The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End by Bart D. Ehrman

Episode Date: March 31, 2023

Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End by Bart D. Ehrman A New York Times bestselling Biblical scholar reveals why our popular understanding of the Apocalypse is all wrong—and why that matters. You’ll find nearly everything the Bible has to say about the end in the Book of Revelation: a mystifying prophecy filled with bizarre symbolism, violent imagery, mangled syntax, confounding contradictions, and very firm ideas about the horrors that await us all. But whether you understand the book as a literal description of what will soon come to pass, interpret it as a metaphorical expression of hope for those suffering now, or only recognize its highlights from pop culture, what you think Revelation reveals…is almost certainly wrong. In Armageddon, acclaimed New Testament authority Bart D. Ehrman delves into the most misunderstood—and possibly the most dangerous—book of the Bible, exploring the horrifying social and political consequences of expecting an imminent apocalypse and offering a fascinating tour through three millennia of Judeo-Christian thinking about how our world will end. By turns hilarious, moving, troubling, and provocative, Armageddon presents inspiring insights into how to live our lives in the face of an uncertain future and reveals what the Bible really says about the end.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from the chrisvossshow.com, the chrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. Oh, my gosh. We've got a brilliant scholar of about 20 plus books on the show with us today.

And we're going to be talking about biblical Armageddon. So stay tuned for that. It's going to be fun. It's going to be interesting. And, you know, we could find out maybe when we're going to hit the wall, which I think is next week from, I don't know, just kind of the way I'm seeing the news going. I don't know. It could happen any time now. So hopefully we'll get to the end of the episode

and we can at least get this in the can before our McGinn hits. We have an amazing scholar on the show who'll be talking to us about today. But in the meantime, the guilt and shaming must start for the plugs of the Chris Voss Show. Please refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives.

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Follow me over there as well. And now, without further ado, we're going to be talking about the end of the world in a world gone mad jesus is coming on march 21st 2023 with armageddon coming to uh your house near you anyway uh bart d erlman is on the show with us today his newest book came out march 21st 2023 armageddon what the bible really says about the end so now we're going to finally find out gosh darn it i know you've all been wondering uh he is the author of more than 20 books including the new york times best-selling misquoting jesus and god's problem uh i've seen that movie he has a few problems he needs to fix i can can we get some work done down here, people?

Got it. Bart is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and is a leading authority on the Bible and the life of Jesus. He's been featured in Time and has appeared on Dateline NBC, The Daily Show, and Jon Stewart's CNN, The History Channel, major NPR shows, and other top media outlets. And now he's finally reached the pinnacle of media outlets, The Chris Voss Show. Welcome to the show, Bart. How are you? I'm doing well, thanks.

It's great to have you. Give us your dot coms, wherever you want people to find you on the interwebs and get to know you better. So two of them. One is just barterman.com. And the other is ermenblog.org there you go so uh when does the erm again happen and uh when should i should i set a uh should i set a zoom time for this or something uh yeah well you know you might want to set the zoom time before that oh Oh, that's right. Probably an hour before. You're going to be facing zap time. So you need to get the Zoom out of the way. Yeah.

So my book is about the book of Revelation mainly and about what the Bible has to say about when the end is coming. And most people read the book of Revelation. Most people don't read the book of Revelation because it's too bizarre and crazy for them. But the people who do read it think it's predicting what's going to happen sometime you know this year and uh people have always said that and in my book i try to show why uh why everybody's been wrong about that and why everybody will be wrong about that it's because that's what not what the book of revelation is about there you go what the bible really says about the end the bible is kind of like the constitution everybody seems to quote it but then you're like uh where is that exactly and like uh

and uh you're like have you read that thing lately so i think it's great that you're on the show and you're establishing on this what is armageddon for the layman who maybe doesn't know what armageddon is or you know they don't read much. They're watching the Kardashians. Yeah, right, exactly. So Armageddon. Isn't that one of the signs of the Armageddon, I think? Well, some people think so, you know, or hope so, that the end's coming soon. So, yeah, so Armageddon is a reference in the book of Revelation.

