I do enjoy hearing Dr. Moss explain her work. She is a very engaging speaker. Compelling, even. New book sounds like a good read. Bart is a great interviewer, as well.

Fascinating! Thank you, both. When writing my Thesis at Seminary in 1970 (How Can a Gospel Mean?: An Exegetical Method for the New Hermeneutic), I recall running across an example of one scribe commenting in the margins about the version they were copying: 'Fool and knave, cannot you leave the text alone'. Sounds like that's one slave-secretary talking to another slave-secretary. What a significant re-frame that is! Wish I had had you around then, Candida! (You, too, Bart. . .)

What a fascinating interview. Thanks for having Candida on the podcast. Book ordered!

Names for slaves in Rome reminds me of the naming customs for slaves in feudal China. Girls were pressed into indentured servitude as a matter of course and were typically given names reflecting luxury items such as "Jade Bottle" or "Silver Bead" as well as botanical names. Meanwhile the masters had adult names (zi) which expressed ambitions, or made literary references, or sometimes were made to "turn around the luck" of their parents. Eventually you recognize immediately that someone named "jade bangle" is definitely a slave.

Very interesting viewpoint on the new testament. One thing that stood out is when Bart said Biblical scholars are torn about using the word slave over servant because they are afraid of how a modern audience will take it. I prefer a harsh truth over a pleasant lie. It saddens me that some people care more about image than the truth. I understand that religions want to keep people in not push people away, but using the more accurate word slave over servant should be what translator want right? the fact that there is debate over it tells me that truth is not the No. 1 priority of whoever is trying to translate the Bible.

Someone who says "just a secretary" has never had a good secretary. A good legal secretary, for example, is a highly skilled professional.

Dr. Ehrman, I remember you saying in several debates that ancient people (authors) did their own writing, not like using a secretary of sorts. Does this book overturns that?

As a practicing Christian myself (Orthodox). Moss’s unflinching scholarship despite the fact that she is a practicing Roman Catholic, is very admirable. She should be the ideal for religious NT scholars.

That was fascinating and opens up whole new ways of viewing not just the Gospels but other ancient works.

Bart interviews a woman academic. Or as we would say in Europe, an academic.

Balsall Heath, Birmingham, here. Know the UoB campus well. Thanks for an eye-opening discussion. Clearly, god not only inspired the author, but also the slave who took the shorthand, then expanded it out to the finished gospel / letter! 😂

13:21 there is no kind form of slavery. Even if you edit textbooks to refer to slaves in the antebellum south as "workers" so that you don't offend Republicans.

Just ordered Professor Moss's book, in large part because of the reference to critical fabulation Professor Ehrman asked about--it's a concept which a student introduced me to and that I taught in a class this semester. If anyone is interested, the source is Saidiya Hartman's "Venus in Two Acts" about research and writing about the lives of enslaved women in the antebellum South. It's a difficult and powerful read.

PBS, KERA, Think, Boyd, in studio, two local historians, both of color, now deleted, about 10 years ago. Concerning Juneteen: the man said something like, we were told we were employees now. In other words, they were told to get back to work and build your own house (Tulsa). Find this interview if you can. Please Bart.

Great discussion. Bart is a great interviewer. He wants to learn, but has a healthy scepticism at times. Candida was articulate and made some good points. And whilst I don’t think she looks like Megan she sounds like her with her Home Counties accent!😅

Fascinating. I look forward to reading the book, which is in the mail now. Thank you for bringing Dr Moss on for an interview.

I’m starting to think that the term “wage slave” is not metaphorical.

