The Surprising Truth Behind "Love Thy Neighbor"

Jesus' most famous commandment might be 'to love thy neighbor'. But what exactly does 'love mean' and 'how do you love your neighbor'? Today, Dr. Bart Ermann joins me to talk about the different meanings of love in the New Testament and how that informs our understanding of Jesus' teachings. Welcome to Miss Quoting Jesus with Bart Ermann. The only show, where a six-time New York Times best-selling author and world-renowned Bible scholar uncovers the many fascinating little-known facts about the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the rise of Christianity. I'm your host, Megan Lewis. Let's begin. Our inaugural new insights into the Hebrew Bible conference is happening March 20th through the 22nd, and I am thrilled to be one of the presenters. My talk is titled 'Before in the Beginning', the creation myths that shaped Genesis, and it explores the striking parallels between Genesis and ancient Mesopotamian creation stories, showing how those earlier myths helped to shape the biblical account. To celebrate, we're hosting a special live Meet Megan, AMA on Zoom, exclusively for those of you who grab an NIHB pass between now and March 20th, and use the coupon code 'Meghan bonus at checkout'. You'll hear from Dan McClellan, Joel Baden, and more. Just head to BartErmann.com/HBConference. On the checkout page enter 'Meghan bonus' that's MEGAM, B-O-N-U-S, to unlock a special discount and the instructions for the AMA, which will take place in early April. I'd love to hang out, answer your questions, and connect with you. So grab your pass, use the code, and I'll see you there. Welcome back everybody to Misquoting Jesus, where today we're discussing the meaning of love in the New Testament. We've also got our bonus segment, Bart's soapbox at the end, where Bart gets on his metaphorical soapbox about an issue he feels strongly about. But before all of that, how are you this week? Well, you know, I'm in a preaching mood, so let's go for the soapbox right off the bat. Alright, alright, I'm down. Yeah, no, I'm doing well. When I retired, it took me a few weeks. It took me a while before I was ready to actually start plunging back into doing serious work. I think I had kind of long-term burnout. And I'm not recovering from that fully, but I started doing some more detailed reading of stuff and started realizing, "Oh, I like this." So I'm feeling better about how things are going right now. So, yeah, how are you doing? Yeah, good. I have bits of blue food coloring on my fingers from Dying Abs and Salts for an archaeology class, which is not a sentence I ever thought I'd say. We're looking at the layering in archaeological digs, and the easiest way for me to show that two small children is with layers of coloured salts. It's supposed to be sand, but colouring salt is a hell of a lot easier. So I've been spending my morning dying bags of salt that's been very interesting. Well, you know, this doesn't work. You've got a career in geology. Exactly. Exactly. I'll just, I'll just, I'll just switch. It'll be fine. Okay. Alright, before we get into love, our icebreaker this week, how do you deal with negative reviews or critiques? Oh, yeah. Well, especially when it comes to reviews of my books, I say, "I don't deal with them well." I think, like, I can't really offer them a sip of tea. No, I don't, you know, I don't do anything about them, but I get irritated. And, like everyone else who gets a negative review, you start grumbling about it, but the person didn't actually read the book, which is often the case, by the way. But, and I just about my books, why don't you just generally, or they say, "I said something I didn't say," or they object to something, and they're like, you know, and so basically, you think, "Well, they're clueless." Why, why'd they ask them to write a review? But, you know, because actually, it doesn't, it's not like when you're in graduate school where you have a professor who might critique your work so that you could do better next time. You've written the book. It's done. And so. And so. And you can't get back and fix things or change things or. You can't improve it now. So I think that, that's one reason I think a lot of scholars don't even read the reviews. And I actually don't seek out reviews of my work. Some people do, but I don't seek it out, but it'll be called to my attention. If there's a very damning review of my thing in the Wall Street Journal, somebody will tell me, "Oh, God, why'd they get him?" Yeah, so. That sounds uncomfortable and unpleasant, especially if you can't go back and fix things. Constructive criticism is one thing. Yeah. And we'll help you grow and negative reviews or another thing in time. Well, the thing is, scholars are very territorial. And if you impede on somebody else's turf, they give very upset. And a lot of times it's not just me again, but just kind of generally a lot of times somebody who doesn't, who hasn't written a book on this, but considers themselves an expert on it, you know, we'll just go on the attack. And you kind of feel like saying, "Well, no, okay, good. You really should write that book then, because