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New Testament Gospels

Debate with a Mythicist! And the Book of Revelation. Readers’ Mailbag September 25, 2016

In this week’s Mailbag I’ll be addressing two questions, one about me personally – my preparations for the upcoming debate with Robert Price on the question of whether Jesus even existed as a human being – and the other about the book of Revelation. If you have a question you would like me to address on the Mailbag, simply ask it in a comment on this post or any other. ************************************************************************ QUESTION It seems the debate between yourself and Robert Price will be going ahead next month, right? I follow Price on Facebook and he has evidently been re-reading all your books in preparation. How much of his books do you intend on reading prior to the debate? How will you prepare for the debate? I’m really looking forward to it! RESPONSE Right! Yes indeed! On October 21 I will be having a three-hour debate in Milwaukee with Robert Price, who has two PhDs from Drew University, one in New Testament Studies and the other in Theology, and who is an atheist who supports [...]

BDEhrman2019-03-20T17:51:16-04:00September 25th, 2016|Bart's Debates, Canonical Gospels, Mythicism, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations, Revelation of John|

Fear of Dying etc.: Weekly Readers Mailbag, September 18, 2016

What is my personal feeling toward death? That's the first of two questions in this weeks' Readers' Mailbag! QUESTION: How do you feel about dying? Is that not in some part terrifying? And us losing our loved ones forever? How do you get over that? RESPONSE: Ah, how do I feel about dying? In general, I’m against it. :-) But do I find the prospect terrifying? I would say that over the years I have had different attitudes toward death. I suppose when I was very young, I hoped I was a good enough person to go to heaven. I was certainly terrified of going to hell. When I had a born again experience in high school, I became absolutely convinced I was going to heaven, as would anyone else who did what I did (accept Christ as their Lord and Savior) and believe what I did. Anyone else (i.e., most of the billions of people in the world): well, too bad for them. They are going to roast forever in hell. When, over [...]

BDEhrman2017-10-23T22:44:27-04:00September 18th, 2016|Canonical Gospels, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Does a Person Need the Holy Spirit to Interpret the Bible? Is John’s Gospel Accurate? Readers Mailbag August 7, 2016

Does a person need to “have the Holy Spirit” in order to interpret the Bible? And does the Gospel of John give a historically accurate accounting of the teachings of Jesus? These are the two questions I will be dealing with on this week’s Readers’ Mailbag. If you have any questions, simply ask them as a comment to any of the posts on the blog, and I’ll add them to the list. QUESTION: How do you respond to those who say “you can’t correctly interpret the bible unless you have the Holy Spirit” RESPONSE: I’ve never found it at all convincing that a person needs the Holy Spirit in order to interpret the Bible. As an agnostic, of course, I don’t believe in the Holy Spirit (since I don’t believe in God). But even when I did believe in the Holy Spirit, I thought that it was silly to claim that a person could not interpret the Bible correctly without the Spirit – for a couple of reasons that have always struck me [...]

BDEhrman2017-11-06T21:08:45-05:00August 7th, 2016|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

The End of Time in Revelation and the Gospel of John

I have been arguing that the author of the Fourth Gospel and the author of the book of Revelation could not have been the same person, and in looking back at my posts I realize that I have left out an important point, one of the strongest arguments that we are dealing with two different people. The theology of these two books is radically different on an issue that is completely central to both of them: their understanding of “eternal life.” It is true that in some respects these two books have similar theological views. I have already mentioned, for example, that both see Christ as the “Word” of God (no other NT author expresses this view) and as the “Lamb” who was slain (again: these two books alone use that image). But both of them are very much interested in views of eschatology, and on these views they differ radically. The term “eschatology” means the “understanding of the end times.” Just about everyone has a view about what happens at “the end.” Some think [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T03:28:05-04:00August 3rd, 2016|Canonical Gospels, Public Forum, Revelation of John|

Did John Write the Fourth Gospel?

In my previous post I explained why the author of the book of Revelation, someone named John, was not claiming to be John the son of Zebedee and in fact probably was not John the son of Zebedee. I also showed why this author was not the same one who produced the fourth Gospel, the Gospel of John. Now I want to talk about the Gospel to show that it too was probably not written by John. The first thing to stress – it can’t be stressed enough – is that like the other Gospels of the New Testament, the Gospel of John (as I’ll continue to call it, for the sake of convenience, since that is, after all, the title that was later given to it) is completely anonymous. The author does not tell us his name or identify himself in any way. I have already explained why people in the early church came to *think* the book was written by Jesus’ earthly disciple, John the son of Zebedee (see https://ehrmanblog.org/who-wrote-the-book-of-revelation-and-the-fourth-gospel/ from a few [...]

