As early christians wrestled with their beliefs and theologies surrounding Jesus, they both produced new texts and gospels, and edited existing ones to better fit with specific theological views. What were some of these early heretical beliefs? How did the Church Fathers fight against them? And can we see traces of that battle in the manuscripts of the New Testament? Today on Misquoting Jesus, we're talking about how the New Testament was shaped by theological fights between early Christian groups.

The Bible's world is crowded and unsystematic: ghosts, familiar spirits, demons that cause illness, and the dead who can be summoned. And at times, this world breaks through in ways modern readers don't always appreciate. When the disciples see Jesus walking on the water, their first thought is that he's a ghost. After the resurrection, Jesus has to reassure them he isn't one. King Saul has a medium call the prophet Samuel up from the dead, and it works.

So what happened to all those ghosts? Bart joins host Megan Lewis to explore the haunted world the Bible was written in, and how later Christians tidied it into a neater system of angels and demons, heaven and hell. Along the way: why demons were blamed for illness, why Jesus was accused of sorcery, and why believing in angels but not ghosts turns out to be a choice Christians made, not one the Bible made for them.

Most Christians grow up believing that everyone is born a sinner, that when Adam and Eve ate the fruit, humanity inherited a broken nature and a guilt we can't escape. It's one of the most influential ideas in Western Christianity. But it isn't in Genesis, Jesus never taught it, and it didn't take its familiar form until four centuries after him.

Bart joins host Megan Lewis to trace where original sin actually came from: what the Garden of Eden story says and doesn't say, what Paul meant when he wrote that sin came into the world through one man, and how Augustine turned that line into a doctrine about every human being from the moment of conception. Along the way, why Eastern Orthodox Christians never fully accepted it, and what changes when you realize this belief has a history.