BDEhrman, Author at The Bart Ehrman Blog - Page 175 of 207

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.

My Next Books

QUESTION: I now have a half dozen questions, but I won’t ask them at this time because I have a better idea for your time: a book on Paul. I would Love that. If that is not your plan, would you give us a hint about what your next book will be about? RESPONSE: I have had a number of people ask if I was planning on, or willing to, write a book on Paul. The answers are no, and probably no. There are already lots of good books out there on Paul for both scholars (my favorite classic is by my former colleague from Duke, E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism) and lay folk (for example, the most recent book by my friend Albert Harrill, Paul the Apostle). Moreover, Pauline studies is not one of my areas of specialization, even though in graduate school I studied with two of the great Pauline scholars of the day (J. Christiaan Beker and Paul Meyer), and I still have both colleagues (Richard Hayes, Douglas Campbell) [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:25:14-04:00May 20th, 2014|Book Discussions, Reader’s Questions|

Interview for The Skeptic Fence Show

On April 20th, 2014, I did a Skype interview for The Skeptic Fence Show, in which we discuss my personal background in the faith, talk about some of my debates, and, especially, deal with questions related to my book, "How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee." The interviewers were Joe, TJ, Paul and Drew. The main website for the show can be found at http://www.skepticfence.com/ + + + + + + + + + + + + + Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition:

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:25:14-04:00May 17th, 2014|Book Discussions, Public Forum, Video Media|

Other Options for Paul and Jesus

In my last post I started giving the principal options, as I see them, for why Paul did not mention more about the historical Jesus. Below are two other leading options. As I’ve indicated, there are probably others, and if some occur to you, feel free to comment! ************************************************* Option Two: Paul knew more of the traditions of Jesus, but considered them irrelevant to his mission. This option relates closely to the one preceding, with a major difference. In this case, Paul did not himself teach his congregations many of the traditions about Jesus that he knew, nor did he refer to them extensively either in person or in writing -- not because he had no occasion to (since he clearly did) but because he chose not to. Why would he choose not to? Perhaps because he considered the traditions about Jesus' words and deeds to be irrelevant to his message of Jesus' death and resurrection. Support for this view can come from a passage like 1 Cor 2:2, where Paul insists that the only [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:25:14-04:00May 17th, 2014|Book Discussions, Historical Jesus, Paul and His Letters|

Why Doesn’t Paul Say More About Jesus?

To this point I have enumerated everything that Paul explicitly says about what Jesus said, did, and experienced during his earthly life. The driving question is the one that I turn to now and in the next post. Why didn’t Paul tell us *more*? I’ve long been fascinated by this question, and even though I’ve thought about it for well over thirty years, I’ve never decided on what I really think. There are just too many counter-arguments for every perspective that I’ve heard or thought of! In these two posts I want to lay out three of the main options. If you think of others that need to be aired, feel free to make a comment. I have taken the following from my textbook The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. *********************************************************** Paul of course has a lot to say about the importance of Jesus, especially the importance of his death and resurrection and his imminent return from heaven. But in terms of historical information, what I've listed above [i.e., in [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:25:14-04:00May 14th, 2014|Historical Jesus, Paul and His Letters|

More on Jesus’ Teachings in Paul

I have been talking about Paul’s knowledge of the historical Jesus, and yesterday began a discussion of what Paul clearly knew about Jesus’ teachings. That’s where I will pick up here. Again, I have taken the discussion from my book Did Jesus Exist?, so the orientation of what I have to say is toward showing that Paul provides solid (and for my mind, virtually incontrovertible) evidence that Jesus was not simply “made up” but was an actual historical figure – an issue that, for most people in the universe of intelligent humans, is not much of an issue, but which is disputed by that tiny but oh-so-vocal group of “mythicists” about which I have said some things before. In any event, there are a few more interesting aspects of the question of Paul’s use of Jesus’ teachings, as follows: ********************************************************* There are no other obvious places where Paul quotes Jesus, although scholars have often found traces of Jesus’ teachings in Paul. The big question is why Paul does not quote Jesus more often. That [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:25:14-04:00May 14th, 2014|Book Discussions, Historical Jesus, Paul and His Letters|

