BDEhrman, Author at The Bart Ehrman Blog - Page 42 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.

How Can We Get Behind “False Memories” of Jesus to the Historical Facts?

I'm discussing how in both the ancient and modern worlds people have constructed "false memories" of who Jesus really was. In this post I give a brief explanation of how scholars became increasingly aware of the problem and, for a time, thought they had found a solution: Mark's Gospel is the unembellished version and so we need to stick mainly with that! How'd they come up with *that* one? And is it true? This is taken from my book Jesus Before the Gospels (HarperOne, 2016). ****************************** Throughout the history of scholarship, especially since the nineteenth century, scholars have realized that Christians in the early years after Jesus’ death were not only altering traditions about Jesus’ life and teaching that they inherited, they were also inventing them. We do not need to wait for non-canonical Gospels such as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, or the Gospel of Nicodemus for “distorted” memories of Jesus to surface among authors and their readers. (Recall: by “distorted memory” I simply mean any recollection of the past that [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:38-04:00May 18th, 2023|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, History of Biblical Scholarship|

Did Early Christians “Invent” Memories of Jesus?

I've been talking about how we remember things -- or misremember things, or make up memories of things -- as a way of getting to the question of how, in our heads, we think about what Jesus said and did. This is all part of my larger project that came incarnated (inletterated?) in my book Jesus Before the Gospels. As I point out early in the book, we remember most things just fine, but we also often get things either partially or completely wrong. Memories can be frail, faulty, and false. And not just our individual memories, but also the “memories” we have as a society. In previous posts I illustrated the point by talking about social memories of Abraham Lincoln and Christopher Columbus. But what about faulty memories of Jesus (see my last post if it doesn't make sense to talk about "remembering" someone we never knew!). To get to this question, in my book, I talk about some of the modern representations of Jesus by current-day scholars and popular authors – for example, Jesus [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:37-04:00May 17th, 2023|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, History of Biblical Scholarship, Public Forum|

How Can We “Remember” Someone (say, Jesus) We Never Knew?

A number of readers on the blog have objected to my understanding of memory, specifically to what a memory is, that is, to what constitutes a memory. As a rule, these readers have argued – some with considerable force and conviction! – that a “memory” is a mental recollection of something that one has personally experienced. Let me cite one of the more closely reasoned expressions of this alternative view by one of my respondents, before explaining my view and why I have it. COMMENT: Bart, I think people might be confused by your definition of false memories. In the medical, psychological and legal literature, false memories are defined as BELIEVED-IN MEMORIES OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCES that are false or are falsely remembered by specific persons. Beliefs ,stories, narratives, myths, folklore and conspiracies that are false but are circulating in a community or culture are not considered false memories by memory experts since these are not claimed to be first-hand memories of personal experiences. For example, a false memory can be created in the mind of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:24-04:00May 14th, 2023|Memory Studies|

In What Sense is a Made-Up Story about Jesus a False Memory??

In the past, when I've said that the Gospels sometimes contain “false memories” of Jesus people have objected: these may not be memories at all, but simply stories the Gospel writers made up for their own reasons. In that case Jesus isn’t being “remembered” in these ways. Someone’s just making up stuff. In response to that view, let me make two points. The second will be the most important, but first things first: in most cases I don’t think there is any way to know whether a non-historical tradition in the Gospels is something that the Gospel writer inherited from others before him or invented himself. Take Luke’s story of how Jesus came to be born in Bethlehem. In Luke, and only in Luke we have a specific explanation of how it is that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, if – as evidently everyone knew – he actually came from Nazareth. It is that when Mary was full-term pregnant, she took a trip to Bethlehem with her espoused Joseph in order to register for a [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:24-04:00May 13th, 2023|Historical Jesus, Memory Studies|

Blog Announcement: Comments!

Just so you know! Tomorrow I'm heading to the Galapagos and will not have reliable wifi for about a week. That WON'T affect the blog posts -- I've got them all lined up and ready to roll. BUT, I won't be able to respond to comments. But feel free to make them at will. I will get to them when I return from the land of Darwin to the land of AI. And maybe I should start using AI to respond to comments, for the sake of all involved! (But never fear: it ain't gonna happen.)

