Bart's Debates Archives - Page 5 of 6 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

Discussions and comments about past and current debates with other scholars.

My Debate This Past Weekend

I just returned yesterday from a two-day event in New Orleans involving a public debate with an Australian New Testament scholar named Michael Bird, who is the author of The New Testament in Its World: An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christians, and Introducing Paul: The Man, His Mission and His Message. To explain the situation, I need to give some background. As most readers on the blog know, a couple of years ago I published my book How Jesus Became God. This was my attempt to show how it is that the man Jesus, an apocalyptic preacher from a remote area of rural Galilee, came to be considered the second member of the Trinity, God the creator, who had always existed, who was fully equal with the God of the universe, who was in fact of the same “essence” as him. How’d that happen exactly? Also as many of you know, a group of evangelical scholars learned I was writing the book, and decided, even before they had seen it [...]

BDEhrman2020-06-03T15:55:04-04:00February 15th, 2016|Bart's Debates, Book Discussions, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Ehrman Licona Debate – Prove Jesus Rose from Dead

On February 28, 2008 I flew back to (near) my home turf, Kansas City, Missouri where I debated Christian apologist Mike R. Licona on the topic, "Can Historians Prove that Jesus Rose from the Dead?" The event took place on at 7 p.m. held at the Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. You can guess whose side the crowd was on! Mike is one person I've debated over the years with whom I have a very good relationship. When we're not going at it verbally, we get along well and have a chummy relationship. Even if each of us thinks the other is completely dead wrong about things -- including the important topic of this debate. Mike Licona is author of Why Are There Differences in the Gospels and Evidence for God: 50 Arguments For Faith From The Bible, History, Philosophy, And Science, among others. The debate is discussed in the book "Come Let Us Reason: New Essays in Christian Apologetics" edited by Paul Copan, William Lane Craig. Chapter 9 is written by Michael Licona, which reviews this debate [...]

BDEhrman2020-05-05T13:01:53-04:00October 3rd, 2015|Bart's Debates, Video Media|

My Debate with Kyle Butt on the Problem of Suffering

Kyle Butt Debate. On April 4, 2014, I had a lively and, well, rather rigorous and at times somewhat unpleasant debate (unpleasant for maybe both of us?) with a conservative Christian apologist named Kyle Butt at the campus of the University of North Alabama (UNA). Gospel Broadcasting Network aired the event live on their television network, as well as live-streamed it on the Internet. We were debating whether the problem of suffering can call into question the existence of God. Kyle Butt Debate with Bart Ehrman Kyle wrote previously about the event explaining that "He [Bart] is a self-avowed agnostic who claims that the pain and suffering he sees in the world make it impossible for him to believe that the Christian God exists. Thus, the debate will be on the subject of suffering and the existence of God. Ehrman will be affirming: “The pain and suffering in the world indicate that the Christian God does not exist.” I will be denying that proposition." Kyle Butt, M.A. is a graduate of Freed-Hardeman University, where he [...]

BDEhrman2022-06-19T00:03:10-04:00September 26th, 2015|Bart's Debates, Video Media|

Live Stream the Debate Tonight

One of the readers of the blog has submitted this: Found this claim: Livestreaming is happening for the Friday night debate, “Did the Historical Jesus Claim to be Divine?” Instructions: To view the event you must have an account with livestream.com. If you do have an account, just sign in to your account to view. If you do not have an account you will have to go through the process of creating an account with Livestream.com. Just copy and paste the URL below and follow the instructions. https://livestream.com/accounts/12497542/events/4350731 Moreover, another asked me why in the world I'm interested in doing debates with this, against people I so thoroughly disagree with in front of audiences that are antagonistic toward me and my views. So here's the deal. First, with respect to such debates in general. I accept about five speaking (or debating) gigs each semester. I charge a healthy fee for these gigs -- minimum $5000 (depending on where it is, how much travel, and so on; west coast is $6000; international is more like $8000; [...]

BDEhrman2017-11-27T20:37:18-05:00September 18th, 2015|Bart's Debates|

Kickstarting a Debate

I periodically get asked to have a public debate with a mythicist on the question of their real concern: Did Jesus Exist? I have regularly declined these offers, for a variety of reasons: The question is not really a matter of dispute among experts, even though mythicists as a rule would like it to be and sometimes even insist it is. But the reality is this: if you were to look at the program of the annual meeting of (the many thousands of English-speaking) professors of Biblical Studies, the Society of Biblical Literature meeting (this year in Atlanta), you will not find a session (out of thousands) devoted to arguing both sides of this issue. That’s because there is no debate. There is debate generated by the mythicists themselves, of course, and in recent years there have been two bona fide scholars in relevant fields (out of the tens of thousands of scholars in relevant fields) who have become outspoken in support of a mythicist view. But like it or not (most mythicists don’t) (quite [...]