BDEhrman2021-01-20T00:54:47-05:00August 2nd, 2016|Canonical Gospels, Public Forum|

Some Comments on the Gospel of John: (Based on John Spong’s Book). A Blast from the Past

A couple of people on the blog have suggested that as a feature of the blog, I periodically provide a Blast From the Past -- that is, repost a blog post from a few years ago. I think it's a great idea. My guess is that most people on the blog haven't read everything from then, and if they have, if they're like me, they won't remember them! So I decided to go back from three years ago today (well, tomorrow) and see what I was saying. Here's the post. I don't remember it at *ALL*!!! But I still think now what I did then. ************************************************************************************* John Shelby Spong, former Episcopal bishop of New Jersey and highly controversial author (because of his skeptical views about the New Testament and traditional Christian doctrine) has just published a new book on the Gospel of John, called The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic. I have not read the book, but Spong has written an interesting article on it that appeared in the Huffington Post yesterday, at [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T03:36:05-04:00June 12th, 2016|Book Discussions, Canonical Gospels, Religion in the News|

Paul in a Nutshell and NT Views of Crucifixion: Readers Mailbag May 13, 2016

In this week’s Readers Mailbag I will deal with two rather massively significant questions, one on the life and message of Paul and the other on the different understandings of Jesus crucifixion in the New Testament. If you have any question(s) you would like me to address in the future, let me know! ******************************************************************* QUESTION: I am wondering what you would consider the most important things to know about the Apostle Paul. Sometimes when I am forced to give a succinct answer to a question, it can have a lot of value. So while I will be going into some depth in the Sunday School class, including referencing some of your work, I would love to hear your expertise on Paul distilled into a brief summary (if at all possible). RESPONSE: Right! Obviously some scholars have written very long books on Paul’s life, message, and mission. So, let me give here the very basic essentials, as I see them, in bullet point form. Paul started life as a highly religious Jew, zealous to [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T03:39:20-04:00May 13th, 2016|Canonical Gospels, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Life After Death in Rome, and other Questions. Readers’ Mailbag May 6, 2016

In this week’s Readers Mailbag I address three rather divergent questions, one on ancient tombstone inscriptions that indicate that many people in the ancient world did not believe in an afterlife, one on the Temptation narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and one on the process of having a book edited in preparation for publication. If you have a question you would like me to address, just ask – and I’ll add it to the list! QUESTION: I’m curious…what sort of “inscriptional evidence” on ancient tombstones would seem to rule out belief in an afterlife? RESPONSE This question was asked in response to something I said, that even though in ancient Greek and Roman mythology there are discussions of the afterlife (e.g., in the Odyssey, book 11; Plato’s Myth of Er in book 10 of the Republic; and so on), there are reasons for thinking that most (or at least many?) people in antiquity believed that life was the end of the story. And I indicated that this is because of inscriptions [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T03:40:21-04:00May 6th, 2016|Canonical Gospels, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

HNN News Story on Jesus Before the Gospels

Below is an article that I published for the History News Network, based on my recent book Jesus Before the Gospels. Enjoy!! ******************************************************************************** Historians/History article featured on HNN (History News Network) posted 3-18-16: Are the Stories in the Bible About the Last Days and Hours of Jesus True? by Bart D. Ehrman The season of Lent has come upon us, the time when Christians focus their devotional attention on the last days and hours of Jesus. Even though we devote more social (and media) space to Jesus’ birth, historically the Christian church has paid far more attention to his death. That is certainly the case with the New Testament itself. The Gospel of John, the perennial favorite of believers, after spending eleven chapters on the three years of Jesus’ public ministry, devotes fully ten chapters to his final week and its aftermath. It says not a word about his birth. The stories of Jesus’ last days – his Triumphal entry into Jerusalem, his cleansing of the temple, his last supper, his betrayal by Judas Iscariot, his [...]

BDEhrman2017-11-13T21:11:18-05:00April 3rd, 2016|Book Discussions, Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Bart Ehrman vs Tim McGrew – Round 1

On Saturday 18th July 2015 I held a kind of radio debate with Timothy J. McGrew, a conservative Christian apologist and professor of Philosophy at Western Michigan University. He's also the author of The Foundations of Knowledge and Internalism and Epistemology. It was a two-part back-and-forth on "Unbelievable," a weekly program hosted by Justin Brierley, which airs on UK Premier Christian Radio. I taped the interview from the station's London studio. The debate was on the topic: Can We Trust the Gospels?" Here Part One. Please adjust gear icon for 1080p High-Definition:

