Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Archives - Page 10 of 14 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

The Two Books of Job: A Blast from the Past

I have been arguiong that there are different views of the afterlife in the Hebrew Bible. The dominant view is that all people go to Sheol when they die -- either they stay in the grave or there is some place that they all gather, a completely uninteresting, dark, dreary place where nothing really happens. Some authors, though, suggest there is no afterlife at all. Ecclesiastes, in one or two places, seems to suggest this, as does the book of Job. Before looking at the relevant passage in Job, I need to say something about the book as a whole, since it is one of the most misunderstood books of the Bible, in part because most readers don't realize that the book comes from the hands of two different authors, living at different times and places, with very different points of view. Here is how I explain it all in a post I made over four years ago, in the context of a thread dealing with how biblical authors deal with the problem of suffering. *********************************************************** [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:36:51-04:00April 10th, 2017|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

The Afterlife (or not) in Ecclesiastes

In my previous post I provided some comments on one of my favorite biblical books, Ecclesiastes. Here I will continue my comments, with some remarks on the topic of the thread, the view of the afterlife in the book, a view unlike what you find in *most* of the Hebrew Bible. Again, this is taken from my book God’s Problem. ****************************************************************** For the author of Ecclesiastes “traditional” wisdom (such as one finds in the book of Proverbs) was inherently flawed -- another reason I like him so much. It simply is not true (as Proverbs insists) that the righteous are rewarded in life and the wicked perish. As the author of Ecclesiastes states: “In my vain life I have seen everything; there are righteous people who perish in their righteousness, and there are wicked people who prolong their life in their evil doing” (7:15); “there are righteous people who are treated according to the conduct of the wicked, and there are wicked people who are treated according to the conduct of the righteous. I said [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:36:50-04:00April 7th, 2017|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

Ecclesiastes and the Meaning of Life

As I have been arguing, *most* of the authors of the Hebrew Bible who have anything to say about life after death believe that people go to Sheol – whether they are good or wicked, faithful or unfaithful. It is the fate of all. Different authors may have different views of what Sheol entails, but nowhere is it a place or reward or punishment for what one does (or believes) in this life. A major exception seems to be the book of Ecclesiastes, which does not subscribe to an afterlife of any kind. Looking back over the posts of the blog from the past five years I’m surprised to see I haven’t said much about Ecclesiastes – surprised because it is one of my favorite books of the entire Bible. I’d like to give a bit of an overview, and that will take two posts. I have lifted these reflections from my book God’s Problem. ************************************************************** Ecclesiastes has long been one of my favorite books of the Bible. It is normally included among the “Wisdom” [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:36:50-04:00April 5th, 2017|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

Life After Death According to Samuel

Before getting sidetracked with other things, I was discussing the intriguing story of 1 Samuel 28, where the king of Israel, Saul, illicitly consults a medium in an attempt to communicate with his now-dead advisor and predecessor, the prophet Samuel. This is the only case of necromancy in the entire Bible. In this post I want to consider what the author of the passage seems to think about those who go to Sheol after death. Recall the story: Saul is experiencing both internal turmoil (his rival David is on the rise and there is civil war) and external threat (from the warring Philistines). He wants advice about how to proceed, but there is no one to turn to. So he takes on a disguise and resorts to a medium (after having, as king, outlawed mediums!) to call up Samuel from the realm of the dead. She does as he asks. As Samuel “comes up” from the ground, the medium realizes that it is Saul who is her client and that she’s in big trouble [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:36:50-04:00April 4th, 2017|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

Returning from the Dead in the Hebrew Bible

In thinking about Sheol and death in the Hebrew Bible, it is worth reflecting on passages where the dead come back to life or are contacted by the living. This does not happen much at all – a couple of instances of resuscitation and one of necromancy. Probably the most famous resuscitation – the bringing back to life of a dead person – involves the prophet Elijah in 1 Kings 17:17-24. Elijah has been helping an unnamed widow from the town of Zarephath, miraculously providing her and her son with food during a divinely-mandated drought/famine (which the prophet brought to teach the wicked King Ahab a lesson). But the boy dies. The widow is understandably distraught – the prophet was supposed to be helping her and now her son has died. Some help. Elijah takes the boy, though, and raises him from the dead. The woman responds appropriately, declaring him Elijah a man of God who speaks the word of God. In 2 Kings 4:32-37 a similar story is told about the prophet Elisha – [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:36:35-04:00March 30th, 2017|Afterlife, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

