BDEhrman, Author at The Bart Ehrman Blog - Page 103 of 203

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.

What Kind of Book Was Papias Writing? Guest Post by Stephen Carlson

This is the second part of Stephen Carlson’s guest post on the important but now-lost work of the early-second century Christian author Papias. In the previous post he talked about the mind-boggling abundance of wine and wheat there would be in the kingdom, based on Papias’s reporting of a “word of the Lord.” Now he explains that saying, and in doing so develops a bold way of understanding what kind of book Papias actually was trying to write. Most of us have long assumed it was a kind of commentary on Jesus’ teachings. But was it? Stephen Carlson is the author of The Gospel Hoax and The Text of Galatians and Its History. **************************************************************** Scholars have long noticed that this fertility tradition has important links with the late first-century Jewish apocalypse 2 Baruch 29.5 (“Also the earth will give its fruits, one in ten thousand. And one vine, there will be on it a thousand twigs. And one twig will make a thousand clusters, and one cluster will make a thousand grapes, and one grape [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:40-04:00May 10th, 2019|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

Wine Flowing in the Kingdom: Guest Post on Papias by Stephen Carlson

Here is yet another guest post by Stephen Carlson on the intriguing but puzzling quotations from Papias, the elusive second century church father who wrote a five-volume book called “Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord.” What was this book, and does it give us any information from outside the Gospels – from an extremely early source – about the sayings of Jesus? In this post Stephen addresses one of the most, well, unusual passages known to be from Papias’s work. As you’ll see, in this account Jesus thought that in the millennial kingdom yet to come, the wine will be flowing…. I have broken the post into two because of its length. Part 2 will come next. Stephen Carlson is the author of The Gospel Hoax and The Text of Galatians and Its History. *************************************************************** The Fertility Tradition in Papias In our last post, we looked at the preface of Papias’s Exposition of Dominical Oracles, and noticed that it mentions two kinds of content in the work. One kind of content is characterized by [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:40-04:00May 8th, 2019|Christian Apocrypha, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE)|

Early Christian Liars

Yesterday I started explaining in some depth how forgers in early Christianity – that is, authors who falsely claimed to be, say, Peter or Paul or James (as in the case of the authors of 2 Peter, 1 Timothy, the Proto-Gospel of James, etc.) – could justify their lies. I need to stress, the idea that they were lying is not just a modern one. The ancients talk about forgery a good deal; they never approve of it and they explicitly called it lying. Yet people did it, producing forgeries far more often than happens today. How did they live with themselves – especially those Christians who insisted that nothing was more important than “truth”? I pointed out yesterday that there were very broadly speaking two views of lying in early Christainity: 1) that it was sometimes acceptable; 2) it was never acceptable in any circumstance whatsoever. It’s not hard to see where forgers lined up on the spectrum. Here I continue the discussion, repeating the final paragraph of yesterday’s post for context. This is [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:40-04:00May 7th, 2019|Forgery in Antiquity, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Could Christian Forgers Justifying Lying?

Yesterday, in response to a question, I started to discuss the age-old problem of literary forgery (authors lying about their true identity), and specifically the question of why Christians would engage in it. In my two books on the topic I spend considerable time trying to demonstrate that forgery was indeed understood – in antiquity – to involve lying, and that the authors who claimed (falsely) to be Plato or Galen or Peter or Paul knew they were lying. But why would they do that? Especially the Christians? Here is a fuller answer that I give at the end of my book: Forged: Writing in the Name of God. It follows a discussion of a number of modern (mainly 19th century) forgeries of Gospels, including the ones that claim that, for example, Jesus went to India as a young man to learn the ways of the Brahmins…. ************************************************************** Christian Forgeries, Lies, and Deceptions This issue of modern hoaxes brings me back to a question that I have repeatedly asked in my study of forgeries: [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:39-04:00May 6th, 2019|Forgery in Antiquity, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Why Did Ancient Christian Forgers Commit Forgery?

Here is an intriguing question I received recently about the use of literary “forgery” in antiquity. A “forgery,” in the technical sense I’m using it, refers to a very specific phenomenon: it is not simply making up a false story or perpetrating some other kind of falsehood. It refers, specifically, to a book whose author falsely claims to be a (famous) person. If I wrote a novel and claimed I was Stephen King, that would be a forgery. Sometimes these books are called “pseudonymous” (which means “going under a false name”). That sounds less offensive, but it means the same thing (literally: “the name is a lie”). There were lots of forgeries in antiquity – many of which were uncovered back them, a number that have been exposed in modern times. My books Forged and Forgery and Counterforgery discuss the phenomenon more broadly but with a special focus on Christian texts of the first four centuries (the first book is for a general audience, the second is a scholarly analysis). Here is the question I [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:39-04:00May 5th, 2019|Book Discussions, Forgery in Antiquity, Reader’s Questions|

