The King James Bible is arguably the most influential book in the English language, and Bart thinks it's a literary masterpiece. He also thinks it's one of the worst Bibles you can study from.

In this episode of Misquoting Jesus, Bart and host Megan Lewis trace where the KJV came from, starting with William Tyndale, whose translation it largely reuses and who was burned at the stake for making it. They look at why its unicorns and cockatrices trip up modern readers, and why the words you think you understand, like "conversation," "strange," and "admiration," are more misleading than the ones you don't. They cover the theological choices its translators made, the late Greek manuscripts behind its New Testament, and a 1631 printing that told readers "thou shalt commit adultery." Bart also shares which modern translations he recommends instead.

In the listener Q&A: where the doctrine of original sin came from, whether early Christians evangelized door to door, and what Jesus meant about eunuchs in Matthew 19:12.

Around 170 CE, a Syrian Christian named Tatian noticed what a lot of readers have noticed since: the four Gospels don't always agree. So he fixed it. Tatian wove all four into a single, seamless account of Jesus' life. And for roughly two hundred years, in the Syriac-speaking churches of the East, that harmony was the Gospel.
Then the church came for it. Bishops collected copies and destroyed them. Tatian was condemned as a heretic. Today not a single copy survives in its original language — we know the text only through a commentary, some translations, and a sixth-century Latin Bible that still carries its shape.
Bart unpacks what Tatian actually did to the Gospels, why the church found it so threatening, and what it means that an entire branch of Christianity once read a Bible we can no longer read.

Most Christians are used to reading four Gospels. But why are there four? Why not one? Or twelve? The early Church thinker Irenaeus fought hard to keep Christians reading all four gospels, but it wasn't a foregone conclusion.

In this episode, Bart unpacks how a four gospel new testament came to be, and what could have been the alternative.

In a recent response to Wes Huff, Bart said the only eyewitness we know of who's converting people is Paul. A lot of people pointed out that Paul never met Jesus.
Fair. But Paul is also the only person in the New Testament who tells us, in his own words, that he saw Jesus alive after his death. Everyone else reaches us secondhand.
Bart unpacks what Paul actually claims to have seen, why Paul is the only person who claims to see a resurrected Jesus, and why the earliest firsthand evidence for the resurrection suggests visions.

For many religious people who deconvert, losing their faith leaves a giant hole in their lives. They can lose their community, their purpose in life, and their understanding of how the world works. What does life look like on the other side of deconversion, once the dust has settled? Today we're talking about how Bart lives without God. We also have our bonus segment at the end, which this week is listener's questions, where I'll be asking Bart - among other things - whether he uses early Christian art as a source for his research.

In the Old Testament, Satan is a minor figure at best, and one fully under the control of YHWH. He appears briefly in the New Testament, notably in the temptation of Jesus. How did Christianity take those minor references and end up with the lord of all evil?

Those familiar with Dr. Bart Ehrman's career trajectory will know that he attended Moody Bible Institute, where he received his early training in textual criticism - but what is a "bible institute", exactly, and why do people attend them?

Did you know that Jesus wasn't the only apocalyptic prophet traveling around Galilee during the 1st century CE? If the answer is "yes Megan, of course!", then you probably know something about John the Baptist. But what do we really know about him, and what impact did his teachings have on the historical Jesus?