Historical Jesus Archives - Page 15 of 35 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

Did Judas Really Betray Jesus? Readers’ Mailbag

My post a few days ago about whether Paul knew that Jesus had been betrayed by Judas Iscariot -- in which I concluded there really was no solid evidence one way or the other -- generated several follow-up questions. Many of them simply asked: well, did it really happen? Here is an example, and my response. QUESTION: I may be showing my ignorance here but could it be that Paul doesn’t know/write about Judas’ betrayal because it never happened? Yes, it is in all four gospels but as you’ve pointed out the four gospels do not agree on who showed up at the empty tomb, what they saw, and what they did next so…. If they get that wrong could it be that the Judas betrayal is also a fabrication/legend? RESPONSE: It's a great question, and I'm completely sympathetic to it. But I have to say that I think Jesus really was betrayed by one of his own, Judas Iscariot. In my judgment, that's just where the evidence points. As many of you know [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:49:10-04:00May 22nd, 2020|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

Did Paul Know that Judas Betrayed Jesus? Readers’ Mailbag!

QUESTION: Do you think that Paul, without naming him, is referring to Judas in 1 Corinthians 11:23-24? (The verse in the NRSV: “For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”) RESPONSE: Ah, it’s a great question. Paul never explicitly mentions Judas Iscariot or indicates that Jesus was betrayed by one of his own disciples. But couldn’t this verse contain a reference to Judas? It refers to the night on which Jesus was betrayed! One reason the question matters is that Paul says almost *NOTHING* about the events of Jesus’ lifetime. That seems weird to people, but just read all of his letters. Paul never mentions Jesus healing anyone, casting out a demon, doing any other miracle, arguing with Pharisees or other leaders, teaching the multitudes, even speaking a parable, being baptized, being [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:49:09-04:00May 15th, 2020|Historical Jesus, Paul and His Letters|

Readers Mailbag: Does Isaiah 53 Predict the Death and Resurrection of Jesus?

I would like to get back into the practice of devoting one post a week to answering questions raised by blog members. I have a fairly long list of good questions I haven’t been able to get to, so why not just go through them week by week? If you have any pressing questions that are particularly intriguing or perplexing for you about the NT or early Christianity or any related topic, let me know as a comment on a post (any post will do, whether relevant or not). If it’s not something I can address or that I can answer in a line or two, I’ll let you know. Otherwise, I can add it to the list! At the top of my current list is the following. QUESTION: I wonder if you could talk about Isaiah 53 which I think is also a later insert by the scribes trying to justify what they had done to Jesus. RESPONSE: Ah, now *this* is a passage that students bring up every time I teach [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:49:08-04:00May 8th, 2020|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

Did Jesus Sweat Blood? “Intrinsic” Evidence for Textual Variants

In yesterday’s post I mentioned some of the kinds of “external” evidence that textual scholars look at when trying to establish the “original” text of a document (that is, the wording of the text as the author originally wrote it) when different manuscripts have different wordings for this or that passage. In this post I’ll talk about one kind of “internal” evidence that is used to assist in making this kind of decision. With internal evidence, instead of looking at what the *attestation* of a passage is in the surviving witnesses (i.e., manuscripts of various kinds) you look at the passage itself, to see what about it can suggest which of the different ways of wording it is probably the "original" and which are the changes made by scribes. There are two kinds of internal evidence that are usually called (1) intrinsic probabilities and (2) transcriptional probabilities. For now, I’ll focus on the first. Intrinsic probabilities involve determining which of two (or more) forms of the text found in the manuscripts is the one that [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:48:20-04:00March 10th, 2020|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, New Testament Manuscripts|

Jesus Kissing Mary Magdalene: A Bizarre Scene in the Gospel of Philip

A number of readers responded to my post about whether Jesus and Mary Magdalene were intimate by pointing out that the non-canonical Gospel of Philip sure does seem to *say* they were! So, what do I have to say about that? I've dealt with the issue on the blog before, but a lot of you were just a twinkle in our eye at the time, so here I'll deal with it again. I have a reasonably full discussion of the relevant issues in my book Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene. In the book I put the discussion in the context of – yes, you guessed it -- Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, the one source many people turn to for the Gospel of Philip (!). Few people who talk about the relevant passage have actually read the book. It strikes many readers today as unusually strange. But in any event, this is what I say about the book and the Kissing Passage there. ************************************************************** Some of the historical claims about the non-canonical Gospels in the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:48:02-04:00February 11th, 2020|Christian Apocrypha, Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions, Women in Early Christianity|

Jesus as Single: An Actual Argument!