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:56-04:00May 12th, 2023|Public Forum|

Creation Stories of the Ancient World (Part 2): An Ancient Egyptian Account

Was the account of creation found in Genesis comparable to (or even borrowed from?) other ancient accounts in scattered throughout the world at the time? Last month my colleague Joseph Lam, an expert in the Hebrew Bible and the languages and literature of the Ancient Near East provided us with a guest post about some of the creation stories found outside Scripture in non-Israelite cultures -- stories in circulation before the ones written in Genesis (https://ehrmanblog.org/creation-stories-of-the-ancient-world-part-1-on-enuma-elish-and-genesis-1-guest-post-by-joseph-lam/) Here now is a second and equally interesting post dealing with stories from ancient Memphis Egypt (not Tennessee!)! This is the topic of his lecture course for the Great Courses/Wondrium, "Creation Stories of the Ancient World" (links at bottom) **************************** In my last blog entry, I offered a brief description of the Babylonian Creation Epic, Enuma Elish, and reflected on how one might imagine its relationship to the seven-day creation story of Genesis 1. In this post, I turn to an enigmatic but fascinating text from ancient Egypt known as the Memphite Theology that has also been compared with Genesis [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:37-04:00May 11th, 2023|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

Does Understanding “Memory” Have Any Bearing on the Study of the Historical Jesus?

In my earlier posts I began to discuss my book, Jesus Before the Gospels, which deals with how understanding how "memory" works can contribute to our assessment of the Gospels stories about Jesus. Long before starting the book I had been intrigued the question of how eyewitnesses would have remembered the Jesus' life, and how the stories about Jesus may have been shifted and altered and invented in later times based on faulty or even false memories. Those questions led me to be interested in memory more broadly. Memory is an enormous field of research, just within cognitive psychology. I spent many months doing nothing but reading important studies, dozens and dozens of books and articles. It is really interesting stuff. Memory is not at all what I started out thinking it was. Like most people I had this vague notion in my head that memory worked kind of like a camera. You see or experience something and take a photo of it and store it in your head. Sometimes the photo might fade, or [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:23-04:00May 10th, 2023|Book Discussions, Historical Jesus|

Was Matthew Attacking Paul?

On my podcast this past week (Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman) someone asked me if I thought any of the Gospels of the NT were influenced by Paul. It's an interesting question that I should post on (my view: Mark, maybe; Luke, unexpectedly and oddly not; John, I doubt it; Matthew?) Ah, Matthew. As it turns out, I think Matthew shows a rather obvious and ironic connection with Paul. Did he know Paul's writings? I have no idea. Did he know about Paul? Same, no idea. Did he oppose a major feature of Paul's gospel message? Sure looks like it!! (I'm trying to say that he could be opposed to Paul's views without necessarily knowing Paul's writings; the views may have been more widely spread than just by Paul. In fact, they almost certainly were. Here's how I've discussed the matter once when I was reflecting at greater length in the issue: Paul certainly had opponents in his lifetime: "Judaizers," as scholars call them -- that is, Christian teachers who maintained that followers of Jesus [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:23-04:00May 9th, 2023|Canonical Gospels, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum|

Remembering Columbus, Remembering Christ

In my previous post on Abraham Lincoln I discussed how the collective "memory" of important persons from the past can be distorted. We as a society "remember" things in certain ways -- e.g., Vietnam; Civil Rights Movement; Elvis; 9/11), -- different groups differently and not always accurately . Here I give another example, not to be a definitive demonstration of my point so much as to help us think about the issue. What about our memories of Christopher Columbus? And, well, how about the early Christians' memory of Jesus? Again, this comes from the early part of my book Jesus Before the Gospels (HarperOne, 2016). ****************************** Remembering Columbus Much the same can be said about most of the historical figures that we revere, from Caesar Augustus to Joan of Arc to Christopher Columbus. Columbus is an interesting example. He is not always remembered today in the same glowing terms that we remembered him when I was a child growing up in the 50s and 60s. In those days, we remembered Columbus as one of the great [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:23-04:00May 7th, 2023|Memory Studies, Public Forum|

How Do We “Remember” Lincoln?

In my last post, I mentioned a phenomenon known as “collective” memory. It's how groups of people "remember" something in the past. This isn't quite the same as how you remember what you did on your last vacation. It's more like how past events or figures are constructed in the broader "memory" of a society. Sociologists have long studied this problem, and their findings can help us think differently about how later Christian societies (groups of people) "remembered" Jesus. Here's an example I cite in my book Jesus Before the Gospels (HarperOne, 2016). ****************************** Remembering Lincoln In 2014 a poll was taken of 162 members of the American Political Science Association, asking them to rank all the past presidents of the United States, from best to worst.[1] Probably to no one’s great surprise, the top-ranked president was Abraham Lincoln. Most of us – though certainly not all of us – remember Lincoln as a truly great and noble man who did remarkable things for his country. But he was not always thought of in that [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:23-04:00May 6th, 2023|Memory Studies, Public Forum|

