# Are the Gospels Mostly Fabricated? ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated.webp]] **Creator:** Bart D. Ehrman (channel) · **Published:** 2026-10-18 · **Length:** 1:02:14 · [Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g) > Caption source: YouTube **auto-generated English** captions, fetched with **youtube-transcript-api** after **yt-dlp** subtitle downloads returned HTTP 429 or bot checks on the default, android, ios, mweb and tv clients, with ~25–30 s waits between tries. The track covers the whole video (0:00–1:02:11). No TubeAlfred credits were used. Auto-captions garble some names; they're corrected here where the right name is clear (e.g. "Vrede" → William **Wrede**, "Leslie Kirk" → Leslie **Kurke**, "Boltmannian" → **Bultmannian**, "News of the World" → *Weekly World News*, "James Parker" → James **Barker**). YouTube chapters are used as section headings. Screenshots come from the 720p video stream. > **Who's on screen:** Bart Ehrman does **not** appear. The conversation is hosted by **C.J. Cornthwaite** with guest **Robyn Faith Walsh** (University of Miami). The video is framed as their second episode on whether the Gospels are complete fabrications. > **Promotion:** It plugs **Dr. James Barker**'s live online course *The Gospels Contradict Themselves. Now What?* (Oct 19–22, lectures plus live Q&A, lifetime access to recordings) at bartehrman.com/contradicting. ## Outline ### 0:00 Teaser - [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=0s) Cold-open clips: Cornthwaite proposes running the Gospel question "in the other direction" (from literature, not memory). Walsh: "No one knows who Odysseus is, either… only the dog knows who he is", and "the hero decides when he's going to be revealed." Then: "Did the Gospel authors have to be Christian?" ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t0003.webp]] *Teaser — C.J. Cornthwaite (left) and Robyn Faith Walsh (right)* - [0:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=28s) "Coming up…" card and intro: Cornthwaite introduces Walsh. The big idea is *what if the Gospels are complete fabrications?* ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t0033.webp]] *Introductions* ### 0:45 What if the Gospels are complete fabrications? - [1:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=60s) Sponsor segment: **James Barker**'s live course *The Gospels Contradict Themselves. Now What?* (Oct 19–22, online, with Q&A). Cornthwaite calls Barker the go-to person on the Synoptic Problem. ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t0065.webp]] *Course card — "The Gospels Contradict Themselves. Now What? with James Barker" (Paths)* - [1:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=95s) Walsh: "it kind of depends on what you mean." What is the alternative to "fabrication"? True, reliable testimony about the historical Jesus? ### 2:23 Running the question backwards - [2:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=120s) Cornthwaite's framing: Gospel talk usually starts from memory, early sources and oral tradition and then admits additions. Instead, start from the Gospels as **literary products of literate people** and work back. ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t0150.webp]] *Cornthwaite frames the "backwards" approach* - [3:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=180s) Walsh glances at her shelf (Ovid's *Metamorphoses*, Euripides, Caesar's *Bellum Gallicum* book 7, Plato, Xenophon). Put the Gospels on that shelf and the similarities are obvious. It's hard to process because of what we **ask the texts to do**: verify our curiosity about Jesus and earliest Christianity. - [4:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=240s) She is teaching courses at UM on Paul and on the historical Jesus. ### 4:34 Jefferson cuts up his Bibles - [4:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=270s) The **Jefferson Bible**: Jefferson ordered Latin, Greek, French and English Bibles and built a side-by-side comparison, much like a modern Gospel parallel. He cut out exorcisms and miracles as Greco-Roman "superstition" that had polluted Jesus the moralist and philosopher. ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t0275.webp]] *Walsh on Jefferson cutting up his Bibles* - [5:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=330s) Jefferson's quip that the virgin birth would one day be classed with the fable of **Minerva** springing from Jupiter's head. He treated it fully as myth and wanted only the moral teachings. ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t0330.webp]] *"He's equating it fully with myth"* - [6:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=390s) What Jefferson noticed is real: much in the Gospels looks like the **Greek novel** and **Homer**. The empty tomb, which contradicts Paul's account, is itself a literary motif (missing body → deification/**apotheosis**). - [7:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=420s) Even stripped down, the text is plainly religious. But 2,000 years of interpretation shape our presuppositions, and the Gospels are rarely compared properly with first- and second-century literature. Compared that way, they are "as much of a fabrication as anything else we're reading from that era." Comparanda: **Philostratus**, **paradoxographers** (wonder-writers), **Thucydides** and **Herodotus** on marvels at the edges of empire. ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t0470.webp]] *Gospels alongside Philostratus, Herodotus and Thucydides* - [8:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=510s) Even lexicons reinforce the silo: **Liddell & Scott** (the "big/middle/little" Liddell) lists classical usages and then "in the New Testament, it's this." - [9:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=570s) Gospel studies' own methods: criteria of authenticity, the **criterion of embarrassment** (nobody would invent Jesus' baptism by John or women finding the tomb). "We don't talk about any other literature this way." ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t0600.webp]] *The criterion of embarrassment* ### 10:15 By that standard, Thomas should be in the Bible - [10:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=615s) Walsh: if the criterion worked, the **Gospel of Thomas** and other non-canonical material would have made it in. ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t0620.webp]] *"By that criterion… Thomas should have made it in"* - [11:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=660s) Two questions: if the Gospels are literary inventions, what (if anything) tells us about the historical Jesus or the early church? And which scholarly methods look bizarre next to the rest of ancient studies? - [11:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=690s) Cornthwaite's example: researching the **Transfiguration**, he found clouds descending and transformations all over **Ovid**. Most Gospel stories retell either the **Septuagint** or Greco-Roman literature, with little in between. - [11:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=715s) Walsh: guest lecturer **Jennifer Eyl** noted that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas story of child Jesus animating **clay birds** on the Sabbath made it into the **Quran**. Scholars also note parallels between the **Lord's Prayer** and the **Golden Verses of Pythagoras**. - [12:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=770s) A caution against **parallelomania**, but motifs recur: clouds at bodily change, vanishing bodies at apotheosis, women at the tomb (women handled the dead), stories like the *Satyricon*'s. - [13:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=810s) Educated people got **the same homework**. School exercises included translating poetry and writing a new monologue for a play's character (e.g. what Jason might say to **Medea** afterwards), plus training in Old/New Comedy character types and motifs. ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t0935.webp]] *Walsh on ancient school exercises and formulas* - [14:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=880s) Paul followed letter-writing formulas, like a modern recommendation letter. People overlook that the Gospels also follow professionally trained formulas. - [15:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=915s) Cornthwaite brings up the **Messianic Secret** in Mark, the theme that nobody recognizes Jesus, first developed by **William Wrede**. - [16:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=960s) Walsh has published on this (building on **Dennis R. MacDonald**'s Homer-and-Mark work, but tying it specifically to Wrede). Wrede says "everyone psychologizes Jesus" and then psychologizes him himself, with Jesus concealing his messiahship for strategic reasons. Her **Ngram** study finds the "Messianic Secret" label stuck mainly in English-language scholarship. She suspects Freud's influence. ### 17:45 Nobody knows who Odysseus is either - [17:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=1050s) With the new *Odyssey* movie, people are noticing. The **Odyssey** (roughly books 9–11) is among the best-attested school texts. For stretches of four chapters nobody knows who "the stranger" is ("did he come from heaven?"). He reveals himself when he chooses, and at home only the dog knows him. ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t1065.webp]] *"No one knows who Odysseus is either"* - [18:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=1080s) The disciples and the crowd around Jesus in Mark work as **avatars for the reader**: who is this guy, and how should I react to the wonders? Being amazed is the plot. ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t1100.webp]] *Disciples as reader avatars* - [19:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=1140s) Everyone in antiquity read Homer, the way high-schoolers read Shakespeare. Walsh wants to "redeem" Mark as a craftsman of plot and structure who has "clearly gone to school," even if his style doesn't match his ambition. ### 20:02 "It was always just Homer" - [19:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=1170s) The Messianic Secret as a theological or christological perspective? "It really… it's just Homer. It was always just Homer." ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t1210.webp]] *"It was always just Homer"* - [20:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=1220s) Why the machinations to make this literature unique? If it's like other literature, "now we have to deal with that." - [20:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=1230s) Compassion for the field: a PhD already demands Judaism, early Christianity, Greek and Roman religion, archaeology and "75 languages." Adding all Greek and Latin literature from about 2 BCE to 3 CE, papyrology and school exercises is close to impossible, but it opens new conversations. - [21:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=1290s) Cornthwaite: the Gospel writers clearly know both the **Septuagint** and Greco-Roman literature. Seminary-trained scholars see the first and classicists see the second. The Gospels blend the two. - [22:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=1330s) Walsh mentions the **Corinthian women prophets**. Classicists look at NT studies ("oral tradition," "Septuagintal," Koine) and retreat to Plato and Attic Greek. Both fields put up barriers and talk past each other. ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t1440.webp]] *Disciplinary barriers between classics and NT studies* - [23:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=1430s) Favorite weird methodology? **Oral tradition**. Cornthwaite cites **Richard Bauckham**, *Jesus and the Eyewitnesses* (and the edited volume *The Gospels for All Christians*). Bauckham argues eyewitnesses *could* lie behind the Gospels. **Papias** preferring the "living voice" is one such hint. Cornthwaite: the field is driven by modern needs. "How the heck would we ever know?" - [26:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=1560s) Walsh is more sympathetic to Bauckham than people expect, but the question is centuries old. Homer does reflect oral tradition, and **Leslie Kurke** (MacArthur fellow) wrote on oral traditions behind **Aesop** (*Aesopic Conversations*). ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t1660.webp]] *Walsh on what "oral tradition" is made to do* - [27:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=1620s) The usual NT model: sayings and sermons delivered orally, a source like **Q** used by Matthew and Luke besides Mark, and communities preserving memory generation to generation. "There were like 15 steps to get there." - [28:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=1710s) Problems: Jesus didn't speak Greek but the Gospels are Greek (an Aramaic original? or simply the Septuagint?). One hearing isn't enough to memorize prose. Homer was verse, which is easier to remember. Human cognition hasn't changed much. "You have to ignore cognitive science… context, history, literary development, and the actual content of the Gospels." ### 30:38 Why this all starts in nineteenth-century Germany - [30:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=1830s) Cornthwaite summarizes Walsh's book. Biblical scholarship came out of Germany, where the Romantic search for a folk tradition got mapped onto the Gospels, with communities each holding their own oral tradition. ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t1840.webp]] *Cornthwaite's "CliffsNotes" of Walsh's book* - [31:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=1890s) Walsh: after the American and French revolutions, and with German unification of statelets, disciplines were just forming. The modern academy follows the German model. Germany wanted a national identity but lacked the surviving literature of Greece and Rome. It had **Tacitus's *Germania*** ("not flattering"), and **Wagner** came later. - [32:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=1950s) So the **Brothers Grimm** collect folk tales: "this is who we are as a people, as a folk." Christianity gets treated similarly, as a people or nation with a self-evident religion. ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t1960.webp]] *The Brothers Grimm and the search for a folk* - [33:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=1980s) In antiquity religion was tied to geography and ethnicity: being Judean meant Judea, the temple and descent from Israel, with **God-fearers** and converts at the edges. Christianity could be practiced anywhere, which was too amorphous, so scholars built an oral history back to its leader. - [34:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=2040s) That goes back to Jefferson: recover the moral core and folk wisdom passed on by illiterate witnesses. "That's all very… romantic… a fantasy." It reflects the 18th and 19th centuries, "not… our ancient evidence." ### 35:26 Who could actually write a Gospel? - [35:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=2100s) "It's not Peter the fisherman from the Galilee." Very few people could write like this. It took serious education. ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t2130.webp]] *Who could actually write a Gospel?* - [35:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=2140s) Some were trained as scribes, and some enslaved people were educated to take dictation (as **Candida Moss** has shown). Example: **Tiro**, Cicero's secretary. ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t2190.webp]] *Educated scribes and enslaved secretaries* - [36:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=2160s) The Gospel writers' social background is unknown, but they are well educated. They write Koine, not Attic, at a time of wider literacy and a boom in **Greek novels** (some in Latin), romance-novel or soap-opera fare, "some… really smutty." - [37:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=2230s) The supermarket tabloid analogy: *Weekly World News* (Bat Boy, Sasquatch). People enjoyed it even knowing it wasn't real. The Gospels are sometimes funny and educational about Jewish scripture. They describe a post-war Jerusalem that no longer exists, which is nostalgic. "I can see why they hit." ### 39:16 A Roman novel with three crosses and an empty tomb - [38:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=2335s) Cornthwaite asks about **Petronius's *Satyricon***. Walsh's favorites are the **Widow of Ephesus** and **Trimalchio**. ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t2360.webp]] *The Satyricon — the Widow of Ephesus* - [39:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=2340s) **Widow of Ephesus:** a widow mourns in her husband's tomb. Outside, **three men are crucified** and a **Roman soldier** guards them. He comforts her, and they're together in the tomb for **three days and nights**. Meanwhile one crucified man's family **takes the body down**. Facing death for abandoning his post, the soldier puts the husband's corpse on the cross instead. ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t2400.webp]] *Three crosses, a soldier, a tomb, three days, a missing body* - [40:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=2430s) Nobody in Gospel studies says the *Satyricon* influenced the Gospels, or vice versa. Classicists trace the tale to a **Milesian tale** centuries older than both. There may be a historical core (soldiers' punishment), but these are motifs people knew worked. - [41:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=2490s) The formula argument: Marvel movies and *Die Hard* 1–3 ("bad guy wants to bad thing"). If a formula works, why reinvent the wheel? Successful stories get repeated, and the Gospel writers weren't immune. ### 42:36 Trimalchio hears a cock crow three times - [42:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=2545s) **Trimalchio**, a parody of a freedman nouveau riche, gets everything a little wrong at his dinner party. He hears a **cock crow**, takes it as an omen of death and reads out his will. Walsh also recalls a demand that heirs **divide and eat his body**. In Petronius that cannibal-inheritance clause belongs to **Eumolpus's** will at Croton (Sat. 141), not Trimalchio's dinner. ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t2560.webp]] *Trimalchio's cock crow* - [43:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=2610s) This doesn't detract from the Gospels. The writers worked within expected parameters, hitting notes readers wanted. Maybe they wrote "because people like to read stories… and they just wanted the Jesus version." ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t2600.webp]] *"They just wanted the Jesus version"* - [44:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=2665s) Cornthwaite: **Vespasian** in Alexandria healing a blind man with spittle (and a lame hand or leg). Asking which came first matters less than recognizing "these are the stories in the world." - [45:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=2700s) Walsh: critics claim she says the *Satyricon* influenced the Gospels. She doesn't, because nobody can say which came first. The motifs are "out in the ether," so we must allow creative license. The better question is what the motifs reveal about the authors' education and region. We don't know where any of them were from. ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t2830.webp]] *Walsh on regional hints in the Gospels* - [46:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=2790s) Cornthwaite: **John Kloppenborg**'s case that **Acts** is accurate about Asia Minor, Thessaloniki and the Aegean (sailing detail) but fuzzy on Judea and Galilee. - [47:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=2820s) Walsh: at a conference in **Aarhus**, Denmark, an Italian scholar argued that **Mark knows Rome**. The soldier types named are like a European referencing *Walker, Texas Ranger*, and a map of the coins Mark mentions clusters around Rome. That may explain the church tradition that **Peter went to Rome with Mark as his scribe**, a story reverse-engineered to get oral tradition into Rome. - [49:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=2970s) Wacky question: did the same scribes produce many kinds of literature, copying Septuagint Jeremiah one week and something else the next? ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t3025.webp]] *The adulterous woman and the "splicey" Gospel of John* - [51:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=3060s) The **pericope of the adulterous woman** (John 7:53–8:11) is missing from early manuscripts and floats into **Luke** in a few, and to the end of John in others. **Bultmann**'s displacement theory holds that John's chapters seem out of order (chapters 6 and 7 could swap). Walsh imagines a scribe meeting a **penitent harlot** story in a Greek novel and fitting it in as a Jesus story. - [52:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=3160s) Walsh gave up on Aramaic and Syriac ("my Coptic was messing up my Greek"). In a **Festschrift for Willi Braun**, though, she showed that characters in **Syriac dialogue hymns** are New Comedy stock types (the penitent harlot talking to the devil). ### 54:13 Did the Gospel writers have to be Christian? - [53:53](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=3233s) Cornthwaite asked **Helen Bond** the same question. Walsh: **no**, they didn't have to be (like students writing papers they aren't devoted to). She thinks it likely they belonged to an *ekklēsia*, but it's equally conceivable that the writer was someone interested in Judean matters after the war, or in interpreting Jewish holy books. ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t3255.webp]] *"Did the Gospel authors have to be Christian?"* - [55:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=3300s) After the temple's destruction, the Gospels offer a way forward through teacher figures like **Jesus** and **John the Baptist**, for Christ-followers and for others interested in Jewish scripture. - [55:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=3355s) Cornthwaite: Luke's Jesus looks like a philosopher, and Acts looks like a philosophical school. Paul gives philosophical speeches and argues with John's followers. Dating the Gospels is saved for a future episode. ### 56:57 The pushback: John the Baptist - [56:57](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=3417s) The pushback round. Is anything historically rooted, like Q or John the Baptist? ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t3420.webp]] *The pushback — John the Baptist* - [57:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=3420s) Walsh: what's interesting about John is that "he's there at all… you don't actually need him." She thinks the Jesus passage in **Josephus** (Testimonium Flavianum) was interpolated but the John the Baptist passage is probably genuine. ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t3480.webp]] *Walsh on Josephus and the John passage* - [57:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=3475s) John turns up more than expected: Josephus, all the Gospels, Mark's "John the Baptist raised from the dead" speculation, and today's **Mandaeans**. Paul runs into his followers. The Gospels had to address and dispel him. Q also contains John sayings, which raises the question of whose sayings they really are. Cornthwaite cites **Clare K. Rothschild**'s book arguing that much of Q is John's (*Baptist Traditions and Q*, 2005). Luke even gives John a fetus scene, a birth narrative and a death scene. - [59:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=3570s) Cornthwaite: **James McGrath**'s point that the **Protoevangelium of James** ends by switching to Herod searching for John. That could have been a John birth story that became Matthew's Jesus birth story. ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t3610.webp]] *John the Baptist as Walsh's "first love in the field"* - [1:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=3600s) Walsh: John was her "first love in the field." She once wrote a paper on what eating unrefined (wild) honey would do to you ("he was tripping"). Other figures: **Theudas**, **Honi** and others in Josephus (scholarship by Bill Green and a Holy Cross scholar). "Jesus was not the only game in town." We're desensitized to John "at our peril." - [1:01:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynCGawdY0g&t=3690s) Wrap-up: comments invited ("too far or not far enough?"). A final plug for Barker's course, where students will write on wax tablets. ![[images/Are-the-Gospels-Mostly-Fabricated-t3700.webp]] *Closing* ## Things mentioned ### People - **Thomas Jefferson** — the "Jefferson Bible" (*The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth*), cut from multilingual Bibles - **William Wrede** — *Das Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien* (1901), the "Messianic Secret" - **Dennis R. MacDonald** — Homeric mimesis in Mark (*The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark*, 2000) - **Richard Bauckham** — *Jesus and the Eyewitnesses*; ed. *The Gospels for All Christians* - **Papias** — early 2nd-century bishop, preferred the "living and abiding voice" - **Leslie Kurke** — classicist, *Aesopic Conversations* (2011) - **The Brothers Grimm** — German folk-tale collectors - **Candida Moss** — work on enslaved scribes and secretaries in early Christian literature - **Tiro** — Cicero's enslaved (later freed) secretary - **John Kloppenborg** — on Acts' local knowledge of the Aegean - **Helen Bond** — Edinburgh; previously asked the same "did they have to be Christian?" question - **Jennifer Eyl** — guest lecturer in Walsh's Paul seminar - **Willi Braun** — honoree of a Festschrift Walsh contributed to - **Rudolf Bultmann** — displacement theory in John - **Clare K. Rothschild** — *Baptist Traditions and Q* (2005) - **James F. McGrath** — work on John the Baptist - **James Barker** — course *The Gospels Contradict Themselves. Now What?