It's a reference to a place outside of the town the town megiddo which is in israel in the old testament it's a place where a lot of battles happen and in the book of revelation it's where the final battle happens when christ combats the armies of earth and wipes them out so in that sense combats the armies of earth, is that like military armies or is that like satanic or demonic armies or is that just the Kardashians? Yeah, well, they're in the front guard. So, you know, it's not clear. It's definitely earthly armies. They're gathered by the Antichrist figure. He's not called the Antichrist.

He's called the beast, but he's Christ's enemy in Revelation. And it appears to be a human. And the armies of earth gather to assault heaven, and they get creamed with not much of a battle. Well, I mean, you're taking on Jesus, eh? Right? God, you know. He's got angels and things. He's got the all-powerful being and omnipotence and, you know, that sort of thing going for him.

It seems like a thing that you wouldn't want to fight the dude, you know? Yeah, well, you know, some people are arrogant. That's true. I think they can do anything. I've got one of those in the mirror. Is the head of that army named Kim by chance? I don't know why that's part of that. It seems like the Kardashians are accidentally going to be the callback joke of the show this sounds like yeah

well you know somebody's got to do the callback um so you you go in depth about what revelations really says like you're just not one of those people who's just throwing around quotes and you know like i had one time a guy who said that uh we don't need the constitution we just need the bill of rights and i was like do you understand how that works but go on yeah all right no well you know actually it is interesting how similar um biblical interpretation is to constitutional interpretation i mean you have you have the very same battles uh about uh you know whether you go back to the original meaning, the meaning of the original authors, whether the times have changed and so it doesn't apply anymore. You know, these are the kind of things you get. But with Revelation, you know, it's very simple to go into

it and kind of cherry pick verses you want to make them say what you want them to say. But scholars, of course, don't do that. Scholars read this thing in Greek, the original language, and they study it intensely, every word, and they put it in its own historical context. And when you do that, you realize it does not mean what most people, most of your favorite televangelists say it means. It means something quite different. And so I try to explain in my book what that is. There you go. You know, I've heard all my life, the end of times are coming. I grew up in a religious cult and I was told that, you know, it's not coming any day now.

And then like 2000 was a big day. It was supposed to come. You know, I think the seventh day of Venice have tried to hit a few marks of when the final days are and missed. And so a lot of people try and nail nail this down when army has happened you know every time there's like a war or earthquake or some sort of major event you know i always hear from my religious family you know it's the end of times you better repent chris and i'm like no hell no sinning's fun um so there's that uh so what what is what is the truth behind when armageddon comes or when do you is there a date on this thing like yeah well every day is the date so you know in the 1970s when i when i was in

college in 1970 in the 1970s the the best-selling book of non-fiction um using the term somewhat loosely here the the best-selling book of nonfiction was called The Late Great Planet Earth. And it was the best-selling book in the English language of any kind, not religious book. I mean, the best-selling book of the 1970s of nonfiction. And it predicted that the end was going to come by the end of the 1980s. And it had a very specific biblical reason for it. A lot of fundamentalists are these days a little bit reluctant to pick an actual date because it's too easy to be shown you're wrong, but some still do. And so the main line is the one you're suggesting is that people say, well, it's going to be

soon. And so whatever's happening now and whatever's in the headlines, that was predicted by the prophets. And you've got that kind of line going back for hundreds of years where people say, oh yeah, now, finally. It actually all started in the Western world with the French Revolution. That's when people started in the modern world, started setting dates because the French Revolution was so flipping crazy that everybody said, you know, this has got to be out of Revelation. This is too much. Everyone's running around with their heads off.

Exactly. You can look up that joke, Gen X. Or Gen Z. Yeah, I mean, I have always heard rumblings of Armageddon, but usually after a night of drinking and Taco Bell. So that's a whole other matter. That's not a good way to go. It's kind of like the Lake of Fire. rumblings of armageddon but usually after a night of drinking and taco bell so well yeah yeah that's not a good way to go it's kind of like the lake of fire yeah it's there's something that

rises from the pit called beelzebub and stuff but uh you know after that you know you're pretty good uh so uh armageddon why is this so misunderstood by people do people just are people just trying to make money off it are people just you know, I've, I've heard the table pounding of like, you must repent now because tomorrow the world must end. I think that's usually the guy in the corner with the, uh, you know, the street corner with the sign, the world ends soon. Why is it so misunderstood or misquoted? Well, I think, you know, I don't, I don't know. I mean, I'm sure some people do it to make, to make the money. I mean, people like Hal Lindsey, the guy who wrote Lake Great Planet Earth, became fabulously wealthy, and that wouldn't have happened if the end had come. And so, you know, he's still going at it.

