BDEhrman, Author at The Bart Ehrman Blog - Page 106 of 204

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.

Expecting the Apocalypse: My Idea for the Book

Instead of one long (and possibly laborious) thread on my current research for my scholarly monograph on Otherworldly Journeys, I’ve decided to talk about that work sporadically, here and there on the blog, over the course of the next couple of months. I would like to give a greater focus on the books I’m working on for a general audience. As I have mentioned, I have two in view just now and am in the process of planning them. I don’t have a contract for either one yet, but hope to present the possibilities to my publisher soon. One, as I have indicated, would be on the expectation that the end is coming soon, both among many Christians but also in the secular culture at large, all based on a certain reading of the book of Revelation (the secularists usually don’t realize this!) that scholars have long found untenable. That is the one I’ll start in on here on the blog. My normal process for coming up with a proposal for a publisher is to [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:21-04:00March 19th, 2019|Book Discussions, Revelation of John|

An Early Otherworldly Journey

Back to my scholarly monograph on Otherworldly Journeys. I pointed out in previous posts that when scholars became particularly interested in these various accounts in ancient Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian circles, they were particularly intrigued with the question of where the idea came from, that a living person could see the realms of the dead. I then devoted a couple of posts to exploring why, in the 19th century, this was a matter of such interest. I don’t at all deny that this question of “origins” is important, but I’m not particularly interested in pursuing myself. There is already enough of that, for my taste! I’m interested in other things, and am somewhat surprised that other scholars have not wanted to pursue them at greater length. My book will not be an exhaustive study of the phenomenon – that would require several books, or, for at least a pretense of comprehensiveness, a book of over 600 pages. And my days of 600-page books are over. I will instead be picking my spots and pursuing [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:21-04:00March 18th, 2019|Afterlife, Book Discussions|

Very Funny…

I normally post only once a day, but in tracing down a Blast From the Past to give today, I ran across this little nugget that I had completely forgotten about, also from this time six years ago. Too good to not repost! **************************************************** OK, this is completely irrelevant to anything related to the blog – especially early Christology, my current topic. But I thought it was too funny to pass up. A fellow who lived in my neighborhood, but whom I never knew (to my regret: he sounds like he was a remarkably interesting guy), beloved chemistry professor Dr. James Bonk died Friday at the age of 82, ending his 53-year career at Duke University. According to the local newspaper: Bonk’s classes were such a staple that Duke introductory chemistry classes became known as “Bonkistry” classes, which approximately 30,000 students attended. He was nationally known for comical incidents with students, one rumored to have taken place in the 1960s. The Bonk joke is that the weekend before a final exam, four students decided to [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:04-04:00March 16th, 2019|Reflections and Ruminations|

My Doubts about the Son of God: A Blast from the Past

Here's a post I made six years ago, when just starting to think about what I would do in my book How Jesus Became God, where I recount a rather emotional experience of starting to doubt my faith. ************************************************************************************************************ 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, trying to strike up a conversation, get into the homes, and convert people. A fundamentalist version of the Mormon missionary thing, also carried out two-by-two. One semester I was a late-night counselor on the Moody Christian radio station. People would call up with questions about the Bible or with problems in [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:04-04:00March 16th, 2019|Bart’s Biography, Reflections and Ruminations|

The Protestant Obsession with Origins

It was especially in the nineteenth century that scholars of religion, theology, and biblical studies became deeply obsessed with the question of “origins.” In many ways, the roots for this interest – in these fields in particular – lay in the Protestant Reformation, and it is no accident that the major research on the question was done in predominantly Protestant countries (especially Germany; somewhat in England and, even less, in America) and by Protestant professors in these fields, scholars who had themselves received theological training before themselves giving instruction in universities. Roughly speaking, it was possible to think about “origins” in two very different ways, one we might label “Catholic” and the other “Protestant.” In the Catholic way of thinking, the “origins” of something was the starting point, from which important developments began to transpire, as religion, theology, and even “the truth” evolved into higher forms over the centuries. This evolutionary model, of course, owed a good deal to other intellectual currents of the day, for example in the understanding of languages: they become more [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:04-04:00March 13th, 2019|History of Biblical Scholarship, Reflections and Ruminations|

Who Cares How It All Started?

