(15 votes, average: 4.93 out of 5)
Loading...In my most recent thread I laid out my thoughts on my next book (what I *think* will be my next book) on how Christian views of charity helped revolutionize ancient (and as a consequence, modern) society.
Now I will begin a series on my thoughts for my book after that. Throughout the past ten or fifteen years I’ve always thought two books ahead; that way when I’m writing a book, in my down time I can be thinking a bit about the next one. It’s kind of pleasant, actually, since there is no pressure on my thoughts – I haven’t even starting to work on it yet!
As I may have mentioned already, I will probably propose a two-book deal to my publisher, that is to have a contract for two books instead of one. That way my thinking can be even more serious about #2. I’ve done that a couple of times before. The first time, it happened (Triumph of Christianity and Heaven and Hell) and the second time, the publisher didn’t go for it. I don’t know if it’ll work this time or not, but hey, hope springs eternal….
Charity is a topic I’ve just gotten interested in over the past three or four years. The subject of the second book is one I’ve been interested in for my entire adult life, nearly 50 years now. I first got interested in my first year of Bible college; it was the topic of my first PhD seminar I had years later; it was the topic of my very first academic publication; it is something I’ve thought, taught, written, and blogged about for-roughly-ever. Where’d the NT canon come from?
Here is how I’m organizing my thoughts as of now in a preliminary draft of a prospectus for my publisher (this will take 7 or 8 posts):
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CREATING THE BIBLE
How We Got the Twenty-Seven Books of Christian Scripture
Bart D. Ehrman
“How did we get the New Testament?” This is the one question I get asked more than any other. It is not about
If you are interested in the topic, join the blog! It doesn’t cost much and you get huge value for your money — every penny of which goes to charity! Click here for membership options
Related issue: I’ve never understood how the anti-papists so willingly accept the decisions of the early church. Maybe because it was just Xian and not Roman Catholic?
Yup, their logic is that “the Catholic Church” doesn’t arise for about three centuries.
Hello Professor. Is you new book on Revelation now available at Amazon?
Nope! Not till March. (Maybe pre-orders?)
Now that is a book I would love to have at the ready.
This is a fantastic choice and I look forward to the discussions in the lead-up to its publication and the book itself.
I have maintained that if the selection of the canon was divinely inspired, God would have done a better job.
Keep up the good work.
Hooray. I wish I could reach that book today. Like the fans of George RR Martin and the next Game of Thrones book, I and your other fans will be pestering you regularly for updates until it’s published.
I am happy and excited for this potential book. I, myself, did not start thinking about this issue until I started reading Lost Christianities as I was leaving the Christian faith.
What a great idea. I have been looking for such a book for decades and the closest I have found are some sections in “The Interpreter’s Bible.” I really look forward to reading this book.
Have there been any shifts in the scholarly consensus or in your particular views since the publication of Metzger’s book on the canon of the New Testament? If so, can you briefly outline these shifts here or in subsequent blog posts?
A lot of the publications since then have been by theologically conservative writers wanting to assure their readers that the canon was pretty much a done deal from the get go. My views have changed, mainly because I’ve come to realize that the most imporatnt and interesting aspects of the process were overlooked or at least underplayed by Metzger — the deep disagreements and hard-fought debates among various Christian leaders and communities. Metzger too more or less thought that that the 27 that made it in were virtually bound to do so.
This will be great!
Q; what was luther’s view on the books he relegated to his appendix? Maybe this question will be answered in upcoming post. I think after
I may be dealing with that in a post. Short answer: he did not think Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation sufficiently “preached the gospel,” by which me meant they did not present adequately Paul’s view of justification by faith. So he included them in Scripture bevause historically that’s where they were, but he thought they had a secondary standing.
How we got the New Testament, Bart, should make a *great* book. (More interesting to me, personally, than your charity book.) What books might you recommend on how we got the *Old* Testament canon?
Many thanks! <3
I have a brief discussion in my book The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction 2nd ed (ch. 27); or you might look at the essays in McDonald and Sanders, The Canon Debate.
I’m very excited about the possibility of a book from you on how the New Testament canon came about.
Please write this book first.
This is Good News! 🙂 It is this topic about which I have always found evangelicals so ignorant & gullible (to be kind) or opaque & evasive (to be unkind). I still clearly recall once asking, in a university seminar, a future archbishop of an ultra conservative Anglican diocese about this & he said “Just accept it”. That is still just as unsatisfactory now as it was then.
Good, as long as it’s less costly than your mentor’s book on the topic. I find the subject fascinating.
Sounds like a great idea! Bart, unrelated, I was listening to a Christian radio station as I love their “Answers in Genises” segment, it is part of my morning entertainment. They were inerviewing some pastor who recently wrote a book about how true the bible is. One interesting exchange between this author and the interviewer he was stating that Bart Ehrmans books like Misquoting Jesus, and Forged are the main reason that so many are now questioning the authority of the bible. He claimed that 20 years ago books like yours could have never become best sellers. He blames you as the sole source of people doubting the bible as the actual ‘word of G~d’ . He also blames theological universities for fostering ‘textual criticism’ in their curriculum. I found myself yelling at my car radio that morning.
