BDEhrman, Author at The Bart Ehrman Blog - Page 144 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.

The New Book: The Triumph of Christianity

When my agent Roger and I decided that we might want to explore the possibility of going with a different publisher, the first step was to come up with a book proposal to shop around. For ten years or so I had been wanting to write a particular book, but had always put it off because it had seemed like such a MAJOR undertaking. I came to think that this was the perfect time to pursue it, to propose doing a new book on a completely new topic with a new publisher as a new beginning. The book was/is to be about how Christianity spread throughout the Roman world, until, less than 400 years after it started, it had taken over and the Roman Empire had officially become Christian. In my mind I was thinking about a title like “The Triumph of Christianity: How Faith in Jesus Destroyed the Religions of Rome.” It would be unlike anything I had ever done. The strategy was for me to write a 15-20 page prospectus in which I [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:33:07-04:00April 19th, 2016|Book Discussions, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum, Spread of Christianity|

Getting a Literary Agent

I am now ready to talk about how I switched trade publishers, so that now I have a two-book contract with Simon & Schuster, after being with Harper for some thirteen years. As I mentioned in a previous note, I had a particularly close and productive relationship with my editor at Harper, Roger. A couple of years ago, when I was just starting to work on the book that just came out (Jesus Before the Gospels), Roger called me and left a message that he had some bad news and needed to talk with me. I thought that it was either a serious health issue or a career change. Luckily it was the latter. But I didn’t feel lucky! He had been my editor!! He had decided to leave Harper, stop editing books, and become a literary agent. Big bummer for me. I had never used a literary agent before, and was not really interested in doing so now (at the time he didn’t ask me to). My reasons were pretty straightforward. Agents typically charge [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:52-04:00April 18th, 2016|Book Discussions, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

New Archaeological Discoveries and the Bible! Readers Mailbag April 16, 2016

Today I address two interesting questions on the weekly mailbag, one about the new archaeological discovery in Israel and the other on whether in my last book I violated my own advice about requiring only experts to write for popular audiences. If you have a question you would like me to address, let me know! QUESTION: Does the latest information on the discovery of written texts from before the removal of the Israelite’s to Babylon indicating a wider level of literacy in 7th century BCE change your mind in any way about the illiteracy of the followers of Jesus? RESPONSE: I’m not sure if everyone saw this intriguing news item in the NY Times (or elsewhere), but here it is: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/12/world/middleeast/new-evidence-onwhen-bible-was-written-ancient-shopping-lists.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0 Let me say emphatically that I have no inside information about the find – I know only what I read in the papers, and it is fascinating indeed. They have discovered a number of ostraca (pottery sherds) that have written on them, in ink, grocery/supply requests; they originate from Israel about the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:52-04:00April 16th, 2016|Book Discussions, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions, Religion in the News|

Getting a First Book Published

I regularly get emails from people who want to break into publishing for the first time, who ask me “How can I get my book published?” As I indicated in my previous posts, almost always what they have in mind is not a work of scholarship for scholars but a trade book for a general audience. And so here is a weird fact about me: even though I have been publishing trade books for eighteen years, I’m not completely sure of the answer. But I know some things, and in this post I’ll indicate what those things are. I absolutely know how one gets his or her first scholarly book published. I help my graduate students, and other scholars just starting their careers, do that all the time. There I’m an expert. But a first trade book? That’s a trickier proposition. The reason is one I’ve intimated before. Most scholars who publish a trade book do so after they have already published serious scholarship and so are to some extent a “known quantity.” In my [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:52-04:00April 14th, 2016|Book Discussions, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Who Should Write Trade Books?

Most people who contact me about a book they would like to write – or that they have written – are not talking about a work of scholarship (though some are); they are talking about a book that they would like to publish that “reaches the masses.” They have some ideas about early Christianity, the historical Jesus, the life and writings of Paul, the Gospels, the entire Bible, or some related topic, and they would like to publish a book to make their views known. I never encourage them. This will probably be the most intellectually snobbish post I’ve ever made on this blog, but I think maybe I should just tell it like it is. In my view, no one should write a book if they lack the necessary expertise. And expertise doesn’t come from wanting to have it or wishing to have it. It comes from years of hard work – in this case, intellectual work – after being trained sufficiently to be able even to *do* the work. I may really, deeply [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:52-04:00April 13th, 2016|Book Discussions, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Being Qualified to Write a Scholarly Book