He wrote this book in 1970, and he's still on the radio saying that now the signs are being fulfilled. Oh, yeah, now. So I think some people may— i don't know if they do it for the money but some people are just really convinced that god has spoken to them through the bible and that this is uh that they've they figured it out finally no one else has figured out to now but now i've got it and this is it and sometimes that means a specific date uh more often these days it just means you better repent because it's coming soon you know russia's just invaded and all hell's going to break out and you know you got to be ready yeah i mean they're like

you know oh world war three is happening and you know everyone knows that doesn't happen for two more years right we all know that um the uh usually after a night of taco bell and vodka. So you basically talk about the prophecy and the symbolism, the violent imagery, the syntax. What about like the whole, isn't there like a part in Revelations? I watched Omen a few too many times. Isn't there a part where they're like, you know, the Omen kid comes along and, you know, he starts, you know,

the weird chorus orchestra kicks in with the, I can't do it. Saying I should probably have that set up and sound. But isn't there a thing where the whole orchestra joins in and it's the whole singing and screaming and stuff that goes on and he runs around for a while and then Jesus comes? Yeah, no, the omen thing is, yeah, that's kind of a bit of a modernization. So the Antichrist figure in the book of Revelation is not a kid. He's not, like, born.

He's, you know, this is the thing. If you read the book of Revelation as predicting our future, then you can come up with all sorts of things, you know, that the Antichrist is X, Y, or Z, you know, that it, it, when, when, um, you know, in the, in the second world war is Mussolini or Hitler, uh, in the lately of Saddam Hussein. And when I was in college, uh, a guy wrote a book saying it was Henry Kissinger, you know, or, or, uh, so, so, you know, you come up with all these names, but it's a leader. It's a,, but it's a leader of the earth, some person. Historically, it's none of the above.

It's not referring to somebody in the future. It's referring to somebody in John's own day. He's actually talking about the problems in his time. He's writing a book to people who are alive at the time. He tells us who he's writing to, and they're meant to understand what he's talking about. And the fact that 2,000 years later, half the world doesn't know what he's talking about has no bearing on the fact that they actually knew what he meant,

and he meant something about their own time. Oh, so was it the end of the world in his time then? That's what he thought, yeah. When you unpack Revelation from a historical point of view, it's clear. The Antichrist figure is the city of Rome and its leader, the Roman emperor. And they're the enemy that are the Antichrist that God is soon going to destroy. And he's going to take all the power and all the wealth that these damn Romans have and give them to the Christians. And so the Christians are going to take have and give them to the Christians. And so the problem,

so the Christians are going to take over the earth like Rome has now. So is the Bible revelations Armageddon then really in the future? Then it was supposed to happen in the past and it maybe didn't or it did. Well, no, well, no, it didn't.

Here we are. He was wrong. Yeah. I mean, that happens in the Bible. Just ruined the whole Omen series for me. Well, I mean, it's not as exciting as saying, you know, that Putin's the Antichrist, but, I mean, you know, the reality is Putin's not the Antichrist.

I mean, he kind of is, but, I mean, he's not like, he's not, you know, he's not the one John was talking about, no. I thought it was recently Elon Musk because, you know, it says in the Bible, everyone will water the mark. And he just started selling the mark of verified for $14.99 or maybe that's Zuckerberg. One of the two of them. Well, you know, the Antichrist does take over the world economy. And so, you know, Musk, although lately it doesn't look like it's going to happen for

him. Yeah. Maybe it will be Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg. I think that's a new name for him. Yeah. Maybe it will be Zuck Muckerberg. Muckerberg. Muckerberg. I think that's a new name I'm using for. I think you are. Zuck.

Muck. Zuck. Maybe it'll be TikTok. Maybe the Armageddon will come with TikTok. I don't know. So basically, you've blown up everyone's bubble. And the Armageddon, if it was going to happen, it happened back in, you said Paul's time, who wrote it? Well, so it's written at the end of the first century, probably in the 90s.

