BDEhrman, Author at The Bart Ehrman Blog

About BDEhrman

Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he has served as the director of graduate studies and chair of the Department of Religious Studies.

The Implausibility of the Triumphal Entry

It is precisely the intricate and complete intertwining of (what we would call) “religion” and “politics” in the ancient world (see my previous post) that explains why Jesus’ forthright views about God and understanding of himself as God’s spokesperson let to his arrest and execution, as well as, ironically, his indifference to the governmental and cultic status quo. His revolutionary views and yet indifference can be illustrated by his two incendiary actions near the end of his life and, oddly, his two discussions of taxation. I will deal with the first of his two actions, typically designated the “Triumphal Entry,” in two posts. The Triumphal Entry refers to Jesus’s coming into Jerusalem on the occasion of the Passover Feast riding on a colt (according to Mark and Luke) or a small donkey (according to John) or both a colt and a donkey (at the same time! According to Matthew), to the acclamation of the crowd of Jewish pilgrims, who welcomed him as the one who was bringing in the Kingdom to Israel (Matthew 21:1-9; Mark [...]

BDEhrman2026-07-31T10:22:53-04:00August 2nd, 2026|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

Religion, Politics, and Resistance in Jesus’ Day

To condemn, oppose, and defy the current order is not necessarily the same as, or even a stage toward, urging its reformation. Jesus certainly condemned, opposed, and defied the ruling authorities of his day. But he did not propose (or support) an agenda to reform the system. He believed God would destroy both the system and those who ran and supported it. He would then set up a new order. He didn’t need either urging or assistance. Roughly speaking there were two sets of ruling authorities in Jesus’s time and place, what we today would differentiate as “political” and “religious.” The differentiation would have made little sense to Jesus or to anyone else in the Roman world. Romans, Jews, and everyone else saw these two realms (that since the Enlightenment have been differentiated) as closely intertwined and interdependent. There were not even words in Greek, Latin, or Aramaic that clearly designated what we today call “politics” and/or “religion.” That is because everyone (who supported the status quo) understood the ruling authorities and their [...]

BDEhrman2026-07-30T22:20:29-04:00July 30th, 2026|Public Forum|

Thoughts on Jesus and Activism. What Do You Think?

Here are some random thoughts I’ve been … thinking, while contemplating Jesus’s views of political and economic systems. They are not definitive thoughts, but explorations. What do you think? I would welcome your comments (on this post I probably won’t be answering questions, just observing responses). Normally when someone opposes a political or economic situation, they want it to be reformed. We should move to a state-supported health care system; we should get rid of the electoral college; we should abolish the House of Lords; we should close the borders; we should … whatever, ad infinitum. It has long been interesting to me that (some) people who propose a radical transformation of current systems nonetheless (sometimes) fully participate in them to their own benefit. For many years one of my close friends was an avowed, deeply committed Marxist who kept true to his principles by refusing to contribute to the Christmas fund for the office staff (since that would involve clandestinely acknowledging and supporting the system that accepted the reality of the proletariat). [...]

BDEhrman2026-07-28T12:14:51-04:00July 29th, 2026|Public Forum|

Jesus the Pacifist
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Jesus the Pacifist

Historical Jesus

Jesus the Pacifist

I was raised thinking Jesus was completely relevant for our own current affairs, that his teachings were directly relevant for governmental policies and social agendas, that he had preferred methods of political rules, definite ideas about competing economic systems, and strong opinions about governmental priorities. To no great surprise, growing up in Kansas in the 1960s and early 1970s, I simply assumed his teachings provided divine support for Capitalist Democracy. I don’t think so any longer. It’s not that I think he preferred Marxist Socialism, as has been sometimes argued by academics and their eager followers, or … well, any other modern political-economic system. My view is somewhat (though in a different way) more radical. I don’t think he cared. It will take a while to explain this. But I want to argue, as intimated in my previous post on Jesus’ “Indifference” that Jesus’s concerns were not strictly speaking political (in the ways we think of politics) or economic. His priorities lay elsewhere. This will take several posts. To begin with, I need to start [...]

