Bart’s Biography Archives - Page 8 of 11 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

An Interview about My Agnosticism

Last weekend I gave a talk at the Freedom from Religion Foundation convention in Raleigh. This is a group of agnostics, atheists, and skeptics who are intent on preserving intact the complete separation of church and state. At the convention I was given "The Emperor Has No Clothes Award" -- including an amusing statue of the emperor who in fact has no clothes -- for my writings on the NT and early Christianity. My lecture was called "Writing about Religion: Some Agnostic Reflections," in which I dealt with what it's like to devote one's professional life to early Chritianity when one is not personally a Christian. In a few weeks I will try to post that entire lecture. What I give here is a very short (7 minute) interview that I did in conjunction with the lecture. But it is unlike other videos I have posted because in it I talk openly about my personal beliefs/agnosticism; there is a brief clip from my lecture embedded in the interview. The interview was recorded at the FFRF (Freedom [...]

BDEhrman2017-12-14T23:19:36-05:00May 10th, 2014|Bart’s Biography, Public Forum, Video Media|

My New Course for the Great Courses

Among other things, this semester I’m working on a new course for The Teaching Company (also known as The Great Courses). This will be my eighth course with them. The other seven have all (with one exception) been 24-lecture courses, with each lecture at 30 minutes. So too will this one. Doing these courses is a great privilege and a terrific experience. What I especially appreciate about them is that they reach many thousands of people who may not otherwise have expert-level access to the material covered in them. And I think that when it comes to issues related to religion – and Christianity in particular – that’s really important. We have enough ignorance in the world as it is, and anything that we can do to combat it is all to the good. If you aren’t familiar with the Great Courses, you would do yourself a great service to look them up. http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/search/search.aspx?searchphrase=erhman I myself have watched a number of courses in other fields (e.g. The History of Rome, How to Understand and Appreciate [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:06:05-04:00October 8th, 2013|Bart’s Biography, Reflections and Ruminations, Teaching Christianity|

The Lowdown on Why I Study the Bible

In my previous post I began responding to the question of why I would study a book that I don’t “believe in.” In that response I gave more or less the “official” line as found in my just-now published introductory textbook on the Bible. Here I’ll say something a bit more casual and personal about it. I get asked the question a lot, sometimes by agnostics/atheists who have no time for religion and don’t understand why I would waste my time with it, and more often by hard-core believers who think the Bible is *their* book and don’t appreciate me encroaching on their turf. I understand both objections and am somewhat sympathetic with them, although at the end of the day I have deep and heart-felt objections to them. First, my agnostic/atheist friends. I think it is very strange indeed to think that one should not become intimately familiar with what one opposes. If I’m a capitalist who thinks socialism or communism is heinous, I really should know a lot about them before attacking them. [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:11:26-04:00September 18th, 2013|Bart’s Biography, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Who Cares?

Several people – on the blog and off of it – have asked me about the broader significance of my research on the Patristic citations of the NT, specifically the quotations of the Gospels in the writings of Didymus. Did this research contribute to my loss of faith? Did it lead me away from evangelical Christianity? Did it affect my understanding of any Christian doctrine – my view of God, my view of Christ, my view of salvation? Did it affect my understanding of Scripture as the inspired Word of God? Did it change anything that I thought about anything apart from the Patristic evidence for the text of the New Testament? The answers are clear and straightforward: no, no, no, no, and no! The follow-up question (when asked; you possibly have the same question) has always been: why did you do it then? My answer to *that* is also straightforward. I did it because I’m a scholar who is committed to scholarship and who thinks scholarly research is important. And this kind of textual [...]

BDEhrman2017-12-31T19:31:29-05:00August 23rd, 2013|Bart’s Biography, New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Doing a TV Interview

On a side note, or no relevance to any of the recent threads or to much of anything, I just now got back from a rather grueling interview for a two-hour National Geographic Channel documentary dealing with -- ready for this? -- Jesus. It’s amazing how many of these things get made. People love them, they sell well, the film company and its employees, the TV channel, everyone concerned (well, except the persons being interviewed!) make money, they spread knowledge (sometimes), so they’re all to the good. This is the second one I’ve done in three weeks. (I’ve been in London for a month; this particular crew is based in the U.K.; the other flew over for the interview.) Anyway, I enjoy doing these things, and they’re always a challenge. Off camera, the interviewer asks a question, and you have to come up with about a 20-second answer, in which you give a complete answer with beginning, middle, and end. You can’t just say something like, “Yes, that’s right, because….” since the audience watching the [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:17:58-04:00August 7th, 2013|Bart’s Biography, Jesus and Film, Reflections and Ruminations|

On the Cutting Room Floor: Part 5 and Final!

