BDEhrman, Author at The Bart Ehrman Blog - Page 145 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.

Is Acts Historically Reliable? The Affirmative Argument

I am ready now to explain how I did the debate with myself in front of my undergraduate class on the resolution, Resolved: The Book of Acts is Historically Reliable. As always happens in a debate, the Affirmative side goes first and gives a prepared speech. In arguing for the affirmative, I made the following points. (Note: I’m not saying I personally agree with these points, just as I’m not going to be saying that I agreed with the Negative points. I’m simply making the best case I can for both positions.) THE REST OF THIS POST IS FOR MEMBERS ONLY. If you don't belong yet, JOIN! The Book of Acts is Historically Reliable, as can be seen by considering three major points First, the author of the book of Acts explicitly tells us that he was concerned and committed to present a historically accurate account of the history of the early church. The author of Acts, of course, was the author of the Gospel of Luke, and the preface to Luke served as [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:50-04:00March 24th, 2016|Acts of the Apostles, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum|

Major Themes in the Book of Acts

The debate over the historical accuracy of the book of Acts is important, in no small measure because – as I have pointed out already – it provides us our one and only narrative of what was happening among the followers of Jesus in the years immediately after his death. This is the key, formative period in the formation of Christianity. How did it start as a religion? Acts is our only surviving historical account. But is it an accurate history? The first thing to stress is that Acts – like all histories – is highly restrictive in what it talks about. It is not a comprehensive history and makes no pretense of being a comprehensive history. The title “The Acts of the Apostles” was given it by later readers and scribes. The author himself (whoever he was) does not give it a title. And this particular title is not particularly apt, for one very important reason: most of the apostles do not figure in the account at all. This is a narrative of some [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:36-04:00March 23rd, 2016|Acts of the Apostles, Public Forum|

The Literary Artistry of the Book of Acts

I am in the middle of a thread dealing with the New Testament book of Acts, the first account that we have of the history of the Christian church at its very beginnings – starting with the events happening right after the resurrection of Jesus and covering the spread of the Christian faith through the Roman world up until the time Paul reached the city of Rome, presumably in the early 60s CE. And so this is an account of the first three decades of Christianity. It’s the only one we have of this period. That’s one reason it is so important to know if it’s historically reliable or not – if it’s not, we have very restricted access to what was happening in these most critical years of the early Christian movement. Before I discuss the issue of Acts’ historically reliability (the subject of my debate with myself in front of my class two weeks ago), I need to provide a bit more background. In my textbook on the New Testament I provide two [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:36-04:00March 22nd, 2016|Acts of the Apostles, Public Forum|

The Book of Acts: An Overview

Now that I have explained at some length how the debates work in my Introduction to the New Testament class, I can talk a bit about the debate that I staged in front of the class. The class debates that the students themselves will participate in start next week – one a week for three weeks. I’ve always thought that for students to see how a debate is supposed to work, they need to observe one in action. So I like to have a debate in front of the entire class to give them an idea. The problem is that most years (well, virtually every year) it is hard to find someone who is willing to debate me. And so, I debate myself. The topic that I usually debate has to do with the NT book of Acts and whether it can be trusted to give a historically reliable account of the work of Paul and the other apostles after the death of Jesus. The specific resolution is this: “Resolved: The Book of Acts is [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:36-04:00March 22nd, 2016|Acts of the Apostles|

Bart Ehrman vs Tim McGrew – Round 1

On Saturday 18th July 2015 I held a kind of radio debate with Timothy J. McGrew, a conservative Christian apologist and professor of Philosophy at Western Michigan University. He's also the author of The Foundations of Knowledge and Internalism and Epistemology. It was a two-part back-and-forth on "Unbelievable," a weekly program hosted by Justin Brierley, which airs on UK Premier Christian Radio. I taped the interview from the station's London studio. The debate was on the topic: Can We Trust the Gospels?" Here Part One. Please adjust gear icon for 1080p High-Definition:

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:36-04:00March 19th, 2016|Bart's Debates, Canonical Gospels, Video Media|

