Canonical Gospels Archives - Page 15 of 36 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

The Gospel of Thomas and the Other Gospels

Here's a post from seven years ago that is still very important and intriguing to anyone interested in the NT and early Christianity. It's mainly about the most influential and historically important Gospel from outside the New Testament. I've inserted a couple of explanations [in brackets] to update the post. ******************************************************************* One of the benefits of teaching at a research university with a graduate program is that – at least where I am – there are periodic reading groups with other faculty members and graduate students. I go to a couple of these a month, including one that I organize. As it turns out, last week I went to two. The first was mine, the (other ) CIA, in which we typically read someone’s work-in-progress. That week’s presentation was a paper by my former student and soon-to-be faculty member in early Christianity at Duke Divinity School, Maria Doerfler, an exceptionally bright and erudite human being [who now is teaching at Yale], who gave a paper on a virtually unknown letter by the famous fourth-century bishop [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:06-04:00November 13th, 2019|Canonical Gospels, Christian Apocrypha, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

What Is the New Testament? A Broad Overview

With some very sage outside advice, I have decided to add a new feature to the blog. Once or twice a week (at least that’s the *plan*) I will create a kind of “general introduction” post, dealing with some broad and basic matter connected with the New Testament, the Historical Jesus, the apostle Paul, the role of women in the church, persecution and martyrdom, heresy and orthodoxy, the development of theology, the Christianization of the empire, etc. etc. Broad overviews, of the BIG matters, at the introductory level. The idea is to make, say, three or four related posts on each issue, and then, when they’re completed, edit them all together into one massive post (say 4000-5000) words, and have that post well indexed with lots of links to other posts on the blog. That way, we can maximize its wide availability throughout the internet. When someone googles “What Is The New Testament,” they will find this particular post; the post will link to other posts on the blog. People go to these other posts. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:50-04:00November 5th, 2019|Acts of the Apostles, Canonical Gospels, Catholic Epistles, Paul and His Letters, Reflections and Ruminations|

Video Debate with Peter Williams: Can We Trust the Gospels

This was a video debate I did last summer in London with British Biblical scholar Peter Williams. Peter has been a friend for a long time, and is a real expert on the manuscript tradition of the New Testament. He is also a committed evangelical Christian who does not believe there are mistakes in the Gospels. I so disagree with that. We had a debate about it on the Christian Radio program "Unbelievable" under their new series "The Big Conversation" Season 2-Episode 3, hosted by Justin Brierley. It was a long and interesting debate. Peter has written Can We Trust the Gospels? and C S Lewis vs the New Atheists. My contention throughout the debate is that he has not answered the question adequately, that in fact virtually everything he says in the book is irrelevant to the question. It's a very interesting and unusual attempt that he makes. But most of the book completely misses the point. It's the kind of book that anyone who wants very much to trust the Gospels will come [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:49-04:00October 27th, 2019|Bart's Debates, Canonical Gospels, Video Media|

The Quest for the Historical … Judas Iscariot

I occasionally (in fact, just last week) get asked if I think Judas Iscariot was a real person or a fictional character, wholly made up. I have a definite view about that. Real person. Actually one of Jesus’ disciples. And the one who betrayed him to the authorities leading to his arrest and crucifixion. But what makes me think so? I talked a bit about the “Quest of the Historical Judas” in a chapter of my book on the recent discovery of the Gnostic "Gospel of Judas," a highly intriguing text that emerged into public view about fifteen years ago (the book: The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed, Oxford University Press, 2016). Here’s what I say about the existence of the person himself, starting out with the basic and fundamental question of how historians know about *any* figure from the past (Robert E. Lee; Charlamagne; the Emperor Tiberius; uh, Jesus …), and then applying the question to Judas. ************************************************************* What kinds of sources of information do historians look [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:49-04:00October 25th, 2019|Book Discussions, Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

Who Would Invent the Story of Women at the Tomb??

Who in the ancient world would ever try to *prove* the resurrection by making up a story that women, in particular, discovered Jesus' empty tomb? Weren't women seen as complete unreliable witnesses? Their testimony never even accepted in a court of law? If someone want to prove that Jesus had been raised -- and that therefore the tomb was empty -- they would have invented *men* at the tomb (reliable witnesses) rather than *women* (untrustworthy). Right? I've been asked this question several times since my recent post on Jesus' women followers not doubting the resurrection. The reason anyone ever has this question is because it is a favorite claim of Christian apologists wanting to prove that Jesus really was raised from the dead. Proof? The tomb really was empty. How do we know? We have witnesses. How do we know we can trust the reports of these witnesses? No one would have made them up: the witnesses in the stories are always * and no one would invent "unreliable" witnesses to back up "proof-claims." When [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:49-04:00October 22nd, 2019|Bart's Critics, Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Women in Early Christianity|

