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Bart’s Public Blog that provides membership samples.

Blog Dinner, Waynesville NC, Feb 7. Anyone Interested?

I'm going to be off to Waynesville next week  for some time away from the hustle and bustle of my normal routine (actually, now that I think about it, what *is* bustle?), to work on the next book.  And I've decided, HEY, time for a Blog Dinner!  Anyone want to come?   It's a chance to shoot the breeze with others about whatever strikes your fancy. Wednesday, February 7, 6:30 pm, place TBD (in Waynesville). The table will be limited to 8 (so we can actually all talk), so that means me and 7 others. The only requirements for attendance to the dinner would be that (a) you are a blog member; (b) you pay your own way – both getting to the event and your meal itself.  Otherwise:  no expense, no requirement, and no expectations, apart from having a scintillating evening together. If you want to come and know for sure you can, zap me a note ([email protected]). Do so right away: if past experience is any guide, the table will fill rather quickly.   I [...]

2024-01-31T21:14:32-05:00January 31st, 2024|Public Forum|

In Support of Religious Studies at a Major University

How dispensible is Religious Studies to the mission of a modern university? To the mutual chagrin of the faculty colleagues in my department, we recently learned that the chancellor of one our affiliate schools, UNC Greensboro, was considering closing down their own very fine Department of Religious Studies ( the UNC "system" has 16 public universities, over which there is a President; each university has its own Chancellor as its chief executive officer). We have signed petitions in support of the department, and several of us have written letters to explain our support. I thought it might be interesting for blog readers to see mine, since it explains why I consier Religious Studies (as a discipline) significant for university education.  There's a lot more that I could say, of course, but that would take a book, not a letter. In any event, we are hopeful that the message gets through, since all of us understand how imporant the academic study of religion is, especially in our times. ******************************   January 23, 2024   Dear Chancellor [...]

2024-01-26T10:34:17-05:00January 31st, 2024|Public Forum|

We Need a Blog Volunteer! Do You Have Experience With Non-profit Taxes?

A major part of the success of the blog is the corps of faithful volunteers who do a variety of tasks, some to make the blog much better and some to make it even possible.   The only perk that volunteers get, in addition to knowing they've helped advance the spread of biblical knowledge to a wider audience and raised significant funds for charity in doing so, is a monthly webinar with me on a topic of their choice.  Those are a blast.   But for the most part, volunteers volunteer because they believe in the cause and are unusually generous human beings. We need another volunteer, someone who is qualified to file our state and federal taxes. We are, as you know, a non-profit, and our long-devoted and highly-capable books-person has recently had to bow out from the position.  We need someone with experience in this kind of thing.  Anyone with experience will not find ours a tough-case.   You interested? If so, please email us at [email protected] to let us know, and tell us a bit about [...]

2024-01-28T12:26:59-05:00January 28th, 2024|Public Forum|

Making the Bible Benevolent: Guest Post by Jill Hicks-Keeton

Is the Bible "Good News" for everyone, or, does it just seem good to those who want it to be? And how do readers make it good in places that on any honest reading are not (think violence and the treatment of women and slaves).  Jill Hicks-Keeton, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Sourthern California, has recently published an intriguing book that is highly controversial in some circles (those who do what she describes) and a breath of fresh air in another, an analysis of how evangelical Christians work to make the Bible not just acceptable but good through and through.  Her study is called The Good Book: How White Evangelicals Save the Bible To Save Themselves.  (Available here:  Good Book: How White Evangelicals Save the Bible to Save Themselves: Hicks-Keeton, Jill: 9781506485850: Amazon.com: Books) I've asked Jill to talk about the book in a couple of posts on the blog.  Here's the first, with a teaser for the second! ****************************** Millions of Americans report understanding the Bible as the Word of [...]