that's your view." But people do. Yeah. I mean, kind of the smaller the world, the more the greater the politics. If you're in a small discipline, it's not easy to. Even though, but in the big disciplines, obviously, people who write on biology or something, you know, they get very, very harsh critiques from people who disagree with them. All right. On to the discussion of today, which is love. I have known Christians who claim that the idea of love was introduced to the ancient world by Christianity. Is that true? Well, it's true you've heard it. It's true that people say it's true. I hear it. And, you know, I get it. I mean, they understand Christianity, a religion of love. There's a lot going on beneath that statement often. Not every time, probably. I think a lot of people just don't know any better. They haven't read Aristotle. You know, how would they know? You know, they haven't read ancient moral philosophy. There sometimes can be a bit of anti-Judy as a minute when people say that, because they assume that the Old Testament God was a God of wrath, but the God of Jesus was the God of love. And so Jesus introduced love into the Christian tradition. That's wrong on every count. When people tell me that the Old Testament is the God of wrath and New Testament is the God of love, I usually ask them, have you read the book of Revelation lately? It's not a wrath. That one's in the New Testament. And God, you know, the commandments to love are in the Old Testament. Love is all over the place in the Old Testament. So I think it's just dead wrong. Love was a frequent topic of discussion in every surviving, you know, every kind of source from the ancient world. How did ancient Greeks and Romans think about and talk about the ethics of love? So in this book I've got coming out, Love Life Stranger, I have spent a lot of time talking about this kind of issue. What did ancient people mean by love? How did they understand it? How did it work in Greek circles, Roman circles, Jewish circles? How did Jesus have a different thing? And so as I was saying, it's a bit crazy to say that Greeks and Romans weren't concerned about love. You have entire treatises devoted to it by important philosophers, including Aristotle and Before and Plato. And so it is a big deal. Love, I would say, like if you have to generalize, which sounds like I need to, because I only have about 20 seconds to do this. But if you had to generalize, you'd say that for most people in the ancient world, love was a kind of, was an emotion that led to beneficial actions towards another. And so something like that. Did ancient Jews have a similar understanding or was there a difference? There were, well there are similarities and differences, especially when you get down a little bit more into the weeds, which we haven't gotten into the weeds at all. But once you get down a little bit, of course Jews felt the same thing. That love, love was an emotion that should have positive reactions, facts on how you behave toward other people. But love wasn't just an emotion in probably in any circle, but in Judaism, for example, in Deuteronomy chapter 6, a commandment that is still recited by Jews today, every day, you know, there are Jews who recite the Shema, the Deuteronomy chapter 6, you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and strength. Now in that context, love doesn't actually mean like an emotion. It can't mean an emotion because you cannot command somebody to love something. You can command how they behave, but you can't command their emotions. And so, I mean, you can, but it's not going to get you anywhere because you can't. So it actually means something else there. In that case, it sort of means something I'd give God is do. You know, worship Him. and devote your life to him, but it doesn't mean like have a gooey feeling towards him. And you get that as well in the Hebrew Bible, throughout the Hebrew Bible. We talk about human love. There's different kinds of human love, but most of them do involve some kind of emotion. Now love, when we're just talking about the emotion, can have a lot of different meanings today. You can love your spouse and love your grandmother, but it means something very different. You can love your job or a book or tennis or cooking, but again, all of these are very different to being in love with someone. Did the inhabitants of the ancient world have a similar range of meaning when they talked about the emotional side? Yes, they did. They had different, they had different, you know, they knew all of that and they agreed with all of that. They like, like in English, they have different words that sometimes they would use a synonym, synonym for love in some context. But in English, we say love and like and desire and have passion for. And you know, there are various things you can use that have different nuances, but could be translated as love. And the ancient language has also had different words. They could that, but they certainly understood that there are different nuances and different kinds of love depending on the person to whom it's being directed. We can take a very brief break, I have some announcements to