Historical Jesus Archives - Page 24 of 34 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

Jesus’ Claim to Be the Messiah

I’m afraid I have been sidetracked from my thread within a thread within a thread, but now want to get back to it. This particular sub-sub-thread is about whether Jesus considered himself to be the Jewish messiah. My view is that Yes he did. But he meant something very specific by that, and it is not what most people (Christians and non-Christians) today mean by it. Recall what I have tried to show thus far. There were various expectations of what the messiah would be like among Jews of Jesus’ day – a political ruler over Israel, a great priest who ruled God’s people through God’s law, a cosmic judge of the earth who would destroy God’s enemies in a cataclysmic act of judgment. All these views had one thing in common: the future messiah would be a figure of grandeur and might who would come with the authority and power of God. And who was Jesus? For most people of his day, Jesus was just the opposite – an itinerant Jewish preacher from [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:31-04:00November 30th, 2015|Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Readers’ Mailbag November 27, 2015

I hope everyone had a fulfilling (and fillingful) Thanksgiving! Now it is time to answer some questions I have received over the past couple of weeks, in short rapid-fire order. If you have a question you would like me to address, please ask it in a comment to this post. I am keeping a list and deal with the questions, weekly, more or less in the order in which I receive them. And I’m running low on questions! So ask away! QUESTION: Why do you think Jesus remained single his whole life? Could that have been part of the reason he was seen as a divine being? Ordinary people marry, not highly esteemed divine beings? RESPONSE: That’s an interesting hypothesis, but I don’t think it is “it.” Let me start with the necessary preliminary: I do indeed think that Jesus was, in fact, unmarried. People have disputed that (most notably that inestimable authority on ancient Christianity, Dan Brown, in the Da Vinci Code!) but the evidence is very strong. I have dealt [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:31-04:00November 28th, 2015|Historical Jesus, New Testament Manuscripts, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

The Teaching of Jesus

I have been providing necessary background to the question of whether Jesus could have considered himself the messiah, and have done so by trying to situate him in the world of first century Jewish apocalyptic thinking. We now need to move to a summary of Jesus’ teaching given that apocalyptic framework. We could obviously have a year-long thread on the topic of what it was Jesus taught during his itinerant preaching ministry. Many people have written very long books on the subject – and the books just keep comin’ out. If you want a more extended discussion of my views on the matter, you can see my book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. I include bibliography of other works to consult. For my money, among the best and most influential have been John Meier, E. P. Sanders, Dale Allison, and Paula Fredriksen – all of whom agree that Jesus is best understood as an apocalyptic preacher. Here let me summarize under several rubrics what I think we can say with reasonable reliability about [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:30-04:00November 24th, 2015|Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Readers’ Mailbag November 20, 2015

It is time for my weekly Readers’ Mailbag. I will be dealing with two questions this time. If you have questions, about anything at all related to the historical Jesus, the New Testament, the history of early Christianity, or anything else that I may have a remote chance of knowing something about, please ask! You can either respond with a comment/question to this post, or send me an email, or comment on any other post! QUESTION: An off-topic request: what are the five most puzzling questions about the historical Jesus you would love to see resolved in your lifetime? RESPONSE: Ah, this is a tough one. It is made particularly difficult by two competing phenomena. The first is that most scholars of the historical Jesus are pretty convinced that their views about what he said and did are on the money. So in that sense, what is there that can be answered that hasn’t been? The other is the unpleasant reality that in fact we know very few things for certain about Jesus – [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:30-04:00November 20th, 2015|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

The Beginning and End as Keys to the Middle

In my last post I showed why it is so widely acknowledged that Jesus began his ministry by associating with John the Baptist, an apocalyptic preacher of coming doom. The reason that matters for our purposes in this thread is that it shows that Jesus chose, of his own free will, to join an apocalyptic movement at the very beginning of his public ministry. That certainly demonstrates that Jesus started out his public life as a fervent advocate of a Jewish apocalyptic message. He too must have been expecting the judgment of God soon to appear in which those aligned against God would be destroyed and those who sided with God would be rewarded. That in itself does not show, however, that Jesus’ own proclamation, after he got started, was apocalyptic. Maybe he changed his mind! Maybe he decided John was wrong! Maybe he went his own direction! There are two arguments against the idea that he changed. The first is one I have already recounted several posts ago: apocalyptic sayings are significantly attributed to [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:30-04:00November 19th, 2015|Historical Jesus, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum|

