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

The Myth of the First Christmas

Yesterday I started a little series of posts on the Christmas story, both in the NT and in later Gospels, by reproducing a little meditation from seven years ago. Here’s one that I wrote last year. Again, it was for some national media (a magazine, I think), but I don’t remember and I didn’t write it down. It deals with some of the things that I’ll be talking about at greater length in some of my forthcoming posts, but in a succinct way; still, be forewarned, there will necessarily be overlap. In this piece, though, I am dealing, ultimately, not so much with the discrepancies and historical problems with the story per se; those allow me to get to a bigger point at the end. In any event, here it is, as written last year at this time. ****************************************************************************************************************** The Myth of the First Christmas Once more the season is come upon us. At its heart stands a tale of two-thousand year vintage, the Christmas story. Or perhaps we should say the Christmas myth. When [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:09:34-04:00December 6th, 2012|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

An Agnostic Reflects on Christmas

I suppose a lot of people have the birth of Jesus on their minds these days. Hard not to. It occurred to me that it might be interesting to do a series of posts on what ancient Gospels – mainly the two of the New Testament, but also some of the others outside – say about it. When I indicate that there are two in the NT that talk about it, it is because Matthew and Luke are the only ones that say anything about the birth of Jesus. I think what I’ll do in these posts is talk about features of each one separately and then talk about the two of them together, with a few posts here at the beginning to provide different angles to introduce to the matter. But I’ll also talk about other Gospels, like the Proto-Gospel of James (which in the Middle Ages was in some places at least as popular as the NT Gospels) and the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. One of the reasons this is on my mind just [...]

BDEhrman2018-01-01T01:31:24-05:00December 5th, 2012|Bart’s Biography, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Feedback on Excursus

Warning. This is a long post. I am editing the first chapter of my Bible Introduction. At its end, I give an excursus that explains that we will be approaching the Bible from a literary and historical perspective, not a confessional perspective. It’s a very tricky and touchy topic, as this is meant for 19 and 20 year olds, most of whom know the Bible, if they do at all, only from church and Sunday school – believing perspectives. I give this kind of excursus in my New Testament textbook, and most teachers like it. But I’ve altered it for this book, to stress that the emphasis is both literary and historical. I would like some feedback: do you think this works, is sensitive to students, yet is clear about what the book will be doing and why? Let me know, if you feel so inclined. Excursus Most of the people who are deeply interested in the Bible in modern American culture are committed Jews or Christians who have been taught that this is a [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:09:40-04:00December 3rd, 2012|Book Discussions, Teaching Christianity|

Melito and arly Christian Anti-Judaism

I AM IN THE PROCESS OF MAKING THE PENULTIMATE EDITS ON MY MY BIBLE INTRODUCTION. TODAY I HAD TO REVIEW AN EXCURSUS ON EARLY JEWISH-CHRISTIAN RELATIONS IN WHICH I DISCUSS THE RISE OF ANTI-JUDAISM IN THE EARLY CHURCH, IN CLUDING THIS BIT ON MELITO OF SARDIS. I THOUGHT IT MIGHT BE WORTH POSTING HERE. ******************************************************************************************************************** Melito was a bishop of the city of Sardis in Asia Mino in the mid to late second century. Today he is best known for a sermon he wrote that lambasts the Jews for the role they played in the death of Jesus. In it we find the first instance of a Christian author claiming that since the Jews killed Jesus, and since Jesus was God, the Jews are guilty of deicide – the murder of God. This charge was used, of course, to justify all sorts of hateful acts of violence against Jews over the centuries. In part, the rhetorical eloquence with which the charge was sometimes leveled has contributed ot the emotional reaction that it produced. Consider Melito’s [...]

BDEhrman2018-01-01T01:33:26-05:00December 2nd, 2012|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Proto-Orthodox Writers, Public Forum|

Apostles as Guarantors of the Truth

Question: I was making my case against the resurrection and Jesus’ divinity tonight to a Christian and we ended up discussing oral tradition. His assertion was that there was enough of a check on what was being transmitted orally that we can be assured the information is reliable. For example, in the context of the story in Mark of the two women discovering the empty tomb, he said that this is probably true because, if it wasn’t, people that knew the disciples, who knew the two women, would have heard about it and put a stop to the story. I thought this was naive to the extreme but I’m not expert on oral traditions so I wanted to take it to you and see what you’d say about it. Response: I suppose I made your friend’s argument back when I was an evangelical Christian, but for the life of me I can’t see how any intelligent person with any experience of the world at all can make it. (I think I was intelligent at the [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:09:47-04:00December 1st, 2012|Canonical Gospels, Reader’s Questions|

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The Myth of the First Christmas

An Agnostic Reflects on Christmas

Feedback on Excursus

Melito and arly Christian Anti-Judaism

Apostles as Guarantors of the Truth