This first paragraph is repeated from my earlier posts: I have now finished with my final edits for my book How Jesus Became God. In the process of doing these final edits, I have cut out large sections of my Preface and the Introductions of four of my chapters and replaced them with other, hopefully better, sections. But I really like the old ones as well. So, since they won’t appear in print, I decided to post them here as a record of what almost was. The all involve anecdotes about my past. In most instances (the Introductions to the four chapters), these were narratives related to my “deconversion” from Christianity. My editor and I agreed that the reading public has heard enough about all that, and there’s only so much more that could still be interesting to them. And so I have replaced those anecdotes with other things. But I will present them here, anyway, for your reading pleasure or displeasure. The following is drawn from my old chapter 9. This will be the [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:25:29-04:00June 22nd, 2013|Bart’s Biography, Book Discussions, Reflections and Ruminations|

On the Cutting Room Floor: Part 4

This first paragraph is repeated from yesterday’s post: I have now finished with my final edits for my book How Jesus Became God. In the process of doing these final edits, I have cut out large sections of my Preface and the Introductions of four of my chapters and replaced them with other, hopefully better, sections. But I really like the old ones as well. So, since they won’t appear in print, I decided to post them here as a record of what almost was. The all involve anecdotes about my past. In most instances (the Introductions to the four chapters), these were narratives related to my “deconversion” from Christianity. My editor and I agreed that the reading public has heard enough about all that, and there’s only so much more that could still be interesting to them. And so I have replaced those anecdotes with other things. But I will present them here, anyway, for your reading pleasure or displeasure. The following is drawn from my old chapter 8. ***************************************************************************** It is always interesting [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:25:36-04:00June 21st, 2013|Bart’s Biography, Book Discussions, Reflections and Ruminations|

On the Cutting Room Floor: Part 3

This first paragraph is repeated from yesterday’s post: I have now finished with my final edits for my book How Jesus Became God. In the process of doing these final edits, I have cut out large sections of my Preface and the Introductions of four of my chapters and replaced them with other, hopefully better, sections. But I really like the old ones as well. So, since they won’t appear in print, I decided to post them here as a record of what almost was. The all involve anecdotes about my past. In most instances (the Introductions to the four chapters), these were narratives related to my “deconversion” from Christianity. My editor and I agreed that the reading public has heard enough about all that, and there’s only so much more that could still be interesting to them. And so I have replaced those anecdotes with other things. But I will present them here, anyway, for your reading pleasure or displeasure. The following is drawn from my old chapter 7. ***************************************************************************** I first began to [...]

BDEhrman2020-05-08T14:38:22-04:00June 20th, 2013|Bart’s Biography, Book Discussions, Reflections and Ruminations|

On the Cutting Room Floor: Part 2

This first paragraph is repeated from yesterday’s post: I have now finished with my final edits for my book How Jesus Became God. In the process of doing these final edits, I have cut out large sections of my Preface and the Introductions of four of my chapters and replaced them with other, hopefully better, sections. But I really like the old ones as well. So, since they won’t appear in print, I decided to post them here as a record of what almost was. The all involve anecdotes about my past. In most instances (the Introductions to the four chapters), these were narratives related to my “deconversion” from Christianity. My editor and I agreed that the reading public has heard enough about all that, and there’s only so much more that could still be interesting to them. And so I have replaced those anecdotes with other things. But I will present them here, anyway, for your reading pleasure or displeasure. The following is drawn from my old chapter 4. ***************************************************************************** I was raised in [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:26:00-04:00June 16th, 2013|Bart’s Biography, Book Discussions, Reflections and Ruminations|

On the Cutting Room Floor: Part 1

I have now finished with my final edits for my book How Jesus Became God. IN the process of doing these final edits, I have cut out large sections of my Preface and the Introductions of four of my chapters and replaced them with other, hopefully better, sections. But I really like the old ones as well. So, since they won’t appear in print, I decided to post them here as a record of what almost was. The all involve anecdotes about my past. In most instances (the Introductions to the four chapters), these were narratives related to my “deconversion” from Christianity. My editor and I agreed that the reading public has heard enough about all that, and there’s only so much more that could still be interesting to them. And so I have replaced those anecdotes with other things. But I will present them here, anyway, for your reading pleasure or displeasure. The following is from what was originally going to be my Preface; it is the opening gambit. ************************************************************************* The issue that lies [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:26:13-04:00June 15th, 2013|Bart’s Biography, Book Discussions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Agnostic or Atheist?