The Baptism of Jesus as an Apocalyptic Event

Over the years scholars have adduced lots of reasons for thinking that Jesus – like many others in his day – was a Jewish apocalypticist, one who thought that the world was controlled by forces of evil but that God was very soon going to intervene to overthrow everything and everyone opposed to him in order to set up a good kingdom here on earth. As I pointed out in my previous post, this is the view found in Jesus’ teachings in Mark (e.g., ch. 13), in Q (the source used by Matthew and Luke for many of their sayings), in M (Matthew’s special source[s]), and in L (Luke’s special source[s]). There is another very good argument for thinking that Jesus must have subscribed to some kind of apocalyptic view (I’ll lay out what his exact views apparently were in a future post). In fact, this argument is so good that I wish I had thought of it myself! But alas, credit goes to others. The argument, as I usually phrase it, is that “the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:14-04:00November 18th, 2015|Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Albert Schweitzer and the Apocalyptic Jesus

In the current thread I’m trying to establish that Jesus believed he was the messiah. I have pointed out that his followers would not have considered him the messiah because they believed he had been raised from the dead (since the messiah was not supposed to die and rise again) unless they had already considered him the messiah prior to his death. But that, of course, does not mean that Jesus *himself* thought he was the messiah. And so we have to look for evidence from Jesus’ life that indicates that this is what he thought about himself, and my argument is going to be that there are several pieces of evidence that strongly suggest it is, of which my plan is to stress two. As background, in my previous post, I laid out the world view that Jesus himself almost certainly subscribed to, a view that scholars have called Jewish apocalypticism. I need to develop these thoughts a bit in this post; and the next; after that I’ll lay out in (very) summary fashion [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:09:39-04:00November 16th, 2015|Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

The Apocalyptic Context for Jesus’ View of the Messiah

In this thread I am trying to argue that Jesus understood himself to be the messiah. So far I have made one of my two main arguments, with the understanding that *both* arguments have to be considered in order to have a compelling case. So the first prong doesn’t prove much on its own. But in combination with the second argument, it makes a strong case. The first argument is that Jesus’ followers would not have understood him as the messiah after his death (as they did) unless they believed him to be the messiah before his death – even if they came to believe he had been raised from the dead, that would not have made them think he was the messiah. I’ve explained why in my previous post. The second second involves showing that it was not only the disciples who understood Jesus to be the messiah before his death, but that Jesus himself did. This is even harder to show, but I think there is really compelling evidence. There are two major [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:14-04:00November 15th, 2015|Early Judaism, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

How Do We Know What Jesus Said About Himself?

Do we know what Jesus said about himself? Yesterday I started my two-prong argument for why Jesus probably considered himself the messiah. The first prong is that Jesus must have been called the messiah during his lifetime, or it makes no sense that he would be called messiah after his death. Even if there were Jews who believed that Jesus was raised from the dead after he was crucified (as indeed there were! Otherwise we wouldn’t have Christianity), the resurrection of a dead person would never lead anyone to say “Ah, he’s the messiah!”. No one expected the messiah to be a resurrected person. So Jesus was being called the messiah before his death. Otherwise, we can’t make sense of the fact that he was called the messiah after his (believed-in) resurrection. Do We Know What Jesus Said About Himself? Several readers have pointed out that this does not mean that Jesus *himself* thought of himself as the messiah. It simply means that some of his followers did. That is absolutely right. I couldn’t agree [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:13-04:00November 12th, 2015|Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Jesus, the Messiah, and the Resurrection

I have been talking about the early Christian understandings of Jesus as the messiah – not just the messiah, but the “crucified messiah,” a concept that would have seemed not just unusual or bizarre to most Jewish ears in the first century, but absolutely mind-boggling and self-contradictory. I’ve been arguing that it was precisely the contradictory nature of the claim that led almost all Jews to reject the Christian claims about Jesus. Several readers have asked me whether I think Jesus understood himself to be the messiah. Probably those who know a *little* bit about my work and my general views of things would think that my answer would be Absolutely Not. But those who know a *lot* about my views will know that the answer is Yes Indeed. I think Jesus did consider himself the messiah. But not the to-be-crucified-messiah. The key to understanding Jesus’ view of himself is to recognize what he *meant* by considering himself the messiah. I will get to that in a later post. For now I want to give [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:13-04:00November 11th, 2015|Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