When I Got Seriously Interested in Memory (at least insofar as I remember)

(Recall: this post came from the past, when I was working on my book about Jesus and Memory, badly titled Jesus Before the Gospels. I had forgotten about the post till just now!) As I indicated in my previous post, I have long been interested in memory for both personal and professional reasons. On the personal level, I have known people very close to me who have experienced serious memory problems, for example through strokes. Depending on what part of the brain is affected, different memory functions are damaged. For example, someone may remember perfectly well what happened in an event 20 years ago, but forget a conversation they just had. I have often wondered why and how that is.. And then there was my own memory. For some things I have a terrific memory. And for lots of things I have an absolutely terrible memory. I especially have a terrible “episodic” memory (as psychologists call it), a memory for things that happen in your life and you experience. Let me give an example. About [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:23-04:00May 4th, 2023|Bart’s Biography, Book Discussions, Memory Studies|

My Forgotten Book on Memory

Of all the books I've written for a general audience, the one that I think got (by far) less attention than it deserved -- well, OK, less attention that I wanted and hoped (!) -- was Jesus Before the Gospels. I've long thought I gave it a very bad title. The book is really about memory -- what we know about how memory works and doesn't work, and how that affects our understanding of the Gospel stories about Jesus, which are based on memories of Jesus and usually among people who were remembering stories about him rather than things they observed themselves. I did some posts on the book many years ago, and thought it would be worthwhile to revisit them, and the book, since it really is crucially important for understanding the Gospels themselves and the problems with knowing about the historical Jesus. The book discusses psychological understandings of memories and false memories, the value of eyewitness testimony, anthropological studies of oral cultures, and other things of relevance to New Testament scholars even though the vast [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:23-04:00May 3rd, 2023|Memory Studies|

And Here’s My Final Exam on The Birth of Christianity

Yesterday I posted an old final exam for my course Introduction to the New Testament. And for your amusement, here is an exam for my course that I taught this semester, called the Birth of Christianity, which covered the developments within Christianity after the New Testament up through the conversion of Constantine. See how you do! And again, I wish I could grade your answers, but, alas.... The Birth of Christianity, Reli 208 Final Exam This is exam is in three sections; you have three hours to complete it. We suggest you spend no more than an hour on each section. Section One: Short Identification. Write short answers up to 50 words on ten (and no more than ten) of the following. Make your answers as detailed and informative as you can. Ebionites The Gospel of Peter Arius Apologists Theodosius I Tertullian The Great Persecution Thecla Donatism Asceticism Incarnation Christology Infancy Gospel of Thomas Section Two: First Essay. Write an essay on the following topic. Make it as detailed [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:23-04:00May 2nd, 2023|Public Forum|

Was Jesus a False Prophet?

As many of you know, I started a podcast awhile back, called Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. It's not connected with the blog, but it deals with stuff most blog members would be interested in. (And hey, it's free! Available both as a podcast on all the main podcast servers and on Youtube.) A new episode comes out every Tuesday, and it occurred to me that you might be interested in knowing what's happening on it. So, I've decided to make weekly announcements here, in case you're interested in going there! This past Tuesday, the topic I discussed with my host Megan Lewis, was "Was Jesus a False Prophet." Here's the description, in case you'd like to check it out. Historical scholars for over a century have maintained that Jesus predicted that the end of history as we know it was to come in his own generation. Conservative Christians -- laypeople and scholars alike -- have insisted that this is a complete misportrayal of Jesus. And many people -- possibly most? -- believe that [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:24-04:00May 1st, 2023|Public Forum|

Wanna Take My Final Exam In New Testament?

I was browsing through some old posts from years ago and came across this one, a copy of my final exam for my undergraduate course, Introduction to the New Testament. Check it out. How would you do? The students have some idea of what the exam will entail in advance. For the identifications, anything they've read or heard during the semester is fair game. I don't give them a list of terms ahead of time to study. They have to know every term covered in the reading and that I've given in class. For the essays: two weeks ahead of time I gave them fourteen possible essay questions for the exam, and told them I would choose two of the fourteen for the final. I decided to give them some choice, as you'll see, so they could have some leeway about which essay to write. I won't be able to correct your wrong answers or even to tell you the right ones, since each identification could take up to 50 words, and the essays took [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:23-04:00April 30th, 2023|Public Forum|

