Did Jesus Actually Believe in Heaven?

[00:00:00]Did you know that Jesus didn't believe in the soul, heaven, or hell? As an apocalyptic Jew, these ideas would have been completely foreign to him. So, where on earth did Christianity get the idea that a life well-lived would be rewarded with a place in paradise [music] for your soul? Today, we're talking about where the idea of heaven came from. We also have our bonus segment at the end which this week is scholar spotlight and Bart's going to be telling us about a biblical scholar he thinks we should know about. Welcome to the Misquoting Jesus podcast with Bartman.

[00:00:34]Now Bart to begin with when you were a believer did you imagine a literal heaven? What did you think it was and how how would you get in there?

[00:00:43]>> Uh well there there was no other kind.

[00:00:45]It [laughter] was it man. there's a we're we're going to heaven when we die.

[00:00:49]And uh at least those of us who are bound that way. And those of us who are going to get in are when I was a believer, it when I was a Christian, it was um it was only by accepting Christ uh and to be committing your life to Christ. Anyone who didn't do that was not going to go to heaven and uh was not going to be obliterated. They were going to be tortured in hell for eternity.

[00:01:14]Delightful. Is this based on anything that we see? Well, no. Let me back up.

[00:01:19]What visions of the afterlife do we see in the Old Testament before we get to the New?

[00:01:24]>> All right. Yeah. So, in the Old Testament, so I people find it very confusing when scholars say things like there's there's no such thing as hell in the Old Testament. There's such thing as heaven in the in the Old Testament. Part of the problem is that the way words get translated from Hebrew into into English uh create the problem. Uh in both the the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament and the New Testament um in the uh in the Hebrew Bible, the fairly consistent view is that um people are are uh people come to life when they're born. Um and uh that's when they become human was when they start breathing uh as as they're born and when they die uh they stop brea breathing and they're dead. They don't exist anymore. Uh there are passages in the Hebrew Bible that talk about a place called Shiel. um especially in um in um poetic writings like the Psalms and in uh other in some of the wisdom literature she also shows up and unfortunately that's translated as hell uh by uh traditional translators. It's not hell. It's it actually it's referring to the grave or the tomb where people go when they die. But there's there's not a sense in the Hebrew Bible that when people die, their soul separates from their body and their soul goes up uh to live in the divine realm with God. Um in the Hebrew tradition, body and soul together constitute the human. And when the body dies, the soul there's no more soul either, right?

[00:02:59]There's no life. And so if there's no life, there's no soul. And so um and so when people talk about being protected from shiel in the Old Testament, being saved from shiel, what they're saying is that, you know, God hasn't God's made it so they haven't died yet. But it's not uh so there's no so there's no neither place in the in the Hebrew Bible.

[00:03:19]>> So it's not an understanding that by being saved from shiel you're you're not going to go to hell. You're not going to have eternal punishment. It's just that you are not yet dead and in your grave.

[00:03:29]>> Not dead yet. and uh the uh the uh and it's not that you you've been saved from hell so that you'll go to heaven. Um there isn't a concept of um you know of the saints all going up to heaven and uh being with God uh forever in in the Hebrew Bible.

[00:03:46]>> Was there any kind of idea or understanding of people getting something better if they lived their life the way that that Yahweh demanded?

[00:03:56]Uh the idea is that you'd get you you'd be rewarded in this life. Um it was true in in most ancient religions that um if if there mo most religions worship the gods or in the case of Judaism, worship the God of Israel. Uh because uh life is really hard here and uh God is the one who created us and he's the one who deserves to be worshiped and if we worship him, he'll give give us the things we can't give ourselves. You know, we can't heal ourselves when we're sick. And we can't guarantee that um that a child who is born will survive uh birth or that the mother will survive child birth. We can't control whether the crops grow or whether, you know, whether we have enough to get by on or whether we get rich. And these aren't things within our control, but God can control those things. And so God is God is worship for what he can provide in this life. But there's there's not a sense that it's going to continue on afterwards.

[00:04:52]So, when we're looking at the the Old Testament and ideas of um what happens once you die, is there anything if people are resurrected, is there like a like, sorry, I'm being very inarticulate, but how does that kind of play into the whole picture?

