September 2023 Gold Q&A (video)
Here is the Gold Q&A for the month, a perk for Gold members only! I hope you enjoy it. ******************************
(Part 2) A Discussion on the Issue of Suffering and the Moral in Job’s Story. A Platinum Post From Omar Robb
The book of Job is one of the trickiest texts of the Bible to understand, even though most people I know seem to think they understand it pretty well. I guess I do too, but of the five Hebrew Bible scholars I've talked with about it with over the past several years, six of them understand it's ultimate point (about why there is suffering) differently from me. Here Platinum post member Omar Robb takes on the task. What do you think? ****************************** I did discuss these two subjects in a series of comments in the post: Is the God of Job Worthy of Worship. And this article elaborates more into these comments. It should be noted that these two subjects in the original article were about 3500 words and I condensed it to be suitable for the blog, but I will provide the link for the original article at the end. 5# The issue of suffering: This subject has been associated with the existence of God, and the basic question here: If God [...]
Did Luke Read Galatians? Platinum Post by Guillermo Mondon
Here is a very interesting guest post by Platinum member Guillermo Mondon, staking out a position that I disagree with and making his case! I love this kinda thing. (I date Galatians about 20 years before Acts; but maybe it's the other way around?) What do you think? Is it likely that the author of Acts had read Paul's letter to the Galatians? ****************************** Introduction The series of three articles on Paul and his relation with the Jerusalem church; Was Paul Authorized to Persecute Christians? - After Paul Converted… Does the Book of Acts Contradict Paul Himself? - Did Paul Get Along with the Other Apostles?; sparked many interesting posts about Acts and Paul’s epistles. One of those posts by quadell considers the possibility of Acts being “a 2nd-century work written by someone who had access to Paul’s letters”. I personally agree with both statements about Acts but I know it is by no means something firmly established (Bart, for instance, does not agree with either statement). In particular, the idea that the author of Acts “had [...]
Time to Vote!
Hey Platinum Members, We've had a spate of interesting Platinum guest posts, and now it's time to vote for one of them to go on the entire blog. Here are your four options. Wanna help decide? Vote! To do so, just send a quick note to Diane at [email protected] Your deadline: this Saturday, September 23, midnight your time. And remember — you’re always welcome to submit a post yourself. Anything connected to the blog that strikes your fancy that you’d like others to read about? Any ideas/thoughts you’d like to have disseminated and discussed? Here’s your chance. Just zap me a note. July 10, 2023 Vespasian Miracles Ryan Fleming July 17, 2023 An Important Difference in John Ryan Fleming July 28, 2023 A Proposition That the First Greek Converts to Jesus Were a Few Ascetic Pythagorean Philosophers Omar Robb July 31, 2023 Jesus the Half-Nabataean Prince Serene
(Part I) A Discussion on Spirit, Death, Afterlife, Consciousness, and Free Will. A Platinum Post From Omar Robb
Here Platinum Guest Poster Omar Robb takes on many of the BIG QUESTIONS that many of us who wrestle with meaning struggle with, in very modern terms. What do you think? ****************************** 1# Spirit and Death: The ancient conclusion about the existence of the spirit is sound and valid. However, I think the ancient couldn’t escape the Metaphoric Syndrome, and with this syndrome, they derived false properties for this spirit: The ancient knew about death, because they experienced it constantly. Therefore, it is expected that they will try and understand this phenomenon. The first obvious logical conclusion is that death is not life. This is actually a direct linguistic deduction: we see living people, then we see dead people, and the difference is that the dead are not alive. I assume that form this direct linguistic deduction, they concluded that “Living” requires two things: Body and Life. From this conclusion they derived that life could be regarded as an entity, and they called it Spirit, which means breath; as breathing is one of the major [...]
Paul, the Apostate: a Platinum Post by Manuel Fiadeiro
I'm pleased to present this Platinum Members guestpost by your fellow platinum member Manuel Fiadeiro, a retelling of the conversion and mission of the apostle Paul, with intriguing possibilities. What do you make of it? Let Manuel and the rest of us know! And remember that you too can publish a Platinum post to your fellow Plats. Just send something along to me! ******************************** 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 could match Saul in intelligence, brilliance and knowledge. He was a devout Jew who knew the scriptures by heart, fluent in Greek and Hebrew, able to read and write, he could beat anyone in theological discourse. Saul was also an ambitious fellow. He "knew" God set him apart from his mother's womb. He wondered what God had in mind for him. [...]
A Conference on the Gospels for Non-Scholars!
