BDEhrman, Author at The Bart Ehrman Blog - Page 64 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.

Heaven and Hell at the Scholarly Level (for comparison)

In this short thread I'm trying to explain the difference between a trade book for a general audience and an academic book for scholars, through example. In my previous post I gave the beginning couple of pages of my trade book with Simon and Schuster, Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife. The academic book coming out on April 5 is not covering the same material but is dealing with a related aspect of it, and at a much deeper level. The book does not pursue the question of where the ideas of heaven and hell came from (the topic of the trade book), but rather explores narrated journeys to the realms of the dead in a range of ancient texts. The book is called Journeys to Heaven and Hell in the Early Christian Tradition (Yale University Press). You can get some basic sense of the different levels of the two books by comparing the way they begin. So, in contrast with the trade book from yesterday, here is the academic book. (Again: Please don't [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:57:06-04:00February 22nd, 2022|Book Discussions|

Heaven and Hell at the Popular Level

I often get asked about the difference between my trade books for general audiences and my academic monographs for scholars. Three times in my career I have written on the same topic for a popular and a scholarly audience. The first was one on the manuscripts of the NT. The popular book was Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind Who Changed the Bible and Why; the academic one was The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament. Just from the title it should not be too hard to tell which one is trying to cater to a wider audience and which one is directed to fellow academic nerds. So too with the next set, dealing with the issue of pseudonymity in the New Testament and other early Christian Writings. The popular account: Forged: Writing in the Name of God -- Why the Bible's Authors are Not Who We Think They Are; the academic one: Forgery and Counter-forgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in the Early Christian [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:57:06-04:00February 20th, 2022|Afterlife, Book Discussions|

The Messages of Jesus and Paul: Basically the Same or Fundamentally Different?

I have been talking about the relationship of Jesus’ proclamation of the coming Kingdom of God to Paul’s preaching about the importance of the death and resurrection of Jesus. In the previous post I argued that the fundamental concerns, interests, perspectives, and theologies of these two were different. In this post I’d like to give, in summary fashion, what strikes me as very similar and very different about their two messages. Again, in my view it is way too much to say that Paul is the “Founder of Christianity”: that assumes that he is the one who personally came up with the idea of the importance of the death and resurrection of Jesus for salvation, whereas almost certainly this view had been around for a couple of years before he came onto the scene. And it is probably too much even to say that he was the “Co-founder of Christianity,” for much the same reason. But it is safe to say that of all the early Christian thinkers and missionaries, Paul is the one we [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:57:06-04:00February 19th, 2022|Historical Jesus, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum|

Jesus and Paul: Are They on the Same Page?

I spent several posts explicating Paul’s understanding of his gospel, that by Christ’s death and resurrection a person is put into a restored relationship with God. He had several ways of explaining how it worked (the “judicial” model; the “participationist” model; and the other models I described). But in all of these ways, it was Jesus’ death and resurrection that mattered. It was not keeping the Jewish law. It was not knowing or following Jesus’ teaching. It was not Jesus’ miracles. It was not … anything else. It was Jesus’ death and resurrection. I then summarized in my previous post, the teaching of Jesus himself, about the coming Son of Man and the need to prepare by keeping the Law of God, as revealed in the Torah, as summarized in the commandments to love God above all else and to love one’s neighbor as oneself. Do these represent the same religion? I see this as one of the most fundamental and important questions in all of early Christianity. I’m not asking if Paul invented Christianity, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:57:06-04:00February 17th, 2022|Historical Jesus, Paul and His Letters|

Would Anyone Invent the Story of the Women at the Tomb?

I received a question in the comments recently that I've gotten a lot before. Wouldn't the Gospel story about women being the first to realize Jesus had been raised be contrary to what Christians would have *wanted* to say, possibly even embarrassing? If so, isn't it likely that no one made it up but that it's actually what probably happened? It's been a few years since I posted on the question, so it seems like a good chance to post on it again. Here's what I've said before: ****************************** Who in the ancient world would ever try to *prove* the resurrection by making up a story that women, in particular, discovered Jesus' empty tomb? Weren't women seen as complete unreliable witnesses? Their testimony never even accepted in a court of law? If someone want to prove that Jesus had been raised -- and that therefore the tomb was empty -- they would have invented *men* at the tomb (reliable witnesses) rather than *women* (untrustworthy). Right? The reason anyone ever has this question is because it [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:56:51-04:00February 16th, 2022|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

