Paul and His Letters Archives - Page 11 of 20 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

Paul the Feminist? The Thecla Legends

I’m in the middle of talking about whether Paul wrote the verses now found in 1 Cor. 14:34-35, or if they were a later interpolation into his letters (that is, an insertion that ended up in every single one of our manuscripts) It's an important issue. This is the passage where Paul sternly tells women that they are NOT to speak in church. They can't only not be *leaders*. They can't *talk*. Wow. OK, then. Did Paul really write that? I'm going to be arguing he did not, that it's an interpolation (I'm doing this in part in order to show how one can show that a passage is not "original" even if the manuscripts all agree. It doesn't happen much. But *sometimes*). But to make sense of it, I have to talk about the two views about Paul and women that emerged after he was dead, one that portrayed him as very much on the side of women, a kind of early Christian proto-feminist, and the other that saw him as a complete misogynist, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:48:35-04:00March 17th, 2020|Paul and His Letters, Women in Early Christianity|

Paul and the Status of Women

In this thread I've been talking about how scholars decide if a passage that is found in *some* New Testament manuscripts but missing from *others* was actually written by the author or not (such as the account of Jesus' "sweating blood" in Luke 22:43-44: was it really an original part of the Gospel or was it something a scribe added?) It is a complicated process of decision, involving examining the surviving manuscripts (i.e. "external" evidence), figuring out if the passage fits well with the author's writing style and perspective otherwise, and seeing if there is anything in the passage that would make a scribe want either to insert it or take it out ("internal" evidence). Each of these arguments can get very tricky, once you get down into the weeds. But the thread began with the question of how do we know if a passage that is in *all* of the manuscripts is possibly something that was not originally there. The question started with the "Christ poem" of Phil 2:8-9, where Paul talks about Christ [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:48:35-04:00March 16th, 2020|New Testament Manuscripts, Paul and His Letters, Women in Early Christianity|

Maybe the Passage wasn’t “Original”!!

How do we know if a passage in the New Testament was “originally” in the New Testament? Scholars are widely agreed, for example (there is not a whole lot of serious debate about the matter) that the appearances of Jesus after his resurrection at the end of Mark’s Gospel (the last twelve verses of Mark 16) were not originally there. The Gospel ends with the announcement that he has been raised and will meet his disciples in Galilee (so that, contrary to what a lot of people say – there definitely *is* a resurrection in Mark); but no one sees him. That makes Mark very different from the other Gospels. So too the famous story of the woman taken in adultery in John 7:53-8:11 – arguably the most famous story from the life of Jesus in the entire New Testament, but almost certainly not originally there. It was added later. So how ‘bout *other* passages? How can we know? I’m addressing this question because ... At the end of this post I explain why it [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:48:19-04:00March 3rd, 2020|New Testament Manuscripts, Paul and His Letters|

Paul’s Incredibly High Christology

I have been trying to explain the unusually important statement about Christ in Paul's "Christ Poem" in Phil. 2:6-10. It's an extremely high Christology. Christ is a divine being before coming into the world; and at his exaltation he was made *equal* with God. Wow. Just 20 years earlier Jesus was a virtually unknown peasant with a few followers in a remote part of rural Galilee. Now he's equal to the Lord God Almighty?? How did *that* happen??? That, of course, is the topic of my book How Jesus Became God. I try to explain how it happened. In the book I talk about other passages in Paul that have similarly remarkable things to say about Christ. Here is how i discuss it there. (I do refer back to some of my earlier discussions in the book here -- e.g., about how some Jews thought of another power being on God's level; I can post some of those too if anyone is interested.) *********************************************************************** Other Passages in Paul The incarnational Christology that lies behind the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:48:19-04:00March 2nd, 2020|Early Christian Doctrine, Paul and His Letters|

A Fuller Exposition of the Christ Poem in Philippians

I’ve been talking about the Christ poem in Philippians 2:6-10, and given some keys to it’s interpretation. If you are new to the discussion, here is the poem itself, about “Jesus Christ…. Who, although he was in the form of God Did not regard being equal with God Something to be grasped after. But he emptied himself Taking on the form of a slave, And coming in the likeness of humans. And being found in appearance as a human He humbled himself Becoming obedient unto death – even death on a cross. Therefore God highly exalted him And bestowed on him the name That is above every name. That at the name of Jesus Every knee should bow Of those in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth. And every tongue confess That Jesus Christ is Lord To the glory of God the Father. I’ve said some things about it’s interpretation, but here I want to give a fuller explication of its meaning. I’ve drawn this from my book How Jesus Became God [...]

BDEhrman2026-04-24T10:38:49-04:00February 28th, 2020|Early Christian Doctrine, Paul and His Letters|

Did Paul Think Jesus Was a New Adam, Not a Divine Being?