BDEhrman2026-07-21T08:50:22-04:00July 28th, 2026|Historical Jesus|

The Indifference of Jesus

How concerned was Jesus about the social, economic, cultural, and political issues that are so vitally important to us and occupy so much of our mental space? The answer is surprising. First some (probably unexpected) background. As a Jewish peasant in early first-century rural Aramaic-speaking Galilee, Jesus would not have known about Greek Stoics or their philosophical views. He nonetheless appears to have shared a perspective with them, one that is a bit unexpected. Like them, he was completely indifferent to a number of issues most people find deeply relevant and important, including fundamental questions connected with governmental policies and religious practices. Stoics insisted that a person’s happiness depended on maintaining an internal state of peace and calm, undisturbed by external events and circumstances. There are only so many things that a person can control in their life. Those are the things they should focus on. Anyone who worries about things over which they have no control creates unnecessary stress and anxiety. So it is best to distance yourself, simply not to be [...]

BDEhrman2026-07-22T06:14:20-04:00July 25th, 2026|Historical Jesus|

The Sadness of Beginning to Doubt

A friend of mine from 50 years ago got in touch with me recently. We were roommates at Moody Bible Institute, and became youth pastors together at Trinity Covenant Church in Oak Lawn, Illinois. I've been reminiscing about those days, and have been thinking about an event connected with the church that I talked about in my book How Jesus Became God (HarperOne, 2014). It involves a sad moment when my doubts about the Christian faith were starting to take hold. Here what I said there. ****************************** When I attended Moody Bible Institute in the mid 1970s, every student was required, every semester, to do some kind of Christian ministry work. Like all of my fellow students I was completely untrained and unqualified to do the things I did, but I think Moody believed in on-the-job training. And so every student had to have one semester where, for maybe 2-3 hours one afternoon a week, they would engage in “door-to-door evangelism.” That involved being transported to some neighborhood in Chicago, knocking on doors, [...]

BDEhrman2026-07-17T10:34:04-04:00July 23rd, 2026|Bart’s Biography|

Was Moses Called God?

In my last couple of posts I've talked about how the King of Israel could, oddly enough, be called "God." That seems contrary to what we think of ancient Judaism, where only God can be God. But it helps explain why later Christians could call Jesus God. There was precedent for a human to be called that, even within Judaism, Possibly yet more unexpectedly, within the Jewish tradition even Moses was sometimes considered a divine being, and called God. Here's how I explain it in my book How Jesus Became God (HarperOne, 2014) ****************************** It is interesting to note that not only the king of Israel, human as he was, is lauded with divine status and even the term “God,” but so too in ancient Jewish texts was that great savior and lawgiver of the people, Moses. The root of this tradition is in the Torah itself, from an intriguing passage in Exodus 4. God is commissioning Moses to go to the Egyptian Pharaoh and demand that he set free the children of [...]

BDEhrman2026-07-17T10:20:11-04:00July 22nd, 2026|Early Judaism|

The King of Israel Was Called … God?
Gallery
The King of Israel Was Called … God?

Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament

The King of Israel Was Called … God?

In my previous post I showed that beings other than God could be called God in the Old Testament and other ancient Jewish literature. It seems strange, but there it is. I continue now with an especially important case in point: the king of Israel. In this case there is not a lot of ambiguity about the matter, as odd as that might seem. Again, this is from my book How Jesus Became God. ****************************** Hebrew Bible scholar John Collins points out that the Israelite notion that the human king could be considered in some sense divine ultimately appears to derive from Egyptian ways of thinking about their king, the Pharaoh.[1] Even in Egypt, where the king was a god, it did not mean that the king was on a par with the great gods, any more than the Roman emperor was thought to be on a par with Jupiter or Mars. But he was a god. In Egyptian and Roman circles, there were levels of divinity. So too, as we have seen, in Jewish [...]

