the fifth century
that has been a monastic site
and today the Dominicans still
oversee this site and it is
recorded that the various popes
and the various Louis',
the kings and Medici's,
many famous people have made the
pilgrimages there over the year
and I'm going to
be going next year.
Her feast-day is July the
22 and I've already made
one visitation.
Can you speak to that at all
from any historic perspective
you know and down below in the
cathedral at the base of the
Sainte-Baume is supposedly her
reliquary with her skull and I
just wondered if you
knew anything about that.
>> Ehrman: Okay, thank you.
I don't really have any
additional information to give
other than what you said.
I will say that there are lots
of legends about a lot of the
followers of Jesus that are in
different parts of the world.
About the Apostle Mark
in Egypt for example,
about the Apostle
Thomas in India,
Mary in France and these
legends are ancient now by our
standards, but we need to
realize that they can't be
traced very far back in the
broader scheme of things.
If you can trace something
back to the fourth century say,
you know Constantine's mother
discovers the true cross in
Jerusalem, that's fourth century
that's three hundred years after
Jesus died and it seems like
it's so long ago now that it
seems like it's
close to the date,
but you need to
think in our terms.
I mean something that became a
shrine in the fifth century is
four hundred years after the
fact so that would be comparable
to you know us today declaring
that making some declaration
about something that
happened in the year 1600.
That's the time gap we're
talking about and I don't think
these people in the fourth
or fifth century really knew.
So, I'm not denying its value as
a religious shrine or the place
of pilgrimage but I am saying
that there's not historical
evidence that a historian would
accept as that this really is
you know the place that
Mary went. Thank you.
>> Question: Hi, I
have several questions,
one of them is the-
you referred to the
Coptic translation of Philip.
Could it not have been Aramaic
before it was translated into
Coptic I mean so that there
might have been corrections-
>> Ehrman: Yes, no
it's a good question.
The Gospel of Philip is in
Coptic but as it turns out it's
a translation of the Greek
original not an Aramaic
original. We know that
on linguistic grounds,
it's a little bit complicated
but if you know any of the
Semitic languages like Aramaic
or Hebrew or Syriac and you find
a translation of it there are
kind of clues in the translation
that the translation is coming
from a Semitic original by the
way the grammar is structured
and it's quite clear the Gospel
of Philip doesn't come from an
Aramaic original but it comes
from a Greek original.
>> Question: Well I've read many
of your lectures and I feel like
you are incredibly unbiased.
So, my own personal question
is do you have a religious
affiliation? Do you?
I know your credentials
I know your education.
>> Ehrman: Do I have a religious
affiliation? No. [laughs]
>> Question: Well that's
very disappointing and
the other thing is-
[laughter]
The other thing is do you have a
website, because I would like to
see you speak again and do you-
you know where you're going?
>> Ehrman: I don't have a
website where I keep up my
speaking engagements.
I just have one that lists all
the boring things I've written.
[laughter]
>> Question: Could
you talk about the
marginalization of other
Christian groups at the
Council of Nicaea perhaps
the Monophysites,
the Gnostics and I don't
know Neoplatonist maybe?
>> Ehrman: Oh my god.
[laughter]
I feel like I'm back at my
doctoral exam [laughs].
Let me think here for a second.
Yeah, I can say something.
The Council of Nicaea was
actually- all the groups you
named were important
groups in early Christianity,
but none of them was the
focus of interest at the
Council of Nicaea.
The Council of Nicaea focused
on the claims of an Alexandrian
teacher name Arias who had a way
of understanding how it is that
Jesus is divine.
According to Arias,
Jesus in fact was divine,
but he's divine because he was
the first being created by God
that in eternity passed God
created Jesus as his son,
begot him as his son and that
Jesus then created the universe
and everything else so that
Jesus is subordinate to
God the father even though
he's himself divine.
There was a moment in the past
there was a time where Jesus did
not exist where
Christ did not exist,
he came into being at a time
and then he created all things,
so he's a subordinate deity.
The Council of Nicaea was called
to decide whether that's an
appropriate way to understand
who Christ was or not and the
alternative view was that Christ
in fact is God completely in
substance that he's
always been god,
he's always existed, he's
eternally existed with the
father and is of the same
substance with the father.
There were very large debates
over it and the Arians ended up
losing the debates at
the Council of Nicaea.
One of the ironies of history
is that after the council ended
most of the world ended up going
with the Arians instead of the
side that won, but about
[coughs] about sixty years later
there was another council called
which confirmed the anti-Arian
view and then created what
we call the Nicaean Creed.
The other groups that you
mentioned either were before the
Council of Nicaea like the
Gnostics and were- and had
become marginalized already by
that time to an extent that they
really weren't even an issue or
some of them are later groups
that start showing up later
where the theological debates
become even more
and more refined
with the passing of time.
