November 2026 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

He Said It But He Didn’t Mean It. An Intriguing Interpretation of Jesus’ Teachings

Did early church leaders take Jesus seriously when he said that it was impossible to serve God if one was interested in mammon, or when he praised those who left literally everything (spouses, children, homes, jobs) to follow him, or when he said that it was “easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven”? Only a very few one-time rich Christians took him at his word and acted accordingly. Most did not. In one of the great interpretive ironies of history, most devout readers of the Gospels admitted Jesus said it but insisted he could not have meant it. This approach to these passages makes sense. If the affluent members of the church gave all their wealth away, who would support them? And how would funds continue to fill the church coffers to help the poor and, well, pay the pastors? But it is interesting to see how church fathers got around the problem. In our day we (those of [...]

BDEhrman2026-11-07T15:24:41-05:00November 14th, 2026|Public Forum|

Jesus and the Trolley Problem – Platinum Post by Douglas Wadeson MD

I'm pleased to post this new Platinum Post by Platinum member Douglas Wadeson for all you other Platinums. This one's a bit of a brain teaser. Good luck working it out. And may you never have to in practice! ****************************** In philosophy a standard thought experiment is the ‘Trolley Problem.’ There are variations, but the basic premise starts with a runaway trolley car that is heading down the track towards a group of five people. There is a switch in front of you which will divert the trolley to a sidetrack on which there is only one person. Should you pull the switch, knowing that your action will cause that one person to die, but the five will live? (No, yelling at the five to get off the track isn’t allowed!) Some would argue that allowing five to live is the better choice, so pull the switch. Others would say that pulling the switch makes you an active participant in the death of the one, so that is not morally right. Yet others would counter [...]

jennao2026-11-12T18:04:07-05:00November 13th, 2026|Public Forum|

December 2026 Gold Q&A

Gold and Platinum Members, our final Q&A of 2026 is upon us. Bart will be answering your questions live on Sunday December 6h at 3pm Eastern and we hope you'll join us. As always, during the first half of the Zoom session, Bart will answer your pre-submitted questions. Send yours to [email protected] no later than Thursday December 3rd so we can add it to the queue. During the second half, live attendees will be invited to take the floor and ask your question to Bart live. 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/84158352394?pwd=hmVCUelxOIsRHlo6luDyJMmCV6Is6R.1 Meeting ID: 841 5835 2394 Passcode: 420972 I'll email the replay out to all Gold and Platinum members after the event, usually within a day. We hope to see you there. – Jen

jennao2026-11-12T16:07:54-05:00November 13th, 2026|Public Forum|

Questions About the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Star of Bethlehem

Here are some more of the many intriguing queries I have recently received from inquiring minds inside the heads of Blog readers! QUESTION: On Friday evening, I was at Wheaton College for a presentation by Ayaan Hirsi Ali (famous Muslim apostate and public intellectual) and Darrel Bock of Dallas Theological Seminary. He quoted a verse, Matthew 28:19, “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” I thought of you because I thought I learned on this blog that the only reference to the trinity in the NT was in one of the John epistles. Is this usage here not sufficiently trinitarian to scholars? RESPONSE: Ah, right. Matthew 28:19 certainly does name the Father, Son, and Spirit, but that's not the doctrine of the Trinity. The doctrine is not that the three exist; it is about how they specifically relate to each other. The orthodox view that developed by the end of the fourth century consists of several affirmations: That the three -- [...]

BDEhrman2026-11-07T08:36:13-05:00November 12th, 2026|Reader’s Questions|

Critical Scholars Who Keep the Faith: Guest Post by Dale Allison

I frequently get asked how any highly-informed scholar of the Bible – knowing about biblical contradictions, historical mistakes, false claims, forged writings, and so on – could STILL be a committed Christian. I usually respond that it certainly is possible and that most critical scholars of the New Testament are in fact Christians. Some people then tell me they don’t believe it (they think scholars like that must just be fakin’ it) or that it just doesn’t make sense. So, I’ve asked a few top-level biblical scholars to explain how they themselves do it. How do they manage it, inside their own heads, and how would they explain it to themselves and possibly others. The first to respond to my request was Dale Allison, Richard J. Dearborn Professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary. Dale is widely recognized as one of the top New Testament scholars in the world, highly erudite, widely published, very influential in the field and among lay-readers, and as knowledgeable as they come. Here is how he explains how it [...]

BDEhrman2026-11-06T13:55:30-05:00November 11th, 2026|Reflections and Ruminations|

Advice About Money From a Different Universe
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Advice About Money From a Different Universe

Historical Jesus

Advice About Money From a Different Universe

It should be dead easy to realize that guidelines for how to live and behave from one time and place may have almost no relevance to those living at other times elsewhere. For ancient sailors it may have made perfect sense that “Thou shalt not sail after dark” – when there were no such things as, say, navigation lights and radar. But to enforce it as a rule today? Or take actual legislation, such as requiring execution for witches or for disobedient children in the Hebrew Bible. Or think of standard mores, such as how partners are to engage with each other in a pederastic relationship, as in ancient Athens. But for some reason, whereas virtually everyone agrees there are problems in these kinds of cases, many don’t see there can be equivalent problems when it comes to following the teachings of Jesus. Hey, he’s always relevant, right? He certainly can be relevant today for people who want to follow him. But even they would be well-served to consider the radical differences between his “then [...]

