Dear Gold Members, It is time for our monthly Gold Q&A. Have a question? Ask it! Anything related to the blog! To enter your question on to the list: send it to Diane at [email protected] DEADLINE: You've got a week to come up with something. Deadine will be Midnight March 23; We have the recorded session out to you by March 30, if all goes to plan! Send some zingers. I'm looking forward to it! Bart
In view of our coming fund raiser for Ukraine on Sunday (Fundraiser for Ukraine. Lecture on "Who Killed Jesus? And Why?" | The Bart Ehrman Blog) a long-time blog member and one of my blog advisors, Doug Wadeson, has provided this moving and informative recollection of his times there. ******************** We are all distressed by the events in Ukraine. My wife and I feel a particular connection to this situation as we have visited Ukraine a number of times and still have friends there. A missionary friend ran a language college in Simferopol, Crimea although his ultimate goal was to teach Christian values to people raised in officially atheistic communism. Each year he sponsored a symposium bringing together Ukrainians, Russians, Americans and Europeans in an east-meets-west sort of multidisciplinary meeting where we each presented a paper for discussion and debate, on any number of subjects, but with a particular worldview in mind, usually Christian or atheist. As a medical doctor I offered to participate. He also arranged for me to speak at various medical facilities [...]
Here is another modern Gospel forgery that has over the years won over readers who have thought it was authentic. It's intriguing stuff: an eyewitness account of Jesus' death! Again, this is taken from my book Forged: Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are (HarperOne, 2010). ****************************** An equally interesting modern apocryphon, The Crucifixion of Jesus, by an Eye-Witness, deals not with the beginning of Jesus’ adult life, before his ministry, but with its ending and aftermath. [1] The account comes in the form of a letter written, in Latin, seven years after Jesus’ crucifixion, from a leader of the mysterious Jewish sect of the Essenes in Jerusalem to another Essene leader who lived in Alexandria, Egypt. All elements of the supernatural are completely stripped away from the account’s description of Jesus’ life and death. Jesus is shown to have led a completely human life and to have died a completely human death. But not on the cross. Jesus survived his own crucifixion and lived for another six months. The account [...]
I would like to announce a major public debate that I will be having with the well-known conservative evangelical apologist Mike Licona on the resurrection of Jesus. The title is “Did the Resurrection of Jesus Really Happen? Two Bible Scholars Debate the Evidence.” It will be held remotely on April 9th from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 pm EST. The debate is not directly connected with the blog but is my own thing, done in conjunction with the courses I've been recording for the Bart Ehrman Professional Services. There will be a charge for the event. Some of the profits will be redirected to the blog, and blog members will get a discount (see below). If you have any interest at all, check out the video below. And if you want to learn more or sign up, here is the link: https://www.bartehrman.com/debate/ For now: more on the debate. If you are attentive to numbers, you will notice that this debate will be an all-day affair. Seven hours. Pray for my soul! On the upside (for you [...]
Several people have informed me that they will not be able to attend the Ukraine Fundraiser on Sunday March 20, 4:00-5:30 Eastern Time, LIVE but would like to make the donation and receive a RECORDING, so: Anyone who registers for the event, whether they come to it live or not, will be sent the recording to have for posterity. The recording will also include the Q&A that follows the lecture. You can make your donation on the blog Home page (scroll to bottom), and you can register & get the Zoom link here. Remember, this is 100% a fundraiser for CARE, which is doing heroic work to help Ukrainians who have had to flee their country, so give what you can. I am personally matching donations up to $10,000.
There are blog members who would love to come to the lecture I'm giving as a fundraiser for Ukraine on Sunday, but simply can't afford the donation (for the information about the event itself, see below). And so this post is for TWO groups of people. If you yourself can afford to come and would like to donate a "ticket" or several tickets to the event for someone or someones who cannot, please click here to do so. If you can NOT afford the donation amount but would like to come to the lecture click here to register and on the Donation Amount, simply enter $0 or the amount you are able to give. The blog is not meant to be exclusive but to be open to all. Many thanks to all for being on it and supporting our causes. Note: for those who wish to donate, but can't attend the lecture live, we will be recording the the talk and will make that available to all donors. Here now is the original announcement again. [...]
I'm pleased to give this Platinum Guest Post by Dennis Folds, a highly informed and informative assessment of the relationship between the infancy stories of Matthew and Luke. A lot has been said about these stories over the years, but Dennis has an intriguing perspective that I don't recall seeing before. Terrific! Read it and see what you think. And send some comments/questions for Dennis. Do you have a post to send along for Platinum members? It does not need to be highly informed, erudite, researched: just something you've been thinking about that you would like to share with other Platinum members, anything related to the many issues we deal with on the blog. The queue is virtually empty now, so send your post along! For now: here's Dennis. ****************************** The Synoptic Problem is the framework in which scholars debate about the commonalities among the three synoptic gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke. A lot of material is in all three, more material is common to two of the three, and the remainder is found in [...]
