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, everyone, and welcome back to misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. Today we're talking about

writing books. Bart is a six-time New York Times best-selling author, but really how many other

academics can you name who have had such success in

writing popular books? Why are so few professional researchers trying to write from non-academic

audiences? Is it really that difficult, or is there something else going on before we get to that?

But how are you doing today? Yeah, I'm doing well. Yeah, so this week is, it's my birthday week. My birthday's in two

days. Well, happy birthday. Well, yeah, kind of. I mean, I'm going to be 68. How did this happen?

But the thing is, you know, I've got a brother who's also an academic, who's a classics scholar.

We and I work in very similar fields. He's a

Greek and Latin scholar, teaches at Kent State. He was born three years before me to the day.

We had the same birthday. Everybody, especially my wife Sarah, says, man, it must have been bad for you.

You came along, man, that's just not good for you. I said, look, it's not my fault. And in fact, his name is Rad.

Rad Erman.

He's a fine classist, philologist. He's such a nice guy. He doesn't have a mean bone in his body. He's never taking it out on me. So, but anyway, yeah, so it's our birthday in two days. Well, it's very kind of him to be so gracious about it, because I can imagine many young children would not be quite so kind.

No, I know, I know, I know.

But yeah, so I know, these birthdays, you know, people always used to say that the older

you get, the faster time goes by.

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