Picture this. You do everything you can to live a good and virtuous life. You do as God commands

and have a beautiful home, prosperous business and loving family. Then you lose everything. No home,

no business, no family. But you know that you've done nothing to deserve this punishment.

What an earth has happened? Today, we're talking about the book of Job

and why no one understands it. 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.

The Book of Job is possibly one of the most debated texts in the Old Testament,

and it can be a deeply unsettling read.

If a person can live a pious life and still lose everything they hold dear, then what hope is there for the rest of us who are less than perfect?

What is the Book of Job trying to teach us about suffering, and why does Bart think that no one understands it correctly?

We'll be getting into all of this and a lot more. But first, Bart, good morning. How are you doing? Good morning, yep. Doing well, thanks. You doing okay? Yeah, no, very well, thank you. And given we're talking about a Hebrew Bible book, I wanted to ask, you're a New Testament scholar, obviously, that's why we're here. Have you ever taught Hebrew Bible? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.. You know, when I was in graduate school, you know, not really have a major, but you have a primary field. My primary field, of course, was New Testament study and early Christianity. But my secondary field was Hebrew Bible. You know, I took Hebrew. Actually, my first year, my master's program, I took Hebrew, and so I took Hebrew classes, and I actually had PhD exams

on the Hebrew Bible. When I went to start teaching at Rutgers University, I taught Hebrew Bible there.

I've taught it for several years here at UNC as well. So it's not my primary field of expertise at all.

I mean, my Hebrew Bible classes tended to be better than my New Testament classes

because I didn't know enough to complicate things. If I gave a lecture on the book of Isaiah,

basically, I had 50 minutes. Yeah, that's the main stuff that I know. I actually said,

I'm kidding about that. But it's, you know, it's not the kind of major expertise. But I mean, you know, you're married to a Hebrew Bible scholar. You actually, you know, you're working in a Cognite field. Have you ever taught Hebrew Bible? I haven't actually. And Josh, bless him, he will, if he hears someone tell him or someone say or describe him as a Hebrew Bible

scholar, so I was like, no, no, no, I'm in a serialist. So he has, his PhD is a seriology. We both

minored in Hebrew Bible in a similar way to you. So we've both taken comprehensive exams in Hebrew.

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