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.

That Jesus would have experienced suffering on the cross is not really a subject for debate,

but the question of why he suffered and whether or not it was necessary is a little more complex.

We'll be getting to that shortly, but first, let's catch up with Bart. How are you doing today? Yeah, doing well. Took a week off to do a, not a week off. I took a week as a writer's retreat last week, and so I'm doing, I'm trying to catch up with what I'm supposed to be doing, which is, you know, writing a book. So that's all good. How are you doing? Yes, good, actually.

Everyone is for once healthy and in school. They weren't last week. So, yeah, also trying to catch up with things while I can. Yeah, right. Okay, yeah. And the kids are catching up with the schoolwork. Yes, yes, very slowly. When you're doing this kind of writing work, how does that fit in around your various travel plans?

So it varies from one thing to the next. Some of my books I've actually written

when I'm not at home. I've written a couple books in coffee shops in Wimbledon. We have a flat in London,

so yeah, it's a nice way to go. It's not as easy to concentrate in a coffee shop, I've got to say. So I put on my headphones and classical music. No words. I cannot write to words. It's got to be just instrumental stuff to get my mind so I don't hear anything else. So for this one, I actually have a trip that I'm doing next month. Well, I guess, yeah, so I guess it's this month,

actually, which is a trip to the Greek islands. It's a tour where I'm giving some lectures.

We're hopping from one island to the next. I mean, I'm lecturing on whether we should see

Christianity as an ancient Greek religion. And so, you know, some of the people coming along. I'm giving lectures and hanging out with people for 10 days. And so, yeah, so I'm trying to get the book written by that time. I've tried to give up on deadlines. They just create stress. But in this case, I'm still not, you know, if I don't get it written in time, that's fine. It's going to be absolutely fine. So that's why I'm telling myself, but I wouldn't mind having it written so I could just go on the holiday. That sounds like a lot of fun. It has been a while since I was on any Greek islands, but I have very fond memories. We used to go to various places with my dad when I was a teenager. Oh, really? Oh. And I'm one of four, so it was my poor father kind of shepherding four teenagers around little Greek islands. I don't quite know how he managed it, but he did, and we had a wonderful time.

A young guy growing up in Kansas, we didn't flip around the Greek islands much. It's a bit easier when you're going from the UK, I think.

It is. You know, I didn't see the ocean times, maybe 23.

Wow.

I do forget sometimes quite how big the US is.

Oh, yeah.

The whole country of Britain will fit many times into various different states.

Oh, God, absolutely.

But it's still a hugely varied country.

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