BDEhrman, Author at The Bart Ehrman Blog - Page 6 of 206

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 Letter Written by Jesus!? Anniversary Post #10

I sometimes get asked if Jesus ever wrote anything. Well, it depends whom you ask. As it turns out, we do have a couple of ancient writings claiming to be written by Jesus himself. Here is the most famous one that we still have that I blogged about in April 2022, as our Anniversary Post #10. ****************************** In an earlier post I talked about whether Jesus could read, and came up with the definite answer: Maybe. That brought to mind a related question: could Jesus write? And do we have any ancient works that claim to be written by him? Answer: Yes indeed. The most famous (among scholars anyway) is a one-time famous correspondence between Jesus and a king who lived in Edessa in Syria named Abgar. I translated it for the book I published (on all earliest Christian Gospels) with my colleague Zlatko Plese, called The Other Gospels. Here is what I say there about the letters (the one from Abgar to Jesus, then his response); at the end of the post [...]

BDEhrman2026-04-20T22:34:30-04:00April 26th, 2026|Forgery in Antiquity, Historical Jesus|

Anniversary Post #9: Misquoting Misquoting Jesus

Nothing is more frustrating than writing a book and having people -- friends and foes -- misread and misunderstand it and think it's about something it's not. (OK, I think I just lied. There are more frustrating things. It was more frustrating when the the "f" and "b" keys on the keyboard on my laptop stopped working. I had to copy and paste the letters in for weeks) (Well, actually, now that I think about it, there are lots more frustrating things. But still...) That's the topic of my post done in April 2020, which I give here as one of my favorites, Anniversary Post #9, on misunderstandings of my book Misquoting Jesus ****************************** Misquoting Jesus is my most widely read book. And I continue to be a bit amazed and dismayed at how widely it is misunderstood. The book was meant to deal with one very specific issue connected with the New Testament, and people who have read it – let alone the people who have not – often assume it’s about some *other* [...]

BDEhrman2026-04-20T22:29:42-04:00April 25th, 2026|New Testament Manuscripts|

Different Words, VERY Different Theologies, and Understanding Which Words They Were. Readers’ Questions

Here are several recent questions I have received that are oddly (and by serendipity) closely related to each other and connected with knowing the New Testament writings said and meant. QUESTION: Don’t you think NT scholars need to stop calling people raised from the dead back to mortality “resuscitations” (e.g., those in 1 Kgs, 2 Kgs, various NT scenes, and Hellenistic traditions)? These aren’t resuscitations (from an almost dead state), they are real “resurrections” from a truly dead state! NT scholarship has co-opted the word “resurrection” to mean raised from the dead back to immortality, but that’s not what that term means, it just means raised from the dead. In truth, Jesus was both resurrected AND made immortal, and one needs to explain why Jesus’ followers thought both of these things about Jesus. RESPONSE: I'd say it's tricky to come up with words that have the precision the ideas do. The virtue of reserving "resurrection" for the idea of being "raised to immortality" (that is, be brought back to life never [...]

BDEhrman2026-04-20T20:43:01-04:00April 23rd, 2026|Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Bad Bible Jokes. (And do you have any?)

I’m visiting my daughter and her family up in New Hampshire just now, and the 16 year-old is reading A Children’s Bible, a novel by Pulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet, for her English class. But it’s filled with biblical allusions from the book of Genesis and elsewhere, so over dinner last night I decided it was time to tell some Bible jokes. You hear a lot of these if you go to Bible college, trust me. And maybe otherwise! Here are four of the classics. Do you have any? Let’s hear ‘em. Where is baseball first mentioned in the Bible? “In the Big Inning” Where is tennis first mentioned in the Bible? “Joseph served on Pharaoh’s court” Who was the first constipated person in the Bible? “Cain. Because he wasn’t Abel.” (I didn’t tell this last one because I thought it probably required to much background/knowledge to be funny) (I’m assuming it’s funny…): Who was the smallest person in the Bible? There are a variety of possible answers. The wrong ones would [...]