The goal of this thread is to talk about the book that I’m working on now, which I hope to have written (gods willing) by the end of this calendar year. We’ll see. To get to that I felt like I needed to talk about how I had changed publishers, and now that I’m talking about that, it occurs to me that I should talk about how one goes about getting a book published. One of the emails I get *all* the time is from authors who have written a book, or hope to write a book, who want to know how they can get a publisher to take a look at it. The short answer: it ain’t easy. So first let me do this autobiographically, how I myself got into the publishing business. The first thing to stress: I had a leg up. I had a PhD at a reputable school (Princeton Theological Seminary) and a teaching job at another one (Rutgers University). The reality is that publishers of scholarly books look for authors [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:51-04:00April 12th, 2016|Book Discussions, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Why I Have Moved to a New Publisher

In my previous post I began to talk about how I have now changed publishers. This past book Jesus Before the Gospels, was my last with HarperOne, and now I have a two-book contract, for the next two books (obviously), with Simon and Schuster. A couple of readers have inferred that I have left Harper because I did not like the way they had handled my most recent book. That’s not the case at all. I made the decision before they even *started* handling the book. And let me stress, I have had a wonderful experience with Harper. They really are one of the truly great publishing houses in the world. Absolutely. How could I possibly complain? Since 2005 I have done seven books with them. One of those seven was a a book that none of us -- not me, not my editor, not my publicist, not anyone in the Harper hierarchy, not anyone on the planet – thought was going to be a big selling book. This was Did Jesus Exist? We originally [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:51-04:00April 11th, 2016|Bart’s Biography, Book Discussions, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

The New Edition of My Textbook: Reader’s Mailbag April 10, 2016

Here is this week’s Reader’s Mailbag (well, last week’s; I took yesterday off from work) (and it was glorious!). This time around I will be dealing with just one question, about the new edition of my New Testament textbook QUESTION: You say you first published your textbook on the New Testament about 20 years ago. I see that it is in its 5th edition (or more?). You’ve studied a lot, published a lot, no doubt learned a lot RESPONSE: Actually, as it turns out, this past year I published the sixth edition of the book. Who would-a thought? To explain what is different about the new book, I need to say a few things about how I imagined the book when I first wrote it, back in the mid 1990s. And then I can talk about what I changed for this new edition. Let me say before detailing all that that even though the book is meant for college and university students, it could be useful for anyone interested n the study of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:51-04:00April 10th, 2016|Book Discussions, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Publishing with HarperOne

Now that I’m in the deep throes of research for my next book, I thought it would be a good time to devote a thread to it. It’s what I’ve been thinking about day and night -- and reading voraciously on – since this past August! To explain it all, I need to provide a bit of personal background. The point of this post: I have decided to change publishers. The book that just came out last month, Jesus Before the Gospels, is my seventh book with HarperOne, which is an Imprint of HarperCollins, one of the five largest publishing houses in the world. It has been an absolutely terrific run with Harper’s, an absolute career-changer. But I’ve decided now – after working with them for twelve years – to move on to something else. My next two books will be with Simon and Schuster, another one of the “big five,” which is located in New York (HarperOne is in San Francisco). Why I changed is a long story. First maybe I should say something [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:51-04:00April 8th, 2016|Book Discussions, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Evaluating My Debate on the Book of Acts

I have now completed my posts on the debate I had with myself in front of my New Testament class on the question of whether the New Testament book of Acts is historically reliable. If you want to see the whole debate, just read the posts in sequence: the affirmative speech arguing Acts is indeed reliable; the negative speech arguing that it is not; the negative rebuttal of what the affirmative side said; and finally the affirmative rebuttal of what the negative side said. In class I delivered the speeches one after the other. When “affirmative” I was wearing a sport coat, but no cap; when “negative” I was wearing a baseball cap but no sport coat – just so students would realize that it was a “different” speaker speaking. I have pointed out on the blog before that even though I do a lot of public debates, I often find them more than a little frustrating and frequently (in fact, almost always) ask myself, in the course of the debate, why I’m doing this [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:51-04:00April 6th, 2016|Acts of the Apostles, Bart's Debates, Public Forum|