Paul’s References to Jesus’ Teachings

So far I have been discussing what Paul says about the historical Jesus in his surviving seven letters. For the next couple of posts I’ll indicate what he says about the teaching of Jesus. Once again there are two observations to make. The first is that he obviously knew that Jesus taught some things. The other is that it is a bit surprising that he doesn’t tell us more. I will be dealing with that second issue soon, when I discuss why Paul doesn’t give us more information about the historical Jesus (there are several options). The following discussion is taken from my book Did Jesus Exist, which was meant to deal more with the first issue: the fact that Paul quotes Jesus on occasion shows at the least that Paul knew Jesus existed (as do the other data that he mentions about Jesus’ life). ***********************************************************8 The Teachings of Jesus in Paul In addition to these data about Jesus’ life and death, Paul mentions on several occasions the teachings he delivered. We have seen two [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:25:14-04:00May 13th, 2014|Historical Jesus, Paul and His Letters|

An Interview about My Agnosticism

Last weekend I gave a talk at the Freedom from Religion Foundation convention in Raleigh. This is a group of agnostics, atheists, and skeptics who are intent on preserving intact the complete separation of church and state. At the convention I was given "The Emperor Has No Clothes Award" -- including an amusing statue of the emperor who in fact has no clothes -- for my writings on the NT and early Christianity. My lecture was called "Writing about Religion: Some Agnostic Reflections," in which I dealt with what it's like to devote one's professional life to early Chritianity when one is not personally a Christian. In a few weeks I will try to post that entire lecture. What I give here is a very short (7 minute) interview that I did in conjunction with the lecture. But it is unlike other videos I have posted because in it I talk openly about my personal beliefs/agnosticism; there is a brief clip from my lecture embedded in the interview. The interview was recorded at the FFRF (Freedom [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:25:14-04:00May 10th, 2014|Bart’s Biography, Public Forum, Video Media|

More on Paul’s Knowledge of Jesus’ Life

In my last post I began to enumerate the things that Paul said about Jesus. *Most* of what he says about Jesus has to do with the significance of his death and resurrection. But what if we wanted to know about the *life* of Jesus – the things that Jesus said, did, and experienced between his birth and his death? Paul doesn’t tell us a ton, as has frequently been noted. But he does tell us some. In addition to what I laid out in the previous post, there are the following bits of information, again taken from my fuller analysis in Did Jesus Exist? FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in as a Member. Click here for membership options. If you don't belong yet, ARE YOU WAITING FOR CHRISTMAS???? ********************************************************* Paul knows that Jesus was a teacher, because he quotes several of his sayings. I will deal with these later [in my next post]. For now it is worth noting that two of the sayings of Jesus that Paul quotes were [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:25:14-04:00May 10th, 2014|Historical Jesus, Paul and His Letters|

What Did Paul Know About the Historical Jesus?

I have been approaching the relationship of Jesus and Paul from only one angle, to this point – viz., did they represent fundamentally the same religion or not? But there is a second, equally interesting question. How much did Paul actually know about the historical Jesus? In an earlier iteration of my Introduction to the NT class, this was what I had my students debate. I never could figure out a good way to word the resolution, but most of the time I gave it as this: “Resolved: Paul Knew Next To Nothing About the Historical Jesus.” The problem with that resolution is that it asserts a negative, so that the affirmative team is arguing for a negative resolution. Not good. But I couldn’t come up with anything I liked better, and so went with it. Most students are surprised to find that if they simply make a list of what Paul says about Jesus between the time of his birth and the time of his death, they don’t need much more than a 3x5 [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:25:13-04:00May 8th, 2014|Historical Jesus, Paul and His Letters|

Jesus and Paul Compared and Contrasted

I have been talking about the relationship of Jesus’ proclamation of the coming Kingdom of God to Paul’s preaching about the importance of the death and resurrection of Jesus. In the previous post I argued that the fundamental concerns, interests, perspectives, and theologies of these two were different. In this post I’d like to give, in summary fashion, what strikes me as very similar and very different about their two messages. Again, in my view it is way too much to say that Paul is the “Founder of Christianity”: that assumes that he is the one who personally came up with the idea of the importance of the death and resurrection of Jesus for salvation, whereas almost certainly this view had been around for a couple of years before he came onto the scene. And it is probably too much even to say that he was the “Co-founder of Christianity,” for much the same reason. But it is safe to say that of all the early Christian thinkers and missionaries, Paul is the one we [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:25:01-04:00May 8th, 2014|Historical Jesus, Paul and His Letters|

