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.

Some Readers’ Questions and Responses

Here are some of the intriguing questions I have recently received from blog members. The first one includes a reply to my response and my response to that reply. Enjoy! QUESTION: Have you considered the angle that Jesus may have been a revolutionary Essene? This would explain his outward orientation instead of inward. I mean he fits right in with being a disciple of John the Baptist and has a very Essene worldview. A good amount of his followers were also followers of John the Baptist. Most of the points he makes, eating with tax collectors and sinners, doing things on the Sabbath, not obsessing over ritual purity == all of these seems strangely specifically targeted towards the Essenes, which means he is very familiar and actively critiquing them. I am wondering if Jesus’ relation to the Essenes could be comparable what to Luther’s relation to Catholicism. As in Luther was a Catholic and started a revolution inside Catholicism. On the surface it doesn’t fit but if he’s a counterculture within [...]

BDEhrman2025-07-17T05:32:09-04:00July 17th, 2025|Reader’s Questions|

Paul’s Letter to the Romans “At a Glance,” and Questions for Reflection

Now that I have finished this subthread on the letters of Paul in a nutshell, I'd like to provide brief summaries of the various Pauline writings (both "undisputed" and deutero-Pauline). These posts will be quick and to the point. In them I reproduce my overviews called "At a Glance" for each letter that I give in my textbook as the final bit of each discussion for each book, along with a couple of questions to reflect on. If the summaries don't make immediate sense and/or the questions don't seem to have an obvious question, I'd recommend rereading the relevant posts from a while back. In this post I deal the the letter to the Romans. Here are the previous posts, in case you need a reminder: https://ehrmanblog.org/pauls-letter-to-the-romans-in-a-nutshell/ https://ehrmanblog.org/the-letter-to-the-romans-who-when-and-why/ https://ehrmanblog.org/unusually-important-for-pauls-letter-to-the-romans-pauls-models-of-salvation/ ROMANS: AT A GLANCE Unlike Paul’s other surviving letters, Romans was written to a church he had not founded or even visited. It was written evidently to secure the support of the Roman Christians for Paul’s missionary endeavors farther west, in Spain. [...]

BDEhrman2025-07-07T11:29:47-04:00July 16th, 2025|Paul and His Letters|

The Transformation of Paul’s Teaching: The Apocalypse of Paul
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The Transformation of Paul’s Teaching: The Apocalypse of Paul

Afterlife, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Paul and His Letters

The Transformation of Paul’s Teaching: The Apocalypse of Paul

In my previous post I began to discuss the non-canonical Apocalypse of Paul, a legendary tale that describes what Paul saw when he had his vision after being taken up to the “third heaven” (see 2 Corinthians 12:1-6). He was actually taken to see what was experienced by the dead in the afterlife. For some lucky souls, it was fantastic. For others, well … read on. He first sees two souls being taken to their eternal destiny, one is happy, and the other miserable. The one is carried by angels before the throne of God to be given an eternal reward; the other is dragged off by some very angry angels to face eternal damnation. Paul then is shown the actual places of bliss and torment. The bliss is amazing—a glorious utopian place of goodness, where Paul meets with the saints of the Jewish tradition and converses with them in paradise. The torment, on the other hand, is horrific. Here are all sorts of punishments arranged for all kinds of sinners, Christian and [...]

BDEhrman2025-07-07T11:43:14-04:00July 15th, 2025|Afterlife, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Paul and His Letters|

Fundamentalist Apologists, Christian and Mythicist

As I’ve been reading in preparation for my course on July 19, “Did Jesus Really Exist” (a freebie! Check it out at https://courses.bartehrman.com/did-jesus-really-exist. ) another thought occurred to me, about the similarities between “mythicist” writers (those supporting the idea that Jesus of Nazareth never did exist) and conservative Christian apologists. They seem to have a lot in common, even though they take virtually the opposite views of things. I suppose I noticed that long ago but never delved much into it. But it was probably 15-20 years ago when I was struck by the fact that the mathematical principle, “Bayes’ Theorem” – which works to work out the probability of a cause based on the known effects, and which sure seems highly scientific (in the general sense), and in fact has been used to reach remarkable conclusions in a number of fields – has been applied by two scholars with respect to the historical Jesus: by Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne, a deeply committed Christian, to demonstrate (on statistical probability) that Jesus was probably raised from [...]