Atonement Doctrine – A Platinum Post by Manuel Fiadeiro

Here is an interesting reflection on the doctrine of the atonement by Platinum member Manuel Fiadeiro, for you other platinum members.  What do you think?  Do you agree with him?  Disagree?  Have an answer to his final pondering? Remember, as a Platinum member you too are allowed to make a post for other Platinums.  Do you have anything you'd like to reflect on?  Go for it! ****************************** Is it still acceptable the doctrine of atonement? The doctrine of atonement is explicitly mentioned by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:3 “Christ died for our sins”. Bart, in his lectures on Paul, gives Paul’s two Models of salvation, or two views of the atonement doctrine: The Participation Model represents the belief of the Catholic Church. The Judicial Model represents the belief of the Protestant Churches. Those are distinct interpretations of “our sins”. The Participation Model was defined by Augustine. Adam and Eve brought Sin and Death into the world by disobeying God, eating the fruit of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil”. So, every human [...]

2024-01-19T11:57:53-05:00January 26th, 2024|Public Forum|

Paul, the Apostate: a Platinum Post by Manuel Fiadeiro

Was Paul responsible for the split between gentile Christians and Jews?  Did he have regular visits with Jesus after he converted?  Did he consult the Alexandrian philosopher Philo about the issue? These are some of the controversial issues raised in this this guest post by Platinum Member Manuel Fiadeiro.  Check it out.  What do you think? Blog members at the platinum level are allowed to submit posts for other Platinum members only; after several come in, we take a vote and the winner gets posted to the entire blog for all to see.  Manuel's is our current winner.  If you'd like the same opportunity, check out the Platinum membership tier and its various perks, and give it a thought! For now here's Manuel on Paul: ******************************** Circa 35 CE, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, a young man, no more than 20 years old called Saul, with scribes and Pharisees, was stoning a man belonging to a sect of a Galilean called Jesus. Saul was in Jerusalem to study with the Pharisee master Gamaliel. Few students [...]

Thoughts on Cosmology, a Platinum Post From Charles Hawkins

Like many of you, I'm fascinated by how ancient people understood the world / universe -- the "cosmos" -- and by what modern cosmologist who actually do the science say about it.  Only rarely can someone speak confidently about both topics, wildly different as they are.  So I'm pleased to publish this Platinum guest post by Charles Hawkins, which discusses cosmology in antiquity and modernity and the transition betwixt them, all in relation to the NT.  In ONE post!  I hope you enjoy it!  Charles will be happy to hear your reactions. ****************************** Understanding cosmology, that is, our view of the structure of the Earth and its place in the universe, is an essential part of understanding the writings of both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian documents of the New Testament.  More importantly, this understanding is a key (there are others) to working out how if at all these writings can be relevant to our era.  Members of this blog may well be aware of much of what follows, but I’ve thought for some [...]

2024-02-03T09:54:46-05:00January 22nd, 2024|Public Forum|

Reminder: My Course on the Gospel of Matthew. This Weekend!

      I'm getting pumped about/for my new online course on the Gospel of Matthew, this coming weekend (Feb 3-4), and want to make sure you know about it before ... well, the End is Near.   I have the lectures all drawn up, the Powerpoints made, and now it's just a bit of fine tuning before we go live.  If you haven't signed up, but think you might be interested, check it out here:  https://ehrman.thrivecart.com/matthew/ The course will be eight lectures, four on Saturday and four on Sunday.  I'll be covering tons of stuff I've never discussed on the blog or, as it turns out, in any public lecture.  Go figure.  Those who sign up for the course will have life-time access to it (we'll publish it with Suggestions for Further Reading, Questions for Reflection, and so on, and participants will receive it automatically). Please remember, you can get a discount on the course by using the code BLOG5.   A portion of the proceeds of the course will be donated to the blog.   Here are [...]

2024-01-31T21:26:59-05:00January 19th, 2024|Public Forum|

I’m Going to the Greek Islands. Interested in Joining Me?

Another travel opportunity has come up for me this summer, a tour of some of the Greek Islands on June 10-20.  These are some of my favorite places on planet earth.  I'll be giving lectures, enjoying the sites, and hanging out with the folk who come. Needless to say, this will be really good.  If it's in the range of your possibilites, check it out. Below you'll see a brochure with all the details.  Here's what I say about it there: ************** We will be island-hopping to some of the most scenic sites in the world – stunningly gorgeous landscapes and seascapes, incredibly beautiful villages and towns, museums, monasteries, churches, and archaeological sites: some of the oldest remnants of western civilization. Some of the places we’ll be going will be new for me.  For many years I’ve wanted to visit Andros, unusually dramatic and filled with interesting villages, monasteries, and churches.  And Naxos (where Dionysus, the Greek god of wine was born.  Take note!), boasting significant ancient remains, old Christian churches, and impressive Venetian architecture: [...]