The Afterlife in the Hebrew Bible: Sheol

When trying to figure out where the Christian ideas of heaven and hell came from, an obvious place to start is with the Hebrew Bible. Jesus himself held to the authority of the Hebrew Scriptures. To be sure, there was not a completely fixed canon in his day, which all Jews everywhere agreed to. But virtually all Jews we know of ascribed to the high authority (and Mosaic authorship) of the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy); and most Jews – including Jesus – also considered the prophets authoritative; Jesus also accepted the authority of the book of Psalms and a probably number of the other books. It was not until a century or so after Jesus that most Jews agreed on virtually all the books of what we now think of as the Hebrew Bible – but Jesus and his followers would have accepted most of them. That means that the views found in these books were highly influential on what Jews like Jesus would have thought about most theological topics. And so, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:36:34-04:00March 29th, 2017|Afterlife, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

Why Do Good People Suffer? A Blast from the Past

I was looking around for an interesting post from a few years ago, and I found this one, from March 2013, which, as it turns out, is relevant to what I am going to want to say in the thread I've just started on views of the afterlife that developed in ancient Israel (leading up to the Christian views that eventually came to be so dominant throughout the West.). The post provides, in a nutshell, three major views about why there is suffering. Why is that relevant? One of my theses I have going into my research for my next book is that views of the afterlife developed originally as a way to explain why there are such inequities in the present life. Here's the post: ************************************************************************ I’m in New York City for a few days. Last night I gave a lecture at NYU; they had asked that I talk about “God, The Bible, and the Problem of Suffering.” That’s the topic of my book God’s Problem, and so I spun off a talk [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:36:32-04:00March 5th, 2017|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

What About the Apocrypha?

What about the Apocrypha? I have been talking about how we got the books of the Bible – both Old Testament and New Testament – and how other books came to be left out. But what are the books of the Apocrypha, where did they come from, and why do some communities of faith (but not others) accept them as authoritative? When someone refers to “The” Apocrypha they are speaking of the “Old Testament Apocrypha,” a set collection of books written by Jewish authors (not Christian). There are also Christian apocryphal books (e.g., other Gospels – such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Mary – and other epistles, Acts, and apocalypsese that did not make it into the NT). But these are not called “The” Apocrypha. That term instead refers to the books written, as a rule, between the end of the OT and the beginning of the NT that are included in some Christian Bibles as canonical or semi-canonical. Here is some basic information about the Apocrypha, lifted [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:35:58-04:00January 9th, 2017|Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

How We Got the Hebrew Bible

Here at last I can summarize what modern scholars say about the formation of the canon of the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament). It’s a fascinating topic, of relevance, of course, to Jews, Christians, and anyone else who thinks the history of our civilization matters! This summary is taken from my book The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction (If the terms I use here don’t make sense: read the preceding two posts!) ************************************************************* Contemporary Views of the Formation of the Canon Today scholars tend to present a somewhat fuzzier picture of when and why the canon came to be formed, although there do seem to be some fixed points. It is widely held that the five books of the Torah were accepted by nearly all Jews as a set canon by the fifth century b.c.e., in the early postexilic period. One piece of evidence comes from the Bible itself, in a post-exilic book, Ezra. The scribe Ezra himself is described as being “skilled in the Torah of Moses that the LORD the God of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:35:40-04:00January 3rd, 2017|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

How We Got the Hebrew Bible: The Older View

Now that I’ve given some terms and definitions (in yesterday’s post) I can start talking about how it is we got the books of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: who chose the books to include, when they did so, and on the basis of what criteria. Before laying out what scholars today tend to think, I need to provide some information about what *used* to be the standard view (this older view is still held by some, who are not abreast on changes in scholarship over the past twenty or thirty years.) That will be today’s post. Again, this information comes from my textbook on the Bible. ****************************************************************** The term “canon” comes from the Greek word for “reed” or “rod.” A canon was a straight edge that was used, for example, by a carpenter to make sure that an alignment was correct; but it could also be used as a measuring stick. Eventually the word “canon” came to be applied in other contexts, by analogy, to refer to a rule or standard by which something [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:35:40-04:00January 2nd, 2017|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

What is the Hebrew Bible?

