I have a special request to make of all members of the blog. It won’t cost you a dime, but could help bring in thousands. It involves a bit of participation on your end that should be simple but fruitful. Can you help? Here’s the deal. Those of us who produce the blog (Jen, the whole team of volunteers, and I) are very excited that we are moving into its next phase. The blog has done amazing things till now, as you know: over $3 million raised over its lifetime, $580,000 just this past year. Greater things are ahead, as it just gets better and better. We are confident of that because, as you may also know, we have hired an impressive development team, DesignHammer, to create a new, better, and more creative Blog platform that will allow us to accomplish a lot more and a lot more efficiently. The basics of the blog will be the same – I’ll post 5-6 times a week, members at the silver, gold, or platinum levels will be [...]

Here now is the second post by Paula Fredriksen, William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of Scripture, emerita, at Boston University, on her new book Ancient Christianities: The First Five Hundred Years. As you'll see, it is smart, interesting, and accessible.  You can find it most anywhere you buy books. ****************************** It’s an awkward fact, for those of us who have advanced degrees in the study of ancient  religion, that antiquity had no word for, and arguably no concept of, “religion.” Religio in Latin  meant something like “obligation” or “reverence.” Our modern definition of religion rests on a  foundation set in the Enlightenment. Religion, now, indexes conviction, the intellectual assent  and psychological and emotional commitment to a proposition: one believes “sincerely” or  “strongly.” Distinguished from the secular world, religion is embodied in doctrine-defined  institutions, which one can move into or out of. For all these reasons, modern religion rests  preeminently in the domain of the individual. If we reconfigure our definition to mean “relations between gods and humans,” a stark  contrast jumps out: ancient “religion” was [...]

I was very excited when I learned that Paula Fredriksen, one of top scholars of early Christianity of our generation, was producing an introduction to the development of Christianity over its first five-hundred years.  I frequently get asked by reader where they can go for an competent and readable overview of the major issues, and, well, there simply has not been a single source to suggest.  Her book came out a few months ago, and it has lived up to its billing.  It's called Ancient Christianities: The First Five Hundred Years, and you can get it most anywhere. I've asked Paula to give us some sense of the book, and she has graciously provided three posts on it.  Here is the first.  As you'll see, it is intriguing and not what many readers will expect! ****************************** People often speak of “the triumph of Christianity” as if “Christianity” were one single,  uniform thing from the mission of Jesus on through to the conversion of Constantine – and,  indeed, on into our own day. They see Jesus and [...]

I'm very excited to announce that I will be doing a new course on April 6, on the resurrection narratives of the New Testament, called "The Other Doubting Thomases: Did Jesus's Disciples All Believe in the Resurrection?" The course is not connected to the blog, but may well be of interest to all you blog members!  For more information and registration, go to https://www.bartehrman.com/the-other-doubting-thomases/   Early bird pricing goes till March 23, and note: you can get a blog discount by using the code BLOG 5 Of course everyone assumes the eleven remaining disciples of Jesus did believe in the resurrection, and the New Testament certainly says so in places.  But there are other passages that raise significant questions, that to my knowledge are almost never considered by scholars let alone other readers.  Why is it that even in the passages that describe Jesus' resurrection -- nearly all of them in the Gospels and Acts -- we are told that some of the disciples "doubted."  What was there to doubt?  Especially if Jesus was right in [...]

I'm going on a cruise this summer and it looks like a complete winner.  I've made a video explaining it and inviting people to consider coming, including where to call/email to get more info.  Hope some of you can consider it! https://vimeo.com/1060335268/95523b1f33?share=copy

Register: https://unc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_9Oxg0DBJQ_2WiyHKO7Elsw Donate: https://give.unc.edu/donate?f=105550&p=aasf https://vimeo.com/1063322255/1f0e8c4faa?share=copy Will I See Fido in Heaven? The Afterlife of Animals in Buddhism and Christianity Do our pets go to heaven? Do they have souls? Can we talk about the salvation of a pet? What about reincarnation, can our pets come back as other animals, or even as people? This new webinar from UNC Chapel Hill explores these questions by bringing together experts on Christianity and Buddhism to compare how these religions view animals. Please join us for a conversation about the religious lives of the most beloved members of our households, our pets (and other animals, too)! This engaging webinar will feature Barbara R. Ambros, an internationally recognized expert on Buddhism and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies, and Bart Ehrman, a leading scholar of early Christianity and James A. Gray Professor of Religious Studies. Together, they will explore, compare, and discuss the fascinating perspectives these two distinct religious traditions offer on animals and the beyond. The suggested donation is $10. 100% of your gift goes the Robert Miller Graduate [...]

A while back blog member Kevin Grant and I did a recorded interview on the teachings of Jesus about the coming apocalypse.  Did he really mean it?  Are we supposed to take it literally?  How can readers understand the dire predictions?   Here is the video! Kevin is the author of What the Hell is Hell?  A Non-religious Look at the Facts and the Love that Shows You How to Soar, available  on Amazon.com.

Now that I’ve devoted two posts to the major sine qua non of the Gospel of Mark – one that lays out its major themes and emphases, the other that deals with who wrote it, when, and why, I can provide a bibliography of important works, written by scholars for non-scholars. You may find one or more of these useful if you choose to dig more deeply into the the Gospel. For each of the books in this this list I provide brief annotations to give you a sense of what it’s about and so help you decide which, if any, might be worth your while. I have divided the list into three sections: Books that provide important discussion of Mark in general or with respect to a particularly key topic Commentaries that give lengthy introductions to all matters of importance about the Gospel and then go passage by passage to provide more detailed interpretation (that’s where you can dig more deeply into “what does this particular word actually mean?”; “what is the real point [...]

Who actually wrote the Gospel of Mark?  When?  And Why? In my previous post I laid out the major themes and emphases of Mark’s Gospel, and now I want to turn to some of the key historical issues about it.  I begin with the author. The two most important things to note are (1) every surviving manuscript that preserves a title ascribes the book to Mark, either calling it “The Gospel according to Mark” or “The Holy Gospel according to Mark,” or just “According to Mark” and (2) these manuscripts were produced over three centuries after the book was placed in circulation. Our oldest two manuscripts (Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, for you fellow Bible nerds) come from toward the end of the fourth century (around 375 CE), and they have the titles (“According to Mark”).  What about manuscripts before then?  We just have no information (since these are our two earliest).  But it does mean that some 300 years after Mark had been circulating, scribes copying it were entitling it that.  And how much earlier than [...]