So far I have pointed out that it is flat-out wrong to say that every Jewish man in the first century was married and was expected to be married. It is not only demographically impossible (there were not enough women to go around) but we know of Jewish men from the time of Jesus who were not married and were proud of it. Strikingly, they, like him, were apocalyptically minded Jews – such as the Essenes and the apostle Paul. I have also argued that whatever Mary Magdalene was to Jesus, she was not his lover and spouse, to the great disappointment of us all….. But is there an actual argument that Jesus was not married other than the silences? I think there is. And this is what it is. A good deal of Jesus’ teaching, of course, was ethical in nature, about how people ought to live and conduct themselves. Many people think of Jesus as one of the great moral teachers of all time, and I have no quarrel with that. But I [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:48:02-04:00February 7th, 2020|Historical Jesus, Sex and Sexuality in the Bible|

Demons and Christians in Antiquity! Guest Post By Travis Proctor

Some readers have suggested that I have guest posts from my former PhD students describing their dissertations. Great idea! This is our first shot at it. One of my most recent PhDs was Travis Proctor, who is now an Assistant Professor of Religion at Wittenberg College in Springfield Ohio. Travis wrote a terrifically interesting dissertation on demons in early Christianity. It turns out, it's not only a really intriguing topic, but unexpectedly complicated. The dissertation was called "Rulers of the Air: Demonic Bodies and the Making of the Ancient Christian Cosmos," completed in 2017. And just recently it has won Travis a major international award from University of Heidelberg, German. See: https://religion.unc.edu/travis-proctor-phd-2017-manfred-lautenschlaeger-award-for-theological-promise/ I asked Travis to summarize the dissertation for us, and here is what he has to say! (I will be happy to post your comments on this; Travis will not be able to respond directly.) ********************************************************************************* Clement of Alexandria, one of the most famous philosophers and ethical teachers of early Christianity, was no fan of eating meat. But Clement’s rationale for avoiding [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:48:02-04:00February 5th, 2020|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

Was Jesus Intimate with Mary Magdalene?

I pointed out in my last post that most people simply assume that Jesus was not married because there is no mention of his wife in any of our sources, or any mention that he ever had a wife. And so it is assumed that he did not have one. As scholars often, and rightly, argue, that is an argument from silence, and on it's own it is not a very strong one – since, among other things, none of these sources indicates, either, that he was not married. And so it is not evidence in one direction or another. It’s a good point, but my own view is that the silence in this case is telling – though not for the reason people sometimes say. It is sometimes wrongly asserted – by no less an inimitable authority than Dan Brown, in the Da Vinci Code – that if there was no claim that Jesus was not married that must mean that he was married, since Jewish men were “always” married. In my last [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:48:02-04:00February 4th, 2020|Historical Jesus, Sex and Sexuality in the Bible, Women in Early Christianity|

So… WAS Jesus Married?

As a follow-up to my previous post, I'll now re-post a couple of reflections on this question that has obsessed modern people: was Jesus probably married? I should say that what obsesses most folk is not what obsesses scholars, as a rule; in my roughly 89 million discussions with New Testament scholars over the past 44 years, I don't recall ever having a detailed back-and-forth about it, except in public settings in front of a crowd of non-scholars. It's kind-a like Shakespeare. I know this is disappointing, but the major Shakespeare scholars in universities in England and America do NOT have discussions about whether Shakespeare really wrote the plays. It's just not the issue.... Anyway, I did have to deal with the question of Jesus possible marriage, with a couple of other scholars, in front of a crowd five years ago. I posted on it afterward. Here's what I said. ***************************************************************** I am en route just now, back from Las Vegas, where I participated in a discussion with two other scholars at the Black Mountain [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:48:02-04:00February 3rd, 2020|Historical Jesus, Sex and Sexuality in the Bible|

A “Newly Discovered” “Gospel”: Was Jesus Married with Children?