I apparently threw a few people for a loop yesterday when I referred to myself as an atheist. Several readers responded, wanting to know if I had changed my views, since I have publicly stated that I am an agnostic. I posted on this issue a while back – possibly a long while back – but since I don’t expect everyone to read everything I’ve ever written on this blog (!), I thought maybe I should explain my views again. So – apologies to those of you who have heard this before. When I became an agnostic – 17 or 18 years ago? I’m not even sure any more – I thought that “agnosticism” and “atheism” were two *degrees* of basically the same thing. My sense is that this is what most people think. According to this idea, an agnostic is someone who says that s/he does not *know* whether God exists, and an atheist is someone who makes a definitive statement that God does *not* exist. Agnostics don’t know and atheists are sure. [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:29:24-04:00May 30th, 2013|Bart’s Biography, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Qumran and Masada

As I anticipated, my last day in Israel was the real climax. We did three things of note (and several other things not of note): the ruins of Qumran, Masada, and the Dead Sea itself. I was disappointed with how our tour dealt with Qumran. At the visitors’ center they now have a rather ridiculous little film to introduce the site, but it consists almost entirely of a dramatization, in which an imaginary member of the Essene community describes his experience in the community; much of the description involves a “human interest” element, suggesting that John the Baptist may have been connected with the sect. There is little in the film about the ancient evidence for the Essenes, and almost nothing about the modern discovery of the scrolls themselves, what they contain, why they’re significant, or the substantial debates surrounding the character of the ruins of Qumran (is it the Essenes’ community? A Roman villa? A fort? What are the arguments?) and surrounding the relationship of the scrolls to it (what ties them to the [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:33:22-04:00May 12th, 2013|Bart’s Biography, Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Reflections and Ruminations|

More in Jerusalem

This has been a great trip. One of the things I’ve liked about it is that it has been focused on Israel in a number of historical periods as well as in the present; it has not been entirely about Christian and Jewish Holy Sites. And so, for example, today we did the City of David (that I’ll talk about below), had a grand overview of the Temple Mount (with the Dome of the Rock), walked through good chunks of the Jewish Quarter, had a very nice lunch outside the old city walls, went to the Jerusalem Market (outdoors, lots of food and spice merchants, etc.), and so on. It wasn’t just one holy site after the other, but there was plenty of holy site time as well. The City of David is in some sense the “original” Jerusalem, the place that King David allegedly conquered from the Jebusites and where he then set up his kingdom. It is outside the “old” city walls, which in fact are (only!) from the 16th century, built when [...]

BDEhrman2017-12-31T22:56:12-05:00May 9th, 2013|Bart’s Biography, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

Touring Jerusalem

We are in that part of our tour of Israel – getting near the end – when everything more or less melds together and you can’t remember what you did when or where. These trips involve some serious sensory overload. Today we did some amazing things. First we went to the Western Wall, probably the most sacred spot for Jews in Israel. Years ago people referred to it as the Wailing Wall, but no longer. It is what remains of the wall surrounding the Temple compound back in the days of Jesus, the wall constructed at the time of King Herod. It is most sacred because it is the spot that remains that is closest to what was at the time the Holy of Holies within the temple itself (i.e., it is not a wall of the temple, but of the temple complex). The Temple complex was enormous – large enough to fit 25 (American) football fields (which, among other things, makes it very hard indeed to think that Jesus actually shut down the entire [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:33:32-04:00May 8th, 2013|Bart’s Biography, Constantine, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Historical Jesus, Reflections and Ruminations|

On to Jerusalem

Just a quick post because of time constraints. We just got into Jerusalem and I am off to give a lecture in half an hour. We left Tiberias (and the Sea of Galilee) this morning and traveled down to Jerusalem. En route we went to one of the traditional sites of Jesus’ baptism, in the Jordan River; it can’t be the actual site, since it’s way up north and it is clear in our earliest account, Mark’s, that John was baptizing somewhere in walking distance of Jerusalem. But it’s a gorgeous setting, and there are always groups of people getting baptized there – as today. From there we went to Beth Shean, one of the major archaeological sites of (Greek and) Roman ruins in Israel, with terrific colonnaded walk ways, a very nicely preserved theater that seats 8000 (in the Greek style – that is, built into the natural slope of a hill, rather than the Roman style which tended to be “free standing”), some terrific public baths, temples, and lots of other things. We [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:33:39-04:00May 6th, 2013|Bart’s Biography, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Reflections and Ruminations|