The Jewish Messiah

In my previous post I began to discuss the understanding of Jesus as the Son of God, the Messiah, in the Gospel of Mark (this is a thread within a thread within a thread – but it doesn’t matter. Each of these posts makes sense on their own). I am trying to show that Mark portrayed Jesus as the Son of God (meaning: the one who was in a particularly close relationship with God who was chosen by God to mediate his will on earth) and the messiah. But he was the Son of God/Messiah whom no one understood. Even his disciples. What though would it mean for first century Jews to think of someone as the messiah? Some serious background is necessary. As I pointed out in my previous post, the word Messiah is a Hebrew term (the Greek equivalent is “Christ”) which meant “anointed one.” Why would you call someone the anointed one? In Jewish circles the term goes back to a kind of royal ideology (i.e., understandings of the kingship) from centuries [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:13-04:00November 4th, 2015|Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Reader’s Mailbag on Virgin Birth: 10/29/15

Many thanks to everyone who responded to my queries about how we could make the Blog better. I received some very good ideas, and one in particular that I want to implement, starting with this post. That involves a weekly Reader’s Mailbag. I get a lot of questions each week, and usually can only devote an occasional post to them. Otherwise, all I can do is give a one-sentence or so response in my Comments. But the idea that several people suggested was: why not have a feature where, in a short directed response, I address interesting questions people raise? I could do this every week. The comments would not be as long as a full post, let alone a thread, but much fuller than I can make in my Comments section. I think it’s a great idea. So I’m gonna try it. My idea is that the questions should be short and to the point. They can be on any topic involving the New Testament, the history of early Christainity, or any related [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:12-04:00October 29th, 2015|Acts of the Apostles, Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Really??? Stories of Jesus’ Virgin Birth

COMMENT: When I bring up the possibility that the original Luke did not have the first two chapters which include the virgin birth narrative, Christians say to me: "How could such a new twist to the story of Jesus have developed so soon in the first century if some of Jesus' family, disciples, and friends were still alive to verify its accuracy? If Jesus had truly been Joseph's son, wouldn't SOMEONE have said, "Hey. Wait a minute. Jesus nor his mother ever claimed that he was the virgin-born son of Yahweh. This virgin birth story is bogus nonsense." RESPONSE: This is an interesting point and one that we should reflect on. As it turns out, it's one I’ve reflected on it for some thirty years now! (And it is related to what I discuss in my next book on how memory affected the oral traditions circulating about Jesus before the Gospels were written.) It is one of those points that on the surface sounds really convincing: of *course* that’s the case! No one could [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:12-04:00October 26th, 2015|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

Adoptionistic Christologies

For some posts now I have been talking about “docetic” Christologies in the early church – views of Christ that said he was so much divine that he was not really a human – and about how these influenced proto-orthodox scribes who changed their texts of scripture in order to show that, by contrast, Christ really was a flesh and blood human being. I would now like to shift to the other end of the theological spectrum to discuss Christological views that insisted on the contrary that Christ was fully human, so much so that he was not actually, by nature, divine. Sometimes these Christologies are called “adoptionistic,” because in them Christ is portrayed not as a divine being who pre-existed before being born of a virgin, but as fully and completely and utterly human, a very righteous man who was born like everyone else and who was by nature like everyone else, but because of his special devotion to God was “adopted” by God to be his son and, as the one who had [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:30:56-04:00October 14th, 2015|Early Christian Doctrine, Heresy and Orthodoxy, Historical Jesus, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Proto-Orthodox Writers|

Debate in Dallas on Friday

For anyone in the Dallas area: On Friday (two days! Sept. 18) I will be having a public debate with Justin Bass, a Christian apologist and pastor with a PhD from Dallas Theological, on the question "Did the Historical Jesus Claim To Be Divine?" Dr. Bass thinks the answer is YES. I think the answer is NO. It should be an interesting back and forth. If you want to hear the arguments, come and see it. Free admission. And my arguments will be worth every dime you pay to hear them. (It will be at Collin College at 6:30 pm) Here's all the information you need: https://www.facebook.com/events/1666142046937367/

