Welcome to Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman.

The only show, where a six-time New York Times best-selling 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. Today we are talking about how Christians

tell God what he can and cannot do. For a religion that claims to view God as the most powerful

supreme being in the universe, some Christians have an interesting

habit of placing restrictions on what he can and can't do. God can't make a world without suffering.

He can't inspire myth, only historical fact, and he certainly can't be involved in other religions.

But where do these limitations come from? And what purpose do they serve? Before we get into that. However, but good morning. How are

you doing today? Yeah, I'm doing pretty well. We're in the Christmas season. So the problem is,

of course, now the Christmas season starts sometime in mid-October. So we've kind of been in it for a while.

But this is the time of year when I start listening

to, you know, Christmas music and stuff, which I have a soft spot for. So yeah, yeah, things are

okay. And we're winding down our, our semester. That's another, another good thing, but a rather

frightful prospect for many of my students. How are you doing? Good. This time of year is mildly terrifying to me

because it feels like Christmas is looming. And we start listening to Christmas music very early because

my husband just loves Christmas music. So it kind of is playing all the time if he's home. Because we have it on for so long, I tend to tune it out. It's like, oh, I've got, I've got loads of time before Christmas. And I don't have to worry about all this stuff. And then it gets to the end of November. And I realize I have exactly one month left. And there are things that must be done. Yeah. I'm good, though. I really love Christmas.

Okay, good. I do too. I mean, there are a lot of us who are not Christian believers who love Christmas. We love parts of Christmas. I love the story of Christmas in a lot of ways. And in some ways, you know, it's a great season for me. A lot of people don't find it great at all. Yes, which is, I think, very reasonable, especially if there's a religious trauma going on there. But for me and for

the way I was raised, it's very much a, you get to spend time with family and just kind of enjoy

yourself and see friends that you don't see very regularly. So that's, those are the bits I really

treasure. Yeah, well, you are the bits I really treasure.

Yeah. Well, you know, the thing is, the family thing is often what leads to the problems,

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