BDEhrman2020-05-27T15:50:53-04:00March 19th, 2016|Bart's Debates, Canonical Gospels, Video Media|

The Triumphal Entry as a Distorted Memory

In my previous post I provided an excerpt from Jesus Before the Gospels where I summarized the New Testament accounts of Jesus’ “Triumphal Entry.” Here is the second part of that two-part post, another excerpt, where I call this tradition into question, arguing that it cannot be right historically and that it must, therefore, represent a distorted memory. It is important to recall that “memory” is not simply a recollection of what we ourselves experienced (what you had for dinner last night; the name of your first-grade teacher; etc.). Memory involves anything that you “call back to mind” (the literal meaning of “remembering”). It can be factual information (what is the capital of France?), even of something you haven’t experienced (e.g., if you have never been to Paris); it can be a shared understanding of a person from the past (Einstein; Karl Marx), even if you never met them. And it can be a recollection of a past event even if you were not involved. Such as the Triumphal Entry, to pick one example out [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T03:47:54-04:00March 7th, 2016|Book Discussions, Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Memory Studies, Public Forum|

The Memory of Jesus’ Triumphal Entry

Two chapters of my book Jesus Before the Gospels involve discussions of “distorted memories” – that is, recollections of events from Jesus life that appear not to represent what actually happened. One of the chapters deals with events leading up to Jesus’ death (the most remembered part of his life), the other with his public ministry. Just to give a taste of how I proceed in these chapters, I will excerpt here my discussion of the Triumphal Entry. The discussion is a little long for a single post, so I will divide it into two. Today’s post explains what the memory is (one many people still have today!); the next one will try to show why it is best seen as not being a “true” memory. The Triumphal Entry There seems to be no reason to doubt that Jesus spent the last week of his life in Jerusalem looking ahead to the celebration of the Passover feast. Passover was by far the busiest time of the year in Jerusalem, when the city would swell [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T03:48:10-04:00March 5th, 2016|Book Discussions, Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Jesus’ Virgin Birth in Mark (Reader’s Mailbag February 26, 2016)

It is time for the weekly Readers’ Mailbag. This week I will be dealing with only one question, one that I find particularly intriguing. If you have any questions you would like me to answer, either in a comment or in the mailbag, let me know. I can’t answer every question I get, either because I don’t know the answers (often enough!) or because I can’t get to them all. But I take them all seriously and will do my best to get to yours! ******************************************************* QUESTION: I've read of one NT scholar who is critical of your reasoning in How Jesus Became God. He says that your argument from silence is fallacious. For example, he says that just because the virgin birth is absent in Mark's gospel does not constitute evidence that the writer did not believe in the virgin birth. RESPONSE: Great question. The first and most obvious thing to point out is that there is no way to know what another person believes (either the person who wrote Mark or [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T03:50:24-04:00February 26th, 2016|Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Christ as Son of God in Mark’s Gospel

In my previous post I indicated that by the early fourth century, the debates over Christ’s divine nature had become extraordinarily sophisticated and complex (though not as sophisticated and complex as in the two centuries to follow!). At the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE the question was over whether Christ, the God who created the world, was a subordinate divinity to God the Father, one who came into being at some point in time, or if, instead, he was just as eternal, just as powerful, and just as glorious as the Father, completely “one” with him, even in his essence. It was this latter view that won the day. One of the things that I contend in my book How Jesus Became God, and in the debate, I had in New Orleans with Michael Bird (as many of you will know by now) was that these issues were not at *all* what the earliest Christians were debating and arguing about, either with one another or with non-believers. Michael Bird’s most popular books are The [...]

BDEhrman2022-12-31T16:34:53-05:00February 21st, 2016|Bart's Debates, Canonical Gospels, Public Forum|

Weekly Readers’ Mailbag: February 18, 2016

Here is the weekly Readers’ Mailbag, three questions this time – one about my alleged “support of Islam against Christianity,” one about why we think the NT Gospels were originally written in Greek, and one about what I mean when I talk about the views held by the majority of “critical” scholars (as opposed to what other kind of scholar?)? Feel free to ask questions you have; some I will not be able to get to (either because I don’t know the answer or because the answer is a one-liner instead of a two-paragrapher or for some other reason); and the list is always growing (making it harder and harder to answer them all). But give it a shot! I love to hear your questions. COMMENT: [After pointing out that whoever said I was about ready to convert to Islam was obviously makin’ in up, or influenced by someone else who was makin’ it up, this Muslim reader commented as follows:] Anyways, that won’t stop us from using your awesome arguments against Christianity. [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T03:51:26-04:00February 18th, 2016|Canonical Gospels, History of Biblical Scholarship, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Weekly Readers’ Mailbag: January 30, 2016