BDEhrman2025-07-15T09:12:55-04:00July 13th, 2025|Bart's Debates|

Did Jesus Exist? Why I Don’t Enjoy Reading the Mythicists

I’ve been doing some reading in preparation for a two-lecture on-line course called “Did Jesus Really Exist” scheduled for July 19. You can find out about it here: https://courses.bartehrman.com/did-jesus-really-exist. It’s a freebie, so, well, feel free to get it for free! Even though I'm pumped to do this course, and I don’t really much enjoy reading about it (that is, reading the work books that argue Jesus did not exist). I once did, back when I wrote my book Did Jesus Exist. But unlike most issues I deal with, I don’t find it very interesting or intellectually challenging. Still it’s a topic that comes up a lot among lay people, especially over the past 20 years or so, and so I feel a need to address it, and will do so with vigor. In preparation, Ive been rereading some of the work of one of the leading spokespersons among the “mythicists." In this view, it’s not just that Jesus did not do and say a number of things recorded of him in [...]

BDEhrman2025-07-12T09:28:37-04:00July 12th, 2025|Historical Jesus, Mythicism, Public Forum|

Paul’s Vision of Heaven and Hell

I now turn to another non-canonical text connected with Paul, one of the most famous throughout the Middle Ages, an account of his journey to observe the fate of souls in the afterlife, both the glories of the saints in heaven and the torments of the sinners in hell. This tale is not simply meant to convey factual information about what happened to Paul once. It is intended to teach a clear lesson. Isn’t all interesting history like that? Here's how I discuss it in my book Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene (Oxford University Press). This will take two posts. The Apocalypse of Paul Is anyone ever interested in the past for purely antiquarian interests – that is, they just want to know what happened but for no other reason? Well, not usually. Most people think about the past because they are interested in the present. One of the ways that people who are interested in the present use history is by making the past itself present—that is, by making it relevant to [...]

BDEhrman2025-07-07T11:01:31-04:00July 10th, 2025|Afterlife, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Paul and His Letters|

Chastity Within Marriage? Paul Taught THAT?

In my previous post I summarized the legendary account of Paul and his most famous female disciple Thecla, and ended by quoting the “gospel message” that he preaches in the tale. It’s not at all what you would expect. He says no word about believing in Christ’s death and resurrection. It is all about remaining sexually chaste, even when married. No sex. That’s what God is most interested in. Here are some snippets by way of reminders. Blessed are those who have kept the flesh chaste, for they will become a temple of God. Blessed are those who are self-controlled, for God will speak to them. Blessed are those who have renounced this world, for they will be pleasing to God. Blessed are those who have wives as if they did not have them, for they will be the heirs of God. Blessed are the bodies of the virgins, for these will be pleasing to God and will not lose the reward for their chastity If (since!) this is not the main gospel message [...]

BDEhrman2025-07-07T10:53:30-04:00July 9th, 2025|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Paul and His Letters, Sex and Sexuality in the Bible|

Paul and His Most Famous Woman Disciple
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Paul and His Most Famous Woman Disciple

Christian Apocrypha, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Paul and His Letters

Paul and His Most Famous Woman Disciple

I have now finished my summaries and discussions of each of the thirteen Pauline letters, "In a Nutshell." In this long thread we have now covered 18 of the New Testament's 27 books, which, by my math, means we are two-thirds of the way through this thread. Nine more gems to go. I'd like to pause at this stage and provide a few other posts on Paul and his writings, specifically by talking a bit about Paul as found in early Christian writings outside the New Testament. I have a fuller discussion of the historical and legendary tales about Paul in my book Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend (Oxford University Press, 2006). This post and the next will contain excerpts discussing Paul and his female follower Thecla, one of the most famous early Christian women of all history (though widely forgotten today, she was virtually a household name throughout the Middle Ages.) ****************************** The Acts of Paul and Thecla One of the most popular legends about the [...]