make and then we are going to get back into the meaning of love and looking specifically at Greek words that are rendered in English as love. All right, this is your final reminder, everybody. This is your absolute last chance to join us for our inaugural new insights into the Hebrew Bible conference. We're kicking things off in just a couple of days. The attendee mixer is this Thursday, March 19th. On Friday, March 20th, Dan McClellan delivers the keynote and then more than 10 featured presentations are happening on Saturday and Sunday. But what are you most excited about when it comes to this conference? Well, this is our first time doing this one. We've done new insights into the new testament for three years now and it's been a huge success. It's been great, really great. And this is going to be equally great. We rounded up 10 of the top scholars in the world on various aspects of the book of Genesis. One of the most famous books of the Hebrew Bible of the entire Bible, one of the most read books of the entire Bible. And scholarship has a lot to say about it. These are top-level scholars who are all going to be talking about different aspects of it. And with insights of that scholars who read this thing in Hebrew and have studied it for decades, and they're based on centuries of scholarship, that are often things that people wouldn't have thought of or wouldn't know. And but were presented in terms that people can understand who are not experts. So I'm looking forward to this a lot. This is going to be great. It's going to be fantastic. And I'd like also to remind everyone that I'm going to be hosting a live meat-megon AMA on Zoom, anyone who purchases an NIHB pass before March 20th. Make sure you use the code "megonbonus@thecheckout" where you will hang out, do a meet and greet talk about sources for Genesis myths, talk about the podcast, behind the scenes stuffs, however many glasses I have. Really whatever you want to ask me about. But to get access you have to buy a ticket at www.batlamon.com/hbconference and use the coupon code "megonbonus@checkout". When you're on the checkout page, look for the little "have a coupon" link. Grab that, put in "megonbonus" and it will unlock the instructions for the meter. So grab your pass, use the code and I will see you both at the conference because I'm presenting and then at the AMA afterwards. So I think that's going to be fun. I'm going to have to count my AMAs of glasses I have, I think. I hope they give you some real zingers. Are they going to do a "megon thing"? Oh gosh, that wouldn't be hard. All right, announcements over back to our episode for this week. Were there different Greek words that are translated into English as word love? Yeah, you know this creates a huge problem because the answers yes. There are a number of Greek words that they often have different nuances but there's not a good translation for them except for the word love. So if you don't know the Greek word you don't know the different nuance. And so this is a tricky business but it's a problem of translation generally. This is why scholars have to learn these ancient languages because you don't understand the nuance of a text. I don't think I mentioned this last time. I mentioned Aristotle's Nicomichian ethics. He has extensive discussions of love in the Nicomichian ethics especially friendship. Love within a friendship has two entire books devoted to it. But the Nicomichian ethics are difficult to read in English. And the reason they're difficult is not difficult for a reason you might think. In other words, it's not like highly complicated philosophy particularly. But when I was trying to read it, I realized I don't know what the Greek word that is using here is and it makes a big difference. And I looked at the Greek and said, "Oh yeah, that's much easier." Now I know what it means. And so it's a problem. So there are several words in Greek that mean that can be and are translated as love that are used in Greek moral philosophy and in Christian circles as well. Which of these words are used in the New Testament? Okay, so there are basically four words that typically get translated as love either as a verb or noun in regular old Greek. Okay, and so the word, well I'll just say what these words are. So one of them is aeroos where we get erotic from. And it doesn't necessarily mean sexual love but it can mean that. It means it kind of love that's passionate. You know, like you could be passionate about a book you're reading or passionate about, you know, playing golf or something. And the things you're passionate about, that would be aeroos. There's another word, "Falia," which is the word we get "Fila del Fia" from, the city of brotherly love. And "Falia" isn't about a passion you have for something. It's really like in a interpersonal relationship, it's more about you really liking somebody. Like you're connecting with them, you have good chemistry with them, you're kind of buddies with them, your friends with them, it's kind of more like a friendly love but where you really connect with each other. That's "Falia." So you have aeroos, you got "Falia." You've got a verb in Greek, "Sterego." It