(Re)Thinking Everything. Guest Post by Glenn Siepert

As you probably know, a number of volunteers work for the blog, graciously giving their time and talents to promote the work we're doing. As one of the perks, volunteers who have published a book of relevance to what we do here on the blog can write a post on it for us. I did an interview this past August with Glenn Siepert that I enjoyed very much; he is a very good interviewer (you can see it here: Interview on Lost Christianities: "What If Project" Podcast | The Bart Ehrman Blog ). Afterward he volunteered to design graphics for some of the blog posts, and we've all benefited from it. Glenn has just published a book about how he left a fundamentalist form of Christianity and the new world he then entered into. Here is his description of his experience and the book. ****************************** Hello friends. My name is Glenn Siepert and Bart invited me onto the blog today to share with you a bit about my new book that I recently self-published via [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:57:05-04:00February 14th, 2022|Book Discussions, Public Forum|

My Response to A Book That Responded To My Book: How Jesus Became God

I was browsing through some blog posts from many years ago and came upon this one, which I had completely forgotten about. It gets a bit feisty at the end, and that's because it was written back when I was ... feistier. Even so, it makes an overarching point I still agree with. It's about my book that tries to explain how the early Christians came to see Jesus as God. ****************************** My publisher, HarperOne, asked me to write a 1000-word response to the book that was written in response to How Jesus Became God. As you probably know, the book is called, somewhat expectedly, How God Became Jesus. I have toyed with the idea of giving a chapter-by-chapter response here on the blog. I’ve grown a bit cold to the idea, though, since I’m not sure every chapter of their book really needs a response. I may respond to a couple of the chapters. In the meantime, here’s one response you can read that is, interestingly, written by Daniel Kirk, a professor of NT at the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:56:50-04:00February 13th, 2022|Bart's Critics, Book Discussions|

The Heart of Jesus’ Message

To this point in the thread I have been talking about Paul’s “religion” – specifically, what he thought was important in a person’s relationship with God. He expressed his views in a variety of ways – I have talked about his judicial and his participationist understandings of salvation, and have made brief comments on yet other “models” that he used to express his view about the act of salvation that God had achieved through Christ. In all of these models, it was the death and resurrection of Jesus that was of paramount importance. It was that, nothing else, that brought about salvation. And what did Jesus himself think? This is arguably the most important point to consider about early Christianity. Did the best known apostle of Christ proclaim the same, or very similar message, to Jesus himself? Or not? In my New Testament class every semester I have my students debate, in class, a resolution dealing with the issue: “Resolved: Paul and Jesus represented fundamentally different religions.” Students are surprised by the topic. Until they [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:56:51-04:00February 12th, 2022|Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Preface to My Book on Revelation: Expecting Armageddon

I have sent my book manuscript off to my editor. She will work it over, ask for edits, and we'll go from there. The preface to the book, as it now stands, explains what the book is about and what I try to argue for in it. I thought I'd pass it by you to see what you think. ****************************** Preface Many of the early Christians had serious doubts about the book of Revelation and did not think it should be included in the New Testament. The author, they argued, was not an apostle and the book presented views that were clearly unacceptable. In the end, of course, they lost the argument. But once the book came to be widely accepted as Scripture, the followers of Jesus had to figure out how to make sense of it. Over the long course of Christian history, many readers of the Bible have widely opted not to delve into its mysteries at all. Even today, most find it bizarre and unapproachable. Those who do read it fall into [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:56:51-04:00February 10th, 2022|Book Discussions, Revelation of John|

Still Other Models of Salvation in Paul

I have been discussing various ways that Paul understands the importance of the death and resurrection of Jesus for salvation, and have focused on the judicial and participationist models – mainly because these are the two that Paul most frequently appeals to (without calling them the judicial and participationist models!). I need to clarify a few points before moving on to speak of yet other models that Paul appears to use. First, over the years when I've discussed these models in a public forum, people have asked me about my personal views of these models. Several have asked how I could possibly believe such a thing. And one has asked what right I have to talk about “sin” if I’m not a Christian and so do not believe in sin. So let me clear: I’m not affirming or denying anything Paul says in any of his writings. I’m simply describing what it is he says. Some people have trouble understanding the difference between description and prescription, but there’s a big difference. I remember back when [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:56:50-04:00February 9th, 2022|Public Forum|

Paul’s Models of Salvation: Contradictory or Complementary?