BDEhrman2025-07-07T10:43:15-04:00July 8th, 2025|Christian Apocrypha, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Paul and His Letters|

Should We Keep “Slaves” in the New Testament?

I’ve been talking about Paul’s view of slavery, in light of the book of Philemon; this seems to be a good time to talk about a very big issue connected with translating the New Testament from Greek into English. It may seem fairly straightforward, but in fact it is incredibly thorny: what English word is best to use for the Greek word that refers to a person who is owned by another and compelled (on every level) to do what the owner requires? It’s “slave,” right? How can it be complicated? Let me put it in a bigger picture. For a very long time I’ve been interested in the question of how to translate ancient texts, such as the Greek New Testament, into modern languages. Early in my scholarly career my interest was piqued by the work I did as a graduate student working as a research grunt for the translation committee for the New Revised Standard Version. My Doktorvater, Bruce Metzger, was the chair of the committee and he asked me, [...]

BDEhrman2025-07-07T10:21:49-04:00July 6th, 2025|Paul and His Letters, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Paul’s Letter to Philemon: For Further Reading

Here is a list of readings on Philemon, all of which are relevant to all the undisputed Pauline epistles, with a couple of commentaries specifically on this significant, short letter. One benefit of serious commentaries is that they always begin by discussing major critical issues in understanding a book: authorship, date, historical context, major themes, disputed issues, and so on. ****************************** Aune, David. The New Testament in Its Literary Environment. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987. Includes a superb discussion of the practices of letter writing in Greco-Roman antiquity as the social context for Paul’s epistles. Beker, J. Christiaan. Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980. A sophisticated and astute discussion of the apocalyptic character of Paul’s theology and its various forms of expression in different situations that the apostle confronted. For advanced students. Bruce, F. F. Apostle of the Heart Set Free. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1977. A full study of Paul’s life and teachings by a major evangelical Christian scholar. Dunn, James D. The Theology of Paul the Apostle. Grand Rapids, [...]

BDEhrman2025-07-07T10:13:10-04:00July 5th, 2025|Public Forum|

Philemon and the Morality of Slavery

Here are a few more comments about the short letter of Paul to Philemon, whose major themes and emphases I discussed yesterday. It may indeed seem a rather peripheral letter – it’s a private letter about a slave returning to his master, not about Paul’s great theological views or highly informative discussions of his life. But even so, this brief one-pager can provide us with some important insights into Paul’s view of his apostolic ministry, and even more about the role of social justice in his ministry (specifically: does he condone slavery?). One thing to observe is Paul’s reciprocal relationship with his converts in this letter. In his other letters, he occasionally appears to be the all-knowing and all-powerful apostle, who makes his demands and expects people to follow them. On certain points that he feels strongly about, such as what his congregations believe about his apocalyptic message and how they treat the Jewish law, he is altogether adamant. But on other issues, he falls short of making demands. In the present instance, [...]

BDEhrman2025-07-07T10:07:56-04:00July 3rd, 2025|Paul and His Letters|

The Letter to Philemon in a Nutshell

I come now to the final Pauline letter of the New Testament, Philemon. If you recall, Paul’s letters are ordered by length; this is by far the shortest, a real one-pager. Given it’s brevity, I’ll be dealing with its major themes and emphases and the questions of Who, When and Why in just this one post. First, a 50-word summary: Paul’s letter to his former convert Philemon concerns Philemon’s slave Onesimus, who has fled from his master, possibly with stolen goods, found Paul in prison, converted, and begged him to intervene on his behalf-- which Paul does by urging Philemon to receive his slave as a fellow believer, without punishment. Here is how I discuss the letter in my book The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (Oxford University Press), edited a bit. ************* The letter to Philemon is a little gem hidden away in the inner recesses of the New Testament. Merely a single page in length, the size of an average Greco-Roman letter, it is the only [...]