I'm getting very excited about the upcoming remote conference I'll be hosting next week, Sept. 23-24. I've mentioned it before on the blog, and here I thought I could give you a better taste of what it will involve. It is called "New Insights into the New Testament" and will entail ten 50-minute lectures by ten top-level scholars on various aspects of the Gospels -- all directed toward *non-scholars*. Each lecture will be followed by a live Q&A with attendees. Below I give a brief summary of the lectures to whet your appetite. The event is not connected with the blog per se, except to the extent that I'm doing both things and many of you will be interested in it. For fuller information, about what it will be about and how to register go here: https://www.bartehrman.com/new-insights-conference/ The event will begin with a thirty-minute lecture (by me) that summarizes the history of modern biblical scholarship (600 years in 30 minutes!). And then this is the two-day line up. Candida Moss (University Of Birmingham) BAD [...]
The Pauline Style and a Discussion About Paul’s Motivation. A Platinum Post From Omar Robb
Here are some reflections on the homiletic style Paul uses in his letters, with some much broader implications for understanding Paul's situation and teaching by Platinum Post member Omar Robb. Feel free to comment and provide feedback! ****************************** I need to be upfront and clearly say that this article is just a rough set of assumptions. In order for this article to jump over this level then it would require adequate linguistic and textual analyses and I am not an expert on them. So, I am just exploring here an area, and I am throwing a flashlight deep into the dark field. The outcome might be fruitful or might not. But it is always fun exploring the unknown past. Having said all that, let us start the discussion: There is something that I did notice before (as I think all did) but I couldn’t put the line under it, except lately. There is a specific common approach that most Christian Preachers follow in their preaching, and I think I am able now to describe it: [...]
Want to Study the Early Christian Apocrypha?
There are some topics that I deal with on the blog that give me a knot in the stomach just to broach -- including the question of whether Jesus was really buried on the afternoon of his death (my recent long thread). The issues are so convoluted and so many people disagree that I wonder, yeah, Why am I doing this? (!) But there are other topics that for me are almost sheer pleasure--like the one I'll be embarking on now for a new thread: the Gospels, epistles, and apocalypses that are NOT in the New Testament. I've talked about these on and off over the years, and thought it was time to get back to them. I regularly get asked by blog members where they can go to learn more about them. And so I thought I'd start this threat by reposting some of the crucial information. Want to know how my grad students study these things? Want to take it on yourself? Here's a copy of my syllabus for the PhD Seminar that [...]
Jesus, Sun Myung Moon, and Me: a Platinum Post from William Poe
******************************* A bit of introduction may be in order. I grew up in a conservative Southern Baptist church. My family wasn’t especially religious, but we often attended Sunday sermons and not least due to peer pressure, I was baptized when I was nine years old. As a teen, and without much resistance from my parents, I became interested in more spiritualist approaches to religion. By age fifteen, I had read all the books about Edgar Cayce, and other contemporary mystics. My readings led me to question the foundations of Christianity. I had concerns that Christians seemed unwilling to address. I continually asked, what if the first-century Jews had accepted Jesus and protected him against Roman authorities, what then. The answer was always that it wasn’t God’s will. I found that unsatisfying. As an eighteen-year-old freshman at university, I studied anthropology and, in another class, became aware of Abraham Maslow and his proposal that people strive for self-actualization. The mix of spiritualism, anthropology, and psychology contributed to my openness to proponents of the new religious [...]
September Gold Q&A–Get Those Questions in!
Whoa, is it time for another Gold Q&A already? Yep, it sure is! Send your questions to [email protected], and Diane will compile and send me the list. Short deadline this month--get your question in by Friday (9/8) midnight (whenever midnight is in your time zone). The questions are always interesting, but remember that shorter, more general-interest questions are more likely to be answered.
Mark 13:30–a New Argument for an Old Hypothesis. A Platinum Post From Omar Robb
In this Platinum Guest Post Omar Robb takes on one of the most controversial verses in the Gospels for which every interpretation is controversial and argues for an interpretation that is ... controversial. Do you find it convincing? Let's hear you say so! Do you not? Let's hear you say why! The question: did Jesus state that his own generation would see the end of all things as we know them? Or not? ****************************** There is a hypothesis that Mark 13:30 (this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened) is related to the destruction of the Temple. This is not a new hypothesis, and there are few articles in the internet that promote it. However, this hypothesis didn’t gain any momentum, and it is highly ignored by both Believers and Non-Believers. I assume that this hypothesis could indicate a partial fulfillment to the prophecy of Jesus, which most Believers couldn’t accept; as Jesus’ prophecies couldn’t have any failures. While many Non-Believers couldn’t also accept it; as Jesus’ prophecies couldn’t even [...]
