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

The Quest for the Historical Paul: Sorting Through Our Sources (Part 1). Guest Post by James Tabor

As you know, I hope, I will be sponsoring an upcoming conference for non-scholars, on the Apostle Paul soon, Sept. 21-22 (see https://www.bartehrman.com/new-insights-into-the-new-testament-conference-2024 ). We will have ten high-level Pauline scholars each give a 50-minute lecture with Q&A, dealing with various issues connected with Pauline studies. This is gonna be a good'un. In preparation for it, I've asked James Tabor, one of the ten presenters at the conference, to give us a couple of preliminary posts here on the blog, dealing with some of the fundamental issues that scholars deal with, all centered on "how can we know" about what Paul really said and did? Turns out, it's not simple. ****************************** What can we reliably know about Paul and how can we know it? As is the case with Jesus this is not an easy question. Historians have been involved in what has been called the “Quest for the Historical Jesus” for the past one hundred and seventy-five years, evaluating and sifting through our sources, trying to determine what we can reliably say about him.[1] As [...]

Diane2025-09-10T13:08:50-04:00September 7th, 2024|Paul and His Letters, Public Forum|

The Next Ten Commandments Platinum Guest post by Douglas Wadeson MD

Here's another guest post by Platinum member Doug Wadeson, who once again brings out some startling issue just from what the Bible says that most people don't see, or at least blithely ignore. What do you think? If you like Doug's work (I do!), he has started a new blog, that he describes as providing "off-beat articles about the Bible." Interested? Check it out: TheBibleUndressed.blog – A doctor dissects the Holy Book at https://thebibleundressed.blog For now, let's get to Doug's reflections on the heart of the Bible: the Ten Commandments! (And remember: you too can post on most anything you'd like connected to the blog, as a Platinum member for other Platinum members) ************************* There is a controversy these days about Louisiana requiring that the Ten Commandments, the Decalogue, (King James version no less) be posted in public schools. I wager that few people who support this can list the ten laws. I will also wager that even fewer people have ever turned the page to study the next set of commandments. After all, the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:08:33-04:00September 6th, 2024|Public Forum|

How Strikingly Few Early Churches Were There? How Amazingly Many Christian Letters?

In his important and stimulating article, “Christian Number and Its Implications,” Roman historian Keith Hopkins next begins to think about the implications about the size of the Christian church at different periods. One point to emphasize is that there was not simply one church. There were lots of churches in lots of places, and it is a myth to think that they were all one big cohesive bunch. On the contrary, they were often (as we see in our records) often at odds with each other. But even more than that, even within one city – if it was large enough (think Rome or Antioch for example) there would have been more than one church. And why? Because there would have been too many people to meet in one place. The first time we have any evidence of a church “building” – that is, what we today normally think of as a church (the Baptist church on the corner; the Methodist church up the street) – is not until the middle of the third Christian [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:08:51-04:00September 5th, 2024|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations, Spread of Christianity|

Were Christians Statistically Insignificant in the First 200 years?

I return now to Roman historian Keith Hopkins’s fascinating and influential article “Christian Number and Its Implications.” As I pointed out, for the sake of his article, and after checking it out for plausibility, Hopkins accepts the calculations of Rodney Stark that if Christianity started with 1000 believers in the year 40 CE, and ended up being 10% of the empire (6 million believers) by the time of the Emperor Constantine, you would need a growth rate of about 40% per decade, or, as Hopkins prefers putting it 3.4%). ****************************** Obviously, as I’ve stated, but need to stress again, we cannot be and are not really thinking that there was a steady rate of growth, that every year there was the same percentage of increase. We’re talking big numbers over a long range of time, so the *average* rate of growth is just that, an average. Some years there may have been a loss of numbers, other years a huge spike. So take that as given. But if we *were* talking about [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:08:51-04:00September 4th, 2024|Spread of Christianity|

Exaggerating the Numbers of Early Christians

I have started discussing the fascinating article by Keith Hopkins, “Christian Number and Its Implications” (see my last post). After discussing some of the problems with knowing how to “count” Christians (i.e., who counts as a Christian), he reflects for a bit on the problems presented to us by our sources of information. The basic problem is that our sources don’t *give* us much information! No one from the early Christian church was a statistician and no one kept records of how many people were being converted. And the comments we find that are of any relevance turn out to be so broad, generalized, and suspicious as to be of no use to us at all. Sometimes, a source will give numbers, but they clearly cannot be trusted. Take the book of Acts. This is our first account of early Christianity, and, of course, became the “canonical” account. According to Acts 2 (this and the following are examples that *I’m* giving; they are not found in Hopkins), just 50 days after Jesus’ death, on the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:08:51-04:00September 3rd, 2024|Spread of Christianity|

New Insights into the New Testament 2024: A Conference you DON’T Want to Miss!!

In case you haven't heard, there is a very excieting event coming up that surely *anyone* connected to the blog will be deeply interested in: a two-day remote Bible conference for non-scholars, called “New Insights into the New Testament,” consisting of ten lectures (each with a live Q&A), on the Life and Letters of Paul, delivered by some of the most highly qualified New Testament scholars in the known universe, in terms accessible to layfolk. It will be Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 21-22; anyone who comes will get the conference as a recording for life-time use; anyone who wants the recording and can't come can do that too! We are nothing if not flexible. This will be our second annual New Insights Conference. We had well over 2000 come to the inaugural event last year, and heading into it we weren't sure how it would be received. Oh boy was it received well. The presentations were crisp, clear, and informative, by world-renowned scholars, all of whom know how to communicate serious advances in scholarship in [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:08:51-04:00September 2nd, 2024|Paul and His Letters, Public Forum|

If You’re Counting Christians, Who Counts as a Christian?

When I first started thinking about the the rise and spread of Christianity, I was particularly struck by an article written by a prominent and deservedly acclaimed British historian, Keith Hopkins, a long-time professor at Cambridge University. It was called “Christian Number and Its Implication,” and it appeared in the Journal of Early Christian Studies in 1998. ****************************** Hopkins begins his article by reflecting on the fact that it’s very difficult to know even what we’re talking about when we’re talking about the numerical growth of Christianity. For one thing, what are we going to count as Christianity and whom are we going to count as Christians? Do we count only those who hold to the views that later came to be the dominant understanding of Christianity, for example, that there is only one God, or that Christ was both human and divine at one and the same time, or that the material world is the creation of this God, and so on? What about other forms of Christianity? What about those people [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:08:50-04:00September 1st, 2024|Public Forum, Spread of Christianity|

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The Quest for the Historical Paul: Sorting Through Our Sources (Part 1). Guest Post by James Tabor

The Next Ten Commandments Platinum Guest post by Douglas Wadeson MD

How Strikingly Few Early Churches Were There? How Amazingly Many Christian Letters?

Were Christians Statistically Insignificant in the First 200 years?

Exaggerating the Numbers of Early Christians

New Insights into the New Testament 2024: A Conference you DON’T Want to Miss!!

If You’re Counting Christians, Who Counts as a Christian?