Christians Believe in Angels. Why Not Ghosts? (vIDEO)

Welcome to the home of Episode 209 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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Bible By Committee

episode description

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In Episode 209 of Misquoting Jesus, Bart Ehrman explores how ancient people understood ghosts, demons, angels, and the spiritual forces believed to shape human life. He explains a crucial difference between ancient and modern worldviews: people in antiquity generally did not separate the natural and supernatural into distinct realms. Divine beings were part of the same world as humans, operating at different levels of power.

Ehrman examines ancient Greek and Roman beliefs about ghosts, including why the improperly buried, the violently deceased, and those who died young were thought to return. He contrasts these beliefs with the Hebrew Bible's understanding of death and discusses the Witch of Endor, who summons the deceased prophet Samuel to advise King Saul.

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The conversation then turns to Jesus being mistaken for a ghost while walking on water and the Gospel of Luke's insistence that the resurrected Jesus has a physical body. Ehrman explains how angels and demons function differently in biblical traditions, particularly how exorcisms in Matthew, Mark, and Luke demonstrate Jesus' authority over the forces of evil—a theme connected to Jewish apocalyptic expectations of God's coming kingdom.

The episode's most personal moment comes when Ehrman reflects on why belief in evil supernatural powers once helped him explain suffering, and why he no longer accepts that explanation as a materialist.