A New Way of Explaining Contradictions in an “Inerrant” Bible

The other recent development in conservative evangelical apologetics – so far as I can discern as an outsider – is a real move to adopt serious historical scholarship on the Bible and apply it to the defense of the reliability of Scripture. That may seem like a paradoxical move to non-evangelicals, since it is precisely serious historical scholarship that, since the 18th century, has been the major problem when it comes to the reliability of the Scripture. In fact, it’s the *main* problem. So, uh, how does that work? I believe, but I may be wrong, that Mike Licona is at the forefront of this development within evangelical circles. Two of his most popular books are Evidence for God and The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus. His view is that we should not try to harmonize different Gospel accounts in every instance. Sometimes, of course, it’s perfectly suitable and appropriate (I agree on this). But sometimes harmonization simply leads to weirdness and implausibility. At least in the eyes of most reasonable human beings. And [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:49-04:00October 21st, 2019|Bart's Debates, Canonical Gospels|

Modern Evangelical Christian Apologetics

This particular post is open-access. Anyone can read it. I post five times a week on all sorts of topics related to the New Testament and early Christianity. To read these posts, simply join the blog. It doesn't cost much, and every thin dime goes to charities helping those in need. No one loses, everyone wins, so join!! I spent yesterday at a conservative evangelical apologetics conference outside of Chicago and, as you might imagine, I was the odd person out. But I was very well received, people were overwhelmingly gracious and receptive and openly grateful that I had come. There were jokes about being thrown into the lions’ den, but it didn’t really feel like it. It felt like I was speaking to a crowd that wanted to hear, respected what I said, and simply fundamentally disagreed. In particular there was a group of current Moody Bible Institute students there; really interesting, interested, and good humored, and we had a great time together. What I was most interested in was how Christian apologetics [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:49-04:00October 20th, 2019|Bart's Debates, Canonical Gospels, Reflections and Ruminations|

But the Women Who Did NOT Doubt the Resurrection

In my previous post I noted something unusual about the doubting tradition in the resurrection narratives (i.e., the tradition that some of the disciples simply didn’t believe that Jesus was raised) – in addition, of course, to the fact that there is such a dominant doubting tradition! (itself a fascinating phenomenon) – which is that there is no word anywhere of the women who discover the tomb doubting, but clear indications (either by implication or by explicit statement) that some or all of the male disciples doubted. This is true of three of our four Gospels. Mark 16:8. (This one is by implication only) We are told that the women never tell anyone that they have found the tomb to be empty. So, the disciples are not said to believe and, in fact, so far as we know from this Gospel, no one does come to believe. (Obviously someone did, otherwise we wouldn’t have the Gospel!) Luke 24:10-11. The disciples think the tale of women told that Jesus has been raised as he predicted is [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:48-04:00October 16th, 2019|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Women in Early Christianity|

Why Would Jesus’ Disciples Doubt the Resurrection?

I was just now browsing through posts from seven years ago, and came across this one, which is related to questions I get from time to time. It is an absolutely fundamental issue for Christian faith, but I almost *never* see anyone talk about it. Surprising! Here's the interesting question and my response (back when I was starting just to do work on the resurrection stories for my book How Jesus Became God). QUESTION: Are we to understand from this that some of the actual disciples, the inner circle, doubted? Is this the origin of the “Doubting Thomas” character in John? Maybe not everyone got a vision of the risen Christ? Perhaps these are hints that after the crucifixion some of the group ran away and DIDN’T come back! RESPONSE: This is a question specifically about the stories of the resurrection of Jesus, and it is one that I’ve been pondering myself intensely for a couple of weeks. It would help to have the data in front of us. The tradition that the disciples [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:48-04:00October 14th, 2019|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

Scribes Who Changed Their Texts on Purpose

I've been browsing through some old posts and came upon this one from years ago, about this time. It's an interesting topic that people on the blog frequently ask me about: did scribes really change the texts of the NT on purpose, and how can we know? The answers are simply: almost certainly yes and it's difficult! Here's an example I talked about back then, one of the most intriguing instances in the Gospel of Mark, where the scribes who changed the text ended up having almost NO effect on Bible translations today; most translators agree on the "original" form of the text. But the change is really interesting, and can show the sorts of reasons scribes were doing this kind of thing. Here's the original post, slightly edited. ************************************************************* I have started giving some instances of what appear to be “intentional” changes made by scribes, as opposed to simple, accidental, slips of the pen. Here's another instance of the phenomenon I stress that these alterations “appear” to be intentional since, technically speaking, we [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:45:57-04:00August 4th, 2019|Canonical Gospels, New Testament Manuscripts|

Is History a Four-Letter Word?