In my last post I started talking about Paul’s “understanding of Christ” – that is, his Christology. It will take several posts to fill out the picture, and in this one I need to return to the Christ Poem that I talked about last week, expanding my discussion of it from what I said then. Just so you don’t have to flip back through to find the former post, here is what the poem says, set in poetic lines. It comes from Phil 2:5-7. It is introduced by Paul’s exhortation to his readers to “Have this mind in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus”: And then he says Who, although he was in the form of God Did not regard being equal with God Something to be grasped after. But he emptied himself Taking on the form of a slave, And coming in the likeness of humans. And being found in appearance as a human He humbled himself Becoming obedient unto death – even death on a cross. Therefore God highly exalted him [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:48:19-04:00February 25th, 2020|Early Christian Doctrine, Paul and His Letters|

Was Christ an Angel, According to Paul?

I have received a number of comments and questions on last week’s about Paul’s understanding of who Christ was, based especially on the key passage called the “Christ Poem” in Philippians 2:6-11. An intriguing passage! But very puzzling in light of what Paul says elsewhere about Christ, as readers have pointed out, and asked about. So I thought I should return to the matter and lay out how I understand Paul’s “Christology” – his “understanding of Christ.” I talked about it at length in my book How Jesus Became God, and have dealt with it on the blog on occasion. But here I want to address it head on. To make sense of my comments it is important to remember two sets of terms that scholars have long used for early understandings of Christ. A “low Christology is one that understands Christ primarily as a HUMAN who somehow and in some way became divine. A “high” Christology is one that understands him primarily as GOD in some sense from before his birth. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:48:19-04:00February 24th, 2020|Early Christian Doctrine, Paul and His Letters|

How Ancient is the Idea of Christ’s “Incarnation”?

Last week I was asked about the famous passage often known (among scholars) as the "Christ Hymn" of Philippians, 2:6-11. For a very long time (mid 20th c?) scholars have argued that it is a passage Paul did not write himself, but one that he is actually *quoting*. The passage seems to affirm the idea that Christ existed *before* he came into the world. That may not seem weird to modern Christians, but in fact the only place where the idea is (otherwise) explicitly stated is in the Gospel of John. In Mark's Gospel there is not a word about Jesus existing before his birth, or, remarkably in Matthew or Luke either! In those Gospels Jesus is born of a virgin. But *nothing* suggests that he existed before then. When God made Mary pregnant through the spirit, that is when the Son of God came into being -- for those Gospels. Only with John is Jesus said to be a pre-existent being: and in John there is not a word about Jesus' mother being a [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:48:18-04:00February 17th, 2020|Canonical Gospels, Paul and His Letters|

So: Was Luke Luke?

I started this thread over a week ago on the authorship of the Third Gospe and its accompanying volume, the book of Acts, and would like now simply to bring some closure to it before moving on to other things. To sum up: there is a kind of interpretive logic that can lead one to think that the books were written by Luke, a Gentile physician who was a traveling companion of Paul. This is what I myself thought for years, and it was based on this logic, that: The author of Acts also wrote the Gospel of Luke That the author of Acts, and therefore of Luke, must have been a traveling companion of Paul (since he speaks of himself in the first person on four occasions) That this author was probably a Gentile because he was so concerned with the spread of the Christian movement among Gentiles (the whole point of the book of Acts) Paul himself speaks of a Gentile among his traveling companions in Colossians 4, naming him as Luke the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:45-04:00January 19th, 2020|Acts of the Apostles, Paul and His Letters|

Does the Book of Acts Accurately Record Paul’s Teachings?

We could deal forever with the question of the historical accuracy of Acts. There are entire books devoted to the problem and even to *aspects* of the problem, and different scholars come to different conclusions. My own view is that since Acts is at odds with Paul just about every time they talk about the same thing, that it is probably not to be taken as very accurate, especially in its detail. In yesterday’s post I dealt with a couple of places where it’s portrayal of Paul’s *actions* seem to be at odds with what Paul himself says; in today’s, my last post on the topic, I speak about Paul’s *teachings/views* and come to the same conclusion. I’ll pick just one example, and again, draw my remarks from comments I’ve made elsewhere in print. *************************************************************** Almost all of Paul's evangelistic sermons mentioned in Acts are addressed to Jewish audiences. This itself should strike us as odd, given Paul's own repeated claim that his mission was to the Gentiles. In any event, the most famous exception [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:45-04:00January 17th, 2020|Acts of the Apostles, Paul and His Letters|

Did Any Companion of Paul Write Luke and Acts?

