March 2021 - Page 2 of 2 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

Two More Live Lectures on Sunday, one of them very strange….

This Sunday, March 14, I will be giving TWO live Zoom lectures (not one) for anyone who wants to come. They will be recorded for my undergraduate course on the New Testament and there will be a 30-minute Q & A to follow the second one. Please NOTE the time; the first is at 2:00 p.m., second at 3:15 p.m. EST. When I say "lectures" with one of the two I'm using the term loosely, as you'll see below. There is no charge per se, but I would like to ask for a donation to the blog in exchange, if you can see your way clear to do it. If not, that’s fine – we all have our circumstances! But one of the main reasons I’m doing these lectures is to raise money for the Food Bank of North Carolina; as with all food banks right now, it is in desperate need. Your donation is completely tax deductible. Here is the info you need: Time: Sunday, March 14, 2:00 pm and 3:15 (EST) The Lectures [...]

BDEhrman2021-03-12T12:40:44-05:00March 12th, 2021|Public Forum|

What Are the Sources of the Hebrew Bible?

Just now I was fishing around for an old post for a rerun, and thought it would be nice to do something on the Old Testament. It's been a while! Here is one from many years ago that deals with a question I still get regularly today. You might have it too! QUESTION: Do you have a suggestion for a book concerning the Old Testament'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: This is an issue that has been on my mind a lot lately [I was writing this in 2012!]. 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 [...]

BDEhrman2021-03-01T08:09:25-05:00March 11th, 2021|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

Christ as “Not God” in the Second Century: Early Jewish Adoptionists

You might think – and many people do think – that as Christianity developed, every Christian more or less went along with the “standard” or “orthodox” Christian beliefs that emerged. The term “orthodoxy” literally means “right beliefs” (or correct opinions); the word “heterodoxy” means “other opinions” (that is, other than the right ones!). A term often used alternatively for the latter is “heresy,” which literally means “choice,” used for people who “choose” to believe the wrong things. (!) As you might imagine, these are highly subjective terms A view is “right” (that is, orthodox) for you depending on what you personally believe. That’s because no one chooses to believe something they know is wrong. If they think it’s wrong, they change their view to what is right. But that means that everyone necessarily believes they are right, i.e. orthodox. Or as one wag put it, “orthodoxy is my doxy, and heterodoxy is your doxy.” That also means that it’s impossible to say that one group within early Christianity was absolutely right about everything (i.e. “orthodox”) [...]

BDEhrman2021-03-01T08:28:46-05:00March 10th, 2021|Early Christian Doctrine, Heresy and Orthodoxy|

Was Matthew Influenced by Buddhist Writings? Platinum Post by Steve Sutter

Platinum Members! Here is another guest post by Steve Sutter on interesting parallels between Buddhist writings and the Gospels. What do you think? Let him, me, and your fellow Platinum folk know! ALSO: The platinum-post well is running dry. Do you have something you'd like to contribute? Go for it! We'd all enjoy it and you can get your thoughts and ideas out there to a generous and welcoming public! It can be on anything related to the blog, if even remotely! But for now, here is Steve's post. ****************************** Matthew’s Gospel Tinged by Buddhism as Well It seems to me entirely possible that the authors of the Gospels of Luke and Matthew had knowledge of Buddhist scriptures while composing the content of their manuscripts in the late first century AD. Some parallels are very fascinating. Using a similar format as articles I published in the Fort Fairfield Journal November 18, 2020 and January 13, 2021, let me again share a sample of Buddhist scriptures, while pointing this time to verses in [...]

BDEhrman2021-03-10T11:46:12-05:00March 9th, 2021|Canonical Gospels, Platinums|

Where Did the Trinity Come From? The (Briefer) Video Version

Now that I've established that the earliest Christians came to think Christ was God (in some sense or other) and continued to think God was God, and yet thought there was only one God -- I am able to move into the thinking and debates based on those views that eventually led to the doctrine of the trinity. This seems like a good time to share a video produced five years ago or so in which I talk about the issue at a speaking gig I did at the Coral Gables Congregational Church in (as one would expect!) Coral Gables, Florida. I did this gig soon after my book was published: "How Jesus Became God." The lecture was the third in a series I did at the church. This was back when I did lectures in front of human beings instead of in front of a computer screen. Ah, the good ole days. On future posts on the blog I'll be going into considerably more detail, but this can give you the major nuts and [...]

BDEhrman2021-03-01T08:10:32-05:00March 9th, 2021|Early Christian Doctrine, Video Media|

The Doctrine of the Trinity: Where We Are So Far

I am in the middle of a very long thread dealing with the question of where the doctrine of the Trinity came from. I started the thread on January 7, here: https://ehrmanblog.org/is-the-trinity-in-the-bible/ , and so have been at it for nearly two months, on and off (with a other things thrown in en route, obviously). And I have gotten nowhere near, yet, to answering the question. So it goes in the world of complicated historical questions. (It is obviously a theological question, but I’m answering it historically rather than theologically). We are at a point where it would be a good time to explain where we are, why we have come this way, and where we are going. I need to begin by explaining why I have spent SO much time on the question of what it meant for early Christians to call Jesus God. It’s very simple really. Christians over time developed more and more exalted views of Jesus, from being a human messiah, to being a human sacrificed for the sins of others, [...]