Memory, Eyewitnesses, and the Relevance of Jesus: Readers Mailbag

In this week’s Readers’ Mailbag I will deal with three questions, all of them having to do with the historical Jesus: how has memory studies affected my understanding of Jesus; whether the claim that the Gospels are based eyewitnesses is a new or an ancient attempt to “guarantee” their accuracy; and whether Jesus can be relevant today if his basic apocalyptic view was proven to be wrong. Good questions, all of them! If you have any questions about anything involving the New Testament or the history and literature of Christianity in the first four centuries, let me know! *********************************************************** QUESTION: Has your view of the historical Jesus changed at all after your studies into memory? RESPONSE: My basic view of Jesus has not changed at all. I continue to think that he was an apocalyptic preacher who proclaimed that he and his listeners were living at the end of the age and that God was (very) soon to intervene and overthrow the evil powers who were in charge of this world in order to [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:36-04:00March 18th, 2016|Historical Jesus, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Memory Studies, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Does the New Testament Condemn Modern Practices of Homosexuality?

The third in-class debate (for the other two, see my two preceding posts) is in some ways the most controversial of all, as it hits at the heart of a highly fraught topic today. And yet the resolution may seem to some people to be undebatable – that the answer to it is obvious. As it turns out, it isn’t. The third resolution is this: Resolved: The New Testament Condemns Modern Practices of Homosexuality Again, the wording of the resolution is meant to make students think about the very words being used. What is “homosexuality”? And what are “modern” practices? If you define homosexuality as same-sex sexual relations, and you define modern practices as things like men having sex with men, then it seems that the answer would be fairly obvious: yes the New Testament does seem to condemn that sort of thing. But, actually, it’s not that simple. At all. There are tons of issues involved, which make this debate very complicated. For one thing ... The Rest of this Post is for Members [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:36-04:00March 16th, 2016|Paul and His Letters, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations, Sex and Sexuality in the Bible|

Were Paul’s Views of Women Oppressive?

In my post yesterday I discussed the first debate topic assigned to my undergraduate class on the New Testament, on the relationship of Paul and Jesus, and the question of whether they represented fundamentally the same religion or not. Of all the debate topics that I assign, I think that one is the most central to the understanding of the New Testament and the history of Christianity, as it deals with the root of the very problem of Christianity itself as it developed into a new religion, separate from Judaism. But the other debate topics are really important too – extremely important – and a bit more, well, controversial. The students enjoy that first one well enough – but not perhaps as much as they could, since they don’t really yet see what an enormous issue it is. (And because since it is the first debate, students tend not to prepare for it as much; once the rest of the class sees what a big deal these debates are, they tend to prepare a lot [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:36-04:00March 15th, 2016|Forgery in Antiquity, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum, Women in Early Christianity|

Do Paul and Jesus Represent Fundamentally Different Religions?

I’m in the middle of a thread on the class debates that I assign for my Introduction to the New Testament. This started by my remarking on the debate I did with myself in front of the class, on whether the book of Acts is historically reliable; I haven’t yet gotten to what it is I argued (both affirmative and negative), but will do so! First I need to set the broader context. As I’ve indicated, every student is required to participate in one of three debates in their 20-person recitation. The first debate will be next week, after Spring break. This resolution strikes me as a particularly important one: RESOLVED: Paul and Jesus Advocated Fundamentally Different Religions. For my money, this gets to the very heart of the formation of early Christianity. Did the religion that emerged after Jesus’ death correspond closely to the religion that he himself followed and proclaimed? Or not? I could obviously devote a large number of posts to just this question. Here let me point out that as will [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:36-04:00March 14th, 2016|Historical Jesus, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum|

Weekly Readers’ Mailbag: March 12, 2016

In this week’s Reader’s Mailbag I will be addressing two questions about me personally, and my work. The first has to do with my controversies with fundamentalists, and the second with which of my scholarly books would be accessible to a non-scholar. If you have questions you would like me to address in this format, let me know! QUESTION: Professor Ehrman, did you anticipate such vitriolic attacks on your character from fundamentalists when you set out on your publishing career years ago? RESPONSE: I have to admit, I’m always surprised when I hear what a persona non grata I am in some Christian circles. Just yesterday I was doing a podcast interview for my new book Jesus Before the Gospels, the interviewer, a former pastor, told me that when he was in his conservative Christian seminary, as a student, he had been warned never to read any of my books, because I was trying to lead people astray. As always, I thought: How strange! I’ve never had as my purpose to lead anyone [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:36-04:00March 12th, 2016|Book Discussions, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