BDEhrman2026-11-07T17:40:48-05:00November 10th, 2026|Historical Jesus|

Outdated Religion and Modern Life

Can Jesus’ teachings on wealth and what to do with it have any relevance for a world that does not share his underlying assumptions/views/beliefs about religion and economics? That question is not relevant only for the uber-rich in our world (name your names; some of them, of course, claim to be ardent followers of Jesus), or just to those living fairly extravagant lives, or even to those who have more than enough to live comfortably. Just about everyone I come in contact with even below that level – and probably, though not certainly, everyone you do as well -- has and buys things they actually don’t need or much need. In this post I deal with the religious issues and in the next the economic. It is not difficult to figure out the key difference between Jesus’ religious views and those widely shared among his followers today of relevance to his teachings on wealth, but it’s surprising we don’t read/hear more about it (at least I don’t). As was long known by scholars, [...]

BDEhrman2026-11-05T10:04:18-05:00November 8th, 2026|Historical Jesus|

Changing Times and the Question of Relevance

If you knew for a fact that the world was going to end on March 1, how would that affect your behavior? It’s worth thinking about. Not only because, well, hey: maybe it will! But also because that kind of thinking can help us decide how we should behave even if the world takes a lickin’ but keeps on tickin’. When I had my birthday three weeks ago, I did a little thought experiment. How would I change my life, if at all, if I knew for a fact I had only one more year to live, or five years, or ten years, or twenty? How would knowing that affect what I do with myself before then, what I prioritize, whom I see and spend time with, and what of the stuff I normally do doesn’t actually matter that much. For me it was an interesting mental exercise: The answer differed depending on the timeline. If I had one year I would definitely make some immediate adjustments (and I realized which ones); if five, some [...]

BDEhrman2026-10-29T14:50:06-04:00November 7th, 2026|Historical Jesus|

Expecting the End? Was Mark Written in Aramaic? And Was a Key Verse Added to John?

I've received some heavy-duty questions recently, on diverse but interesting issues. Don't some Christians today seem to share Jesus' view of the coming end? Was the Gospel of Mark composed in Aramaic rather than Greek? And did a scribe insert what is now John 16:15 into the Gospel, so that it originally didn't have it? Here we go! ****************************** QUESTION: Recently I’ve been talking to my grandma, who is a Seventh Day Adventist, and it seems like their views of the afterlife are quite similar to the one of the historical Jesus. Are you at all familiar with their beliefs? Am I correct in my interpretation? RESPONSE: Seventh Day Adventists emerged out of the "Great Disappointment" of 1844, when William Miller, a self-taught biblical "scholar" -- and his followers -- a huge group across America -- had predicted (to the day) when Jesus would return, based on biblical prophecy, especially the book of Daniel. It didn't happen. Huge disappointment. Some folk had sold the farm, literally. Some morphed into other groups either [...]

BDEhrman2026-10-29T14:36:28-04:00November 5th, 2026|Reader’s Questions|

The (Ir)relevance of Biblical Moral Teachings

Last week I was visiting Wittenberg University in Springfield Ohio to give a lecture and was given a tour of the impressive rare book room in the bowels of their library. Before my hosts and I were brought in we were instructed to wash our hands carefully, and informed that current protocol is NOT to wear gloves when touching ancient books. Whoa? Really? News to me. Back when I was particularly interested in ancient books and manuscripts in my graduate days and early career, it was definitely gloves, to keep any oil / dirt / whatever on the fingers from contaminating the page. That’s still obviously the problem, but rather than separating the human skin from animal skin (vellum/parchment) with latex, it apparently is better simply to wash the hands well. That’s because the gloves too easily rip the paper. New day; new policy; makes better sense. Rules, regulations, laws, and good advice all change over time, depending on new knowledge, experience, changes in thinking, historical developments, different cultural assumptions, and lots of [...]

BDEhrman2026-10-29T14:22:03-04:00November 4th, 2026|Reflections and Ruminations|

A Modern Scholar Who Also Argues Jesus Did Not Die on the Cross
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A Modern Scholar Who Also Argues Jesus Did Not Die on the Cross

Historical Jesus

A Modern Scholar Who Also Argues Jesus Did Not Die on the Cross

In my previous post I mentioned a modern forgery that claimed Jesus never actually died on the cross. Some of those who read that will probably have immediately thought of a modern scholar who with great sensational flair and vigor argued precisely that: Hugh Schonfield in his once (and in some circles still) popular book The Passover Plot. I discuss that as well, but only briefly, in my book Forged (HarperOne, 2011). Here is what I say there – with an opening paragraph that sets it up by mentioning several other accounts with very interesting but completely fabricated claims. ****************************** There are lots of modern apocrypha that try to report on what Jesus and those associated with him really did. There is, for example, a book called The Confession of Pontius Pilate, which tells the story of Pilate going in exile to Vienna where he feels deep remorse for what he did to Jesus and eventually commits suicide. Among other things, this account refers to a story in which Mary Magdalene presents the [...]

BDEhrman2026-10-26T17:00:44-04:00November 3rd, 2026|Historical Jesus|

Did Jesus Survive His Crucifixion? Depends Which Gospel You Read….

Is it possible Jesus never actually died, but survived the crucifixion -- and that's why his followers could claim they saw him afterward? Because they really did? I've been discussing a couple of the Gospels that have been forged in modern time either as hoaxes, or money-makers, or (usually) both. Here is one that deals with a question of Jesus faked death -- an issue people occasionally ask me about still today. This discussion is taken from the final chapter of my book Forged (Harper, 2011), slightly edited here. ****************************** Unlike some other modern forged Gospels, a particularly interesting one, called The Crucifixion of Jesus, by an Eye-Witness, deals not with Jesus’ adult life but with its ending and aftermath. The account comes in the form of a letter written, in Latin, seven years after Jesus’ crucifixion, from a leader of the mysterious Jewish sect of the Essenes in Jerusalem to another Essene leader who lived in Alexandria, Egypt. All elements of the supernatural are completely stripped away from the account’s description of [...]

BDEhrman2026-10-26T17:11:43-04:00November 1st, 2026|Public Forum|

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