Is 2 Thessalonians a Forgery? From 132 CE? Platinum Guest Post by Omar Robb

The proposition that the 2 Thessalonians was forged in 132AD by a Thessalonian priest. Omar Abur-Robb omr-mhmd.yolasite.com There have been lot of arguments discussing the authenticity of the 2 Thessalonians. Many Scholars concluded (due to many observations) that it is a forgery. I am going here to add one more observation into the list by highlighting an angle that was probably missed. I need to give credit to Joseph Turmel (1859 - 1943) who probably was the first to link this letter to Bar-Kokhba revolt, and the model that I am presenting here is not very far from his model. [Reference: Introduction by Neil Godfrey, https://vridar.org/2011/05/31/identifying-the-man-of-sin-in-2-thessalonians/] The Second Thessalonians is a letter that is attributed to Paul for the Thessalonian Christians. The main objective of this letter is a discussion about the return of Jesus in 2.1: “Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him”, and the narratives related to the antichrist: the “man of sin”. So, the explicit objective of the letter is: Jesus will not return [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:23-04:00April 28th, 2023|Forgery in Antiquity, Paul and His Letters|

“Death is nothing to us.” What Do YOU Think?

I quote: “You need to realize that death is nothing to us. Everything that is good and bad in our lives comes from the experiences of our senses. But death brings an end to our senses/experiences. And so having the right understanding – that death is nothing to us – makes our mortality enjoyable, not because we will live forever but because we don’t pointlessly long to live forever. For there are no terrors in life for the one who fully understands that there are no terrors in not living. It is absurd for people who fear death -- not because it is afflicting them now but because they expect it will be horrible when it comes. For this allegedly most awful thing – death -- is actually nothing to us: when we exist, we are not dead, but when we are dead, we no longer exist. And so death is completely irrelevant – both to those who are living and to those who are dead. Those who are living are not experiencing it and [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:22-04:00April 27th, 2023|Afterlife, Reflections and Ruminations|

My Best Best-Selling Fluke

A couple of weeks ago I published a post about how an author writes a bestseller (she doesn't! It becomes one or not for reasons other than the author's intent or writing...) I remembered I had posted something on the topic years ago, based on a blog member's question about my personal best-selling book, Misquoting Jesus, and why it did so well. In some ways it's a real puzzle. The book is about Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. HUH??? A bestselling book? What??? (That, at least, is what all my friends said!) But the answer relates to my previous post. Here is the Q and then the A. QUESTION: In your previous answer to me you indicated that what makes a bestseller, in the end of the day, is massive media attention. My question now is what sparks this attention. In other words, why, out of all your books, did Misquoting Jesus receive a great attention from the media? RESPONSE: Ha! It’s a great question. I’ll start by saying that if there were [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:07-04:00April 26th, 2023|Bart’s Biography, Book Discussions|

A Scandalous Discovery of a Scandalous Gospel?

Later scholars have sometimes claimed Morton Smith forged the Secret Gospel of Mark; he claimed he *discovered* it. Which is it? Here I continue with my account of how he said it all happened. In my previous post I indicated that in 1958 Smith was catagaloguing the books of the library of the monastery of Mar Saba near Jerusalem, when he found a book that had a text written into its final (blank) pages. It was allegedly a letter of Clement of Alexandria, a famous theologian and ethicist who lived and wrote around 200 CE. Smith immediately recognized that it was a letter we did not have before. And here is how I discuss what he did next, in my book Lost Christianities (Oxford University Press, 2003). ****************************** On the spot, Smith decided to photograph the three pages that contained the handwritten copy of Clement’s letter, but chose to hold off translating the entire text until later, reasoning that if some such treasure had turned up, there might be more where that came from; given [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:06-04:00April 25th, 2023|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

Could the Mysterious “Secret Gospel of Mark” Be Authentic?

In my previous posts I discussed how Morton Smith claimed he discovered a copy of an ancient letter of Clement of Alexandria (ca. 200 CE), written in the back of a 17th century book, by a scribe of the 18th century, in which Clement described a mysterious “Secret Gospel” – an intriguing and possibly scandalous longer version of the Gospel of Mark. In yesterday’s post I indicated how Smith went about trying to authenticate the discovery. Here I pick up at that point, again, as recounted in my book Lost Christianities. ****************************** A key question was whether the copyist who put the alleged letter of Clement of Alexandria that Smith mound into the bak of a book was copying an actualy letter of Clement of Alexandria. There is no difficulty believing that a scribe of the eighteenth century might have had a fragmentary copy of an ancient letter at his disposal – possibly a loose sheet in the ancient library, known for its famous ancient texts – and that rather than simply discard it, he [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:07-04:00April 23rd, 2023|Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), History of Biblical Scholarship|

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