Acts of the Apostles Archives - Page 3 of 4 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

Are Contradictions the Real Point?

In my last couple of posts I’ve talked about internal contradictions in Luke-Acts and John. I’ve had several readers tell me that they already “got the point” and so they don’t see any reason for me to keep harping on it: there are contradictions so you don’t think the Bible is inerrant. OK OK OK, got the point! As it turns out, that’s not really the point. To be sure, it is *one* of the points. But it’s not actually the main one. If I had to explain fully why it matters that there are internal contradictions in an ancient document created by the use of disparate sources (the case with both Luke-Acts and John) I would do so under three distinct rubrics, each rather complex. Religious implications. Yes, if there are contradictions in a book found in the Bible that means that the common fundamentalist understanding that the text is inerrant is almost certainly wrong. I have tried to word that statement carefully. I’ve noticed that often in these kinds of discussions, people don’t [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:41:39-04:00June 27th, 2018|Acts of the Apostles, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Why Does Luke Appear to Contradict Himself?

A question has come from a reader, based on my recent post dealing with the apparent contradiction between Luke and Acts on the timing of Jesus’ ascension. Do contradictions often result from authors editing several documents together and inserting them side by side in their work? If different source documents have different views, that would create contradictions in the final product which embodies their amalgamation, no? Here’s the question. QUESTION: I continue to be struck by how often Bible authors, since there were no copyright laws, seem to edit two or more different versions of an event together as seen in the Documentary Hypothesis. Is it likely that Luke and Acts had such an editor editing two or more manuscripts together thus producing contradictions? I would also like to know if this kind of editing together of two or more manuscripts was a common way of writing ancient books. RESPONSE: The answer is Yes and Yes. This apparently did happen with the book of Acts and it is indeed a phenomenon we can [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:41:25-04:00June 25th, 2018|Acts of the Apostles, Reader’s Questions|

Does the Book of Acts Portray the Teachings of Paul Accurately?

This is my second post on the portrayal of Paul in the book of Acts. In the one previous I tried to show, briefly, how the account of Paul’s activities in Luke’s narrative do not gel well with what he says in his own letters. Here I address the question that was originally raised: his teachings. Do the things Paul says in Acts coincide with what he himself indicates? I won’t give a detailed discuss, but just look at one key passage. Again, this is drawn from my book The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. ************************************************************** Paul’s Teaching. Almost all of Paul’s evangelistic sermons mentioned in Acts are addressed to Jewish audiences. This itself should strike us as odd given Paul’s repeated claim that his mission was to the Gentiles. In any event, the most famous exception is his speech to a group of philosophers on the Areopagus in Athens (chap. 17). In this speech, Paul explains that the Jewish God is in fact the God of all, pagan and [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:41:24-04:00June 18th, 2018|Acts of the Apostles, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Paul on Trial for the Resurrection

In previous posts I have discussed the different Jewish sects that we know about from the first century, at the dawn of Christianity (Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Fourth Philosophy) in order to show that (a) there were different understandings of the afterlife among them, but (b) there was a belief in a future resurrection of the dead attested in at least two of the groups: the Pharisees and Essenes. We don’t know what the eschatological views of the Fourth Philosophy were; possibly different Jews who wanted the violent overthrow of the Roman overlords had various expectations. We really don’t know. One reason we don’t know is that we don’t have any writings from any of them. On other hand, that’s true of the Sadducees and the Pharisees as well. That may seem weird, but it’s the case. We have no clear and certain writing from any Sadducee in all of antiquity that explains what it is they thought and believed. Even more strange, from all of antiquity up until the time of the Jewish war, leading [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:41-04:00September 26th, 2017|Acts of the Apostles, Early Judaism, Public Forum|

Is Luke’s Christology Consistent? A Blast from the Past

I have had several comments about the point I made that in Acts 2 Luke indicates that it was at the resurrection that God "made" Jesus both "Lord" and "Christ." Uh, does that fit in with Luke's views otherwise? Wasn't he *born* the Lord and the Messiah, for example? Then how could it be at his resurrection? I dealt with the question on the blog a couple of years ago, and after some digging, found the post. When I discussed the issue before it was because at Jesus' *baptism" Luke appears to indicate that it was then that God made him his Son. So how does all that tie together? Or does it? Here is that post again: ************************************************************************** Does Luke present a (strictly speaking) consistent view of Jesus throughout his two-volume work of Luke-Acts? I raise the question because of the textual problem surrounding the voice at Jesus’ baptism. I have been arguing that it is likely that the voice did NOT say “You are my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased” [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:40-04:00September 25th, 2017|Acts of the Apostles, Canonical Gospels, New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum|

