Welcome to Miss Quoting 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.

Today on misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman, I'm going to be talking to Bart about exactly how

the New Testament got the form we see it in today, what's called the canon, who decided it,

when was it set, and what exactly was left out. During the conversation, I suspect, will also touch on the non-canonical Christian writings. We won't dwell on them this week, but I promise there will be episodes devoted to them in the future. So do not worry about that. We'll get back to it. But before we start, Bart, how are you doing? How's your week going? My week's going great. We have a mountain house in the western part of North Carolina. It is cold and sunny and brilliant. And right now it's just me and my dog. And so we're having a great old time. That sounds delightful. It's lovely. Yeah, yeah. I did want to ask you something about your personal life just now per se, but you said you do

this as seriology stuff. And could you just say like Assyria? Give me some help here.

Yeah, yeah. So it's like the cultures and language of ancient Mesopotamia, which is Iraq and

modern Syria. What was like Babylonia, if you're familiar with the Old Testament, the Neo-Esyrians

are involved in the whole Mesopotamian culture spectrum. Okay. So, Assyria is kind of a broad

term for anything having to do, including Babylon and... Yeah. It's exactly how the field got his

name is a little bit convoluted, but when the languages and

when Kenea form, which is the writing system, it's these little tiny wedges, when that was first

kind of rediscovered by Western scholarship, the language was thought to be Assyrian. And there is a

dialect called Assyrian, but the languages are Acadian and Sumerian. So that's where the Assyrian connection comes from. It confuses people because you say Assyria and they think maybe you're mispronouncing Syrian. Yes. Yeah, like, no, we're kind of, but no, not really. Yeah, right, right, okay, no, I didn't know that about the whole. Okay, great. I'm glad you're hosting this because I'm learning things already. Well, I'm always happy to help.

Okay. Okay, great. I'm glad you're hosting this because I'm learning things already.

Well, I'm always happy to help.

Okay.

So we should talk before we get into the weeds, really.

Why is the New Testament canon an important topic of conversation?

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