In response to my previous two posts about how the Hebrew Bible came to be copied over the years, several readers have asked me a related (though also very different) question about how the books of the Hebrew Bible were chosen – why do we have these books and not some others? Who decided what the canon of the Hebrew Bible would be? When did they decide? And what were their criteria? These are important questions, and even though not quite as directly related to the thread I’m making my way through, I think they are worth a couple of posts. Before giving the standard scholarly view of such things, I will need to explain in the simplest terms I can what the layout, structure, and divisions of the Hebrew Bible are, and define and explain a number of terms. That will occupy us in the present post. I have once more taken this information from the discussion in my book The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction. ************************************************************** BOX 1.1 THE [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:35:40-04:00January 1st, 2017|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

The Copying of the Hebrew Bible

Here I continue on with my comments on the manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, and the question of whether they were changed over the years. Again, this is taken from my discussion in The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction. *********************************************************************** The Masoretic Text The text of the Hebrew Bible that is read today and that is at the basis of all modern translations is called the Masoretic Text. It is called this because the Jewish scholars who devised the rules for copying scripture are known as the Masoretes. The term “masorete” comes from the Hebrew word masorah, which means “tradition.” The Masoretes were the scholars who worked out ways to preserve the traditions of the Hebrew Bible. They were active between 500-1000 CE. To understand what the Masoretes accomplished, you need to remember that ancient written Hebrew was a language that used only consonants, not vowels. Any language that is written only in consonants is open, obviously, to serious problems of interpretation. Imagine if you were to write English that way. Apart from context, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:35:40-04:00December 29th, 2016|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible

Just now I started to write a post dealing with what it is exactly that translators (such as those of the New Revised Standard Version) translated when they translated their texts. I realized that to explain that I have to say something about the surviving Hebrew manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible – something I have not talked a *great* deal about on the blog in the past, and about the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament – about which I have said a good deal more. My comments on the Hebrew Bible will require a couple of posts. As you’ll see, I start at the most basic level and go from there, never getting at all complicated or technical. This has been taken from my textbook The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction ********************************************************** The Text of the Hebrew Bible We have seen that the earliest writings of the Hebrew Bible were probably produced during the eighth century BCE. This is the date of the oldest prophets such as Amos and Isaiah of Jerusalem. When [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:35:40-04:00December 28th, 2016|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Problems with Inclusive Language Bible Translation

From the marvels of the universe (yesterday’s post) to the use of inclusive language in Bible translations (today’s post) – easy! All in one step. The Psalm I quoted yesterday presents a problem to Bible translators who want to render the text to include both men and women. Here is what Psalm 8 says in the (non-inclusive-language) King James, as quoted yesterday: 3 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; 4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? 5 For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. 6 Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: When the New Revised Standard Version came out in 1989, it altered the translation by making it more inclusive, as follows: 3When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:35:39-04:00December 23rd, 2016|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Reflections and Ruminations|

The Marvels of our Universe

Even though I am no longer a believer, I still sometimes read and think about the book of Psalms in the Old Testament. Just yesterday I had occasion to quote Psalm 8 to my wife. In the beautiful and most familiar (though completely non-inclusive!) wording of the King James Version, this is the psalm. 1 O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens. 2 Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. 3 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; 4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? 5 For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. 6 Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:35:39-04:00December 22nd, 2016|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