Did Luke Have a Doctrine of the Atonement? Mailbag September 24, 2017

For this week’s readers’ mailbag I have chosen a question about my claim that the author of Luke-Acts, unlike other writers of the New Testament, does not have a doctrine of the atonement – that Jesus’ death brought about a restored relationship with God (for Luke, it was the *resurrection* that mattered, not the crucifixion). The questioner sets up the question with an important observation. I suspect my answer will not be what he expected. QUESTION: I have spent a lot of time looking in the gospels for teachings on the atonement. I could only find 5 passages (really more like 2, because they are parallel). Mt 20:28/Mk 10:45 Jesus life as a ransom for many Luke leaves this part out of the story Mt 26:28--this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Mk 14:24--This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Lk 22:20 This cup that is poured out for you is the new [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:40-04:00September 24th, 2017|Acts of the Apostles, Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine, New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Does the Book of Acts Underplay the Significance of Jesus’ Death?

One of the things that I have found most interesting about doing the blog over these, lo, past five and a half years is that when I decide to write a post on something, I often realize that I need to provide some background that involves something else that, on the surface, may seem unrelated, but that is crucial for understanding the point I want to make. Which leads me to a different topic and then to another, and so on. I suppose that’s why I still haven’t run out of things to say (yet); I *thought* I’d have nothing to write about after six months. But it hasn’t happened yet. I’ve been talking about the sects within Judaism because I wanted to make a simple point about how widespread the views of “resurrection” were at the time of Jesus and Paul. This morning it occurred to me that it would be helpful to illustrate the conflict between Sadducees and Pharisees over the issue, as exemplified in a famous passage in Acts 22 where the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:40-04:00September 22nd, 2017|Acts of the Apostles, Early Christian Doctrine, Public Forum|

James the Brother of the Lord

In my previous post explaining why I think the Mythicist position – that there never was a man Jesus – is simply untenable, I pointed out that among the things Paul says, none is more specifically relevant than the fact that he indicates that he was personally acquainted with Jesus’ own brother James (along with Jesus’ disciples Peter and John). When Paul mentions knowing and spending time with James, it is decidedly not in order to prove that he knew him. The comments he makes are completely incidental, explaining to people who already know about James how it is that he, Paul, met with him on a couple of important occasions. One of these occasions was just three years after Paul converted – so in about 36 CE. At that time Paul paid a visit to Jerusalem to meet with Cephas and James, the leaders of the church there. Paul is reluctant to mention that he had gone there, since the entire point he is making is that he did not learn anything of relevance [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:35:05-04:00November 4th, 2016|Acts of the Apostles, Bart's Debates, Historical Jesus, Mythicism, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum|

The Death of Paul in Acts and Unrelated Topics: Readers’ Mailbag April 29, 2016

I will be dealing with three very different questions this week in my Weekly Readers’ Mailbag: why does the book of Acts not narrate the deaths of Peter and Paul; what is the difference between the Day of Atonement and the Passover; and how I dealt with discrepancies and contradictions when I was an evangelical Christian in college. If you have any questions for me to address, pass them along! QUESTION: If Acts was written after 75 CE why do you think Acts doesn’t contain details of Paul’s and Peter’s deaths? RESPONSE: I get asked this question a lot – maybe five times this month! I’m not sure why. But it’s something people seem to be interested in, and in part that’s because some conservative evangelical scholars want to claim that Acts was written before Paul’s death in around 64 CE (since otherwise the author would “surely” have narrated his death), and that therefore Luke’s Gospel (written by the same author) was written before then, so that both Luke and Acts are nearer [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:33:08-04:00April 29th, 2016|Acts of the Apostles, Early Judaism, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Evaluating My Debate on the Book of Acts

I have now completed my posts on the debate I had with myself in front of my New Testament class on the question of whether the New Testament book of Acts is historically reliable. If you want to see the whole debate, just read the posts in sequence: the affirmative speech arguing Acts is indeed reliable; the negative speech arguing that it is not; the negative rebuttal of what the affirmative side said; and finally the affirmative rebuttal of what the negative side said. In class I delivered the speeches one after the other. When “affirmative” I was wearing a sport coat, but no cap; when “negative” I was wearing a baseball cap but no sport coat – just so students would realize that it was a “different” speaker speaking. I have pointed out on the blog before that even though I do a lot of public debates, I often find them more than a little frustrating and frequently (in fact, almost always) ask myself, in the course of the debate, why I’m doing this [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:51-04:00April 6th, 2016|Acts of the Apostles, Bart's Debates, Public Forum|

