I am pleased to let all you blog members to know that on Saturday July 18, 2:00 - 5:00 pm ET, I will be doing a FREE two-lecture course on where the Christian idea of hell (as a place of eternal conscious torment) came from.   This course is NOT connected with blog per se, except insofar as I am connected with both.  It is rather a production of my on-line course company, Paths in Biblical Studies.  But since this is a complete Freebie, I thought I would be remiss not to let all of you know about it who haven't learned about it from another channel. The course is called:  What theHell? The Real Teaching of Jesus on the Afterlife.   It will will consist of two lectures of 50 minutes each, followed by a live Q&A.  Anyone can come.  There's zero cost. If you're interested, you can find out more about it here:  https://learn.bartehrman.com/what-the-hell?widget=courses Here's a brief overview: What The Hell? The Real Teachings of Jesus on the Afterlife  Many people have trouble understanding how a good God could [...]

Why did early Christians portray Pontius Pilate, who ordered Jesus' crucifixion, as increasingly innocent in Jesus' death?  Was it be blame Jews for being "Christ killers"? In a couple of recent posts I've talked about a couple of the "Pilate Gospels" -- apocryphal accounts of Jesus' trial and crucifixion -- in which Pilate himself is shown to be innocent and "the Jews" (either their leaders or the entire people) were at fault for the execution of the son of God.  These accounts may have started to appear in the second century, but the texts we have now are from later periods when anti-Jewish hatred in some parts of the Christian church had become standard rhetoric, sometimes leading to violence. This rhetorical strategy did not originate after the New Testament period, but can be found already in the canonical Gospels. I should stress that the earliest Christians -- starting obviously with Jesus himself and his disciples -- were Jewish through and through, with nothing non-Jewish, let alone anti-Jewish about them.  Jesus did not plan [...]

Is there any evidence to support the idea that Jesus and his followers survived during his public ministry principally, normally, or often by foraging?  In my previous post I explained why it is plausible.  But is there any reason to consider it probable? (Sidenote: In my view, far too many scholars of New Testament and early Christianity in recent years have succumbed to the temptation of advancing claims/views that could be true, without worrying if there is evidence that shows they probalby are [or at least without citing and evidence];  and without considering counter-evidence.  For readers, books that do that can certainly be more scintillating than an account -- even at a popular level -- recognizes the need to mount an argument rather than simply make an assertion.  But in my view it’s bad history and not helpful) Since our best sources of information about Jesus’ life of any real merit are the earliest Gospels, it is to these we turn.  Here are three passages that seem to relate directly to my question, all from our [...]

I am please to publish this guest post by Christopher Stanley, a scholar of the New Testament and Early Christianity who enjoyed a long career at St. Bonaventure University (after receiving his PhD in NT at Duke!)   The post deals with a topic most of us haven't thought about before.  In the Jewish uprising against Rome that led to the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 70 CE, were there *some* Jews who were actually opposed to the revolt and sympathized with the Romans?  The answer may be surprising. This is a topic of Chris's recent research and a novel that he has published, as he'll explain in this intriguing post. --------- Anyone who has read Bart’s books is aware of the gulf that often separates scholarly interpretation from lay readings of the New Testament.  Some of the differences are apparent, such as questions about the authorship or historical reliability of the Gospels.  Others are less obvious. A topic that arguably belongs under the latter heading is the New Testament authors’ engagement with their political [...]

I’m in London for a bit just now, as is my summer wont, currently enjoying the heatwave (96 degrees without air conditioning!), as all you other London and thereabouts residents are!  But this too shall pass.  And so.... I would love to have a blog dinner in central London with anyone who can make it, hopefully in cooler conditions, on the evening of Wednesday July 15.  Would you be interested? I’ll probably start around 6:00 or so for a pint with whomever is interested in quenching thirst before satisfying hunger, and then head over to dinner at 7:00 or so.  Location TBD -- but somewhere relatively interesting and easy to get to. You interested?  My plan is to limit the table to 10.   For those who come there are no obligations other than: Being a blog member Showing up Talking Paying for whatever you ingest.  (Whatever you exgest is free.) If you’d like to join me and a group of other blog members for an evening of interesting discussion of areas of mutual [...]