Once I realized that so much of the scholarship on the Christian accounts of journeys to the realms of heaven and hell was focused almost exclusively on the ultimate question of where this idea of taking an actual trip to the afterlife came from – ancient Greek myths? Jewish apocalypses? – I was deeply puzzled by it. Why is the *origin* of an idea the most important or revealing thing about it? Would any scholar of Victorian English dealing with David Copperfield be concerned *only* with knowing where the idea of writing a novel originated? It’s an interesting and important question, but is that really the main thing we want to know about the book? Why would it different with this kind of ancient religious writing? Why this one focus? And what was driving the concern? I immediately realized that it was tied in to lots of other fields of inquiry going on in the 19th century. Origins seemed to be everywhere. Scientists were interested in the origins of life, and the origins of humankind [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:04-04:00March 12th, 2019|Reflections and Ruminations|

The Passion for Origins

After I had engaged for a couple of months doing some real research and thinking seriously about my scholarly book on visions of and journeys to the realms of heaven and hell (tentatively entitled, for now, Otherworldly Journeys: Katabasis Traditions in Early Christianity), I thought I might start it all by doing a kind of history of research. This is how scholarly books commonly used to start – especially books of German scholarship and American dissertations. Chapter one would be a discussion of what all the other scholars had said about a topic, and use that history of scholarship to set up what the author him/herself wanted to explore, argue, and say that was different – whether it involved new data or new interpretations of old data, etc. That way of preceding was always highly informative (and often seen as essential: my dissertation advisor insisted on it!) but not always scintillating, and most books today are more driven by scintillation. So I certainly was not planning, for this book, on giving a blow-by-blow account of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:04-04:00March 11th, 2019|Afterlife, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Reflections and Ruminations|

Do Any Ancient Jewish Sources Mention Jesus? Weekly Mailbag

I recently received a succinct but very important question about whether Jesus is ever mentioned by any Jewish sources of the first century. The premise behind the question is that if Jesus was the miracle-working son of God who was healing the sick, casting out demons, and raising the dead – wouldn’t everyone be talking about him, all the time? It turns out, the answer is – we don’t know! We have hardly any Jewish writings from his time and place. At the end of the first century we do have the copious and massively important historical writings of Flavius Josephus, and there is one passage in particular where he does indeed refer to Jesus. The passage is typically called the “Testimonium Flavianum” (that is, “Flavius [Josephus’s] Testimony to Jesus”). But did Josephus actually write this passage? Or has it been inserted into his work by a later scribe? Or did a later Christian scribe “touch it up” a bit? Here is the simple but crucial question I have received. QUESTION: How much of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:04-04:00March 10th, 2019|Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

The Original Obsession with Trips to the Afterlife

I have been interested in the early Christian texts that describe tours or visions of heaven and hell for a long time – I suppose since, when in graduate school, I first heard about the Apocalypse of Peter, which I have described on the blog before. That’s not the sort of text we would have been reading at Moody Bible Institute. (!) But its description of the torments in hell – brief, yet lurid accounts of what will happen to people for all eternity, depending on what their characteristic sin was -- hooked me right away: blasphemers, seductresses, adulterers, and people who lend money out at interest all get distinctive and rather ghastly eternal torments, specified for their crimes, (as if a person only commits one of them!). I didn’t realize at the time that we have several other accounts from Christian authors of the first few centuries; nor did I know, uneducated as I was, that it is one of the oldest tropes in literature, with examples in Gilgamesh, Homer, Plato, and on into [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:04-04:00March 8th, 2019|Afterlife, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

My Next Scholarly Book: Visits to Heaven and Hell

As I have indicated on the blog before, I like to mix up the various kinds of research and writing projects that I do. My time is not split evenly, but over the years I have written scholarly books for scholarly audiences, trade books for the wider reading public, and textbooks for college-level students. Usually it’s one thing at a time, but as it turns out now I’m in the midst of three tasks – revising two of my textbooks (The New Testament and a Brief Introduction to the New Testament), writing up proposals for two future trade books to submit to my publisher to see if they would agree to publish them, and, principally, working on the next scholarly project. When I first started thinking about the scholarly project, I came up with the title: “Observing the Dead: Otherworldy Journeys in the Early Christian Tradition.” I may still call it that – as you may know from my other posts over the years, titles usually are the last thing decided when it comes to [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:04-04:00March 6th, 2019|Afterlife, Book Discussions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Heaven and Hell, Finally

