August 2026 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

More on Jesus’ Upbringing

I continue here with events from Jesus’ life before he started his public ministry that I think we can treat as historical. (If you need some background on how I’m claiming this information is historical, see the previous post). His Parents In all our sources Jesus’ parents are assumed to be Jewish. They, as we’ve seen, came from Nazareth, a small rural village in Galilee, the northern part of what we today think of as Israel. They are consistently named Joseph and Mary in our sources (for example, independently, Matt. 1:16-18; Mark 6:3; Luke 2:5, 16; 3:23; John 1:45; even rabbinic sources call his mother “Miriam”). In none of our traditions are there stories about Joseph after Jesus begins his public ministry. It is usually assumed that he had died by then. The idea that he was already an old man when he became betrothed to Mary is not found until the second century, when it is sometimes used to explain why they never had sex. But it has absolutely no basis [...]

BDEhrman2026-08-26T17:16:11-04:00August 30th, 2026|Historical Jesus|

The Early Life of Jesus

I’ve been thinking a lot about the social/cultural/economic/historical context of Jesus lately, and reading a good bit on what we know about Galilee from the time. I’ll be saying more about all that anon, but I thought this might be a good chance to cover some of the basics on the blog – what do we know about Jesus from the time he was born to the time he was baptized as an adult, which is how he begins his ministry in the Gospels. For stories of his life before that, of course, all we have are Matthew and Luke. I won’t explain here why I don’t think their accounts of his genealogy and birth can be historical. I’ve posted on that a good deal before and you can find them on the blog by doing a word search for “virgin,” “Bethlehem,” “census,” and so on. But both Gospels also have short stories about him as a boy. Matthew describes the circumstances of his “descent to Egypt” with his family to escape the [...]

BDEhrman2026-08-26T17:15:58-04:00August 29th, 2026|Historical Jesus|

Platinum Lecture on October 1

Platinum members, we've got our next quarterly lecture on the calendar. It's an opportunity for Bart and just Platinum blog members get together on Zoom. Our topic for this quarter is: Matthew and the Rise of Anti-Judaism As always, there will be time at the end for questions…be prepared! Can't make it live? Don't worry. We’ll record the lecture and send it out for all Platinum members to watch after the event. Event Info: When: Thursday October 1 at 7pm Eastern Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88260423137?pwd=aSwenEJvbTcsaOou6Alyqt8lINpIx8.1 Meeting ID: 882 6042 3137 Passcode: 425313

jennao2026-09-01T09:15:38-04:00August 28th, 2026|Public Forum|

My Odd Situation, Writing this Book…

For the first time in my life, I’m not really sure what I'm going to be arguing in the book I’m working on.. As I’ve said before, some months ago my publisher suggested I change course for the next book. Instead of what I had been focusing on for some months (a book on the canon – how we got the 27 books of the NT – a book that I’ll do soon as well, but not first), she said they would love to have a book about: Jesus the Socialist. As always, with virtually every suggestion I get about virtually everything (academically related or otherwise), I was dubious, not sure I really wanted to do that. But then I thought about it for a while, and realized it could be really interesting. I had dealt with Jesus’ view of wealth in my last book Love thy Stranger, but this would be a different sort of thing, more along the lines of how Jesus’ views might relate to our modern economies. On one level that [...]

BDEhrman2026-08-26T16:18:16-04:00August 27th, 2026|Book Discussions, Reflections and Ruminations|

How the World Was Created in 4004 BCE

Now that I've started talking about the Hebrew Bible on the blog, I think maybe I'll keep talking about it for a bit. Let's start at the beginning. As in "In the Beginning..." Lots of people know that (some) fundamentalist Christians insist the beginning was when the world was created "6000 years ago." But most of those people don't know where the idea came from. (It's not stated, of course, in the Bible itself. If you find dates in the margins of your Bible, it's because modern English editors have put them there.) The "6000" years is only approximately the fundamentalist view. Well before there was fundamentalism (you can trace it to the 19th century) a standard belief among Christians (from the 17th century), before the rise of yet more modern geological science, was that the world was created in 4004 BCE. So if we think of fundamentalists as literalists, let's be literal: it was created 6030 years ago. But whence did it come? I talk about it briefly in one of my textbook [...]

BDEhrman2026-08-17T16:28:39-04:00August 26th, 2026|Public Forum|

Hebrew Bible/English Old Testament: Charting Their Differences

Some blog readers have requested more posts on the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. I'm happy to comply! We begin with the foundational issue of which books are in each, in which order, and why are they so very different but also in some senses just the same. In my textbook The Bible: A Literary and Historical Introduction (Oxford University Press; a new edition of which will appear in about a year, co-authored this time with Hebrew Bible scholar Joel Baden) I explain it all and lay it out in charts. Here it is, in compact form: The Bible in Hebrew and in English have the same books, but they are numbered differently (e.g., the twelve minor prophets in the English Bible are counted as just one book in Hebrew). They are also organized differently. Different Christian denominations have different books included in their “Old Testament,” as Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches include books that Protestants consider to be the “Apocrypha.” These books are excluded not only from the Protestant Bible but from the Hebrew [...]