My Work for the New Revised Standard Version Committee

QUESTION: If my memory serves me, you (as a graduate student?) were involved in the development of the NRSV Bible version in 1989. Could you describe your work please? RESPONSE: Yes, that’s right. The New Revised Standard Version Committee was appointed by the U.S. National Council of Churches to produce a revision of the famous Revised Standard Version (RSV) of the Bible, which had come out in 1952. Since the time when the RSV had been produced (mainly in the 1940s), many important developments had happened in the scholarship of the Bible. New discoveries had been made and partially published, especially: the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Scrolls contained a number of different kinds of writings, produced by Jews living at the turn of the Christian era, including a large number of copies of the Hebrew Bible, in Hebrew, as it was known in that day. These are very important for determining the oldest form of the Hebrew text of the Bible for some of its books. The English language had changed in important ways. That [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:35:38-04:00December 17th, 2016|Bart's Debates, Bart’s Biography, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Jesus, The Law, and the New Covenant

This past week I gave a lecture at the University of Michigan called “Jesus, the Law, and the New Covenant.” The occasion was a symposium in honor of the life and work of Old Testament scholar George Mendenhall. I never knew Mendenhall. He was a highly prominent figure in the field of Hebrew Bible in the middle of the 20th century, known especially for his work on the significance of “covenant” for understanding both the Hebrew Bible and the history of the Israelites. The symposium itself was a day-long affair in which scholars of Hebrew Bible, Ancient Near Eastern Studies, and post-biblical Judaism gave academic papers dealing with the concepts of covenant and law in their fields of interest. The organizers of the conference asked me to give the keynote address the evening before the symposium itself. When I was asked, I told them how deeply honored I was, knowing the importance of Mendenhall’s scholarship. But I pointed out that my expertise is not Hebrew Bible, and I would not be able to interact intelligently [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:34:46-04:00October 12th, 2016|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Reflections and Ruminations|

Knowing the “Original” Text — of the NT or of Isaiah. Weekly Readers’ Mailbag July 17, 2016

How can we absolutely know whether we have the original words of the New Testament? And weren’t books of the Old Testament edited progressively over time, so that their texts were even more fluid than those of the New Testament? These are the two questions I address in this week’s Readers’ mailbag. If you have a question you would like me to address, let me know! QUESTION “So that there are some places where specialists cannot agree on what the text originally said, and there are some places where we’ll probably never know.” I’ve both heard – and read – you saying the above on multiple occasions, and I’ve always wanted to ask: if we ‘don’t have the originals, or even copies of the originals, or even copies of copies of the originals’, as you often say, then why do you say ‘there are [merely] some places where we simply don’t know what the original text said’? If we don’t have the originals (or copies and so on), then we don’t REALLY know what [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:33:56-04:00July 17th, 2016|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Are the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Manuscripts Reliable? A Blast From the Past

A reader has perspicaciously pointed out to me that a particularly relevant post from three years ago (June 7, 2013) makes an important contribution to the topic I've been discussing about the Pentateuch. This post is not about whether the events described in the Hebrew Bible are accurate, but whether we have accurate manuscripts of these accounts. I talk a lot on the blog about manuscripts of the New Testament. What about manuscripts of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible? My post back then was in response to a question. Here it is in full: **************************************************************************************************** QUESTION: Bart, these issues you've found in the New Testament, have you studied and found similar issues in the Old Testament?" RESPONSE: Yes indeed! Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament) was my secondary field in my PhD program, and I taught Introduction to Hebrew Bible at both Rutgers and UNC. A few years ago when I decided to write my Introduction to the Bible I decided that to do it right I had to re-tool in Hebrew Bible. I’m by no [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:33:56-04:00July 11th, 2016|Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Suggestions for Further Reading on the Pentateuch

A couple of readers have asked if I have any bibliography to suggest in connection with the thread I am just finishing now on the sources behind the Pentateuch. Below are the suggestions I make in my textbook on the Bible, the first three chapters. As you’ll see, they are briefly annotated to give you a sense of where first to turn, based on you particular interests. The first chapter is an Introduction to the Bible, and so the bibliography comprises general reference works that I highly recommend. These may be ones you would want to buy if you are hard core into your interests. The other two chapters are on Genesis and then the rest of the Pentateuch. ********************************************************* Suggestions for Further Reading Chapter One: What is the Bible? And Why Is It So Hard to Understand? Coogan, Michael and Bruce Metzger, eds. Oxford Companion to the Bible. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. A superb dictionary of all things biblical, ideal for both beginning and advanced students. Freedman, David [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:33:55-04:00July 10th, 2016|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Reader’s Questions|

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