March 2024 - Page 2 of 2 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

Gold Q&A: Ask Your Questions!

Hey Golds and Platinums, you the few, the proud: Time again for the Big Dance! I'll be recording the March Gold Q&A this weekend, scheduling gods willing, to be published next week.. Got a burning, a smoldering, or a cool question? Ask away! Anything related to the blog. I'll do my best to answer. , Send your questions to [email protected], and Diane will compile and send me the list. DEADLINE: Get your question in by Friday (March 15, 2024) midnight (whenever midnight is in your time zone). Every question I get is interesting, but remember, Many are culled, but few are chosen. Questions that are shorter and to-the-pointer are more likely to be chosen. And zingers, as always are welcome!

BDEhrman2024-03-11T20:52:18-04:00March 11th, 2024|Public Forum|

Is There Any Point Doing a Public Debate?

I'm contemplating doing another debate for BECO (Bart Ehrman Courses Online; you can see the various courses on my website: http://www.bartehrman.com). It won't be just like the last one, on whether historians can "prove" that Jesus was raised from the dead, since that one was, well, seven hours! (https://www.bartehrman.com/did-the-resurrection-of-jesus-really-happen-bart-ehrman-mike-licona-debate/). But if I do it, it would be on something equally interesting. While pondering doing it, I remembered that long ago on the blog I talked about the value (or lack of value) of public debates, in relation to one of the exercises I do in my undergradaute classroom. I looked it over and thought it might be good to run the thread again. Here's the first one, on ... whether there is really any point in doing them... ************************* As most readers of the blog know, I do a good number of public debates, almost always (I’m trying to think if there is an exception!) with conservative Christians or fundamentalists who think that my views are dangerous to the good Christians of their communities and [...]

BDEhrman2024-03-03T11:15:45-05:00March 10th, 2024|Bart's Debates|

Did Paul Exchange Letters with the Greatest Roman Philosopher of His Day??

I've mentioned several non-canonical letters forged in Paul's name connected with the views of the second-century heretic Marcion. There are other letters out there that also (falsely) claim to be written by Paul but that were not forged in order to support or attack a particular heretical view in Paul's name. That is almost certainly the case with a set of letters that were accepted as authentically Paul's (though never accepted as canonical) for many centuries, down until relatively modern times: Paul's correspondence with the great philosopher (and personal tutor and advisor to the emperor Nero). Here's what I say about these letters in my book Forged (HarperOne, 2011). (If you want a more thorough analysis of these, and all the Pauline forgeries I'm mentioning in these posts, I get gratifyingly down in the weeds at good length in my academic book, Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics) ****************************** The Letters of Paul and Seneca A completely different agenda is found in a much later forgery of Pauline letters [...]

BDEhrman2024-02-29T10:59:04-05:00March 9th, 2024|Christian Apocrypha, Forgery in Antiquity, Paul and His Letters|

Paul’s Letter to the … Laodiceans? Long Thought to be Part of the New Testament!

One of the most intriguing letters forged in the name of Paul is his alleged letter to the Laodiceans. As you’ll see, it’s intriguing both because some Christian churches accepted it as part of the New Testament for centuries and because scholars have never been able to figure out why a forger bothered to write it. I have a theory about that though, which I laid out in my book Forgery and Counterforgery (Oxford University Press, 2013), from which I have taken this discussion. (I’ve edited it a bit to get rid of the weeds; here I explain the issues and my argument in accessible terms). ****************************** The Letter to the Laodiceans The Letter of “Paul” to the Laodiceans is a pastiche of Pauline phrases with no obvious theme or purpose. Apart from the opening line, drawn from Gal. 1:1, the borrowings are almost exclusively from Philippians. About a tenth of the letter represents “filler” provided by the author, which is also without character or color. Scholars have long vied with one another to see [...]

BDEhrman2024-02-29T10:47:20-05:00March 7th, 2024|Christian Apocrypha, Forgery in Antiquity, Paul and His Letters|

Platinum Webinar for March: Ethics Without God??

Dear Platinum Members, It's time for our Quarterly Platinum Webinar. We have scheduled it for Wednesday, March 13, 2023, at 7:30 pm. When I was a young evangelical Christian, I ran across a book called Ethics Without God. I thought the whole idea was preposterous. Why would there by ANY reason for being ethical if there is not God overseeing the world? And how could we possibly have any direction for knowing how to live without divine oversight? I held those views for a long time, and in fact when I was contemplating leaving the faith, some 30 years ago now, they haunted me. Will I be cast to sea, with no moral compass? These last few years I've been thinking a lot about ethics: why we should behave and what right behavior might entail. And I've been studying a wide range of answers from antiquity till today. I've never given a webinar about this topic before. But since it's tied up with the book I'm working on, I decided it's jolly about time! So that's [...]