BDEhrman2026-08-17T16:16:18-04:00August 25th, 2026|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

The Moral Benefits of Capitalism

In my previous post I began to argue that an economic system is not inherently good or evil. Like other things (wine, automobiles, guns, computer games), systems can be used in ways the produce very good consequences and truly awful ones. It’s a point I want to emphasize because most people I know outside of academic circles think that Marxism and even socialism are inherently evil, and most people I know within academic circles think that capitalism is. (Damn intellectuals…) Here I’m focusing on capitalism since, well, like it or not, it’s the system we and virtually everyone else in the world has. So, to reiterate, the problem with capitalism is that there are capitalists and there are capitalists, and the system itself – even though it is based on a principle of self-interest -- is not necessarily the problem. It’s the people who are the problem. And an argument can indeed be made that capitalism is good for people of faith (not just Christian, of course, but I’m focusing on the Christian [...]

BDEhrman2026-08-17T16:02:17-04:00August 23rd, 2026|Reflections and Ruminations|

Is Capitalism Anti-Christian?

It is dead easy to attack the fundamental principles and historical practices of capitalism on religious, and particularly Christian, grounds. A system that thrives on self-interest and personal gain, that leads to massive exploitation, to the subjection of entire indigenous populations to colonial powers, to enormous economic and social inequalities, that celebrates greed and focuses entirely on wealth and power – is this anything like the teachings of Jesus? The Jesus who told his followers not even to be concerned even about what to eat and drink, to sell what they have and give to the poor, to bypass material comforts now for eternal life in God’s glorious kingdom later, to serve others instead of dominate them, to give rather than receive, to be willing to lay down their lives for those in need? Among the various shifts in my life, toward the end of college and on into seminary I moved away from the conservative social/political perspectives I was raised with to embrace far more liberal views – the need for social [...]

BDEhrman2026-08-17T11:44:10-04:00August 22nd, 2026|Reflections and Ruminations|

September 2026 Gold Q&A

Gold and Platinum Members, our September Q&A is coming up. Join Bart live on Tuesday September 8th at 7pm Eastern as he answers your questions. Bart will spend the first half of our Zoom session answering your pre-submitted questions. Send yours to [email protected] no later than Monday September 6th so we can add it to the queue. Then we’ll open things up. During the second half, you’re invited to come on the microphone and ask Bart a question live. There’s no theme this month, so anything goes: the New Testament, the historical Jesus, early Christianity, Bart’s books and research, or that burning question you’ve been meaning to ask him for ages. If you’d like to participate in the live Q&A: Prepare your question in advance Keep your question to roughly 20 seconds or less Be ready to ask it live during the session Meeting Details: Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89058506667?pwd=nId19nGbXjmM2YHR4BWCzPaQPbraYg.1 Meeting ID: 890 5850 6667 Passcode: 948441 And if you’re unable to make it live, I always send the recording of the event to all Gold and Platinum [...]

jennao2026-08-24T14:58:39-04:00August 21st, 2026|Public Forum|

Martyrs, Forgers, and Textual Scholars: Intriguing Questions From Readers

Here are some spot-on questions from readers with (spotty?) attempts to answer from me.... QUESTION: (Note: this is a question about my views on how early Christians appealed to their martyrs as evidence of the truth of the Christian message in order to convert outsiders. The question is specifically based on the book called “the Martyrdom of Polycarp,” our earliest account of a Christian being tried and martyred for his faith) Your integrated model, developed over this series, is becoming clearer: hell provides urgency, miracles provide credibility, and martyrdom functions as miracle in human form. That is a coherent and serious historical account. But reading Polycarp’s response to the proconsul, I find myself pausing. The proconsul threatens him with fire. Polycarp answers calmly. He does not sound like a man under pressure making a difficult calculation. He sounds almost expectant, as if death is not the worst thing that could happen to him, but something closer to a threshold he is ready to cross. Your model explains well why that composure was persuasive to [...]

BDEhrman2026-08-17T11:44:00-04:00August 20th, 2026|Reader’s Questions|

Flipping a Coin. Cephas and Peter: One Person or Two?