BDEhrman2026-04-20T20:36:01-04:00April 22nd, 2026|Public Forum|

Anniversary Post #8: When Is a Contradiction Not a Contradiction?
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Anniversary Post #8: When Is a Contradiction Not a Contradiction?

Canonical Gospels

Anniversary Post #8: When Is a Contradiction Not a Contradiction?

How can you debate about whether there are contradictions in the Bible if you don't agree on what contradictions are? In this Anniversary POst #8, taken from April 2019, I deal with this issue. At the time we were doing a blog fundraiser involving a debate between me and an Oxford-trained theologian named Matthew Firth, who insisted the Gospels have no contradictions of any kind. I, well, disagreed with this view. What ensued was a multi-post back and forth that you can still see (either go posts from o April 2019 or do a word search for Firth). Here is my preliminary post about the issue of "contradictions," exploring what the term means and does not mean, in my view. ****************************** As many of you know, Rev. Matthew Firth, an Anglican rector trained in theology at Oxford, will soon be participating on the blog in a fund-raising event, for which many of you, bless your souls, have already donated. This will entail a debate with me over whether there are contradictions in the Gospels. The [...]

BDEhrman2026-04-17T10:51:47-04:00April 21st, 2026|Canonical Gospels|

Celebrating our 14th Anniversary! Check Out the Unusual Q&A!

As you may know, this month we are celebrating fourteen years of the blog's existence. The actual anniversary took place back on April 3rd, and to mark the occasion, we did something a little different. Instead of a lecture or formal Q&A, we hosted a live cocktail hour built entirely (okay, well mostly) around hypotheticals. We discussed the kinds of questions that are too playful for a classroom but still rooted in real historical thinking. I offered a few answers to get us started, but the real fun was hearing yours. It turns out that even the most offbeat questions can open up genuinely interesting ways of thinking about the past. If you missed it, here’s the full recording. https://vimeo.com/1182051051/8bf9b050b7?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci

BDEhrman2026-04-12T12:53:57-04:00April 19th, 2026|Public Forum|

Anniversary Post #7: Doing a Graduate Degree in Early Christian Studies

It doesn't seem like it should be that hard to get a PhD in New Testament/Early Christianity, right? It ain't quantum physics! How hard can it be? This is an issue I addressed in April 2018, which I present here as my Anniversary post #7. ****************************** I often get questions from people who have been in a career for a while who want to know if it is feasible for them to go back to school and get a PhD in my field of New Testament/Early Christianity. In most cases it is not feasible at all, simply because it is way too complicated and involved -- and takes way more time than one would think. I teach one undergraduate and one graduate course a semester. Teaching undergraduates is a passion of mine. I love doing it. These are nineteen-year-olds who are inquisitive, interested, and interesting. I enjoy lecturing to a crowd like that, figuring out what can make complicated material intriguing and compelling, keeping them attentive, helping them understand such important topics. [...]

BDEhrman2026-04-23T23:20:44-04:00April 18th, 2026|Teaching Christianity|

Anniversary Post #6 Is Mark’s Seemingly Simple Gospel Unsophisticated?

On the surface, Mark's Gospel seems straightforward and simple, a kind of nuts-and-bolts account of Jesus' life from his baptism to the empty tomb. But is it just that? Here is my Anniversary post #6 celebrating our 14th Blog anniversary, taken from April 2017, where I dealt with this issue in response to a reader's question: ****************************** This post focuses on the literary artistry of the Gospel of Mark – is it a fairly unsophisticated account of Jesus’ life and death? The question itself will require a bit of set-up and explanation. In an earlier post I argued that Mark’s Gospel almost certainly ended in chapter sixteen at verse 8. Jesus has been crucified, dead, and buried. On the third day some women go to his tomb to anoint his body more appropriately for burial, but when they arrive the tomb is already opened, Jesus’ body is not in it, but a young man is, who asks them if they are looking for Jesus of Nazareth. He then tells them that he has [...]

