writings attributed to the Apostle Paul make up a large sway of the New Testament and have been

of fundamental importance in the development of Christian theology. However, there are some serious

questions over whether Paul actually wrote everything attributed to him. I've got New Testament

scholar Bart Ehrman with me. Hello. Hey, Megan. Glad to be with you for this one. It's going to be fun.

And Bartley's going to uncover what scholars believe to be the actual authentic letters of Paul.

Stay tuned for all of that and so much more.

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, Bart. We're talking about Paul today. I know we've done a few episodes on

Paul and we've kind of worked around this topic, but we've not really addressed it head-on.

I wanted to open by asking, this is obviously a really important topic given how influential

Paul's letters have been. How have the disputed authorship's of Paul's writings come up in your own life?

I'm amazed we haven't dealt with this one head on because this is one of the fundamental things.

I mean, when I was growing up, I just assumed that all the letters that say they were written by Paul were written by Paul.

And even when I started my studies at the graduate level, I still thought

that gradually it kind of eroded away. And it's one of the things that made me start thinking

more seriously about some of the critical problems with the New Testament. You know, it's not the

sort of thing that should ever make somebody like leave the faith or anything. It's just like,

I mean, it shouldn't. It sometimes does, I suppose, but it didn't for me. It just, I came to realize, wow, these particular letters, they don't look like they were probably written by Paul. And it took a long time for me to accept that. But once I did, I realized it was absolutely true, and the evidence is overwhelming. and it's just it's reality, and it's better to believe in reality than in non-reality.

Usually, yes, I think so.

Yeah, usually.

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