All right. And it's an author who's very, very upset with the situation of Christians in Rome, and he's writing in Apocalypse. So what people don't realize, I think, is that most people avoid the book of Revelation, even if they do read the Bible. If they read the Bible, Revelation is the one book they're not going to touch because it's just too bizarre. But those that do read it, of course, think it's talking about our future because that's what they've always been told. But the reality is that for most of the history of Christianity, this was not understood to be a prediction of the future at all uh and so this is it's a modern reading and part of the things i do in my book is i try to where this idea comes from well that's that's important i you know i kind of on one hand i feel kind of relieved

that like oh good it isn't really something that's supposed to happen in the future but the other hand um i don't know. I guess we'll just get back to sinning because now I don't have anything to worry about. Hey, get back to sinning, damn it. Well, you know what ended up happening in Christianity is they gave up on this idea that the end of the world was going to come sometime, you know, within the next year or so. And what they did is then they invented the idea that when you die, you go to heaven or hell. So I'm sorry to mention this for your sinning proclivities, but you still got a hell of a lot of trouble. Oh, yeah, well.

In the Christian tradition, you die, okay, baby. You're going to pay the price here. I remember Rhino last week. It's that old Vegas thing. I don't know. I've done a little bit of drinking and maybe a couple swearing but uh that's all right god give me that you know some people they play you know they kind of play that cover the bases game with religion where they're like oh you know i keep one foot here and one foot over there and yeah and maybe when i need to run home

i'll run home but uh in the meantime, you know, I'll work. Well, no, I mean, a lot of my students, you know, look, I teach in the South. I teach in the Bible Belt. And my students are a lot, not a lot, some of my students are religious because, you know, they're afraid of burning in hell. I mean, they don't, it's like, you know, it's fire insurance. And so they just don't want to, you know, they don't want to, they just don't want that. And so, but, you know, and a lot of people think if there's no afterlife, well, why not party on?

And so, yeah. Yeah. You know what they should do to keep me from going to hell and from doing all my sinnering? Sinnering? I don't know. I'm just making up jokes. They should say the Kardashians are going to be there. Because the problem they have right now, and this is a marketing problem religion has right now. They're like, Hey, if you do bad stuff,

you're going to go to hell and all the stuff that's fun. And like all the great bands will be there like Led Zeppelin and Ozzy Osbourne and black Sabbath and all that satanic heavy metal stuff. And you're like, well, I'm going to to hell because i love metallica and i love black sabbath and i want to see him play in hell i mean that's going to be hot i mean like seriously oh yeah maybe hot but i mean you know yeah seriously but i mean you know um or you could take the stairway to heaven i mean yeah i could do that but sometimes i played that thing backwards i did the whole backwards thing i heard what says. It says the whole 666 thing. You know, but what I'm saying is what they should do is say the Kardashians

and like all the housewives or whatever stupid stand, drama stand, are going to be in hell. And I will stop sinning just to get to heaven, just to get away from them. I got it. I've spent a lifetime already. So speaking of 666 what is that you know famous 666 that all these great bands wrote about satanism and what's that all going on about was that something that was back then or is that all right so all right so in the antichrist figure

in revelation uh is is the the john has a vision of this kind of this beast, this wild beast that takes over the earth and that everybody worships, and an angel standing by to explain what it is he's seeing. And so in the books like this, when a prophet sees something, like it's just crazy and nuts and they don't know what it is, and the angel explains it to them. And in this case, the angel explains that this beast that takes over the world that everybody worships is actually a human and his number is his number is 666 yeah um and so the deal is is that uh in ancient languages like greek and hebrew they didn't have a separate alphabet from their numerical

system and we have a we have you we use a roman or a latin alphabet A, B, C, D, but we have Arabic numerals. They use their alphabet for their numbers. So, you know, the first letter is an A, the second letter is B, and you go on, all the letters have numbers, and you can do all the numbers that way. So what he's saying is that if you add up the numbers of this person's name, it'll add up to 666. And as it turns out, the first, and this person is an opponent of Christians, and he's killing Christians, and it turns out the first Roman emperor to execute Christians was the Emperor Nero. And if you spell Emperor Nero, Kaiser Neron, in Hebrew letters, it adds up, the letters add up to 666 you're ruining like every

