BDEhrman, Author at The Bart Ehrman Blog - Page 2 of 208

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.

A Head-Scratcher in the Sermon on the Mount: Who Gets Into the Kingdom?

There is a passage in the Sermon on the Mount that is crucial for understanding Matthew’s portrayal of Jesus, as I’ve taught for years, without, though, being able to get my mind around it completely. It doesn’t seem consistent with itself. Here’s Matthew 5:17-20 in the New Revised Standard Version (Updated Edition): 17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. 19 Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. The problem I’ve had with understanding the [...]

BDEhrman2026-10-06T16:45:34-04:00October 17th, 2026|Public Forum|

How Much Reward Do You Want? The Tiers of Heaven

I have become deeply interested in the question of whether Jesus thought that people should be considered equally and treated as equals, and that has led to my ponderings on Jesus’ view of the afterlife for those who are “saved.” Will everyone in the future kingdom of God be treated equally? That made me reflect on the fact that there is a longstanding view within the Christian tradition that says: definitely not. This view of differentiated afterlives is portrayed most emphatically in one of the most popular and influential portrayals of the realms of the blessed and the damned referenced in my previous post, the Apocalypse of Paul. This is a fictional narrative of a personal tour granted to the apostle, which attempts to explain Paul’s claim in 2 Corinthians 12:1-4 that he was taken up to “the third heaven” and shown things that he is not to reveal. The fourth or fifth century author of the Apocalypse of Paul, claiming himself to be Paul, decided to reveal what “he” (allegedly Paul) actually saw. That [...]

BDEhrman2026-10-06T11:51:25-04:00October 15th, 2026|Christian Apocrypha|

Are People Treated Equally in the Age to Come?

For nearly all my life – until a few months ago, actually – I assumed that Jesus favored and promoted equality: everyone deserves equal treatment and will receive equal rewards from God if they are on his side and survive the coming day of judgment. This really was a pure assumption on my part. I never much thought about it and didn’t realize I was simply assuming it. Hey, I believe everyone deserves to be treated equally. And if that’s what makes sense to me, obviously all right-minded people would think that. And who was more right-minded than Jesus? But now that I have put some thought into it, I’m not sure Jesus would agree. Certainly, I’d say, Jesus thought everyone was free to accept and follow his teachings and could equally receive God’s gracious gift of salvation. For Jesus, “salvation” meant surviving the coming onslaught that was to appear soon on the Day of Judgment, when God intervened in history by sending a cosmic judge who destroy all of God’s enemies – [...]

BDEhrman2026-10-16T00:16:39-04:00October 14th, 2026|Christian Apocrypha, Early Christian Doctrine|

Great News For the Blog! A Significant Milestone
Gallery
Great News For the Blog! A Significant Milestone

Public Forum

Great News For the Blog! A Significant Milestone

I’ve got some exciting news about how we’re doing on the blog this year – with respect to funds raised, and in connection with a series of posts I did last year. The funds, as you’ll see below, are significant. To this point, in terms of the monies we’ve given to our charities, this is our best year yet of the fourteen we’ve had running this show. First let me explain a long-term project that ended up making a big difference. As (lots of you) know/remember, I did that “New Testament in a Nutshell” series in 2025, producing usually 3 or 4 posts on each book of the NT in canonical sequence, from Matthew to Revelation. You can still see them all, easily enough. Just do a word search for “nutshell” and you’ll see them. The first post gave a 50-word (exactly!) summary of the book, and then a longer exposition of its major themes and emphases. A second post discussed Who wrote it, When, and Why. A third post discussed one of the more [...]

BDEhrman2026-10-07T22:33:38-04:00October 13th, 2026|Public Forum|

Did Jesus Believe in Equality? You Might Think So….

Did Jesus believe in equality, and if so, what would that mean? It obviously means different things to different people in different contexts (we don’t equally mean the same thing…). Our (the U.S.) declaration of national independence insisted that “all men are created equal,” but it really did mean “men” (not women) and none of the Founders thought that their incomes and possessions should be equal to those of hoi polloi they saw in the streets. So too, the apostle Paul said that “There is neither New nor Greek, neither slave nor free, nor male and female; you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). But he also told women that the head of a “man” was Christ, the head of a “woman” was her husband, and women were therefore to show due deference by wearing a head covering in public (1 Corinthians 11:3-10). What about Jesus? Did he believe everyone was “equal,” or more important, that they should be? Was it part of his ethical teaching that we should strive for social, political, [...]

