BDEhrman, Author at The Bart Ehrman Blog - Page 108 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.

Was Jesus A Great Moral Teacher? A Blast From the Past

A few days ago, in response to a question, I reposted on the problem of fundamentalism; looking back on the blog some six years, I see that at about the same time another related question appeared. This involves fundamentalists who object to calling Jesus a "great moral teacher" since, for them, he is actually God himself. It will take two posts to reply to that view, first, in this one: was Jesus in fact a great moral teacher? The answer might seem obvious but, well, not so much. ****************************************************************** QUESTION: Do you think Jesus was a great moral teacher? If you think this is the case would you mind blogging about it? Fundamentalists are using C.S Lewis (the well-known author of Narnia and The Problem of Pain) approach in this matter. Apparently they are happier if people call Jesus a lunatic vs. a great moral teacher. RESPONSE: I think this question is going to require at least a couple of posts: one on Jesus as a moral teacher and one on the claim by [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:43:28-04:00January 21st, 2019|Historical Jesus|

Readers’ Mailbag 1/20/2019: The Only Story of Jesus as a Boy in the New Testament

Based on the feedback I’ve received on the blog this past week, I’ve decided to reinstate the weekly Readers’ Mailbag. I have actually continued responding to questions since abandoning the feature of the blog, but in a less formal way. Formalizing it seems like a popular option, and so I’ll try to do this once a week. I start this week with an interesting question about Jesus as a boy. QUESTION Outside the birth narratives, the only canonical story about the young Jesus is in Luke 2, although there are numerous childhood legends in the apocryphal gospels. Do you have any opinion, please, as to why this story of Jesus at twelve made it into Luke? RESPONSE Over the years I have found among readers of the Bible an almost endless fascination about the “missing” years of Jesus’ life. The narratives of our earliest and latest canonical Gospels, Mark and John, begin with Jesus as an adult associating with John the Baptism. In Matthew and Luke, we have the stories of his birth; [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:43:28-04:00January 20th, 2019|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

The Dangers of Fundamentalism

I'm out of town for a long weekend and so away from my books, and have decided to re-post some particularly intriguing (IMHO) posts from many years ago. Here's a hot one. QUESTION: You note that fundamentalism is dangerous and harmful. How do you define fundamentalism and why do you think it’s dangerous? RESPONSE: There are of course actual definitions of “fundamentalism” that you can find in scholarship on religion, but I sense that you’re asking more for a rough-and-ready description. Years ago I started defining fundamentalism as “No fun, too much damn, and not enough mental. When I was a fundamentalist myself (yet to be described) I understood it in a positive way. Originally, in Christian circles, it referred to believers who held on to the “fundamentals” of the faith, which for us included such things as the inspiration of Scripture, the full deity of Christ, the Trinity, the virgin birth, the physical resurrection, and, well, probably a collection of other doctrines. Fundamentalism, for us, was to be differentiated from liberalism, which [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:43:28-04:00January 18th, 2019|Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Your Thoughts on the Blog?

It is difficult for me to know what really “works” on the blog. On the whole, most things seem to work well: as I’ve reported recently, the blog continues to grow. We are working toward 7000 members (but I very much want that in six figures!) and this past year we raised on average over $420 a day for charity. That’s a lot of dosh. All to the good. But I’m concerned about the quality of the blog and whether it is doing what you yourself want it to. I have only two ways of knowing: the rather crude rating system we use for blog posts and the feedback I get. The rating system could probably be improved, but I’m not completely sure how. Of course each post isn’t read by 6700+ members every day, but even so, I typically will get somewhere between 5 and 10 people rating a post. That much is helpful (especially if there is a consistent trend), but it’s not a lot to go by, nothing anywhere statistically significant. The [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:43:27-04:00January 17th, 2019|Public Forum|

Does Eternal Punishment Even Make Sense?

This will be my last post on the understandings of hell in early Christianity. There is a lot more to be said, of course, but for our purposes this is enough. I’ve been trying to show that there was a minority view held by some prominent thinkers – and possibly a lot of other Christian folk; there’s no way to tell – that said in the end everyone would be saved. The dominant view, though, was that for non-believers and sinners, there would be hell to pay. This would involve eternal torment. Once Christianity became a massive and widespread phenomenon – when there was no more persecution, and when philosophically oriented intellectuals had positions of authority in the church -- highly trained Christian thinkers could engage in reasoned and intellectual reflections on the fate of souls after death, and none did so more influentially than Augustine (354 -430 CE), the greatest theologian of Christian antiquity. Augustine chose to conclude his great work, The City of God, with three books describing how the reality of God [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:43:27-04:00January 15th, 2019|Afterlife|

Eternal Torment Even for Christians?

