June 2012 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

My Next Book

Several readers have suggested that this kind of post should be available on the blog for everyone, not just members. I think they're right! ******************************************************************************************************************* The next two weeks are going to be highly intense for me, and I’m a bit worried about how I will be able to fit in my “blog time.” The reason: I will be throwing myself day and night into writing my next book. Background Part One: As I think I’ve mentioned on the blog before, I try to write three different kinds of books for three different audiences. This keeps life interesting and varied for me. First, I write books for scholars, in which I try to advance serious scholarship, speaking the language that works with my colleagues who have PhD’s in the field and who are deeply conversant with all the ancient and modern languages and with all the major critical and historical issues. My most recent work of this kind is due out in October: Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in the Early Christian [...]

BDEhrman2017-12-23T15:42:58-05:00June 30th, 2012|Book Discussions, Public Forum|

Q & A with Ben Witherington: Part 10 (and last!)

Q. In what way is the Jewish notion of a resurrection a different idea than either the fertility crop cycle idea, or what is sometimes said about pagan deities that either disappear or die? A. One of the reasons for thinking that the belief in Jesus’ death and resurrection is not exactly like what you can find in pagan myths about their gods is that it is solidly rooted in Jewish apocalyptic beliefs of the first century. This should come as no surprise, since Jesus and his followers were not pagans with pagan views of the divine realm, but first-century apocalyptically minded Jews. In some pagan circles, there was a belief in fertility gods, who would spend some time in the underworld and some time in this world, alternating year after year.... FOR THE REST OF MY RESPONSE, go to the Members Site. If you don't yet belong, JOIN NOW!!

BDEhrman2017-12-23T15:43:58-05:00June 29th, 2012|Bart's Critics, Early Judaism, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Q & A with Ben Witherington: Part 10 (the last!)

CONTINUATION! Ben Witherington, a conservative evangelical Christian New Testament scholar, has asked me to respond to a number of questions about my book Did Jesus Exist, especially in light of criticism I have received for it (not, for the most part, from committed Christians!). His blog is widely read by conservative evangelicals, and he has agreed to post the questions and my answers without editing, to give his readers a sense of why I wrote the book, what I hoped to accomplish by it, and what I would like them to know about it. He has graciously agreed to allow me to post my responses here on my blog, which, if I’m not mistaken, has a very different readership (although there is undoubtedly some overlap). It’s a rather long set of questions and answers – over 10,000 words. So I will post them in bits and pieces so as not to overwhelm anyone. The Q is obviously his, the A is mine. Some of Ben Witherington’s most popular books are The Jesus Quest, and The [...]

BDEhrman2020-12-02T00:11:16-05:00June 29th, 2012|Bart's Critics, Book Discussions, Early Judaism, Historical Jesus, Paul and His Letters|

Helping Charity and Improving My Blog

As I have mentioned elsewhere on this blog, I have had three debates with Dinesh D’Souza, an extremely smart, articulate, and conservative fellow, on the Problem of Suffering. The debates were not about whether there is a problem (yes there is!), but about whether the problem is, or should be, insurmountable for faith. For many people (like me) it is insurmountable. But I don’t think it necessarily is for everyone. Dinesh does not think it should be for anyone (including me). In one of the debates Dinesh argued – I don’t know why, as I don’t recall the context – that contrary to what you might think, it is precisely conservative Christian believers who are more prone to give to charity than liberal non-religious people. To back up his point, he referenced a study Who Really Cares, by Arthur C. Brooks, who also seems to be an extremely smart, articulate, and conservative fellow. Brooks claims, apparently, that it is not the bleeding heart liberals but the anti-welfare conservatives who give more money to social causes. [...]

BDEhrman2012-06-28T23:06:37-04:00June 28th, 2012|Public Forum|

Q & A with Ben Witherington: Part 9

CONTINUATION! Ben Witherington, a conservative evangelical Christian New Testament scholar, has asked me to respond to a number of questions about my book "Did Jesus Exist," especially in light of criticism I have received for it (not, for the most part, from committed Christians!). His blog is widely read by conservative evangelicals, and he has agreed to post the questions and my answers without editing, to give his readers a sense of why I wrote the book, what I hoped to accomplish by it, and what I would like them to know about it. He has graciously agreed to allow me to post my responses here on my blog, which, if I’m not mistaken, has a very different readership (although there is undoubtedly some overlap). It’s a rather long set of questions and answers – over 10,000 words. So I will post them in bits and pieces so as not to overwhelm anyone. The Q is obviously his, the A is mine. Some of Ben Witherington’s most popular books are The Jesus Quest, and [...]

BDEhrman2021-01-10T00:53:45-05:00June 27th, 2012|Bart's Critics, Historical Jesus, Mythicism|

Would We Recognize an Original Manuscript?