BDEhrman2025-07-07T09:57:12-04:00July 2nd, 2025|Public Forum|

Another Puzzling Figure in the Hebrew Bible: Woman Wisdom?

Here is another tidbit from the Hebrew Bible section of first edition of my textbook that covered Genesis to Revelation, book-by-book, now being edited for a third edition with Joel Baden. ****************************** Box 1.2: Woman Wisdom as God’s Consort? We have seen that in ancient Israel Yahweh was sometimes thought to have a divine consort, his “Asherah” (Note: if you're interested in this topic, we have just published a one-lecture course on it by Dan McClellan: The Israelite Goddess Asherah.) This was never accepted by the strict henotheists who wrote the historical and prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible, but in Proverbs, a book of Wisdom, there is a passage that some interpreters have thought represents a kind of modified or “tamed” view of Yahweh and his divine female companion from eternity past. Here she is not Asherah, but Wisdom herself, shown to be speaking in Proverbs 8: The LORD created me at the beginning [or “as the beginning”] of his work, the first of his acts of long ago Ages ago [...]

BDEhrman2025-07-02T14:46:35-04:00June 29th, 2025|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

Who Was the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53?

Here is another post on the Hebrew Bible from the blog in 2012, written while I was working on the first edition of my Bible Introduction. It is an excerpt from my first rough draft of a discussion of an unusually important passage in the book of Isaiah. Brief context: at this point I was discussing Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55), almost universally thought by scholars to be written by a different author from chapters 1-39 (themselves written by Isaiah of Jerusalem in the 8th c. BCE). Second Isaiah was writing after the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem (including the temple) in 586 BCE, while the leaders of the people and many of the elite had been taken into exile in Babylon, in what is known as the Babylonian Captivity. ****************************** No passage of Second Isaiah has intrigued readers and interpreters – especially among Christians – more than the four passages that are dedicated to describing a figure known as the “Suffering Servant.” Some scholars have called these passages “songs,” or “songs of [...]

BDEhrman2025-06-19T09:20:15-04:00June 28th, 2025|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

One of the Stranger Stories of Scripture

Here is another tidbit from the original version of my Bible Introduction. It may be old news for a lot of you, but it's fun to write this kind of thing up for college students, who have never heard of such a thing! ****************************** One of the most mysterious and even bizarre stories in Genesis happens right at the beginning of the flood narrative, where we are told that the “sons of God” looked down among the human “daughters,” saw that they were beautiful, and came down and had sex with them leading, to the Nephilim. The word Nephilim means “fallen ones.” According to Numbers 13:33, the Nephilim were giants. So what is going on here in Genesis? Apparently there were angelic beings (the “sons of God”) who lusted after human women, cohabited with them, and their offspring were giants. It is at that point that God decides to destroy the world. The situation was too weird even for him. This brief episode has parallels in other ancient mythologies. It is common [...]

BDEhrman2025-06-19T09:15:12-04:00June 26th, 2025|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

How We Know the World Was Created in 4004 BCE…

In my Bible Intro, I included a number of "boxes" that deal with issues that are somewhat tangential to the main discussion, but of related interest or importance. Here's one of the ones in my chapter on Genesis, in connection with interpretations that want to take the book as science or history. For a lot of you, this will be old news. But then again, so is Genesis. ****************************** In 1650 CE, an Irish archbishop and scholar, James Ussher, engaged in a detailed study of when the world began. Ussher based his calculations on the genealogies of the Bible, starting with those in the book of Genesis (which state not only who begat whom, but also indicate, in many instances, how long each of the people thus begotten lived) and a detailed study of other ancient sources, such as Babylonian and Roman history. On these grounds, he argued that the world was created in 4004 BCE — in fact, at noon on October 23. This chronology became dominant throughout Western Christendom. It [...]

