Last week I invited Blog Members who had published something to tell all of the rest of us about it.  Many have done so!  If you, too, would like to make your written work known, please read very carefully the instructions in the original post:

https://ehrmanblog.org/have-you-written-something-you-would-like-to-advertise-on-the-blog/

 

Today I publish the first batch.   There are seven (a good biblical number) and of various kinds.   I chose these on very scientific principles: they were the first seven I received!

Each one includes the name of the work, the author’s name, a description of what the piece  is, and a link that can show you how to get a copy.  I will post these periodically in batches of about this size.

 

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  1. Manifest Insanity, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Think for Myself, by Diogenes of Mayberry (my author pseudonym; I am a member of the blog under my real name)
  2. https://www.amazon.com/Manifest-Insanity-Learned-Worrying-Myself-ebook/dp/B00GTJ3U3A/ref=la_B00GUB3ZEQ_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1385104266&sr=1-1
  3. An irreverent social commentary that traces the history of Judeo-Christian doctrines and how they have evolved over the centuries, impudently contradicting the perception that these established beliefs were original to their traditions, and specifically challenging the evangelical Christian concept of literal inerrancy. The historical information is presented in an informal, but polemical, conversation between teachers and students in a Christian high school as they move from class to class throughout the day. The narrative exposes some of the historical misunderstandings and outright doctrinal forgeries that the Religious Right trumpets in their attempts to force their morality on mainstream society.
  4. My book makes use of your insights from six of your works, along with that of many other scholars. The full biography, index, and topical excerpts are available on my blog; and the second edition was just released a few weeks ago. I was offered a publishing contract in late 2012 from a publisher in NYC, but the terms were so onerous, I decided to self-publish, becoming the first (only?) e-book to ever be listed by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science.

 

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  1. Konnie Ellis.  Facebook post: “Letter To Fundamentalist Friends and Family.”

 

  1. Available at: https://m.facebook.com/notes/konnie-hoffman-ellis/letter-to-fundamentalist-friends-and-family/1529041763808588/?refid=21&_ft_=top_level_post_id.1529041763808588%3Acontent_owner_id_new.100001083371392%3Astory_location.9%3Astory_attachment_style.note&__tn__=H-R

 

  1. In this essay, I try to explain, as concisely as possible, some of the main reasons that I left fundamentalism after nearly five decades of believing it wholeheartedly, and being a devout and active church member for all of those years.
  2. My goal is that, hopefully, others will find the information helpful, as they try to explain to their own loved ones, some of the reasons for their change in beliefs.
  3. Dr. Ehrman, I’d just like to take this opportunity to let you know how much I appreciate all you do. I’m sure you’ve never heard that before from anyone. ????

I have been agnostic for about six years now, and unfortunately, I was not very familiar with any of your material, at the time I had written the above post.

I had always been told that you were dangerous, and that I should stay as far away from your “strange writings,” as I possibly could. Needless to say, I’m so glad I stopped listening to that advice.

Keep doing what you do, and I greatly look forward to your next book. I loved the one on Hell, and have shared several of your posts and interviews on my Facebook page – which is the main way I try to maintain contact with, and educate, the friends from my fundamentalist years.

 

 

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  1. Book; Wounded in Spirit by David Bannon (Paraclete Press, 2018). Foreword by Philip Yancey.2. https://paracletepress.com/products/wounded-in-spirit3. Christmas can be a time of joy but also of memory and tears. In 25 illustrated readings we meet the wounded artists that gave the world masterpieces of hope. “A gorgeous book to help the grieving,” wrote Jana Riess, Religion News Service. “I wish I had this book 6 years ago, when my mother was dying.” Despite their brokenness these artists achieved the sublime. Based on the latest grief research, Wounded in Spirit is, according to Elizabeth Palmer (Christian Century), “an honest grappling with grief” and “a valuable resource” that “intersperses carefully curated photos of Christian art with reflections on the artists—their lives, their tragedies, and their persistent hopes.” “Remarkable.” — Christianity Today.  “These meditations and images are a marvelous gift.” — Luci Shaw, Regent College.
  2. My daughter died in 2015. She was twenty-six years old.  For years I focused almost entirely on history writing and translation, primarily Asian, but now those same tasks hold little interest for me except when they can be of use to others who also know loss.