I have recently finished republishing a series of posts from years ago that explored the tradition that Peter and Cephas were in fact two different people. Anyone who is not interested in the Bible would not care, of course, but then again, no one like that would be on the blog! For those who are both interested and familiar with the New Testament, the idea is unusual and odd – a bit of a bombshell, actually, since it is normally assumed that these are two names for the same disciple of Jesus, Simon son of Jonah, nicknamed “Cephas” (an Aramaic term that means “rock”) by Jesus. When the term “Rock” was translated into Greek by later story tellers, they simply used the Greek term “Petros,” which gets transliterated into English as “Peter.” No problem, right? Well for 99.99% of the readers of the NT over the centuries, right. No problem. But for roughly .01% of us there is a problem, as I have outlined in the previous posts. I showed that there was [...]

BDEhrman2026-08-09T22:01:12-04:00August 19th, 2026|Paul and His Letters|

Other Suggestions That Peter and Cephas Were Two Different People
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Other Suggestions That Peter and Cephas Were Two Different People

Paul and His Letters

Other Suggestions That Peter and Cephas Were Two Different People

I have been reposting a thread from years ago about whether Peter and Cephas, almost universally "known" to be the same person (Peter is his Greek name; Cephas is the Aramaic equivalent) may in fact have been two different people with the same name. I pulled all this from an article I wrote over back when I was young and foolish: "Cephas and Peter," Journal of Biblical Literature, 109 (1990) pp. 463-74. It stirred up some controversy and some occasional animosity among colleagues. But most, when they'd see me at a conference, would ask: "Were you serious?" Ha! I would usually tell them I was serious, but that at the end of the day I'm not 100% sure either way. And that's still true. But I make the best argument I can in the piece. Here's a bit more of it, a bit in the weeds, but with some of the more boringly academic elements removed. ****************************** The evidence of Paul (that they were two different people) has not been exhausted by this consideration of [...]

BDEhrman2026-08-11T16:23:40-04:00August 18th, 2026|Paul and His Letters|

Did Paul Know that Peter and Cephas were Two Different People?

Very few readers have ever noticed that even though almost everyone (including the Gospel writers) assumes that Peter and Cephas are simply names for the same person (Simon Peter, Jesus's disciple), Paul -- our only author from antiquity who knew Peter indicates he was not the same person as Cephas. WHAT? In my previous post I gave the evidence that in the early church there were writers who maintained that Cephas and Peter were *not* the same person, despite what is explicitly said in John 1:42. Some readers may point out that these later Christian authors *may* have differentiated between the two (saying they were not the same person, even though they were) for a very clear and certain reason: in Galatians 2 Paul confronts “Cephas” and blasts him for not understanding the Gospel. Could there have been a major rift between the two most important apostles of early Christianity (Paul and *Peter*)? Surely the apostles were more unified than *that*! Well, if Cephas was not the same person as Peter, it is a much, [...]

BDEhrman2026-08-09T14:39:27-04:00August 16th, 2026|Paul and His Letters|

Paying Your Religious Dues: The Studied Indifference of Jesus

I have been arguing that that are many political and social issues that many of us care deeply about that, surprisingly, Jesus apparently did not. Another passage that illustrates Jesus relative indifference to governmental policies and economic systems is his discussion with Simon Peter about paying the “temple tax,” a story found only Matthew (17:24-27). They have come to the town of Capernaum and some collectors of the “two drachma” temple tax ask Peter if his teacher pays the tax or not. Peter replies that he does, but when he goes back home, Jesus talks to him about it, asking whether kings tax their own children or only other people. Peter naturally replies that children of the king don’t pay taxes, only others. Jesus agrees: the ruler’s “children” are exempt from taxes – implication being that God’s children should not have to pay for the running of God’s house any more than a king’s children pay for the running of his palace. Jesus indicates that, even so, they should “not give offense” and [...]

BDEhrman2026-08-09T21:40:51-04:00August 15th, 2026|Historical Jesus|

Were Peter and Cephas the Same Person?

In Galatians 2 Paul describes a serious blow up that he had with "Cephas" over the relationship of Jews and Gentiles in the church. Major conflict. Possibly never resolved. Throughout history this event has usually been cited to show that Paul and Peter had very different views of things. But what if the Cephas Paul attacked was not Peter but someone else? A couple of weeks ago I gave a webinar on “Cephas and Peter” for members of the Biblical Studies Academy (my for-profit business that produces on-line courses, etc., not connected with the blog). I had written an academic article with that title many years ago, some time back in the Pleistocene age, arguing that contrary to what everyone thinks and says, they may not have been the same person. That there were two people with that name, not just one (despite what John 1:42 explicitly states). It was a rather, uh, controversial issue and I had to look up the details of a number of the arguments I used; in doing so I [...]