One thing that has struck me lately regarding the New Testament is this: whoever the people were that put this thing together, they were not illiterate farmers, fishermen, peasants. If they were indeed slaves they were highly educated slaves. Who had access to materials that most people did not have, who had the skills and the time to compose these documents. Why do I say this? Because the Bible as we know it today, a single volume divided into books, chapters and verses, is a very recent thing. So is the idea of individually owned Bibles. Prior to the invention of the printing press, most communities only had one Bible which was kept chained in the church, not because the church authorities didn't want people reading it (they probably couldn't read anyway!), but if something should happen to it it would be extremely time-consuming and expensive to replace. When you go back to the beginning of Christianity, again, the scrolls that made up the Tanakh/Old Testament were also something most people did not keep in their homes unless they were very rich. They would most likely be kept in the synagogue and available only to those who really had the leisure and education to study them in depth. This would rule out the majority of Galilean peasants who had neither and were most likely illiterate or semi-literate at best. So the New Testament did not come from that particular circle of Jesus' followers. The writers of the Gospels as well as Paul show a familiarity with the Tanakh/Old Testament that I dare say goes way beyond what even many modern Christians have today. They were able to pull together passages from these books that in their mind demonstrated why Jesus was the promised Messiah, even if these passages may have been taken out of context or even altered to fit their agenda--without the benefit of chapter and verse numbers, indexes, concordances, cross-references or any of the tools we use today to find something in scripture. That means they had to read and re-read each scroll carefully from beginning to end to find what they were looking for and they had to have a pretty good memory, practically photogenic, in order to do so. Try taking any random book and doing the same to fit the life of some historical or fictional character that is not in that book--I dare say it would be very hard to pull off. For an example I refer you to Barbara Kinsolving's "The Poisonwood Bible" and see how she crafts her story, so many verses from the beginning, so many verses from the end and so forth, which can only work with a Bible that has numbered chapters and verses in a single volume. The New Testament authors did not even have the advantages Kinsolving had. This tells me that they were very sophisticated people who came from a position of relative privilege. It is very possible that some were slaves/servants who were employed as scribes in wealthy households.

Handwriting prize 😂❤ hey I'm a brit too, but my Handwriting looks like Drs scribbles and squashed spiders across the page lol 😂

Despite their effort not to portray Roman slavery as basically nice, they ended up glossing over how brutal it was. They did in fact have large scale plantations with thousands of farm slave workers, analogous to the Atlantic plantation slaves. Those slaves and others like mine slaves were harshly treated, had low life expectancy and were 'liquidated' the moment they fell below norms for production. The owners were hugely rich and very cruel, in an industrialised way similar to 18th/19th century slavery. Slaves in domestic service were at the complete whim of their masters, beaten and sexually mistreated. There were companies that offered 'disposal' services for unwanted slaves. The whole empire was built on the toil, exploitation and misery of millions of enslaved workers. It was a very good when the empire was destroyed as a system, despite its undoubted achievements.

Bart you are so diplomatic

I've always wondered about the downfall of scribes as a class from pre antiquity to classical antiquity but the army of slave labor in Rome explains it. This also goes a long way towards explaining something that's bothered me for a while: the fact that academics claim that literacy rates in Rome were ridiculously low and yet these people are scribbling on EVERYTHING. I'm sorry, something's wrong with this picture. It also gives us a straight line to the slave officials and slave administrators of the Islamic era. Evidently being a bookkeeper or a secretary was considered slave work. It's kind of amazing for us since slaves today are pressed to particularly low skill (or supposedly low skill) labor jobs.

Even 50 years ago in many places around the world there were local “letter writer/reader” in communities

Adds a question about the identity of the woman at the well and why Jesus would use it. Or the woman caught in adultery and what Jesus wrote in the dust.

I'm so glad to learn about Dr. Moss. I hadn't heard of her two weeks ago, and now, she's all over my YT feed and I love it.

The likely slave having the name “Bird” is extremely interesting to me because there is an ancient map of Mesopotamia which is signed by someone who is likely the “son of Bird”. We don’t know his first name but I wonder how far back into antiquity these slave names might have existed. 31:13

Wow! That interview had some interesting twists and turns. A couple of times I thought Barts's head was going to to one of those Exorcist 360 degree turns.

