Did Slaves Give Us the New Testament?
Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
Chris Huntley
4.8 • 745 Ratings
🗓️ 9 April 2024
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week Bart will be interviewing New Testament scholar and public intellectual Candida Moss, on her new book, God's Ghostwriters: Enslaved Christians and the Making of the Bible.
In the book, Dr. Moss (Professor in the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham) maintains that parts of the Bible may have been written by slaves (Mark, possibly); or co-authored by them (enslaved secretaries of Paul?); or copied by them (in our surviving manuscripts).
No one has broached the topic of "How We Got the Bible" from this perspective before, and the episode provides a lively discussion of numerous issues of real significance.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. |
| 0:07.5 | The only show, where a six-time New York Times bestselling author and world-renowned Bible scholar, |
| 0:13.6 | uncovers the many fascinating, little-known facts about the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the rise of Christianity. |
| 0:23.6 | I'm your host, Megan Lewis. Let's begin. I'd like to welcome you to the special edition of the Misquoting Jesus podcast. This week, |
| 0:31.5 | I will not be interviewed by a woman academic with a British accent. I'll be interviewing a woman academic with a British |
| 0:40.0 | accent. And I'm very happy to be doing this interview with Candida Moss. Those of you who |
| 0:46.0 | came to our Bible conference this past year, new insights into the New Testament, heard Canada |
| 0:50.9 | make a very, very interesting presentation for us on the Gospels. |
| 0:55.0 | And now we're going to be talking about her book that is just coming out. |
| 1:00.0 | I've probably come out by the time we play this. |
| 1:02.4 | Canada's book is called God's Ghost Writers, Enslaved Christians Making the Bible. |
| 1:08.8 | Canada, Moss, is the Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology at the |
| 1:13.5 | University of Birmingham in England. She earned her undergraduate degree at Oxford University |
| 1:19.7 | and did her MA and her Ph.D. at Yale, focusing on the New Testament and early Christian studies. |
| 1:27.0 | Canada began her teaching career at the University of Notre Dame |
| 1:30.4 | before taking her current position at Birmingham in 2017. |
| 1:35.3 | She's the prize-winning author of nine books, now 10, I guess. |
| 1:40.0 | Some of them academic books for scholars |
| 1:42.3 | and some popular books, trade books, for general audiences. |
| 1:46.5 | These books deal with different aspects of the New Testament and early Christian history. |
| 1:51.4 | And it is one of the real public intellectuals in our field of early Christian studies. |
| 1:56.7 | She's written for the New York Times, Washington Post, the LA Times, Atlantic Monthly, Politico, |
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