BDEhrman2017-11-29T21:34:43-05:00June 26th, 2015|Bart's Debates, Mythicism, Public Forum|

Follow-up Apologies for the Post on Dinesh D’Souza

I was completely taken aback when I got up this morning (I’m in London – five hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time) to check my blog and Facebook pages to find that I caused a bit of a firestorm by my comments on Dinesh D’Souza when in yesterday’s post I introduced the video of the debate that I had had with him a couple of years ago. That was not my intention at *all* and I’m non-plussed, surprised, and embarassed. All sides of the political spectrum have reacted strongly – rabid liberals hee-hawing and rabid conservatives fuming and others weighing in one way or the other. Woops. Not what I had in mind. Now that I re-read my opening comments, I see how they are being read, and they are not being read in the way that I meant them. But I need to apologize to Dinesh and to anyone else I have offended. My intention was *not* to badmouth Dinesh, whom I like on a personal level even if absolutely not on the political. [...]

BDEhrman2017-12-14T22:49:10-05:00August 3rd, 2014|Bart's Debates, Public Forum|

My Debate with Dinesh D’Souza on the Problem of Suffering

A prominent figure in the news lately has been Dinesh D'Souza. Dinesh is best known as a hyper-conservative political commentator. His most recent book is America, and this week it is #1 on the New York Times bestseller list for non-fiction. It has a companion documentary film. If you're politically very-right-wing conservative and despise Barack Obama and everything he stands for -- this is the book for you! Dinesh was a policy analyst in the Reagan White House as a 20-something Wunderkind; he has served as John M. Olin Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. The New York Times Magazine named him as one of America's most influential conservative thinkers. Newsweek listed him as one of the country's most prominent Asian Americans. Dinesh has also been in the news for several other things in the past two years, in connection with his (former) presidency of Kings college -- a conservative evangelical institutions that trains conservative Christians in business and finance so that they can get high level places at Goldman Sachs-- and more recently because [...]

BDEhrman2020-12-29T00:55:02-05:00August 2nd, 2014|Bart's Debates, Public Forum, Video Media|

My Debate on Suffering with Philosopher Richard Swinburne

This is a radio debate that I had on January 10th, 2009 with Richard G. Swinburne, a philosopher who teaches at Oxford; Swinburne is a Christian and is well-known in philosophical circles. The debate involved an area we are both interested in, The Problem of Suffering and whether it makes sense to be a theist in light of the pain and misery in the world. I have to say, this is probably the only radio debate that I've ever done where I got genuinely angry at an opponent. Swinburne's answers to the worlds misery struck me as completely remote from any pain -- the stereotypical arm-chair-ivy-tower rationalism that makes me wonder if some people have any empathy at all with their fellow human beings who suffer so terribly. In any event, the debate was moderated by Justin Brierley for his radio show "Unbelievable," a weekly program on UK Premier Christian Radio. Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition:

BDEhrman2017-12-14T23:05:50-05:00June 8th, 2014|Bart's Debates, Public Forum, Video Media|

Video: Bart Ehrman vs. James White Debate
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Video: Bart Ehrman vs. James White Debate

Bart's Debates, Public Forum, Video Media

Video: Bart Ehrman vs. James White Debate

James White vs Bart Ehrman: I wasn't sure whether I should post this debate or not. Frankly, it was not a good experience. I normally do not have an aversion to the people I debate. But James White is that kind of fundamentalist who gets under my skin. James White vs Bart Ehrman To be fair, he would probably not call himself a fundamentalist. Then again, in my experience, very few fundamentalists *do* call themselves fundamentalists. Usually, a "fundamentalist" is that guy who is far to the right of *you* -- wherever you are! Someone on the blog can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe White does hold to the absolute inerrancy of the Bible. If so, given what else I know about him, I'd call him a fundamentalist. James White vs Bart Ehrman - Here's the Debate! In any event, he's a smart fellow and came to the debate loaded for bear. But it's good to see me at not my best as well as at my best. So why [...]

BDEhrman2022-05-22T23:59:24-04:00April 27th, 2014|Bart's Debates, Public Forum, Video Media|

Media: How Jesus became God – Ehrman vs Gathercole Pt 2

Here is the second part of my radio "debate" (rather, exchange of views) with Simon Gathercole. To refresh your memory (or in case you didn't see the earlier post with the first part), Simon is a Senior Lecturer in New Testament at Cambridge University. He is a serious and well-known scholar, and also happens to be an evangelical Christian. We disagree on a lot of things, but we are civil about our disagreements, and I respect his opinions even though I disagree heartily with many of them -- especially on the topic at hand! This part of the program focuses more on Paul than on the Gospels. Again, this was recorded for, played on, the program called "Unbelievable" for Christian Premier Radio in the UK (headquarters in London), hosted and moderated by Justin Brierley. Brought to you in association with www.reasons.org. Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition:

