Did Jesus Really Change Western Morality? Bart Ehrman
The Michael Shermer Show
Michael Shermer
4.3 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 28 March 2026
⏱️ 72 minutes
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Summary
How much of what we call "basic morality" is actually inherited from Christianity? Bart Ehrman joins Michael Shermer for a wide-ranging conversation about one of the biggest moral questions in history: why do we feel obligated to care for strangers at all?
Drawing from his new book Love Thy Stranger, Ehrman argues that the idea of helping people outside your tribe, family, or nation was not a moral given in the ancient world. Greek and Roman ethics made room for loyalty, friendship, and civic duty, but not for radical concern for the outsider. He makes the case that Jesus changed that moral equation—and that his teachings still shape the modern West, including many people who no longer consider themselves religious.
The conversation also covers Ehrman's own path from evangelical Christianity to agnostic atheism, the problem of suffering, whether pure altruism really exists, and the difference between forgiveness and atonement.
Bart Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and The New York Times bestselling author of Misquoting Jesus and How Jesus Became God. His new book is Love Thy Stranger: How Jesus Transformed Our Moral Conscience.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Who was Jesus anyway? Which is really the question here, because he's always presented as somebody rather different than how you've presented him. |
| 0:07.6 | As an apocalyptic preacher, Jesus was not focused on personal happiness in this life. |
| 0:12.8 | His ethics ran counter to the quest for a happy and comfortable not life, nor did he urge ethical behavior to promote the welfare for society for the long haul. |
| 0:20.5 | He didn't think there was going to be a long haul. |
| 0:22.5 | Like other apocalypticists, Jesus expected the end of the age to come very soon. |
| 0:27.5 | People needed to repent in preparation for the eminent day of judgment. |
| 0:30.8 | That runs counter to how Christians today mostly think about who Jesus was and what his message was. |
| 0:35.9 | And then abortion, there's next to nothing about abortion in the Bible either. No, there's nothing about abortion in the Bible. This is the |
| 0:41.1 | interesting thing. The people who are so pro, you know, so anti-immigration are also anti-abortion. |
| 0:47.7 | If they think the Bible supports their view, there are only two passages in the entire Bible |
| 0:51.4 | that refer to an abortion. Both of them indicate that the fetus |
| 0:55.7 | is not to be given human rights. There were two million copies of this book in circulation, |
| 1:00.1 | arguing that Raptor is coming in September 1988. And he had a particular week, and why? |
| 1:06.1 | Because Yom Kippur. Somebody pointed out to him and said, the Bible says no one knows the day or the |
| 1:09.9 | hour when the end will come. |
| 1:11.2 | So why are you predicting when it's going to come? |
| 1:13.2 | And he said, well, no, it's absolutely right. |
| 1:15.4 | No one knows the day or the hour. |
| 1:17.0 | I just know the week. |
| 1:21.0 | Hey, everybody. |
| 1:25.6 | It's Michael Shermer's time for another episode of the Michael Shermer show. |
| 1:28.3 | This one is brought to you by Big Nerve, the platform for the skeptic society where we are hosting |
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