BDEhrman2026-04-14T10:34:30-04:00April 16th, 2026|Canonical Gospels|

Anniversary Post #5: Why I Was Reluctant to Write The Triumph of Christianity

My book The Triumph of Christianity was (by far?) the most difficult book I've written for a general audience (difficult to write, not to read). And it was the most learned in many ways, as well as the one I learned most from by writing it, because of the range of informatoin I had to deal with. Here is my Anniversary Post #5, published in 2016, before I was fully committed (that is, under contract) to write it, explaining why I knew it would be unusually hard. ****************************** When my agent Roger and I decided that we might want to explore the possibility of going with a different publisher, the first step was to come up with a book proposal to shop around. For ten years or so I had been wanting to write a particular book, but had always put it off because it had seemed like such a MAJOR undertaking. I came to think that this was the perfect time to pursue it, to propose doing a new book on a completely new [...]

BDEhrman2026-04-09T15:49:21-04:00April 15th, 2026|Book Discussions, Spread of Christianity|

Anniversary Post #4: Why Gospels Matter Even Where They Are Not Historical
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Anniversary Post #4: Why Gospels Matter Even Where They Are Not Historical

Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus

Anniversary Post #4: Why Gospels Matter Even Where They Are Not Historical

If the Gospels are not historical, why should they matter?? Here is my anniversary post from April 2015; in it I expostulate on the importance of the Gospels even if they are not historically accurate, and challenge the idea that history is all that matters. (It's longer than my typical post.) It is taken from the ending of my book Jesus Before the Gospels (HarperOne) based on feedback / pushback I was getting from some readers, and explains why "memory" is just as important (more?) as history. ****************************** Like most authors, I get a lot of email from people who have read my books. I find one of the comments I repeatedly receive somewhat puzzling and even disheartening. To explain it, I need to provide a bit of background. When I discuss historical understandings of the New Testament and of the historical Jesus, I frequently refer to the problems of our sources. The Gospels were written decades after Jesus’ death by people who were not eyewitnesses and had probably never laid eyes on an eyewitness. [...]

BDEhrman2026-04-14T10:29:15-04:00April 14th, 2026|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

Anniversary Post #3: My Response to an Ill-Tempered Richard Carrier

Here is the third post in my series celebrating our 14th blog anniversary, a post from each of our 14 past years. This is the one I've chosen from April 2014; it's another one that involves a response to a rather spirited attempt to show that I'm an idiot. I tried not to respond TOO much in kind, but, well, I guess it is a bit feisty.... ****************************** Sometimes I think that if I’m “getting it from all sides,” I may be doing something right. The religious conservatives seems to be up in arms about my book How Jesus Became God – both conservative evangelical Protestants and conservative Roman Catholics like the Very Reverend Robert Barron. In fact, as I’ve said, I do not think anything in the book is inimical to Christian faith, unless it is completely committed to a view of the infallibility of the Bible and its full, historical accuracy. The Christianity I admire is not like that. But I get it from the non-religious left as well. Yesterday a [...]

BDEhrman2026-04-09T15:35:55-04:00April 12th, 2026|Bart's Critics, Historical Jesus|

Anniversary Post #2: Why Were the Gospels Written Anonymously?

Here is the second of my "Anniversary Posts" given in celebration of the fourteenth year of the blog. Unlike the snarky first in the series, this one is meant to be strictly informative, on an issue that I regularly get asked about by people who come to realize that the Gospels were not originally circulated in the names we now know them by. But they weren't called something else. They were anonymous. But why? Here was my answer from April 2013, and it's pretty much what I think now in April 2026! ****************************** It is always interesting to ask why an author chose to remain anonymous, never more so than with the Gospels of the New Testament. In some instances an ancient author did not need to name himself because his readers knew perfectly well who he was and did not need to be told. That is almost certainly the case with the letters of 1, 2, and 3 John. These are private letters sent from someone who calls himself “the elder” to a church [...]

