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Greco-Roman Religions

Could a Human Become a God in the Ancient World?

If early Christians were monotheists, how could they claim that someone other than the One God was also God and yet still say there was in fact only one God? That will be the first issue to figure out if we want to understand how the doctrine of the trinity developed. With respect to Christ, if he was a human, how was he divine? In other words, how could ancient people get their minds around that? Not just whether he was divinely handsome or divinely wise – but actually Divine? In some sense a God? (I will, over this thread, emphasize the terms “in some sense,” as you will see). A couple of weeks ago I talked on the blog about some special individuals in the Greco-Roman world who were understood to be both human and divine because they had one of each kind as a parent. Typically this involved a mortal woman who was attractive to one of the gods (Zeus / Jupiter wasn’t the only one, but he was the most notorious), who [...]

BDEhrman2021-01-05T10:20:48-05:00January 14th, 2021|Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, Historical Jesus|

Were Ancient Pagans Sometimes Monotheists?

In my last couple of posts I’ve been talking about Jewish monotheism and henotheism as a backdrop to early Christianity. And now *here* is a something almost no one in the civilized universe knows any more: even among traditional pagan religions there were sometimes movements toward monotheism, or at least evidence of serious henotheism. Here is how I discuss it in my book Triumph of Christianity, in the context of why the Christian claims about their God would not have seemed completely unprecedented. ****************************** Scholars have long known of henotheistic tendencies among ancient (pagan) philosophers, who had come to think that behind all the diversity of the world, above all the manifestations of what we know and experience, there must be one ultimate reality that makes sense of it all. This principle of unity could be understood to be the ultimate divinity, and so some philosophers stressed the “oneness” at the heart, or at the beginning, of all things. The sense of one ultimate divinity could also be found outside the ranks of the professional [...]

BDEhrman2021-01-05T00:56:21-05:00January 13th, 2021|Greco-Roman Religions and Culture|

The God Jesus, In Competition

I have started what will almost certainly be a long thread on where the idea of the Trinity came from within the Christian tradition. In plotting out the thread I saw right away that the very BIG issue is not really about the “three” (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) but about the “two”: God and Christ. This was the matter Christians debated for centuries, with the Spirit being (by far) a less central figure. The very major problem early Christians confronted was that they were monotheists who believed in only one God but they also thought Jesus was God. And they did not think that he was the same being as his Father. So God was God and Christ was God but there was only one God. How can that be? Answering that question will eventually get you to the doctrine of the Trinity. To explain it I will need to go into some length on the issue of Jewish monotheism, and what it meant (especially in a world where everyone else was a polytheist), [...]

BDEhrman2021-01-02T16:33:24-05:00January 10th, 2021|Bart’s Biography, Early Christian Doctrine, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture|

No Virgin Births? Then How Were Demi-gods Born In Antiquity?

In my previous post I pointed out that there do not appear to be any instances in the other religions of antiquity of a virgin birth – where a woman gives birth without having sex. In this post I’ll lay out the more typical view of how a “son of God” came into the world. It very much does involve sex. Most of the post will deal with one (very funny) story in particular which is emblematic of the rest. For this post I will quote a section from my recent book, How Jesus Became God. ****************************** Even though Apollonius of Tyana was understood to be a pre-existent god come in the flesh, that is not the normal Greek or Roman way of understanding how a divine human could be born of a mortal. By far the more common view was that a divine being comes into the world – not having existed prior to birth – because a god has had sex with a human, and the offspring then is in some sense divine. [...]

BDEhrman2020-12-26T00:16:10-05:00January 5th, 2021|Greco-Roman Religions and Culture|

What About All Those Other Virgin Births in Antiquity?

I have devoted several posts to the issue of Jesus’ virgin birth, as recounted in Matthew and Luke. As I pointed out, there is no account of Jesus’ virgin birth in the Gospel of John, and it appears that the idea is actually argued *against* (implicitly) in the Gospel of Mark. As happened last time I did a thread like this, several readers have asked me (or told me) about the similarities to the virgin birth stories in pagan texts, where a son of God, or demi-god, or, well, some other rather amazing human being, is said to have been born of a virgin. Aren’t the Christians simply borrowing a widely held view found among the pagans, that if someone is the son of God (e.g., Hercules, or Dionysus, or Asclepius, etc.), his mother is always thought to have been a virgin? As it turns out, that’s not the case at all. I don’t know of any parallel to ... Want to be well informed? Keep reading. Not a member of the blog? Join! Costs [...]

