June 2012 - Page 2 of 2 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

Which Charities Does The Blog Support?

QUESTION: With administration costs taking bites out of donated dollars I hesitate to give $s to unknown/redundant agencies which duplicate efforts and erode potential $s for receipients. Would 'you' identify the agencies being used by those contributing to your foundation? What % of donated dollars are spent on administrative costs per dollar received? .... I support what you are doing in the areas of poverty and want to know how wisely and through whom it is dispersed. RESPONSE: This is obviously a most important question!! And I have gotten it, or something like it, a couple of times this week, so I thought I should deal with it here in the Public Forum. As it turns out, I dealt with it once before, but it was a couple of months ago. I will simply repeat a good bit of what I said then -- so if this sounds familiar, well, save yourself some time and ... read something else! On the site itself I make it as clear as I can that none of the [...]

BDEhrman2012-06-12T00:01:37-04:00June 12th, 2012|Public Forum|

Q & A with Ben Witherington: Part 3

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 [...]

BDEhrman2021-02-02T01:01:22-05:00June 11th, 2012|Bart's Critics, Early Judaism, Historical Jesus, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Mythicism|

Should We Change the Canon of Scripture?

QUESTION: Given the criteria used to determine what would go on to constitute the New Testament canon, how is it that Hebrews and the book of Revelation remain part of the canon? I understand that Christians came to believe that they were authored by the apostles which is why they made it into the canon, but we now know that they weren't authored by Paul or John..so why are they still in the NT? RESPONSE: Interesting idea! I sometimes get asked what I would exclude from the canon if given the choice, and I almost always say 1 Timothy (because of what it says about women in 2:11-15, and how the passage has been used for such horrible purposes over the years). But, well, it ain’t gonna happen. I don’t get a vote. And that’s the problem with Hebrews and Revelation – and all the other books that were admitted when Church Fathers (wrongly) thought they were written by apostles of Jesus (in this case Paul and John). No one is going to give any [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:39:17-04:00June 10th, 2012|Catholic Epistles, History of Christianity (100-300CE), New Testament Manuscripts, Reader’s Questions|

Q & A with Ben Witherington: Part 2

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 [...]

BDEhrman2020-12-17T23:41:39-05:00June 8th, 2012|Bart's Critics, Historical Jesus, Mythicism|

Was Jesus an Essene?

QUESTION: I was wondering how big of an influence you think the Essenes had on Jesus and his teachings, and if there's any evidence that he and John The Baptist were students of that philosophy. Jesus' apocalyptic teachings seem to align with them a lot. RESPONSE: Great question! When the Dead Sea Scrolls (= DSS) were discovered in 1947, it was quickly realized that this was a library of documents produced by the Jewish group known from other ancient authors (such as Josephus and Pliny the Elder) as the Essenes (this identification is debated among some scholars; but the solid majority of scholars agree today that the “Essene” hypothesis is right). The Essenes were known from antiquity for being a rigorously ascetic group. The DSS themselves were an entire library of writings. Some of them were copies of biblical books (Hebrew Bible) – significant because they were about a thousand years older than the oldest copy otherwise available. Others were previously unknown works: commentaries on biblical books, apocalyptic treatises, instructions for how the community was [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:39:38-04:00June 7th, 2012|Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

Q&A With Ben Witherington: Part 1

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 [...]

BDEhrman2020-12-17T23:39:40-05:00June 6th, 2012|Bart's Critics, Book Discussions, Historical Jesus, Mythicism|

Which Bible Translation Do I Prefer?

QUESTION: Dr. Ehrman, most of your readers in the ancient languages that the Bible was written in, therefore must rely on translations. Clearly no one translation is conclusive, but for clarity of reading and reliable research, can you recommend some translations to us? Conversely, do you have any that readers should avoid, because of clear bias or a little too loose? RESPONSE: When I published Misquoting Jesus, I received a lot of emails from a lot of people asking a lot of questions. But the one question I got asked more than any other was this one (in various forms): which translation of the Bible do I recommend? I should have answered it in the book itself; it would have made my life oh so much easier. There are lots and lots of good translations that are available today. The first thing to stress about them is that just about every one of them (just about! I’m sure there are exceptions, although offhand I can’t think of any) has been done by bona [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:40:02-04:00June 5th, 2012|Christian Apocrypha, History of Biblical Scholarship, New Testament Manuscripts, Reader’s Questions|

The Work of the Professional Scholar 10: Editorial Work (Books)

In addition to serving as editors and editorial board members for academic journals, many scholars also serve in the same capacity for scholarly book series published by academic presses. Over the years – again, just taking myself as a not particularly unusual example – I have been on the editoral boards for a number of scholarly monographs series: Studies and Documents (published by Eerdmans Press); Early Christianity in Context (T & T Clark), and Vigiliae Christianae Supplements (E. J. Brill). Scholars serving in this capacity perform a similar service to those on editorial boards for journals, but now, rather than evaluating academic articles for publication, they are evaluating books, to be published in a series that is usually devoted to a certain kind of book written, broadly, on a certain kind of subject in the field. Serving as the referee for a book is obviously a good deal more demanding than for an article. Books are much longer, more thoroughly researched, and (far) more important for the academic career of the author. And so a [...]

BDEhrman2020-12-29T01:03:06-05:00June 4th, 2012|Bart's Critics, Bart’s Biography, History of Biblical Scholarship|

My Views on Suffering Are Not Held by Those Who Suffer

In two of my debates, one with the “Messianic-Jewish Apologist” Michael Brown (whom I had never heard of before, but who was a remarkably good debater) and with the conservative Christian Dinesh D’Souza (whom I had heard of before, loud and clear, and who is also a remarkably good debater), I have been confronted with a point that, in both instances, my opponents thought was a decisive strike against me. My views of suffering are not shared by the people who, unlike me, actually suffer. It’s an interesting point. To explain it, and my response to it, I need to say a few words about the context of these debates. The topic of my debates on the problem of suffering is never whether or not there is suffering. Luckily. Everyone (at least everyone I debate, and most everyone who listens to the debates) agrees that there is suffering. The question at stake is whether it makes sense to believe in God given the nature and extent of suffering in the world. FOR THE REST OF [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:40:18-04:00June 3rd, 2012|Bart's Debates|

Am I an Agnostic or an Atheist?

QUESTION: If you don't think God exists, why do you refer to yourself as an agnostic? If this is your perspective, why not refer to yourself as an atheist? Could it be that you don't believe the Christian God exists, but are open to the possibility that some kind of higher power exists (this is my perspective) and this is why you call yourself agnostic? ANSWER: I have been getting this question a lot, and so I’ve decided to try to explain my position a bit more fully here in this post. The first thing to say is that I had no idea how militant both atheists and agnostics could be about their labels, until I became an agnostic myself! FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in as a member. If you don't belong yet, JOIN!! ANSWER [continued]: As a believer, I pretty much thought they were two amicably related positions, one saying that there is no God and the other saying that s/he doesn’t know if there is a God. But [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:40:26-04:00June 2nd, 2012|Bart’s Biography, Reader’s Questions|

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