READER'S QUESTION: Were we to have any *original manuscript* of any NT document in our midst, would we be able to recognize and confirm it as such? If so, how? BART'S RESPONSE: Now that’s a question I’ve never been asked before! And in fact, that I’ve never really thought about before. It’s been fun to reflect on it a bit. To get to the short answer: I think the answer would almost certainly be "No". The reasons are of particular interest, though. Suppose by chance a very early copy of the Gospel of John appeared. How would we date it? Manuscripts are dated on the basis of palaeography – an analysis of the handwriting. Since, before the invention of printing, handwriting changed slowly, over periods of time, we can collect specimens of Greek manuscripts (or Latin or Coptic etc.) and find ones that have dates written on them. We can then establish what Greek handwriting looked like at one period or another. This, of course, has all been done for us already by experts [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:36:05-04:00June 26th, 2012|New Testament Manuscripts, Reader’s Questions|

Outta here (for a couple of days)

Friends, Fans, and Others, I am heading outta here for a few days, taking my 85-year-old mom trout fishing! We will be in a remote part of the Missouri Ozarks, where there is no Internet connection. I have prepared a couple of posts for when I'm away, which my trusty website and technology support, Steven Ray, will put up on the blog while I'm gone. But I will not be able to respond to comments, until I get back at the end of the week. Just so you know: I'm not meaning to ignore you!

BDEhrman2017-12-25T11:05:22-05:00June 25th, 2012|Bart’s Biography, Public Forum|

The Hebrew Bible and Its Sources

QUESTION: Do you have a suggestion for a book concerning the OT's construction? I believe in the History of God (by K. Armstrong) she mentioned that there were about five distinct writers for the OT. Is this the scholarly view and do you have a book suggestion to delve deeper into it? RESPONSE: Right! The Old Testament (for Christians; otherwise: the Jewish Scriptures, the Hebrew Bible; the Tanakh – these are all more or less synonyms.) It’s been on my mind a lot lately. Right now, my current writing project is a college-level textbook on the entire Bible, Genesis to Revelation. This seems to me to be way too much to cram into a semester, but as it turns out, something like half the colleges in the country teach biblical courses this way, rather than having Hebrew Bible in one semester and New Testament another. And, in my judgment, the textbooks currently available for the course are not as good as they should be. So my publisher, some years ago, urged me to write [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:36:13-04:00June 25th, 2012|Book Discussions, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Reader’s Questions|

Q & A with Ben Witherington: Part 8

CONTINUATION! Ben Witherington, a conservative evangelical Christian New Testament scholar, has asked me to respond to a number of questions about my book Did Jesus Exist, especially in light of criticism I have received for it (not, for the most part, from committed Christians!). His blog is widely read by conservative evangelicals, and he has agreed to post the questions and my answers without editing, to give his readers a sense of why I wrote the book, what I hoped to accomplish by it, and what I would like them to know about it. He has graciously agreed to allow me to post my responses here on my blog, which, if I’m not mistaken, has a very different readership (although there is undoubtedly some overlap). It’s a rather long set of questions and answers – over 10,000 words. So I will post them in bits and pieces so as not to overwhelm anyone. The Q’s are obviously his, the A’s mine. Some of Ben Witherington’s most popular books are The Jesus Quest, and The Problem with [...]

BDEhrman2021-01-10T00:53:59-05:00June 24th, 2012|Bart's Critics, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, Historical Jesus, Mythicism|

Why Did “Orthodox” Christianity Win: Part 2

In my previous post I talked about the “Eusebian model” for understanding the relationship of orthodoxy and heresy in earliest Christianity, and then about the counter-view set forth by Walter Bauer in his important study of 1934. What do scholars think today? Only the most conservative scholars (fundamentalists and extremely conservative evangelical Christian scholars) still hold to a Eusebian view. For them, not only was Eusebius’s form of orthodoxy taught by Jesus (who told his disciples that he was fully God and fully man, etc.), but their *own* view of the faith was taught by both Jesus and all his disciples. No one else thinks so. Jesus did not teach his disciples the Nicene Creed! FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in as a Member. Click here for membership options. If you don't belong yet, JOIN!! Bauer’s view has been enormously influential on critical scholarship, although no one today accepts the details of Bauer’s very detailed exposition. And everyone recognizes that there are major problems with the case that Bauer built. Many of [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-07T14:44:07-04:00June 23rd, 2012|Fourth-Century Christianity, Heresy and Orthodoxy, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Reader’s Questions|

Why Did “Orthodox” Christianity Win?