BDEhrman2026-09-30T17:25:10-04:00October 11th, 2026|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

A Very Different (not to say Bizarre) Gospel Featuring Mary Magdalene

To round out this brief thread of Gospels connected with Mary Magdalene, I've decided to repost something from a few years ago that almost no one outside of the small pond of early Christian studies knows about, a book called “The Greater Questions of Mary” (i.e., of Mary Magdalene). Trigger warning: sexual content! (Really???) One of the “great questions” for scholars is whether such a book ever really did exist. It is mentioned only once in ancient literature, in a highly charged polemical context by Epiphanius of Salamis, a Christian heresy-hunter who was prone to exaggeration and fabrication, who was incautious at best in his attacks against heretical sects in his book the Panarion (= “Medicine Chest”; in it Epiphanius supplies the “antidotes” for the “snake-bites of heresy”). The most notorious of the groups that Epiphanius attacks were known by a variety of names, including the “Phibionites.” According to Epiphanius -- our sole source of knowledge about the group -- these gnostic believers engaged in nocturnal sex rituals that involved indiscriminate sex, [...]

BDEhrman2026-09-30T10:24:02-04:00October 10th, 2026|Christian Apocrypha|

Was Mary Magdalene the Actual Founder of Christianity?

In my last post I talked a bit about the relationship of / competition between Peter and Mary in early Christian traditions. Peter, of course, has traditionally been seen as the “rock” on which Christ built his church, the very foundation of Christianity (Matt. 16:18 – “You are Peter (Greek: petros) and upon this rock (Greek: petra) I will build my church.”). And indeed, according to 1 Cor. 15: 3-5, Peter was the first to see the resurrected Jesus (and realize he had been raised from the dead), and that is the very beginning of Christianity. But what if the Gospels are right, that Mary actually was the first. Wouldn’t it make better sense, then, to say that Mary started Christianity? Here is how I talk about the matter in my book Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene: ****************************** There is no doubt that Peter became dominant as the leader of the church early in the Christian movement, and Mary receded into the background. We have scores of passages that talk about Peter, his involvement with [...]

BDEhrman2026-09-30T10:32:52-04:00October 8th, 2026|Canonical Gospels, Women in Early Christianity|

Peter and Mary Magdalene Going Toe to Toe

In my previous post I talked about the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and ended with the passage showing her having a rather serious disagreement (after Jesus' death) with Peter about whether she could have been favored by Jesus. I want to pick up there, and show how not just in the Gospel of Mary but in other parts of the early Christian tradition Mary and Peter were sometimes portrayed in controversy over who was Number One! Here is how I discuss it in my book Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene. slightly edited here. ****************************** In some early Christian circles Mary was considered the original apostle – the one commissioned to tell the good news of Christ’s resurrection -- based on the New Testament Gospel accounts themselves. In the Gospel of Mark, it is Mary Magdalene along with Mary the mother of James and Salome who come to the tomb on the third day, learn from a young man there that Jesus has been raised, and are told then to go tell the disciples. In this [...]

BDEhrman2026-09-30T10:59:47-04:00October 7th, 2026|Canonical Gospels, Christian Apocrypha|

The Intriguing Gospel of Mary Magdalene
Gallery
The Intriguing Gospel of Mary Magdalene

Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Women in Early Christianity

The Intriguing Gospel of Mary Magdalene

This past weekend I hosted an online conference on the relationship of Christian apocrypha to the New Testament canon (apocrypha = Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses that in the end were not included in the New Testament). There were a number of terrific talks given, one of them by Nicola Denzy Lewis (at Cornell), on the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. As she was giving it I realized that even though many people are intrigued by Mary Magdalene, few actually know much about this Gospel. I taught it when I did my undergraduate class on ancient Gospels and modern Jesus films, and thought I should say some things about it here on the blog. It is a second-century Gospel does not claim to be written by Mary Magdalene, but she is the main figure in it – the one to whom Jesus gave a secret revelation about ultimate reality, much to the chagrin of the male disciples who can’t believe that Jesus would reveal the secrets of the world to a *woman* instead of [...]

BDEhrman2026-09-30T11:12:01-04:00October 6th, 2026|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Women in Early Christianity|

Does Paul Ever Refer to (or Even Know About) Judas Iscariot?

For many years I thought that Paul knew about the betrayal of Jesus by Judas Iscariot. And I had good reason: he seems to refer to him in 1 Corinthians 11:23-24: “For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” NRSV) Since Paul indicates that the Last Supper happened on the night Jesus was betrayed, that settles it, right? If so, it would be a relatively big deal, for one thing because otherwise Paul says almost nothing about the events of Jesus’ lifetime. That seems weird to people, but just read all of his letters. Paul never mentions Jesus healing anyone, casting out a demon, doing any other miracle, arguing with Pharisees or other leaders, teaching the multitudes, even speaking a parable, being baptized, being transfigured, going to Jerusalem, being arrested, put on trial, found guilty [...]

BDEhrman2026-09-28T10:22:56-04:00October 4th, 2026|Paul and His Letters|

Did Judas Iscariot Actually Exist? Or Was He “Made Up”?

