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

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|

Is the Book of James Attacking the Teachings of Paul?

Yesterday I began answering a question about the New Testament book of James. The most interesting thing about the book, for most readers, is that it *seems* at least to be attacking a view vigorously espoused by the apostle Paul. Are these authors at odds with each other? Here is where I pick up on that discussion in my book Forged. My sense is that a lot of readers of the blog will not anticipate where I stand on the issue. ************************************************************************** There is one issue that the author is particularly concerned with, however. It is an issue that reflects a bone of contention with other Christians. There are some Christians who are evidently saying that to be right with God, all one needs is faith; for them, doing “good works” is irrelevant to salvation, so long as you believe. James thinks this is precisely wrong, that if you do not do good deeds, then you obviously don’t have faith. What use is it, my brothers, if a person says he has faith but has [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:45:38-04:00July 14th, 2019|Catholic Epistles, Paul and His Letters|

Why Paul Did Not Write 2 Thessalonians: A Final Post

This will be my last post on the question of whether Paul wrote 2 Thessalonians. If you’ve been following all this, you know that my view is that he did not. My sense is that a lot of people have trouble accepting that view simply because it’s not what they’ve always heard and thought. It’s hard to change your mind about something that just seems sensible and right, even if you haven’t really given it much thought or attention. We’re *all* inclined to think what we’ve always thought. For most people, of course, the question doesn’t matter a twit. Who CARES? Well, some of us care. And if you’re one who does, then I’d suggest being open to changing your mind if the evidence takes you in a different direction. If you don’t want to change your mind, or are just on principle disinclined to do so, fair enough. We all have to decide that to think and also what even not to bother thinking about. (But then why are you reading these posts?!? J) [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:45:19-04:00June 18th, 2019|Forgery in Antiquity, Paul and His Letters|

Does Paul Think the End is Coming Soon? Does 2 Thessalonians?

I now come to the crux of the matter, the argument that for me seems the most convincing that Paul probably did not write 2 Thessalonians. I already stated the argument in its simple form last week, here: https://ehrmanblog.org/did-paul-really-write-2-thessalonians/ Now I want to show how the argument gets grounded in a much deeper exploration of the text itself; in part this is to show that it’s not a particularly simple matter and in part it’s to illustrate, again, how scholars make argument like this to other scholars (as opposed to summarizing the results more broadly). That may not be your cup of tea – but if so, then be assured, another pot is brewing. Once more, this comes from the blog (five years ago), and can be found with footnotes (if you’re a real glutton for punishment) in my monograph Forgery and Counterforgery. I have translated most of the Greek here. For further guidance, among the technical terms I use, “realized eschatology” refers to the idea that believers are *already* enjoying the full benefits of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:45:19-04:00June 17th, 2019|Forgery in Antiquity, Paul and His Letters|

2 Thessalonians as a Forgery? Does the Author “Write” Like Paul?

I have made the following post available to all readers, whether they belong to the blog or not. Rarely on the blog do I show how scholars make arguments to other experts in the field of biblical studies (as opposed to scholars who simply summarize the results for non-scholars); even more rarely do I make such posts available to anyone who wants to see. But here is an example -- just in case you're interested and would like to know. (You'll notice that once you get into the meat of the discussion, about half-way through, it's not the sort of thing that would occur to regular-ole readers of the Bible, even if they've been reading it their entire lives.) This is a "re-post" of a post I made some five years ago. If you were a member of the blog, you could read five posts a week, nearly always written at a popular level for non-scholars, but always based on scholarship "behind the scenes" (like this). So think about joining! ************************************************************* In my previous two [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:45:19-04:00June 16th, 2019|Forgery in Antiquity, Paul and His Letters|

Is 2 Thessalonians a Forgery Based on 1 Thessalonians?

In a previous post I began giving the scholarly version of why 2 Thessalonians is often considered to be non-Pauline – that is, to be forged in the name of Paul by someone wanting you to think he was Paul even though he was someone else. That discussion was taken from my book Forged, written for a broader audience Now that I have given a (very) brief sketch of the history of the scholarship on this problem (the previous post) I can begin to discuss the actual evidence, taken from my deeper analysis in Forgery and Counterforgery. This is where the discussion gets down to business with more serious argumentation. As you'll see, it's not that the ideas themselves are hopelessly complex (we're not talking astro-physics here....) but that to write at the scholarly level requires assuming lots of background not usually known to normal people, -- only to abnormal biblical scholars -- and, correspondingly that it requires the use of Greek. That's the only kind of approach that will convince. (Not that scholars [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:45:19-04:00June 14th, 2019|Forgery in Antiquity, Paul and His Letters|

2 Thessalonians: When Scholars Began To Doubt It Was Authentic

Since I am in Greece (starting out in Thessaloniki) I have begun reposting some blogs from five years ago connected with the Second Letter to the Thessalonians, which claims to be written by Paul but appears to have been written instead by someone else who wanted his readers to *think* he was Paul. My last post gave the heart of the matter from my trade book for a general audience, Forged: Writing in the Name of God – Why The Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are. In the next several posts I will show how I address the same question for scholars, in my scholarly monograph, Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics. I thought this would be worth doing for two reasons. First, I’d like you to know – if you’re interested – what the full reasoning behind the common critical view of 2 Thessalonians is, that is, what the really persuasive arguments are. Some of these are long and complex and not easily simplified for [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:45:18-04:00June 9th, 2019|Forgery in Antiquity, Paul and His Letters|

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