2024-01-15T13:49:51-05:00January 16th, 2024|Public Forum|

Our Commitment to Charity

My next book will be dealing with how the teachings of Jesus transformed the understanding of what it meant to live a good life and to be a good person in the Western world.  One of the most important areas I'll be focusing on is Jesus' emphasis on going out of one's way to help those in need -- not just family and friends, but even complete strangers.  What we think of as privately funded charities, governmental support of the needy, and individual assistance for those we hear about virtually didn't exist in the pagan/polytheistic world of the Roman empire before then.   It exists big time now, and it almost certainly would not have happened apart from the influence of Jesus' followers, as Christianity became the dominant religion of the West and transformed culture, society, and government.  And now this commitment to help others in need seems rooted in our DNA (well, obviously not in all of us!), whether we identify as Christian or not.    The original motivation for the Bart Ehrman Blog was [...]

2024-01-08T10:47:06-05:00January 13th, 2024|Public Forum|

How Do We Fit in the Universe?

Yesterday I put out a post that involved Psalm 8, one of the great passages of the Old Testament.  And I remembered that I posted a reflection on it many years ago, since it had made me think about something, well, rather significant: where we (I) fit into the universe.  OK then!  I've decided to come back to it here, because it still sometimes reflects in my head. Here is the psalm in the (non-inclusive) King James Version, which, as it turns out, is the way I memorized it when oh so much younger than I am now: 1 O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens. 2 Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. 3 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; 4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and [...]

2023-12-28T13:55:50-05:00January 4th, 2024|Public Forum|

How to Botch a Bible Translation (because of inclusive language)

This post explains one of the real faux pas of the NRSV Bible translation, which, I regret to say, was not corrected in the new "updated edition."  It involves an unfortunate attempt to use inclusive language where it is misleading, and in this case, makes almost nonsense of the passage in question. But it's a very tricky issue.  It involves a quotation of an Old Testament Psalm in the New Testament, where the Old Testament passage is understandably rendered inclusively to include both men and women, but where its citation in the New Testament makes no sense when rendered inclusively.  It appears to be a problem that the translators of both the original NRSV and of the updated version didn't notice or, at least in my judgment, take seriously enough. 3 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; 4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? 5 For thou hast made him a [...]

2023-12-28T14:03:04-05:00January 3rd, 2024|Public Forum|

2023 In Review

The blog has done extremely well this past year, thanks to you the members and the core of people who work to keep it going.  Here on our annual last day I’d like to take look back on what has happened and talk a bit about what lies ahead. I’m particularly pleased that we have continued to meet our two goals for the blog, which drove us to start it over eleven years ago now: To provide scholarly knowledge about the historical Jesus, the New Testament, and the other Christian writings of the first three or four centuries to a broad non-scholarly audience. To raise money for charities while doing it, highly reputable, responsible, and effective organizations that deal with hunger, homelessness, disaster relief, and literacy. To start with the charity: once more we have done extremely well, having distributed (as of today) just over $480,000.  To put that into a bit of perspective, our first full year of operation, exactly ten years ago, we raised $54,000.  I’m no mathematician, but by my count that’s [...]

2024-01-08T12:31:49-05:00December 30th, 2023|Public Forum|

A Blog Challenge Grant, A Worthy Cause for Your End-of-the-Year Giving

Many of us are (still!) considering some end-of-the-year giving as the End Draweth Nigh.   As it turns out, an unusual option and opportunity has just appeared for the blog.  An anonymous donor has pledged a matching $10,000 gift for all funds donated prior to the Happy New Year.  The donor will match donations up to that amount -- which would (if my math skills are still intact) be a very nice end of the year climax of $20k. All of the monies, of course, will go directly to the charities we support (if you don't remember what those are, see this post: What Charities does the Blog Support?  [I'll be updating the numbers in a few days]).  Not a penny will go to overhead -- it all will go to those in need, a frustratingly increasing number, as we all know, given our current international crises and ongoing  problems here at home. Are you interested?  Any amount would be so welcome and so well-used.  Donate simply by going to the blog, scrolling to the bottom [...]