As I indicated earlier, I’m thinking about doing a series of posts on the various research and writing projects on my plate. As of yesterday, my trade book on the afterlife is finished and moving into production (meaning that it will now go to a copy editor to deal with grammar and style, correct typos, etc.; it will then come back to me to review his/her suggested corrections; it will then…. and so it goes, till it comes out in a year from now). I had announced that the book was actually finished months ago, and it was, kind of. But we still hadn’t settled on a title, and the title mattered because in the Preface of the book I discussed the title as a way of introducing the thesis and themes of the book. If the title changed, well, that made the discussion irrelevant. We’ve settled now on the title. I *had* been calling it “The Invention of the Afterlife,” which a lot of blog readers, and others, rather liked, and a lot of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:04-04:00March 5th, 2019|Afterlife, Book Discussions|

Homosexuality and the New Testament. Guest Post by Jeff Siker.

Yesterday Jeff Siker, PhD in NT and editor of two books that discuss biblical/Christian views of homosexuality, started his summary and assessment of what the Bible has to say about same-sex relations, in light of the recent vote of the United Methodists not to welcome “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” in their churches. In that post he dealt with the salient passages in the Old Testament; today he moves to the controversial texts of the New Testament and ends with some insightful reflections on the relevance of the Bible for same-sex relations in the modern context. Jeff Siker is the author of Jesus, Sin, and Perfection in Early Christianity, Liquid Scripture: The Bible in the Digital World and Homosexuality and Religion: An Encyclopedia. ****************************************************** Romans 1:26-27 “For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:03-04:00March 4th, 2019|Paul and His Letters, Reflections and Ruminations, Religion in the News, Sex and Sexuality in the Bible|

Homosexuality in the Bible (and the Christian Church)

Here is a pressing question I was asked about a month ago, involving homosexuality and the Christian church. Since the question was asked, as you know (if you follow the news!), the Methodist Church has made its decision. I decided to ask a real expert to deal with the question, my friend Jeff Siker, PhD in New Testament who has just retired from a 30+ year career teaching biblical studies at Loyola Marymount, and who has edited two books that address Christian views of homosexuality, the one he mentions below in his answer (1994) and a more recent reference work, Encyclopedia of Homosexuality and Religion (2006). When it comes to this topic, he’s heard it all and is massively informed. These two posts, of course, represent simply a condensation of the relevant information and his views about them. Jeff has served as a guest poster twice on the blog before, and both times graciously answered questions and responded to comments. I’m not sure if he will be able to do so (I asked him just [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:03-04:00March 3rd, 2019|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Reader’s Questions, Religion in the News, Sex and Sexuality in the Bible|

University Professors and their Research

As some of you know, a couple of years ago I decided to slow down on my research and writing. I was feeling burned out and wondering what the point was. Do I really need to keep writing more books? Why not read more novels, cook more, take more walks, get in more work outs, watch more football/basketball/tennis/golf, and on and on? So I did. It lasted about four months. As it turns out, I am indeed doing all these other things more than I was. But I’ve also cranked up (rather than down) the research and writing. How is that possible? Because I’m on academic leave this year (at UNC, for some historical reasons we don’t call these “sabbaticals”). Batteries are getting recharged, I’m having a great time, and doing tons of research/writing on a number of projects, enough to make my head spin at times. But all in a good way. It’s been fantastic. And I was thinking this morning that it might be interesting for me to lay out on the blog [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:03-04:00March 1st, 2019|Reflections and Ruminations|

A Return to the Historical Jesus

One of the most interesting developments within New Testament studies happened in the 1950s. To set the development in context, I need to remind you that the long “quest” of the historical Jesus – trying to determined what Jesus said and did historically – was evidently put to rest by the work of Wrede and Schweitzer fifty years earlier, and not a whole lot was being done in that field, as scholars *either* thought that our sources were basically reliable and so should be simply be accepted for what they said, *or* realized that our sources were so highly problematic that we couldn’t actually say much about what had happened in Jesus’ life historically. And so scholars turned their attention to other things, first in examining the oral traditions about Jesus through form criticism, and then starting in the 50’s focusing on the distinctive *portrayals* of Jesus in the Gospels using redaction criticism. (I’m simplifying things here, of course, since there were lots of scholars doing lots of different things at the time). In the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:03-04:00February 27th, 2019|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, History of Biblical Scholarship|