Over the years on the blog whenever I have posted something about Judas Iscariot (as in my last post), I've had readers ask me whether he was a real person or, as some folk have it, he was made up by Christian story tellers who wanted to explain how Jesus ended up in the hands of his enemies? Often it is pointed out that "Judas" sounds like "Jew": did Christian story tellers come up with the "Jew" who "betrayed Jesus" in order to make a theological point? I have a definite view about that. I think he was a real person. Actually one of Jesus’ disciples. And the one who betrayed him to the authorities leading to his arrest and crucifixion. Why should I think so? The following explanation is based on the discussion in my book, The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot (Oxford University Press, 2006) -- where I start with the question of historical evidence and what "counts": First, in general: What kinds of sources of information do historians look for, when [...]

BDEhrman2026-09-27T17:32:21-04:00October 3rd, 2026|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

About the Betrayer Judas Iscariot. What’s an Iscariot?

This past weekend I sponsored the fourth annual "New Insights into the New Testament" conference, with an array of speakers giving talks for non-scholars on a particular topic. This year the topic was "Apocrypha and Canon" which was dealing with books that did not make it into the New Testament -- other Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses. The most recent significant discovery in this field was the Gospel of Judas, and we certainly had a paper on that. It made me wonder when I last discussed Judas Iscariot on the blog and I looked -- and it's been years. So I thought I should give it another go, either to refresh years-old memories or to inform others who were not here among us at the time. For starters, if he's called Judas Iscariot -- what's Iscariot mean? It turns out, the question is much debated. Here is what I say about it in my book. The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot (Oxford University Press, 2006), which includes a long section on the "historical Judas" ****************************** [...]

BDEhrman2026-09-27T17:45:23-04:00October 1st, 2026|Historical Jesus|

Slaughter and Human Sacrifice: Understanding Tales of the Hebrew Bible

When I was a kid we celebrated the “Battle of Jericho” when “the walls come a’tumblin’ down” as a great victory of God that shows how he will bring victory to those who are faithful to him. I don’t think we thought for a moment what it must have been like for the people in the city itself who were slaughtered to a person (man, woman, and child) so that the Israelites could take possession of the place. And I doubt if we ever heard at all the story of “Jephthah’s daughter” – it’s a little bit harder to make a nice Sunday School song out of someone who literally sacrifices his own child to show his faithfulness of God. Even today many people don’t know the story (and those who do usually try to explain it away). If you yourself don’t, read on. For both I provide side-boxes on my book The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press). If you need a refresher on what happened in the battle [...]

BDEhrman2026-09-25T10:04:36-04:00September 30th, 2026|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

Can You Explain the Tabernacle, the Ark of the Covenant, and/or the Shema?
Gallery
Can You Explain the Tabernacle, the Ark of the Covenant, and/or the Shema?

Hebrew Bible/Old Testament

Can You Explain the Tabernacle, the Ark of the Covenant, and/or the Shema?

The Tabernacle, the Ark of the Covenant, and the Shema! Key features of the Israelite religion as portrayed in the Hebrew Bible, even if widely misunderstood or virtually unknown among the populace at large. (Can you explain them off the top of your head? If not, keep reading. If so, keep reading to see if you’re right. If you’re right, congratulations!) Here I continue this Hebrew Bible thread by extracting two side-boxes from my textbook, The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press. BOX 6.1 THE TABERNACLE AND THE ARK OF THE COVENANT Nearly all religions have sacred places that are set aside for the worship of the deity. But how can you have a sacred place if you are not settled down in a single location but are on the move? You can have one if the sacred place is a tent that you move with you. According to the books of the Pentateuch, Israel was on the move after leaving Egypt and before conquering the Holy Land. [...]

BDEhrman2026-09-25T10:10:02-04:00September 29th, 2026|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

Jesus’s Salvation, Self-Identity, and Birth: Key Questions from Readers

Here are three questions I've received recently on Paul's views of Christ, Jesus's view of himself, and the marital status of his mother. QUESTION: What is your opinion on Paul’s Greek, translated as “Faith in Jesus” vs “faith of Jesus” (the faithfulness of Jesus in God’s plan?) There are a few verses this comes up in, including gospel material. (I don’t know Greek, and I’m not a linguist or scholar, and I have basically no idea what I’m talking about. However, I’m told through literature and scholarship that the Greek seems to be able to go either way.) Do you think it changes the meaning? Having faith [IN] Jesus seems to make it more about us, and less about the free gift of God. Whereas, if salvation is through the faith [OF] Jesus, it is less about us. Although, if I understand him correctly, Paul does say that we can accept or reject this gift. RESPONSE: Yes, that's pretty much the difference (a key verse is Galatians 2:16). Is a person [...]

BDEhrman2026-09-25T10:20:25-04:00September 27th, 2026|Historical Jesus, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Do You Really Mean That? Antisemitism.

