The One Verse That Made Bart Question Everything (VIDEO)

The One Verse That Made Bart Question Everything (vIDEO)

Welcome to the home of Episode 182 of the Misquoting Jesus Podcast with Bart Ehrman. Below, you can watch the entire episode, read its description, and see links to related resources.

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episode description

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In this episode of Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus, Bart reflects on how his understanding of the Bible evolved from childhood Episcopalianism through evangelical fundamentalism and eventually into liberal Christianity and agnosticism. He explains that, growing up in the Episcopal Church, the Bible was respected but not treated as the central focus of faith. That changed dramatically after his born-again conversion, when he embraced evangelical ideas about biblical inerrancy and began studying scripture obsessively, even memorizing entire books of the New Testament.

Bart describes how his time at Moody Bible Institute reinforced the belief that the Bible was completely without error, from Genesis to Revelation. But during college and seminary, cracks began to form. Exposure to broader intellectual traditions, shifting political and social perspectives, and deeper study of the biblical texts themselves led him to question whether scripture could truly be perfectly consistent.

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A pivotal moment came at Princeton Seminary while studying the Gospel of Mark in Greek. Faced with a famous discrepancy involving the high priest Abiathar, Bart realized that accepting the possibility of a simple mistake made more sense than elaborate harmonizations. That realization triggered a broader reconsideration of inspiration, contradiction, and the relationship between faith and scripture.

The episode also explores why Bart never abandoned biblical scholarship after leaving Christianity, arguing that the Bible remains the single most influential book in Western civilization regardless of one’s faith commitments.