BDEhrman2026-07-17T10:11:00-04:00July 21st, 2026|Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

Jewish Precedents for Jesus Becoming God

In my previous post I showed how Jews could and did conceive of humans who became super-human beings -- angels. But that's a far cry from thinking humans could be GOD! And yet the Jewish followers of Jesus claimed that's what he was. How'd that work exactly? That may come as a surprise: Jews who were monotheists thought that others could be God, along with the one God? Uh, how does *that* work? As it turns out, you can find it in the Hebrew Bible and in later Jewish traditions as well. Angelic beings are sometimes called “gods” (e.g. Psalm 82, esp. vv. 1, 7); a figure called “The Son of Man” is considered a divine being before whom the entire world falls down in worship (1 Enoch 48:2-7); God’s “Wisdom,” a being separate from God himself, is said to have created the world (Wisdom of Solomon 9:-10); so too God’s “Word” (the Logos) is called “God” and “the second God” (Philo, Dreams 1.230 and Questions on Genesis 2.62). But more than that, even some [...]

BDEhrman2026-07-17T03:24:55-04:00July 19th, 2026|Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

How Can Monotheists Think a Human Could Become God?

One of the questions I regularly get is how we can imagine that Jews -- specifically, the Jewish followers of Jesus after his death -- could possibly imagine that he had become God. They were monotheists. How could someone in addition to God be or become God? That maybe makes sense in pagan circles, where there are many gods and a rather fluid transition between humanity and divinity. But not in Judaism, right? Well, wrong. As it turns out Jews also sometimes thought that a human could become divine. In this post I’ll talk about one variant of this view, that mortal humans could become divine superhumans, angels. In later posts I’ll talk about an even more bizarre view (bizarre, that is, in the context of Judaism) that humans could become gods. Jews believed that? Who woulda thought? This is how I begin to explain the matter in my book How Jesus Became God. ****************************** Many people today have the view that when people die, they become angels (well, at least if they’ve been “good”). [...]

BDEhrman2026-07-12T14:37:30-04:00July 18th, 2026|Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

Personal Faith, Textual Problems, and the Miracles of Jesus: More Readers’ Questions

Here are three quite disparate questions from readers (with attempts at answers), each interesting and together showing the kind of range of issues that are involved with trying to make sense of the Bible from a historical point of view. QUESTION: I am at one of the hardest points of my life, the dimming of my faith. I have always been a person of faith throughout my young age, and I really want to keep that faith mainly because I want a better future for my son. However, upon the discovery of the contradictions, errors, and upon actually studying the difficult-to-digest parts of the Bible, I do not know what to think anymore. I still pray and read the Bible, but it’s like the house is slowly crumbling down; I can’t even read without being critical of the text. I know your position regarding faith, but also know that you have many friends and family members who still hold faith. How do they do it? How do they keep faith despite the facts mentioned [...]

BDEhrman2026-07-10T10:13:35-04:00July 16th, 2026|Reader’s Questions|

How the Year 1517 Revolutionized Biblical Studies

Two events in 1516-1517 CE unexpectedly altered the field of biblical studies for all time. Yesterday I discussed the first published edition of the Greek New Testament by Erasmus (1516); today I discuss the “95 Theses” of Martin Luther. Neither scholar would likely have approved the tenets or conclusions of historical criticism that emerged from the foundation they laid. But emerge they did. On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther, an Augustinian friar and ordained Catholic priest, posted his “95 theses” – traditionally said to have nailed them to the door of All Saints Church in Wittenburg. This moment is usually regarded as the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, even though Luther had no plans/intentions to break off from the Catholic church at this point. He was wanting reform from within, specifically with respect to the collection of “indulgences” to pay for St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Indulgences were the system by which someone could donate money to the church to reduce their time in Purgatory. Purgatory itself had been been introduced a few [...]

BDEhrman2026-07-12T14:28:28-04:00July 15th, 2026|History of Biblical Scholarship|

Two Years that Transformed the World of Biblical Studies.
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Two Years that Transformed the World of Biblical Studies.

History of Biblical Scholarship, New Testament Manuscripts

Two Years that Transformed the World of Biblical Studies.