[00:05:09]>> Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's it's no resurrection is the right term for it because what what ends up happening in Judaism over time is that the idea that if you serve God, you'll be rewarded and if you're opposed to God, you'll be punished. That's a view that you get throughout the Hebrew Bible. You get it like strongly pronounced in the book of Deuteronomy when Moses is giving the law. You get it in the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, all the prophets. You get it in the Proverbs. You get it in the Psalms. That's the thing. you you worship God well and do what he wants and you'll be rewarded in this life and if you don't you'll be punished in this life. Eventually um um some Jewish thinkers uh at the at the very tail end of the the Old Testament period started thinking that that that creates a problem of justice because so many people are uh righteous who suffer in this life and they're not rewarded by God and they're hungry all the time or they starve to death or they get defeated in war or they they have just horrible lives even though they try to be faithful. Whereas people who are just really awful human beings often live great lives. And so that's not right.

[00:06:17]And so Jewish thinkers about 200 years before Jesus started thinking that in fact there's got to be justice. It clearly isn't in this life. It must be in the life to come. And so they started coming up with ideas of life after death. But since they had the same view that your body, the human being is a body and soul combined, that meant life after you die means coming back to life, which means your soul will come back into your body. Uh for the word soul, you can also use the term breath. You're alive as long as you breathe. God will breathe life back into people. And people who have sided with God will be rewarded when that happens. And so even though it looks like there's no justice in the world, no, God is sovereign. God is just God. And if you sided with him, even if you suffered now, he will reward you later by being raised from the dead.

[00:07:12]Not by not by having a soul go up to heaven or anything like that. It's you you you will come back to life. [snorts] >> Do we see a similar concern about justice in uh other ancient religions? I know that they have a similar understanding of the afterorld. You die.

[00:07:26]That's kind of it. You might go into some dark dank underground place, but there's no there's no heaven. There's no paradise. So, do you see this concern with well what's the what's the point of living a good life? What's my reward?

[00:07:41]Does that similarly creep into other religions?

[00:07:44]>> It does and in different ways uh and at different times. you know when you if you're looking at like the Greek and Roman worlds out of which uh in which Judaism was situated and the you know later you know later in the time like around the time of Jesus and where Judaism was situated where all the religions were at the in the around the Mediterranean um if you look at those things the oldest the oldest traditions we have are like Homer the LA in the Odyssey and it's clear in the Odyssey that uh the afterlife entails everybody's spirit going down to Hades and living this boring uh uninteresting life there whether they're good or not and it's puzzling for uh in Homer how do you account for this you know people who are superpower heroes in this life and virtuous and good and strong and bright and everything they get the same they get the same afterlife as somebody's a schmuck and so you see that in the Odyssey and it's a bit puzzling to the author um later on um you start getting um you start getting ideas that there have to be there has to be justice in the afterlife just happened in Judaism eventually it happened in Greek and Roman religions as well but in Greek and Roman religions the idea was that the body uh the body could die and would decompose but we have a spiritual side within us that can be separated from the body and it can go on forever uh in fact it will go on forever this is argued strenuously by Plato that the the soul is immortal the body dies the soul lives on. And so in order to also deal with the idea of the injustice of the world, they started having ideas that their the soul will live on and will be rewarded or punished. And so you get that already in some of the myths that uh Plato Plato gives that he calls myths. Um they're they're they're stories to explain uh what happens to the soul after death.

[00:09:40]>> Could you give us a quick synopsis of one of these myths? What did Plato think the afterlife would look like?

[00:09:46]>> Yeah. Well, the the most famous one is in um Plato's longest dialogue uh the Republic like the other dialogues um like they uh they feature Socrates talking to uh to France and he's uh the Republic is actually trying to show how the um how uh how society ought to be organized. Uh and so it's it's kind of developing the idea of a utopian world, what it would look like. And it takes 10 volumes. It's a big big dialogue. But the 10th volume, what sometimes happens in Plato is he'll he'll extend his he'll he'll engage in kind of a reasoning process where he'll consider an idea and then show what was right about then show why it's wrong and move on to another idea. And it's he call it's called dialectic when you're kind of reasonably working out the logic of what's the right answer to something. But then at the end of one of his dialogues, he'll tell a story, a myth. uh and it's a story and the the end of the republic uh book 10 is the myth of e er who is a soldier who gets killed in battle but then wakes up. [laughter] So, he has a near-death experience and he describes what happens in the afterlife because he went there and he saw and he gives a detailed description, but the short of it is that the souls that were righteous that pursued uh understanding and knowledge and tried to be virtuous, those souls would be rewarded. And the souls that refused and that lead led lives of exploiting others and just trying to get rich and powerful and were mean-spirited, they they're they are dreadfully punished. They're tortured.