In this installment of the Weekly Readers’ Mailbag, I’ll address two questions, one about the Jewishness of Jesus the other about my personal (bad) experience with editors. If you have a question, either send it via a comment here or zap me an email. QUESTION: What is it in the NT portrayal of Jesus that tends to obscure the centrality of his Jewishness? RESPONSE: The person who asked this question mentioned the fact that it is only in fairly recent times, since the second half of the twentieth century, that scholars have emphasized that Jesus was thoroughly Jewish. Prior to that, Jesus’ Jewishness was commonly downplayed. So the question is, what about the New Testament led scholars away from recognizing how thoroughly Jewish he was? I have three things to say in response to this very good question. First, my sense is that in no small measure, the earlier scholars who did not see Jesus’ Jewishness were living and doing research in an environment that was itself anti-Jewish. Christianity, as we long know, [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T03:54:41-04:00January 30th, 2016|Book Discussions, Canonical Gospels, Early Judaism, Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Did Jesus Urge People to Repent?

Below is the third guest post by my colleague David Lambert, connected to his book How Repentance Became Biblical. For many readers of the blog, this will be the most important and interesting of them all. It deals with the historical Jesus. Did Jesus tell people that they needed to repent? You might think the answer is obvious…. ****************************************************************** Did Jesus Preach Repentance? In my past two posts, I argued that the concept of repentance, as we use it today and as it first developed within Judaism and Christianity, was not originally found in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. Now, it’s possible that you might be tempted by this argument to draw the conclusion that repentance is a specifically Christian concept. It’s important, however, to keep in mind that, even though repentance became very important to Christianity, it actually first developed in the context of late Second Temple Judaism shortly before the advent of Christianity. The concept, for instance, is alive and well in the writings of Ben Sira (also known as Ecclesiasticus) a text that [...]

BDEhrman2021-02-06T01:00:25-05:00January 27th, 2016|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

Weekly Readers’ Mailbag: January 24, 2016

A day late, here is this (past) week’s Readers Mailbag. I will be dealing with two questions this time, one on why Mark includes Aramaic words in his accounts of Jesus’ sayings and the other on where someone might find English versions of the surviving Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. If you too have a question, simply ask it here as a comment, or send me an email, and I will add it to the list! QUESTION: Why is Mark sometimes quoting Jesus in Aramaic? I know, that Jesus cry on cross is possibly reference to the psalms, but why is Mark spicing his gospel with Aramaic much more than other gospel authors? Is it sign of a oral/written source used by Mark? RESPONSE: Ah, good question. It’s true that Mark on occasion does record some of the words of Jesus in Aramaic. For example, in chapter 5 Jesus is told that a young girl (daughter of Jairus) has died; he goes to her in her room, and taking her by the hand [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T03:54:58-04:00January 24th, 2016|Canonical Gospels, New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Jesus and the Son of Man

Over the past few weeks, as I have been talking about the rise of Jewish apocalypticism, in relation to the historical Jesus, a number of readers have asked me to explain what I think about the “Son of Man” in the sayings of Jesus Jesus. Did Jesus call himself the son of man? If so, what did he mean? And if not, what did he mean? As it turns out, these are some of the most complex, convoluted, and confounding questions confronting scholars of the historical Jesus. Many books, some of them big and dense, have been written on the issue. There are lots of opinions about it. Here I’ll try to explain my view, and try to justify it. The following is taken from my book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium ***************************************************************** The Coming Son of Man Among the most heated, and least enlightening, debates among New Testament scholars has been the question of the origins of the phrase “the Son of Man” in the teachings of Jesus. Everyone agrees -- since [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T03:55:05-04:00January 21st, 2016|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

Readers’ Mailbag: December 27, 2015

QUESTION: [Bart has said:] “Jesus must have been called the messiah during his lifetime, or it makes no sense that he would be called messiah after his death”: [Comment:] By this line of reasoning, then surely one would conclude that Jesus was considered divine during his lifetime, else it makes no sense he would be considered divine after his death? RESPONSE: The first line in the question is a quotation of a view I have elaborated on the blog. The logic, in short (see the posts for a fuller explanation) is that no one on the planet expected that the messiah would die and rise again. And so even someone who came to believe in Jesus’ resurrection would never conclude: OH! He must be the messiah? That’s because that is not what the messiah was supposed to do. The questioner then is arguing that the same thing applies to the question of Jesus’ divinity, that the resurrection would not make anyone think Jesus is divine. My view is that this is precisely wrong. It [...]

BDEhrman2017-11-16T21:47:46-05:00December 27th, 2015|Canonical Gospels, History of Biblical Scholarship, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

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