My Recitation Debates

Before I talk about the debate I had with myself in front of my class this week, on the topic Resolved: The New Testament Book of Acts is Historically Reliable, I need to do some considerable stage-setting. First, in this post, let me explain how the class is set up (including the debates the students themselves do), to make sense of what I was trying to accomplish in my staged split-personality (affirmative and negative). So the class is an Introduction to the New Testament, which presupposes no background or knowledge about the field. It is, of course, historically oriented, rather than confessionally, religiously, theologically, or devotionally. Students learn the Jewish and Greco-Roman background to the New Testament, and they study the Gospels, the historical Jesus, the letters of Paul, and the other writings of the New Testament from the historical-critical perspective. Twice a week students hear me give a lecture (most recently three of the classes involved lectures on the historical Jesus: problems with our sources; methods scholars have developed for dealing with these problems; [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:36-04:00March 11th, 2016|Public Forum, Teaching Christianity|

The Value (or Not) of Debates

As most readers of the blog know, I do a good number of public debates, almost always (I’m trying to think if there is an exception!) with conservative evangelical Christians or fundamentalists who think that my views are dangerous to the good Christians of their communities and to all those non-Christians they very much want to convert. My view all along has been that my historical views are not a threat to Christian faith, but only to a particular (and particularly narrow) understanding of that faith. But most of my debate partners can’t see things that way. For them, their views are Christianity, and any other kind of Christianity is not actually Christianity. I usually look forward to these debates in advance, but I have to say that almost every time I’m actually having one, I start jotting notes to myself, asking “Why Am I Doing This?” or “Why Do I Do This To Myself?” I often find the debates very frustrating. I imagine my debate partners do as well. They just can’t understand why [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:35-04:00March 10th, 2016|Bart's Debates, Public Forum, Teaching Christianity|

Buy New Book & Get Any Previous HarperOne Book for 50% OFF

In my latest book, Jesus Before the Gospels, I examine the oral tradition and its role in shaping the New Testament stories about Jesus—and ultimately our understanding of Christianity. For a limited time, if you purchase Jesus Before the Gospels, you can get any of my other HarperOne bestselling books for 50% OFF plus FREE shipping. Offer expires 3/15/2016... Yes, you have only ONE WEEK to take advantage of this exclusive offer. Offer valid only in the United States. LEARN MORE: https://wp.me/P54A3a-Mq

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:35-04:00March 9th, 2016|Book Discussions, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum|

Irritating Amazon Reviews

OK, to start off with, I have to admit that my skin is not as thick as I would like it to be. And because of that, I really should not read reviews of my books on Amazon. It is, to say the least, highly aggravating. As on the Internet generally, people can say what they want and there is no mechanism (well, no effective mechanism) for making sure they say things that are true, right, or responsible. So why do I read these things? I suppose in hope (idle hope, most of the time) that the person will have read the book, understood it, and “gotten” the point. It doesn’t always happen. It often doesn’t happen. OK, actually, it usually doesn’t happen. Here is a sample of the kind of thing I mean. The writer of this review is not simply wrong about things, he is downright scandalous, leveling a charge that he does not substantiate (for a good reason: he is unable to substantiate it, since it is flat-out false). But why does [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:35-04:00March 8th, 2016|Book Discussions, Public Forum|

The Triumphal Entry as a Distorted Memory

In my previous post I provided an excerpt from Jesus Before the Gospels where I summarized the New Testament accounts of Jesus’ “Triumphal Entry.” Here is the second part of that two-part post, another excerpt, where I call this tradition into question, arguing that it cannot be right historically and that it must, therefore, represent a distorted memory. It is important to recall that “memory” is not simply a recollection of what we ourselves experienced (what you had for dinner last night; the name of your first-grade teacher; etc.). Memory involves anything that you “call back to mind” (the literal meaning of “remembering”). It can be factual information (what is the capital of France?), even of something you haven’t experienced (e.g., if you have never been to Paris); it can be a shared understanding of a person from the past (Einstein; Karl Marx), even if you never met them. And it can be a recollection of a past event even if you were not involved. Such as the Triumphal Entry, to pick one example out [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:35-04:00March 8th, 2016|Book Discussions, Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Memory Studies, Public Forum|