* - **Vespasian**, **Theudas**, **Honi the Circle-Drawer**, **John the Baptist**, **Paul**, **Peter**, **Mary Magdalene** ### Ancient texts and authors - Gospels of **Mark**, **Matthew**, **Luke**, **John**; **Acts**; Paul's letters - **Gospel of Thomas**; **Infancy Gospel of Thomas** (clay birds); **Protoevangelium of James** - **Q** (hypothetical sayings source); the **Septuagint**; **Quran** (clay-birds episode) - **Homer**, *Odyssey* (books ~9–11 as school texts); **Ovid**, *Metamorphoses*; **Euripides** (*Medea*); **Caesar**, *Bellum Gallicum* 7 - **Plato**, **Xenophon**, **Herodotus**, **Thucydides**, **Philostratus**, the paradoxographers - **Petronius**, *Satyricon*: the Widow of Ephesus, Trimalchio's dinner (*Cena Trimalchionis*), Eumolpus's will - **Tacitus**, *Germania*; **Josephus** (Testimonium Flavianum; the John the Baptist passage) - **Golden Verses of Pythagoras**; Milesian tales; the Greek novels; Syriac dialogue hymns ### Concepts and methods - Criterion of embarrassment / criteria of authenticity - Messianic Secret; parallelomania; apotheosis and the missing-body motif - Oral tradition, community memory, eyewitness testimony; Q hypothesis - German Romanticism, *Volk* and national identity; Koine vs Attic Greek - Ancient school exercises (character speeches, letter formulas); papyrology; epigraphy - Pericope of the adulterous woman (John 7:53–8:11); displacement theory in John - God-fearers; *ekklēsia*; Mandaeans; post-70 CE (post-temple) context - Google Ngram study of "Messianic Secret" ### Pop culture and other references - The new *Odyssey* film (2026); Shakespeare's sonnets; Marvel movies; *Die Hard* 1–3 - *Weekly World News* (Bat Boy); romance-novel covers; Netflix - *Walker, Texas Ranger* (the Mark-knows-Rome analogy); Wagner ### Books and courses - Robyn Faith Walsh, *The Origins of Early Christian Literature: Contextualizing the New Testament within Greco-Roman Literary Culture* (Cambridge University Press, 2021) - James Barker, live course *The Gospels Contradict Themselves. Now What?* (bartehrman.com/contradicting) ## Biographies ### C.J. Cornthwaite (host) Interviewer and YouTuber who hosts *Footnote Famous*, a podcast of "conversations with the world's top scholars of the Bible and Christian origins." Season 1 began in August 2025 with Helen Bond (Mark) and Robyn Faith Walsh (*The Origins of Early Christian Literature*). He mentions early training in a seminary setting (Hebrew Bible, Septuagint) and an earlier video of his on the Transfiguration. Here he hosts on the Bart D. Ehrman channel. ### Robyn Faith Walsh (guest) Associate Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity and Gabelli Senior Scholar at the University of Miami. She holds a PhD from Brown University in Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean (early Christianity, ancient Judaism, Roman archaeology). She has edited the Database of Religious History and published in *Classical Quarterly* and *Jewish Studies Quarterly*. Her book *The Origins of Early Christian Literature* (Cambridge, 2021) argues that the Synoptic Gospels were written by elite cultural producers in Greco-Roman literary networks, possibly including non-Christians, rather than by spokespeople for communities preserving oral traditions. She calls that framework a legacy of 19th-century German Romanticism. ### Bart D. Ehrman (channel) New Testament scholar and James A. Gray Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He wrote bestsellers including *Misquoting Jesus* and *How Jesus Became God*. His YouTube channel carries the *Misquoting Jesus* podcast (with Megan Lewis) and guest conversations like this one. He does not appear in this episode. ### James Barker (course instructor) New Testament scholar who works on the Synoptic Problem and how the Gospels use one another. Cornthwaite calls him the go-to person on Gospel interrelationships. He leads the promoted course *The Gospels Contradict Themselves. Now What?* ### William Wrede (1859–1906) German Lutheran theologian of the history-of-religions school. His *Das Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien* (1901) argued that Mark's secrecy motif was a theological construction rather than a historical memory. ### Petronius (d. 66 CE) Roman courtier under Nero, traditionally identified as the author of the *Satyricon*. Its surviving parts include Trimalchio's dinner and the Widow of Ephesus tale.