I am circling around the ultimate question of this thread, whether Luke, the companion of Paul, wrote the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts. A big reason this matters: if Paul's companion, "the gentile physician," wrote Acts, he had first-hand knowledge of Paul's life and teachings. That would certainly increase the likelihood that he was giving an authoritative account! The first step to answering the question -- was it written by Luke? -- was to show that Paul never *mentions* Luke as a gentile physician in any of his undisputed letters. The second step involves asking the question of whether *any* companion of Paul – whether Luke or anyone else – wrote these books. The argument that a companion of Paul did write the books is based on the “we-passages” that I mentioned in the previous post. Now I want to advance the argument by saying that I don’t think the we-passages indicate that a companion of Paul wrote Acts (or, by inference, Luke) because I think there is good counter-evidence to indicate [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:45-04:00January 17th, 2020|Acts of the Apostles, Paul and His Letters|

Did Paul Write Colossians? According to Most Scholars No – Paul did Not Write Colossians
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Did Paul Write Colossians? According to Most Scholars No – Paul did Not Write Colossians

Forgery in Antiquity, History of Biblical Scholarship, Paul and His Letters

Did Paul Write Colossians? According to Most Scholars No – Paul did Not Write Colossians

Did Paul write Colossians? Asking and answering questions like this every now and then is useful on the blog to shift gears away from explaining at a more popular level what scholars have come to think - to showing how scholars make their arguments to one *another*. I don't want to do this a lot, but it seems that it can be helpful at times, just so blog readers can get a bit of a sense. Right now I'm in them middle of a thread on whether the author of Luke was really "Luke the gentile physician," one of Paul's traveling companions. The only reason for thinking such a person even existed (a gentile doctor named Luke) is that he is mentioned by Paul in Colossians. In my previous post I explained why the majority of critical scholars don't think Paul actually wrote Colossians (so that the historical Paul does *not* mention this person). The post was written for a general audience, and a number of people raised questions about it. So here is how [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:44-04:00January 11th, 2020|Forgery in Antiquity, History of Biblical Scholarship, Paul and His Letters|

Problems with Thinking That Luke Wrote Luke (and Acts)

I continue now with my discussion of whether one of Paul's traveling companions wrote the account of his life in the book of Acts, and thus, by association, the Gospel of Luke. It turns out to be a really sticky problem -- one of those that can't be solved simply by looking at a couple of verses and applying some basic logic. In my previous post I gave the logic that is typically adduced for thinking that the Luke was probably written by Luke, the gentile physician who was a companion of Paul for part of his missionary journeys. The short story, in sum: the author of Luke also wrote the book of Acts; the book of Acts in four places talks about what “we” (companions with Paul) were doing; both books were therefore written by one of Paul’s companions; Acts and Luke appear to have a gentile bias; only three of Paul’s companions were known to be gentiles (Colossians 4:7-14); Luke there is a gentile physician; Luke-Acts appears to have an enhanced interest in [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:44-04:00January 8th, 2020|Acts of the Apostles, Forgery in Antiquity, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

The Life and Message of Paul

I return now to the next portion of a longer post I’m composing on the New Testament, a general survey in what is now looking like 10,000 words or so? My most recent segment was an explanation of what we can know about the life and teaching of Jesus: https://ehrmanblog.org/who-was-jesus/ This one is a corollary: what we can know about the life and message of Paul. Next to Jesus himself, Paul was the most important figure in the entire history of Christianity. Nearly half the books of the New Testament claim to be written by him; one other book (Acts) is largely written about him. More than anyone else we know of, he was responsible for the spread of Christianity through much of the Mediterranean world. And perhaps most important, he significantly developed the theological understanding of the significance of Jesus. For Paul, far less important than Jesus’ earthly life and teaching were his death and resurrection, which were God’s means of salvation to the world. It may be too extreme to say that Paul [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:27-04:00December 28th, 2019|Acts of the Apostles, Paul and His Letters|

Does the New Testament Condemn “Homosexuals”?

It is commonly argued that the Bible condemns sexual “perversion” such as gay or lesbian sex. In earlier posts I discussed the relevant passages of the Old Testament, to show that they simply cannot be used in these modern debates, since their very understandings of the phenomena are completely at odds with what people think today (including, most emphatically, the people who appeal to those passages in support of their views). See, for example: https://ehrmanblog.org/are-same-sex-relations-condemned-in-the-old-testament/?highlight=homosexual I should stress there are lots of other activities that are condemned in the Bible all over the map, and these are never a particular emphasis of modern ethical discussion, whether in Christian circles or in society at large. You may be able to deprive gays and lesbians of their civil rights or deny them the ability to serve in the church, based on a couple of passages (almost always misinterpreted) scattered here and there throughout the very large Bible; but what about doing the same for people who are greedy, who get angry, who disobey their parents, who eat [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:24-04:00December 8th, 2019|Paul and His Letters, Reflections and Ruminations, Sex and Sexuality in the Bible|