[00:11:24]Uh and so that's uh and so that's one of his myths and he has myths like that trying to show that that what the soul is immortal, the body dies, but the soul there will be justice in the afterlife for the soul.

[00:11:36]>> Thank you. We're going to get more deep into this in a moment, but we have a quick break for an announcement.

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[00:12:51]So, but if we have this idea from Plato that uh living living a good life, being righteous and just is is a a way to have a more pleasant afterlife, are there any religious requirements for this? Do you have to believe in a specific god or follow a specific religious path or is it more to do with how you are treating people? Well, that's that's what strikes many people as very odd is that in Greek and Roman religions, including in Plato, uh what your religious beliefs are don't matter for the afterlife. Uh it isn't what you believe. And religion itself isn't about faith and belief in in these traditions which were like the entire traditions of the entire world [laughter] in polytheism generally in the ancient world. It's um religion is a matter of honoring the gods and revering them and worshiping them and mainly through acts of prayer and uh offerings where you offer things to the gods so that they you give the gods things so that they they will give you thanks and you acknowledge them and and so you do that and so it requires some kind of modum of belief. I mean presumably you've got to think there are gods you know there things like that but it isn't like developed within Christianity where there are certain beliefs you've got to hold to you know it's got to be boom boom boom boom boom boom like that it's not the belief is not the issue the issue is worship in Greek and Roman religions and so what really matters for the afterlife in these traditions is how you've lived because if you've lived a rotten life you're going to have a rotten afterlife [snorts] >> so t typical or traditional Jewish Israelite thought is that there is there's no heaven, there's no soul.

[00:14:31]Once you're dead, you are dead. You are in your grave. That's that's kind of that. Um, Greek and Roman thinking eventually kind of develops this idea of a pleasant afterlife if you if you live correctly. And you see something similar developing in Jewish thought based on an idea of justice, right? You have to be if there's justice in the world, bad people, people who are cruel in this life should not have the same fate as those who who live their lives correctly. Where would Jesus have fit into all of this conversation?

[00:15:08]>> Yeah. No, it's a great question and and um so I I need to clarify one thing because I just know a lot of people are hearing us talk about this and say, "How can you say the Hebrew Bible has no soul? The word soul shows up all over the place." Yes, it does. But it doesn't mean what you mean by it. [laughter] It's the thing inside the breath inside of you that dies along with your body.

[00:15:28]And so, uh, yeah. So, um, where does Jesus stand? Well, um, I I had mentioned that, uh, in the Hebrew Bible, throughout the Hebrew Bible, death is it, you know, you you just you're dead.

[00:15:39]and until they start developing the idea of a resurrection of the dead. Jesus held to the view of the resurrection of the dead which was that um at the end of time um there's going to be a day of judgment and um people who uh people who have died will be judged along with the people who are alive at the time. And so if you've lived a uh a righteous life and died and uh you know had no nothing good come out of your righteousness, you will be rewarded with this resurrection.

[00:16:09]And if you've you thought if you thought that you can be a horrible human being to everybody else to have what you consider to be a good life and you in fact are a wretched human being and then you die, you're not going to get away with it. God's going to God's going to raise you from the dead. So everybody will be raised from the dead. The wicked will face judgment. They will be uh shown the error of their ways and then will be ruthlessly annihilated. Um and the righteous will be raised from the dead and be given an eternal reward. So this is the doctrine of the resurrection. It's a belief that was held widely in Judaism at the time of Jesus. It was held by uh most of the Jewish groups and authors that we know of from the period. One kind of outstanding exception, the Sadducees who show up in the Gospels did not believe that there's an afterlife did not believe in a resurrection of the dead.

[00:16:56]Uh but Pharisees did and the Essenes, the people who produced the Dead Sea Scrolls did and John the Baptist did and Jesus did, lots of other authors did.