Does Archaeological Evidence Show that Jesus Was Buried on the Day He Died?
[Note: this post originally appeared in 2014; since then the skeletal remains of another victim of crucifixion have appeared in England; to my knowledge, the new discovery does not affect either Craig's argument or my response here] ****************************** I plan to make this the last post responding to Craig Evans’s article, “Getting the Burial Traditions and Evidences Right,” in which he attempts to refute my argument in How Jesus Became God, that Jesus was probably not given a decent burial on the day of his crucifixion. I have dealt with a wide range of Craig’s arguments, and have saved his two strongest arguments for last. In my last post I dealt with the claim of Josephus that Jews (always? usually? sometimes?) buried crucifixion victims before sunset, and I showed that as a general statement it simply isn’t true, and argued that in any event it would not have applied to a case such as that of Jesus, one who was crucified as an enemy of the state. Today I deal with the second argument that [...]
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 [...]
How Relevant is Josephus for Knowing What Happened to the Body of Jesus?
In my previous post I began to deal with the first of two arguments that Craig Evans provides from Josephus. Craig wants to argue that Josephus, a first-century Jewish authority, explicitly indicates that Romans allowed Jews to provide decent burials for their dead. In this first argument Craig provides a concatenation of passages from Josephus that together, Craig argues, indicate that Jews would not leave a corpse (such as that of Jesus) on the cross, but would provide a burial for it. Here is the argument again. “Josephus asserts the same thing. The Romans, he says, do not require “their subjects to violate their national laws” (Against Apion 2.73). The Jewish historian and adds that the Roman procurators who succeeded Agrippa I “by abstaining from all interference with the customs of the country kept the nation at peace...” (Jewish War 2.220) "... customs that included never leaving a “corpse unburied” (Against Apion 2.211). I dealt with the first quotation in yesterday’s post, where I pointed out that in Against Apion Josephus is not referring to [...]
Premarital Sex in The Song of Songs: A Platinum Post by Dan Kohanski
The Bible has numerous passages that would be shocking to many readers if they read them without pious assumptions. Of none is that more true than the Song of Songs (sometimes called the Song of Solomon). And so I welcome this guest post by Platinum members Dan Kohanski, who takes on this erotic work and tries to say it as it is! Remember: you too can publish a post for other Platinum members. Why not give it a shot? Just send something along to me, and I'm happy to look it over for you. ****************************** (This essay was inspired by Bart’s recent post, “What is (Sexually) Unnatural,” and based on research I did for my recent book, A God of Our Invention: How Religion Shaped the Western World (Apocryphile Press, 2023), specifically the chapter on sex: “God Between the Sheets.”) The Hebrew Scripture is the work of many hands: scribes, story-tellers, mythmakers and lawmakers, prophets and poets. Its parts were composed over several hundred years, and edited for [...]
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Did Jesus Believe the End Would Come Within his Lifetime? Maybe Not! Platinum Post by Rizwan Ahmed
Did Jesus (wrongly) preach that the end of the age and history as we know it was to come in his own time? It's one of the hottest topics in NT studies. I'm pleased here to include a guest post by Platinum member Rizwan Ahmed on the question, in which he argues that my views do not rest on solid evidence. What do you think? As you know, Platinum members can submit posts to other Platinum members, and after a few get posted the Platinums can vote on which one gets posted to the whole blog. It's a real perk of Platinum membership -- along with others (most important: a quarterly webinar with me, for Platinums only). Check out the benefits and the membership requirements for that level and think about joining: Register - The Bart Ehrman Blog For now: here's Rizwan's challenging post. ****************************** “Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened” (Matthew 24:34, Luke 21:32) A little over a century ago, [...]
Corpses Left on Roman Crosses? Penalties for Removing them Early? A Humorous Story (?!) from Antiquity
There's been a lot of interest on the blog in the question of whether Romans left bodies on crosses or allowed same-day burials. No need to take my word for it. Just look up the references I give, e.g., in How Jesus Became God. Even better, I'll give one of them here from the first century Roman world, a fictional tale told within the gloriously funny novel, The Satyricon, by the Roman author Petronius, an advisor to the emperor Nero. The account is predicated on the widespread understanding of historical custom, as you'll see (and makes no sense unless it was the widespread understanding). The tale told by one of the characters in the Satyricon -- which I recommend you read in full! I've taken this translation from the online Gutenberg Project. You can find the entire text here: THE SATYRICON, Complete (gutenberg.org) I would not say that a story like this *proves* how things were everywhere at every time in Roman antiquity, but all the other references I know of from Greek and Roman [...]