BDEhrman, Author at The Bart Ehrman Blog - Page 2 of 189

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.

Paul’s Letter to the Romans in a Nutshell

I will now move to a nutshell mini-thread on the individual Pauline letters in the New Testament. I will be covering them in canonical sequence, including both the so-called undisputed Pauline letters, which I’m saying are “so-called” simply because scholars in every field dispute flippin’ everything (well, almost everything), and the disputed epistles, which, as it turns out are undisputably disputed! The thirteen letters are arranged not in chronological (or alphabetical!) sequence, but by length: with Romans as the longest and Philemon the shortest. Note: in this arrangement, letters to the SAME audience (two each to the Corinthians and the Thessalonians) are combined in order to determine their length. And so, the sequence (with U meaning undisputed and D disputed) is Romans (U) 1 Corinthians (U) 2 Corinthians (U) Galatians (U) Ephesians (D) Philippians (U) Colossians (D) 1 Thessalonians (U) 2 Thessalonians (D) 1 Timothy (D) 2 Timothy (D) Titus (D) Philemon (U) In this four-post mini-thread, I deal with the letter to the Romans. I begin by giving a 50-word summary. If you know [...]

BDEhrman2025-03-10T18:27:45-04:00March 18th, 2025|Paul and His Letters|

Paul’s Life and Letters: For Further Reading

Now that I have provided nutshell summaries of Paul’s life, letters, and significance, I can provide some suggestions for further reading. Here is an annotated list of some of the books you may find useful. These are taken from my textbook, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (Oxford University Press) in which I devote six chapters to Paul. Another resource not listed in the textbook would be the (different!) six chapters I devote to discussing Paul's biography in my book Peter, Paul, and Mary Magadalene (HarperOne). ****************************** Aune, David. The New Testament in Its Literary Environment. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987. Includes a superb discussion of the practices of letter writing in Greco-Roman antiquity as the social context for Paul’s epistles. Beker, J. Christiaan. Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980. A sophisticated and astute discussion of the apocalyptic character of Paul’s theology and its various forms of expression in different situations that the apostle confronted. For advanced students. Bruce, F. F. [...]

BDEhrman2025-03-12T10:07:56-04:00March 16th, 2025|Paul and His Letters|

The Life of Paul in a Nutshell

Now that I have provided an overview of the significance of Paul and his letters (my previous post) I can summarize what we can know about his life. I begin by trying to give a fifty-word version: Paul, originally a zealous Greek-speaking Jew, vigorously opposed early Christians before having a vision of the resurrected Jesus that convinced him that the crucifixion was God’s plan of salvation for both Jew and gentile, leading him to spread his law-free gospel to gentiles in major urban areas of the Mediterranean. Now I can provide a fuller summary of what we can know of Paul’s life. We are fortunate that it is so well documented, with a biographical account in the book of Acts and a collection of seven letters that he himself wrote, in which he occasionally mentions aspects of his past. But there are major difficulties as well. Because the key aspects of his life were already known among his converts in the churches he founded, in his letters he refers to it only [...]

BDEhrman2025-03-12T10:03:27-04:00March 15th, 2025|Paul and His Letters, Public Forum|

The Significance and Letters of Paul, in a Nutshell

Now that I have covered the Gospels and Acts in this “Nutshell” series, it is time to move on to the writings of Paul. Rather than start with his first letter in the New Testament, Romans, I’ve decided to devote a couple of posts to Paul himself, one to his significance and surviving letters and one to a biographical sketch. I start by giving a 50 word summary his writings, the “seven undisputed letters” in a nutshell: Paul wrote seven of the letters attributed to him, addressing problems of churches he had established (five letters), of a church he planned to visit (Romans), and of an individual convert (Philemon), resolving their issues by explaining the implications of his law-free Gospel of Christ for faith and communal life. I found this 50-worder especially difficult. See if you can do better! But for now I will provide a short introduction to Paul and his letters. ****************************** By any metric you choose, Paul was the most important figure in the history of Christianity apart from Jesus himself. This [...]