BDEhrman2026-04-09T15:15:49-04:00April 11th, 2026|Canonical Gospels|

Anniversary Post #1: Defending Misquoting Jesus

Here I begin my 14-post "anniversary" series with the very first post that appeared on the blog (April 3, 2014). Recall: this thread will consist of 14 posts from each of the 14 years of the blogs life, one per year, 13 of them from ... April of that year. (Not this year's, since if you follow the blog, they are still fresh in your mind. This first one is rather telling. Among other things, it tells how much more thin-skinned, snarky, and combative I was in the days of my youth (fourteen years ago!). Hey, go for the jugular! Even so, since it was post #1, it simply has to start the thread. ****************************** Probably more than any of my other books, Misquoting Jesus provoked a loud and extensive critique from scholars – almost exclusively among evangelical Christians, who appear to have thought that if readers were “led astray” by my claims in the book (in many instances, these critics pointed to claims that in fact I never claimed!) they might be [...]

BDEhrman2026-04-09T15:10:39-04:00April 9th, 2026|Bart's Critics, New Testament Manuscripts|

Celebrating The Blog’s 14th Anniversary! Do You Have a Favorite Post?

Want to help celebrate the beginning of year 15 of the blog? Choose one of your favorite posts (even if you started, say, last week) for us to revisit (see belowe for details) We celebrated our 14th anniversary on April 3 (this year, 2026). Whoa. Never saw that coming. We're gonna keep celebrating for a while. First I should say that this longevity entails some interesting numbers. We have had 4300 posts (most by me; but some by guest scholars and occasionally Platinum members); on average that means about six a week. These posts have generated about 165,710 comments from readers, so around 228 per week; and about 55,000 of those are my replies to questions, so about 75 per week. OK then. More important, we have raised a boatload of money for our charities, nearly $3.5 million since we started; with the last three years being by far the best for our, nearly $1.5 million combined. The vast chunk of that has come from membership fees -- that is, from your generous decision to [...]

BDEhrman2026-04-08T10:06:51-04:00April 8th, 2026|Public Forum|

The Distinctively Jewish Roots of Jesus’ Ethics
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The Distinctively Jewish Roots of Jesus’ Ethics

Historical Jesus

The Distinctively Jewish Roots of Jesus’ Ethics

One of the points I try to emphasize in my book Love They Stranger: How the Teachings of Jesus Transformed the Moral Conscience of the West is that Jesus’ teachings were not made out of whole cloth but are deeply rooted in the Hebrew Bible and teachings of other Jewish teachers of his day. Here is one place in my book where I try to stress the point. ****************************** Throughout the prophets of Hebrew Scripture (Isaiah, Amos, etc.) we find a recurring emphasis that God is concerned for the poor, the outcast, the vulnerable – and he expects his people to be actively concerned as well, helping rather than exploiting those in need. Living centuries later and dealing with different situations, Jesus frequently aligned himself with such prophetic teachings. He shared their assumptions about what it means to live as God wants – above all, to care for others and especially those in need, rather than for one’s own life and desires. Jesus was not alone in this; similar views could be found in [...]

BDEhrman2026-04-04T09:06:43-04:00April 7th, 2026|Historical Jesus|

Understanding the Gospels, Jesus, and the Spread of Christianity: Great Readers’ Questions

Weren't Jews trying to make converts? Did Christians really do it mainly by telling stories about Jesus through word of mouth? And what did Jesus mean when he was talking about the Son of Man? Here are some of the excellent questions I've been asked by readers recently. QUESTION: Bart, My understanding is that Judaism WAS a proselytizing religion between about 150 BCE and 100 CE., which spread Judaism all around Mediterranean and parts of eastern Europe. I got that understanding from the book Crossing Over Sea and Land: Jewish Missionary Activity in the Second Temple Period (2010) by Michael F. Bird. Michael Bird is apparently a well-known New Testament scholar in Australia. Are you familiar with him or with that book? What is your rationale for thinking he is incorrect? RESPONSE: Yes, I know Michael. And no, there's no real evidence of Judaism as a proselytizing religion. This was the view that was popular about 50 years ago and still is among some evangelicals today. The passage in Matthew that [...]