Wow.
Ah, you see what you’ve gone and done there Bart? You’ve helped people to think for themselves and ask some serious questions about their faith – how dare you, Sir! 😀
God, what was I thinking?
I told you your books are going to change the world.
I really love this topic as a book and hope your publisher goes for it.
I have this vague impression of Martin Luther as an eminently reasonable composer of some 95 modest Latin theses shifting within a few short years into a wild-eyed apocalyptic accuser of the pope (and the Turks) of being the antichrist. Not sure how much of this caricature is true, but now I really want to know more about Luther’s view of the book of Revelation. That would make for a great blog post. What do you think, Bart?
Yes it would! (He wasn’t big on Jews either, after a time….) His views of Revelation were interesting. He said he couldn’t get his mind around it but he had no trouble using it to show that the pope was the Antichrist. Yup, maybe I should post on it.
Excerpt from “The Jews And Their Lies” (Martin Luther)
I shall give you my sincere advice:
First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians. For whatever we tolerated in the past unknowingly — and I myself was unaware of it — will be pardoned by God. But if we, now that we are informed, were to protect and shield such a house for the Jews, existing right before our very nose, in which they lie about, blaspheme, curse, vilify, and defame Christ and us (as was heard above), it would be the same as if we were doing all this and even worse ourselves, as we very well know.
Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues.
Not his finest moment….
Professor, an angle I would love to see in the work… an analysis of the .. degree (probably just an event count) of superstitious acts in each book (maybe just gospels in and out of Canon). Perhaps correlated by age of the book from 33 BCE. Perhaps there was an underlying fear some authors went overboard? Looking forward to it!
Prof Ehrman,
I remember that you speak about how the canon was formed in your lectures ” How Jesus Became God” , which I listened to twice ( lecture 23). Is this connected with the theme of this upcoming book, which I find most exciting?
Not so much — I won’t be dealing with Christology per se in the book, except insofar as some books were left out because they had dubious christological views (e.g., a view that Jesus wasn’t actually human).
Prof Ehrman
Stubborn that I am, just yesterday I went over” Jesus, Interrupted” yet again -I had already read it practically cover to cover- and realized that there is a significant portion in the book that apparently deals with this topic, “How we got the Bible”
(p 181- 223) . I look forward very much to the new book. In the meantime, it will profit to read in their entirety those few books you mention in “Jesus, Interrupted” , books that didn’t make it to the canon.
Hey Burt,
Consider the excerpt below (p97-8) from ‘Individuals and Institutions in Early Scholasticism’ 2019 edition by Antonia Fitzpatrick & John Sabapathy.
…Earlier, in 1272, a statute, perhaps written at their request, had forbidden the Paris arts masters from making purely theological questions the subject of their disputations and required them to refute any views they discussed which might seem to negate Christian doctrine. This statute formed the basis of the oath for arts masters instituted in Paris in 1279, but the requirement about statements contrary to Christianity was both widened and qualified, since arts masters had to swear that, if they had to determine any question touching on ‘faith and philosophy’, they would determine it ‘on behalf of faith’ (pro fide) and refute the arguments against the faith ‘in so far as it seems to you they should be refuted’…
Q: Can we at least suggest that such oaths ensured the development & survival of scriptures this far rather than Devine intervention?
Q: Can we rule out conspiracy in the making of the NT?
1. We have no record of such things imposed on scribes in monasteries (as opposed ot masters of teh arts) 2. Do you mean in the writing of it or in the decisions about the canon? For neither is there any evidence in the least for conspiracy. Though there is plenty of evidence for bias.
Thanks Prof,
I’ve just finished reading your book Misquoting Jesus and I must say it is outstanding.
It answered many of my questions…
Thanks again for a job well done.
This is a very important book to write. It is essential for the community at large to be clearly shown how we really got the current collection of books that they know as the New Testament.
Since it is relied on so heavily by political parties and influential people to shape laws and impose punishments on citizens, its true origins must be clearly laid out. It needs to be shown what the general community belief in the ‘gospel truth’ actually rests on. The discrepancy between the facts and what churches are happy for the community to believe will be very apparent.
The actual process of the NTs compilation, the uncertainty of its true authors and the veracity of its accounts wouldn’t satisfy most newspaper editors, let alone the burden of proof in a court. Despite this it currently occupies an unjustified position as the ultimate source of truth and the ultimate justification for laws.
In my opinion you can’t write this book soon enough.
Have you ever written a big picture view of the development of the books in the bible, from Genesis to Revelation, and thus the development of Jewish-Christian thought and theology? (for general audience).
Just my book The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction.