BDEhrman2025-03-07T12:14:30-05:00March 13th, 2025|Paul and His Letters|

Personal Update: My Book on the Ethics of Jesus

I am happy to report that I have now, finally, finished my manuscript on the ethics of Jesus and have sent it in to my editor for her to peruse and suggest edits. Phew!! This one seems to have been a “Slow Train Coming.” Huge relief. I’ve changed the title I’ve been giving it for the past couple of years. I very much liked what I had: “The Origins of Altruism: How the Teachings of Jesus Transformed the Moral Conscience of the West,” but my editors in the end weren’t thrilled with it. They liked the subtitle, but didn’t think the title was catchy enough. I disagreed, but eventually (kicking and screaming) came to see their point. I’d always felt like I’d have to defend it anyway – since the book is emphatic that Jesus did NOT invent altruism!! But that was part of the catch, I thought. In any event, even though a lot of people liked it, others were ambivalent. So I’ve changed it. So far the editors like the new title, but [...]

BDEhrman2025-03-07T11:29:22-05:00March 12th, 2025|Public Forum|

Dating Manuscripts and Understanding Mark: Readers’ Questions

How much historical information about Jesus does the Gospel of Mark present? How do you date an ancient manuscript? Why does Mark have a "messianic secret"? These are among the very good questions I've received recently, and here is how I've tried to answer them succinctly. ****************************** QUESTION: How much of the historical Jesus does Mark capture, either purposefully or accidentally? RESPONSE: Well, it's impossible to put a percentage on it. For one thing, if it’s correct that Jesus' lived for, say, 30-33 years (who knows?), it’s worth noting that Mark's Gospel takes roughly two hours to read/recite. Necessarily he would have captured only a tiny fraction of the historical Jesus' life, even if he is 100% accurate. He's clearly not 100% accurate, so the question for most historical scholars is not how much of his life does he capture but how accurate is the information that he does give. That's impossible to quantify definitively, in no small measure be because different scholars would give different responses (though none of them in a percentage!). What [...]

BDEhrman2025-03-07T11:23:42-05:00March 11th, 2025|Canonical Gospels, Reader’s Questions|

The Gospel of Mark: Are You Interested in a More Extended Discussion?

These "In a Nutshell" posts on the books of the New Testament are obviously meant to provide quick, concise, and accurate information about each of the books of the New Testament. Many of you may be interested in longer expositions. To that end, you may be interested in the far more extensive discussions that I give in the various lecture courses that I've done on some of them for the venture I started a couple of years ago, Paths in Biblical Studies (unconnected with the blog). I particularly enjoyed the eight-lecture one I did on the Gospel of Mark (50 minute lectures; two Q&A's; and additional materials provided). You can find it here: Unknown Jesus. Blog members get a discount with the code Blog5. Whether you want to get the course or not, I thought it would be valuable to explain what I cover there, lecture by lecture. And so here is a summary, along with questions for reflection that some should be able to answer if they've listened to the lecture. Lecture [...]

BDEhrman2025-03-16T19:11:16-04:00March 9th, 2025|Public Forum|

Did Jesus BECOME the Son of God? The Christology of Acts

In broad terms, there were two major kinds of Christology in the early church. One of them could be called an "incarnation" Christology, since it maintains that Christ was a pre-existent divine being who became a human, as explicitly stated in John 1:1-18 and Philippians 2:6-11. That's the view, of course, that most Christians have always held, and is often referred to as a "high" Christology, where Christ starts out up above, with God, as divine himself. The other could be called an “exaltation” Christology , sometimes called a “low” Christology or a Christology from below, where Jesus started out as a human, nothing more, but came to be exalted by God to become his Son, the Lord (at some point of his existence.) As I tried to show in my book How Jesus Became God, this was the oldest view among the Christians, and can be found in fragments of creeds and confessions that were later quoted by authors of the New Testament, so that in terms of raw chronology, they were formulated well *before* the [...]