BDEhrman2026-04-02T16:24:04-04:00April 5th, 2026|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

Early Christian Reactions to “Heresies” in a Nutshell

In recent posts I gave brief overviews of issues from the earliest centuries of Christianity that would take (and have taken) entire books to cover in adequate length -- Christian relations with Jews and their relationship to hostile outsiders (persecutions). In this post I deal with the third key antagonistic social situation that arose early on in the faith, the relationship of "orthodox" Christians with "heretics." For long-time readers of the blog, this will probably be more familiar territory -- I've dealt with related issues a lot; but whether you have a firm grasp on the matter or no grasp at all, here is a nutshell discussion to provide some of the basics one should probably know. Again, this is from my textbook, The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press). ****************************** Christianity was highly unusual among the religions of the ancient world because it insisted that it mattered what you believed. As we have seen on the blog before, in pagan religions, “beliefs” played very little role at all: what [...]

BDEhrman2026-03-30T10:05:08-04:00April 2nd, 2026|History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum|

The First Attempts to Wipe Out Christianity

Persecutions of Christians did not become “empire-wide” or generally threatening until the middle of the third century, over 200 years after Jesus’ death. It is a mistake to think all Christians had to go in hiding in the early years/decades/centuries of the church because they were seen by the Roman state as an impending threat. Here I continue with this short series describing the imperial persecutions of Christians, from my book The Triumph of Christianity (Simon & Schuster). ****************************** Valerian (ruled 253-60 CE) Two years after Decius (discussed in the previous post), Valerian assumed the mantle of office. He was the first emperor to issue decrees specifically directed against the Christians and thus the first to sponsor an empire-wide persecution.[1] The initial decree appeared in 257 CE, requiring church leaders to participate in pagan rituals and banning Christians from meeting en mass in cemeteries. More significant was a rescript the next year ordering the execution of all Christian bishops, presbyters, and deacons in the city of Rome itself. Christians at the [...]

BDEhrman2026-03-27T09:39:08-04:00April 1st, 2026|History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

When Emperors Became More Involved in Christian Persecutions
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When Emperors Became More Involved in Christian Persecutions

History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum

When Emperors Became More Involved in Christian Persecutions

When did Christianity first become “illegal” in the Roman world? In my previous post I described the Christian persecutions in its early decades, including those under Nero in Rome in 64 CE and Papias in Bythinia in 112 CE. It would be useful to continue the tale, to see just what the known persecutions were about. This is worthwhile information for anyone interested at all in how Christianity started out and was received in the Roman world. There was no “official” persecution (pursued or permitted by a Roman emperor) for another half century. I’ll pick up the story from there, based what I say in my book The Triumph of Christianity (Simon & Schuster). This will take two posts, focusing on the emperors’ roles in each case. Part of the point will be that persecution rarely happened, at least at an emperor’s bidding, and Christianity was not declared in all effects illegal until the early fourth century – just a decade before the first emperor actually converted (Constantine, in 312 CE). ******************************* [...]

BDEhrman2026-03-27T11:08:11-04:00March 31st, 2026|History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum|

You’re Invited: The Blog Turns 14

I started this blog back in April 2012, and here we still are: fourteen years, thousands of posts later, a few million comments (some of them even on topic!), and over $3 million donated to charity later. I have to say, I never saw this coming. To celebrate, we’re doing something we’ve never done before: a live cocktail hour. No lecture or slides or Q&A. Instead, bring whatever you drink when you’re about to engage in a lively debate (wine? whiskey? sparkling water? coffee? a nice bourbon if you’re feeling Pauline…) and join me on Zoom for an evening of questions that are too fun for a formal course and too academic for normal dinner conversation. We’ll be tackling some of the most pressing hypotheticals in early Christian scholarship, such as: Which biblical figure would make the best Misquoting Jesus podcast guest, and who would be a disaster? Which biblical figure survives a modern 24-hour cable news cycle, and who is completely destroyed by day two? The early church has to survive one family-style holiday [...]

BDEhrman2026-03-30T11:32:02-04:00March 30th, 2026|Public Forum|

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