Someone should write a book on the inordinate significance of the years 1516 and 1517 for the rise of modern biblical scholarship. Two publications by two ordained Catholic Priests, Desiderius Erasmus and Martin Luther, revolutionized how the Bible came to be studied, in some ways marking the beginnings of the historical-critical study. Both men would have been completely surprised by the outcome. The Bible had long been understood in light of traditional perspectives and interpretations advanced by ecclesiastical writers for centuries; in the Latin-speaking West, based on theological understandings of the Vulgate. The grounds for a seismic change, for not directly connected reasons, appeared in a less-than two-year span. Erasmus was an internationally famous humanist scholar from Rotterdam, highly erudite, proficient in ancient languages, and deeply religious. In 1511 he published his most famous work, In Praise of Folly, a book that begins by celebrating the more-or-less foolish things we tell ourselves to get along in the world – for example, the unspoken self-delusions that bulk up our self image or that we share with [...]

BDEhrman2026-07-08T15:10:13-04:00July 14th, 2026|History of Biblical Scholarship, New Testament Manuscripts|

The Martyrdom of Polycarp (Another Book of the Apostolic Fathers): In a Nutshell

Do you know the first account of a Christian martyr -- the actual narrative of his trial and executio -- from outside the New Testament? It's one of the Apostolic Fathers, and for many readers one of the most intriguing: The Martyrdom of Polycarp. Here is a nutshell summary of the work, an edited version of my Introduction to the translation I made for my collection, The Apostolic Fathers (Harvard University Press) ****************************** The Martyrdom of Polycarp has long occupied a place of special intrigue for readers of the Apostolic Fathers. This is an account, evidently based on the testimony of eyewitnesses, of the trial and execution of a prominent church leader of the early and mid-second century, Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna. Known already from the letter addressed to him by Ignatius, an earlier martyr (whose own death is recounted only in later legends), and from the letter that he wrote to the church in Philippi (see the Letter of Polycarp), Polycarp was an important figure in the development of proto-orthodox Christianity. Tradition held [...]

BDEhrman2026-07-07T20:07:54-04:00July 12th, 2026|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE)|

2 Clement (one of the “Apostolic Fathers”) in a Nutshell

What does our earliest Christian sermon outside the New Testament look like? It is found in one of the apostolic fathers, in a book called 2 Clement, allegedly (but not really) written by the early bishop of Rome, Clement, and historically associated with another book of the Apostolic Fathers, 1 Clement. The following is an edited version of the Introduction to my translation of the text in The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 1 (Loeb Classical Library; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003) ****************************** Second Clement is probably the most overlooked and least appreciated of the writings of the Apostolic Fathers. This is somewhat to be regretted, as it is in some ways a historically significant work. As with 1 Clement, the book is misnamed – even more so, as in addition to being written by a different author, who cannot be identified as Clement of Rome, it is not even a letter. Readers have long recognized that the book appears in fact to be an early Christian homily, a written exposition of Scripture with an accompanying set [...]

BDEhrman2026-07-08T07:25:50-04:00July 11th, 2026|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE)|

Christian Justifications for Lying

Isn't lying acceptable and even the "right thing to do" in some circumstances? I became keenly interested in this question when writing my books oon early Christian forgeries (Forged and Forgery and Counterforgery) -- canonical and non-canonical writings by authors claiming to be Peter, Paul, John, or even Jesus, knowing full well they were, well, someone else. Contrary to what you sometimes hear, this was decidedly (and repeatedly) talked of as a kind of "lying" throughout the ancient world, intentional attempts to deceive others. But isn't intentional deception the right thing to do sometimes? It is certainly possible ancient Christian authors sometimes felt that way, that lying is the right thing to do in some instances. Throughout much of antiquity, this view was based on the idea that there could be such a thing as a “noble lie,” a lie that serves a noble cause. If a doctor needs to lie to a patient in order to get her to take the medicine she needs, then that can be a good form of deception. [...]

