It's not every day that you get to talk about an exciting new discovery in biblical studies.

The ravages of time mean that it's rare for a text to survive, especially a complete text.

Even rarer is a complete text that records an entire sermon given by Jesus.

Well, I'm excited to say that today is one of those days.

Dr. Bart Ehrman is with me to talk about his take on a fascinating new text discovered recently in Egypt.

Welcome to Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. The only show where a six-time New York Times bestselling author and world-renowned Bible scholar,

uncovers the many fascinating, little-known facts about the New Testament, the historical Jesus,

and the rise of Christianity. I'm your host, Megan Lewis. Let's begin.

Hello everyone and welcome back to misquoting Jesus.

I am sorry to say that my little intro there was a small April Falls.

While I think we'd all be very excited about such a discovery, no such text has been found and if it had been,

I think there would probably be some very valid questions about its authenticity,

which does lead me to the actual topic of today's episode,

modern forgeries of early Christian texts.

It's not quite as sensational as a brand new sermon of Jesus, but I think probably just as interesting.

We also have news of Bart's upcoming two lecture mini-series, and finally

we'll be closing with the selection of audience questions. So Bart, how are you? Sad, obviously,

because there's no new text to talk about. I'm very sad, because I was hoping that between our

announcement and today it would show up. But, you know, things do show up sometimes,

and sometimes they're authentic, and often they're not. And so we'll talk about the ones that

are not. It's going to know. It's going to be good. Before we get into, like, the technicalities

and all that kind of thing, do you have a favorite forgery, modern forgery of an ancient text?

...