BDEhrman2017-12-14T23:26:43-05:00April 7th, 2014|Bart's Debates, Canonical Gospels, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum, Video Media|

Radio Debate on How Jesus became God: Part 1

As is my wont, I was in England for Spring Break, and while there I was invited to participate in a radio program devoted to my book How Jesus Became God (as I've indicated before on the blog). The program was set up to be a radio "debate," or, well, "friendly exchange of ideas" (it was the latter more than the former) between me and Simon J. Gathercole, who is a Senior Lecturer in New Testament at Cambridge University. Simon is one of the five contributors to the response book How God Became Jesus. He is a bona fide and serious New Testament scholar, whom I respect and with whom I heartily disagree on many many issues! :-) The program was "Unbelievable," a weekly program on UK Premier Christian Radio hosted by moderator Justin Brierley, a bright and interesting fellow, not a scholar but well acquainted with scholarship. He, like Simon, is a reasonably, but reasonable, conservative Christian. The "debate" involved two segments, both taped on March 29th, 2014. The following is the first of [...]

BDEhrman2017-12-14T23:29:41-05:00March 31st, 2014|Bart's Debates, Canonical Gospels, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum, Video Media|

2009 Debate With Mike Licona: Can Historians Prove the Resurrection of Jesus?

I've decided to take a day or so off from my discussions of Reza Aslan's Zealot, both for my sanity and yours. Here, for a bit of variety, is a video of a debate that I had a few years ago with Mike Licona on the topic or whether historians can *prove* that Jesus was raised from the dead. Mike thinks the answer is "yes"; I think the answer is "no way." It's important to note: the debate was *not* about whether Jesus was raised from the dead. The debate was about whether historians can *prove* that he did (if he did). Mike Licona has burst onto the scene as a conservative Christian apologist. He did a master's degree at Liberty University (that's Jerry Falwell's place) and then a PhD in New Testament at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. Someone may be able to correct me on this, but I *think* that is the kind of degree where instead of taking PhD seminars and so on, as at an American university, it [...]

BDEhrman2021-02-13T01:10:41-05:00December 26th, 2013|Bart's Debates, Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Video Media|

Video: Ehrman & Evans 2012 Debate – Part 2

A couple of weeks ago I posted a debate that I had with Craig Evans, an evangelical Christian New Testament scholar. That debate was held at Saint Mary's University in Nova Scotia. The next night we had a second debate -- on the same topic (!) but in a different location, at Acadia University, where Craig currently teaches in the Acadia Divinity College. The topic, again, was "Does the New Testament Present a Historically Reliable Portrait of Jesus." I was hesitant to post this debate on the blog, since it's on the same topic as the other one. But I watched it and saw that I actually make my case differently this time, as does he. So, what the heck -- you can start watching it and if it sounds like old hat, you can stop! But in a way it's interesting how we changed our presentations, in no small measure because we had heard the night before what they other guy was going to argue.... Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition: See first video [...]

BDEhrman2017-09-16T22:16:57-04:00December 5th, 2013|Bart's Debates, Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Video Media|

Is The NT Portrayal of Jesus Accurate? Debate With Craig Evans

This video is of a debate that I participated in nearly two years ago in Nova Scotia with Dr. Craig Evans, a very well-known and widely published scholar of the New Testament who is also a conservative evangelical Christian (not “ultra-conservative,” and nowhere near a fundamentalist – but still conservative). He is the author of Jesus and His World: The Archaeological Evidence and Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels. This was the first of two debates that took place, in two different locations,on subsequent evenings. The topic of the debate was: “Does the New Testament Present a Reliable Portrait of the Historical Jesus.” As you might imagine, Craig Evans argues that Yes, it does. I argue that No, it does not. Both of us, naturally enough, focus our attention on the four Gospels of the New Testament. We each gave an opening speech of 30 minutes; and then we had a chance for a rebuttal, followed by some Q & A. I have to say, this was one of the favorite debates that I [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-29T17:09:05-04:00November 17th, 2013|Bart's Debates, Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Video Media|

Carrier, Bayes Theorem, and Jesus’ Existence

As most of you know, I’m pretty much staying out of the mythicist debates. That is for several reasons. One is that the mythicist position is not seen as intellectually credible in my field (I’m using euphemisms here; you should see what most of my friends *actually* say about it….) – no one that I know personally (I know a *lot* of scholars of New Testament, early Christianity, and so on) takes it at *all* seriously as a viable historical perspective (this includes not just Christians but also Jews, agnostics, atheists – you name it), and my colleagues sometimes tell me that I’m simply providing the mythicists with precisely the credibility they’re looking for even by engaging them. It’s a good point, and I take it seriously. In that connection I should say that I can understand how someone who hasn’t spent years being trained in the history of early Christianity might have difficulty distinguishing between serious scholarship that is accepted by experts as being plausible (even when judged wrong) and the writings of others [...]