One of the emails I get *all* the time is from authors who have written a book, or hope to write a book, who want to know how they can get a publisher to take a look at it.   The short answer: it ain’t easy.  Often the inquiry comes from someone who wants to publish a book for scholars to convince them to take a different view on a matter of scholarly importance.  How does a someone get a publisher to publish a book like that? People don't like to hear this, but if you don't already have scholarly credentials an academic publisher will almost certainly (or at least extremely rarely) even consider your manuscript.  And having the credentials, for a first-time author, almost always means having done advanced graduate level education in the field. I know a lot of authors who think that it’s not fair that they can’t get their books published “just because I don’t have a PhD.”   It get that -- it must be hugely frustrating.  But the problem is that [...]

Some of you have probably had this same experience.  Now that I'm 70, I'm thinking about my past a lot more than ... in the past.  The other day I was thinking about my life in high school soon after I had become a born-again Christian (an incredibly ignorant born-again Christian).  One incident quickly came to mind. Before I became a gung-ho Christian, my first serious girlfriend was Linda, whom I met when we were starting our sophomore year in high school.  She was funny, personable, attractive, intelligent, and Jewish.  I’m not sure I had ever known a Jewish person before her. Now I don’t recall that we ever talked about religion, and looking back  I suppose it’s not particularly surprising.  She and her family  certainly weren’t observant Jews and my uninformed sense is that they were completely secular.  I don’t know if they went to synagogue or kept any of the holidays, but I kind-a doubt it.  In any event, at that point in my life religion wasn’t really my main concern [...]

Isn’t atheism an extreme position to take?  If you (or, well, I) give up believe in the Christian God we were (I was) raised on, why give up on the idea of any god entirely? I’m on a trip giving lectures to a group of folks who, well, want to see Norway (!) but also want to discuss issues closely related to what we do on the Blog – questions about the New Testament, the historical Jesus, early Christianity, related topics in religion, and questions about religion in general.  It’s a great group with people of a wide range of backgrounds and lots of interesting stories. Already we have discussed lots of interesting things, and one of my fellow travelers has pushed me on why I became an atheist.  They agree that there are real problems with believing in an all-loving and all-powerful God who wants humans to thrive, be happy, be content with life, and who is certainly able to make that happen for everyone if he chooses (even if there does [...]

I'm with a group of travelers just now who are interested in critical approaches to the Bible (not views that are criticizing per se, but views that approach the Bible using historical methods -- "Biblical Criticism").  One of them - as usually happens - has asked me about the very popular writings of John Shelby Spong, who was an unusual figure in numerous ways, most famously because he was both highly skeptical about the reliability of the New Testament AND a long-time bishop in the Episcopal church.  How does that work? Well, work it did.  He had a deservedly huge following. Years ago I posted comments on a book he wrote near the end of his career on the Gospel of John, which takes an even more skeptical view of its reliability than I do.  But I realized I should first set the context for those of you who don't know who he was by re-posting my "Memorium" for him written soon after he died.  So here is that first, then my summary/discussion of his [...]

In my previous post I gave a brief overview of the doctrine of predestination, especially as developed by the great 16th century Protestant Reformer John Calvin and his followers.  I ended the post by indicating – surely this is a surprise for many people – that one of the most interesting and formative understandings of modern capitalism is that its has it can be traced back in its origins to Protestant views of predestination.  How does that work exactly? The key text is Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, tr. Talcott Parsons (NY: Scribner, 1958; German original, 1920).  Weber (= VEY-ber) was an important German intellectual often credited as being the founder of modern Sociology as an academic discipline. He begins his book with an intriguing question about modern economic systems that, till then, had never posed: why [in his time, the early 20th century] are there more capitalist ventures, capitalists, and trained capitalist laborers in Protestant countries than in Catholic ones?  And in countries of mixed populations, why are there [...]

Some think that, in contrast to miracles & martyrdom, the fear of perpetual torment in hell may be what drove the early growth of Christianity. After all, who WOULDN'T want to avoid eternal fiery torture? Here’s what I said about that in my book Triumph of Christianity (Simon & Schuster) ****************************** I’ve indicated that fire and brimstone preaching won many converts in early Christianity.  What about the idea that the stalwart faith of Christian martyrs, the willingness to “die for the truth” had a big effect on ancient people as well?  As it turns out, those two were closely related. The horrors of hell may have been the argument for why people should convert, but it was the miracles that made the argument persuasive.  God had shown, and continues to show, what he could do to counteract the ravages of pain, misery, and suffering.  Anyone who refused to side with him now would pay a price later.   Or as one group of Christian martyrs is said to have proclaimed to the pagan hordes [...]