Capernaum and the “Jesus Boat”

I am typing just now on the third floor of the Scots Hotel in Tiberias, in a room with a glorious view of the Sea of Galilee. In the distance, across are the sea, are clearly visible the Golan Heights, where we spent a day or so, having lunch yesterday just 40 miles from Damascus. All may not be quiet on the Western Front (well, in this case, the Eastern Front) but we are safe and sound, and feel more secure than typically we do even in New York City (!). Yesterday there were two highlights to our trip, for me. Capernaum has always been one of my favorite spots in Israel. It is one of those few places where the archaeological record is interesting and the literary texts are important at one and the same time. In terms of literary texts: according to the Gospels, this is the home town of Peter, Andrew, James, and John, the first disciples of Jesus; and it is the place that Jesus used more or less as his [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:33:48-04:00May 5th, 2013|Bart’s Biography, Historical Jesus, Reflections and Ruminations|

Caesarea Maritima

Many apologies to any- and everyone who has grown accustomed to me posting virtually every day on the blog. I left NC for Israel on Tuesday, flew overnight to Tel Aviv, and have been on the run ever since with scarcely a free minute to call my own. Today is … Saturday (I think), so it must be Tiberias…. I am hoping that from now on I’ll be able to squeeze in some time to do a daily post – but I can make no promises. I am on a tour group with for the UNC General Alumni Association. There are 25 of us; I’m giving a few lectures; and we are hitting some of the real highlights of Israel. We spent a couple of nights in Tel Aviv; spent last night on a kibbutz on the Golan Heights, within view of Lebanon and Syria, and now are in Tiberias on the shores of the Sea of Galilee for two nights. It would take a long time indeed to talk about the highlights of the [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:33:55-04:00May 4th, 2013|Bart’s Biography, Historical Jesus, Mythicism, Reflections and Ruminations|

Off to Israel

I'm off to Israel first thing tomorrow morning, and will be gone for ten days. I’ll be on email most days; I’m not sure how much time I’ll have to blog, but I’ll do my best. So this is an alumni tour for UNC, just over 20 people going (they limited it to that size), along with Sarah and me. It’s a great deal for me. On these things the university will send a faculty member who gives a few lectures, hangs out with the people, answers questions, engages in conversation – and gets a free trip out of it! Things could be worse…. This will be my fourth time in Israel. The first time I went was in 1993, and I remember quite vividly thinking before that that it was not a place I much wanted to visit. That seems weird – and seemed weird to me even at the time – since obviously a good deal of my research has to do with Israel 2000 years ago. But I think that I had [...]

BDEhrman2017-12-31T22:59:21-05:00April 29th, 2013|Bart’s Biography, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

My Start in Teaching

I’ve mentioned briefly what it’s like to teach at a major research university, with large undergraduate classes. I’ll have more to say about that soon. For now, I should get to the point of why I raised it in the first place. But it’ll take a couple of posts; my starting and ending point for these posts was / will be to contrast my teaching situation with others that I could have found myself in, but didn’t. And to get to that I need to provide more background. When I was doing my PhD at Princeton Theological Seminary, my one and only goal was to teach (and, of course, do research). I had three kinds of schools in mind that I might want to teach at, in this order: a Christian seminary, a Christian college, a secular school. I had been trained my entire academic career (all twelve years of it after high school! Five years in college; three in a Masters of Divinity program; and four in my PhD) in Christian schools: Moody Bible [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:35:12-04:00April 21st, 2013|Bart’s Biography, Reflections and Ruminations, Teaching Christianity|

Teaching Religion in the South

So, as I was saying in the previous post, I love teaching undergraduate students at Carolina. My “bread-and-butter” course is an Introduction to the New Testament. I teach it every spring semester. Usually the enrollment is around 300; I’ve had it as large as 420, and as small as 180. As I indicated yesterday, the size depends on the number of graduate student teaching assistants available to co-teach it with me by running the weekly recitations sections. One reason I like teaching such large classes is simply that I enjoy being in front of a large crowd of people talking about important things. Another reason is related – with a big class it is possible to reach more people – and what can be more important for people in our culture than understanding the roots of our civilization and the history and literature lying behind the most important book in the Western world? (OK, there are probably things more important: but this is pretty important). If I had classes of, say, 25 students, then over [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T18:35:54-04:00April 19th, 2013|Bart’s Biography, Reflections and Ruminations, Teaching Christianity|

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