BDEhrman, Author at The Bart Ehrman Blog - Page 102 of 208

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.

My Trip To Rome: Interested in Joining?

As I announced a few weeks ago, I will be going on a tour to Rome and other sites to the south, including Pompeii, Heraculum, Bay of Naples, Amalfi Coast on April 14-24, 2020 (six months from now!). If you haven't been to these places before, this would be a great opportunity! And even if you have been before this would still be a great opportunity! It is a very impressive itinerary. Every informed and interesting person on the planet really should see these sites before shuffling off their mortal coil. The tour is being sponsored by Thalassa journeys, which does a fantastic job in every way: thoughtful itineraries, great accommodations, unusually helpful tour guides. I will be giving lectures on the tour, focusing on the relations of pagans and Christians in the early centuries of the Christian movement, as Christianity moved from being a hated and persecuted little sect to becoming the dominant religion of the empire, eventually the most powerful social, cultural, and, of course, religious movement in the history of Western civilization. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:32-04:00October 12th, 2019|Public Forum|

Did God Want Us To Have His Word?

In my previous post I said that, in my opinion, the best way to approach the “original” text of the New Testament – given the fact that we don’t actually *have* it – is to make a working assumption that we are pretty darn close, in most places, most of the time. I openly admit, and always have, that this is an *assumption*. But since it’s one that “works,” well, I think I’ll continue calling it a working assumption! And I’ll show why there are really very good grounds for it. But first I want to affirm strongly that the assumption is contrary to what most people think about the New Testament – both scholars and lay folk. Among virtually everyone else that I’ve ever heard talk about it, there are two views, one the massive consensus and one the tiny minority; and I don’t agree with either one. The consensus view seems to be that we really do *know* what the authors of the New Testament wrote. Deeply committed Christian readers of the Bible [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:31-04:00October 11th, 2019|New Testament Manuscripts, Reflections and Ruminations|

What I think of the Bible as Both a Critical Scholar and A Christian: Guest Post by Judy Siker

This is the second guest post by Judy Siker, who last week explained about her upbringing as a Christian in the south and then her move into the academic study of the Bible from a critical perspective. If you recall, Judy was my student in the (very secular!) graduate program in New Testament/Early Christianity here at UNC, where she did both a Masters and PhD in the field, focusing, in her dissertation, on the socio-historical background to the Gospel of Matthew, in particular as that involved the relations of Jews and Christians in the author's community. She had a rich and varied teaching career in a range of schools -- private liberal arts, Catholic university, and Baptist seminary, among them! In this follow up post Judy lays out her understanding of what the Bible is (among other things, a book that asks compelling questions about matters of faith) and is not (a book that gives us all the incontrovertible answers), partly in response to comments and questions she received. She is willing once more to [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:31-04:00October 9th, 2019|Public Forum|

Misconstruing My Words. Can We Know What the Authors of the New Testament Originally Said?
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Misconstruing My Words. Can We Know What the Authors of the New Testament Originally Said?

Bart's Critics, New Testament Manuscripts

Misconstruing My Words. Can We Know What the Authors of the New Testament Originally Said?

Sometimes people take what I say to an extreme that I don’t mean to convey. That especially happens when I talk about the textual criticism of the New Testament. As a reminder, “textual criticism” is a technical term. It does not refer to the interpretation of texts or to the history behind the composition of texts or to the assessment of the original context of texts or anything like that. It is used to refer specifically to the attempt to reconstruct the words of a text. That is, textual criticism is not interested in understanding what the text means; it is interested in figuring out what words the author originally used. And in seeing how the author’s original words may have been changed over in the process of copying. Textual criticism is a fundamental aspect of literary study – certainly for the Bible, but for all texts. There are textual critics who avidly work on the classics (Homer, Virgil, Cicero, etc. etc.); and on medieval literature and on modern literature. It’s a huge field, e.g., [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:31-04:00October 8th, 2019|Bart's Critics, New Testament Manuscripts|

Modern Defenders of the Faith: Why Not Just Tell the Truth?