BDEhrman2025-03-07T10:53:52-05:00March 6th, 2025|Acts of the Apostles|

The Acts of the Apostles: For Further Reading

Now that I’ve devoted two posts to the major sine qua non of the book of Acts – one that lays out its major themes and emphases, the other that deals with who wrote it, when, and why, I can provide some suggestions for further reading, important works written by scholars for non-scholars. I have given brief annotations for each book to give you a sense of what it’s about and so help you decide which, if any, might be worth your while. I have divided the list into three sections: Books that provide important discussion of Luke in general or with respect to a particularly key topic Commentaries that give lengthy introductions to all matters of importance about the book of Acts and then go passage by passage to provide more detailed interpretation (that’s where you can dig more deeply into “what does this particular word actually mean?”; “what is the real point of this passage”; how does this passage relate to what Luke says elsewhere in his two-volume work or [...]

BDEhrman2025-03-06T22:25:05-05:00March 5th, 2025|Public Forum|

The Acts of the Apostles: Who Wrote It, When, and Why?

Now that I have discussed the major themes and emphases of the Acts of the Apostles, I can summarize what (I think) we can know about its author, when he wrote, and why. As I’ve indicated, Acts is the second volume of a two-volume work by the anonynmous author of the Gospel of Luke. In my discussion of the Gospel I’ve show why the traditional view that the author was Luke the gentile physician, a traveling companion of Paul, is probably not right. In case you want to read/reread the post, it is here: https://ehrmanblog.org/the-gospel-of-luke-who-wrote-it-when-and-why/ There I point out what I’ve repeatedly argued on the blog, that in virtually every instance in which the book of Acts can be compared with Paul’s letters in terms of biographical detail, differences emerge. Some of these differences are minor – the kinds of things a friend might just get wrong; others are major and show that the author misunderstands or at least mischaracterizes Paul on significant issues, in ways hard to explain if he was closely associated with [...]

BDEhrman2025-03-05T15:06:41-05:00March 4th, 2025|Acts of the Apostles|

The Book of Acts in a Nutshell

Acts in a Nutshell The book of Acts is a truly important book for anyone interested in knowing how Christianity began: it is our only narrative of the spread of the faith in its first thirty years. Acts is a relatively long book – about the size of its companion volume the Gospel of Luke – and there is a lot going on in it. Have you ever read it all the way through? Do you know much about it? If not, this is the post for you. If so, then try to summarize the major themes and emphases of Acts in one sentence, of fifty words or less. Here’s how I would do it (today!): A companion volume to the Gospel of Luke, Acts narrates the miraculous spread of Christianity from Jerusalem to Rome, from Jew to gentile, through the miraculous deeds and inspired preaching of Jesus’ original apostles and the convert Paul, all empowered by the Spirit and in complete harmony with one another. In this post I’ll unpack this statement and in [...]

BDEhrman2025-02-23T12:19:30-05:00March 2nd, 2025|Acts of the Apostles|

More Interesting Questions from Blog Readers

The intriguing questions keep coming. Here are some more that I've received. And BTW, if you're not a Gold Member on the blog you might consider moving up to that level: one of the perks is that I do a live Q&A every month with Gold Members, which is recorded and then distributed to them. It's a terrifically fun event and I get very good questions to address. But for now, here's some that I've addressed in writing: QUESTION This question is about the understanding of atonement across the gospels. Specifically why do Matthew and John think Jesus specifically HAD to die, in your view? Especially Matthew since he is the one I struggle with most. Luke famously doesn’t have atonement and thinks he had to die to bring people to repentance. I think Mark is a Pauline Gospel so it has his theology of Jesus death being a ransom for gentiles in mind. Matthew and John are the ones that I struggle with most, though. I think John says that it is meant to [...]