movie and every ozzy osbourne song i know it's not nearly as fun but uh you know on the other hand it's not nearly as dangerous either i mean part of my book is showing these people are thinking the end of the world's coming they've done some real damage and not not just psychological damage to people who buy into it and then realize they were wrong but but actual damage in the real world and so uh yeah i'm glad you're on because anytime my uh religious family members start going on about the end of the world i'm just gonna throw your book it out be like yeah yeah it already went down man it's already over so there's no armageddon coming is that is that what you're saying well there may be but it's not predicted in the book of Revelation. It seems

like it's coming, but yeah, it's got nothing to do with biblical prophecy. Wow. I'll never be able to watch the omen. Yeah, I know. It's disappointing. Listen to Black Sabbathbath ever again it's on the book what else do we need to know to tease out in the book i think we had an internet bump there uh bart can you hear me uh what else is there to tease

out on the book uh in my book or the book of revelation well your book about the book of revelation uh yeah you know it's there there are uh kind of bizarre implications for this idea that um that the bible's predicting what's going to happen in the future one one of them is that um u.s foreign policy has been affected in rather serious ways um and so in the book, I don't take a stand on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, but I do explain why evangelicals have always been in strong support of Israel. Because on the surface, like, you know, why? I mean, American evangelicals think that all Jews are going to hell. So why are they supporting Israel exactly?

Why are they so gung-ho for it? It turns out- Is it because Steven Spielberg makes such good movies? Yeah, well, you know, no. Although he did, but it's not that. It's because evangelicals interpret the Bible as saying that Israel has to be a strong nation and that Israel, in fact, has to take over the Temple Mount and destroy the Dome of the Rock and build the Temple again. Because if the Temple doesn't exist, Jesus can't come back because of a verse in the Bible. And so the support of Israel by evangelicals in America and in England

started in the early 19th century by people who were convinced that Israel had to become a nation, which it did in 1948, and that the temple had to be rebuilt, which is yet to happen. And so, you know, the move of the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was not religiously innocent. This was to support evangelicals who want the temple to be rebuilt. So the temple hasn't been rebuilt yet? No, it was destroyed in the year 70 by Roman armies, and it doesn't exist. So if you go to Jerusalem now, you go to the Temple Mount, and the western wall, what used to be called the Wailing Wall, part of that's still there. The rest of it's wiped out. But on top of the mount itself, there are some religious structures, including Islamic holy sites.

And so if Israel doesn't take over the Temple Mount completely and drive out the Muslims, then the temple can't be rebuilt and Jesus can't return. But if they do that, they do destroy the temple the uh the dome of the rock oh my god then you will have armageddon that's yeah whoa well i mean do we do we want jesus come back yet because we're having a good time down here we don't want him to you know show up and be like yeah oh man you guys what are you guys doing down here hey i'm just gonna i'm just gonna flood y'all or something yeah well you know, laid back party animals don't want them to come back, but yeah. You know,

give me a couple more years of spirit. Most of the world's having a pretty wretched time of it. And like, you know, it's not good down here. That's true. Get me out of here. I don't understand though.

I feel like George Carlin right now. Like if he's an all omnipotent God, why does he need a temple to come back? Seems like, you know, he runs the universe he'd do it oh yeah i know because uh as as runner of the universe he predicted the temple would be rebuilt that's why so he's kind of stuck he said it was going to be so it's got to be we got to

hold him to it uh seems like he's omnipotent i mean doesn't he change his mind he played that one game with abraham and his son that one time where he's like yeah yeah kill the son he's like uh never mind yeah no in the bible he does changes in the old testament especially he changes his mind a lot but even in the new testament i mean in the new testament uh you have a book you have one book the book of second peter that's explaining why in fact uh god said it was going to be soon but yeah he didn't really mean by our calendar. The Old Testament seems like a God with maybe some childhood trauma, and then he gets some therapy, it seems, and then the New Testament starts. Yeah, kind of. But I mean, the thing is, the God of the Old Testament is a God of love. But he's a wrathful fellow a lot of the time.

He's a wrathful fellow a lot of the time. He's a very violent book. But, you know, when people tell me that the Old Testament has the God of wrath and the New Testament has the God of love, I just ask them, have you read Revelation lately? Oh, my God. You talk about violent wrath. It's kind of wrath, violent. It's kind of a weird ending to the book, too. Revelation is at the end, right?