doesn't have a noun for some reason but it has a verb "Sterego," which is another word for a love. It tends to do more with kind of affection between parents and their children. It can be kind of that kind of connection you have with someone. Yeah, so just say it's often in family context but in other contexts as well. So those are the three main words in Greek. There's a fourth verb in Greek, "Aga Pa'o," which is also a verb for love and it means something like to have affection for somebody, to be affectionate for somebody. So those are the four words you get widely in Greek and they are sometimes differentiated by Greek philosophers. You say, "Well, aeroos is this and "Falia" is this and they're very different." And they are in these Greek philosophers. So you ask which words are in the New Testament and only two of them. "Aeroos" does not occur in the New Testament. "Aeroos" is the one for kind of "passionate love" and "Sterego the verb," which is like familial love, it doesn't occur there. So the two words that occur in the New Testament are "Falia" and "Aga Pa'o" or the Greek or the noun verb "Aga Pa'o." It's spelled "A-G-A-P-E" but it does not mean "a gate." It does not say "It does not sound like a gate." It's a "ga Pa'o." And that's the principle word "Aga Pa" within Christian circles. And does Jesus use both of these words or are they used by others because in different contexts? So the problem is that we have the New Testament in Greek and Jesus spoke in Aeroomac. And so it's a little bit hard to know how the Greek translators of his sayings dealt with his use of different Aeroomac words, which was kind of a comparable range to what you get in Hebrew. And in the Hebrew Bible there are two main words that get translated into English as "love" usually. So there's that complication. But within the Greek New Testament, Jesus does use both words. He principally uses the "Aga Pa'o" sometimes it leads to translational and interpretive confusion. There's a famous past, a famous incidence of this and it's a passage where you wouldn't realize that there's a problem by reading it in English. It's in John chapter 21. Jesus has been raised from the dead. He's talking to Peter, his closest disciple. And he asks, "Peter, do you love me?" And Peter says, "Yes, Lord, I love you." Jesus has asked, "Do you agape me?" And Peter's replied, "Yes, I filia you." So Jesus asks again, "Do you agape me? Do you love me?" Peter replies, "Yes, Lord, I love you." But again, Jesus says agape, Jesus, Peter says filia. And so it looks like Jesus is fishing for something here. Third time he asks him, "Do you love me?" Peter says, "Yes, I love you." So in English, you'd have love all six times, right? Do you love? Yes, I love you. And so it isn't quite clear why you keep repeating it. But in Greek, the third time he asked it, "Jesus changes to Phalia. Do you Phalia?" Yes, I Phalia. Okay, feed my sheep. And so the question is, is there a different nuance between the agape and the Phalia? And what we learned in graduate school was like, then was the standard wisdom is that the word were synonyms. They actually did not matter which word they were using at the same thing. And the reason you have three requests, isn't because Jesus is efficient for something, is because Peter denied him three times. And now he confesses love for him three times. Okay, well, so that might be true, but Jesus does change, it does change the word. And so why would that be? And so the way other interpreters have interpreted that might be more correct is, Jesus is saying, "Would you do anything for me?" And Peter says, "Yes, I really like you. Would you do anything for me?" Yes, I like you. Peter, would you do, do you really like me? Yes, I like you. Okay, good enough. So this hinges though on something we haven't really talked about yet, I guess we will now, is the difference between agape and Phalia in the New Testament itself? So, but what is the difference between agape and Phalia in the New Testament? Okay, I'm glad you asked me that. I thought you wouldn't. I thought that okay. I wasn't expecting it. Okay, so here's the deal. Phalia means pretty much in the New Testament what it means generally. It's a word for love that can refer to lots of different kinds of love. Agape seems to take on a distinctive meaning in Christian writings. The noun agape, I may have mentioned, does not occur in Greek in the Greek language outside of Judaism and Christianity. It's not a word found in Plato or Aristotle. In any but it's not found in the election. You can't find it in a Greek lexicon being used the noun agape. It first occurs in the Septuagint and the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible where it translates one of the Hebrew words as agape. And there it kind of means what it means in general circles, Greek circles, the idea of agapahoe is affection for. When you come to the New Testament, agape takes on a different meaning. It clearly does not refer to an emotion unlike other Greek words for love. It is definitely not an emotion. It is how you behave towards somebody, whatever you feel towards them or whatever you think towards them. Agape