I’ve been discussing how Paul understands the significance of Jesus’ death and resurrection for salvation, and have done so by laying out as concisely as I could his two principal “models” of how salvation worked, the judicial and the participationist model. In this post I’ll make some brief concluding comments about the two models, in particular in relation to one another, again from my textbook on the New Testament. ****************************** Comparison and Contrast of the Two Models Let me emphasize that the two models of salvation we have been looking at are ways of understanding something. They are not the thing itself. Paul's gospel is not "justification by faith" or "union with Christ." These are ways of reflecting on or thinking about his gospel. His gospel is God's act of salvation in Christ; the models are ways of conceptualizing how it worked. The way it worked differed according to which model Paul had in mind. In both of them, the problem is "sin." But in one, sin is an act of disobedience that a person [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:56:50-04:00February 8th, 2022|Paul and His Letters|

The “Common Era”: Invented to Stop Speculations About the End of the World. Platinum Guest Post by Daniel Kohanski

I'm pleased to publish this Platinum guest post by Dan Kohanski. I think I can *guarantee* that most of you will not have heard this information before! And it's really interesting, the kind of thing you might wonder about but not know who to ask. Dan will be happy to respond to your comments and questions. Do you have anything you want to post about? You don't have to do massive research or be a scholar in the field -- just have in interest in expressing your views, getting them out there, getting some feedback from kindly-disposed readers, your fellow Platinums! If you're interested, just let me know! For now, Here's Dan: ******************************* The first Christians were driven by the expectation of the immediate end of the world as it then existed. It was going to happen right now, or tomorrow, certainly within a few days, definitely within their generation, surely within their own lifetime. The disciples preached that Jesus had gone to heaven to get the kingdom moving, as it were, and [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:56:51-04:00February 7th, 2022|Public Forum|

Paul’s “Participationist” Model of Salvation.

I started explaining that Paul has different ways that he conceptualizes the act of salvation – how the death and resurrection of Christ restores a person to a right relationship with God. The judicial model that I laid out can be found in several of Paul’s letters, especially Romans and Galatians. But he has other ways of understanding how salvation works, other models involving Jesus’ death and resurrection. The other BIG one can be called the Participationist model. Here is what I say about it in my textbook on the New Testament: ****************************** The Participationist Model. Most of us today have no trouble understanding how a judicial process can be seen as analogous to the act of salvation. The participationist model, however, is much harder to get our minds around. This is partly because it involves a way of thinking that is no longer prevalent in our culture. Under this second model the human problem is still called "sin," "sin" is still thought to lead to "death," and Christ's death and resurrection still work to [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:56:50-04:00February 6th, 2022|Paul and His Letters|

Do We Have Any Reliable Sources for Pontius Pilate?

I recently was asked in a comment what kind of independent information do we have, outside the Gospels, for Pontius Pilate? Answer: not much. I told the commenter that I thought I had once written about the matter, and lo and behold, I was right. It was in my book Did Jesus Exist? The book was written to show why -- contrary to what you sometimes hear these days -- there doesn't seem to be any reason to doubt that, whatever else you might think of him, there was a man Jesus of Nazareth (a Jewish teacher from Galilee who was crucified on orders of Pontius Pilate --- and about whom we can say a good deal more. This is not an issue I want to re-address here again on the blog. But I do want to show why it's not weird that Jesus isn't talked about much in ancient sources. Here's what I said about it in my book (slightly edited for the sake of the blog): ****************************** I have often pointed out that [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:56:50-04:00February 5th, 2022|Historical Jesus|

Are the Teachings of Jesus Realistic? Platinum guest post by Douglas Wadeson

Now *here's* a challenging post, by Platinum member Doug Wadeson. Read it and see! Doug will be happy to reply to responses. Many thanks Doug. Others of you who want to do a post -- go for it. ********************** Jesus is generally thought of as a great moral teacher, but I have heard that questioned on occasion. For example, Jesus said, “Do not show opposition against an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other toward him also” (Matthew 5:39). Really?! Does Jesus want us to be target practice for bullies? Won’t that just enable and embolden them? And on a society scale, if America is attacked are we not supposed to defend ourselves? Otherwise evil will win. A real sore point for some people is that Jesus never condemned slavery, which was a common institution in his day (e.g., Matthew 10:24, 24:46, etc.). Apologists sometimes rationalize this by explaining that slavery was not that bad in the Roman empire; it was more like indentured servitude. Yet a truly wise [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:56:51-04:00February 4th, 2022|Historical Jesus|