Is Acts Historically Reliable? The Affirmative Rebuttal

I have been (intermittently) discussing the debate that I had with myself in front of my New Testament class on the resolution, Resolved: The Book of Acts is Historically Reliable. So far I have indicated what the Affirmative side argued in favor of the resolution; what the Negative side argued against the resolution; and what the Negative side said in its rebuttal to the first Affirmative speech. NOW, at last, I can indicate what the Affirmative side said in its rebuttal to the two Negative speeches. Recall: in this post I’m not indicating what I really thing; I’m indicating what I would argue if this were the side I was required to argue (and what I did argue in class that day). Here it is: ******************************************************** Despite what the negative side has maintained, we remain convinced that the New Testament book of Acts is historically reliable. The first point to stress is that it is of utmost importance that we not impose modern standards of historical accuracy on an ancient text. Of course the author [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:51-04:00April 5th, 2016|Acts of the Apostles, Bart's Debates, Paul and His Letters|

The Letters of Paul: Mailbag April 1, 2016

In today’s Readers’ Mailbag, I will be answering questions connected with the writings of Paul: what is the earliest manuscript of his letters; did the author of Acts know Paul’s letters; and is Paul described as a heretic in the Dead Sea Scrolls. ******************************************************************************************* QUESTION Bart, early in your book Misquoting Jesus (p. 4) you wrote a sudden, shocking surprise (to many born-again Christians) when you said “As we learned at Moody in one of the first courses in the curriculum, we don’t actually have the original writings of the New Testament.” I’ve witnessed my own neighbor’s disbelief and visible anger when I pointed this out to him. … My interest is your response to my question “How old are the earliest copies we have of Paul’s letters 1 Corinthians and 1 Thessalonians.” … As you know, these books describe, in part, the resurrection of Jesus. RESPONSE It is a little difficult for me to know the question behind this question, so first let me answer the direct question and then to respond to [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:51-04:00April 1st, 2016|Acts of the Apostles, Early Judaism, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Is Acts Reliable? The Negative Rebuttal

What follows is the “negative rebuttal” of the speech given by the “first affirmative” in its support of the resolution, “Resolved: The Book of Acts is Historically Reliable.” If you need to refresh yourself on what the affirmative team argued, you can find it on the March 24 post, here: https://ehrmanblog.org/is-acts-historically-reliable-affirmative-argument/ In the first negative speech (yesterday’s post) the negative team argued its case, without direct reference to the affirmative side. This, now, is the negative response to what the affirmative said (the next post in the thread will be the affirmative rebuttal to the negative side) (recall: this was a debate I staged with myself in front of my New Testament class earlier this semester. I didn't read this speech: I winged it. But this is the essence of what I argued, on the negative side against the affirmative) *************************************************************** If you choose to go point by point through the affirmative team’s case that the book of Acts is historically reliable, you will find that they have advanced their views on very thin grounds. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:51-04:00March 31st, 2016|Acts of the Apostles, Bart's Debates, Public Forum|

Is the Book of Acts Historically Reliable? The Negative Case.

This post will lay out the Negative case, arguing against the resolution, Resolved: The Book of Acts if Historically Reliable. Again, I am not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with this argument; I’m giving it as I would in a debate. ********************************************************** The New Testament book of Acts is not historically reliable. Before showing that to be the case, I want to make two preliminary remarks, both of them related to the question of what it means for an ostensibly historical account (a narrative of what allegedly happened in the past) to be reliable. First, when readers today want to know whether the book of Acts is reliable, they mean that they want to know whether the events that it narrates actually happened in the way it describes. Or not. Readers are not primarily interested in knowing if he wrote his account the way other authors in his day would have done. They are mainly interested in knowing whether his narrative happened the way he says it did. Second, it is indeed important to know whether [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:50-04:00March 30th, 2016|Acts of the Apostles, Bart's Debates, Public Forum|

Is the Book of Acts Historically Reliable? Smoke and Mirrors.

