In my previous post I explained how the book of Job comprises both a folk-tale written in prose about a righteous man named Job (chs. 1-2; 42) and a set of dialogues written in poetry between Job, his so-called friends, and eventually God (chs. 3-42).   These are two different compositions with two different authors living at two different times with two different understandings of why Job and people like him suffer. To unpack these understandings, I begin with the folktale as discussed in my book God's Problem (HarperOne, 2008). ****************************** The Folktale: The Suffering of Job as a Test of Faith The action of the prose folktale alternates between scenes on earth and in heaven.  It begins by indicating that Job lived in the land of Uz; usually this is located in Edom, to the southeast of Israel.  Job, in other words, is not an Israelite.  As a book of “wisdom,” this account is not concerned with specifically Israelite traditions: it is concerned with understanding the world in ways that should make sense to everyone living [...]

  After I finished my short thread of posts about the problem of suffering a couple of weeks ago, I realized that it might be helpful for me to discuss one or two of the books of the Bible that deal with the issue head-on -- in part because many people don't read these books much, even if they know about them, and in part because many people who *do* read them don't know how expert interpreters have explained them. For no book is this more true that that gem in the Hebrew Bible, the book of Job.  Or rather those two books, the two books of Job. To talk about Job and what it is really about will require several posts.  This is the first, an introduction to the single most important issue connected with the book that most people have never heard and that completely affects how the book is to be interpreted. This is how I discuss it in my book God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question [...]

In my upcoming course "Finding Moses" I'll be discussing the final four books of the Pentateuch (Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) (for more information, see:  Finding Moses – Online Course Covering the Historicity of the Pentateuch - Bart D. Ehrman - New Testament Scholar, Speaker, and Consultant (bartehrman.com). Apart from the opening chapters of Exodus, these books are not well known to most Christians, even those on fairly good terms with the New Testament.  I've known many a reader who was determined to read the entire Bible from beginning to end, but who quit early into Leviticus.  In part that's because these books are both hard to understand and difficult to see as interesting when not explained.  A huge chunk of them is made up of the laws given to Moses (almost the entire second half of Exodus, all of Leviticus, a good chunk of Numbers, and most of Deuteronomy).  How can reading a bunch of antiquated laws be interesting? Of course, many (MANY!) Christians just love to cherry pick these laws in order to [...]

In my upcoming course on Finding Moses I will be discussing some of the most important features of the foundation of Judaism -- in particular, the Exodus and the giving of the Jewish Law, both connected directly in the Hebrew Bible with Moses (8 lectures, given live with Q&A on Dec. 10 and 11: Finding Moses – Online Course Covering the Historicity of the Pentateuch - Bart D. Ehrman - New Testament Scholar, Speaker, and Consultant (bartehrman.com) These are hugely important events for all of world history (without them, we wouldn't have Judaism, Christianity, or Islam: so imagine what the world would be like otherwise!).  And it is very much worth studying what we know about them, both as literary narratives of the Hebrew Bible and in relation to what actually happened historically. I'm giving here just a taste of the sorts of things I'll be covering in the course.  One key question for historians, of course, is "what really happened"? (There are lots of other questions and issues too -- we'll be covering a [...]

Yesterday I began a short thread dealing with problems in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament, as a kind of foreshadowing of the sorts of things I'll be covering in my online course of eight lectures, that I'll be giving live, with Q&A, on December 10-11; again, if you're interested, you can find out about the course here:  Finding Moses – Online Course Covering the Historicity of the Pentateuch - Bart D. Ehrman - New Testament Scholar, Speaker, and Consultant (bartehrman.com) The course will be a followup to my earlier one on Genesis (called "In the Beginning").  Many of the same problems that I have discussed on the blog and in my course about Genesis apply to the other books of the Pentateuch as well.  For many of us, some of the most interesting ones involve contradictions among the various narratives. I talk about that a bit in my book The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction.   Here's some of what I deal with there, edited here and there [...]

On December 10 and 11 I will be giving my eight-lecture remote course on "Finding Moses: What Scholars Know about the Exodus and the Jewish Law."  This was supposed to happen a month earlier, but life got in the way and we had to postpone it.  The course is not connected to the blog per se, it is part of my other outreach program the Bart Ehrman Professional Services (BEPS), which hosts public courses and lectures.  To find out about the course and others like it, here's the address: Online Courses by Dr. Bart Ehrman (10% Off First Order) The course is one of a long series that I've started on the entire Bible, both Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament) and NT.   My expertise, of course, is mainly NT and early Christianity; but all the way back in graduate school (about the time the book of Isaiah was written) my secondary field of training was Hebrew Bible, and I taught Introduction to Hebrew Bible at both Rutgers and UNC. Some years ago when I [...]

In a previous post I began talking about the distinctive views of the book of Ecclesiastes, one of the real gems of the Hebrew Bible, a book that refuses to accept easy answers or blithe truisms about life, but faces reality head on.   No matter what we do or how we try to explain it away, life is short.  Very very short.  The author of course had no conception of what we know now about time in relation to lifespan.  What would he say if he knew that the world (what we would call the universe — something about which also he had no knowledge) was not a few thousand years old but 13.8 billion? My guess is that he would say the same thing he already does, but possibly with a few more exclamation points.   Given how incredibly brief our life is, even if we live to “old” age — what’s the point of it?  Is there a point?   I think there is.  And I find not just value but also hope in his [...]