In my last post I talked about a humorous Gospel forgery by a modern scholar. There are a number of other forgeries of Gospels done in (relatively) modern times -- especially in the nineteenth century -- which were not particularly risible but were far more successful. I still get asked about them today, especially by people who don't know what to think about them or, even more, people who assure me they are true. I talk about them in the last chapter of my book Forged (HarperOne, 2011). Here's one of the most successful, as I discuss there. ****************************** One of the most widely disseminated modern forgeries is called The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ.[1] From this account we learn that Jesus went to India during his formative teen years, the “lost years” before his public ministry, and there learned the secrets of the East. The book made a big splash when it appeared in English in 1926; but as it turns out, it had already been exposed as a fraud more than thirty years [...]
Most of us are feeling depressed, frustrated, anxious, stressed, fearful, and helpless in the face of what is happening in Ukraine. Even though there is nothing we as individuals can do to halt the Russian advance and is horrific consequences, we can at least do something to help those in the throes of the humanitarian crisis. I would like to do a fundraiser to provide funds for one of the great charities dealing with the situation, one that the blog has always supported.. We will send all the money we raise directly to Care International. They are doing fantastic work in the crisis and desperately need the funding. Our event will be on Sunday March 20, 4:00-5:30 Eastern Time. It will be a Zoom lecture that I give on "Who Killed Jesus? And Why?" It will involve a 45 minute lecture and a 45 minute Q&A. We are asking all attendees for a minimum donation of $45 dollars. If you choose to come, please consider giving more -- as much as you can and wish. [...]
In a previous post I gave the introduction to my book about ancient forgery, Forged, written for a general audience. Posting it reminded me of a modern forgery that was done by a bona fide scholar -- of a Gospel text! I heard the story numerous times because the fraud was exposed by my own teacher, Bruce Metzger. I think the first time I wrote about the story was in my book Lost Christianities (Oxford University Press, 2003). Here is what I said there: ****************************** Some forgeries have been perpetrated in modern times, of direct relevance to our current study of early Christian apocrypha. One might think that in our day and age, no one would be so deceitful as to try and pawn off any first hand accounts of Jesus as authentic. But in fact, nothing could be farther from the truth. Strange Gospels appear regularly, if you know where to look for them.[1] Often these record incidents in the “lost years” of Jesus – e.g., accounts of Jesus as a child or a young [...]
New Testament scholars are virtually unified in thinking that the Gospels of the New Testament began to appear after 70 CE. The major exceptions are conservative evangelicals who often date them earlier. One can understand why: they typically maintain that the Gospels of Matthew and John were written by disciples of Jesus and it seems implausible that they would still be alive toward the end of the first century (especially given live expectancies in antiquity). There are good reasons, nonetheless, for the scholarly consensus outside evangelical circles. I’ve talked about the matter on the blog before but just now I reread my discussion in my New Testament textbook and thought it might be useful to give it here. In particular I like the final point I make (in the second to last paragraph), which, now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve stressed enough over the years. Here is what I say there: ****************************** Critical scholars are widely agreed that the earliest Gospel was Mark, written around 70 c.e.; [...]
In my previous post I began to summarize the lectures that are available in my course: “In the Beginning: Myth, Legend, and History in the Book of Genesis.” If you’re interested in the course, you can learn more about it on my personal website (which is not directly connected to the blog): www.bartehrman.com Here I will give a synopsis of the final four lectures. Lecture 3: The Ancient Tales of Genesis: Borrowings from the Wider Culture Scholars and lay-readers alike were shocked in the mid 19th century to learn that versions of the most important stories of Genesis 1-11 were discovered in other (non-Israelite) parts of the Ancient Near East. In fact, in many cases these other non-biblical versions can be shown to be much older than those in Genesis. There is, for example, a story of creation from ancient Canaan called the Enuma Elish, which is different in many ways from the story in Genesis 1, but with numerous similarities as well both in the overall concept and sometimes even with [...]
As I have mentioned before, I have started a small business on the side, Bart Ehrman Professional Services (BEPS). At this point it involves booking speaking engagements, providing consultations with authors of various kinds, and online courses. The online courses, of course, are a way of disseminating knowledge about the Bible, the historical Jesus, the history of Christianity, and so on. BEPS is a separate commercial endeavor for me and I am diligently keeping it distinct from the blog, except to announce what I’m up to there for blog members who might be interested. You can also learn more about it on my website, www.bartehrman.com This past month I produced a six-lecture course called “In the Beginning: Myth, Legend, and History in the Book of Genesis.” This is the first of possibly many courses in a long series called “How Scholars Read the Bible.” The entire series will be devoted to showing what critical scholars think, believe, and argue about the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, but also to show why they think what [...]