Next week I'm off to give a talk at an evangelical Christian conference that is dealing with contradictions in the Gospels; the other speakers will be explaining either why they don't actually exist or why they are completely insignificant or how they can be comfortably explained given ancient writing practices or ... or some other point that will assure their committed Christian audience that there's nothing really to worry about. It will be in Chicago and is called the Defenders Conference. I quite admire the organizers of the conference because they genuinely want to hear the other side from me. As y'all know, I think there are serious contradictions in the Gospel that cannot be reconciled or explained away, and these demonstrate that the Gospels are not historically reliable. I'm not saying (I'm NOT saying) that there is *nothing* reliable in the Gospels. Of course there are lots and lots of reliable materials in the Gospels (the key is figuring out which ones they are). But anyone who thinks they give a fully reliable account [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:31-04:00October 7th, 2019|Bart's Debates, Reflections and Ruminations|

Who Wrote the Pentateuch? The JEDP Hypothesis

In response to my recent posts about the historical accuracy of the Hebrew Bible, especially in the opening five books, the “Pentateuch” (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) I have had several members of the blog ask about the “Documentary Hypothesis” which postulates that one reason for the discrepancies is that whoever published these five books was not a single author (Moses or anyone else) but an editor who combined earlier sources of information together, without smoothing out their differences. Like just about all scholars of the Bible, I agree with the basic premise of the documentary hypothesis, though these days most real experts think it is much more complicated than what we present to our first-year students. If you’re interested in a bird’s eye view of it, I have a discussion in my book The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction. If you want an intriguing full presentation written for lay folk, in a convincing fashion, see Richard Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible. The traditional form of the documentary hypothesis was most famously promoted [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:31-04:00October 6th, 2019|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

Blog Dinner in Chicago (Oct. 18): Full!

I am pleased and regret (at the same time) to say that the table for the blog dinner in Chicago for October 18 is now full. I have a waiting list that I have started, and have notified everyone who contacted me (both those at the table and those on the waiting list.) But I’ll be doing others this coming year in a few other places! Hopefully others can come to these.

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:31-04:00October 4th, 2019|Public Forum|

How Did We Get These 27 Books in the New Testament?

I often receive questions about how we got the canon of the New Testament. We have twenty-seven books in it. Who decided? On what grounds? And when? Here is a recent question on the matter. QUESTION I have always wondered about the men (only men!) who decided “this one’s in . . . that one’s out!” back in 325 (was it 325?) at Trullan, Rome, Trent and where else? Nicea? RESPONSE: The first thing to emphasize is that the most common answer one hears – an answer that seems to have become common sense among people-interested-in-such-things-at-large -- is completely wrong. It appears that people have this answer because they read it someplace, or heard it from someone who had read it someplace, and that someplace was a place in particular: Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code! (If you don’t know, I wrote an entire book pointing out the historical mistakes in the book. [title: Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code]. That was a particularly fun book for me to write. Some [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:31-04:00October 4th, 2019|Fourth-Century Christianity, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Proto-Orthodox Writers, Reader’s Questions|

Blog Dinner, Chicago IL, Friday October 18

On Friday, October, 2019, at 7:00 pm, I will be hosting a Blog Dinner for blog members (members only, I'm afraid) in Chicago. Well, kind-a. I'll be in Oak Brook to give a paper the next day, so it would need to be near there. The table is limited to eight. I'm one of them. That means that seven spots are available. First come first served: please do NOT response here on the blog, but send me a private email, at [email protected]. The occasion is a bit unusual for me. There is a conservative evangelical conference focused on "apologetics" (called The "Defenders Conference") dealing with differences among the Gospels. The other three speakers are themselves evangelical, two of them are scholars I know and have had interactions with before (Mike Licona and Craig Keener), the other I don't know (Rob Bowman), but he's apparently on expert on what he calls Christian "cults" (for example, Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses). In any event, I'll be discussing why I think there are differences in the Gospels that cannot [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:31-04:00October 2nd, 2019|Public Forum|

How Can You Still Believe? Guest Post by Judy Siker

One of the questions I get asked the most frequently from blog members is how someone can possibly continue to be a believing Christian if they understand the enormous problems presented by the critical study of the New Testament. I always tell them that in fact it’s not only possible – it happens all the time. Sometimes they are incredulous, but it’s not only true, it’s so true that my friends who know everything I know about the Bible and are still believers often find the question / issue completely puzzling. They have trouble understanding why anyone thinks it’s a problem. As we learned from "Cool Hand Luke" (a great movie, btw, with tons of Christ-images), “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” I have asked my former student and long-time friend Rev. Dr. Judy Siker to write a couple of posts from a personal standpoint, indicating why/ how she continues to be a believer and faithful church person even though she is, at the same time, a critical scholar of the Bible. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:31-04:00October 2nd, 2019|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

If the Old Testament is Not Accurate — Where Did Israel Come From?