Some really important words tend to become more vague and generalized to the point where they don’t mean what they used to. A lot of times that’s fine – doesn’t create a lot of problems. Other times, it makes it hard for us to know what each of us is talking about. Or it makes it easy to use a word as a tool, on the assumption that people will not know that it doesn’t mean what it used to. I showed how that is true of the terms “consciousness,” and “socialism” in the previous post. Now I turn to a term that is far more fraught on a number of levels: “antisemitism.” It’s a term that once had, can have, and should have, a specific meaning, and most people don’t know it. When used with precision, the term does not refer to opposition to Jews for their religious practices and culture, to Judaism as a whole, to the modern state of Israel, or to the policies and practices of any particular Israeli government and [...]

BDEhrman2026-09-23T15:30:52-04:00September 26th, 2026|Reflections and Ruminations|

Do You Really Mean That? Consciousness and Socialism

I’m not a professional linguist, but it does seem to me that language tends to get more casual, sloppy, and imprecise over time, that words that once had a very specific meaning often become more generalized and widely applied to things that are similar but not actually the same. On one level that’s probably fine – it’s just naturally what happens when millions of people in different contexts use words and phrases billions of times. But the downside is that without some modicum of precision we can’t communicate well and are more easily misunderstood; people often think we mean something we actually don’t. Most of the time that don’t signify, but sometimes it does. I’ll illustrate with three terms that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, for different reasons: consciousness, socialism, and antisemitism – the first two in this post and the third in the next. ****************************** For the past twenty years or so I’ve been interested in the problem of consciousness, how it is that we as material beings [...]

BDEhrman2026-09-21T11:33:08-04:00September 24th, 2026|Reflections and Ruminations|

The Ten (more or less?) Commandments and the Code of Hammurabi
Gallery
The Ten (more or less?) Commandments and the Code of Hammurabi

Hebrew Bible/Old Testament

The Ten (more or less?) Commandments and the Code of Hammurabi

Here I continue my thread on interesting aspects of the Hebrew Bible not known to most people I meet at a cocktail party. (OK, I never talk about the Hebrew Bible at a cocktail party. But if I did, I’m pretty sure this would never come up.) Everyone knows about the “Ten Commandments.” Even Christians who think the Law of Moses no longer is binding on them (because, they say, Christ “abolished the law”) (which isn’t true, but it’s what they say) claim that the Ten Commandments are valid (it’s usually not clear why these apply but the other laws don’t), even if they don’t know what they are (how many people can actually list them?). And they in fact willingly break one of them all the time: anyone who has done any work on a Saturday is guilty! When my undergraduate students tell me they keep the Ten and I ask them if they have ever had a job on Saturday they usually end up admitting that they try to follow the “nine commandments” [...]

BDEhrman2026-09-18T11:13:39-04:00September 22nd, 2026|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

The Origins of God’s Personal Name and of the Feast of Passover

In the current thread (threading in and out of other posts on other things) I have been discussing some of the most interesting features of the Hebrew Bible by (re-)presenting side boxes found in my book The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press). I continue the thread here with discussions of two distinct issues that have a key commonality, “where something originated.” The first part resumes an earlier post where I explained God’s actual name (“Yahweh” in Hebrew spelled with the four letters YHWH and called the “Tetragrammaton” – a name that was so holy it was not to be pronounced). Here now I explain where the name came from. The second part of the post discusses the origins of Passover, one of the most significant festivals of ancient Judaism, still celebrated today. Enjoy! BOX 5.1 GOD’S ACTUAL NAME We earlier saw that the Tetragrammaton YHWH was probably understood by ancient Israelites to be the personal name of God. But where did the name come from? It is not [...]

BDEhrman2026-09-16T07:35:21-04:00September 21st, 2026|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

Important Questions About Jesus, Paul, and the Gospels

I continue to receive significant questions from readers on key issues connected with the study of the New Testament. Here are three of them with my responses: QUESTION: Wouldn’t you agree that Jesus’ teaching is deeply rooted in Israel’s prophetic tradition, where judgment and restoration regularly unfold in stages rather than as a single, instantaneous event? Historically, these stages often span decades or centuries. If Jesus located his ministry within that prophetic narrative, why think there’s a contradiction between announcing an imminent judgment on Jerusalem and envisioning a kingdom whose growth and worldwide restoration would take time? The Gospels preserve both emphases. Jesus predicts the destruction of Jerusalem within “this generation,” yet he also compares the kingdom to a mustard seed, leaven, and harvest that matures over time. Rather than dismissing one set of traditions as inauthentic because they don’t fit a predetermined model, isn’t it equally plausible they reflect different stages of the same prophetic drama? Don’t you worry that the criterion of automatically assigning “delay” traditions to the post-Easter church risks becoming [...]

BDEhrman2026-09-17T15:32:23-04:00September 20th, 2026|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Previous 123···208 Next