QUESTION: What I have been wondering lately is "why" did Christianity win out. There seemed to be much competition in the ancient world between the pagan polytheisms and monotheistic religions. Competition not only between the Jewish religion and Christian religion but within Christianity. I would be interested in why you think the current version of Christianity won out. Was it purely a matter of cultural evolution and this form of Christianity seemed to benefit people the most, easiest to adhere to, most flexible. RESPONSE: In my previous post I tried to deal (briefly!) with the first part of this question: why did Christianity succeed in the first place, so that it eventually became the dominant religion of the Roman Empire. In this post I will deal (briefly again!) with the second question: why did a certain form of Christianity – widely labeled “orthodox” – end up triumphing within Christianity, when there were so many other forms of Christianity that were competing for dominance? This too is not at all an easy question, and I have [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-07T14:34:22-04:00June 22nd, 2012|Fourth-Century Christianity, Heresy and Orthodoxy, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Reader’s Questions|

Q & A with Ben Witherington: Part 7

CONTINUATION! Ben Witherington, a conservative evangelical Christian New Testament scholar, has asked me to respond to a number of questions about my book Did Jesus Exist, especially in light of criticism I have received for it (not, for the most part, from committed Christians!). His blog is widely read by conservative evangelicals, and he has agreed to post the questions and my answers without editing, to give his readers a sense of why I wrote the book, what I hoped to accomplish by it, and what I would like them to know about it. He has graciously agreed to allow me to post my responses here on my blog, which, if I’m not mistaken, has a very different readership (although there is undoubtedly some overlap). It’s a rather long set of questions and answers – over 10,000 words. So I will post them in bits and pieces so as not to overwhelm anyone. The Q’s are obviously his, the A’s mine. Some of Ben Witherington’s most popular books are The Jesus Quest, and The Problem [...]

BDEhrman2021-01-10T00:54:21-05:00June 21st, 2012|Bart's Critics, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Historical Jesus|

The Growth of Early Christianity: A Clarification

In my last post I was discussing why / how Christianity succeeded in taking over the Empire, and a number of readers have pointed out that the conversion of Constantine had something to do with it. Yes indeed!! Constantine had EVERYTHING to do with it. If he/that hadn’t happened, there’s no telling what would have been. Constantine was the real game-changer. But my post (I wasn’t clear about this: my mistake) wasn’t dealing with the cataclysmic events of the fourth century; I was trying to talk about what was going on *before* the game changed. The question I had and have is how Christianity managed to grow exponentially from the time of the apostles up to the early fourth century, when everything took a radical turn with the conversion of the emperor (which led, before century’s end, to Christianity becoming the state religion!). If we assume that the New Testament is basically right, just for the sake of the argument (and in this it cannot be wrong by much, any way you look at it) [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-04T13:39:30-04:00June 20th, 2012|Constantine, Fourth-Century Christianity, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum, Reader’s Questions, Spread of Christianity|

Why Did Christianity Succeed?

QUESTION: What I have been wondering lately is "why" did Christianity win out. There seemed to be much competition in the ancient world between the pagan polytheisms and monotheistic religions. Competition not only between the Jewish religion and Christian religion but within Christianity. I would be interested in why you think the current version of Christianity won out. Was it purely a matter of cultural evolution and this form of Christianity seemed to benefit people the most, easiest to adhere to, most flexible. RESPONSE: There are actually two questions here, both of them really interesting and really important! One is: why / how did the “orthodox” form of Christianity manage to become dominant within the religion. I will take a stab at answering that question in a couple of days, but be forewarned: it’s not easy, especially in a 1000-word post on a blog! The other question is at least as interesting and even harder to answer: how / why did Christianity manage to become the dominant religion of the entire Roman Empire, so that [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-09T13:17:55-04:00June 19th, 2012|Constantine, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Reader’s Questions, Spread of Christianity|

Q & A with Ben Witherington: Part 6

Q. Mythicists seems to often uses the interpolation theory to explain away NT texts that are inconvenient to their agendas. Yet it is also true that some NT scholars use interpolation theories to the very same end, even when there is apparently no textual basis for the interpolation theory. Explain how the mythicists appeal to interpolation is special pleading, whereas it is not when some NT scholars resort to such a theory (take for example the case of 1 Cor. 14.33b-36, which is displaced in some manuscripts but to my knowledge there are no manuscripts that omit it altogether). A. A theory of interpolation argues that there are passages in the New Testament that were not originally there, even though they are still found in all the surviving manuscripts. When a passage (whether several verses, a single verse, or part of a verse) is not found in one or more manuscripts, then the decision whether it was originally in the NT is based on textual criticism. Scholars have to decide then which manuscript(s) more likely [...]

