BDEhrman, Author at The Bart Ehrman Blog - Page 8 of 180

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.

Did Luke’s Gospel Originally Contain a Virgin Birth?

A couple of weeks I gave a two-lecture online course called “Jesus, The Actual Son of Joseph: The New Testament Evidence” (not connected with the blog; you can learn more about it on my website www.bartehrman.com/courses). It was an interesting experience for me, in part because it made me think of things and look into things I hadn’t thought or looked into before, and in part because it made me look back at some of the work I had done before but not thought about in a long time. That included a paper that I gave twenty years ago now at the British New Testament Conference organized by Mark Goodacre, back when he was still teaching a the University of Birmingham in England. For this more recent course I re-read the paper (not remembering it!) and (having read it again) thought that it would be interesting to excerpt here on the blog. It was delivered for scholars of the New Testament, but I wrote it so that it would not be overly technical or jargony, [...]

BDEhrman2023-12-11T21:40:09-05:00December 12th, 2023|Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine, Heresy and Orthodoxy|

When Modern Christians Came to Think “The End is Near”

Israel and Palestinians: in my previous post I began to explain why Christians in Britain and America (some of them highly influential on foreign policy in both places) came to support the re-establishment of the state of Israel in the early 19th century. I pick up the discussion there, with another excerpt from my book Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says About the End (Simon & Schuster, 2023). This one too veers into a direction I imagine you won’t expect. ****************************** For years evangelical Christians had been convinced that Scripture predicted Jews were to return to the Holy Land to reestablish themselves there as a sovereign state. After all, the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah had reported God’s words to his people Judah: “I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you … and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you to exile” (Jeremiah 29:14). If the end was near, as indicated by the events in France, then the [...]

BDEhrman2023-12-04T11:42:42-05:00December 10th, 2023|Religion in the News, Revelation of John|

American Support of Israel: A (Widely) Unknown Part of the History

Since the horrific sequence of events that started on October 7, I have been asked about the historical roots of the conflict. Much of the important information is well known and easily accessible, from the biblical accounts of the Conquest of the Promised Land, up through 1948, on to the Second Intifada, till today. I won’t be covering this information here, and I will not be offering my political or personal opinions on the matter. I will instead provide some important and widely unknown historical information on one of the significant aspects of the matter. In a section of my book Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says About the End, published earlier this past year, I discussed how the expectation that “The End is Near,” largely based on interpretations of the book of Revelation, came to affect broad swaths of American culture in ways that almost no one would suspect. I should say emphatically that I’m not one of those religion scholars who thinks religion is at the heart of everything. But it is at [...]

BDEhrman2023-12-07T10:17:07-05:00December 9th, 2023|Religion in the News, Revelation of John|

Jesus in Illuminated Manuscripts and Legends: Video Post

Here's something I've dug out of the archives! I was asked to speak at the Getty Museum, in the Harold M. Williams Auditorium in Los Angeles, California on Thursday, September 22, 2011 during the exhibition "In the Beginning Was the Word: Medieval Gospel Illumination." Illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages are significant for the literary texts they preserve. But they are also important, historically and culturally, for their illustrations of the life of Jesus and other figures associated with him. These artistic representations tell tales of their own, and the visual stories are not always found in the corresponding texts. A careful examination of these images shows clearly and convincingly that medieval artists were familiar not only with the stories of the canonical Gospels but also with many noncanonical apocryphal tales of Jesus. The apocryphal stories, in some instances, were understood to be "Gospel truth" on par with accounts found in Scripture. In any event, here is the lecture that I gave: Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition: Details on the "In [...]

BDEhrman2023-11-27T14:58:34-05:00December 7th, 2023|Christian Apocrypha, Public Forum, Video Media|

So: Did Anyone Think of Jesus as a Miracle-Worker Before His Crucifixion?

This is the final, and most important, of my posts on the miracles of Jesus. In it I raise the question – without being able to come to an absolutely definitive answer – of whether Jesus was thought to be a miracle worker already in his life time or if, instead, miracles came to be ascribed to him only later by followers who believed he had been raised from the dead. I incline toward the latter view. To set the stage for and make sense of what I have to say, I include the final comments from the previous post: ****************************** In the other two Synoptics there is a different understanding, one that can be seen most clearly in the saying preserved in Matthew 11:2-6. Here we are told that John the Baptist, who is now in prison, has heard about “the deeds of Christ,” and sends some of his disciples to him to ask if he is the one to come at the end of time, or if there is someone else. Jesus replies: [...]

BDEhrman2023-11-27T14:56:27-05:00December 6th, 2023|Historical Jesus|

Platinum Webinar for December: “O Little Town of Nazareth? Where Was Jesus Actually Born?”