[00:17:03]And so that was the belief uh is that you're you would be brought back to life and life eternal life would be lived here on this planet. Right? The planet was created for humans and the afterlife is when humans actually can enjoy it when they've been faithful to God.

[00:17:17]>> So we're not talking about any still no kind of soul. This is a physical resurrection and you will stay on earth and just have a a more enjoyable I guess eternal physical life.

[00:17:28]>> Yeah. And there's a soul that's within you but it doesn't exist outside of you.

[00:17:32]it doesn't exist. And so the analogy I think I've done this before on the podcast is it really can the the word can be breath for soul or spirit especially spirit means and breath are the same word and so what hap you know when we to die they died nobody asked where did your breath go right [laughter] because you get it doesn't go anywhere you're dead now and that's that's they understood the breath and the spirit to be the same thing and so when you die there's no sp soul existing outside of it that's right >> so when this kind of mass resurrection and eternal physical life didn't materialized, how did that idea get transformed into an eternal spiritual afterlife?

[00:18:14]>> Okay. So, so the way it works is uh really interesting. I think that this the apocalyptic thinking that Jesus had and that other many other Jews had understood that the the reality we experience happens in like two periods of time. There's this age which is rotten uh and people live and die and there's the age to come where God will have destroyed the powers of evil and the age to come for people who live into it will go on forever and it'll be a paradise. So it's this age and that age and all of kind of the the the religious thinking is centered around that kind of dualism. This world and the world to come but the world to come will be here without evil. So what ends up happening is that kind of dualism that you might think of as a kind of a horizontal dualism. It's like a timeline. It's a line across the page. What ends up happening is the Christians um end up flipping this dualism into a vertical line. So that now it's not now and then like chronology horizontally. It's down here and up there. It's still a dualism.

[00:19:23]But the problem is that the age to come never came. So that's one problem.

[00:19:29]Second problem, it's not really a problem, but most people who convert to Christianity by the end of the first century, most of them are not Jewish and were not raised with a Jewish idea of what it meant to be human. They were raised in Greek circles. Greek culture had infiltrated the Mediterranean world.

[00:19:46]And these converts were coming out of Greek circles. And they were born and raised thinking that the B body and the soul were separate from each other. And so they brought that notion into their Christianity and they flipped it so that now it's not that the the body the the body will be brought back to dead and be reunited with the soul in the age to come is that the body will die and the soul will live on up above. And so it's still a dualism but now it's a vertical dualism. And so the basically what they've done what the Christians have done is they've t to put in the most simple terms possible which are simplistic but the simple terms they've taken the teachings of Jesus and they've combined them with the teachings of Plato and they've ended up with heaven and hell. Uh yeah and it's not in the New Testament. [laughter] >> That is quite the combination of teachings.

[00:20:40]Well, it is and it it's kind of a natural move because the people who are converting to believe in Jesus believe there will be justice in the afterlife, but they also know that the body will die and the soul will live on. And so they they change it. So when I say it's not in the New Testament, it's not it's not in the New Testament in a kind of a fully laid out form. There are a couple of hints about it in a couple of passages in the New Testament, but really it's a development that starts that develops in a serious way after most of the books of the New Testament were written.

[00:21:07]>> I see. So, where do we see these these hints in the New Testament?

[00:21:12]>> Well, you you find places where uh the Apostle Paul in um in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and in Philippians chapter 2 uh seems to think that when he dies, he's going to be in the presence of Christ before the resurrection happens.

[00:21:28]And so he thinks that he he originally thought Paul originally thought um in in like in his earliest letters like first Thessalonians the first letter of his that we have indicates that what's going to happen at the end of time is that Jesus is going to come back destroy all the enemies of God and there will be a resurrection of the dead and Paul indicates he'll be one of the ones who's alive when it happens.

[00:21:55]This is first 1 Thessalonians chapter 4.

[00:21:57]And in 1 Corinthians 15, he indicates he'll be alive when it happens. Well, as time goes on, Paul's getting older and getting persecuted. And he's starting to think and he's in jail. He's think, you know, I might get executed here. Maybe I won't be alive. And so, in later letters, he starts talking about what it will be like when he dies. Surely, he's in the he's in the presence of Christ now. Surely, when he's dead, there's not going to be like this interim period where he's not in the presence of Christ. and he started thinking there'll be this interim existence. He'll be up in heaven for a little while like his soul will be there before the resurrection. The resurrection is still going to happen but and so you get that and so what ends up happening then is you know not not even that happens and so they shift entirely to you die and your soul goes up to heaven. Do we have any non-cononical writings that tell people what heaven is going to be like or speak more specifically about [snorts] the lack of a physical resurrection? I guess.