Paul and Jesus

I spent several posts explicating Paul’s understanding of his gospel, that by Christ’s death and resurrection a person is put into a restored relationship with God. He had several ways of explaining how it worked (the “judicial” model; the “participationist” model; and the other models I described). But in all of these ways, it was Jesus’ death and resurrection that mattered. It was not keeping the Jewish law. It was not knowing or following Jesus’ teaching. It was not Jesus’ miracles. It was not … anything else. It was Jesus’ death and resurrection. I then summarized in my previous post, the teaching of Jesus himself, about the coming Son of Man and the need to prepare by keeping the Law of God, as revealed in the Torah, as summarized in the commandments to love God above all else and to love one’s neighbor as oneself. Do these represent the same religion? I see this as one of the most fundamental and important questions in all of early Christianity. I’m not asking if Paul invented Christianity, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:25:00-04:00May 7th, 2014|Historical Jesus, Paul and His Letters|

The Message of Jesus

To this point in the thread I have been talking about Paul’s “religion” – specifically, what he thought was important in a person’s relationship with God. He expressed his views in a variety of ways – I have talked about his judicial and his participationist understandings of salvation, and have made brief comments on yet other “models” that he used to express his view about the act of salvation that God had achieved through Christ. In all of these models, it was the death and resurrection of Jesus that was of paramount importance. It was that, nothing else, that brought about salvation. And what did Jesus himself think? This is arguably the most important point to consider about early Christianity. Did the best known apostle of Christ proclaim the same, or very similar message, to Jesus himself? Or not? In my New Testament class every semester I have my students debate, in class, a resolution dealing with the issue: “Resolved: Paul and Jesus represented fundamentally different religions.” Students are surprised by the topic. Until they [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:25:00-04:00May 6th, 2014|Historical Jesus|

Response to the Response: How God Became Jesus

My publisher, HarperOne, asked me to write a 1000-word response to the book that was written in response to How Jesus Became God. As you probably know, the book is called, somewhat expectedly, How God Became Jesus. I have toyed with the idea of giving a chapter-by-chapter response here on the blog. I’ve grown a bit cold to the idea, though, since I’m not sure every chapter of their book really needs a response. I may respond to a couple of the chapters. In the meantime, here’s one response you can read that is, interestingly, written by Daniel Kirk, a professor of NT at the evangelical Fuller Theological Seminary, about one of the better chapters in their book: http://www.jrdkirk.com/2014/04/24/god-became-jesus-part-1-review-evangelical-response-ehrman/ What I give below is the overall response to the book that I wrote for my publisher. We had thought about publishing it somewhere, but I’ve decided to give it here instead. ************************************************************ It is always exciting to publish a book that is considered controversial; it is more exciting when it is thought to be controversial before anyone [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:25:00-04:00May 3rd, 2014|Bart's Critics, Book Discussions, Public Forum|

Other Models of Salvation in Paul

I have been discussing various ways that Paul understands the importance of the death and resurrection of Jesus for salvation, and have focused on the judicial and participationist models – mainly because these are the two that Paul most frequently appeals to (without calling them the judicial and participationist models!). I need to clarify a few points before moving on to speak of yet other models that Paul appears to use. First, several readers have seemed to think that I have a personal relationship to these models. Several have asked how I could possibly believe such a thing. And one has asked what right I have to talk about “sin” if I’m not a Christian and so do not believe in sin. So let me clear: I’m not affirming or denying anything Paul says in any of his writings. I’m simply describing what it is he says. Some people have trouble understanding the difference between description and prescription, but there’s a big difference. I remember back when I was a conservative evangelical at Princeton Theological [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:25:00-04:00May 2nd, 2014|Paul and His Letters|

Comparison of Paul’s Two Principal Models of Salvation

I’ve been discussing how Paul understands the significance of Jesus’ death and resurrection for salvation, and have done so by laying out as concisely as I could his two principal “models” of how salvation worked, the judicial and the participationist model. In this post I’ll make some brief concluding comments about the two models, in particular in relation to one another, again from my textbook on the New Testament. ************************************************************* 3. Comparison and Contrast of the Two Models Let me emphasize that the two models of salvation we have been looking at are ways of understanding something. They are not the thing itself. Paul's gospel is not "justification by faith" or "union with Christ." These are ways of reflecting on or thinking about his gospel. His gospel is God's act of salvation in Christ; the models are ways of conceptualizing how it worked. The way it worked differed according to which model Paul had in mind. In both of them, the problem is "sin." But in one, sin is an act of disobedience that a [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:25:00-04:00May 1st, 2014|Paul and His Letters|

