BDEhrman, Author at The Bart Ehrman Blog - Page 36 of 204

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.

Some of the Difficulties in Understanding Gnosticism

Now that I've discussed the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, I can move into the kinds of religion found among these books, popularly known as the "Gnostic Gospels." And that will involve laying out the views found among the various Christian groups of the second and third century (principally) that scholars call Gnostic. Gnosticism is a fascinating topic, but it is also widely misunderstood, in no small part because scholarship on Gnosticism over the past twenty or thirty years ago has shown that the widely held views of earlier generations of scholars were based more on assumption than on evidence. There have long been heated debates over even how to define Gnosticism. Until about a hundred years ago, just about the only sources scholars used for understanding Gnosticism were the writings of its most vocal opponents, the proto-orthodox church fathers of the second, third, and fourth centuries. The problem is, as we all know so well (think: American politics!) you can't really rely on what a group's enemies say if you want to know [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:05:01-04:00October 26th, 2023|Christian Apocrypha, Heresy and Orthodoxy|

Aren’t You Inconsistent in Your View of the Historicity of the Gospels?

Do contradictions in a story show that it didn't happen? When I first responded (a few days ago) to Mark Goodacre’s five points calling into question the traditional story of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, I was intrigued to receive a number of comments suggesting I sure seemed to be inconsistent in how I dealt with historical accounts. To wit: Why would I say contradictions in the Nag Hammadi discovery story (that Mark pointed out) DON'T show that the basic account is false -- that is, didn't happen -- but I DO use contradictions to call the Gospel accounts of Jesus into question. Is this an agenda-driven inconsistency? All right -- fair question. First let me remind you that in my post a few days ago (about the Nag Hammadi discovery) I pointed out that just because a story changes over time does not mean that the gist of the story is false. If some tellings indicate that the jar was two feet tall and others that it was six, or [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:05:01-04:00October 25th, 2023|Canonical Gospels|

Interesting Questions About the Books From Nag Hammadi
Gallery
Interesting Questions About the Books From Nag Hammadi

Christian Apocrypha, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE)

Interesting Questions About the Books From Nag Hammadi

There are a lot of unsettled questions about the "Gnostic Gospels," that is, the books of the Nag Hammadi Library. After my recent posts I received some interesting questions that *can* be settled, and here I deal with two of them: one that’s a zinger and the other that has been asked by several readers. First the zinger. The reader noted that I indicated that the books of the library were manufactured in the fourth century; we know this because the leather bindings on the books had their spines strengthened with scrap papyrus (and is therefore called cartonnage) and some of these papyri were dated receipts. And so the reader’s question: QUESTION: Just out of curiosity – what form of dating did the compilers of the books use, that would correspond to our “341 CE” and so on? I’m assuming they weren’t using Roman dates. But were the Romans themselves, in that era, still using dates “ab urbe condita”? RESPONSE: This is a great question, and I have to admit, I had [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:05:01-04:00October 24th, 2023|Christian Apocrypha, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE)|

Are There Really Good Reasons to Doubt the Story of the Discovery of the Gnostic Gospels? My Response to Mark Goodacre

A couple of days ago we enjoyed a guest post on the blog by Mark Goodacre, Professor of New Testament at Duke University. In this post Mark provided five reasons for doubting if the story of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library – as that story has been recounted by scholars for many years – is in fact accurate. Mark’s post was a summary of a longer, more detailed, and scholarly article that he has published on the subject. In 2015, when I first discussed this issue on the blog, I asked Mark’s permission to respond to his five points, and he gladly agreed; I in turn agreed to let him respond to my responses. Rather than asking you to reread his post, I have reproduced each of his five reasons here, and then dealt with them one at a time. Let me say that I really don’t have a horse in this race, and my sense is that Mark doesn’t either. We would both love to be able to keep telling the story, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:05:01-04:00October 22nd, 2023|Christian Apocrypha, History of Biblical Scholarship|

Why We Might Doubt the Story of the Discovery of the Gnostic Gospels: Guest post by Mark Goodacre

A few days ago I posted about the Discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, giving the remarkable story that scholars -- for as long as I myself have been a scholar -- have been telling about how it happened. I also mentioned that my New Testament colleague at Duke, Mark Goodacre – who is on this blog and who has an important blog of his own – has written an article calling this story into question. Years ago when I was discussing this matter on the blog, I asked Mark if he would be willing to summarize his objections to the story as it is typically recited, and he did so in the following post. He's asked me to add a couple of links at the end in case you want to look more deeply into the matter. ****************************** Five Reasons to Question the Story of the Nag Hammadi Discovery I am grateful to my friend and colleague Bart Ehrman for mentioning me in his blog in connection with the fascinating and compelling story of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:05:01-04:00October 21st, 2023|Christian Apocrypha, History of Biblical Scholarship|

What Is Actually In the Nag Hammadi Library?