Yeah, well, it's the, you know, so it makes sense the way they organize the Bible. You start with the creation of the world in Genesis, and then you end with the destruction of the world in Revelation, and so that makes sense. But it is, you know, the book of Revelation had trouble getting in to the New Testament. That sounds like every episode of the Kardashians, actually. Well, none of them's getting in i'm telling you that so uh uh yeah so uh it had trouble making it into the new testament and part of my book is explaining why uh and then

how it did get in because if it hadn't gotten in the world would have been a very different place we wouldn't have all these fundamentalists running around for one thing damn well i mean you've ruined the plot of every black sabbath song for me uh every dark uh ozzy osbourne song and 666 is satan and you ruin iron maidens uh uh famous song or an album uh the number of the beasts um anything else you more you want to ruin before we go out here bart you ruin the kardashians too well you know the funny thing is that the um of course fundamentalist christians and evangelicals are really pissed off at me because i'd say things like this wow oh my god yeah no no it's quite um but you know for them i really am ruining things and the reality is i'm not what i do you, I write these books and basically I'm just saying what historical scholars have known for a long time.

There are Christian scholars who agree with me. I don't know. I'm not a Christian. I mean, I'm a historical scholar. I used to be a Christian. Yeah, I'm not a Christian. But there are very, very fine Christian historical scholars who agree with just about everything I say in this book. I mean, it's a violent book.

And it's not, you know, I end my book by saying that this author, in my judgment, does not actually have the gospel of Jesus. He does not agree with Jesus. And that's a rather important point. Jesus was not this wrathful, vengeful, out-for-blood guy. And the author of Revelation is. There you go. Was there like one of the names of the beast was Abaddon in the Bible? Yeah, in the book of Revelation.

There are lots of weird names in the bible uh and so uh you know if you if you you know if you reform and uh and you know kick this in habit and enroll at a moody bible institute you'll probably be given an entrance exam and so i suggest you memorize the names there you go there you go i actually named one of my dogs abaddon oh you did um yeah that was when i believed all this stuff before you ruined it. Well, you didn't believe it. I bought some of it. But I wish I would have known this when I was a kid because my mom would put the fear of hell and fire and damnation into us as kids.

You better stop being bad kids or else Jesus is going to come and smite you. And we're like, yeah, no, but you know, a lot of the psychological damage of people thinking the revelation is predicting the end is that there's been for almost 200 years now, there's been this idea of a rapture where Jesus is going to come and take

people out of the world. So they don't have to experience all this chaos that's going to happen when the antichrist comes and people, you know, there are people who, you know, have thought, just about every evangelical kid I knew in the 70s, at one time or another, thought the rapture had happened and they'd been left behind. Just scared the hell out of them. And it ended up being terribly damaging. I know people who are still damaged by that. I think, oh my God. And so it's just, you know, for one thing, the rapture is not in the Bible at all.

That's just made up. Yeah, yeah. Really? Yeah. No, in my book, I explain it didn't start till the 1830s, the idea of a rapture where Jesus takes everybody out so the rest of us can suffer hell on earth for a while. That's just made up. But it's, yeah, so it's in in uh yeah it's not in the bible it's not not in revelation not anywhere i mean it's like

all the there's been like tv shows and movies yeah about it and everything what the heck well no look the best-selling novel series probably of all time was left behind which was you know it sold i don't know over 80 million copies in the 1990s. And it was all about that. The rapture happens and what happens when you're left behind. And people read this as if this is the Bible speaking, it's just some guy coming up with stuff. There you go.

Well, I mean, you know, this is kind of a downer because there are some days when I, you know, I accidentally skip across the Kardashiansashians or i see some gen z uh people doing weird stuff on tiktok and i go please god can we make this stop tomorrow if we can arm again just comes put us out of our misery for the love of god ironically um uh you know you uh one of your big i think is it one of your biggest books out of the 20 plus books you've done it It was Misquoting Jesus? Yeah, it was the first kind of big selling book I did. First time you decided to piss off evangelicals?