2023-12-24T08:34:44-05:00December 26th, 2023|Public Forum|

The Gift of Christmas (2023)

The practice of gift-giving has obviously gotten way out of control for many of us in the Christmas season.  I suppose on the upside, it helps the economy and gets more people employed, so that part’s good.  But the commercialism and greed, not to mention the sense of heavy obligation (all those relatives!), uncertainty (O God, what am I going to get her this year?), and anxiety (I’ve only got three days left!), take a bit of an edge off of what is supposed to be a good thing: giving to the people we love to show we care for them and want them to know it. So for me, at least, the principle of gift-giving this time of year is something to be cherished. It is rooted ultimately in the Christmas story.  But there is one aspect of the story – possibly the most significant aspect – that many people have never considered – one that nevertheless lies at its core.  At heart it is the story of God’s giving his Son and his [...]

2023-12-27T17:22:28-05:00December 24th, 2023|Public Forum|

The Myth That Nazareth Was a Myth

Did Nazareth even exist in Jesus’ day? Or was it invented by the same ancient people who invented the man Jesus – a non-existent home for a non-existent person? So claim many of the “mythicists” I began to discuss in my previous post. Here I continue on the theme, as discussed in my book Did Jesus Exist? ****************************** G. A. Wells advances a different argument to much the same end. In his view the key to understanding the non-existence of Nazareth is in the four occasions in which Mark indicates that Jesus was a “Nazarene” (1:24; 10:47; 14:67; 16:6). According to Wells Mark misunderstood what this meant. What it originally meant was that Jesus belonged to a pre-Christian Jewish sect called the “Nazarenes” who were similar to figures from the Old Testament (like strong-man Samson) called Nazirites who took vows to be specially set apart for God (they couldn’t touch corpses, drink wine, or cut their hair). Mark didn’t know this, though, and wrongly assumed that the term Nazarene must have indicated Jesus’ place [...]

2023-12-27T17:20:24-05:00December 23rd, 2023|Public Forum|

Did Nazareth Even Exist?

I’ve been thinking and talking about the town of Nazareth a lot lately.  ‘Tis the season!  Last weekend I did my quarterly webinar with Platinum blog members (you should look at the benefits of the Platinum level!  Private webinars!) on whether Jesus was actually born in Nazareth (most of the New Testament appears to thing so).  And that made me think of an even more radical view that I think is dead wrong. Many of you will know about the vocal group of non-believers called “mythicists,” who think that Jesus never existed at all, but was completely fabricated, a complete myth.  No man Jesus.  Invented wholesale. I wrote a book years ago trying to explain why that almost certainly just ain’t true.  A lot of mythicists were pretty ticked off about my book and I received some rather venomous responses.  But hey, what’s life without a little spice?  In this case, sliced habeneros straight on the tongue…. In any event, some mythicists argue as evidence for the non-existence of Jesus the non-existence of the town [...]

2023-12-15T20:25:57-05:00December 21st, 2023|Historical Jesus, Mythicism, Public Forum|

Bart’s Going Viral–And You Can Help!

From Diane: Hi, Bart fans--Bart is too modest to blow his own horn about this, but Academic YouTuber Dan McClellan (@maklelan) has posted a short video debunking an apologist's video trashing Bart. Dan is a master at this--watch below, and make sure to Like the video (instructions at bottom).   The original creator tried to slap back--it didn't go well for him:   You can help this video go viral by clicking on "YouTube" at the bottom of the video, then give it a like by clicking the little thumbs-up icon under the video (see below). It's got 1,000 likes as of this morning, and 10,000 views...let's join in:  

2023-12-07T22:36:28-05:00December 7th, 2023|Public Forum|
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