BDEhrman2020-12-26T00:18:40-05:00January 3rd, 2021|Book Discussions, Canonical Gospels, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture|

Paul’s Ascent to Paradise. Guest Post by James Tabor

A couple of weeks ago I learned that James Tabor had republished his book Paul’s Ascent to Heaven, his first scholarly monograph, which, alas, had gone out of print. But it’s back in! I wrote him to ask if he’d be willing to write a couple of guest posts about it, and here is the first. This one explains how and where the book originated (published 1986); his next post will discuss how his mind has changed on some issues in the intervening years. Many of you know James from his other writings. He publishes for both scholarly and popular audiences. James has long been a professor of Religious Studies at UNC Charlotte. Here is his story of how his book first came to be. He will be happy to respond to comments and questions. James Tabor’s most popular books are Paul and Jesus and The Jesus Discovery: The New Archaeological Find that Reveals the Birth of Christianity, among others. ************************************************************ James D. Tabor, Dept. of Religious Studies, UNC Charlotte Paul’s Ascent to Paradise [...]

BDEhrman2020-10-29T17:24:02-04:00August 28th, 2020|Book Discussions, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, Paul and His Letters|

What Did Ancient People Think (a) God Was?

A number of people have asked me how anyone could imagine a human being or becoming God in the ancient world, based on my claims that for Paul and other early Christian writers Jesus was a divine human. But if he was human, how could he be God? To answer that I have to stress a point I made repeatedly in my book How Jesus Became God. Anyone who wants to say that “Jesus is God” according to an early Christian text, has to explain “in what *sense*” is he God? Now is a good time for me to lay out how again how ancient people understood the divine realm. It was very different from the way most people today do – at least the people I run across. People today think of God as completely Other than us humans. We are mortal and limited in every respect; he is immortal and unlimited. He is all-powerful, all-knowing, and everywhere-present. We are by comparison weak, ignorant, and in one place at a time. He is infinite [...]

BDEhrman2021-01-05T01:04:33-05:00March 5th, 2020|Book Discussions, Early Christian Doctrine, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture|

How Were People Crucified?

I have always said that people were crucified by being nailed through their *wrists* instead of their hands. I had heard that in college when I was maybe 18, and I’ve been saying it ever since. And I still say it because it’s apparently true. But I never knew how we knew. Was it simply common sense that a nail/stake through the hand would rip out, and needed to go between two strong bones? Or did we have some evidence? And if it’s true that the nail/stake went through the wrist, why do virtually *all* the artistic representations show the holes in the hands? There are entire books on crucifixion in antiquity – I don't mean books about the significant of Jesus’ death, but on what crucifixion actually involved. When I was in grad school I read Martin Hengel’s brief study; in more recent days John Granger Cook has written a massive tome, which I’ve looked at but haven’t read cover-to-cover (it’s amazing what I haven’t read….). I’m sure it is the drop -dead authoritative [...]

BDEhrman2020-01-15T08:51:32-05:00January 15th, 2020|Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, Historical Jesus|

Heaven and Hell in a Nutshell

Heaven and Hell. I’m excited about my next book, being published on March 31, Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife. It’s already getting good reviews in the trade journals, the publications that announce which books are soon to come out and have experts review them in advance, so those booksellers, book stores, libraries, and so on know whether they want to buy them, and for booksellers and stores, in what quantities. So that’s all good. A while back I decided to try to encapsulate the essence of the book in a short essay, a kind of 2000-word summary of what it’s all about and why it matters. I will give it here, over the course of two posts. Here’s the first half. Ehrman Hell & Heaven The fear of death has been among us for as long as we have had human records, from history’s oldest surviving tale, the Epic of Gilgamesh, to the now final season of the Good Place, soon to enter its own eternal rest. The views of these two [...]

BDEhrman2022-06-20T00:05:10-04:00December 15th, 2019|Book Discussions, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

Why Are Their Differences in the Gospels? Does it Affect Their Inspiration? Guest Post by Mike Licona

This is Mike's third and final guest post. In the earlier post he explained his views about whether the Bible is inspired by God and is inerrant. He thinks the answers to both are "yes," though his actual views are not what most people would probably expect. Here now is the third, and critical post, based on the research he did for his 2017 Oxford University Press book, with the same title: Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? I agree with a lot of what Mike writes here. In reading it, I'd suggest you bear in mind his earlier two posts, that he sees the Gospels as inspired and inerrant. Mike has graciously agreed to answer questions you have for him, but only for the next four days! Otherwise this would go on forever. And please, in your questions, do your best to keep them concise and direct, without asking multiple questions at once. Pick the most pressing. And I scarcely need to remind you of that verse in the Ehrman Revised Standard Version: "The [...]