No, I decided to piss them off before that, but that was the one that really kind of did it. This is entertainment for an atheist right here. And I think, I mean, Misquotingoting jesus story but i think this is important because you know it seems like there's a lot of abuse that goes on of armageddon and what jesus said and what jesus didn't say he's mowed my lawn every week now for years i have no i i've never heard any of the stuff that's been quoted from him that i hear people quote um and i think it's really important that you know some scholars really nail this down so the people aren't just running around saying you know jesus said this

jesus said that i mean yeah i had a quote from him here welcome to the jungle it gets worse here every day turns out he didn't say that either that was uh some song from uh some band uh i don't know i got nothing there i'm just running off at some so the thing about this book this book misquoting jesus is actually it's it's about something people wouldn't expect um which is that um we don't have the original copies of the new testament we have uh so when the authors wrote something whoever wrote the book revelation wrote wrote this thing and we don't have that thing he wrote we We have copies made later by scribes, and we actually don't have the first copies or copies of the copies of the copies of the copies.

We have copies from centuries later. And all these copies we have are different from each other. They have different wordings for different verses. And so scholars have to figure out, well, what did the author write? Because we don't have his writing. And there are places where we don't know. And just as an example, I mean, when you mentioned 666, in some of our surviving copies, it's not 666, it's 616, which isn't as interesting. But if you spell that name Caesar Nero, there's two ways to spell it, Kaiser Neron with a noon,

Hebrew noon at the end end or without the noon. And the noon is worth 50. So without the noon, it's 616. So some manuscripts say 666. Some say 616. Any other one, it's not about Nero. Maybe the guy was just lazy the second time around. He's like, I just make the 616.

Yeah, he just left it off. Maybe he just left the loop on it. Fell asleep. A lot of that happens. They make a lot of mistakes. There are hundreds of thousands of differences in our manuscripts it could have been high so there's that well it's kind of you know technically possible that's fermented they weren't good at refrigerating stuff back then that's all i'm saying it could have been something no that's true no that's a good point uh I've been high in written stuff.

I've been drunk, too, in written stuff, so there's that. I don't know. But I think it's interesting, all the stuff you do. So, overall, do Christians like your work, or how does that work out for you? Well, evangelical and fundamentalists do not like my work. Some evangelicals do, more liberal evangelicals. But a lot of Christians do like my work very much because within Christianity, there are very major differences from one Christian group to another. And fundamentalists really, you know, they're

not the majority of Christians in the world. They just happen to be the loudest ones. And they convince people of a lot of things that are just not true. And so, people who aren't fundamentalists who are Christians, which is the majority of Christians in the world, many of them actually like my stuff a lot because it's showing that their more liberal views are justified. And, you know, fundamentalists, for example, have convinced everybody in my part of the world that if you don't believe in the Bible, you can't be a Christian. That's just crazy. That's crazy talk. But it's what fundamentalists say. And so everybody who's not a Christian

thinks it's true. It's not true at all. For most of history, people haven't believed in the Bible and been a Christian. They've been Christians. They believe in Christ. They don't believe in the Bible. So anyway, so what I'm saying is fundamentalists don't like this kind of stuff because it's completely threatening to them and part of my book is showing where fundamentalism actually came from because it came from this idea that the book in part the idea that the bible is predicting when the end is coming that's what in the 1890s that led to american fundamentalism i'm leaning out to something on this but uh what do mormons think of your work because mormons kind of believe that i think uh the the garden of eden was in mississippi or missouri mississippi i don't know it could be there who knows in missouri and like

maybe the end of the world's going to be there that was like joe smith's thing when he wasn't chasing young girls around yeah well uh the um this book we mentioned earlier misquoting jesus about scribes have changed their manuscripts, so it's hard to know what the originals said. There are two groups of religious folk who really, really like that book and use it. One is the Mormons, and the other are the Muslims. and they both use it for their missionary work because uh mormons uh have used it to say that in fact you know the book of mormon is you know you know that's that's the final scripture and the muslims use it to say yeah you got that problem the christian bible but the quran has no mistakes in it period boom nothing and so so they use me to kind of convince people to become you know muslim or to become mormon Because you point out the mistakes in the Bible?

Yeah, point out, well, the mistakes and yeah, yeah, point out the mistakes. Yeah, they say that about the, they say that about the Mormon church Bible, but it's been, it's been auto-corrected like 50,000 times. In fact, I think it's about 4,000 plus times. And then in recent years, they had to clean it up some more for some of the racist stuff that was in it but i i kind of bring that up the lead-in was uh it just recently there was uh here in utah the legislature that they they passed a law where you couldn't have certain books that talked about uh you know some nastiest sexuality and some evilness uh and stuff like that going on you know some uh some uh what, what's a joke word I can use? Some fornicating.