When James Tabor graciously made two guest posts a couple of weeks ago, he raised a lot of intriguing questions for our blog readers. I was asked by one of them to address James's view that Jesus may well have been married. I was pretty sure I had dealt with this at one point on the blog, and just now I've checked, and it was almost exactly five years ago, well before most of you were on the blog, and probably before some of you were born. A series of posts. On a lively and interesting topic. Was in fact Jesus married? The series started with a news report that a Gospel had been newly discovered that provided evidence that in fact he probably was. I'll start by reposting that one, and then get into the issue of how we can weigh the evidence one way or the other. It's an issue that continues to intrigue! But rarely does anyone actually discuss the actual *evidence*. It's much easier to make bold claims. I'm not talking [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:48:01-04:00February 2nd, 2020|Book Discussions, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Jesus, the Supernatural, and the Historian: Guest Post 2 by James Tabor

Here is the second half of James Tabor’s guest post; for the first, see yesterday! I think you will agree, the two parts are very stimulating. If you want to hear more of James’s thoughts on all sorts of topics connected to the New Testament and Early Christianity, he too has a very helpful blog where he discusses all sorts of relevant topics. Give it a look! It’s at https://jamestabor.com/ James will be happy to address questions you have in your comments. Please keep them short and to the point, if possible! Happy reading. James Tabor's most popular books are The Jesus Dynasty and Paul and Jesus, among others. ******************************************************* The public has been geared to think of the suppression of evidence, usually with the Roman Catholic church being the culprit, but such grand “conspiratorial” theories have little basis in fact. What is most characteristic of early Christianity, or more properly, “Christianites,” is a competing diversity of “parties and politics,” each propagating its own vision of the significance of the life and teachings of Jesus [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:45-04:00January 21st, 2020|Historical Jesus, Reflections and Ruminations|

Guest Post by James Tabor: The Historian and the Supernatural

I am honored to have a guest post provided for us by James D. Tabor, Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at my sibling-school UNC-Charlotte, and longtime friend. Many of you will know James and his work, as he publishes not only for the scholarly crowd but also for broader audiences. If you want to stir up controversy – that’s the way to go! And James is no stranger to it, as becomes clear in this post – or rather these two posts. I’ve decided to split them in half to fit in with the more common length on the blog. So, one today and one tomorrow. James is dealing with a topic we have queried before on the blog before, about the role of miracles/the supernatural in scholarship. But this will be very different from the most recent posts by our firm atheist friends last month. James is not dealing with the difficult question of whether miracles are plausible at all, but with the equally difficult question of whether historians, by the nature [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:45-04:00January 20th, 2020|Historical Jesus, Reflections and Ruminations|

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 [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:45-04:00January 15th, 2020|Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, Historical Jesus|

End of the Year Final Exam!

We are near the end of the year. What better time for a final exam? In my classes I normally give essay exams -- they are by far the best way to find out how much a student actually knows (as opposed to testing them for what they don't know) and how well s/he can express thoughts in writing and develop an argument. I've pulled out an exam that I once gave to my students in a class called Jesus in Scholarship and Film. It's a terrifically interesting course: we examine ancient Gospels, mainly but not exclusively the ones in the New Testament, to see what each of them is trying to teach about the life, teaching, and meaning of Jesus; then we use the Gospels as historical sources to see what we can say about the actual man himself, the life and teaching of the historical Jesus; and then we look at modern films to see how *they* portray Jesus in light of what we've already learned (e.g. Infancy and Crucifixion narratives in Ben [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:27-04:00December 29th, 2019|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Teaching Christianity|

Why Does Matthew Have the Story of the “Wise Men”?

QUESTION: My Bible group had a good time yesterday comparing Matthew and Luke's accounts of the Christmas story. One question that came up was why would Matthew relate the story of the Magi? RESPONSE Ah, it’s a great question and – as it turns out – an important one for understanding the Gospel of Matthew. The story is found only in this Gospel (But this time of year, who can keep ones mind from jumping to: “We Three Kings of Orient Are….”), and it is filled with intriguing conundra. For example, why would pagan astrologers from the East be interested in knowing where the King of Israel was born and come to worship him? Were they doing this for all babies who were bound to become kings of foreign countries? How does a star lead them to Jerusalem and then disappear and then reappear and lead the Magi not just to Bethlehem but stop over a *house*? How does a star stop over a house? If Herod really sent out the troops to kill [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:27-04:00December 26th, 2019|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