BDEhrman2021-02-13T01:11:39-05:00December 10th, 2019|Canonical Gospels, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture|

Sex and Gender in the Ancient World

Most people agree that there are parts of the Bible that are not applicable today. We don't normally execute people for being witches or for disobeying parents anymore (at least in the U.S.). But what about same-sex relations? Are the Bible's injunctions still applicable about *that*? It turns out the issues that are involved are different from those surrounding witches and rowdy kids, and n ways most people wouldn't suspect. It's not as easy to explain why, and so I've been laying the background generally by talking about the Bible's understanding of sex and gender broadly. So far I've talked about the creation of Adam and Eve and what it says about gender and the relationships of male and female (the only gender categories available to the authors), and about how that basic story underlies the insistence by some early Christian authors (1 Timothy 5:11-15, e.g.) that women should be completely submissive to men, and therefore not exercise authority over them or even speak in church (or does it mean generally, unless spoken to?). Now [...]

BDEhrman2020-05-01T13:18:36-04:00November 4th, 2019|Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, Reflections and Ruminations, Sex and Sexuality in the Bible|

Is It Ever Right to Lie? Or Was It? Even in Early Christianity? The Relevance for Forgery.

Is it ever morally acceptable – even desirable – to tell a bald-faced lie? That was probably a topic covered in your Philosophy 101 course. At a historian, I’m interested in the question from an ancient perspective. What did people in antiquity think about it? In particular Christians. Did they think – based on the Ten Commandments, say, or the teachings of Jesus, that a person should never lie? Or were they quite lax on the matter? Or something in between? I was actually a bit surprised to learn the answer to the question. And as you might expect, the answer is complicated. My original interest in the issue had to do with forgery. A forger claims to be someone famous, knowing full well he is someone else. That’s a lie, that is, it is a falsehood told intentionally. How did forgers justify that? It turns out, there appear to be answers. This is how I dealt with the matter in my lecture on forgery given at the conference in Quebec a couple of weeks [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-11T15:41:26-04:00September 29th, 2019|Forgery in Antiquity, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Reflections and Ruminations|

A Recent Argument that Ancient Pseudepigraphy Was NOT Deceptive (or Meant to Be)

I continue now with the lecture I gave on "forgery" in the ancient world, delivered at a conference in Quebec a couple of weeks ago. I had planned for this to be the last post, but I will have one more after this, the conclusion of my lecture where I deal with the ancient ethics of lying. In this one I talk about a brilliant recent attempt to argue that it was not (always) a deceitful practice to claim to be a famous person when writing a work in antiquity. ************************************************************** One of the most recent erudite and impressive attempts to defend at least one group of ancient pseudepigraphers comes in the study I mentioned earlier by Irene Peirano, a classicist at Yale, in her published Harvard dissertation, The Rhetoric of the Roman Fake: Latin Pseudepigrapha in Context. Most of this important book provides detailed analyses of highly literary Roman pseudepigrapha, including pseudo-Virgil. But she begins with a defense of her view that such works do not involve intentional deceptions but self-conscious “imitations” of [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-11T17:22:48-04:00September 24th, 2019|Forgery in Antiquity, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture|

What Motivated Some Ancient Authors to Lie About Themselves?

I return now to my lecture on ancient Pseudepigraphy, the practice of writing a book falsely claiming to be someone else, a famous person. I have been arguing that even in the ancient world this was considered to be a form of lying, the use of literary deceit, and authors who were detected doing it were outed and, if any moral judgment was passed, condemned for it. Today we would call it “forgery,” and the ancient discussions of it were similarly negative. Here is where I pick up in the lecture, part 3 of my 4 posts. (I think one of my most important points comes half way through, where I explain the key difference between “intention” and “motivation” – i.e., what we intend to do and what motivates us to do so. *************************************************** One could ask whether anyone on record in antiquity ever condoned the practice of pseudepigraphy. To my knowledge, there is only one possible trace of approval, in a single sentence of the late antique neo-Platonist Iamblichus, who does say, [...]

BDEhrman2020-05-25T13:23:02-04:00September 23rd, 2019|Forgery in Antiquity, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture|

Were Ancient Readers Interested in Detecting Forgeries?

I continue now with my lecture this past week on whether ancient readers and writers considered pseudepigraphic writing – in which an author claimed to be someone else (always someone famous) – was seen as deceitful, a kind of literary lie, and is therefore appropriately, in an ancient context, appropriately considered by thos of us today, “forgery.” This is Part 2 of 4. ******************************************************** I do not need to give an extensive account of all the instances of ancient Echtheitskritik (= scholarly attempt to determine if a work is authentic) found throughout the surviving literature: full accounts are readily available in any of the lengthy monographs. To be sure, some recent scholars have claimed it was a rare discourse. But maybe abundance, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. I myself have always been struck by how extensive the discourse of authenticity is, going back in some sense to Herodotus and becoming a focus of interest for some authors, especially critics and biographers such as (the Roman medical writer of the second century) [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-11T15:40:31-04:00September 18th, 2019|Forgery in Antiquity, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