BDEhrman2026-08-13T22:53:12-04:00August 13th, 2026|Paul and His Letters|

Problems of Suffering and Why Gospels Started Being Written: Questions from Readers

Here are some excellent questions I've received from readers of the blog that I'd like to share with y'all, along with my attempts at responding.... QUESTION: Do you think that the presence of mass suffering is not necessarily an argument against the existence of God, but rather an argument against the existence of a loving God? If so, what would a loving God be expected to do regarding suffering? Or at what point does the amount of suffering become incompatible with the existence of a loving God? I’m curious how you would define divine love in this context and what implications that definition would have for the problem of suffering/evil. RESPONSE: I think the problem of suffering becomes a serious objection to “God” when the suffering is so intense, so widespread, so gratuitous, so random, and so horrible (as it has been from the beginning of human existence) that one can no longer believe a God is in charge. And so I'd say it's an argument against a God who is both [...]

BDEhrman2026-08-06T16:04:05-04:00August 12th, 2026|Reader’s Questions|

What Did Jesus’s Violent Action in the Temple Actually Mean?
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What Did Jesus’s Violent Action in the Temple Actually Mean?

Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus

What Did Jesus’s Violent Action in the Temple Actually Mean?

Several aspects of Jesus’s actions in the temple – the so-called “Cleansing of the Temple” – have long puzzled scholars. As I indicated in the previous post, in all four Gospels – with some important differences among them – Jesus enters the temple compound, is angered by what he sees, overturns the tables of those who are changing Roman currency for temple currency to allow people to purchase sacrificial animals, drives out those who are selling (and even buying) the animals, prevents (in one account) anyone from carrying anything needed for the sacrifices though the temple, and forcefully declares that the temple is to be “a house of prayer for all the nations” but that “you have made it a den of robbers” (quoting Isaiah 56:7). Most critical scholars agree that this cannot be construed as an attack on Judaism per se, since Jesus was thoroughly Jewish and stood in the line of Hebrew prophets who opposed the activities of the temple. But that’s where the puzzlement begins to arise. The temple was built on [...]

BDEhrman2026-08-09T21:28:30-04:00August 11th, 2026|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

Blog Dinner in NYC, September 1. Interested?

I will be in NYC on Tuesday, Sept. 1, for an extremely important academic engagement (aka, the U.S. Open....). I'll be hosting a blog dinner for any blog members who would be interested. Yup up for it? I’ll probably start around 6:00 pm for drinks with whomever wants both to quench thirst and cha, and then head over to dinner (with both quenchers and non-quenchers) at 7:00 or so. Location TBD -- but somewhere relatively interesting and easy to get to. My plan (subject to whimsical change) is to limit the table to 10. For those who come there are no obligations other than: Being a blog member Showing up Talking Paying for whatever you ingest. (Whatever you exgest is free.) If you’d like to join me and a group of other blog members for an evening of interesting discussion of areas of mutual interest, simply send along an email at [email protected]. (NB: Please do NOT reply here as a comment). Hope you can come!

BDEhrman2026-08-10T13:42:46-04:00August 10th, 2026|Public Forum|

Prophetic Condemnations of Jews Within Judaism Before Jesus

Over the past few decades scholars have become loathe to label Jesus’s actions in the Temple (Mark 11:14-17; also in the other three Gospels) with the traditional phrase “The Cleansing of the Temple.” One reason is the hateful afterlife of this phrasing, because it makes it sound as if Judaism at its very heart was foul, dirty, unclean, and vile, and Jesus is the one who purified it. In other words, this phrase can be/has been taken to mean that God hates Jews and their religion and sent Jesus in order to show the true path of holiness. The social and political implications of that view are stunning. They stand at the root of horrible acts of violence over the centuries leading to the Holocaust. The problem, however, cannot be solved simply by insisting that Jesus was a Jew and was not at all opposed to the worship of the Jewish God. That is completely true, of course. He was Jewish in every way conceivable, as were his followers. But that does not [...]

BDEhrman2026-08-06T20:53:07-04:00August 9th, 2026|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Historical Jesus|

Gist and Exaggeration: Jesus and the Cleansing of the Temple

It is virtually impossible to disentangle religion and politics when studying ancient sources:, they were not separate entities but tightly interwoven aspects of the same entity, involving questions of authority, who wields it, how they should wield it, and how these “authorities” are “authorized.” Kings could be gods, and vice versa. Priests were governmental officials and vice versa. Laws were divinely sanctioned. Opposition to the state meant opposition to the gods who supported it and opposition to the state gods meant opposition to the state. That’s why Jesus’s “religious” views that God was soon to bring in a new kingdom and appoint him its ruler was seen as a “political” offense leading to his execution for insurrection. It is also why his so-called “Cleansing of the Temple” was not only a religious statement but also a threat to the established order. The event is recounted in all four of our Gospels, again with important differences in detail (particularly in John), but with the same gist. Mark provides our earliest account (Mark 11:15-17). The day [...]

BDEhrman2026-08-06T21:41:48-04:00August 8th, 2026|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|