There sure are a lot of stupid comments here. A nice conversation by two PHDs that is commented on by a bunch guys who did not even pay attention in high school 🏫🎒. 😮😮😮

Just picked up the audio book. Look forward to listening to it! 53:01

These insights are intriguing. Could this mean that, for example, Peter or John the son of Zebedee, whom we assume were illiterate, could have dictated their epistles to enslaved, or formerly enslaved, professional scribes? Would this explain the quality of Greek we see in many scriptures and texts?

Sadly slavery still goes on today.

Wow that intro.. she’s a busy woman. 🤗 Impressive knowledge and experience.

Unfortunately, for me as a non-native English speaker, Dr Moss is difficult to understand.

She was interesting, but it's really obvious that she comes up with an idea and then find support of it - often in very ingenuous and wandering and dubious ways.I'm not buying. it.

My view on how slavery was eventually considered an evil by society isn’t based upon just religion. The societal change took nearly a millennium to accomplish by the rise of power in the middle and lower classes against those of the higher classes which is still ongoing. I am not talking about socialism or communism as a goal but rather an obedience to the laws of society that elites brush aside as inconveniences.

God does not fear people who search for truth along different pathways. He will be found at the end of all paths. Only those who pretend to have faith, but really don’t, will object to those like Dr. Ehrman who earnestly search for the truth.

If Saul\Paul was a Tent Maker, do we really know if he was fully literate in both reading and writing?

Bart: I've picked up some books about the historical Jesus that I first thought were novels. Ha ha ha ha... [just like yours, Candida]. Candida: [Terribly awkward moment] [Yeah, message got. That's so kind of you, Bart!]. I've created a website where I explained all the justification for what I thought... [I DID DO MY HOMEWORK!!!] Bart: [A website? That's scholarly work indeed!] Seems to me like Bart does think Candida's written a trade book mostly based on guesswork or at least partly ungrounded conjectures, with no real solid evidence, which could never be turned into a scholarly book.

Bart, you are a great interviewer and educator. Whenever I start wondering, "Who is this person talking about?" you stop and take a step back and explain it all very clearly for us laypeople. Thanks. And while I'm at it....More Candida!

Amazing work, thank you for sharing here! Best part is how it started with the reading glasses. What a trajectory (-:

I guess my question is how does one apply lectio difficilior to the infinite readings that apparently exist in the "gaps"/omissions of texts?

Great convo, book ordered!

Bart's facial reactions in this video are priceless. Fascinating lecture and material.

I wonder how the conversation would go if Robyn Faith Walsh and Dennis MacDonald were involved.

Second comment: there's this huge glaring omission in this discussion and that is the ugly sexual ethos of the Roman Empire where sex is all about power, to wit: exploitation of slaves in the Empire, the sexual duties of freedmen, the sexual desirability of young men ages 13 to 20 (this ties into Mark 14:51-52, what's THAT all about?), and the sexually violative nature of crucifixion itself where the crucified weren't just nailed up they were also "safely" impaled (Seneca Younger Moral Epistles 101.10-14), which may have something to do with Jesus' loud cry and sudden, immediate expiry on his torture-stake a.k.a. _crux_ or "cross".

The "Did Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John write their gospels?" ad hits different this episode, lol

I also like Bart’s evocative phrase, with reference to “popular history” books, of “imaginative but not untrue”! 😂 There’s a really wide spectrum here, from Historical novels, where there’s a made up, but plausible narrative set in a historical setting, (written to entertain, but often acting as a gateway drug to genuine historical curiosity), through the whole vast genre of charlatanism, with authors like Dan Brown, Ralph Ellis and the mythicists on KZfaq. And then, at the other end you have people like this lady, who appears to be making a lot of well educated guesses, which are certainly intriguing and which may or may not lead to to any genuine historical insight.