[00:22:58]>> Yeah, they we do. We absolutely do. And this is a subject that I deal with in my book, Heaven and Hell. Uh where I try to explain where these ideas of heaven and hell came from since they're not what Jesus taught and they're not in the Hebrew Bible. So where did they come from? And and part of the thing I do is I talk about some of these texts that uh one kind of text I got really interested in uh is not widely known outside of scholarship, but it's it's a kind of text where Christians are given guided tours of the afterlife. Starting with a book that almost made it into the New Testament called the Apocalypse of Peter where uh Peter is shown what the torments of the damned are like and what the blessings of the saved are like up in heaven. And so and he and it um some of these uh some of these narratives of these these these kind of fictional accounts of guided tours of heaven and hell uh in the Christian tradition, they're pretty much uh told in order to show people they don't want to reject Christ because they're going to be tortured forever. And here are some of the tortures. The Apocalypse of Peter gives 21 different tortures [laughter] for people depending on how they've lived. and they are gory and they're not pleasant and um and so part of the function of these things is to convince people they need to they need to turn to Christ or this is what's going to happen to them forever.

[00:24:19]>> So we have we have 21 options I guess of torture if you if you do things wrong.

[00:24:25]Do we have similarly descriptive accounts of what the nice stuff looks like or is it just like a you get a nice robe and you get to be in the presence of God and do a lot of singing?

[00:24:35]>> Yeah. Well, it's, you know, it is interesting in this apocalypse of Peter, they discover, we knew about this before because it, as I said, it almost made it in the New Testament, but then it was lost and it didn't turn up until the 1880s. And one of the things that was discovered in in a in a tomb in in Egypt, a book with this thing in it. And and we found other parts of it now. And and the the thing that's surprised many people, not surprised, but it kind of wa made them wake up and notice is that Peter does describe the blessings up above and the torments down below. But the blessings up above are discussed just in a paragraph basically. I mean, it's just a little description. You, you know, it smells great up there and everybody's happy and they're joyful and they're worshiping God the whole time.

[00:25:16]It's great. But the descriptions of hell go on and on and on. [laughter] And I think it's because, you know, there only so much many ways you can describe eternal joy. You know, I mean, they're they're joyful. You know, they're blessed and that's great. But man, there are lots of ways you can describe torment. [laughter] >> Lots of options there.

[00:25:34]>> And if the idea is partly to convert people, you know, you kind of emphasize the torment. Fire and brimstone goes all the way back in the Christian tradition, and this is one of the early instances of it.

[00:25:45]Do any of the other early Christian apocalypses have similar depictions of of heaven?

[00:25:51]>> Well, they get more and more developed.

[00:25:52]And so based on the apocalypse of Peter, which was written in the second century, probably the first half of the second century, so you know, just 40 50 years after the end of after the New Testament, most of the New Testament writings. Um later there was another person uh several centuries later who wrote an apocalypse of Paul where Paul is given a guided tour of heaven and hell and this one's important because this is the uh this was known to Dante when he wrote the divine comedy he knew about the apocalypse of Paul and so this is uh significant you know for lots of reasons because you know the inferno and paradesio and the based you know ultimately on apocalypse of Paul in the apocalypse of Paul there's a much more extended discussion of heaven and one of the interesting things in it is that heaven comes in different tiers and uh so that there are different levels of heaven and each one is infinitely better than the one before it and so there's kind of competition for who can get to the highest level and so you got to be really holy if you want the fantastic I mean look it's all going to be fantastic but you know you're going to be kind of jealous of the people are ahead of you so you need to be even more righteous because being more righteous is going to give you more more reward board >> and and to both of these apocalypses for both of them is the main requirement to get into heaven following Christianity. It's less the platonic ideal of uh living a good life uh doing like things to nourish your soul rather than attack other people. It's more you have to believe the right thing.

[00:27:28]>> You have to believe the right thing.