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  • This is an article entitled “Small Tracer, Big Tracer”; my byline is “Steven Goldleaf”
  • https://www.billjamesonline.com/small_tracer_big_tracer/?AuthorId=23&Year=2020&pg=2
  • I write a regular baseball column for Bill James On Line, and when I noticed there were similarities between Bill James’ approach to baseball and Bart Ehrman’s approach to religion, I decided to introduce Bart to Bill’s crowd, so this is necessarily going to seem a little superficial for the Ehrman blog’s readers, but perhaps of interest.
  • My own academic field of study, American Literature, requires me to know a little bit about textual criticism, which I also have to explain somewhat for my audience of baseball fans.  The article begins with a close reading of a baseball text, but I soon introduce my main subject.

 

 

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  1. Book (fiction): Second Born, by Patrick W. Andersen

 

  1. Available at: https://www.amazon.com/Patrick-W-Andersen/dp/1640825436/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Second+Born+by+Patrick+W.+Andersen&qid=1592162184&sr=8-1

 

  1. Assuming that the historical Jesus was born a normal human rather than a cosmic being with magical powers, this novel tells the story of a boy growing up with his brothers and sisters in Sepphoris, Galilee. Diverging from the assumptions handed down to modern readers over the past two millennia, in this story Jesus is the second-born son of a wealthy family, the first-born being James, who from birth has been dedicated to God and has been studying at the Jerusalem temple for the priesthood since his youth. The story navigates a series of developments both religious and political as well as personal from Jesus’s 12thyear through to the culmination of the drama at the Passover festival in Jerusalem.

 

Thanks for this opportunity!

 

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  1. This work is a reference text. Michael Alter
  2. Title: A Thematic Access-Oriented Bibliography of Jesus’s Resurrection.

https://www.amazon.com/Thematic-Access-Oriented-Bibliography-Jesuss-Resurrection/dp/1725252732

 

This book organizes more than seven thousand English sources dealing with Jesus’s resurrection into twelve main categories and then thirty-four subcategories, which are designed to help researchers find the most relevant literature quickly and efficiently. Embedded are pro and con arguments which support efficient access through brief annotations,

 

  1. The focus of this book is on Jesus’s resurrection. The literature measures well over seven thousand sources in English-language books alone. This book organizes approximately seven thousand English sources into twelve main categories and then thirty-four subcategories, which are designed to help researchers find the most relevant literature quickly and efficiently. Embedded are pro and con arguments which support efficient access through brief annotations and then annotate the diversity and complexity of the field of religion by including sources that represent a diverse range of views: theistic, agnostic, and nontheistic. The objective of this bibliography is to provide convenient access to relevant sources from a variety of perspectives, allowing you to browse or find the one source accurately and with ease. (122 words)

 

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1) A speculative novel about Jesus of Nazareth.  The title is SON OF MARY, by R.S. Ingermanson.

 

2) Available at:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0863CSFDG

 

3) Two of the four gospels claim that Jesus of Nazareth was not the biological son of his legal father Joseph. Suppose this is correct, and then ask what explanation Mary gave for how she got pregnant. I suggest that no girl in her right mind would tell some story about an angel Gabriel meeting her and about the holy spirit impregnating her, because no parents or husband-to-be or village would ever believe such an outlandish story (Matthew 1:20 implies Mary didn’t tell this story to Joseph). Now imagine that Mary never gave any explanation at all, and ask what cruel things the village would say about her for the rest of her life.

 

4) Nothing else to say.

 

This post is free and open to everyone.  Most posts are for members only.  Want to join up and get five meaty posts a week?   We still have free memberships available, until next week.  Or join by paying the small membership fee.  Every thin dime will go to charities helping those in need — so what’s the downside???