Dear Platinum Members, It's time for our Quarterly Platinum Webinar. We have scheduled it for Thursday, December 14, 2023, at 7:30 pm. I've decided to go with a seasonal topic on an aspect of the Gospel birth narratives that most people have not much thought about: could "Jesus of Nazareth" have actually been born in Nazareth, instead of Bethlehem? Scholars have long argued so. But on what grounds? I'll explain in my talk, we'll have questions and discussion, and then you can decide for yourself. Hey, it's a free world! Here's the link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85895014121?pwd=d4YeabuDx7s5A5LTzXse3C4wQgebwV.1 I hope to see you there. Bart

BDEhrman2023-12-06T10:21:58-05:00December 5th, 2023|Public Forum|

What’s the Point of Jesus’ Miracles?

I have been talking about the stories of Jesus' miracles, and am raising the question of whether they necessarily go all the way back to Jesus' lifetime, as tales told while he was still living. I pick up where I left off last time, after showing that Jesus' miracle-working abilities increased with the passing of time. ****************************** Not only does Jesus become increasingly miraculous with the passing of time, these miracles are all told in order to make a point. The stories about Jesus as the miraculous Wunderkind reveal that he really was the Son of God endowed with supernatural power straight from the womb; as a five-year old he was already the Lord of life and death; as the resurrected savior he was manifestly a superhuman being of giant proportions. In more general terms, the miracles in our later accounts repeatedly show that Jesus was the spectacular Son of God. He was far superior to all his enemies (even if these were only the aggravating kids down the street). He was more powerful than [...]

BDEhrman2023-11-27T14:51:35-05:00December 5th, 2023|Historical Jesus|

Was Jesus Considered a Miracle Worker During His Lifetime?

In my discussion of whether the historian can deal with the category of miracle, I’m now at the point where I can deal directly with the miracles ascribed to Jesus. This is an issue that I have dealt with in several books, including, most recently, Jesus Before the Gospels. It will take three posts for me to cover the waterfront here. This is how I began dealing with the issue in the book. ****************************** The Miracles of Jesus When one discusses the activities and deeds of Jesus, it is very hard indeed to avoid talking about his miracles. Miracles are everywhere in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life. He is miraculously born to a woman who has never had sexual relations. From the beginning of his public ministry to the end he does one miracle after the other, conquering nature, healing the sick, casting out demons, and raising the dead. So abundantly attested are Jesus’ miracle-working abilities that even scholars who are otherwise skeptical of the supernatural biases of our sources sometimes [...]

BDEhrman2023-11-27T14:32:08-05:00December 3rd, 2023|Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Gold Q&A!! Ask Your Questions!

Hey Goldies and Plats, Now's your chance! I'll be recording the December Gold Q&A on December 11, schedule gods willing, to be published later that week. God a burning, a smoldering, or a cool ? Ask away! Anything related to the blog. I'll do my best to answer. , Send your questions to [email protected], and Diane will compile and send me the list. DEADLINE: Get your question in by Saturday (12/09/2023) midnight (whenever midnight is in your time zone). Every question I get is interesting, but remember that shorter and to-the-pointer questions are more likely to be chosen. Zingers are welcome!

BDEhrman2023-12-02T17:08:17-05:00December 2nd, 2023|Public Forum|

Were Jesus’ Miracles in the Original Texts of the Gospels?

Here's an interesting question I received from a reader many years ago that I had forgotten all about, but I bet it's one some others have had (If you know the "Jefferson Bible" you'll see it has a long history of sorts): QUESTION: I have looked up the content of all the papyri of the New Testament I'm aware of (i.e. the most ancient manuscripts) . It is my understanding that although p52, p90, and p104 are dated around 125-150 AD, they contain fragments of John 18 and Matt 21 only, and that it's not until 200 AD that manuscripts emerge which actually contain accounts of supernatural actions by Jesus. So, it's possible that accounts of miracles existed in copies that got destroyed, but is it fair to say that the earliest available copies of accounts of Jesus's supernatural actions date from around 200 AD? In other words, assuming people on average had kids by age 20 back then, and thus 20 years counts as a generation, is it fair to say that the earliest available accounts [...]

BDEhrman2023-11-27T14:14:16-05:00December 2nd, 2023|Public Forum|

I’m Lecturing on a Cruise this Summer. Interested in coming?

Everyone is traveling these days. I’m traveling these days. Hey, wanna travel with me? This summer I’m doing a tour (and giving lectures) on a cruise to historic coastal cities and religious sites of Western Europe, from Amsterdam to Lisbon, July 30 - August 10. This is gonna be an unusually good trip, with awe-inspiring scenery, gorgeous medieval towns/cities, important religious sites (including Santiago de Compostela), and some of the most amazing museums in the known universe. Included on the tour are some of my all-time favorite cities: Amsterdam, Bruges, and Lisbon. And it includes a bunch of places I’ve never seen but always wanted to, Honfleur (Normandy Beaches), St. Malo (Mont St-Michel), Tresco (Isles of Scilly off the coast of Cornwall; I’ve been to Cornwall a ton, but never the Isles), Concarneus, France (Brittany!), Santiago de Compostela (whoa…), Oporto Portugal. How good can it get? The cruise is being organized / run by Thalassa Journeys, best known for their small-group educational tours for university groups. In this case the small group is not college [...]

