Our COO and organizer of all things blog, Diane Pittman, has sent along this announcement of the upcoming Book Club event, a two-parter that sounds unusually interesting.  If it's interesting, are you interested?   Here it is! ****************************** It's BACK...It's BOLD...It's BIGGER than ever...(Well, not really, but it'll be as much fun as it usually is.)   It's the Bart Ehrman Blog Book Club #3 (BBC 3).   Click here to sign up and get the Zoom link.   If you've never had a chance to participate in one of our BBCs, this will be a perfect introduction. Every person, regardless of your beliefs, is welcome. In honor of the Passover/Passion week, we will be reading just one book: "The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach Us About Jesus's Final Days in Jerusalem" by Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan. This book was recommended for us by Bart. Click on link to order directly from Amazon; you may also be able to find it at your local library.   Because Passion week is the [...]

I am very pleased to announce that the Blog's ten-year anniversary is on April 18!   We have been going at it this whole time, ten years, non-stop!  HA!   Tempus is fugiting.... We are celebrating the upcoming date in a variety of ways.  There will be at least one celebratory event,  special announcements, reposting of favorite posts from years gone by, and a couple of fundraisers.   Today I announce the first fundraiser.   A LOTTERY with prizes, with all proceeds going to disaster relief in Ukraine. As to the Lottery:  Each ticket is $10 and you can buy as many  as you like.  So if you want to have a shot (see prizes below), buy one!  If you want to increase the odds, buy more.  The limit to the number you can buy is ....  well, it is limitless. Tickets can be purchased UNTIL MIDNIGHT APRIL 18 (the anniversary date itself). ALL of the money will go to Ukraine relief, through one of the two charities we support that are doing amazing work in this most horrible [...]

I’ve enjoyed getting readers’ opinions on topics over the past few months, and now I’d like to hear what you think about another, which strikes me as unusually important.  It has to do with the afterlife. The traditional Christian belief, of course, is that when a person dies, their soul either goes to heaven to be rewarded for eternity or to hell to be punished, for the same length of time.  (“Length of time” and “time” itself no longer make much sense in eternity, of course.  Eternity is infinite, not long.  Though admittedly eternal ecstasy or torment sure seems long….). Many Christians today are moving away from an idea of hell, to think either in terms of temporary punishment, or annihilation, or …. something else. Many others, including me, do not think there is an afterlife at all.  Like the other animals, we simply cease to exist. Here I am NOT asking for your opinions about whether there *is* an afterlife or about what it is *like* if you do.  (If you don’t know, I [...]

One question I get a lot:  where did the Bible’s chapters and verses came from.   Here's a quick answer taken from my textbook on the NT (The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, Oxford University Press; 7th ed., 2020.  Since the answer is so brief, I’ll attach another couple of paragraphs drawn from a nearby page in the book, dealing with another somewhat related and even more important (for many people) problem: when did scholars start to think that the differences in our manuscripts were a VERY big deal? QUESTION: About the numbers of the verses, who put them?  Who divided the text in verses and chapters, and when? RESPONSE: (from my book) Given the fact that ancient manuscripts did not use punctuation, paragraph divisions, or even spaces to separate words, it will come as no surprise to learn that the chapter and verse divisions found in modern translations of the New Testament are not original (as if Paul, when writing Romans, would think to number his sentences and call them [...]

This next week I'm heading out to San Diego for a debate on March 24 with a Catholic Apologist named Jimmy Akin on the question of whether the Gospels of the New Testament are historically reliable.  I've never debated a Catholic apologist before!  This should be fun. I also (obviously) haven't done a live event in over two years.   So, this will be interesting as well as fun. The event will be live streamed if you're interested, and even if you're not.  Here's the announcement, with ticket information, in case you might want to attend or listen in: Jimmy Akin vs Bart Ehrman - Campaign (catholic.com) MOREOVER (only distantly conntected):  It turns out I'll be free for breakfast that morning.  I'm happy to do a blog event ((as in live, and in person!) if anyone feels like shlepping out to Del Mar.   I'm thinkin' March 24 at 8:00 am.  Anyone interested?  Just send me an email at [email protected]   There'd be no obligation other than showing up, ordering what you want, eating what you order, and [...]

I have often been puzzled by how defenders of the Christian faith attack me and my views by taking the biographical route, pointing out the course of my faith journey, identifying a flaw in it, and then drawing the conclusion that if I had not thought X or been convinced by Y then I would have seen the truth and not been led astray. The way this narrative usually works is this:  “If Ehrman had not been raised a fundamentalist he would have realized… x, y, and z … and he then never would have left the faith”  OR “If Ehrman had not held X view he would not have been so easily swayed when he realized it was wrong” OR “The problem is that Ehrman appears to have thought Y and that’s not at all what true evangelicals think” and so on and on. The reason I find this puzzling is that people get their notions of how I was raised or what I thought from things I’ve written and said and in most [...]