has to do with doing something for the good of another, even at a cost to the self. So agape is being concerned about the needs of another. That makes it virtually a synonym of altruism. But it comes in a verbal form and as a noun form. So you have love for somebody. You really wouldn't say I have altruism for somebody. But it does mean that. So agape by far the most common word for love in the New Testament and the verb agapahoe, they refer to this kind of self-giving love that is interested in somebody else's needs rather than one's own. Now Jesus seems to emphasize this form of love is more important than anything else. Do you see a similar emphasis in other Jewish teachers from the same time period or is this particular to Jesus? There were other rabbis who absolutely would have said that loving God above all else is the most important thing and loving your neighbor as yourself is the most important thing. They're both like they're the two important things. Within Israelite tradition, of course, you get the commandment, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And this is central to Jewish thinking and goes all the way back to the Torah. But when you read that in the Torah, love your neighbor as yourself. Leviticus 19, 18, it is referring to your fellow Israelite. You're to love your fellow Israelite, but it includes strangers among the Israelites. Like somebody you don't know, but they're in Israelite. You're supposed to treat them well and not just somebody who's born into Israel, but anybody who immigrates into Israel and has settled among the Israelites in his adopting Israelite ways, even a foreigner you're supposed to love in this way. So immigrants and Native Israelites, yes. But this does not apply throughout the Hebrew Bible to those who are outside of Israel. So this commandment occurs in Leviticus. In the next book, the Book of Numbers, the Israelites go into, start conquering the promised land. And they're not supposed to love the Midianites and the Moabites. They're supposed to destroy them. And so the idea is that this is, it is within the community that you're to love others. But within Judaism, it's different from the Greek and Roman worlds. Because now it's not just your family and friends or the people who like live in your close community. It's like you love any Israelite. And you would never have a Greek author saying, love every Greek. You know, love everybody speak Greek or every Roman. Yeah, you should love every Roman. No, of course not. But you do get that in Judaism and then you get that pushed to an extreme by Jesus. So if he's pushing the extreme, pushing a statement from the Book of Leviticus to an extreme, is he extending it to all of humanity or is he restricting it in some way? What's happening there? It appears to be non-restricted. And I think this is one of Jesus' really radical teachings. Jesus really did say, I think, love your enemies. And I think he meant it. It didn't mean feel good about your enemies or to like them or to have any kind of emotion toward them. It meant do, you know, and it doesn't mean like, you know, help the enemy destroy us. But it means work in their best interests, even if they're your enemies. And so this gets encapsulated in a number of Jesus' teachings in the Gospels. The best known, the most famous one, is the parable of the good Samaritan. The Samaritan is a man who sees this, the Jewish man who's been beaten half to death by the side of the road, apparently unconscious, who has been bypassed by two Jewish leaders, a priest and a Levite, and who don't help them, don't even go over to see if he's okay. He looks like he's dead, they just pass him by. The Samaritan comes by and sees him and he goes over and he binds his wounds and he takes him to an inn, he pays for his upkeep, he takes care of him. And Jesus says, this is how you are supposed to love your neighbor. The deal is that the Samaritans were the hated enemies of Jews. And for a number of historical and cultural reasons, they're enemies. But the enemy is taking care of the enemy. This is what it means to love your neighbors as Jesus. So, and he means that for his followers, that's how they're supposed to behave, to love everyone who's in need, regardless who they are. So, when he says, "Love your neighbor," he's not talking about have a warm fuzzy feeling towards someone, he's talking about how you are supposed to treat people. Yeah, and he's not talking about just the guy next door, the woman across the street. You know, he's not your literal neighbor. Every other human being is your neighbor and you should treat them well. And so that gets translated into these two other topics that I deal with my book, Charitable Giving, and Forgiveness. You treat people well, even if they mistreat you. As long as they're in need, you try to help them out. That's Jesus' teaching. It's pretty radical. I mean, it's so radical that most Christians today don't follow it. I mean, they, you know, most people don't follow. Understandably, I don't follow it. I mean, I tried to with, but I mean, it's a radical teaching. And it, but I think it really is what Jesus meant. And is all we have for today's