Yesterday I argued that the Old Testament account found of the "Conquest of Canaan," as found in the book of Joshua, cannot be historically accurate. This is one of those matters that matter. As we all know full well, the dispute over the land has been going on for millennia, and continues to create trauma and disaster, war and suffering, all the time -- no matter which side you stand on. And please, in your comments, do not make polemical political remarks that are hostile to those who disagree with your position; there are huge problems everywhere you look.... Our question here, for the purposes of this blog, right now, is not about legitimacy -- who should own what, and on what grounds? -- but history. If Israel was not in fact a pre-existing entity that emerged out of Egypt at the Exodus and then entered the land God had promised the ancestors, wiping out the native population to take over what by divine right was theirs -- then where then did Israel come from? [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:31-04:00October 1st, 2019|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

Did The Israelites Really Conquer Canaan?

A couple of weeks ago I was in the middle of a thread on historical problems with the Hebrew Bible, and somehow ancient forgery intervened -- as it does, I suppose -- and I got sidetracked. But I have a couple of more posts on the topic, that are complete "stand-alones" (you don't need to see what I earlier said to make sense of these) (though hey, why not take a glance?). In this post: after the exodus in the book of, well, Exodus, and the giving of the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai, in Exodus, Leviticus, (Numbers), and Deuteronomy, comes the stories of the Israelites taking over the Promised Land (promised by God to Abraham, the father of the nation), by wiping out all the Canaanites who were already there, as found in the book of Joshua -- one of the great books of the Hebrew Bible. Extermination of indiginous populations is not exactly the political policy most of us advocate these days (well, at least not me), but those were different contexts [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:31-04:00September 30th, 2019|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

Is It Ever Right to Lie? Or Was It? Even in Early Christianity? The Relevance for Forgery.

Is it ever morally acceptable – even desirable – to tell a bald-faced lie? That was probably a topic covered in your Philosophy 101 course. At a historian, I’m interested in the question from an ancient perspective. What did people in antiquity think about it? In particular Christians. Did they think – based on the Ten Commandments, say, or the teachings of Jesus, that a person should never lie? Or were they quite lax on the matter? Or something in between? I was actually a bit surprised to learn the answer to the question. And as you might expect, the answer is complicated. My original interest in the issue had to do with forgery. A forger claims to be someone famous, knowing full well he is someone else. That’s a lie, that is, it is a falsehood told intentionally. How did forgers justify that? It turns out, there appear to be answers. This is how I dealt with the matter in my lecture on forgery given at the conference in Quebec a couple of weeks [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:30-04:00September 29th, 2019|Forgery in Antiquity, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Reflections and Ruminations|

Why It Is Hard To Publish a Translation of an Ancient Text

In my last post, en route to discussing my latest attempt at publishing both a scholarly and a trade book on the same topic, I talked about how I took on the task of doing a new Greek-English edition of the Apostolic Fathers for the Loeb Classical Library. At the end of the post I indicated that doing that edition was one of the hardest things I have ever done. There were lots of things that made it very difficult – deciding which form of the Greek text to use for each of the writings included (i.e. what to do in the many places where the manuscripts differed from one another), doing all the research in order to write up competent and relatively complete Introductions to each text, studying the history of research into various problems posed by the Apostolic Fathers, from the 17th century until today, and so on. But the hardest part was the translation itself. The Greek of the Apostolic Fathers is not incredibly difficult, as far as Greek goes. It is [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:12-04:00September 29th, 2019|Book Discussions, Reflections and Ruminations|

My Speaking Schedule for this Academic Year (so far)

I often get asked where I"m giving a talk next. I do keep a listing on my website (www.bartdehrman.com), which has other information about my life and activities as well. But, well, I haven't been good this year at getting it up to date, until now. (It was lost in the triage of my life....) With Steven's help, it's now up and up to date. Here it is, for anyone who's interested. And available, as well, even for anyone who is not. All of these are open to the public (except, well, the two I've already done; they're now closed to everybody). Most of them require registration. If you google the date and organization, for most of them, you'll find the information you need to sign up. If you have any problems or just can't find it, just zap me an email at [email protected]. I'll probably be adding a few things here and there, at least in the spring. If I do, I'll keep you posted. DATE LOCATION SUBJECT ORGANIZATION Sept. 7 Washington, DC [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:30-04:00September 27th, 2019|Public Forum|

Hey! Wanna Go With Me To Rome ?
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Hey! Wanna Go With Me To Rome ?

Public Forum

Hey! Wanna Go With Me To Rome ?