The Memory of Jesus’ Triumphal Entry

Two chapters of my book Jesus Before the Gospels involve discussions of “distorted memories” – that is, recollections of events from Jesus life that appear not to represent what actually happened. One of the chapters deals with events leading up to Jesus’ death (the most remembered part of his life), the other with his public ministry. Just to give a taste of how I proceed in these chapters, I will excerpt here my discussion of the Triumphal Entry. The discussion is a little long for a single post, so I will divide it into two. Today’s post explains what the memory is (one many people still have today!); the next one will try to show why it is best seen as not being a “true” memory. The Triumphal Entry There seems to be no reason to doubt that Jesus spent the last week of his life in Jerusalem looking ahead to the celebration of the Passover feast. Passover was by far the busiest time of the year in Jerusalem, when the city would swell [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:35-04:00March 5th, 2016|Book Discussions, Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Weekly Readers’ Mailbag: March 4, 2016

Time for the Weekly Readers’ Mailbag. This week I will be dealing with three questions that have come in about my books and writing habits. If you have any questions you would like me to address in this format, go ahead and ask! *************************************************************** QUESTION: Which of your books didn’t do well? I’ve often guessed that your least-selling trade book would be either RESPONSE: The reader who asked this question was referring to my comment that I’ve now written seven books with my publisher HarperOne and that of the six previous ones, five sold extremely well. The questioner wants to know which one did not. So I have been very fortunate with my Harper books. The first one I did was Misquoting Jesus. To everyone’s enormous surprise, it became a bestseller. The reason everyone was surprised was, at least in part, because of the topic: it was about the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. Who in the world wants to read about that? It turns out that the answer is: lots of people. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:35-04:00March 4th, 2016|Book Discussions, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

My First Interview on Jesus Before the Gospels

Here is the first interview I have done for Jesus Before the Gospels, for the American Freethought Podcast, hosted by John C. Snider & David Driscoll (on March 1st, 2016). American Freethought is meant to serve freethinkers of every stripe: atheists, agnostics, skeptics, secular humanists, brights, rationalists, or whatever. In the interview we talk about what research on memory–how it’s formed, how it’s recalled, how it can change when transmitted from person to person, and how it can be remolded based on historical perspective and current events. Studies of memory, of course, can help us understand the oral traditions of Jesus before the written accounts of the Gospels were produced. Jesus Before the Gospels is available in hardcover, audiobook and for Kindle. Please adjust gear icon for high-definition.

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:35-04:00March 3rd, 2016|Book Discussions, Historical Jesus, Video Media|

Jesus Before the Gospels in Relation to My Other Books

Jesus Before the Gospels is now the seventh book I’ve published with HarperOne; two of the others have also involved issues related to historical problems posed by the New Testament Gospels. And so I have been asked recently a very fair question: how does this book differ from the others I’ve written? The short answer is that it is dealing with a completely different topic. But to explain that at greater length, I should explain what the others focused on. First, I should say that four of my Harper books were on other things. Did Jesus Exist was an attempt to show why scholars in the fields of New Testament, early Christian studies, and antiquity in general are convinced, and do not even question, that Jesus actually lived as a real human being. There I try to mount the arguments that almost no one has ever bothered to mount because they are so obvious to most people working in the field Forged was dealing not with the contents of the New Testament writings so much [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:35-04:00March 2nd, 2016|Book Discussions, Public Forum|

My New Book! (In Context of My Others)

. O frabjous day! Callooh, callay! I’m chortling in my joy. My new book came out today: Jesus Before the Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed, and Invented their Stories of the Savior. It is available now, as we speak! Many, many thanks to everyone on the blog who has commented on various posts that I’ve done related to the book, and especially to those blog members who actually read the book in advance and made comments on it. I acknowledge you in the Acknowledgments, and I thank you here! The publication date of a book is always an ecstatic and anxious time for an author. Will people buy the book? Will they like it? Will they hate it? One never knows! This is the seventh book that I have published with HarperOne. It has been a very good run. I started out publishing my trade books (that is, books written for a general audience – the kinds of thing you would find in Barnes and Noble) with Oxford Press. I published with them [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:20-04:00March 1st, 2016|Book Discussions, Public Forum|

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