Most people on the planet simply are not interested in history. I’d say that’s true of most American high school and college students. History classes can be dreadfully boring, especially with the wrong teacher -- and it is very hard to be a good teacher of history. In high school, I had almost no interest in my history classes. Names, dates, things that happened that had no relevance to anything I was interested in or what I felt like doing day to day. Ugh. But a good history teacher is a marvel to behold. There is so much about the past that is fascinating, and, of course relevant. And so, as it turns out, I’ve turned into a professional historian. Go figure. I’ve been thinking about this because of that debate I had on Monday with Peter Williams, a very bright evangelical Christian and a fine scholar of ancient Semitic languages who firmly believes that the Bible conveys God’s Truth, in every way, so that there are no mistakes of any kind in it. Peter [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:45:39-04:00July 19th, 2019|Bart's Critics, Canonical Gospels, Reflections and Ruminations|

Flat-out Lies or Willful Ignorance. How Do They Get Away With It?

Sometimes it’s enough to make my blood boil. Maybe someone can explain it to me. If you were to interview the 7,346,235,000 occupants of this planet, you would find *no* group of people who declare themselves MORE committed to “truth” than the evangelical Christians. Evangelical Christianity, historically, is about nothing other than the Truth. Jesus himself said “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no one comes to the Father except by me” (John 14:6); and “You shall know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free” (John 8:32). The Christian faith, for these people, is all about finding the Truth that leads to eternal life. So why do so many of their spokespersons simply tell lies? Or at least propagate willful ignorance? Those are the two choices: they either know what they’re saying is absolutely false or they don’t go to the bother of finding out, when the information is readily available to anyone who wants to take 38 seconds to look for it. I don’t get it. Well, OK, I [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:45:20-04:00June 26th, 2019|Bart's Critics, Canonical Gospels, New Testament Manuscripts, Reflections and Ruminations|

Finally! Now We Know. The “First-Century Copy” of Mark

I have posted on and off over the past six or seven years about an allegedly first-century copy of the Gospel of Mark that some scholars claimed we had now in our possession. This would be by far the earliest manuscript we have of any part of the New Testament, a matter of real importance and interest. But it turns out NOT to be that, and it has involved a real academic farce. Those of you who have followed this charade know most of the important facts, but for those of you who don’t, and just to remind those of you who do, let me set them out, before explaining the new development: In 2012 I was holding a public debate on whether we can know what the authors of the New Testament “originally” wrote, given the fact that we don’t have their original writings but only later copies of them, all of them different in many, many small ways and sometimes in more important ways. Virtually all of these copies are many centuries removed [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:45:20-04:00June 24th, 2019|Canonical Gospels, New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum|

When Were Matthew and Mark First Seen as Scripture: Guest Post on Papias by Stephen Carlson

Conservative Christian scholars often claim that the Gospels of Matthew and Mark were recognized as "Scripture" already by the early second century, and for evidence they appeal to the words spoken of that mysterious church father "Papias" (writing in 120 CE? 140 CE?). But when Papias mentioned Matthew and Mark, was he speaking about the books that we now know about? And if so did he see them as Scripture? Here is the final guest post by Stephen Carlson on Papias, based on research he has been doing for years for a book on this and related questions. As you'll see, he reaches very different, and intriguing conclusions. - Stephen Carlson is the author of The Gospel Hoax and The Text of Galatians and Its History. ****************************************************************************** The Logia of Mark and Matthew In our last post, we considered Irenaeus’s extensive quotation of Papias for a millennial fertility tradition from the “elders” to the effect that Jesus promised that, in the resurrection, the renewed earth will be so fertile that each grape vine will [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:45:18-04:00June 10th, 2019|Canonical Gospels, Proto-Orthodox Writers|

When You Feel Like You’re Talking to a Wall

I wrote this post a while ago, and now that I reread it, I think I might be kicking a dead horse. (Something, in case you wonder, I’ve never actually done.) But, well, I suppose it’s sometimes OK to leave written what has been written, so to say. So here ‘tis. There are times when I debate a committed evangelical or fundamentalist Christian on whether the Bible is reliable or not, and I feel like I’m talking to a Martian. Or maybe I’m a Martian. We are both educated human beings and do indeed seem to be speaking the same language (English); but how we understand what very same words virtually certainly have to mean is completely opposite. How can that be? Again, I’m not going to be trying to provide further counter-arguments for the back and forth that Matthew Firth and I had over whether there are contradictions in the Gospel or not. I said emphatically yes, he said emphatically no. But both of us seem to have felt like we were talking [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:45:01-04:00May 26th, 2019|Bart's Debates, Canonical Gospels|

Was Jesus Perfect? Then How Was He Human?? Guest Post: Jeffrey Siker
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Was Jesus Perfect? Then How Was He Human?? Guest Post: Jeffrey Siker

Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine, Historical Jesus

Was Jesus Perfect? Then How Was He Human?? Guest Post: Jeffrey Siker

Another guest post by Jeffrey Siker, raising a very hard question with some peculiar answers and a provocative suggestion. Jeff Siker is the author of Jesus, Sin, and Perfection in Early Christianity and Homosexuality in the Church. Jesus and Sinlessness: Metaphor and Ontology, Blog 3 In the two previous posts I have shown how the tradition developed that Jesus was sinless, namely, retrospectively in light of resurrection faith. If Jesus was raised to divine stature at the right hand of God, then surely he must have been God’s divine Son throughout his public ministry (even if hidden by a messianic secret), and also in his baptism and birth. Thus, the logic goes, he must have been perfect throughout his life. He could have no taint of sin. On this the earliest Christians generally came to agree, though they expressed this agreement in different ways. Gnostic Christians like Valentinus in the second century associated sin with material existence, and bodily physicality. This led Valentinus to argue that Jesus only appeared to be a flesh and blood [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:45:01-04:00May 24th, 2019|Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine, Historical Jesus|

Were Miracle Stories Originally in the Gospels?

Looking through old posts on the blog, I came across this very interesting and important question from seven years ago. It's a question I continue to get on occasion, so I thought we all might profit by thinking about it again. (And now, older and wiser, I would answer almost exactly the same way!) QUESTION: I have looked up the content of all the papyri I'm aware of (off of links on wikipedia, so who knows if they're accurate). It is my understanding that although p52, p90, and p104 are dated around 125-150 AD, they contain fragments of John 18 and Matt 21 only, and that it's not until 200 AD that manuscripts emerge which actually contain accounts of supernatural actions by Jesus. So, it's possible that accounts of miracles existed in copies that got destroyed, but is it fair to say that the earliest available copies of accounts of Jesus's supernatural actions date from around 200 AD? In other words, assuming people on average had kids by age 20 back then, and thus 20 years counts [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:45:01-04:00May 22nd, 2019|Canonical Gospels, New Testament Manuscripts, Reader’s Questions|

Being Willing to Accept the Truth

Here I’d like to add just a couple of more reflections on whether critical scholars *have* to claim there are contradictions in the Bible because of their beliefs. As I tried to state as strongly as I could in my previous post, I think the answer is absolutely not. To begin with, let me stress that I started learning about serious contradictions when I was in a Christian theological seminary taking biblical studies courses with committed Christian teachers who were devoted to the church. But they were also scholars and refused to accept fundamentalist understandings of the Bible. Their theology was much more sophisticated than the simple “The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it” mentality I had grown up on. These were incredibly intelligent and learned scholars intimately familiar with the texts in Greek and Hebrew and massively well-read in scholarship going back centuries in various modern languages. They didn’t accept easy answers and pushed their students to realize that knowing what the New Testament really is, as opposed to what [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:45:01-04:00May 21st, 2019|Bart's Debates, Canonical Gospels, Reflections and Ruminations|

Contradictions in the Gospels – Rev Matthew Firth’s Final Response

Thanks for such an interesting debate, Bart. Here goes with my final response: In my view, a genuine contradiction between two texts occurs when those texts carry mutually exclusive accounts, i.e. accounts where, if one account is correct, the other cannot be. In the examples you have cited, you have failed to show that the so-called contradictory accounts are genuinely mutually exclusive. You have therefore failed to provide any examples of genuine contradictions. Sure, the examples you’ve cited are, on the face of it, contradictions, but only if one doesn’t go beyond the surface and if one is insistent on applying contemporary values to the practice of ancient authors. It seems to me that the so-called contradictions you’ve cited are akin to saying that the following two accounts are contradictory: 1. Yesterday, Alice enjoyed a meal with Bob in New York. 2. Yesterday, Alice spent the day with Bob in London. But these accounts are not contradictory. They do not present mutually exclusive events, and their failure to each give an exhaustive account of the [...]

admin2025-09-10T12:45:00-04:00May 12th, 2019|Canonical Gospels|

Contradictions and Contradictions: Final Response to Matt Firth

Matt: thanks for your additional comments. I’ve given my replies below. At the outset I should say that I’m not sure I understand what a “genuine contradiction” would look like for you. If you have two authors who at least appear to contradict each other, surely the best explanation will not be one that: Suggests an author / speaker really doesn’t mean what he says but means something else. Suggests an option that has never ever happened, to our knowledge. With that in mind, I turn to your new explanations. I’ll respond in green. Thanks very much, Bart, for these interesting responses. I will get straight into explaining why I still don’t think you have shown that the examples you have offered are genuine contradictions. In the case of Luke 24 you say that the grammar of the Greek indicates that ‘Luke is extremely careful to date the entire sequence of chapter 24, at the beginning of each major paragraph. It all happens on the day of the resurrection.’ But we know from Acts, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:39-04:00May 3rd, 2019|Bart's Debates, Canonical Gospels, Reflections and Ruminations|

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