I have been discussing the “universalistic” strand in parts of Christianity in the early centuries, which said that ultimately, everyone will be saved. This was very much a minority opinion. Most Christians continued to think that non-believers would be damned, forever, to some very nasty torments that would never end. In fact, in many circles, more and more people came to be subject to the fires of eternity in the Christian imagination. In the fourth and fifth centuries, with a massive influx of converts there also came large numbers of less-than-devoted souls. And the blessings and punishments of eternity almost inevitably came to be modified as a result. By the end of the fourth century, when Christianity was well on the road to becoming the dominant religion of the empire, some Christian writers started to maintain that heaven was not the destination of all members of the church, or hell the fate reserved only for those outside of it. On the contrary, Christian sinners too could be subject to the eternal wrath of God. Especially [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:43:27-04:00January 14th, 2019|Afterlife, Fourth-Century Christianity|

What Greek Version of the New Testament Do I Use?

I often indicate that when citing the New Testament in English, I’m giving my own translation, and that understandably has led some people to think I’ve actually citing a completed translation that I’ve made but not published. A reader of the blog recently asked me how he could get access to the translation. But I’ve never written a translation of the NT; when I say that a quotation is in “my” translation I simply mean that I’m reading the Greek with my eyes, translating it in my brain, and typing it with my fingers. That’s a typical procedure for NT scholars. The reader then asked an interesting and important corollary question: how do I know what Greek to be translating? Here’s the question and my response. QUESTION: How do you or any professional translator choose and get the right Greek version of the NT? I understand there were many manuscripts discovered and they are different in terms of content and time of writing. Many of them incomplete and none of them original. Is [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:43:27-04:00January 13th, 2019|New Testament Manuscripts, Reader’s Questions|

The Happy News! No One Stays In Hell!

I don’t want to leave the impression that Origen was the only early Christian thinker who held to the idea of universal salvation, that in the end, everyone gets saved. Very few (hardly any) would have agreed that the Devil too would get redeemed. But that all humans will eventually “make it” was an attractive view to others – even “orthodox” Christian thinkers. Among scholars from the later church, the most famous theologian to countenance universal salvation was a self-confessed advocate of Origen, the late fourth-century Gregory of Nyssa (335-94 CE). In a dialogue called “On the Soul and the Resurrection,” held with his own sister and fellow theologian Macrina the Younger, Gregory insists that suffering after death is not meant to be a punishment for sin, but as a way of driving evil out of the soul. His sister agrees, at some length. Moreover, she claims that when evil is finally driven out, it will disappear, since evil cannot exist outside of the will of a person. And when that happens, Macrina maintains, there [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:43:27-04:00January 11th, 2019|Afterlife, Fourth-Century Christianity|

Did We Exist Before We Were Born?

Yesterday I started explaining how the influential early Christian theologian Origen believed that at the end of time, all souls -- including the most wicked to have ever lived, even the demons and the devil -- will be saved. To make better sense of why this happens at the end, it's important to understand what Origen thought happened at the beginning -- where souls came from in the first place In the first book of his theological work On First Principles, Origen explains how all sentient beings originally came into existence. He argues that in eternity past, before the world was created, God created an enormous number of souls, whose purpose was to contemplate and adore him forever. True adoration, of course, requires freedom of the will: beings need to choose to adore God if their worship is a true honor. That means all souls must also have had the capacity to choose not to worship God, that is, to do evil. None of these created souls was inherently evil, however, and none – not even [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:43:27-04:00January 8th, 2019|Afterlife|

Does Everyone Get Saved in the End?

