Atheist Bible scholar, Bart Ehrman, recently recorded the lectures for his new online course, "The Genius of the Gospel of Matthew."
https://barterhman.com/matthew
At the end of the second day of recording, Bart blew everyone away with this moving ending to the course about how Jesus' teachings have changed our world ethically, referencing the Sermon on the Mount and other teachings from the book of Matthew.
This came at the end of lesson 8 titled "How the World Changed the Gospel of Matthew and How Matthew Changed the World."
It created a lot of buzz and comments in the chat among the live attendees such as:
- "Awesome ending! Blows away any sermons I've heard in over 30 years!"
- "Wonderful summation about the effect of Matthew on the modern ethics. Very moving."
- "Yeah, you can tell that Dr. Ehrman used to be a preacher."
- "I agree it was a wonderful ending to the last lecture. None the ministers (Lutheran) I have known or worked with or in my family could have said it better."
- "WOW! Dr Ehrman, you've helped make the Jesus from the Gospels a far more "real" person whose message and movement are truly actionable in my life. Thanks, Team Bart."
- "A priest couldn’t have made it better!"
- "Another from Peter Moulton: Thank you for a mind blowing ending to a great set of lectures."
- "The last part of Dr Ehrman’s lecture today was excellent. I personally do believe Jesus took everything to the next level."
For those of us who are mostly used to seeing Dr. Ehrman cover the New Testament from a historical critical view, it was quite a surprising and moving performance.
Fortunately we caught it on recording and wanted to bring it to you. You can catch all eight 50-minute lectures at:
https://barterhman.com/matthew