BDEhrman2020-05-27T16:02:02-04:00November 7th, 2013|Bart's Critics, Bart's Debates, Historical Jesus, Mythicism|

My Views on Suffering Are Not Held by Those Who Suffer

In two of my debates, one with the “Messianic-Jewish Apologist” Michael Brown (whom I had never heard of before, but who was a remarkably good debater) and with the conservative Christian Dinesh D’Souza (whom I had heard of before, loud and clear, and who is also a remarkably good debater), I have been confronted with a point that, in both instances, my opponents thought was a decisive strike against me. My views of suffering are not shared by the people who, unlike me, actually suffer. It’s an interesting point. To explain it, and my response to it, I need to say a few words about the context of these debates. The topic of my debates on the problem of suffering is never whether or not there is suffering. Luckily. Everyone (at least everyone I debate, and most everyone who listens to the debates) agrees that there is suffering. The question at stake is whether it makes sense to believe in God given the nature and extent of suffering in the world. FOR THE REST OF [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:40:18-04:00June 3rd, 2012|Bart's Debates|

The Irony of our Earliest Manuscripts

It’s a little hard to get one’s mind around the irony of our early manuscripts, as I was alluding to in my earlier post. To reconstruct the “original” text of the New Testament – by which, for my purposes here, I mean the text that the author himself produced and put into the public sphere by “publishing” (or sending) it – we would love to have lots of early manuscripts to look at. Unfortunately, we don’t have lots of early manuscripts. 94% of our manuscripts are 800 years after the fact. We have only a handful of manuscripts, at best, that can plausibly be dated to the second century. These are all *highly* fragmentary (the oldest is just a scrap with a few verses on it). And even these are decades after the authors were all dead and buried. The problem is that every time a manuscript gets copied, mistakes – either intentional or accidental – are introduced. And then when that manuscript serves as an exemplar for the next scribe, its mistakes are [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:45:17-04:00May 2nd, 2012|Bart's Debates, New Testament Manuscripts|

For the “Original” Text: What Kinds of Manuscripts Would We Need?

As I pointed out in my previous post, in my debates with Dan Wallace I have stressed that we simply don’t have the kinds of manuscripts we need in order to know with certainty (let alone complete certainty!) what the authors of the New Testament originally wrote. Dan will typically argue that we have so many more manuscripts of the New Testament than for any other ancient author, that of course we can know the originals. My reply is that what we have – even though we have 5560 or so Greek manuscripts – is not enough. Out of some frustration, Dan or a member of the audience during the question –answer period sometimes asks, “Look! What exactly do you want?!? ” It’s a fair question. What do I want? Of course, what I really want are the originals. But it seems unlikely that I’ll ever be getting them. They disappeared long ago, probably within a couple of centuries of their being written, at the latest (the great textual scholar of the early third [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:45:26-04:00May 1st, 2012|Bart's Debates, New Testament Manuscripts|

The Text of the New Testament: Are the Textual Traditions of Other Ancient Works Relevant?

I have had three debates with Dan Wallace (author of Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament and Reinventing Jesus) on the question of whether or not we can know for certain, or with relative reliability, whether we have the “original” text of the New Testament. At the end of the day, my answer is usually “we don’t know.” For practical reasons, New Testament scholars proceed as if we do actually know what Mark wrote, or Paul, or the author of 1 Peter. And if I had to guess, my guess would be that in most cases we can probably get close to what the author wrote. But the dim reality is that we really don’t have any way to know for sure. Our copies are all so far removed from the time when the authors wrote, that even though we have so many (tons!) of manuscripts of the New Testament, we do not have many (ounces!) that are very close to the time of the originals, and it is impossible to say whether the texts were altered [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-26T23:34:56-04:00April 30th, 2012|Bart's Debates, New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum|

What Do Tectonic Plates Have To Do With Suffering?

I have always found it interesting that when I talk about how there can be suffering in the world if there is a good God who is in charge of it, someone will tell me that it is all because of “free will.” I think most of us – not Sam Harris, of course, or some others, but most of us – think that there is such a thing as free will, that our actions are not completely determined for us but to some extent (not completely! Or even nearly completely) we can decide what to do (we can’t decide to walk on the ceiling without special equipment; most of us can’t decide to understand the general theory of relativity; and so on. But we can decide whether to cross the street, or go to a movie, or punch our neighbor in the nose). Moreover, most of us would agree that a good deal of suffering happens as the result of humans exercising free will. Your own broken nose may be because your neighbor was [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:46:20-04:00April 23rd, 2012|Bart's Debates, Reflections and Ruminations|

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