BDEhrman2026-07-01T10:06:25-04:00July 9th, 2026|Forgery in Antiquity, Reflections and Ruminations|

Ancient Christians Who Wanted to Lie

Is it ever OK to lie in order to promote the truth? Even in Christian circles? In my previous post I talked about an evangelical Christian who flat-out lied about things I've said and written. It's also possible, of course, that he simply repeated a complete falsehood he had heard about my views without bothering to take a minute to check. That too would be bad, but different. But to give him the benefit of the doubt, so to say, I'll assume that as an influential speaker on scholarly matters and a representative of conservative evangelical Christianity he usually does his homework. Whether he himself was lying or not, the phenomenon of lying to convey the truth is interesting and worth thinking about. I've thought and read a lot about it over the past 10-15 years, especially when I was writing my books on forgery in the ancient world. By forgery I mean (specifically) a book written by an author who falsely claims to be a famous person in order to deceive his [...]

BDEhrman2026-07-02T08:55:25-04:00July 8th, 2026|Forgery in Antiquity, Reflections and Ruminations|

Evangelicals Who Lie to Promote the(ir) Truth….
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Evangelicals Who Lie to Promote the(ir) Truth….

Public Forum

Evangelicals Who Lie to Promote the(ir) Truth….

I was looking through the archives of posts from many years ago and came across one that struck me as rather hilarious. Why do devout Christians sometimes tell flat-out lies to support their truth-claims? Here's what I said in the post: ******************************* Sometimes it’s enough to make my blood boil. Maybe someone can explain it to me. If you were to interview the billions of occupants of this planet, you would find no group of people who declare themselves more committed to “truth” than evangelical Christians. Evangelical Christianity, historically, is about nothing other than the Truth. Jesus himself said “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no one comes to the Father except by me” (John 14:6); and “You shall know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free” (John 8:32). The Christian faith, for these people, is all about finding the Truth that leads to eternal life. So why do so many of their spokespersons simply tell lies? Or at least propagate willful ignorance? Those are the two choices: they [...]

BDEhrman2026-06-29T08:41:15-04:00July 7th, 2026|Public Forum|

Free Course on … Hell!

I am pleased to let all you blog members to know that on Saturday July 18, 2:00 - 5:00 pm ET, I will be doing a FREE two-lecture course on where the Christian idea of hell (as a place of eternal conscious torment) came from. This course is NOT connected with blog per se, except insofar as I am connected with both. It is rather a production of my on-line course company, Paths in Biblical Studies. But since this is a complete Freebie, I thought I would be remiss not to let all of you know about it who haven't learned about it from another channel. The course is called: What theHell? The Real Teaching of Jesus on the Afterlife. It will will consist of two lectures of 50 minutes each, followed by a live Q&A. Anyone can come. There's zero cost. If you're interested, you can find out more about it here: https://learn.bartehrman.com/what-the-hell?widget=courses Here's a brief overview: What The Hell? The Real Teachings of Jesus on the Afterlife Many people have trouble understanding how a good God could [...]

BDEhrman2026-07-05T06:32:43-04:00July 6th, 2026|Public Forum|

Exonerating Pilate to Implicate the Jews

Why did early Christians portray Pontius Pilate, who ordered Jesus' crucifixion, as increasingly innocent in Jesus' death? Was it be blame Jews for being "Christ killers"? In a couple of recent posts I've talked about a couple of the "Pilate Gospels" -- apocryphal accounts of Jesus' trial and crucifixion -- in which Pilate himself is shown to be innocent and "the Jews" (either their leaders or the entire people) were at fault for the execution of the son of God. These accounts may have started to appear in the second century, but the texts we have now are from later periods when anti-Jewish hatred in some parts of the Christian church had become standard rhetoric, sometimes leading to violence. This rhetorical strategy did not originate after the New Testament period, but can be found already in the canonical Gospels. I should stress that the earliest Christians -- starting obviously with Jesus himself and his disciples -- were Jewish through and through, with nothing non-Jewish, let alone anti-Jewish about them. Jesus did not plan [...]

BDEhrman2026-06-28T10:29:28-04:00July 5th, 2026|Public Forum|

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