BDEhrman2025-02-23T12:09:41-05:00March 1st, 2025|Reader’s Questions|

The Gospel of Matthew. Are You Interested in a More Extended Discussion?

It has just occurred to me (duh) that some blog readers who are enjoying these "In a Nutshell" posts on the books of the New Testament may like to see a more extended exposition of the various issues I address, and I've devoted entire lectures courses for some of these books (and will be doing more). You might be interested in them. One of the first I did was on the Gospel of Matthew, an eight-lecture course (50 minutes or so each; with two Q&A's; and additional materials provided). You can find it here. https://courses.bartehrman.com/matthew Blog members get a discount with the code Blog5. Whether you want to get the course or not, I thought it would be valuable to explain what I cover there, lecture by lecture. And so here is a summary! ****************************** The Genius of Matthew Lecture Descriptions Lecture One: How Do You Study a Gospel? Take Matthew For Example. After a brief overview of the Gospel of Matthew – its contents, date, language, author, and sources of [...]

BDEhrman2025-03-06T22:22:59-05:00February 27th, 2025|Canonical Gospels|

The God Hypothesis. What Do You Think?

I don’t think you can disprove the existence of God. And I don’t think you can prove it. There are some things that by their very nature are not susceptible of proof, at least at this stage of our knowledge, including some things that theoretically exist or not. If you want to insist that one of the universes within the multiverse is an exact replica of ours down to the very molecule – so that my cosmic double is typing these very words the moment I am – I have no way of proving it or disproving it. (some will argue it's likely, esp. if there is an infinite number of universes – in which case in another one of them my cosmic virtual double is typing these words but changing one of them; and in another….) Even so, that kind of thing could in theory be proven or disproven if human knowledge expands geometrically in the future, since we would (probably) be talking about a physical entity that exists. But when it comes to [...]

BDEhrman2025-02-27T11:32:17-05:00February 26th, 2025|Public Forum|

All Four Gospels in One Nutshell
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All Four Gospels in One Nutshell

Canonical Gospels, Public Forum

All Four Gospels in One Nutshell

So far in this thread on “The New Testament in a Nutshell” I’ve covered the four Gospels, each in four posts. The first always begins with a 50-sentence summary of the major themes and emphases of the book. In this post I want to make things easily accessible for anyone interested in the broad similarities and contrasts of the Gospels, by putting all four sentences in one place. But before that, it would be useful to have a fifty-word summary of all four Gospels as a whole. Give it a try yourself. What can you come up with? A statement that is accurate, informative, and concise? Accuracy is particularly difficult, since a lot of general statements wold not apply to all four Gospels: for example, if your summary was to include a brief comment on the miracles and you included Jesus’ exorcisms, that wouldn’t be right, since Jesus never casts out a demon in the Gospel of John. And you can’t say that in all four Jesus died (as an atonement) for the sake of [...]

BDEhrman2025-02-28T12:14:51-05:00February 25th, 2025|Canonical Gospels, Public Forum|

John Versus the Synoptics: How Does Jesus Raise the Dead?

I've discussed how John differs strikingly from the Synoptics, especially considering the stories and sayings/discourses in each. I've also indicated that they differ strikingly even when they tell the same *kind* of story, but I haven't been able to illustrate that yet. Here is one of my favorite examples. How does Jesus raise from the dead? In Mark 5 Jesus raises an unnamed young girl, the daughter of Jairus, from the dead; in John 11 he raises a (young?) man from the dead, Lazarus, sister of Mary and Martha. How do these stories compare and contrast? The following discussion is based on what I say in my textbook (The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 7th ed. Oxford University Press), expanded and edited a bit here. ****************************** The differences between John and the Synoptics are particularly striking in stories that they have in common. You can see the differences yourself simply by taking any story of the Synoptics that is also told in John, and comparing the two accounts carefully. Try [...]