Here's an exciting announcement that I've been eager to make. And now I can. I'll be taking a group of interested (and interesting) folk on a ten-day trip to Rome and Southern Italy on April 14-24, 2020 (this coming April!); this is tour sponsored by Thalassa Journeys, the group that arranged my (with some other blog members)to Greece and Turkey last year. It was spectacular. And this one will be as well. It is an amazing itinerary, as good as they come. The theme is "Pagans and Christians in the Roman World," and the places we see will be tied both to my most recent book The Triumph of Christianity, and the one about to come out in March, Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife. I've been to Rome a number of times, but this trip looks unusually good. Some of the highlights: Four nights in a hotel in Sorrento (one of the places I've never been; but google it and check it out: right on the Bay of Naples), with trips to [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:30-04:00September 25th, 2019|Public Forum|

A Recent Argument that Ancient Pseudepigraphy Was NOT Deceptive (or Meant to Be)

I continue now with the lecture I gave on "forgery" in the ancient world, delivered at a conference in Quebec a couple of weeks ago. I had planned for this to be the last post, but I will have one more after this, the conclusion of my lecture where I deal with the ancient ethics of lying. In this one I talk about a brilliant recent attempt to argue that it was not (always) a deceitful practice to claim to be a famous person when writing a work in antiquity. ************************************************************** One of the most recent erudite and impressive attempts to defend at least one group of ancient pseudepigraphers comes in the study I mentioned earlier by Irene Peirano, a classicist at Yale, in her published Harvard dissertation, The Rhetoric of the Roman Fake: Latin Pseudepigrapha in Context. Most of this important book provides detailed analyses of highly literary Roman pseudepigrapha, including pseudo-Virgil. But she begins with a defense of her view that such works do not involve intentional deceptions but self-conscious “imitations” of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:30-04:00September 24th, 2019|Forgery in Antiquity, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture|

What Motivated Some Ancient Authors to Lie About Themselves?

I return now to my lecture on ancient Pseudepigraphy, the practice of writing a book falsely claiming to be someone else, a famous person. I have been arguing that even in the ancient world this was considered to be a form of lying, the use of literary deceit, and authors who were detected doing it were outed and, if any moral judgment was passed, condemned for it. Today we would call it “forgery,” and the ancient discussions of it were similarly negative. Here is where I pick up in the lecture, part 3 of my 4 posts. (I think one of my most important points comes half way through, where I explain the key difference between “intention” and “motivation” – i.e., what we intend to do and what motivates us to do so. *************************************************** One could ask whether anyone on record in antiquity ever condoned the practice of pseudepigraphy. To my knowledge, there is only one possible trace of approval, in a single sentence of the late antique neo-Platonist Iamblichus, who does say, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:30-04:00September 23rd, 2019|Forgery in Antiquity, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture|

My Approaching Birthday

I turn 64 in just under two weeks – October 5. I have to admit, for most of this past year I’ve had Paul McCartney ringing in my ears, “When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now…. Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64”…. As I get older, I think more and more about what I value in life, often with regrets for not always valuing what I now, at this point, think is truly valuable, but – for years and years – sometimes throwing myself into things that now seem so ephemeral and rather pointless. It’s not that I’m a particularly regretful person; on the contrary, I tend to throw myself into the moment with an eye to the future, is i.e., dealing with things I can change/do now, rather than being eaten up with things I can no longer do anything about. But most of the time I find myself narrowing my values and latching on to fewer things, things that I can truly [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:30-04:00September 22nd, 2019|Reflections and Ruminations|

How Many Books in the New Testament Were Forged?

In response to the lecture on ancient practices of pseudepigraphy (writing in the name of a famous person when, alas, you are actually someone else), I received this important question, getting to the very basics – the heart and soul of the issue for students of early Christianity. QUESTION: Dr. Ehrman, I know you have published and spoken on the topic, but would you mind sharing which NT books are pseudepigraphical? RESPONSE Yes indeed, one of the reasons I’m so interested in this topic is that the use of pseudepigraphy, what today we would call “forgery,” was so much more widespread in antiquity than today, probably because there were far fewer people who were literate in the first place and so far fewer experts who could uncover a forgery; and those who could, of course, didn’t have our modern methods of analysis and technologies of data retrieval. It was very common in the Christian world as well. Before answering the question directly at the end of this post, let me just say something about how [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:30-04:00September 20th, 2019|Forgery in Antiquity, History of Biblical Scholarship, Reader’s Questions|

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