” The Bible” is a beautiful book, and so is “The New Testament” ( 7th edition, I had to buy it twice as they sent me the 5th edition at first). These books are gems not just for students but for everyone else. “The Bible ” is a stunner even for those of us very familiar with the Hebrew Bible
Thanks!
Sounds like a great idea for a book. Do you know why 1 Clement was never adopted into the canon? I understand it appeared in some early bibles.
It’s found in the fifth-century Codex Alexanrinus (along with 2 Clement!). I think it simply was not widely used enough and since it refers to Peter and Paul as being of an earlier generation it wasn’t considered sufficiently apostolic (the book itself doesn’t claim to be written by Clement, of course, but by the church of Rome; so it would be a bit hard to claim a *direct* connection with an apostle the way one could argue for the Gospel of Mark)
I have a book by C E Hill called Who chose the Gospels? which seems to be aimed at non-scholars. I think he argues that the eventual NT books were always in the majority and the apocryphal writings far less common, which suggests that the ‘final cut’ for the NT wasn’t that much of a surprise. But I may be over simplifying. Anyway, I’ll certainly look forward to your book Dr Ehrman.
Yes, he’s a smart guy and learned. We are distant friends and very friendly — but we disagree with scholarly issues all over the map!
Great idea Bart. I read the book “The Origin of the Bible” by Bruce, Packer, Comfort, and Henry, which I enjoyed reading. They basically gave a general overview of how we got the Bible. Are you going to focus on anything in particular? I can’t wait to read it. Please write it for a lay audience! I’m not ready for scholarly books yet. I try to sometimes, and it feels like I am reading another language.
Yup, I’ll be writing it explicitly for a lay audience, and unlike a lot of the books out there, I will not be assuming a conservative evangelical theological position on the question(s). I do plan, though, to do a hard-hitting scholarly analysis as well. THe scholarly world needs one.
I saw a copy of Making the Bible by Konrad Schmid & Jenz Schroter at one of my local bookstores and I was thinking of purchasing this book, which has an endorsement/blurb from you on the back cover.
If I may ask: in what ways do you see your upcoming book departing from this work, aside from the fact that your book may focus less on the Hebrew Scriptures ….?
Ah, it’s not at all alike. They cover a huge range of issues. Mine will focus on the history and conflicts leading up to the canonizaton of the NT.
Hi Bart. This may be basic but since the New Testament is a book, why aren’t what is included in it referred to as chapters or short stories within the book?
In antiquity a “book” was a distinct writing that could fit on a scroll. For example, the four Gospels and Acts would have each been able to be on just one scroll each. (Scrolls could be 30-35 feet) And so we speak of Josephus’s work The Antiquities of the Jews as coming to us in 20 “books” even though it’s (in our mind) just a single peice of writing. That nomenclature was taken over then for the “books” of the Bible, even though when they were circulated, early on, most of them were not the length of books. (It’s not clear if the Gospels were written on scrolls, but I would imagine so)
I’m really looking forward to this one (and the Revelation one…)
I’m glad you chose to write about this.
I have SO wanted a trade book like this! Write it before the one on Christian charity!
I’m very excited for this book! Great choice.
This is probably not something you’ll get into, but the obvious implication – for fundamentalists – of the reality that the “New Testament” didn’t exist as a group of books until the 4th century is that sola scriptura makes no sense…they didn’t have “The Bible”.
It’s always been my sense that the typical fundamentalist imagines – without really thinking about it – that a Christian in 95 CE had access to a NIV Study Bible.
So, my question: what ‘scripture’ DID a typical Christian (say, in the areas where Paul frequented) have access to (irrespective of whether they could actually read it)?
Their first Scriptures would have been the Old Testament. After that they started using “authortative” writings (letters of church leaderss, narratives of Jesus’ life), some of which wold have *become* parts of the NT and others not.
You do not know how grateful I am that you will (hopefully? presumably?) writing this book, and I have an unusual reason why: You are widely read by the skeptic community and thus the information you present here would be widely read by people why keep spouting the same old misinformation about the formation of the canon of the the NT (that it was decided by Constantine, or at the council of Nicea, by the Illuminati, or whatever).
is there anyway to buy this book before its release date? very thanks
There will be once I”ve written it. But, well, that won’t be for a long time. I have another book to write first.
Thank you very much, Bart, for recommending McDonald and Sanders’ *The Canon Debate* to me. It’s just what I was looking for.
This is the second time you’ve recommended a particular book to me in response to my request for a recommendation. Both of your recommendations have been perfect. The ability to ask you for this kind of recommendation is precious to me.
Thank you! <3
Whoa. Batting a thousand. Pressure’s on….
Good day!
Dr. Ehrman, I have a question about bible translation.
Is the NIV translation good and reliable? I usually use the NRSV, but a parishioner asked me about the NIV.
It’s a good translation in many ways, and is the most widely used English translation. My qualms with it are that the translators, all of whom had to be committed evangelicals, in many places translated teh text in ways that made differences and discrepancies disappear, and I don’t think that’s useful.