Some fornicating going on. It was bad. And evidently somebody used it against them. I believe the Church of Satan did that in Florida too. But they used the law to get the Bible banned from like libraries and schools or something. And it kind of backfired on the people that were trying to just push the Bible and nothing else.

Well, it's amazing how many people really believe in the Bible who've never read it. Sounds like the Constitution, dude. You know, it's absolutely true, the Constitution, but I mean, including presidents. I said, whoa, wow, really? Assuming that Andrew Jackson wasn't, yeah, whatever. One of those Jacksons. The Jackson 5,

I think, Michael. That was it. It wasn't on drugs. It wasn't Michael, but yeah, it was one of those. Was it Michael?

No, it wasn't Michael. Was it Janet? No, I'm just kidding. We're just doing jokes here, folks. So this has been wonderful to have you on the show

and ruin everyone's uh musical uh lyrics and and the music and now i'm just gonna go have to listen to fucking celine dion all the time all right if that doesn't prompt the end of the world god help us all good luck with that i don't know what's going on there that or justin bieber um so anything more you want to tease out on the book i think this is one wonderful insight uh well just you know if people do wonder about anything you know this it's it the book of revelation is a really mysterious book to many people i try to explain it in very simple terms explain what it really does mean and to try and show that the that um but both that it's not predicting our future, but also that its message is very, very troubling. When you actually read it carefully, it's a disturbing book.

And I don't think Jesus would have recognized this author as one of his followers. But apart from that, there's also the fact that these kinds of misreadings actually affect our lives. They affect our lives, not just people who are believers, but just everybody. And I show why in the book about what kind of carnage it's caused and what kind of— I mean, it has not had a good effect on a lot of social and political policies in the U.S. Yeah, in fact, there was kind of a point where during the Bush administration, George Bush, and I think this is reported, and take it for whatever it's worth, I don't ever try and quote too many facts because, you know, something like this, you know, you wonder.

But there was kind of a suggestion or rumor that the Bush administration, George Bush, kind of felt like they were biblically in the final times. And that affected their policy making. Yeah, yeah. Well, Ronald Reagan certainly did. And he and Caspar Weinberger, his defense secretary, really thought the bombs were going to fly. And George W., of course, was a born-again Christian who believed in the Bible. And, you know, you really don't want foreign policy

to be dictated by the Book of Revelation. Yeah, that's true. I mean, that's one of the problems with the hellfire and damnation politicians is, you know, they really buy into that stuff, and it leads their thinking and stuff. But now you've debunked all that, and we'll send a copy to Mr. Weinberger,

and I believe he was in both administrations, the George Bush administration, W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was clearly trying to sleep through Armageddon if it came, along with most of his meetings in the White House. I don't understand. But then so was George Bush. Maybe George Bush's interpretation was getting shoes thrown and was going to be the end of the world for interact there.

So there's that. So this has been great to clear up. And I got to tell you, you've lifted just a huge worry off my thing. And now every time one of my relatives says something about the end of the world, I'm going to hit them with your book across the face and then tell them to read it do i want to do that we don't condone violence here folks those are jokes anyway thank you very much for coming on the show bart we really appreciate it okay thanks for having me i've enjoyed it thank you and give us a dot com so people can find you on the internet and the kardashians can sue both of us all right so um

my my main website is barterman.com and i i there i i uh i do online courses and lectures that people can check out i also do a blog five times a week that actually raises money for charity and it's just hermanblog.org there you go and you've got a great youtube channel we should give a plug to that thing as well go for it there you go there you go he's like he's like all humble about it but no it's a great channel and he goes on there and talks about all the brilliant stuff but buy his books first damn it because that's what we're here to do we're here to move books anyway it's the editor's pick of best of history on amazon prime right now march 21st 2023 armageddon what

the bible says about the end um and uh thanks to Ehrman for being on the show with us today. He's ruined all the plugging that I do about telling people they need to subscribe to the podcast before the end of the world Armageddon comes or else. Now I'll never use that line. But in the meantime, now that you know that the world's going to keep going, subscribe to the show. Go to youtube.com for it says Christmas. Goodreads.com for it says chris wasn't linkedin thanks for tuning in be good to each other stay safe there's no armageddon we'll see you next time