Contradictions and Contradictions: Final Response to Matt Firth

Matt: thanks for your additional comments. I’ve given my replies below. At the outset I should say that I’m not sure I understand what a “genuine contradiction” would look like for you. If you have two authors who at least appear to contradict each other, surely the best explanation will not be one that: Suggests an author / speaker really doesn’t mean what he says but means something else. Suggests an option that has never ever happened, to our knowledge. With that in mind, I turn to your new explanations. I’ll respond in green. Thanks very much, Bart, for these interesting responses. I will get straight into explaining why I still don’t think you have shown that the examples you have offered are genuine contradictions. In the case of Luke 24 you say that the grammar of the Greek indicates that ‘Luke is extremely careful to date the entire sequence of chapter 24, at the beginning of each major paragraph. It all happens on the day of the resurrection.’ But we know from Acts, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:39-04:00May 3rd, 2019|Bart's Debates, Canonical Gospels, Reflections and Ruminations|

Constantine and the Christian Faith: My Fourth Smithsonian Lecture

I have found over the years that lots of people have mistaken ideas about Constantine the Great, the early fourth century Roman Emperor who converted to Christianity. I used to have mistaken ideas myself, until I started reading the sources and examining the scholarship. For example, Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the empire, right? (Wrong.) Constantine is the reason Christianity took over the empire, right? (Wrong again). Constantine didn't really convert to Christianity: it was a political move by a savvy politician who remained, at heart, a pagan, right? (Well, uh, sorry...) It is true, though that the conversion of Emperor Constantine in 312 CE is one of Christianity’s pivotal events, and that by the end of the 4th century, Christianity was proclaimed the official religion throughout Rome, leading to the suppression of other religious traditions. Here is a lecture I gave on Constantine and Christianity at the Smithsonian on Feb. 10, 2018. It is the last of the series of four that I have given here on the blog, based on my [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:21-04:00May 2nd, 2019|Book Discussions, Constantine, Fourth-Century Christianity, Public Forum, Spread of Christianity, Video Media|

Death and the Meaning of Life

Different understandings about what happens to us at death embody and promote different views about what we consider to be the ultimate reality of life, what it is that we think -- at the deepest level of our being -- provides meaning for our existence and makes sense of the world we encounter while still breathing. I have given four examples from the ancient world. Each of them portrays a different sense of ultimate reality, of one thing, in each case, that establishes, determines, and directs everything that finally matters for human existence in general – for all people who have ever lived – and for our specific existence in particular. All four involve trips to the realms of the dead, in order to see what happens for those who are no longer living. Each is meant to show what we should live for now, based on what the ultimate meaning of life is, what the very root and fabric of human existence consist of. In this post I’ll talk about two of them. When [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:39-04:00April 30th, 2019|Afterlife, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture|

Similarities and Differences: Which Matter the Most?

I have been thinking a lot about the categories of “similarities” and “differences” recently. In fact, now that I look back, I’ve been thinking about these categories for about forty years. It’s funny the things we think about. But for a scholar of early Christianity, these categories matter a lot. When I was a conservative evangelical Christian, reading, studying, and thinking about the Bible, I was completely focused on similarities. This book, this passage, this teaching is very similar to that one. I did focus on differences about lots of *other* things (other than the Bible). That person is Jew and not a Christian, and therefore will have to face judgment and be condemned, unlike *me* a Christian. Or that person is a Roman Catholic and so is not a real Christian and therefore… Or that person does not have the right theology about salvation, or Christ, or predestination, or the Bible, and therefore…. So I knew and thought about differences a lot and knew that they were highly significant. Even eternally significant. Anyone who [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:39-04:00April 29th, 2019|Reflections and Ruminations|

Paul in Hell. The Apocryphal Apocalypse of Paul.

You may have not noticed, since so much else has been happening on the blog lately (guest posts, a debate, etc.), but I have a very loose thread going on my book on the guided tours of heaven and hell, a scholarly monograph that deals with the Christian versions of "katabasis" (the technical term for "going down" -- that is, someone going down into the underworld and then reporting what he saw) in relation to Greek, Roman, and Jewish versions. The clear focus will be on the Christian texts, but to make sense of them it helps do see how they are similar to and different from those found in the surrounding cultures. My first chapter will provide a set of comparisons of several earlier narratives (Odysseus's encounter with the dead in the Odyssey book 11, Aeneas's descent to Hades in Aeneid book 6, and the vision of Enoch in 1 Enoch 21-22) with the most famous and popular Christian account, the Apocalypse of Paul, which probably dates from the early fifth century but may [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:39-04:00April 26th, 2019|Afterlife, Christian Apocrypha|