BDEhrman2023-12-01T15:09:13-05:00December 1st, 2023|Public Forum|

Is There Any Sarcasm in the New Testament?
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Is There Any Sarcasm in the New Testament?

Paul and His Letters, Reflections and Ruminations

Is There Any Sarcasm in the New Testament?

Every now and then someone asks me if there is any sarcasm used in the New Testament. You would think the answer would be fairly obviously, No. But, well, I've dealt with the issue before, and my response was Yes. Let me start by giving a definition of sarcasm. You can find various definitions just on the Internet, but the basic idea is that sarcasm is a form of humor that used irony in order to mock another. It is difficult to identify sarcasm in ancient writings. In fact, as you’ve probably noticed, sometimes it’s hard to know if someone is being sarcastic when they are speaking directly to our face. The way we typically detect sarcasm is by the context of the comment and the non-verbal signs given – the facial expression, for example, or the tone of voice used and the words orally emphasized. You have none of that for the writings of the New Testament – only a bit of information about context (inferred from the text itself) and no non-verbal signs. [...]

BDEhrman2023-11-27T20:55:16-05:00November 29th, 2023|Paul and His Letters, Reflections and Ruminations|

Was Joseph the Actual Father of Jesus? Announcing a Special Online Christmas Course

I'm pleased to announce that I will be doing a special event this Christmas season, a two-lecture online course called Jesus: The Actual Son of Joseph: Evidence From the New Testament Itself. This is a topic I have long thought about casually but never really dug into until recently. And when I dug, I started realizing that in fact there's a lot buried, more than I expect. There are very good reasons for thinking that a number of the earliest sources of the New Testament (Paul, Mark, the sources of Matthew and Luke), as well as the latest (John), not only did not KNOW the tradition about Jesus being born of a virgin, but actually maintain (in some places) and suggest (in others) that he was not. Whoa. In two lectures delivered remotely on Sunday December 10, I'll be laying the case out in full. Obviously what someone (say the authors of the Gospels) *thought* about the circumstances of Jesus' birth (whether those who indicate his mother was a virgin and those who indicate she [...]

BDEhrman2023-11-26T16:15:12-05:00November 27th, 2023|Public Forum|

Do You Want to Take the Final Exam for My Course: “Birth of Christianity”?

I'm teaching The Birth of Christianity this semester, a course that deals with the history of Christianity from right after the New Testament up to about the conversion of Constantine. Want to take my Final Exam? Well, I ain't gonna grade it if you do. But here are the instructions I gave to the class so they could know what to expect -- including the ten POSSIBLE essay questions, from which I will choose two for them to answer, in essays they could take one hour (each) to write. What do you think? Could you nail it? The Birth of Christianity, Reli 208 Final Exam Questions Our final exam is scheduled for Tuesday, December 12 at (gulp) 8:00 – 11:00 am in our regular classroom. The exam will consist of ten short answer identification questions and two essays. The exam will be closed book, closed notes, and open mind. You will need to write out your answers in a blue book (bring several) with pen and ink! Identifications The first section of [...]

BDEhrman2023-11-23T11:40:51-05:00November 26th, 2023|Public Forum|

An Intriguing and Unusual Demonstration of Early Christian Differences…

Nine years ago when I was discussing on the blog the topic of the current thread -- the wide diversity of early Christianity -- I took the occasion to mention a book that I had just read and found to be unusually interesting and enlightening. It is by two Italian scholars, married to each other, who teach at the Università di Bologna: Adriana Destro, an anthropologist, and Mauro Pesce, a New Testament specialist whose teaching position is in the History of Christianity. Their book is called Il racconto e la scrittura: Introduzione alla lettura dei vangeli. It is about all the things I am currently interested in: the life of Jesus as recounted by his earliest followers, the oral traditions of Jesus, and the Gospels as founded on these oral traditions. In it they develop a theory that I had never thought of before. I’m not sure all the evidence is completely compelling, but the overall view is very interesting and very much worth thinking about. As an anthropologist, Prof Destro looks at things in [...]