Bart characterises the situation as, “The evidence is so tantalisingly sparse”. Which is nearly equivalent to saying that there’s really not much evidence and that when we speak about slavery and the authorship of books, we can predict a certain amount, but with issues like the parentage of Jesus and his own status, we really are limited to conjecture. There simply isn’t the evidence to know anything very much about these things. All we can say with confidence is that Jesus was probably a Rabbi, a sort of Hebrew itinerant teacher, with a following rather like a guru and that he had strong links with the Essene movement and, like John, was baptising people in the desert. None of this would be commensurate with the proscribed lifestyle of a slave, as he would have needed complete autonomy and a lot of free time. Of course we do have the suggestion from within scripture, that he had the patronage of others with means.

“tantalizingly sparse” is a convenient euphemism for argument from silence

👏🙂 Very interesting. Great interview

The issue with New Testament studies today is you can say that your work is original by appealing to Classical studies that there is a huge amount of work in this field being written on a topic like 'slavery and writing' but not so in New Testament. Yet, use those scholars in Classics to form your argument. Scholars know that slaves or freedman probably contributed to the writing of the New Testament, why? because they are writing in Greco-Roman society where these social classes would write down works for the wealthy literate population. Therefore, this isn't anything new, it has just been rebranded.

'Servant' in the OT/Torah / 10commandments also slaves

Yes, Dr. Moss, you are one of the cool people 😎

What happened at 18:00 ?? Abrupt cut there and numerous other "black-outs" throughout the video. Something's off. Whats going on here? EDIT: Jesus... Robert Moss... Look him up... Whoa. I get it now.

As someone who has been an atheist for many years and doesn't revere Paul (ha), it's still wild how hearing that Paul probably had slaves feels kind of shocking. Fascinating info.

What a fascinating interview! I'm excited to get a copy of this book and learn more! .... after I finish my many assignments for this semester x.x

Thanks , Dr. Ehrman. Excellent program. I want to read her book.

It reminds me of entertaining great youtuber-and-editor relationships

Having worked with a Vassar grad who used to workshop her colleagues' phrasing, i think Dr Moss is right on the money. I don't know of Bart had or it was so long he doesn't renege a time when he took oral dictation and had to translate that into professional correspondence. It's definitely not word for word. It's polished.

