Was Peter a Rock or Shifting Sand? Jesus' Closest Disciple in History and Legend.
Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
Chris Huntley
4.8 • 745 Ratings
🗓️ 26 March 2024
⏱️ 44 minutes
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Summary
Jesus' closest disciple was Simon, whom henicknamed "Peter" -- that is "The Rock." But in the Gospels and the writings of Paul, Peter is fickle, clumsy, and unreliable, less like a rock than shifting sand.
After the New Testament we have numerous writings both about and allegedly by him. In looking over all these records, what can we say about the one on whom Jesus allegedly "built his church"? Is it possible to separate out the history from the legend? The fact from the fiction? And why didn't the Gospel writers do a bit more to improve his reputation?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | As one of Jesus' disciples, Simon Peter is a prominent figure in the New Testament. His prominence |
| 0:05.7 | has always seemed to be a bit of a contradiction to me. He's rash and impetuous and famously denied |
| 0:11.6 | knowing Jesus, but at the same time performs miracles and goes on to be a very dedicated missionary. |
| 0:17.4 | So how do we cut through the legendary accounts of him to understand who Peter really was? And given |
| 0:23.3 | his importance, why would early Christian writers continue to portray him in a less than stellar |
| 0:28.7 | light? Join us this week on misquoting Jesus to find out. Welcome to Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. |
| 0:39.2 | The only show, where a six-time New York Times bestselling author and world-renowned Bible scholar, |
| 0:45.2 | uncovers the many fascinating, little-known facts about the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the rise of Christianity. |
| 0:52.9 | I'm your host, Megan Lewis. Let's begin. Welcome back to |
| 0:58.2 | misquoting Jesus. This week we are talking about the Apostle Peter. And for a man nicknamed Rocky |
| 1:03.7 | by Jesus, he seems to have been less than reliable. But should we understand his flawed character |
| 1:09.1 | as a reflection of an historical man or is it a literary |
| 1:12.4 | invention before we get to that but good morning how are you yep doing fine thanks yep uh life's good |
| 1:19.0 | personally not in terms of the world but personally it's going fine how about you how you doing |
| 1:24.3 | same actually very well the world burning, but everything else in my |
| 1:28.5 | personal life is going quite nicely. I wanted to ask, because we've spoken several times about |
| 1:34.1 | teaching and how much you enjoy it and how much fun undergraduate students are, and it's been |
| 1:39.8 | kind of rolling around in my head. What do you dislike about academia? Oh, yeah. No, |
| 1:44.7 | I'll leave aside the kind of the structural issues, because the way the university system's |
| 1:49.2 | going now, I think is really quite problematic. So I'll just talk on kind of the personal level, |
| 1:53.9 | something I really don't like, which is what every professor I know doesn't like, which is grading. |
| 2:00.1 | So it is an unpleasant job. |
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