The Gospel Writers as Editors Rather than Authors

Three weeks ago I started to give a response to a question about the Messianic Secret. At first I thought I could handle the question in a post or two. As seems to happen a lot on the blog, once I explained all the background that led up to the development of the idea, and then explained it, and then talked about its aftermath – Voila! We had an entire thread. All to the good, I suppose. I have now gotten to the point of talking about how in the 1950s, New Testament scholars moved away from focusing on the oral traditions behind the Gospels (the concerns of the “form criticism”) to looking at the theological and literary investments of the Gospels themselves (“redaction criticism”). Scholars now had a renewed interest in seeing what these particular authors – the anonymous writers of the Gospels – wanted to emphasize, individually and distinctively, about Jesus. It came to be realized afresh that each writer had his own emphasis, his own story, his own perspective – that Matthew’s [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:03-04:00February 26th, 2019|Canonical Gospels, History of Biblical Scholarship|

A New Way of Looking at the Gospels

In this long and complicated answer to the "messianic secret" in Mark I have explained how 19th century scholars were interested in "source criticism" -- the attempt to figure out what the sources of the Gospels were, and in particular, how to explain the "synoptic problem," that is, the problem of explaining how Matthew, Mark, and Luke have so many similarities, in terms of the stories they tell, often in the same sequence, and even at numerous points in precisely the same words. The goal in this source analysis was to figure out which Gospel was closest to the time of Jesus and therefore most reliable. The answer: Mark. But after some decades Wrede showed that even Mark was not a simple historical account of Jesus' life, but was driven by literary/theological purposes, causing the author to alter the traditions about Jesus' words and deeds he had inherited. That killed for a time the Quest of the Historical Jesus. Scholars turned to a different interest: what can we say about the traditions of Jesus *before* [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:03-04:00February 25th, 2019|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, History of Biblical Scholarship|

Non-Christian Sources for Jesus: An Interview with History.com

I have recently had a written interview about the historical Jesus with Christopher Klein, correspondent with History.com, the web site of the History Channel. I’m not sure what the title of the article will be; it should be appearing relatively soon, as a lead up to Easter. He has graciously allowed me to post the questions and answers from the interview. They all deal with the non-Christian evidence we have for the life of Jesus. QUESTION: Can you say a few words about why it's not surprising that there is no archaeological evidence of Jesus? RESPONSE: It makes sense that people today would think that we should have archaeological evidence of Jesus – after all, he’s the most important figure in the history of Western Civilization! If he existed, surely we’d have some physical record of it, right? The problems are that (a) we too quickly assume that someone who is important *after* his life must have been equally important *during* his life; but that’s absolutely not the case. No one who has [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:03-04:00February 24th, 2019|Historical Jesus|

If the Quest for the Historical Jesus Failed… What Then?

In response to a question about the Messianic Secret in Mark, I have now shown how scholars (most signficiantly William Wrede) came to realize that not even the Gospel of Mark was a straightforward historical account of what actually happened in the life of Jesus. Some five years ago on the blog I talked about what happened next, in the scholarship on the New Testament. It's a crucial element of the history of biblical scholarship. Here is what I said. ***************************************************************************************************** Once it came to be realized that Mark’s Gospel – the earliest of our surviving accounts of Jesus – was driven not purely by historical interests in order to record biographical information with historical accuracy, but was (like the other Gospels) written in order to convey theological ideas in literary guise, the movement to use Mark to write a “Life of Jesus” more or less collapsed on itself, for a time and among most New Testament scholars. What arose from the ashes of this “Quest of the Historical Jesus” could not have been foreseen [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:03-04:00February 22nd, 2019|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, History of Biblical Scholarship, Memory Studies|

The Death Knell for the Study of the Historical Jesus

Once Wrede convincingly showed that the Gospel of Mark was not a literal, factual description of what Jesus said and did, in his 1901 book The Messianic Secret (but that it, like the other Gospels, had incorporated its own literary and theological concerns into its account), the cottage industry of Historical Jesus books pretty much collapsed. Its entire foundation had for decades been built on the assumption that even if the other Gospels were not completely historical, but theologically biased, Mark was not. Wrong. It was. Contributing significantly to the collapse of this academic venture was the first full account of its history, Albert Schweitzer’s classic, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, produced five years later, and still very much worth reading. As I have mentioned, Schweitzer discussed virtually all of his predecessors, starting with the first critical/historical attempt to figure out what Jesus really said and did (i.e., an account that didn’t simply think the Gospels were inspired and flawless in their reporting, but needed to be examined critically to establish the historical reality [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:03-04:00February 20th, 2019|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

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