Diane2024-03-07T14:28:41-05:00March 6th, 2024|Public Forum|

Paul’s THIRD Letter to the Corinthians? A Very Interesting Forgery

Even though we don’t have the forgeries of Pauline letters connected with Marcion (they’ve all been lost or destroyed by orthodox Christians), we have other letters forged in Paul’s name that appear to be opposing Marcion (you don't need to read the previous posts to make sense of this one; but if you want to learn more about Marcion -- see the two posts preceding). These surviving letters are forgeries written to oppose forgeries, an orthodox attempt to fight fire with fire. One of the most interesting is Paul’s alleged Third Letter to the Corinthians! Here’s what I say about it in my book Forged (HarperOne, 2011). ****************************** Third Corinthians It was quite common for “orthodox” Christians (that is, Christians who accepted the theological views that eventually became widely accepted throughout Christianity) to charge “heretics” (those who taught “false teachings”) with forging documents in the names of the apostles in order to support their views. We will see much more of this phenomenon in chapter five. The Gospel of Peter, for example, was charged with [...]

BDEhrman2024-03-01T07:08:47-05:00March 6th, 2024|Christian Apocrypha, Forgery in Antiquity, Heresy and Orthodoxy, Paul and His Letters|

The Two Gods of Marcion and the Forgeries in the Name of Paul
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The Two Gods of Marcion and the Forgeries in the Name of Paul

Forgery in Antiquity, Heresy and Orthodoxy, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Paul and His Letters

The Two Gods of Marcion and the Forgeries in the Name of Paul

Here I continue my discussion of Marcion, the arch-heretic of the second century, whose followers forged writings in the name of Paul to support their view that the God of the Old Testament was not the God of Jesus and Paul. Recall: Marcion argued that the God of the Old Testament was the Jewish God who created this world, chose Israel to be his people, and then gave them his law. He was a just, wrathful God: not evil, just ruthlessly judicial. The God of Jesus, on the other hand, was a God of love, mercy, and forgiveness. This good God, superior to the God of the Jews, sent Jesus into the world in order to die for the sins of others, to save people from the wrathful God of the Old Testament. Salvation comes, then, by believing in Jesus’ death. To prove his point, Marcion pointed out the contradictions between the Old Testament God and the God of Jesus. The God of the Old Testament sent his prophets, one of whom was Elisha. One [...]

BDEhrman2024-03-04T11:06:28-05:00March 5th, 2024|Forgery in Antiquity, Heresy and Orthodoxy, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Paul and His Letters|

The Heretic Marcion and Forgeries of Pauline Letters

If Christians made up stories about Paul, did they also make up writings allegedly by Paul? My two previous posts were about fabricated narratives connected with Paul both from outside the New Testament and in the NT book of Acts. After posting, I realized that after lo these many years, I’ve never discussed at any length the related topic, non-canonical Pauline forgeries, writings that claim to be written by Paul but were definitely not. I leave out of consideration here the six “disputed” Pauline epistles of the New Testament – Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus. There are very good reasons for thinking none of these were written by Paul either (they all, of course, explicitly claim to be), but I’ve dealt with those before (see What about Forgeries IN the New Testament? Is it Possible?, Forgeries in the Name of Paul, Pauline Forgeries: 2 Thessalonians as a Test Case, for example) and will no doubt do so again. Here I’m interested in less familiar writings. You probably know [...]

BDEhrman2024-02-29T10:18:25-05:00March 3rd, 2024|Paul and His Letters|

Facts Hidden Among the Legends of the Apostle Paul?

There are so many legends, and only so many facts, we know about Paul from our surviving sources. Is there a way to tell which is which? How much of what we read -- in the New Testament letters of Paul, the book of Acts, the Acts of Paul, the letters of Paul from outside the New Testament, such as the Letter of 3 Corinthians, the Letter to the Laodiceans, and the exchange of letters between Paul and Seneca -- how much of all that can be seen has historically reliable information and how much intriguing but unhistorical fiction? That's what I started to ask in my previous post, and I continue here, once again, in an excerpt from my book Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene (Oxford University Press, 2006). ****************************** Separating History from Legend How do we know the difference between what really happened in the life of Paul and what has come down to us as pious legend? An early account indicates that on one of his missionary journeys Paul arrived on the [...]

BDEhrman2024-02-26T14:24:01-05:00March 2nd, 2024|Public Forum|

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