[00:27:30]That's the sin quuanon. Um, if you believe the right thing, you will behave in the right ways. One way to know that you're not believing the right things is you're not behaving properly. You know, it's really hard to know what somebody's thinking in their head, but it's pretty easy to see how they act and they'll act based on what they what they believe. Um but when you start getting this idea of a tiered uh heaven uh where you know some are more righteous than others then it's of course everyone who gets in is a believer. But you've got to behave in certain ways in order to increase your your holiness. And so there's a kind of a competition a holiness competition uh which manifests itself in various ways actually in Christianity with the start of the monastic movement in the 4th century. Monks would sometimes compete to see who could suffer the most. Um, you know, you go off into the desert by yourself for for two years. Yeah. This guy did for five, you know, and you eat red bread and water. He he man, he he hardly ate he he'd eat sand. [laughter] It's not quite that bad, but it's And so it it it starts feeding into this competition thing that there's some people more righteous than others, but you've got to believe in Christ.

[00:28:40]So the the whole idea of a tiered heaven is not something that I've really heard of before. Did that was that ever mainstream theology or did that kind of die out with the apocalypse?

[00:28:51]>> Uh no, that's a good that's a good question. I think you know the the idea of layers of things becomes um I think a lot of people end up believing that in the Christian tradition. It's in part it's kind of what leads to much later leads to purgatory. Um, I think a lot of people misunderstand purgatory. Um, I I've known a lot of Catholics, devoted Catholics, who have been Catholic, you know, who are in their 60s, who've been Catholic their entire lives who do do not understand what purgatory is.

[00:29:20]Purgatory um is only for people who are bound for heaven and but uh they're bound for heaven, but you know, they still have some sins they haven't taken care of, and they've got to pay for those sins. And so, um, purgatory is a place where they're punished for their sins for a period depending on how bad they were. So, they were believers, so they're going to go to heaven, but, you know, you got to go through this purgatory. And you could be centuries down, you know, centuries in purgatory being tortured, and you don't want that.

[00:29:51]And so, that that's so that's another thing about this kind of a tier thing.

[00:29:54]You purgatory would be kind of like the entryway you got to go through. And um but you know it doesn't we don't you don't start getting that till the 12th century. Um and so it isn't it isn't like an ancient idea but it is dealing with this problem that the tiered heaven thing is dealing with that you've got Christians and you got Christians. You know you got the you got the woman who basically you know basically believes but it doesn't really affect her life very much and then you got this woman who's like you know Mother Teresa you know or something. is just like and they they get different rewards because if there's justice, it isn't like one, you know, one thing for everybody. And so the whole thing about justice leads to these ideas that there are more more blessed afterles. So I had I have a friend I I have a guy who's on my blog uh who I'm friendly with who who told me that he was sitting next to a um a table of women uh at a at a very posh restaurant and they were clearly evangelical women talking about the afterlife.

[00:30:55]And they were they were saying how they they each of them was going to have a mansion in heaven. Uh these are very rich women and apparently they're all going to have these mansions. They're talking about what kind of mansions they wanted. And then one of them said, "You know that we're we're also all going to have golf courses in heaven." And no, she's serious. [laughter] And then she said, "Of course, my golf course won't be as nice as Billy Graham's." [laughter] What?

[00:31:25]So, so the tradition continues.

[00:31:27][laughter] >> I I have never heard of the heavenly golf course before. [laughter] >> That's I've played some hellish golf courses before.

[00:31:37][laughter] >> Yeah.

[00:31:39]>> Wow. Okay.

[00:31:42]>> In heaven, it'll probably be a hole in one every time, right? Because it's got to be boring after a while. [laughter] >> That's fun.

[00:31:47]>> Yeah.

[00:31:48]>> Wow. Okay. So we get this whole thing starts as a question of justice and if I live my life well and I follow all the rules it it is not fair. It makes no sense that I am also just dead in the ground.

[00:32:03]>> Yeah.

[00:32:03]>> And it it evolves through time into this idea of tiered heaven with with mansions and golf courses.

[00:32:10]>> Right. So it's because the you know the Jewish idea Jesus was Jewish. His followers were Jewish. They were apocalyptic Jews. They believed in a physical resurrection and eternal life here on earth. And within a hundred years, most people weren't Jewish and they they they they hold these other ideas about the body and they they bring those ideas with them into the church.