Please remember our fundraiser for Doctors Without Borders (MUCH in need of support just now in particular!). It's your chance to ask me questions and my chance to desperately think of answers. ALSO: I will have a one-one-one after the event with the highest bidder! And bids are due TONIGHT. See details here: https://ehrmanblog.org/ask-bart-anything-blog-event-march-6/
Here now is the second post on Sting and the New Testament by my colleague Evyatar Marienberg. To learn more about Evyatar and his book on Sting (Sting and Religion: The Catholic-Shaped Imagination of a Rock Icon, Cascade Books / Wipf & Stock, Oregon 2021) see yesterday's post. ****************************** Those who checked the Wikipedia’s page about Sting (and many other online sources), might have noticed that it is said his “real” name is “Gordon Matthew Thomas.” I did not mention “Thomas” in his name, following his birth certificate, and still the reality of Sting’s legal name. Some might have also noticed that a saying attributed to the New Testament’s figure of Thomas was mentioned above. Thomas, in fact, is some kind of a ghost around Sting. In his most recent album, The Bridge of 2021, the ninth track is called “The Bells of St. Thomas” (full disclosure: Sting shared with me an early demo of that song, and asked me for comments). In this song, the interlocutor wakes up in an unknown bed, in the [...]
One of my interesting and unusually wide-ranging colleagues in the Department of Religious Studies at UNC is Evyatar Marienberg, trained in orthodox circles in Haifa, PhD from Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, in Paris, expert in Rabbinic Judaism, author of a textbook on Roman Catholicism, and, most recently, a study of Sting and Religion. That's right, the English rock singer and song writer: Sting and Religion: The Catholic-Shaped Imagination of a Rock Icon, Cascade Books / Wipf & Stock, Oregon 2021. I've asked Evyatar to write some posts for us. Here's the first of two on Sting and the New Testament. ****************************** Professor Bart Ehrman, a colleague, a friend, and the person who was running the search committee that hired me for a position at his (and since 2009, also my) department of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was asking me for some time now if I would like to write for this blog. Well, I, unfortunately, recently, said yes. Following his suggestions of topics, I might [...]
I have been doing a few posts on the difference between popular writing (for a trade book) and scholarly writing (for an academic book). In my last post I reproduced the introduction to my book Forged: Why The Biblical Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are (popular book published by HarperOne); here, by way of contrast, is the introduction to Forgery and Counterfortery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (academic book by Oxford University Press). Both the title and the opening paragraphs are give-aways that this is not meant for most readers, even if those who are interested can certainly follow it and get a lot out of it. It ain't quantum mechanics. ****************************** Arguably the most distinctive feature of the early Christian literature is the degree to which it was forged.[1] Even though the early Christians were devoted to the truth– or so their writings consistently claimed – and even though “authoritative” literature played a virtually unparalleled role in their individual and communal lives, the orthonymous output of the early Christians was [...]
Last week I tried to show the contrast between my trade books for general audiences and my academic books for scholars, by posting the very beginning of my book Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife (Simon & Schuster, a tradebook, 2020) and the beginning of my book Jouneys to Heaven and Hell in the Early Christian Tradition (Yale University, due out April 5 2022; a scholarly book). The general topics are similar, as you can see by the titles, but they are not actually about the same thing. And the level of discourse is different. So too with my books on forgery -- I wrote one for a general audience (Forged: Writing in the Name of God -- Why the Bible Authors are Not Who We Think They Are Harper San Francisco, 2011) and the other for academics (Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in the Early Christian Tradition, Oxford University Press, 2013). In this case the differences are more obvious, I think, from both the titles and the openings. Here is how [...]
On Sunday March 6, 4:00 - 5:15 EST we are holding a blog event which will be a two-way affair: I will have the pleasure of trying to answer questions participants have and participants will have the pleasure of stumping me with questions I can't answer. And a good time will be had by all! This will be a fundraiser for Doctors Without Borders. Donations are voluntary but encouraged for this great cause. To learn more, keep reading; to register and get the link: go here: Register here for the ABA The format: I will take live questions through chat. The questions can be on ANY topic that anyone is interested in. If it is something I don’t know anything about (Kant's second critique or quantum mechanics) or that I would rather not talk about (that little incident when I was 16….) I’ll just say so. I will get through as many questions as I can, answering easy ones briefly and taking as long as I need to deal with more complicated ones. My only [...]
A reader recently asked a question I had dealt with on the blog many years ago. When originally asked it, I responded by saying I had never thought about it before. (!) Below is the question and my initial reflections. My views haven’t matured much during the past seven years (and they ain't the only thing), so I give my initial response. If someone can improve on it, let me know. First here is this week’s way of asking the question: QUESTION: Suppose someone did claim to have found the original…. I get that you can show something isn’t original, such as by dating it to two hundred years later. But is there anything you can do to show it is likely original? Here now is the original post. ****************************** READER'S QUESTION: Were we to have any *original manuscript* of any NT document in our midst, would we be able to recognize and confirm it as such? If so, how? BART'S RESPONSE: Now that’s a question I’ve never been asked before! And in [...]