Papias and the Writers of the New Testament: Guest Post by Stephen Carlson

Here is another post by Stephen Carlson on that mysterious figure named Papias, an early second century writer who claims to have had information from reliable witnesses about the authors of the New Testament, and who may indicate that the "John" who wrote the Gospel is different from the "John" who wrote Revelation. Or does he? If the *apostle* John did not Revelation, should it be in the New Testament? Puzzling and hard to figure out -- but here is what Stephen says about it. - Stephen Carlson is the author of The Gospel Hoax and The Text of Galatians and Its History. *********************************************************************************** What Papias Says About His Own Work In our last post, we looked at the title of Papias’s work, Exposition of Dominical Oracles, and surveyed the considerable scholarly controversy about the nature of Papias’s work. Many scholars take the position that it was a commentary on the sayings of Jesus, perhaps with some narrative elements, but others contend that it was a commentary on at least the Gospel of Matthew, or [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:39-04:00April 25th, 2019|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Proto-Orthodox Writers, Revelation of John|

Why Did Christianity Take Over the World? Smithsonian Lecture 3.

Here is Lecture 3 (out of 4) that I came at the Smithsonian Associates in Washington DC on Feb. 10, 2018, based, again, on my book The Triumph of Christianity. This lecture deals with the key aspects of the early Christian movement to try to explain its success. What was it about Christianity that allowed it to take over the entire Christian empire? People have all sorts of "common sense" answers to the question -- as did I for many years, even as a professional scholar -- which are probably wrong (e.g., Christianity was naturally superior to all the other religions, because of its strict monotheism and strong ethical stance, so naturally people were inclined to convert). The first time I realized the actual answer to the question was when, long ago, I read Roman social historian and Yale professor Ramsay MacMullen's brilliant analysis The Christianization of the Roman Empire. I pondered the matter for years, read massively on it, and here is what I ended up concluding (very much in line with MacMullen, but [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:21-04:00April 23rd, 2019|Book Discussions, Public Forum, Spread of Christianity, Video Media|

Are These Really Contradictions? My Response to Matt Firth

Thanks Matt for your thoughtful comments on the four contradictions I discussed in my opening post. I agree – this form of debate is much better than the oral back and forths I’m used to on a stage in front of an audience, where it’s so easy to say something unwittingly that is completely stupid or wrong. With this format I’m able to think about it a bit before saying something completely stupid! I appreciate your attempts to reconcile the contradictions. For years I wished I could reconcile all the ones I found – and did my best to do so, using many of these kinds of arguments. I ended up thinking it just didn’t work. I’ll try to explain below why I think so, step by step. I’ve decided that it would be easier for readers of the blog to be able to compare your reconciliations with my responses directly, and so I have copied your comments and will be giving my responses in green so they will be easily distinguished. Blog readers: this [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:39-04:00April 22nd, 2019|Canonical Gospels|

The Radical Implications of the Resurrection

Over the years on the blog, I have reflected a number of times on the significance of the earliest Christians' belief in the resurrection. On this Easter morning, I thought it would be appropriate to return to one of those reflections. The most important result of the disciples' belief that God had raised Jesus from the dead was that it radically changed their understanding of what it meant to say Jesus was the messiah. As I have explained before that in my view, ,Jesus did believe he was the messiah (in a certain sense), and his followers believed it. Given everything we know about Jewish beliefs at the time, that almost certainly mean that they thought that he was (or would become) the king of the Jewish people. That’s certainly how the Roman governor Pontius Pilate took it. It was because Jesus made such a claim that Pilate ordered him crucified. The crucifixion would have proved beyond any doubt -- to anyone paying attention -- that Jesus was not the messiah after all. Rather than [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:39-04:00April 21st, 2019|Early Christian Doctrine, Historical Jesus|

Contradictions in the Gospels

This is the opening gambit in my debate with Rev. Matthew Firth on whether there are contradictions in the Gospels. I believe there are many. He believes there are none whatsoever. So who is right? I would strongly recommend that, if you are really interested in the matter, you actually look up the passages in question and see for yourself. I will need to be brief on each one, since space is highly restricted. I ended up requiring 1300 words, and so obviously Rev. Firth can follow suit. I start with one that may seem completely unimportant, but is, to me, a clear contradiction. In Mark 5:21-24 a man named Jairus approaches Jesus in distress. His daughter is “very ill.” He wants Jesus to come heal her so she doesn’t die. Jesus agrees to go, but before he can get to Jairus’s home, he is delayed by a woman who herself desperately needs to be healed (5:25-34). While Jesus is dealing with her – it takes a while – someone comes from Jairus’s house to [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:38-04:00April 16th, 2019|Bart's Debates, Canonical Gospels|

What Is a Contradiction?