How Did Paul Understand Salvation? The “Judicial” Model

I am currently in the middle of a thread discussing the significance of Paul to the history of early Christianity. So far I have been trying to argue that Paul is of utmost importance to the New Testament itself, but that it is very difficult to know how much of what we think of as Pauline theology (the doctrine of the atonement, for example) was *distinctive* of Paul (I doubt if he came up with the idea himself) and that there are some prominent features of Paul’s thought – e.g., the importance of Jesus’ resurrection – that he must have inherited from Christians before him. One of my ultimate points is going to be that whatever one thinks about Paul’s originality, it is clear that the gospel that he proclaimed looked very different from what Jesus himself taught. To get to that point, I have to deal a bit more with what it is that Paul proclaimed. Nowhere does Paul lay out his gospel message more clearly than in the book of Romans. The reason [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:56:50-04:00February 3rd, 2022|Paul and His Letters|

What Was Paul’s Innovation?

I was recently recording the monthly Q&A that I do with Gold members of the blog (if you're not a Gold member, this is one of the perks of moving to that level: every month Gold members ask me questions -- in writing -- and I record a 50-55 minute audio Q&A answering them; since the Gold members get audio versions of the posts, as well as written, this is an add-on they get every month. Think about joining!). In this Q&A I received a lot of really interesting questions, but one was very important for understanding the life and ministry of Paul. And now I see that it was closely related to a question I received on the blog years ago, which is exactly what I was going to post on today anyway! Here's the original blog question and response. QUESTION What do you make of Paul’s statement that he didn’t get the good news (= the resurrection and thus the triumph over death) from other humans but from the ‘risen Christ’ himself? [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:56:50-04:00February 2nd, 2022|Paul and His Letters|

What Do You Think? What’s It Mean to Study Religion in a Secular University?

One of my classes this semester is a First Year Seminar, designed, obviously for students in their first year of college (either semester) and meant to be a bit more hands-on and with an unusual creative component. I’ve mentioned the course on the blog in previous years; it is called “Jesus in Scholarship and Film.” (The creative element: for a final writing project they have to write a Gospel.) In preparation for the second meeting of the semester this time I asked the students to reflect on what they thought would be the difference between studying religion – and especially the New Testament and the historical Jesus – in a faith context such as a church, synagogue, or Sunday School, and in a secular research university funded in part by the state. It led to an interesting discussion and the students had good ideas. Most of the comments were along similar lines, that there must be a difference between discussing biblical writings in light of your faith / personal beliefs and studying them as historical [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:56:50-04:00February 1st, 2022|Public Forum|

How Important Was Paul, Actually, For Early Christianity?

I’d like to say a bit more about Paul in relationship to the beginning of Christianity. Yesterday I argued that Paul could not have invented the idea of the resurrection. I should point out that Paul himself – who was always proud of the “revelation” of the truth given to him and his part in disseminating it (see Galatians 1-2) – admits in 1 Cor. 15:3-5 that he “received” from others the view that Christ died for sins and rose from the dead, before appearing “first” to Cephas and then others. I should stress, this language of “receiving” and “passing on” has long been understood as a standard way of indicating how tradition was transmitted from one person to another. Paul did not “receive” this information from his visionary encounter with Jesus (Jesus didn’t tell him: first I appeared to Cephas then to… and then to… and then finally to you!). Paul received this core of the Gospel message from those who were Christians before him. People today often think of Paul as the second-founder [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:56:49-04:00January 30th, 2022|Paul and His Letters|

Reminder! Live Lectures Tomorrow (Sunday 1/30/2022)

In case you're interested: here is the post I made a while back about the course I'll be starting tomorrow. *********************** I am pleased to announce that I will be doing a six-lecture online (recorded) course called: “In the Beginning: History, Legend and Myth in the Pentateuch. Part 1. The Book of Genesis.” This will not be in connection with the blog per se, but there is an important connection worth noting for blog members (see below). The plan is to make this course the first installment of a rather long series of courses that I am calling, “How Scholars Read the Bible.” (The next six-lecture course – no surprise! – will be the rest of the Pentateuch after Genesis). Each lecture in this course, and the ones that follow, will be thirty minutes of length. We will later be announcing the release date of the course (it will probably in February). But I want to let you know about it now, so that it can be on your radar screen. And because there is [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:56:51-04:00January 29th, 2022|Public Forum|

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