[00:32:35]And so the irony is that what ends up developing is since the resurrection of the dead was such a central teaching of Jesus, such a central teaching of Paul, it's in the New Testament. Christians continue to confess the resurrection of the dead even though they don't understand what it means. It means your body comes back to life and you live forever here on earth. But in the creed today that people say at the end of the creed um it says and I believe in the resurrection of the dead uh and life everlasting. Yeah. But they don't people say that but it's not what they think because they don't understand resurrection is means the body coming back to life. Um but they believe that their soul goes to heaven. So Christianity is oddly kept on with both things even though they're at odds with each other.

[00:33:26]>> That's fascinating.

[00:33:27]>> Yeah.

[00:33:27]>> And as someone who grew up in the Anglican church and said that creed every Sunday.

[00:33:33]>> Mhm. I was like well into my 20ies before I actually stopped and thought, "Hang on, resurrection of the dead.

[00:33:40]That's that sounds not quite right.

[00:33:45]>> Bodies coming out of the graves. It's what it is." And it's um it's it's the traditional Christian belief that most Christians don't believe. [laughter] It's a very it's a strange thing. But you know the thing about the creed is most people you know I I also grew up in the Episcopal church and and we recited it every week and I had it memorized when I was very young and once you got it memorized you just say it and you don't really think about it and most people have no idea what most of it means. I mean they just don't you can I mean uh so or or why it says what it does, right? I believe in one God. Yeah.

[00:34:20]How many of you going to believe it?

[00:34:21][laughter] I mean what why am I saying this?

[00:34:25]And so I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ. Well, how many Lord Jesus Christ are there? What do you mean you believe in one of them? [laughter] And so, so you really have to have kind of an understanding of the history of theology even to understand what you confess every week. But I think this resurrection of the dead thing is one of the really outstanding ones because it's the one that people they just they don't understand what it means and um but they confess it.

[00:34:50]>> Well, this has been absolutely fascinating. Bart, thank you. I don't have any more questions. Is there anything that you want to add before we move on?

[00:34:58]>> Well, I just say, you know, a lot of people uh a lot of people uh take take real comfort in belief that there will be a heaven. Um and um I am not saying that I know what happens after we die. I know what I think. Uh what I think is that there's no afterlife at all. That's me. But I'm not, you know, I'm not saying that that's the case. It's just what I happen to think. But people I know a lot of people who are very um very committed to the idea of there being a heaven. And for a lot of people it's because a lot of people it's because they don't want you know life to end. And of course none of us wants to disappear not exist anymore. And so that makes sense. A lot of people really want to see their deceased loved ones. Um and it's a it's a hope that they have and it's an important hope and a and a precious hope for people sometimes that too uh can lead to difficulties and um kind of problems. I my when my mom was elderly uh my my dad died when he was uh 65 so he was young. My mom lived to till she was in her mid 90s. And while she was still compass near like in the at the end of her 80s, when she was 90 or so, she would get very upset because she was pretty sure that now that she was this old, my dad would not recognize her when she got to heaven.

[00:36:22]And um you know, I say, "Oh, mom, it's not going to work like that." No, he'll of course he'll recognize you. And but you know, he'll look 65 and she'll look 94. and you know and she won't and like how's that going to work? And so it was interesting in early Christianity because the early Christians who started developing this idea of you know having eternal life and in some kind of even if it's a soul you're in some kind of physical shape you can still you still look like who you are had to deal with these issues about like what's it going to be like physically if you've got even if you're it's a your body doesn't come back to life you still have some kind of physicality about it and so how does it appear and it's it's a perennial problem I think for people and so the the idea of heaven is a it It's a very important hope for people but it also has created real kind of mental difficulties for others.

[00:37:10]>> Thank you very much Bart. We are going to move to this week's bonus segment which is the scholar spotlight in which Bart tells us about a biblical scholar he thinks we should know. Bart, who are you recommending to us today? Well, uh, the preface of this is that I have, uh, just this week, um, finished editing the third edition of my textbook on the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation.

[00:37:35]>> Congratulations.