Heaven and Hell in a Nutshell: Getting into the Kernel

Here is the second and last part of my summary of the heart of my forthcoming book Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife. It's not an outline of the chapters, but a summing up of the key issues, flow, and the ultimate "point" of the book. As a tip, I've called this little essay (in my own mind): "There Is Nothing To Fear." ************************************************************************************************ The idea of rewards and punishments eventually found its way into Judaism as well, but not until the very end of the Old Testament period. The book of Daniel was the final writing of the Hebrew Bible. This fictitious account of a pious Hebrew young man, Daniel, presents an alternative Jewish understanding of the world, the nature of reality, and of life beyond, quite unlike the rest of the Hebrew Bible. Scholars have called Daniel’s view “apocalypticism,” from the Greek word “apocalypsis” – which means a “revealing.” Jewish apocalyptic thinkers began to believe that God had “revealed” to them the truth of ultimate reality hidden from all their predecessor, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:24-04:00December 16th, 2019|Book Discussions, Early Judaism, Historical Jesus|

Who Was Jesus?

This is a continuation of a soon-to-be-compiled longer post for broader consumption on the New Testament. Now that I have described what the NT is, how it is structured and organized, and how it has come down to us, I get to one of the key issues: what does the New Testament tell us about the historical figure of Jesus himself? ********************************************** There can be no doubt that Jesus of Nazareth has been the most influential person in the history of the world. The church founded on his name shaped the history of Western Civilization, and over two billion people worship him today. And yet, because of the nature of our sources, it is surprisingly difficult to know what he actually said and did. Jesus is thought to have died around 30 CE. He is not referred to in any Greek or Roman sources of the first century, and only briefly in our major Jewish source of the period, the historian Josephus. The earliest Christian references are from the New Testament, but most of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:07-04:00November 29th, 2019|Historical Jesus|

Maybe Jesus DOES Talk about “Homosexuality”?

In my recent post I pointed out that Jesus said nothing – nada! – about same sex relations in any of his surviving teachings. One blog member pointed out a post on a different blog by New Testament scholar Scot McKnight arguing that there are there passages in the Gospels where in fact Jesus *may* have been referring to homosexuality, in condemnatory terms. I thought, HUH? THAT’s interesting! I better look. So I did. I don’t think there’s any way this is right, but you can decide for yourself. This will take two posts. I’ll cite the the passages, then Scot’s assessment of them (which I summarize), and my response. Several things to say at the outset. I have known Scott (not well, but a bit) for many years. He is a bona fide scholar of the New Testament, a well-trained and careful interpreter of the text. He is also a committed evangelical Christian, and an interesting one: a few years ago he “converted” (or at least moved on or over) to join the Episcopal [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:06-04:00November 22nd, 2019|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Sex and Sexuality in the Bible|

Is the Bible Inspired by God? Guest Post by Evangelical Apologist Mike Licona

This particular post is free and open to the public. If you belonged to the blog, you would get five posts a week, for about what it costs to send a letter. And every penny goes to charity! So why not join? Mike Licona has burst on the scene as one of the leading spokespersons for evangelical Christianity and its theological claims, especially that Jesus was physically raised from the dead, that purely historical research can actually demonstrate that it happened, and that the Bible is literally inspired by God himself and to be accepted as inerrant. As many of you know, I have had three public debates with Mike (on the question of whether historians can proved that Jesus was raised from the dead; the debates were not about whether Jesus was raised from the dead – they were about whether this kind of claim can be proved by historians using historical methods, or, instead, is a theological claim that cannot be demonstrated historically); and recently we shared a stage at an evangelical Christian [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:06-04:00November 17th, 2019|Bart's Debates, Historical Jesus|

Jesus and “Homosexuality”

This post is free and available to everyone. Most posts on the blog are for members only. But the good news is that it's extremely easy and inexpensive to join. It costs less than 50 cents a week, for five posts of this substance. You get TONS for your money. And all proceeds to to charity. So why not? Most Christians today who continue to condemn homosexuality, whether in publicly opposing the LGBTQ community or privately assigning people of various sexual identities or non-heterosexual actions to eternal damnation, or at least to God’s bad side, do so on the basis of the New Testament. Yes, they know about the book of Leviticus and it’s condemnation of men having sex with men; but most of the time that is a kind of back-up argument. Since they realize and openly admit that so much else in the book of Leviticus is no longer applicable to Christians (for example, kosher food laws), they realize that the case against same-sex relations, let alone sexual orientation, cannot be water-tight with [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:06-04:00November 15th, 2019|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Reflections and Ruminations, Sex and Sexuality in the Bible|

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