>> Question: Hi, my daughter
took your New Testament course
at Chapel Hill
and just loved it.
So, she's going to be real
excited that I heard you speak.
My question is about Da Vinci's
Codes conspiracy theory that
Christianity has had a huge role
and I've listened today and I
haven't heard that spoken too
directly and I wondered if you
could talk about that some.
>>Ehrman: Yeah, I'd be happy to
because it is a major point in
"The Da Vinci Code" and if I had
had more time this would have
been the point I would
have addressed.
In "The Da Vinci Code," there
are both true things and I think
untrue things said about
the subjugation of women
and Christianity.
It's absolutely not true to say
that Constantine is the one who
was the culprit, who squelched
woman's participation in the
Christian religion.
By Constantine's time the
religion had already became
patriarchalized, by which I
mean had become a religion
for and by men.
Men ran the show by
the time of Constantine.
When he called the
Council in Nicaea,
all of these Bishops who showed
up from all around the world
they were all men.
And so, Constantine had
nothing to do with it.
But there is a truth in what
"The Da Vinci Code" has to say,
which is that early
on in Christianity,
Christianity was
not patriarchal.
It appears from my reading of
the New Testament at least and
I should say I actually have
a chapter devoted to this
in this new book.
My understanding is that in
the New Testament period,
women had a prominent role to
play in the Christian religion.
There were women missionaries,
there were women who had
churches in their homes.
They were apparently
leaders in these Churches,
they were Deacons.
There is one woman that Paul
mentions in the book of Romans
Chapter 16 who's called
Junaid who's foremost
among the apostles.
So, it's quite clear that women
were given prominent roles in
the earliest form
of Christianity,
but it's also equally clear that
by the second century the main
stream of Christianity women had
become completely marginalized
and silenced and you find this
movement towards silencing women
already in the later books
of the New Testament.
So, it's quite easy to turn to
the New Testament and pick proof
text to say women should be
silent because the books are
there, they say that.
But there are later books like
First Timothy which claims to be
written by Paul but almost
certainly was not written by
Paul but by a later disciple
writing in Paul's name in the
next generation.
I think what happened is,
when Christianity started out it
started out as religion- these
groups of Christians met in the
private homes.
We don't have church buildings
that we know about until the mid
-third century.
Christianity met in the home
and the home was the place where
women exercised
influence and authority.
They educated the children,
they cooked the food,
they mended the clothes,
they made the clothes,
they controlled the
finances of the home,
the home was the woman's sphere.
When Christians met just in
small private homes then woman
were the ones who had authority
because this was their realm
of authority.
As Christianity grew it out
grew the small private home and
became more of a public affair
and that's when the men
took over.
I think it happens already by
the end of the first century.
So, that by the time we get to
Constantine it's already become
a completely
patriarchal religion.
Okay that's a very short answer.
We have time for one more
question then we'll stop. Yes?
>> Question: Yes, hi.
Are there many other credible
historians and theologians that
are refuting Brown's book?
>> Ehrman: No, I'm the only one.
[laughter]
It's for sale out in the lobby!
[laughter]
There have been a
ton of spin offs.
The reason I wrote mine wasn't
because nobody had thought to
respond to it as you know
there's- just go to the Barnes
and Noble or something,
there are tons of books.
Almost- the books that I know
of have come out from 2 kinds of
sources. There are the
free-lance journalists,
who have compiled books by
consulting experts and stuff.
My first connection actually
with "The Da Vinci Code" was,
I'm in one of those books, the
book by Dan Burstein on "The
Secrets of the Code" which is
the one that sold- it was sort
of the big seller on the New
York Times Bestseller List.
But Burstein doesn't
know anything about it,
he's a journalist who was
interested in it and he got
experts and I should say
a lot of non-experts
to give their opinion.
And so, you kind of take
what you get with that book,
because he includes the
reputable historians
and the wackos.
They're both represented
there, fair representation.
The other kind of book that's
come out that I know of are
books written by people who are
evangelical Christians who are
concerned that the claims of
"The Da Vinci Code" will be
damaging to their- to the
faith of their co-religionists.
So, they're afraid that other
evangelical Christians will be
led astray by things said about
Jesus and Mary Magdalen and the
Canon of Scripture.
And so they've written to
set the record straight
for religious reasons.
Maybe someone else knows, I
don't know anyone else who's
principally a historian, who
doesn't have an axe to grind
who's done a book yet.
But I'm sure they will appear.
Ok I think we'll stop there.
Thank you very much.
[applause]
>> Peters: Thank you
all so much for coming and if
you wouldn't mind giving Dr.
Ehrman time to get out to the
back, he'll be happy to sign
your books on the way out.
So, thanks again for coming
today and supporting our
speakers at UNCA.
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