interview, but is there anything that I didn't cover that you would like to make sure people know before we move on? Well, I'll just say that I think this is really is the core of Jesus' teachings. That, that when he, when he explains who it is that's going to be brought into the kingdom of God, in Matthew chapter 25, it isn't, it isn't just Jews, it isn't people who believe in him. It's people who have done good things for those in need, who have fed the hungry, given something to drink to the thirsty, who have, who have clothed the naked, who have visited the lonely. These are the people who will get into God's kingdom. And so Jesus' teaching is all about the kingdom of God is coming soon. You need to get on God's right side. And here's how he tells you to do it. It's to live this way. And so if people want to be followers of Jesus, I'm, you know, I'm an agnostic atheist myself, but, but if people want to be followers of Jesus, they should take this seriously. It doesn't matter if these people are your family, friends, or neighbors, literal neighbors. It doesn't matter if they belong to your country or your your ethnicity or your race or anything else. It matters if they're in need. And Jesus says, that's who you're supposed to live. So if you're a follower of Jesus, I think that's what you're supposed to do. And even those of us who aren't think, yeah, you know, it's a pretty good idea to do that. But thank you so much. We're going to be moving on to this week's bonus segment, which is Bart's Soak Box. But what are you feeling strongly about this week? Right. Well, you know, so I think last time we in the last episode, we talked about whether people get surprised like I've written this book, which, you know, of course, I'm not urging people to become Christian, but I am pointing out the good things that came into the world because of Christianity. And I, you know, I've thought a lot about how I get a negative reaction about that from some of my friends who are a very hardcore atheist or strong agnostic. I also, as I said, I'm an agnostic and an atheist as well. But I do know a lot of people who used to be Christian who have left Christianity, who see nothing good in Christianity, that it's all bad. And even in my book, I talk the forthcoming book, I do talk about, yes, there are bad sides to Christianity. And Christian history is not always glowing. You get the, you get anti-Judyism very early that leads to horrible programs and slotters in the Middle Ages that ultimately lead up to the Holocaust. You get crusades and all that has to say about Islamophobia. You get inquisitions which people who don't believe the right things are tortured to death. You get, you know, you get the support of slavery, biblical justification for slavery in the South. You have the oppression of women. You get, you get all sorts of things that are really, really dark from Christianity. And I, boy, do I get that. But it is crazy to pretend that everything is bad. Jesus, it's crazy if you're a Gungho conservative evangelical Christian to think that everything about Christianity is good. It's not completely good. It's not completely bad. And it just kind of irritates me that people don't see this. You know, that you can't see there's anything good in Christianity. My God, yes, of course, they're good things in Christianity. And so, so anyway, my book is trying to show that there are good sides. Especially the sides that I point out, the kind of institutional changes that made a huge difference in society. And I just think that it's part of the problem I have that people can't see both sides of an issue. Everybody's, everything's got to be one thing or the other. And it's drive our society apart right now. This kind of division that's happening everywhere along all sorts of lines. And within religion, but my view is that even though I'm not a Christian, in addition to the many, many dark things, there are good sides of Christianity. And I really think that people ought to be opened up to the good as well as to the bad. And to the bad as well as the good. Thank you, Bart. Now, before we finish for the week, could you remind us what we spoke about today? Well, you know, we're talking about the topic of love. It's rather a big topic to try to do in 35 minutes, whatever we spent on it. But it's a topic, one of my main topics in my book, Love, Life, Stranger. And kind of reflecting on how love in the Christian tradition, beginning with Jesus, was different in ways from the way it was manifest otherwise in the Greek and Roman world, and at the world at large. And it's important to see what the differences are. And to appreciate, appreciate these differences in order to evaluate them. It's not that Jesus invented love, but there is a different aspect to it that he talks about that ends up making a big difference in our world. This has been an episode of Misquoting Jesus with Bart Erm. We'll be back with a new episode next Tuesday, so please be sure to subscribe to our show for free on your favourite podcast listening app, or on Bart Erm in YouTube channel so you don't miss out. From Bart Erm and myself, Megan Lewis, thank you for joining us.