BDEhrman2025-02-14T10:57:04-05:00February 23rd, 2025|Canonical Gospels|

The Gospel of John: For Your Further Reading

I have devoted two posts to major features of the Gospel of John, one that lays out its major themes and emphases, the other that deals with who wrote it, when, and why. Now I can provide some suggestions for further reading, important works written by scholars for non-scholars. The list is annotated to give you a sense of what each book is about and so help you decide which, if any, might be worth your while. I have divided the list into three sections: Books that provide important discussion of John in general or with respect to a particularly key topic Commentaries that give lengthy introductions to all matters of importance about the Gospel and then go passage by passage to provide more detailed interpretation, where you can dig more deeply into what does a particular word actually means; that the real point of a passage is; how the passage relates to what John says elsewhere or to other parts of the New Testament; where you can we find similar ideas expressed in other [...]

BDEhrman2025-02-14T14:05:28-05:00February 22nd, 2025|Canonical Gospels|

The Gospel of John: Who Wrote It, When, and Why?

Now that I’ve summarized the major themes and emphases of the Gospel of John, I can turn to the historical questions of who wrote it, when, and why. In this case, the biggest mystery is Who? To start with, the Gospel is anonymous – the author chose never to name himself. The first author to attribute it to John the son of Zebedee is Irenaeus (around 185 CE). Later readers found hints in the text to confirm this identification. The matter may seem a bit convoluted at first, but there is a clear logic to it. It was thought that the author was identifying himself in John 19:35 and John 21:20-24 as an eyewitness to the life of Jesus, one Gospel calls “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” And so the question was: which disciple would that be? The figure is mentioned several times earlier in the account, where he is clearly one of Jesus’ closest companions: he is the one leaning on Jesus’ breast at his last meal (John 13:23). That would [...]

BDEhrman2025-02-23T11:18:33-05:00February 20th, 2025|Canonical Gospels|

The Gospel of John in a Nutshell

What is the Gospel of John all about, in a nutshell? It’s worth knowing: John continues to be one of the favorite books of the Bible and is the (only) source of many of the well-known sayings of Jesus: For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16) I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep (John 10:11) I am the Way the Truth and the Life: No one comes to the Father except through me (John 14:6) It is also the Gospel that gives us some of the most memorable miracles of Jesus: Turning water into wine (ch. 2) (the favorite miracle of college students everywhere) Raising Lazarus from the dead (ch. 11) Have you read John’s Gospel all the way through, or even studied it? If so, try to summarize it in one sentence of fifty words. If you don’t know the Gospel well (or at all): keep [...]

BDEhrman2025-02-23T11:06:28-05:00February 19th, 2025|Canonical Gospels|

Some Intriguing Questions from Readers 2/2025
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Some Intriguing Questions from Readers 2/2025

Public Forum, Reader’s Questions

Some Intriguing Questions from Readers 2/2025

Here are some interesting readers’ questions I’ve received that I think would be of some interest to other blog members, along with my answers which may or may not be of interest! QUESTION I often find that historians of early Christianity use the terms “historical Jesus/Paul/whoever” and “real Jesus/Paul/whoever” somewhat interchangeably, which I don’t love. I think there’s a difference between the historical Abraham Lincoln, who is an artificial human construct arrived at by following the rules of historical scholarship, and the real Abraham Lincoln, who is someone we have no access to. Perhaps I’m being too post-modernist though. Perhaps somewhat analogous are Proto-Indo-European, an artificial human reconstructed language obtained by following the rules of historical linguistics to the best of our ability, and whatever was truly spoken by any particular speaker in the Pontic-Caspian steppe in, say, 6000 BCE. Or, as a looser analogy, Biblical religion as it existed in its ideal form in the mind of the priestly redactors of the Tanakh, and Israelite-Judean religion that any particular person in say 600 [...]

BDEhrman2025-02-10T12:58:02-05:00February 18th, 2025|Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

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