Paul’s “Participationist” Model of Salvation

Yesterday I started explaining that Paul has different ways the he conceptualizes the act of salvation – how the death and resurrection of Christ restores a person to a right relationship with God. The judicial model that I laid out can be found in several of Paul’s letters, especially Romans and Galatians. But he has other ways of understanding how salvation works, other models involving Jesus’ death and resurrection. The other BIG one can be called the Participationist model. Here is what I say about it in my textbook on the New Testament: ********************************************************** 2. The Participationist Model. Most of us today have no trouble understanding how a judicial process can be seen as analogous to the act of salvation. The participationist model, however, is much harder to get our minds around. This is partly because it involves a way of thinking that is no longer prevalent in our culture. Under this second model the human problem is still called "sin," "sin" is still thought to lead to "death," and Christ's death and resurrection still [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:25:00-04:00April 30th, 2014|Paul and His Letters|

Paul’s “Judicial” Model of Salvation

I am currently in the middle of a thread discussing the significance of Paul to the history of early Christianity. So far I have been trying to argue that Paul is of utmost importance to the New Testament itself, but that it is very difficult to know how much of what we think of as Pauline theology (the doctrine of the atonement, for example) was *distinctive* of Paul (I doubt if he came up with the idea himself) and that there are some prominent features of Paul’s thought – e.g., the importance of Jesus’ resurrection – that he must have inherited from Christians before him. One of my ultimate points is going to be that whatever one thinks about Paul’s originality, it is clear that the gospel that he proclaimed looked very different from what Jesus himself taught. To get to that point, I have to deal a bit more with what it is that Paul proclaimed. Nowhere does Paul lay out his gospel message more clearly than in the book of Romans. The reason [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:25:00-04:00April 29th, 2014|Paul and His Letters|

Video: Bart Ehrman vs. James White Debate
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Video: Bart Ehrman vs. James White Debate

Bart's Debates, Public Forum, Video Media

Video: Bart Ehrman vs. James White Debate

James White vs Bart Ehrman: I wasn't sure whether I should post this debate or not. Frankly, it was not a good experience. I normally do not have an aversion to the people I debate. But James White is that kind of fundamentalist who gets under my skin. James White vs Bart Ehrman To be fair, he would probably not call himself a fundamentalist. Then again, in my experience, very few fundamentalists *do* call themselves fundamentalists. Usually, a "fundamentalist" is that guy who is far to the right of *you* -- wherever you are! Someone on the blog can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe White does hold to the absolute inerrancy of the Bible. If so, given what else I know about him, I'd call him a fundamentalist. James White vs Bart Ehrman - Here's the Debate! In any event, he's a smart fellow and came to the debate loaded for bear. But it's good to see me at not my best as well as at my best. So why [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:25:00-04:00April 28th, 2014|Bart's Debates, Public Forum, Video Media|

Paul’s Gospel Message

QUESTION And what do you make of Paul’s statement that he didn’t get the good news (= the resurrection and thus the triumph over death) from other humans but from the ‘risen Christ’ himself? If he persecuted the Christians because of a resurrection belief then he would have heard about it before, from other humans, no? RESPONSE Ah! This takes me to the issue that I was planning on posting about today anyway. Several people in their comments have pointed out that if Paul claims to have “received” the teachings about Jesus’ death and resurrection from others (1 Cor. 15:3), then it is hard to make sense of what he says in Galatians 1, that he received his “gospel” directly from Jesus himself. How could Paul have it both ways? FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in as a Member. Click here for membership options. If you don't belong yet, GET WITH THE PROGRAM!!! Here’s what I think. I think when Paul talks about receiving “his gospel” from a revelation – presumably [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:25:00-04:00April 26th, 2014|Paul and His Letters|

Paul’s Importance in Early Christianity?

I’d like to say a bit more about Paul in relationship to the beginning of Christianity. Yesterday I argued that Paul could not have invented the idea of the resurrection. I should point out that Paul himself – who was always proud of the “revelation” of the truth given to him and his part in disseminating it (see Galatians 1-2) – admits in 1 Cor. 15:3-5 that he “received” from others the view that Christ died for sins and rose from the dead, before appearing “first” to Cephas and then others. I should stress, this language of “receiving” and “passing on” has long been understood as a standard way of indicating how tradition was transmitted from one person to another. Paul did not “receive” this information from his visionary encounter with Jesus (Jesus didn’t tell him: first I appeared to Cephas then to… and then to… and then finally to you!). Paul received this core of the Gospel message from those who were Christians before him. People today often think of Paul as the second-founder [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:25:00-04:00April 25th, 2014|Paul and His Letters|

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