BDEhrman2025-06-24T20:21:12-04:00June 25th, 2025|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

Understanding the Hebrew Bible: The “Old” Testament in Modern Scholarship
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Understanding the Hebrew Bible: The “Old” Testament in Modern Scholarship

Hebrew Bible/Old Testament

Understanding the Hebrew Bible: The “Old” Testament in Modern Scholarship

Would you like some help in understanding the Hebrew Bible? I have two unofficial announcements to make (official ones are yet to come). The first is that we are producing a third edition of my texbook: The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction (Oxford University Press) which provides up-to-date scholarship on the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation, book-by-book. I say "we" because I've been fortunate to acquire a co-author to edit the portion on the Hebrew Bible, Joel Baden (PhD Harvard, 2007), Professor of Hebrew Bible at Yale University. I love teaching Hebrew Bible (I've taught it at both Rutgers and UNC), but it's obviously not my main area of expertise. Joel is one of the top scholars in the world. He has produced already an incredibly well-received course for us for Biblical Paths in Religion: "The Rise and Fall of Biblical Israel" (also available to anyone in the Biblical Studies Academy. AND (second unofficial announcement), in the fall he will be doing a full semester-long course on Hebrew Bible, in the same venue. To [...]

BDEhrman2025-06-19T09:06:50-04:00June 24th, 2025|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

My Least Favorite Passage of the Pastorals: Those Silent and Submissive Women….

I'd like to conclude this thread on the Pastoral epistles by discussing at greater length the one passage that I think has done more damage than nearly any other. It involves women in the church. The story of women in the entire Bible is long and complex, but it starts in the beginning (Genesis 1-2) and continues all the way through. The traditional Christian views ultimately derive from the New Testament. In an earlier set of posts I explained why women were actually prominent, important, and authoritative leaders of the Christian church in its earliest days – they were unusually present and active in the Jesus movement while he was living, as well as in the earliest churches we know about, those connected with Paul (who has received a rather unfair rap as one of the world’s great misogynists). But it was not long before men took over the movement and suppressed women’s voices and roles. We are obviously still living with that today, in a world where the largest Christian body, the Catholic Church, still [...]

BDEhrman2025-06-19T08:42:21-04:00June 22nd, 2025|Paul and His Letters, Women in Early Christianity|

The Pastoral Epistles. For Further Reading

Here is an annotated list of books on the Pastoral Epistles of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, most of them relevant to all the Deutero-Pauline epistles with a couple of commentaries that deal with 2 Thessalonians. One benefit of serious commentaries is that they always begin by discussing major critical issues in understanding a book: authorship, date, historical context, major themes, disputed issues, and so on. ****************************** Beker, J. Christiaan. The Heirs of Paul: Paul’s Legacy in the New Testament and in the Church Today. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1991. A clear assessment of the theology of the Deutero-Pauline, especially in light of the views embodied in the undisputed Paulines. Ehrman, Bart D. Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Biblical Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are. San Francisco: Harper One, 2010. An account of the phenomenon of literary forgery (pseudepigraphy) throughout the early Christian tradition that asks how and why a Christian author would try to deceive his readers about his own identity, written for a popular audience; it it I deal [...]

BDEhrman2025-06-27T15:45:04-04:00June 21st, 2025|Paul and His Letters|

More Evidence That the Pastoral Epistles Were Written After the Days of Paul

I now conclude this short thread and who wrote the Pastoral epistles, when, and why by picking up on my previous argument: that aspects of these letters reveal a church situation after Paul’s day when proto-orthodox Christians were appealing to the authorities of the clergy, the creed, and the canon of Scripture to support their views, in contrast to those of “false teachers. The Creed Proto-orthodox Christians of the second and third centuries felt a need to develop a set of doctrines that were to be subscribed to by all true believers. As was the case with the proto-orthodox clergy, the proto-orthodox creed was acclaimed as a creation of the apostles themselves: hence the name of the most famous of these statements of faith, devised in the fourth century and known today as the Apostles’ Creed. The proto-orthodox creeds affirmed beliefs that were denied by other groups who claimed to be Christian, and they repudiated beliefs that these other groups affirmed. For example, Gnostic Christians claimed that there were many gods, not just one; and [...]

BDEhrman2025-06-15T18:38:57-04:00June 19th, 2025|Forgery in Antiquity, Paul and His Letters|

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