For near fifty years now the "books that did not make it into the New Testament" have been a source of fascination, not just for scholars but for regular ol' folk intrigued by the idea that there may have been alternative forms of Christianity, a wide range of seemingly bizarre beliefs and practices out there in the early centuries of the church. In my previous post I gave the standard tale of how the most significant discovery of such books occurred in 1945 somewhere near the village of Nag Hammadi Egypt (and therefore called the Nag Hammadi library). The story I told has fallen into some disrepute over the past decade, for reasons we'll see in the next post. Before dealing with that issue, however, it's important to see what this library/collection of books actually is. Here is how I describe it in my textbook, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (Oxford University Press). ****************************** What was this ancient collection of books? The short answer is that it is the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:05:01-04:00October 19th, 2023|Christian Apocrypha, History of Biblical Scholarship|

Reminder: Interesting Lecture on Thursday Oct. 19: Creation Stories not in Genesis!

Hey Blog Folk, Quick reminder of an interesting lecture tomorrow evening (Thursday Oct. 18); it's free even though we're hoping for donations (not connected with the blog). Here's the original annoucement in case you missed, misplaced, misconceived, or misconstrued it: ********************************* Are you interested in the Creation account in Genesis 1? Did you know there are *other* creation accounts in the Hebrew Bible? Different ones? Want to hear about them? And about how they relate to other creation accounts in the ancient world? On October 19, 8:00 pm, my colleague Joseph Lam, professor of Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East will be giving a remote public lecture: "Beyond Genesis: The Many Creation Stories of the Bible." Below you will find a short video that I did with Joseph to explain the event, and a link to sign up for it. This lecture is NOT related to the blog, but it IS a fundraiser for my department (I'm mentioning it here on the blog only because many of you are interested in the topic). The [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:05:02-04:00October 18th, 2023|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

Our Most Important Discovery of Ancient Christian Writings: The Nag Hammadi Library

The most significant discovery of Christian manuscripts (ever) was the Nag Hammadi Library, popularly (and a bit inaccurately) known as "the Gnostic Gospels." One of the intriguing features of the discovery is that no one is quite sure how it happened. When I was in graduate school, everyone heard a standard tale that we then passed along with some glee to our students. But now that story is in a bit of disrepute -- thanks in large part to that destroyer of New Testament Scholarship Orthodoxy, my friend and colleague, Duke professor, Mark Goodacre, as you will see in subsequent posts.. Just to be clear: the discovery itself was definitely made. We have the books of the Nag Hammadi Library, readily available in English translations. And I want to talk about a few of them. But first I want to talk about what we know and don't know about the discovery itself. I'll start, in this post, by giving the popular tale that, until relatively recently, just about everybody knew. This is how I laid [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:05:01-04:00October 18th, 2023|Christian Apocrypha, Heresy and Orthodoxy, History of Biblical Scholarship|

Another Mythicist View of Jesus’ Brothers
Gallery
Another Mythicist View of Jesus’ Brothers

Historical Jesus

Another Mythicist View of Jesus’ Brothers

In my previous post I pointed out that mythicists have a real problem on their hands when it comes to insisting that Jesus didn’t exist (well, they actually have a *boatload* of problems; but this is one of them): Paul actually knew, personally, Jesus’ own brother, James. It’s hard to say that Jesus never lived if he in fact had a brother…. It doesn’t solve the problem to say that this was in fact Jesus’ cousin, since, well, he would still then be the cousin of (the real) Jesus (!) (plus the word Paul uses is “brother” not “cousin”) and it doesn’t work to say that he is Jesus’ brother meaning he is a member of the Christian church (since Paul differentiates him from himself and Peter by calling James the “brother” – and both Peter and Paul were also members of the church!). Mythicists have tried other approaches, including the one I discussed yesterday, of trying to claim that there was a group of fervent missionaries in Jerusalem called “the brothers of the Lord,” [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:05:00-04:00October 17th, 2023|Historical Jesus|

New Policy on Platinum Guest Posts

Dear Platinum Members, We have had a slew of terrifically interesting Platinum Member guest posts over the past year, and such a slew that we (we being me and my blog advisory committee) have decided we need to limit the quantity of the submissions. Keep on sending ‘em in! BUT, we would like to limit each participant to one guest post submission within any two-month period. If you haven’t ever submitted one before but art tempteth, go for it! And if you have submitted one (or some) and art still tempteth, you too go for it!