Is Acts Historically Reliable? The Affirmative Rebuttal

I have been (intermittently) discussing the debate that I had with myself in front of my New Testament class on the resolution, Resolved: The Book of Acts is Historically Reliable. So far I have indicated what the Affirmative side argued in favor of the resolution; what the Negative side argued against the resolution; and what the Negative side said in its rebuttal to the first Affirmative speech. NOW, at last, I can indicate what the Affirmative side said in its rebuttal to the two Negative speeches. Recall: in this post I’m not indicating what I really thing; I’m indicating what I would argue if this were the side I was required to argue (and what I did argue in class that day). Here it is: ******************************************************** Despite what the negative side has maintained, we remain convinced that the New Testament book of Acts is historically reliable. The first point to stress is that it is of utmost importance that we not impose modern standards of historical accuracy on an ancient text. Of course the author [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:51-04:00April 5th, 2016|Acts of the Apostles, Bart's Debates, Paul and His Letters|

Our Fourth Anniversary!

Yesterday marked the fourth anniversary of our blog. We began this little venture back on April 3, 2012. Happy anniversary to us! In thinking back on the past four years, I have lots of things to reflect on, as this blog is a rather complicated affair. For every single week over these four years I have made 5-6 posts, on average 1000 words in length; I have read and added comments made by readers (I post almost all the comments, deleting only those that are not related to the concerns or the blog, or inappropriate for one reason or another) (very few are overly snarky, but on occasion there will be one) (I try to keep the tone of the discussion on the blog at a high level – not an easy thing to do on the internet) (and I try to limit the number of parenthetic comments that I make) (obviously that is not easy either). I also answer every direct question I get – obviously not at any great length, since, as with most [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:51-04:00April 4th, 2016|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

HNN News Story on Jesus Before the Gospels
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HNN News Story on Jesus Before the Gospels

Book Discussions, Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Public Forum

HNN News Story on Jesus Before the Gospels

Below is an article that I published for the History News Network, based on my recent book Jesus Before the Gospels. Enjoy!! ******************************************************************************** Historians/History article featured on HNN (History News Network) posted 3-18-16: Are the Stories in the Bible About the Last Days and Hours of Jesus True? by Bart D. Ehrman The season of Lent has come upon us, the time when Christians focus their devotional attention on the last days and hours of Jesus. Even though we devote more social (and media) space to Jesus’ birth, historically the Christian church has paid far more attention to his death. That is certainly the case with the New Testament itself. The Gospel of John, the perennial favorite of believers, after spending eleven chapters on the three years of Jesus’ public ministry, devotes fully ten chapters to his final week and its aftermath. It says not a word about his birth. The stories of Jesus’ last days – his Triumphal entry into Jerusalem, his cleansing of the temple, his last supper, his betrayal by Judas Iscariot, his [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:36-04:00April 3rd, 2016|Book Discussions, Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

The Letters of Paul: Mailbag April 1, 2016

In today’s Readers’ Mailbag, I will be answering questions connected with the writings of Paul: what is the earliest manuscript of his letters; did the author of Acts know Paul’s letters; and is Paul described as a heretic in the Dead Sea Scrolls. ******************************************************************************************* QUESTION Bart, early in your book Misquoting Jesus (p. 4) you wrote a sudden, shocking surprise (to many born-again Christians) when you said “As we learned at Moody in one of the first courses in the curriculum, we don’t actually have the original writings of the New Testament.” I’ve witnessed my own neighbor’s disbelief and visible anger when I pointed this out to him. … My interest is your response to my question “How old are the earliest copies we have of Paul’s letters 1 Corinthians and 1 Thessalonians.” … As you know, these books describe, in part, the resurrection of Jesus. RESPONSE It is a little difficult for me to know the question behind this question, so first let me answer the direct question and then to respond to [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:51-04:00April 1st, 2016|Acts of the Apostles, Early Judaism, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Is Acts Reliable? The Negative Rebuttal

What follows is the “negative rebuttal” of the speech given by the “first affirmative” in its support of the resolution, “Resolved: The Book of Acts is Historically Reliable.” If you need to refresh yourself on what the affirmative team argued, you can find it on the March 24 post, here: https://ehrmanblog.org/is-acts-historically-reliable-affirmative-argument/ In the first negative speech (yesterday’s post) the negative team argued its case, without direct reference to the affirmative side. This, now, is the negative response to what the affirmative said (the next post in the thread will be the affirmative rebuttal to the negative side) (recall: this was a debate I staged with myself in front of my New Testament class earlier this semester. I didn't read this speech: I winged it. But this is the essence of what I argued, on the negative side against the affirmative) *************************************************************** If you choose to go point by point through the affirmative team’s case that the book of Acts is historically reliable, you will find that they have advanced their views on very thin grounds. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:51-04:00March 31st, 2016|Acts of the Apostles, Bart's Debates, Public Forum|

Is the Book of Acts Historically Reliable? The Negative Case.