BDEhrman2021-01-10T00:55:55-05:00June 18th, 2012|Bart's Critics, Historical Jesus, Mythicism, New Testament Manuscripts|

Some Reading Suggestions on the New Testament

QUESTION: I've enjoyed reading "Jesus Interrupted" and "Misquoting Jesus". I am also listening to two of The Teaching Company courses you recorded - "The New Testament" and "Lost Christianities". Here is my question: Can you suggest additional books by other authors that provide balanced information on the New Testament? Such a bibliography would be a nice addition to your web site. RESPONSE: Ah yes! It’s important to hear various (balanced) views. I tell my students this and they sometimes are surprised, since they think that I imagine that my view is the only one worth hearing! But in my textbook on the New Testament (The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings) I provide suggestions for further reading at the end of each of the thirty chapters, for each relevant topic. I include, in virtually every chapter, an important book that I completely disagree with. Students, of every age, should get a range of perspective, weigh evidence, and make a decision for themselves. FOR THE REST of this Response, go to [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:38:30-04:00June 17th, 2012|Book Discussions, Reader’s Questions, Teaching Christianity|

Q & A with Ben Witherington: Part 5

Q. Various mythicists have tried to argue that in fact there is only one source, namely Mark, that provides evidence that Jesus existed and presumably he made up the idea? Why is this not a fair representation of the evidence, and why do you think it is that various of them hardly even deal with the evidence from Paul? A. Most mythicists claim that Paul never mentions the historical Jesus or says anything about him, but that he only speaks of a “mythical Christ” who was not a real human being. That is completely wrong. Paul tells us that Jesus was born of a woman, that he was born Jewish, that he had brothers, one of whom was named James (whom Paul personally knew), that he had twelve disciples, that he ministered to Jews, that he taught that it was wrong to get a divorce and that you should pay your preacher, that he had the last supper (Paul indicates what Jesus said at the time), and that he was crucified. Anyone who says that [...]

BDEhrman2021-01-10T00:56:14-05:00June 16th, 2012|Bart's Critics, Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Mythicism, Paul and His Letters|

My Apocrypha Seminar at the National Humanities Center: Part 2

In my earlier post I talked about the seminar I am now leading at the National Humanities Center, and mentioned the various primary (i.e., ancient) texts we’re discussing over the course of our three weeks together. These cover a range of books that did not “make it in” to the New Testament: non-canonical Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses. Terrific and terrifically interesting books, even if they never did become Scripture in the long run (many of them were in fact considered to be Scripture by one group or another during the early years of the church; that is one of the issues we are discussing in the seminar.) For part of each seminar we are talking about the meaning and interpretation of these texts: how does one understand the giant Jesus in the Gospel of Peter? The three – or is it four – Christs in the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter? The nature of the sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas (are they best seen as Gnostic?). The view of Jesus in the [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:38:43-04:00June 14th, 2012|Christian Apocrypha, Teaching Christianity|

Q & A with Ben Witherington: Part 4

CONTINUATION! Ben Witherington, a conservative evangelical Christian New Testament scholar, has asked me to respond to a number of questions about my book Did Jesus Exist, especially in light of criticism I have received for it (not, for the most part, from committed Christians!). His blog is widely read by conservative evangelicals, and he has agreed to post the questions and my answers without editing, to give his readers a sense of why I wrote the book, what I hoped to accomplish by it, and what I would like them to know about it. He has graciously agreed to allow me to post my responses here on my blog, which, if I’m not mistaken, has a very different readership (although there is undoubtedly some overlap). It’s a rather long set of questions and answers – over 10,000 words. So I will post them in bits and pieces so as not to overwhelm anyone. The Q’s are obviously his, the A’s mine. Some of Ben Witherington’s most popular books are The Jesus Quest, and The Problem with [...]

BDEhrman2020-12-17T23:45:24-05:00June 13th, 2012|Bart's Critics, Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Mythicism, Paul and His Letters|

Personal Reflections: My Apocrypha Seminar at the National Humanities Center

If I had a fiver for every time someone who knows I’m a university professor says to me, “So, now you have the summer off!” – I’d buy an apartment on the upper West side. But it’s understandable, I know. The professorial life looks awful darn cushy: teach a couple a classes per semester, for fifteen weeks at a shot, and that’s *it*! 30 weeks of the year on, 22 weeks of the year off. Right? Yeah, well, kinda. To be fair, I should stress that it is indeed an amazing job and an unbelievable privilege to teach at the university level. I have colleagues who take it for granted, but after 27 years at it, I don’t at all. I know very deeply just how lucky I am. But it really is not (at least for anyone I know very well) a year-long boondoggle. Quite the contrary. In one of my “series” of posts I’ve been trying to describe what it is professional scholars do, for those out there who wonder. So far I [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:39:02-04:00June 12th, 2012|Christian Apocrypha, Teaching Christianity|