I return now, at last, to the question of why the Apocalypse of Peter, an account of Peter’s tour of the glories of heaven and the torments of hell, did not make it into the New Testament. It was a fairly widely known book in the first couple of Christian centuries, was accepted by some church leaders as part of the Scriptures, seemed to support acceptable Christian views, and was said to have been written by Jesus’ apostle himself. So why did it come to be excluded? No one in the ancient church actually says, and so we have to come up with a hypothesis. I have one, but it’s a bit complicated, which is why I’ve been putting off talking about it (I’ve been out of town for a couple of weeks, away from my books, and wanted to make sure I could access them before giving this a shot). My thesis is that there are a couple of points of view in the book that were *eventually*, by the fourth century or so, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:43:27-04:00January 7th, 2019|Afterlife|

Fundamentalist Arguments Ad Absurdum about the “Original” Text of the NT

I’ve been looking for a scrappy question to tangle with, and today I received one! QUESTION: You make the case that we do not have the original New Testament manuscripts. In fact, we do not have any complete manuscripts of books that eventually became part of the New Testament until the 3rd century, correct? The response often given by fundamentalist Christians is this: So, you don't believe that Socrates died by drinking hemlock? You don't believe that Julius Caesar was Emperor? You don't believe that Plato wrote Plato's Republic? The manuscripts for Jesus are superior in quality to the manuscripts for other historical figures. This is sort of a sneak way of convincing people that if they don't accept Jesus (his historicity or divinity?) than you don't believe anything about ancient history. I am guessing that you aren't a scholar of ancient Greece. But in a debate with a fundamentalist Christian, it's often tempting to pretend to be one simply to swat away these silly arguments. What do you think is the best argument [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:43:27-04:00January 6th, 2019|New Testament Manuscripts, Reader’s Questions|

My Pod Cast Interview with Sam Harris

On May 1, 2018 I was interviewed by Sam Harris for his podcast "Waking Up." Ostensibly the interview was to be about my book "The Triumph of Christianity: How A Forbidden Religion Swept the World" but we covered a wide range of topics, from my autobiography to numerous substantive issues, including the nature of miracles, the composition of the New Testament, the resurrection of Jesus, the question of heaven and hell, the book of Revelation, the End Times, contradictions in the Bible, the concept of a messiah, whether Jesus actually existed, and the conversion of Constantine! Now *that's* a lot to talk about in a single interview! Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition:

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:42:56-04:00January 4th, 2019|Book Discussions, Public Forum, Video Media|

Hey, They’re Free! Memberships Still Available for Those Who Can’t Afford Them

Do you OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW want a free one-year subscription to the blog (because, for various reasons, you, or the one you know, cannot afford it)? I STILL HAVE FREE MEMBERSHIPS TO GIVE OUT. Please ask or encourage someone you know to ask. Here is the original announcement from a couple of weeks ago, with instructions about how to obtain one. *********************************************************** Thanks to the incredible generosity of members of the blog, I am happy to announce that there are a limited number of free one-year memberships available. These have been donated for a single purpose: to allow those who cannot afford the annual membership fee to participate on the blog for a year. I will assign these memberships strictly on the honor system: if you truly cannot afford the membership fee, but very much want to have full access to the blog, then please contact me. Do NOT reply here, on the blog, as a comment. Send me a separate email, privately, at [email protected]. In your email, let me know your situation [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:43:27-04:00January 3rd, 2019|Public Forum|

My Research Goals for 2019

I occasionally get asked what I’m “working on,” and it seems like January 1 is a good time to lay out my research goals/directions for the year. As some of you know, a couple of years ago I decided to cut back and become less busy with research. That lasted a couple of months. But, well, it was a *nice* couple of months. Now I’m back in over my head – but enjoying that immensely as well. I have four major research goals (at this point) for the coming year. Finish The Invention of the Afterlife. This is the trade book (that a few of you have read in draft!) that deals with the question of where the ideas of heaven and hell came from. As I’ve mentioned before, 72% of Americans believe that there is a literal heaven, a place for blessed souls after death, and 58% in a literal hell, a place of torment for sinners. The thesis of this book is that heaven and hell – as places of eternal reward and [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:43:27-04:00January 1st, 2019|Public Forum|

Blog Year in Review, 2018

Here on this New Year’s Eve I would like to reflect for a minute on the last calendar year of the blog, our seventh year of operation. By nearly any metric, I would say it has been a very good year indeed. For just about all the users of the blog, of course, the primary interest is to read what scholars say about the subject areas that we cover, which are narrow, in one sense, in that they deal almost exclusively with the area of early Christianity (with some discussion of cognate fields, such as Hebrew Bible, early Judaism, Greco-Roman world, Roman religion, and so on). But in another sense they are very broad, as the blog covers a range of subfields all of which entail scholarship produced by specialists who, in many instances, work in one small subfield or another. (My best friend in graduate school, upon graduation, used to say that her expertise was on Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapters 9-11. And she meant it!) And so the blog covers, among other [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:43:27-04:00December 31st, 2018|Public Forum|

Were There Other Virgin Births in Antiquity?