BDEhrman2023-11-25T15:34:52-05:00November 25th, 2023|Book Discussions, Heresy and Orthodoxy|

How Paul’s Own Writings Show the Earliest Church Was Split Over “Orthodoxy” and “Heresy”

Are Christian "heresy" (that is, "false belief") and "orthodoxy" ("right belief") products of developments within Christianity after the New Testament? Or can they be detected in the New Testament itself? I'm not asking if the New Testament literally has false teachings. As per my definitions, I'm asking whether it contains views that disagree with one another, only some of which later came to be seen as acceptable. In getting to that answer I have been discussing the views of Walter Bauer, in his classic work, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, who maintained that from the earliest of times, so far as we can tell from our surviving records, Christianity was not a single unitary thing with one set of doctrines that everyone believed (orthodoxy), except for occasional groups that sprang up as followers of false teachers who corrupted the truth that they had inherited (heresies). Instead, as far back as we can trace the history of theology, Christianity was always a widely disparate collection of various beliefs (and practices). In the struggle for [...]

BDEhrman2023-11-23T11:22:34-05:00November 24th, 2023|Early Christian Doctrine, Heresy and Orthodoxy, Paul and His Letters|

How the Canon Itself Tames the Diversity of the New Testament

The writings of the New Testament do not provide good evidence that Christianity started out as an original unity, only to come to be fragmented with the passage of time into the second and third Christian centuries -- so I argued in the previous post. Quite the contrary. And yet having them all in the same book (between covers) does seem to readers to suggest an overarching unity. That's what I want to talk about here. For the most part, the books of the NT are the earliest Christian writings we have, and most of the books can probably be dated to the first Christian century. Probably not 2 Peter. Possibly not Acts. But the others? Probably. Only a couple of other Christian books are to be dated this early. None of the other Gospels (including the Gospel of Thomas, I would say). But 1 Clement, is usually dated to the mid 90s CE and the Didache in its final form may be from around 100 CE (they are both in the collection known as [...]

BDEhrman2023-11-21T14:48:19-05:00November 22nd, 2023|History of Biblical Scholarship|

But Your Own Teacher Bruce Metzger Didn’t Think That!

In my previous post, and a number of times elsewhere, I mentioned my mentor at Princeton Theological Seminary, Bruce Metzger. Over the years I've been asked a number of times why, if he was my teacher, I don't agree with him on so many things. Usually this comes as an accusation more than as a genuine query. Here's a reworking of a response I gave to the issue about ten years ago. ****************************** Prof. Metzger was not just a brilliant scholar but also a deeply committed Christian, an ordained Presbyterian minister, who believed in the inspiration of the Bible and in the literal truth of the statements found in the Christian creeds, about the incarnation, the virgin birth, the resurrection of Jesus, and so on. Behind the question are usually the unexpressed statements: he was more learned than you, he knew what you do, he was your teacher, but he disagreed with you. What's wrong with you that you would disagree with your own teacher?? It’s a good question and it deserves a straightforward answer. The people [...]

BDEhrman2023-11-21T14:48:05-05:00November 21st, 2023|Bart's Critics|

Wasn’t Early Christianity Basically Unified? Why Fret About Occasional Diversity?

I have spent three posts talking about the terms “orthodoxy” and “heresy” and why they are problematic; in doing so I have been explaining both the traditional view of the relationship of orthodoxy and heresy (as found, for example, in the writings of Eusebius) and the view set forth, in opposition, by Walter Bauer. So, where do we now stand on the issue, some 90 years after Bauer’s intervention? As I indicated in my last post, there are some problems with Bauer’s analysis, but also much positive to say about it. Conservative scholars continue to hold to a more traditional view (e.g., conservative Roman Catholic and evangelical scholars); others find it *basically* convincing, even if they would write the details up very differently from Bauer. I am very much, and rather enthusiastically, in this latter camp. It was when I was in graduate school, as a committed evangelical myself, but as one who was moving away from my conservativism based on my detailed research into the New Testament and the history of the early Christian [...]

BDEhrman2023-11-06T13:56:01-05:00November 19th, 2023|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Heresy and Orthodoxy, History of Biblical Scholarship|

The Revolutionary Understanding of Orthodoxy and Heresy: An Evaluation of Bauer’s Views

In my last two posts I talked about the relationship of orthodoxy and heresy in early Christianity. The standard view, held for many many centuries, goes back to the Church History of the fourth-century church father Eusebius, who argued that orthodoxy represented the original views of Jesus and his disciples, and heresies were corruptions of that truth by willful, mean-spirited, wicked, and demon inspired teachers who wanted to lead others astray. In 1934 Walter Bauer challenged that view in his book Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity. Bauer argued that in many regions of the church, the earliest known form of Christianity was one that later came to be declared a heresy. Heresies were not, therefore, necessarily later corruptions of an original truth. In many instances they were the oldest known kind of Christianity, in one place or another. The form of Christianity that became dominant by the end of the third century or so was the one known particularly in Rome. Once this Roman form of Christianity had more or less swept aside its [...]

BDEhrman2023-11-06T14:04:05-05:00November 18th, 2023|Public Forum|

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