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:05:01-04:00October 16th, 2023|Public Forum|

What the Jesus “Mythicists” Say About the Brothers of Jesus

Ten years ago on the blog when I was discussing the Proto-Gospel of James (the current subthread within a thread), I received an intriguing question about this issue, addressed in the previous post, about the brothers of Jesus and how "mythicists" -- those who claim there never was a historical Jesus whatsoever but that he was completely made up (a "myth") -- dealt with them. Here's the question and my response. QUESTION: Since you’ve brought up the subject of Jesus’ family perhaps it won’t be too far off the subject to ask this question. Mythicists are forced by their arguments to deal with Paul’s encounter with Peter and James in Galatians 1:18–20. They claim that when Paul refers to James as “The Lord’s brother” he does not mean that James is Jesus’ biological brother (which of course would mean that Jesus actually lived) but that he was using the word “brother” in the sense that all the disciples were “brothers” i.e., metaphorically. What about this? Is the word translated as “brother” in English that [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:05:00-04:00October 15th, 2023|Historical Jesus|

Were Jesus’ Brothers His … Brothers? The Proto-Gospel of James

In the Gospels conference a few weeks ago (New Insights Into the New Testament; see New Insights into the New Testament: A Biblical Conference for Non-Scholars (bartehrman.com), Candida Moss gave a fascinating presentation on (the historical) Jesus' actual family. That is a major issue in the non-canonical Gospel I have been discussing just now in this thread, the Proto-Gospel of James. This Gospel was very popular in Eastern, Greek-speaking Christianity throughout the Ages, down to modern times; and a version of it was produced – with serious additions and changes – in Latin, that was even more influential in Western Christianity (a book now known as the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew). In some times and places, these books were the main source of “information” that people had for knowing about Jesus’ birth and family – more so than the NT Gospels. The idea that Joseph was an old man and Mary was a young girl? Comes from the Proto-Gospel (not the NT!). The view that Jesus was born in a cave? Proto-Gospel. The [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:05:00-04:00October 14th, 2023|Christian Apocrypha|

Misquoting Jesus Podcast: Special One-Year Anniversary Edition

As some of you know, I do a weekly podcast (unrelated to the blog) called "Misquoting Jesus." My co-host is Megan Lewis, a terrific interlocutor who is an expert on ancient history (she's actually an Assyriologist! And trained in classics), who asks terrific questions. Basically, she interviews me on a different topic each week, the sorts of issues we deal with here on the blog, but in a recorded interview style. You can get it on Youtube (to my surprise, that's where by far most people get it) or on any podcast app. This coming Tuesday, October 17, will be our one-year anniversary of doing the podcast, and I thought you might be interested in knowing about it. This time rather than a back-and-forth with Megan it will be a live Q&A, with previously submitted questions by listeners. Megan will MC it, but the questions we have selected will actually be asked by the person who proposed them. If you're interested, check it out live or catch it later, either on Youtube or wherever you [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:05:01-04:00October 13th, 2023|Public Forum|

When a Gospel Meets the Twilight Zone: As Time Stands Still in the Proto-Gospel of James

In my previous post I mentioned one of the most significant passages of the Proto-Gospel, where the midwife Salome doubts that a virgin had given birth (note: she does not doubt whether a virgin could have *conceived* [although no doubt she *would* have doubted it!]; what she doubts is that a woman could give *birth* and still have her hymen intact. That, obviously, would be impossible), and gives Mary a postpartum examination only to find that in fact she really is still a virgin (i.e., “intact”). Immediately before that amazing scene is another that I find at least as entrancing. In it, Joseph himself describes – in the first person – what happened when the Son of God came into the world. This was such a cosmic event, that time stopped. And Joseph describes how, by explaining what he saw at that moment. Every time I read this passage I think of a Twilight Zone episode that I saw once where everything slowed down to a virtual standstill except the main character, who observes everyone [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:05:00-04:00October 12th, 2023|Christian Apocrypha|

The Gospel Before the Gospel: The Proto-Gospel of James

In this thread I've been talking about some of the more famous Gospels that are not in the New Testament. I move now to one that I've talked about on the blog before, but it's been a few years so it's worth talking about again. It is arguably the most influential Gospel outside the canon: the Proto-Gospel of James (which scholars call the Protevangelium Jacobi -- a Latin phrase that means “Proto-Gospel of James,” but sounds much cooler….). It is called the “proto” Gospel because it records events that (allegedly) took place before the accounts of the NT Gospels. Its overarching focus is on Mary, the mother of Jesus; it is interested in explaining who she was. Why was *she* the one who was chosen to bear the Son of God? What made her so special? How did she come into the world? What made her more holy than any other woman? Etc. These questions drive the narrative, and make it our earliest surviving instance of the adoration of Mary. On the legends found [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:05:00-04:00October 11th, 2023|Christian Apocrypha|

But If It Didn’t Really Happen, Who Cares?
Gallery
But If It Didn’t Really Happen, Who Cares?

Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus

But If It Didn’t Really Happen, Who Cares?

Whenever I have talked about the story of Jesus and the leper in Mark 1:40-44 on the blog -- most recently a week or so ago -- I have gotten a number of comments from readers that made me realize that I wasn’t being at all clear about what I was talking about. These comments came from people who appear to have thought I was talking about a historical event that really happened, one way or the other, and that I was trying to figure out which it was. Did Jesus really get angry or did he really feel compassion? In response to my view that Mark 1:41 originally indicated that Jesus got angry, some comments stressed that what really mattered was not his emotion but the fact that he did what he did. Others wanted me to know that it didn’t matter to them which emotion was ascribed to Jesus, because in their opinion the whole thing never actually happened at all. Both of these views (they’re obviously at the opposite ends of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:05:00-04:00October 10th, 2023|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

Is Christ Merely the “Adopted” Son of God?

If Jesus wasn't God from eternity past, but was "adopted" to be the Son of God at some point of his existence, wouldn't that be a pretty watered-down understanding of his divinity? A lot of people find this kind of "adoptionist" Christology (Christ wasn't "inherently" God but "made" divine by adoption) completely unsatisfying and, well, pretty wimpy as far as Christologies go. I mentioned in the previous post that one could well read Luke as adoptionistic, and as I reflected on it some more, I recalled that the first time I wrestled seriously with the issue was ten years ago, when I was doing my research for my book How Jesus Became God. Here's what I ended up thinking about it, and saying about it in the book. And in case you wonder -- mirabile dictu! -- I still think the same today! ****************************** Part of what has convinced me that an [adoptionistic] understanding of Christ should not be shunted aside as rather inferior involves new research on what it meant to be “adopted” [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:04:45-04:00October 8th, 2023|Early Christian Doctrine, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture|

If Luke Didn’t Originally Have a Birth Story — Then What?

In my previous post, ostensibly on the genealogy of Luke, I pointed out that there are good reasons for thinking that the Gospel originally was published – in a kind of “first edition” – without what are now the first two chapters, so that, after the Preface of 1:1-4, the very beginning was what is now 3:1 (this is many centuries, of course, before anyone started using chapters and verses). If that’s the case, Luke was originally a Gospel like Mark’s that did not have birth and infancy narratives. These were added later, in a second edition (either by the same author or by someone else). If that’s the case then the Gospel began with John the Baptist and his baptism of Jesus, followed by the genealogy which makes better sense here, at the beginning, than it does in the third chapter once the first two are added. But is there any hard evidence that a first edition began without the first two chapters? One of the reasons it is so hard to say [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:04:45-04:00October 7th, 2023|Canonical Gospels|

Did Luke Originally Have the Birth Narrative (chapters 1-2)?

In my previous post I pointed out that some scholars, myself included, think that the original Gospel of Luke did not have the birth narrative recounted in chapters 1-2 (the annunciation of Mary's virginal conception, the trip to Bethlehem from Nazareth, the worship of the shepherds, etc. etc.). In this view the Gospel started with what is now 1:1-4 and then the next verse was what is now 3:1, and the Gospel went from there. I posted on this issue some years ago, but I think it's worthwhile addressing it again in the context of the current thread, on just how "messy" the situation was in the first couple of centuries when different Gospels were all in circulation (not just our four), saying different things, and sometimes in different versions themselves. What's the evidence that there was an earlier version of Luke without the familiar birth narrative (which, in case you don't recall, differs hugely from Matthew's). One place to start to explain the matter is with what comes *after the birth narrative in [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:04:45-04:00October 5th, 2023|Canonical Gospels, Public Forum|

Early Gospels in Circulation: An Even Messier Scenario

When it comes to the early Christian Gospels, most people simply assume that there were four Gospels from the first century (those in the NT), and no others, and that they were written as they are found now, and that they circulated in that form, and that later Gospel writers (say in the second century) who used earlier written sources about Jesus must have borrowed their stories from those Gospels. Their other stories they just made up, or heard about from oral traditions, or both. In my last post I suggested why I don’t think that view is particularly plausible, and tried to imagine something a bit more realistic; there I proposed a “messier scenario" in which there were numerous early Gospels, some earlier than others (e.g., Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the earliest that survive, but that doesn’t mean they were the earliest). In this view, Gospels later than the canonical four (e.g., Papyrus Egerton 2) may or may not have used the canonical four for their information (with additional legendary materials); [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:04:45-04:00October 4th, 2023|Canonical Gospels, History of Biblical Scholarship|

Previous 1···353637···204 Next