Why Christians Needed an Old Testament: Pagan Attacks on the Faith

In my discussion why Christians claimed the Jewish Bible for themselves (and argued it no longer belonged to Jews), I’ve been focusing strictly on the relationship of Jews and Christians, for obvious reasons. But as it turns out, there is more to it than that. Here is an issue that is hardly ever talked about in the scholarship on the rise of anti-Judaism in early Christianity, let alone among lay people wondering about why mainstream Christianity became opposed to Jews and the religion they practiced in antiquity (leading to the anti-Judaism and then the antisemitism of later times.) This issue involves Christians’ relations not with Jews, but with pagans, and the rejection of the new Christian faith by the world at large. As is well known, apart from Jews and Christians, everyone in the Roman empire was pagan – that is, everyone followed one or more of the polytheistic religions of that world. I do not need to detail the various kinds of pagan religion found throughout the Roman Empire. But a couple of important [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-02T23:35:16-04:00June 23rd, 2019|Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Jews and Christians in Antiquity|

Death and the Meaning of Life

Different understandings about what happens to us at death embody and promote different views about what we consider to be the ultimate reality of life, what it is that we think -- at the deepest level of our being -- provides meaning for our existence and makes sense of the world we encounter while still breathing. I have given four examples from the ancient world. Each of them portrays a different sense of ultimate reality, of one thing, in each case, that establishes, determines, and directs everything that finally matters for human existence in general – for all people who have ever lived – and for our specific existence in particular. All four involve trips to the realms of the dead, in order to see what happens for those who are no longer living. Each is meant to show what we should live for now, based on what the ultimate meaning of life is, what the very root and fabric of human existence consist of. In this post I’ll talk about two of them. When [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-02T23:54:27-04:00April 30th, 2019|Afterlife, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture|

Jesus “Only” Adopted to be the Son of God?

Here's a post from six years ago involving an important matter that I completely changed my mind about. I know some scholars (not to name names) will never change their views about something, come hell or high water. They probably don't think they should be seen to waffle. I don't mind waffles. Especially on a nice Sunday morning like this. ****************************************************************** I used to think – for years and years I thought this – that being adopted was a lower kind of sonship. Jesus was “only” the adopted Son of God, not the “real” Son of God. But I came to realize this was fundamentally a mistake and an extremely important one. To say Jesus was the adopted Son of God was to say HUGE things about him, virtually INCONCEIVABLE things. It was not a “lowly” view of Jesus. Here’s how I explain it in my book How Jesus Became God. ****************************************************************** Part of what has convinced me that this [adoptionistic] understanding of Christ should not be shunted aside as a rather inferior view involves [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-02T23:59:52-04:00April 7th, 2019|Canonical Gospels, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture|

A Roman Vision of Heaven and Hell

In our world, most people who think about the afterlife suppose that when we die we either cease to exist or receive our due rewards (rewards/punishments). I have pointed out that the latter view did not originate in Jewish or Christian circles, but in pagan, going back some time before the Greek philosopher Plato in the fourth century BCE. The Greeks influenced their later conquerors the Romans in many, many ways, one of which involves their views of the afterlife. The idea of fantastic rewards or horrific torments to come after death be seen in rather graphic terms in the writings of the most famous and talented poets of the Roman world, the great Latin poet Virgil (70-19 BCE), who like his Greek predecessor Homer, some seven centuries earlier, tells the story of a descent to the underworld. Aeneas En Route to the Underworld Virgil is best known for his epic the Aeneid, named for its main character, Aeneas, a fugitive from the Trojan War who, in the wake of Troy’s disastrous defeat through [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T00:01:02-04:00March 27th, 2019|Afterlife, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture|

Did Ancient Greeks Invent Heaven and Hell?

Back, for a post, to the scholarly project I’m now doing on the “katabasis” traditions in early Christianity – the stories of people being given tours of / visions of both heaven and hell. Some readers of the blog may be confused about why, on a blog devoted to the study of the New Testament and Early Christianity, I would want to discuss the Odyssey of Homer or the Aeneid of Virgil, etc. It’s because I very much want to understand where the Christian ideas of the afterlife come from. In the traditional Christian view, after death a person is taken off to be rewarded with paradise or punished with the torments of hell came from. In my book I’ll be arguing that idea did not come either from the Old Testament or from Jesus. Then whence? My last post on this was on the Odyssey, where Odysseus goes to the underworld and there are no heaven and hell there either, just a place called Hades where everyone – whether great or small, valiant or [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T00:01:25-04:00March 26th, 2019|Afterlife, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture|

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