As many of you know, Rev. Matthew Firth, an Anglican rector trained in theology at Oxford, will soon be participating on the blog in a fund-raising event, for which many of you, bless your souls, have already donated. This will entail a debate with me over whether there are contradictions in the Gospels. The debate will start soon, but I thought I should lay a little bit of groundwork. I hadn’t planned on doing this originally, and haven’t told Rev. Firth that I’m going to do it now – but I’ll show this post to him and allow him to respond if he feels inclined, prior to my opening gambit when I mention several points in the Gospels that appear to me to be contradictory to one another. I do not plan or intend anything in this post to be controversial, but in case Rev. Firth does want to respond, he’s certainly welcome to do so. Otherwise, we can just get on with the debate. But I did want to say a few words about [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:38-04:00April 15th, 2019|Bart's Debates, Canonical Gospels|

Who Were The “Pagans” Christians Were Converting?

PART TWO of FOUR: Pagan Converts and the Power of God This is the second lecture I gave at the Smithsonian on Feb. 10, 2018, based on my book The Triumph of Christianity: How A Forbidden Religion Swept the World. The premise behind the lecture: as Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire, it converted almost entirely pagans (after the first couple of decades). Who were these people, and what were they converting *from*? And why? Paganism is not and was not really a "thing." The term was designed (by Christians) simply to designate all the ancient religious practices that were not either Jewish or Christian -- that is, it lumped together all kinds of religious practices, thousands of them, as some"thing" opposed to the faith in the Jewish god. But is there anything all these religions spread throughout the Roman world had in common? And how did Christians approach people from these traditional religions, religions that each individual would have always assumed was simply right, involving rituals and ideas that had always been part of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:21-04:00April 14th, 2019|Book Discussions, Public Forum, Spread of Christianity, Video Media|

A Papias Mystery: What Was the Book He Wrote? Guest Post by Stephen Carlson

Stephen Carlson has graciously agreed to do a few more posts on his work on Papias. Remember, Papias is that (very?) early second century church father who is later said to have written a five-volume work called the Exposition of the Sayings (or Oracles) of the Lord. We don’t have the book any longer, and don’t really even know what was in it. But several church fathers mention it and give a few quotations from it, some of them very intriguing indeed (including an alternative account about how Judas Iscariot died!). In this post Stephen continues his explanation – based on a new book he is just now finishing up for publication. For my money, this is the most interesting one yet, dealing with an intriguing question: just what kind of book was this that Papias produced? (The other fascinating question that has no definitive answer – don’t know if Stephen will be dealing with this – why didn’t anyone preserve the book for posterity???) Stephen Carlson is the author of The Gospel Hoax and [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:38-04:00April 12th, 2019|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Proto-Orthodox Writers|

Fund Raising Event on the Blog: Contradictions in the Gospels??

We will be engaging in an unusual fund-raising event on the blog in a week or so. A well-trained Anglican priest named Matthew Firth had issued a challenge that no one could point out any contradictions in the Gospels of the New Testament that could not be explained. As I understand it, he offered an award of $1000. OK then! Someone on the blog contacted me to see if I'd be willing to take up the challenge. Of course, there is not a contradiction in the known universe that someone cannot explain away to his or her own satisfaction, given sufficient ingenuity and the deep inclination or desire to think that contradictions do not exist. So in a sense the outcome is pre-determined. Rev. Firth will not be convinced, nor will his followers, nor anyone on either side of the pond who comes into the question with mind already made up. So in one sense, at least, it's a pointless exercise. On the other hand, outsiders might be interested in a back and forth. There's [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:38-04:00April 10th, 2019|Bart's Debates, Canonical Gospels, Public Forum|

Enoch’s Vision of the Realms of the Dead

In discussing the research I’m doing on (human) journeys to the realm(s) of the dead, I have so far mentioned two in particular that occur outside of Christian circles and much earlier: the famous account of Odysseus’s vision of the dead in Homer’s Odyssey book 11 and Aeneas’s journey to the underworld in Virgil’s Aeneid, book 6. These are very similar to one another (since Virgil was basing his account on Homer’s) but also very different: in particular, whereas in Homer every spirit has the same uninteresting and boring forever in Hades, in Virgil the righteous are given fantastic rewards and the wicked graphic torment, with the possibility of reincarnation to have another go at it. . Now I introduce a Jewish version of this kind of journey, found in the non-canonical book of 1 Enoch, which has many similarities to Virgil (though not so much with Homer). Here too the righteous are rewarded and the wicked punished. But there are (a couple of) gradations from one kind of sinner to the next. And moreover, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:38-04:00April 9th, 2019|Afterlife, Early Judaism|

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