Based on the additional context provided, I can further explore how distinguishing between the pre-Babylonian captivity definitions of El (God) and Elohim (sons/beings of El) versus the post-captivity syncretized definitions could resolve contradictions and cast the Yahweh figure of Genesis 2-3 in a very different light from the transcendent Elohim portrayed in Genesis 1. Pre-Captivity Definitions: In this framework, the supreme creator deity is simply referred to as El - the Most High God. The Elohim are understood as a pantheon or "sons of El" - lesser divine beings subordinate to El. This aligns with ancient Canaanite and older Israelite religious conceptions. Under these definitions, the Genesis 1 account would refer to the transcendent El as the prime creator, with the Elohim (plural) potentially being celestial forces/angels enacting aspects of the creation. The Ruach Elohim (Spirit/Breath of the divine beings) hovering over the primordial waters connects to surviving traces of this polytheistic worldview. Crucially, this allows one to separate the Elohim of Genesis 1 from the distinct Yahweh Elohim first appearing in Genesis 2 to form man from the dust. Based on references like Deuteronomy 32:8-9, the pre-captivity perspective viewed Yahweh as one of the sons of El (an Elohim) rather than conflating him with El itself. This de-syncretization casts Yahweh as a separate, lesser, more anthropomorphic deity associated with the ancient Israelites - perhaps retained from their Canaanite heritage. His behavior and commandments in Genesis 2-3 and elsewhere in the Torah would then represent the teachings of this tribal desert deity, not the supreme metaphysical creator El. The Garden Scenario Reframed From this vantage point, the events of Genesis 2-3 can be interpreted not as ordained by the most high El creator, but rather as humanity's initial tragic entrapment by the lesser devolved being Yahweh within his constructed realm of mortality, suffering, and cosmic privation. Yahweh's wrathful conduct, his placing of humans under a yoke of commandments, his expulsion from Eden's paradisiacal environment, and the subsequent violent legacy of his covenants and laws all derive from the subjugating delusions and stunted, anthropocentric conception of this finite Elohim - not the infinite plenitude of the supreme El. Contradictions Resolved Separating El from Yahweh along the pre-captivity definitional lines could resolve contradictions in several important ways: 1) It distinguishes the transcendent, metaphysically profound cosmic creator portrayed in Genesis 1 from the all-too-human tribal deity of the remaining Torah material. 2) It allows for a reframing of the Torah's teachings around blood sacrifice, ethnic conflicts, law codes, etc. as the cultural mythological traditions of ancient Israelite history rather than attributed to the most high El itself. 3) It creates space for the Christ figure of the New Testament to represent a re-emergence of the supreme El's sovereignty and universal spiritual path - overriding the outdated covenants, ethnic segregations, and violent subjugations prescribed by the lesser Yahweh consciousness. 4) Humanity's existential struggling, our proclivity towards violence/evil, and our fundamental state of cosmic imprisonment can be metaphysically associated with the fallout of our ancient reunion from Yahweh's corrupted influence rather than the designs of the supreme El consciousness. 5) Competing depictions of the divine across different books (wrathful/peaceful, loving/cruel, spiritual/legalistic) can be added to different nodes of the El vs. Yahweh consciousness schisms. While still requiring some nuanced interpretation, this delineation allows for a coherent reintegration of Old and New Testament perspectives under a broader metaphysical framework. It preserves the universal spiritual integrity of the highest Creator from the cultural mythological contexts surrounding the more finite tribal deity Yahweh. By embracing the pre-syncretized definitions and recognizing the conflation of El and Yahweh as a later imposition, one can reconnect with deep streams of ancient Hebrew theological diversity. This presents an intellectually robust path for understanding the unified trajectory of the biblical texts as exploring a single universetheological consciousness's reassertion over more contingent, anthropomorphized deviations and exiles.

It would be really interesting to hear/learn more about how education/schooling worked in the ancient world. Is anyone working in this area?

Fascinating. Thank you so much!

38:23 spot on! coded speaking exists today among certain ethnic groups with a similar history

Wow. This is mind blowing

I am so tired of the term enslaved as a better term than slave. A person can be enslaved; then they are a slave. And you can also be an ex slave. But enslaved is just jargon.

imagine being so uni-pilled you can't call a slave a slave.

This interview with Dr. Moss is amazing. I'm reminded of some Fredrick Niechze beliefs about Christianity where he believed it's a form of savery.

Past job references mean employer can make future life difficult so employee is forced to behave certain way. Right to marriage or divorce in real terms can be also going both ways.that is why love and understanding is crucial for decent and honest society

This should have been longer

I like this bird's habitus. Firmly convinced you can judge a book by its cover.

She's amazing. I love this guest.

"He's not going to ride a unicorn up to the heaven"... Wow, surprisingly there is another Abrahamic faith that did just that!

To read an in-depth study of Greek and Roman cultures as they influence us today, check out Michael Hudson's book : "The Collapse of Antiquity"

Bart, if you really wanted to get someone who has incredible knowledge and insights into slavery in the Bible; all you needed to do was ask Megan's husband Dr Josh Bowen on the podcast. It was torture listening to this Moss woman for almost an hour. Talk about someone who seems to be wandering around looking for justification for what she thinks. So sad!

What an interview. Opened my eyes to possibilities. Covered some extremely sensitive topics. Will make some very very upset.

I always enjoy listening to Dr. Moss

I love Candida Moss. What a terrific guest to have. Totally brilliant, just like Bart

Thanks for a wonderful and fascinating video! I think I'll get the book tomorrow when my next Audible credit drops.😎

Wasn’t the Mark that Papius mentioned a sayings gospel and therefore not the same as canonical Mark?