BDEhrman2021-03-01T08:15:47-05:00March 7th, 2021|Early Christian Doctrine, Historical Jesus|

Another Weird Event in my Life that Led Me to Be a Research Scholar

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BDEhrman2021-03-01T08:22:34-05:00March 6th, 2021|Bart’s Biography, Public Forum|

God Showing Up a (Apparently) Human in the Hebrew Bible

So far in my posts on Christology I have talked a bit about pagan views of the divine realm and its relationship to the human. There is a lot more that could be said about that – in particular with the various ways that humans could be thought of as in some sense divine in the pagan world. But a lot of readers may be wondering what any of this has to do with Christianity since obviously the original followers of Jesus were Jewish, not Gentile, and their views of divinity in relationship to humanity would have been guided by Jewish traditions, such as those of the Old Testament. Fair enough! So before going any further, I thought I should make some posts about divinity in relationship to humanity in the Christian Old Testament. If God could look like a human in the OT, is that what's going on with Jesus? Was he God, but only looked human? This entire thread will be dealing with that kind of question. Interested? Join the blog! The [...]

BDEhrman2021-03-04T19:02:53-05:00March 4th, 2021|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

TWO Live Lectures This Sunday (We’ve Changed The Plan…)! How Do We Know about the Historical Jesus? and Jesus, The Apocalyptic Prophet

APOLOGIES for the earlier post. It was mistaken. Can you imagine? Here is the true, infallible, inerrant information! At last, you may say.... This Sunday, March 7, I will be giving TWO live Zoom lectures (not one) for anyone who wants to come. They will be recorded for my undergraduate course on the New Testament and there will be a 30-minute Q & A to follow the second one. Please NOTE the time; the first is at 2:00 p.m., second at 3:15 p.m. EST There is no charge per se, but I would like to ask for a donation to the blog in exchange, if you can see your way clear to do it. If not, that’s fine – we all have our circumstances! But one of the main reasons I’m doing these lectures is to raise money for the Food Bank of North Carolina; as with all food banks right now, it is in desperate need. Your donation is completely tax deductible. Here is the info you need: Time: Sunday, March 7, 2:00 pm [...]

BDEhrman2021-03-03T18:19:48-05:00March 3rd, 2021|Public Forum|

The Divine Realm in Antiquity (Appropriately: A Pyramid!)

In my previous posts I have been insisting that if one wants to say that “Jesus is God” according to an early Christian text, one has to ask “in what *sense* is he God? Now is a good time for me to lay out how I understand ancient people understood the divine realm. It was very different from the way most people today – at least the people I run across – imagine the divine realm. As I pointed out earlier, people today think of God as completely Other than us humans. We are mortal and limited in every respect; he is immortal and unlimited. He is all-powerful, all-knowing, and everywhere-present. We are by comparison weak, ignorant, and in one place at a time. He is infinite and eternal; we are finite and temporal. There is an unbridgeable gap between us and God. (Although in Christian theology, it is Jesus who bridges that gap by being a divine being who becomes human; in traditional theology, he did that so that we humans could then become [...]

BDEhrman2021-03-01T08:38:37-05:00March 3rd, 2021|Greco-Roman Religions and Culture|

Apologies about the Comments!

Many apologies to Silver, Gold, and Platinum members. We are having a technical difficulty with comments on posts. Ugh. But we're on it and will soon get it resolved.

BDEhrman2021-03-02T19:03:38-05:00March 2nd, 2021|Public Forum|

Christian Attitudes toward War, Through the Ages: Platinum Post by Dan Kohanski

I am very pleased to have this interesting post on an unusually important topic for Platinum Members, produced by one of your own, Dan Kohanski. He tells me that the post has been adapted from part of a chapter, "When God Goes to War," in a book he is working on about the impact of Western religion on the world. I venture to say the information he presents here includes many things many of us do not know! Feel free to comment! (ALSO: I'm running short of future Platinum posts: if you can work one up, on any topic of relevance to anything we do -- a broad category -- please send it along) ********************* Shifts in the Christian Approach to War The earliest Christians had the mixed fortune to live under the Pax Romana, the peace of the Roman empire. On the one hand, they suffered from its harsh response to any insult to the state gods. On the other hand, the pax kept the peace. Early Christians could thus afford to argue that [...]

BDEhrman2021-03-02T19:01:29-05:00March 2nd, 2021|Platinums, Reflections and Ruminations|

The Stories We Tell: Guest Post by Robin Jones

As many of you know, a few months ago I invited my long time friend and erstwhile fellow-student at Moody Bible Institute, Robin Jones, to write a some posts for the blog. Robin continues to be an evangelical Christian and is deeply committed to important social issues that I think just about all of us are also concerned about: hunger, homelessness, suffering, and justice. Here now is her third and final post. I hope you find it both interesting and inspiring: ************************ Who doesn’t love a good story? Stories embody our humanity in a way few other things do. Some of you may be familiar with the radio commentator Paul Harvey who was famous for telling how an unknown twist of fate catapulted someone into a totally different life story or created a completely unexpected conclusion. After giving the surprise ending, he would famously conclude with “and that’s the rest of the story.” While Paul Harvey was indeed a great storyteller, I propose that the master at that craft was Jesus. He told stories [...]

BDEhrman2021-03-01T08:39:40-05:00March 2nd, 2021|Public Forum|

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