What Is the New Testament? A Broad Overview

With some very sage outside advice, I have decided to add a new feature to the blog. Once or twice a week (at least that’s the *plan*) I will create a kind of “general introduction” post, dealing with some broad and basic matter connected with the New Testament, the Historical Jesus, the apostle Paul, the role of women in the church, persecution and martyrdom, heresy and orthodoxy, the development of theology, the Christianization of the empire, etc. etc. Broad overviews, of the BIG matters, at the introductory level. The idea is to make, say, three or four related posts on each issue, and then, when they’re completed, edit them all together into one massive post (say 4000-5000) words, and have that post well indexed with lots of links to other posts on the blog. That way, we can maximize its wide availability throughout the internet. When someone googles “What Is The New Testament,” they will find this particular post; the post will link to other posts on the blog. People go to these other posts. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:50-04:00November 5th, 2019|Acts of the Apostles, Canonical Gospels, Catholic Epistles, Paul and His Letters, Reflections and Ruminations|

Women Are To Be Silent and Submissive!

Yesterday I started this thread on the understanding of sex and gender in the ancient world by pointing out how the entire Bible starts, with the creation of the world and both men and women, the woman being created “out of” the man – so that she was secondary to him, dependent on him for her existence, and brought into the world both to keep him from being lonely and to help him out. For most feminists, this would not seem like a very good start. The story of women in the Bible is long and complex, and I’m not going to go into every relevant passage. That would take years. But I do want to point out how the creation story from Genesis ended up affecting the later Christian tradition. It is no mystery that Christianity has a very long history of insisting that women should not exercise authority over men, both in the church and in the marriage relationship. That, of course, was, in broad terms, consistent with most social views and policies [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:46:49-04:00October 30th, 2019|Paul and His Letters, Reflections and Ruminations, Women in Early Christianity|

Is the Author of James Rejecting Paul Himself?

I have been talking about how the letter of James appears to refer to Paul's letters in order to contradict them (as has long been thought by scholars -- going back at least to Martin Luther). But as it turns out, I don't think it's actually that simple. I briefly mentioned this in an earlier post, but here is the fuller scoop. This again is taken from my book Forgery and Counterforgery. I should remind you what I mean by those terms, "forgery" and "counterforgery." The term "forgery" is a technical term for a book that claims to be written by a famous person who in fact did not write it. (So "forgery" does NOT mean, in this context, something like "a made-up story." It refers specifically to the claim by an author -- either explicit or implicit -- to be someone other than he is.) A "counter-forgery" is a kind of forgery -- it refers to a forgery written in order to contradict the views found precisely in someone else's forgery (whether or not [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:45:58-04:00August 5th, 2019|Catholic Epistles, Forgery in Antiquity, Paul and His Letters|

The Close Connections of James and Paul

I continue here my comparison of the wording of the book of James to the writing of Paul, in order to establish the point that whoever wrote James, it was someone who was directly responding to the letters of Paul (because he imitates Paul’s wording while refuting his views.) This will lead then to my argument – not yet made – that the author of James is in fact writing a “counter-forgery” – that is he is writing a forgery in order to counter later writings forged in the name of Paul. (I know this can be confusing: but I’m not saying he’s writing directly against Paul. He may *think* he is, but my argument is that he will be opposed to later writings claiming to be Paul; that argument will start in my next post.) Here now is the second example of the borrowing of Pauline writings: ************************************************** James 2:24 and Gal. 2:16 and Rohhhm. 3:28 James 2:24: You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone Gal. 2:16: [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:45:57-04:00August 2nd, 2019|Catholic Epistles, Forgery in Antiquity, Paul and His Letters|

Is James Responding to Paul?

I now begin to explain why someone might have wanted to (falsely) claim to be James the brother of Jesus when writing the letter attributed to him in the NT. My basic argument is that the letter is being written to oppose the writings of Paul (at least as they were being *interpreted*: whether Paul himself would have agreed with the interpretation of his views that they oppose is a completely different question), and the author needed someone of the stature of James in order to make the refutation convincing, both because James was the head of the Jerusalem church and because it was widely thought that he was at loggerheads with Paul. I have taken this again from my book Forgery and Counterforgery. It’s written for scholars, but I’ve tried to make it accessible by explaining the terms I use and translating the Greek. This will take a few posts, so here’s the start, where I lay the groundwork: the letter of James does seem to be responding to the writings of Paul. ************************************************************** [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:45:40-04:00July 31st, 2019|Catholic Epistles, Forgery in Antiquity, Paul and His Letters|

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