In my next post I will be staking stake out the “negative” side on the debate I had with myself in class, arguing against the resolution, Resolved: The Book of Acts is Historically Reliable. I have already made the affirmative case; in the negative I will argue that the book is not reliable (that first speech was a set speech, prepared without reference to anything the affirmative side said). I will then give a negative refutation of the affirmative’s first speech, and I will end with an affirmative rebuttal of the negative’s two speeches. Before I do all that, however, I need to take a time-out and explain one negative counter-argument that would take too much space if it were simply part of a longer post laying out the negative position. The affirmative side in the debate argued that based on archaeological evidence Luke can be shown to have presented accurately the laws, custom, and geography mentioned or alluded to in the book of Acts: there really was an Areopagus where philosophers gathered, as mentioned [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:50-04:00March 29th, 2016|Acts of the Apostles, Bart's Debates, Public Forum|

Bart Ehrman vs Tim McGrew – Round 2

Here is the second part of my on-radio debate with Christian apologist Timothy J. McGrew, which aired on the Unbelievable," a weekly program aired on UK Premier Christian Radio. I recorded the interview from the station's London studio; McGrew was on the telephone. In the discussion we address the question Do Undesigned Coincidences Confirm the Gospels?" We also debated whether historical research can ever validate miraculous conclusions, as we express differ views over accounts in the book of Acts. For McGrew's views on what he calls these Un-designed Coincidences, see http://www.christianapologeticsalliance.com/2013/09/01/undesigned-coincidences. He's also the author of The Foundations of Knowledge and Internalism and Epistemology. Please adjust gear icon for 1080p High-Definition:

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:36-04:00March 26th, 2016|Acts of the Apostles, Bart's Debates, Video Media|

Is Acts Historically Reliable? The Affirmative Argument

I am ready now to explain how I did the debate with myself in front of my undergraduate class on the resolution, Resolved: The Book of Acts is Historically Reliable. As always happens in a debate, the Affirmative side goes first and gives a prepared speech. In arguing for the affirmative, I made the following points. (Note: I’m not saying I personally agree with these points, just as I’m not going to be saying that I agreed with the Negative points. I’m simply making the best case I can for both positions.) THE REST OF THIS POST IS FOR MEMBERS ONLY. If you don't belong yet, JOIN! The Book of Acts is Historically Reliable, as can be seen by considering three major points First, the author of the book of Acts explicitly tells us that he was concerned and committed to present a historically accurate account of the history of the early church. The author of Acts, of course, was the author of the Gospel of Luke, and the preface to Luke served as [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:50-04:00March 24th, 2016|Acts of the Apostles, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum|

Major Themes in the Book of Acts

The debate over the historical accuracy of the book of Acts is important, in no small measure because – as I have pointed out already – it provides us our one and only narrative of what was happening among the followers of Jesus in the years immediately after his death. This is the key, formative period in the formation of Christianity. How did it start as a religion? Acts is our only surviving historical account. But is it an accurate history? The first thing to stress is that Acts – like all histories – is highly restrictive in what it talks about. It is not a comprehensive history and makes no pretense of being a comprehensive history. The title “The Acts of the Apostles” was given it by later readers and scribes. The author himself (whoever he was) does not give it a title. And this particular title is not particularly apt, for one very important reason: most of the apostles do not figure in the account at all. This is a narrative of some [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:36-04:00March 23rd, 2016|Acts of the Apostles, Public Forum|

The Literary Artistry of the Book of Acts

I am in the middle of a thread dealing with the New Testament book of Acts, the first account that we have of the history of the Christian church at its very beginnings – starting with the events happening right after the resurrection of Jesus and covering the spread of the Christian faith through the Roman world up until the time Paul reached the city of Rome, presumably in the early 60s CE. And so this is an account of the first three decades of Christianity. It’s the only one we have of this period. That’s one reason it is so important to know if it’s historically reliable or not – if it’s not, we have very restricted access to what was happening in these most critical years of the early Christian movement. Before I discuss the issue of Acts’ historically reliability (the subject of my debate with myself in front of my class two weeks ago), I need to provide a bit more background. In my textbook on the New Testament I provide two [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:36-04:00March 22nd, 2016|Acts of the Apostles, Public Forum|

The Book of Acts: An Overview

Now that I have explained at some length how the debates work in my Introduction to the New Testament class, I can talk a bit about the debate that I staged in front of the class. The class debates that the students themselves will participate in start next week – one a week for three weeks. I’ve always thought that for students to see how a debate is supposed to work, they need to observe one in action. So I like to have a debate in front of the entire class to give them an idea. The problem is that most years (well, virtually every year) it is hard to find someone who is willing to debate me. And so, I debate myself. The topic that I usually debate has to do with the NT book of Acts and whether it can be trusted to give a historically reliable account of the work of Paul and the other apostles after the death of Jesus. The specific resolution is this: “Resolved: The Book of Acts is [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:36-04:00March 22nd, 2016|Acts of the Apostles|

Previous 1 234 Next