The President of Purdue University created a program where students would receive payment for their college education at Purdue and thereby have themselves forced (by some choice) into indentured servitude.

Yeah Bart isnt buying most of this stuff. I find Dr Moss' stuff pretty unconvincing. Ive heard her spiel a couple times now and it falls apart after the first couple flashy ideas.

Really fascinating stuff, when I get money, I'ma throw it at the book.

Dr. Moss spins speculation and fantasy like a conjuror. She speaks like an academic who knows she must publish or perish and also knows that the pool of potential topics is shrinking fast. Her desperation has led her into the dizzy world of mind reading. Bart is too polite to call out her bullshit.

Often, apologists for biblical slavery (btw if your job can remotely be described that way, you should reconsider your life choices) will protest that biblical slavery wasn’t racist, or that biblical genocide wasn’t race based. With our modern sensibilities, we recognize racism as a negative because racism is the most prominent way that we can dehumanize others and do inhuman things to them. Modern people are repulsed by racism for this reason, whereas slavery and genocide are usually such unreal concepts that we know they’re bad but they’re not really happening so we don’t have that gut reaction like we do with racism. (Btw they are really happening) So it’s likely that some modern people who are horrified by racism could be more accepting of biblical slavery if they’re told it’s not racist. But that’s only because biblical morality was so horrific that the protagonists would enslave anyone they could overpower without even thinking about race, and would genocide anyone they couldn’t enslave without thinking about race. Because the protagonists of the Bible were so inhumane that they automatically dehumanized anybody who wasn’t the in-group and slavery or genocide was fine for anyone who wasn’t in-group. Modern sensibilities tell us that we shouldn’t enslave or genocide anyone at all, and racism is the most likely excuse that can be used to justify it, so racism is the worst thing we can think of. But biblical morality was so far beneath us that the heroes of the Bible never rose high enough to consider the worst thing we can think of.

Her name is Candida Moss

Hypatia of Alexandria the great mathematician and linguist and librarian was brutally murdered by a Christian mob. It was claimed that they killed her because she was associated with paganism of the Greeks and because she was in a high position as a woman which was a threat to the Christian beliefs. Could she also have been brutally murdered by her own slaves working in the library of Alexandria?

Candida is certainly very candid in her answers😅

29:39 You guys don't imagine that a slave may have a different editorial perspective than a freeman? 🤔

I heard that Constantine organised the new testament as we know them.

I prefer Nerdy Spectacles. It is a much more colorful show

Since early Christianity was mainly Apocalyptic Jewish in nature, it makes sense to me that enslaved (or formerly enslaved) people would be attracted to it like others of low social status. The person who was given the task of writing Mark might have intentionally made it easier for the enslaved to identify with Jesus to help spread the word.

Did slaves "give us the New Testament"? Of course not. Did slaves "give us a fair portion of pre-400 CE New Testament manuscripts"? Certainly, though we don't know the exact percentage, but a far less salacious rhetorical question.

Thank you.

~ 52 minutes - Well Said!

I dont think slaves had any role in modifying the content of the gospels.

Glad to tune in as a scholar/academic and archeologist ❤ love the human race lol humans are very interesting 👍

This really was an excellent discussion.

At the 43-minute mark, Professor Ehrman comments on using names as an approach. What if that were the approach to each gospel? Mark is from the Latin Markus. Markus is one dedicated to Mars. Mars is the protector of cattle and the god of war. Shrines were carried by Roman legions to Mars, etc. With this in mind, how would one's assumptions change? Mark's story isn't about those ascending the hill of the LORD but about cattle or spartan foot soldiers. Cattle wouldn't have a named father but a bull that has a harem. A Markian disciple isn't one fully developed. Something to chew the cud on.

Hello Candida, seen you on Tik-Tok. Thanks!

Bart is so kind. You can see the disbelief in his eyes with the BS that he is hearing, but he is too polite to voice his thoughts.