As happened four years ago when I made a series of posts on the virgin birth stories in the NT, this time too I've received queries about whether the idea of a virgin birth was a common motif in antiquity; some "popular" books out there claim that other alleged sons of God were born of virgins. Is that true? Well, I don't think so. Here is how I responded before. ********************************************************************************** I have devoted several posts to the issue of Jesus’ virgin birth, as recounted in Matthew and Luke. As I pointed out, there is no account of Jesus’ virgin birth in the Gospel of John, and it appears that the idea is actually argued *against* (implicitly) in the Gospel of Mark. Several readers have asked me (or told me) about the parallels to the virgin birth stories in pagan texts, where a son of God, or demi-god, or, well, some other rather amazing human being is said to have been born of a virgin. Aren’t the Christians simply borrowing a widely held [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:43:26-04:00December 30th, 2018|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

Was Jesus Born of a Virgin in the Gospel of John?

I have talked about the virgin birth in both Matthew and Luke, and noted its absence from the earlier Gospel, Mark. In response, I have been asked about its presence/status in the last canonical Gospel, John. I've posted on this before, even within living memory, but maybe to round out the presentation, it would be good to deal with it again. Here is the original post from years ago. ********************************************************************************************** I have pointed out that our earliest Gospel, Mark, not only is lacking a story of the virgin birth but also tells a story that seems to run precisely counter to the idea that Jesus’ mother knew that his birth was miraculous, unlike the later Gospels of Matthew and Luke. It is striking to note that even though these two later Gospels know about a virgin birth, our latest canonical Gospel, John, does not know about it. This was not a doctrine that everyone knew about – even toward the end of the first century. Casual readers of John often assume that it presupposes the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:43:26-04:00December 28th, 2018|Canonical Gospels|

Does Mark’s Gospel Actually Deny the Virgin Birth?

We are moving beyond the Christmas season, but I did think it would be worthwhile responding to a couple of queries I've received about the stories of Jesus' virgin birth -- found only in Matthew and Luke. What did Mark think about it? Here, in a post from years ago, I delve into the matter, suggesting some conclusions that are, admittedly, a bit unexpected by most readers of the Bible. **************************************************************************** It is interesting that our first canonical Gospel (which is our first Gospel, whether canonical or noncanonical), Mark, does not have the story of the Virgin birth and in fact shows no clue that it is familiar with the stories of the Virgin birth. On the contrary, there are passages in Mark that appear to work *against* the idea that Jesus’ mother knew anything about his having had an extraordinary birth. There is a complicated little passage in Mark 3:20-21 about Jesus’ family coming to take him out of the public eye because they thought he was crazy. It is a difficult [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:43:26-04:00December 27th, 2018|Canonical Gospels|

Christmas Reflection 2018

I have always loved Christmas. But looking back over my life, it is interesting to think about what, exactly, I have loved about it. Like every middle-class first-world child, I suppose, when I was very young I liked all the excitement around presents – the anticipation, the tree, the night before, the excitement of the morning, the happiness of the giving but especially – of course! – the receiving! Starting about when I was in junior high I started really appreciating the religious connections with the season, especially the midnight church service, in which I participated – in my Episcopal church – as an altar boy. Carrying the cross, being involved with the liturgy, singing the carols, finishing in the dark, with lighted candles in the standing-room-only crowd, softly singing Silent Night. Magical. When I was a mid-teenager and had become a born-again Christian, I continued to enjoy all that (from the tree to the service to the gifts) but I acquired a deeper appreciation of the theology of it all and what it actually [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:43:26-04:00December 25th, 2018|Reflections and Ruminations|

The Gospel of Luke without a Birth Story

In my previous post, ostensibly on the genealogy of Luke, I pointed out that there are good reasons for thinking that the Gospel originally was published – in a kind of “first edition” – without what are now the first two chapters, so that the very beginning was what is now 3:1 (this is many centuries, of course, before anyone started using chapters and verses.) If that’s the case, Luke was originally a Gospel like Mark’s that did not have a birth and infancy narratives. These were added later, in a second edition (either by the same author or by someone else). If that’s the case then the Gospel began with John the Baptist and his baptism of Jesus, followed by the genealogy which makes better sense here, at the beginning, than it does in the third chapter once the first two are added. But is there any hard evidence that a first edition began without the first two chapters? One of the reasons it is so hard to say is because we simply don’t [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:43:26-04:00December 24th, 2018|Canonical Gospels|

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