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:30:38-04:00September 17th, 2015|Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Back to the Forgery of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife

Some three years ago now I discussed in several posts the newly "discovered" text called "The Gospel of Jesus' Wife" (just search for "wife" and you'll find the posts). A new development has occurred that makes it almost certain that this text is a modern forgery, done sometime in the last 20 years. The evidence has been uncovered by Andrew Bernhard, author of Other Early Christian Gospels, and who was one of the first to establish other grounds for seeing the text as something quite fishy, and who has posted several times on the matter on Mark Goodacre's blog (as Mark informed me a couple of nights ago at a reading group). I asked Andrew to come up with an explanation of the new evidence of foul-play (either by the person who gave the document to Harvard Professor Karen King or by the person who gave it to that other person). I am very grateful to him for having done so. Here is what he says: *********************************************************************************************** Confirmation that the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:30:38-04:00September 10th, 2015|Historical Jesus, Religion in the News|

Christ’s Self-Ignorance

As chance would have it, I was asked virtually the same question within about fifteen minutes of one another, a couple of days ago. Here is the question, in both its iterations: QUESTION ONE: I have a question with regard to your statement that you are not “trying to argue that Jesus is not God.” If the message of the book is that the concept of the “divinity of Jesus” was not clearly stated by Jesus and, instead, slowly evolved after His death, then doesn’t this imply that this concept of the “divinity of Jesus” is a human invention and, therefore, Jesus is not really God? ANOTHER QUESTION ONE: I confess I don’t see how something can be theologically “true” and yet not be historically true. If Jesus did not claim to be God and his immediate disciples did not believe he was God in what sense can he be God now? If they don’t discipline their speculations with recourse to history how can theologians claim to be making truth statements of any kind? [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:30:38-04:00September 8th, 2015|Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

Earliest Christian Diversity

In keeping with the current topic of the diversity of early Christianity, I thought I could say something about a book that I just read that I found to be unusually interesting and enlightening. It is by two Italian scholars, married to each other, who teach at the Università di Bologna, Adriana Destro, an anthropologist, and Mauro Pesce, a New Testament specialist whose teaching position is in the History of Christianity. Their book is called Il racconto e la scrittura: Introduzione alla lettura dei vangeli. It is about all the things I am currently interested in: the life of Jesus as recounted by his earliest followers, the oral traditions of Jesus, and the Gospels as founded on these oral traditions. In it they develop a theory that I had never thought of before. I’m not sure all the evidence is completely compelling, but the overall view is very interesting and very much worth thinking about. As an anthropologist Prof Destro looks at things in ways differently from most of us who are text-people; and she [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:30:02-04:00July 13th, 2015|Book Discussions, Early Christian Doctrine, Heresy and Orthodoxy, Historical Jesus, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

Contradictory Stories and Historical Method

I was surprised and intrigued to see the reactions I received to my post in which I responded to Mark Goodacre’s five points calling into question the traditional story of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library. In it I pointed out that just because a story changes over time does not mean that the gist of the story is false. If some tellings indicate that the jar was two feet tall and others that it was six, or that there were two people involved or seven, this does not indicate that the story is, at its heart, false, only that it has been changed in the retelling. A number of readers to the blog reacted by saying that the arguments Mark was making about the discovery of the library are precisely the kind of arguments that I (and critical scholars generally, including, probably Mark!) would make, and have made, against the stories of the Gospels about Jesus. If I want to use those kinds of argument against the historicity of the Gospel accounts, what [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:29:45-04:00June 24th, 2015|Historical Jesus, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Reader’s Questions|

Lecture: Jesus and the Historian

On Tuesday, February 25, 2014 I gave a lecture at Dickinson College (Carlisle Pennsylvania) on "Jesus and the Historian," in the Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium. In the lecture I deal with the historical problems posed by the surviving Gospels for evaluating the evidence for the life and teachings of Jesus. Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition (The quality is not as good as one might hope, but it's the best we can do given the original source)

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:29:12-04:00June 7th, 2015|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Video Media|

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