A final guest post from Glenn Siepert, on his recent book! ****************************** Here's my last post about my book, "Emerging From the Rubble" - a reflection on Matthew 7:13-14. If you've read the posts, thank you. As you can imagine, this book means the world to me. And if you find yourself navigating through your own loss and demolished Temple, my hope is that it can become a friend to you. Whether you believe in God or not or consider yourself a Christian or not ... I don't think it really matters because I think that whether it's God or the Universe or our own inner knowing - I think that small inner voice can speak to us through these stories and leave us challenged, encouraged, and full of ideas about how to move forward. May it be so. -- A Threat? A while back someone told me that I was walking down the wide road to hell. I don’t remember why or the context of the comment … Was it the podcast episodes about [...]

This is an unusually important post on how to solve the problem of the date of the Qur'an, by my colleague Stephen Shoemaker, connected with his earlier scintillating discussion based on his recent book Creating the Qur'an, which you can check out here: Amazon.com: Creating the Qur’an: A Historical-Critical Study eBook : Shoemaker, Stephen J.: Books The question is: can't you just do a scientific dating of the Qur'an manuscripts and quickly solve the question: when were they produced?  The answer may surprise you.  It enlightened *me* ****************************** Radiocarbon Dating and the Origins of the Qur’an: The Perils of Scientism and Internet Sensationalism   Bart invited me to make another post or two about studying the origins of the Qur’an from a historical-critical perspective, and right off the bat I knew that I needed to write something about attempts to radiocarbon date early Qur’anic manuscripts. It turns out that over the last ten years this topic has become the 800-pound gorilla in the room (to mix metaphors), and much like an actual 800-pound gorilla in [...]

I am happy to announce that I will be doing a new course, Why I Am Not a Christian:  How Leaving the Faith Led to a Life of More Meaning and Purpose.  I explain it all below, but as spoilers: it is July 23, it will involve four talks and a Q&A, and it is free.   You can sign up for it at bartehrman.com/lifeafterfaith  The course will be unlike any other I have given in any context.   It will indeed cover major issues involving the New Testament, early Christianity, and the formation of the Christian religion.  But it will also be deeply personal and autobiographical.  I became a scholar because of my Christian faith; then my Christian faith changed because of my scholarship.  My “quest for truth” led me to evangelical Christianity; and then – as I grew, matured, learned, and reflected – it led me to away from the Christian faith. In this course of lectures I explain how it all happened and discuss what the results were – for my scholarship, my understanding [...]

I am in London for the summer and would like to do another small dinner with active blog members on Tuesday,  July 25, 2023.   Possibly a pint in advance.  This time it will be on my home-away-from-home turf, Wimbledon, specifics TBD. You interested?  If we can get 3-4 folk, and no more than 7, people together, I'd be happy to do it.  If more then 7 reply, I'll take the first 7. No obligations other than: Being a blog member Showing up Talking Paying for whatever you ingest.  Whatever you exgest is free. If you're interested, do NOT reply here as a comment.  Send me an email at [email protected]. Hope it happens!  

Are sex acts other than those between a man and a woman “unnatural”? Very few people ever bother to reflect on what the term “natural” means or how one decides what an “unnatural might be – and what makes it unnatural.  Almost everyone simply assumes that we each have a conscience; that our consciences basically tell all of us the same things; that there are some things we know are wrong, without needing anyone tell us; and – for a large segment of the population -- certain gender identifications and sexual activities are simply “unnatural” and therefore “wrong.” Sometimes arguments are invoked, but usually arguments are not actually thought out and reasoned; they are simply ad hoc constructions designed to convince people who are already convinced. Most commonly, at least in the world I grew up in, the argument against same-sex relations, for example, was simply about the plumbing.  Men aren’t made to have sex with men or women with women.  It’s just kinda biologically obvious, right?  Penises were made for vaginas. The variant on [...]

Why don’t scholars engage in a historical-critical study of the Qur’an the way they do with the New Testament and the Hebrew Bible?   I get asked this kind of thing all the time – with variations: “Where can I find a scholarly discussion the critical problems with the Qur’an like scholars publish about the Bible all the time?” or “I know Muslims claim the Qur’an is perfect, but what to critical scholars say about it?”  or “Why don’t scholars take a historical to early Islam like they do with early Christianity?”   For most of my career there really hasn’t been much out there to suggest, but in recent years that has begun to change.  In large part that’s because of a former student of mine who is now a prominent scholar of early Christianity, Stephen Shoemaker, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Oregon.  Stephen is an unusually productive scholar with a wide range of expertise (and a deep knowledge of a crazy number of ancient languages and obscure texts!).  Check him out [...]