This post will lay out the Negative case, arguing against the resolution, Resolved: The Book of Acts if Historically Reliable. Again, I am not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with this argument; I’m giving it as I would in a debate. ********************************************************** The New Testament book of Acts is not historically reliable. Before showing that to be the case, I want to make two preliminary remarks, both of them related to the question of what it means for an ostensibly historical account (a narrative of what allegedly happened in the past) to be reliable. First, when readers today want to know whether the book of Acts is reliable, they mean that they want to know whether the events that it narrates actually happened in the way it describes. Or not. Readers are not primarily interested in knowing if he wrote his account the way other authors in his day would have done. They are mainly interested in knowing whether his narrative happened the way he says it did. Second, it is indeed important to know whether [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:50-04:00March 30th, 2016|Acts of the Apostles, Bart's Debates, Public Forum|

Is the Book of Acts Historically Reliable? Smoke and Mirrors.

In my next post I will be staking stake out the “negative” side on the debate I had with myself in class, arguing against the resolution, Resolved: The Book of Acts is Historically Reliable. I have already made the affirmative case; in the negative I will argue that the book is not reliable (that first speech was a set speech, prepared without reference to anything the affirmative side said). I will then give a negative refutation of the affirmative’s first speech, and I will end with an affirmative rebuttal of the negative’s two speeches. Before I do all that, however, I need to take a time-out and explain one negative counter-argument that would take too much space if it were simply part of a longer post laying out the negative position. The affirmative side in the debate argued that based on archaeological evidence Luke can be shown to have presented accurately the laws, custom, and geography mentioned or alluded to in the book of Acts: there really was an Areopagus where philosophers gathered, as mentioned [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:50-04:00March 29th, 2016|Acts of the Apostles, Bart's Debates, Public Forum|

For Anyone Who Still Needs a Free Membership!

I'm happy to say that thanks to the incredible generosity of members of the blog, I am still able to provide 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 (why you would like to take advantage of this offer) and provide me with the following information: 1) Your first and last name. 2) Your preferred personal email. 3) Your preferred user name (no spaces). 4) Your preferred password (should be 8 or more characters, no spaces). The donors will remain anonymous, but here let me publicly extend my [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:50-04:00March 29th, 2016|Public Forum|

Bart Ehrman vs Tim McGrew – Round 2

Here is the second part of my on-radio debate with Christian apologist Timothy J. McGrew, which aired on the Unbelievable," a weekly program aired on UK Premier Christian Radio. I recorded the interview from the station's London studio; McGrew was on the telephone. In the discussion we address the question Do Undesigned Coincidences Confirm the Gospels?" We also debated whether historical research can ever validate miraculous conclusions, as we express differ views over accounts in the book of Acts. For McGrew's views on what he calls these Un-designed Coincidences, see http://www.christianapologeticsalliance.com/2013/09/01/undesigned-coincidences. He's also the author of The Foundations of Knowledge and Internalism and Epistemology. Please adjust gear icon for 1080p High-Definition:

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:36-04:00March 26th, 2016|Acts of the Apostles, Bart's Debates, Video Media|

My Book Sales and the “Relatives” of Paul: Weekly Reader’s Mailbag March 25, 2016

For this week’s Readers Mailbag I have two questions, one about the sales of my new book and one about the apostle Paul (the meaning of a particularly important verse). If you have a question you would like me to address, simply ask it here! ********************************************************* QUESTION: Are you pleased with how Jesus Before the Gospels is selling? The reviews are great. I'm enjoying reading it, myself. RESPONSE: Thanks for asking! Yes, there are some reviewers who seem to “get” what the book is, and who appreciate it. I’m always grateful for that! Am I happy with the sales so far? Unfortunately, the answer is “not really”! I have to admit I’m a bit spoiled on the book sales front. This is the seventh book I’ve published with HarperOne. Of the other six, one was a book that none of us thought would be a huge sales success, Did Jesus Exist? (In fact, our original idea was to publish it simply as an e-book, because we knew it had such a limited market. At [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:50-04:00March 25th, 2016|Book Discussions, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

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