[00:37:36]>> Thank you. It's um, I hate revising these things. It's a pain in the neck, but you need to keep them up to date because people use them in their classes. I originally I wrote this thing some years ago. Um, and this is the third edition. And for the third edition, I decided that I really wanted to have a Hebrew Bible scholar do the Hebrew Bible part. So the book, the textbook, it's for for undergraduates.

[00:38:00]Um, but although it's it'd be useful for anybody really because it deals with every book of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation and tries to explain them and and what scholars say about them and such. And I my my secondary field in um in my PhD program and in my master's program was Hebrew Bible. And so I and I I've taught it a number of times over the years, but I'm not, you know, I'm not like one of the experts in the Hebrew Bible. Joel Ben, who teaches at Yale University, is and um he's a very fine author. He's a very good speaker.

[00:38:31]He's a great teacher. And I asked him to be my uh to be my co-author for this third edition. And so Joel and I have just finished this. And he he redid the Hebrew part, Hebrew Bible part. I redid the New Testament part. Joel um Joel is an expert on many aspects of the Hebrew Bible and he's he's written books he's written books for scholars but he's also written books for broader audiences um that are worth uh looking up. So it's Joel Ben Aen. He's one of the real experts on how the the sources behind the pentatuk the Torah um the traditional sources the four sources are J and P. There are a lot of debates about these things now uh but but he's like an expert in the sources. He's an expert on the history of King David.

[00:39:14]He's a history. He's like he's an expert in everything in the Hebrew Bible. So for he's somebody I would recommend people check out. Um he's done online courses and he's written books and he's he's really one of these people who who actually knows a ton but also can communicate and uh that's that's a good thing for a scholar to be able to do.

[00:39:35][laughter] >> Always helpful and not always something that as academics we are taught how to do. We are not taught that. No. When I was in graduate school, we had no classes on how to teach. Period. No instruction on how to teach. Period. We just, you know, we were taught scholarship. You're just kind of expected to figure out how to teach [laughter] my colleagues.

[00:39:56]>> Yeah. After I did my comps, my adviser recommended that I took a class on pedagogy that wasn't offered by our department. It was a an interdep departmental thing. And it was fascinating just from a a a perspective of how the human brain works, but it was incredibly helpful.

[00:40:14]>> And I remember being very surprised at the time that this was not something that was required >> or PhD students who were very often teaching within the university as as part of their uh as part of their PhD.

[00:40:27]>> Yeah. With no training. Just throw you know, you tell okay uh we're going to assign you this class and they get some assigned some class. kind of related to something they do and they have to make a syllabus. They have to design the class. They have to pick the textbooks.

[00:40:40]They have to figure out how they're going to do it, how much discussion, how much lecture, how to give lecture. It's like no training in it at all. So these day these days though, I will say that PhD programs focus on training in a way that we never did. And it's a it's a good thing.

[00:40:55]>> But thank you so very much. Before we finish for the week, could you please remind us what we spoke about today?

[00:41:01]Well, you know, it's a surprise to many people that our view of heaven that your soul dies and goes to heaven is not uh in the teachings of Jesus. Um, and it's not uh it's it's not in the Hebrew Bible at all. And the question is, well, how did it come about? And so I tried to in our discussion I was trying to explain how how we got our current doctrine of heaven even though it's not the original Christian view. Um, that doesn't make it wrong, but it is worth knowing that this is not what the original Christians taught. audience. Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show.

[00:41:34]If you did, please subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don't miss future episodes. Remember, you can use the code MJ podcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.bartman.com.

[00:41:46]Misquoting Jesus will be back next week.

[00:41:48]But what are we talking about next time?

[00:41:51]>> So, there's a um there's a um a new uh Christian apologist who's appeared on the scene named Wes Huff. very smart guy, very articulate guy who uh says a lot of things in support of the Christian faith. And we're going to look at a few things that he says and I'm going to give my my take on them to see uh we we don't agree on a lot of things but uh and I don't know him uh but uh I'll just I'll talk about some of the claims that he makes about uh the the truth claims of Christianity.

[00:42:19]>> Make make sure you join us then. Thank you all and goodbye.

[00:42:27]This has been an episode of Misquoting Jesus with Bartman. We'll be back with a new episode next Tuesday. So, please be sure to subscribe to our show for free on your favorite podcast listening app or on Bartman's YouTube channel so you don't miss out. From Barterman and myself, Megan Lewis, thank you for joining us.