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Vote for Your Favorite Platinum Post

  Hey Platinum Members, Time to vote on your favorite platinum guest post from relatively recent times.  Here are four to choose from, all of them interesting and important!  Pick one and name your preference, not as a comment here but by letting Diane know at [email protected]   She'll tally the votes and then we'll annouce the winner, and I'll post the post. So... what are yiur druthers?   April 10, 2023 The Quest for the Legendary Jesus. Robert Droney April 14, 2023 Baptism and the Macbeth Effect Douglas Wadeson April 28, 2023 Is 2 Thessalonians a Forgery?  From 132 CE? Omar Robb May 3, 2023 Did The Twelve Become Only Three? Doug Wadeson

2025-07-16T17:42:34-04:00June 7th, 2023|Public Forum|

“You Have Heard His Blasphemy!” But Did They? A Platinum post by Daniel Kohanski

I'm pleased to present this well-researched Platinum post by Dan Kohanski, on one of the most intriguing (at least for me) questions about the Passion narrative.  It's a highly controversial passage and Dan makes a highly controversial suggestion!   He makes a good case!  What do you think? Remember: you too can make a Platinum guest post for other Platinum members.  It doesn't have to be highly learned and sophisticated -- just something you're thinking about connected with the stuff we do on the blog.  If you have something, send it along to Diane at [email protected].   ****************************** “You Have Heard His Blasphemy!” Said the High Priest—But Did They? The trial of Jesus as described in the gospel of Mark, and particularly the part where the high priest charges Jesus with blasphemy, is one of the most hotly debated stories in the New Testament. Here is the heart of the passage: Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” Jesus said, “I am; and ‘you will see the [...]

2025-09-10T13:02:37-04:00June 5th, 2023|Public Forum|

The 3rd Rail – A Critique of Jesus. Platinum Post by Steve Clark

A Platinum post for Platinum members from Platinum member Steve Clark: ****************************** It was a cold winter morning, the exciting music of the 1970’s was in my head. I was learning to play guitar and learning to be cool. Mostly failing at both but kept trying. What else was a young man to do in the 70’s? I was walking around Georgia State University in downtown Atlanta (my friends called it the concrete campus) and had a spring in my step as I stepped into Philosophy 101 class. In the days to come we were assigned materials to read and one of them was Why I am not a Christian by Bertrand Russell.   Like many in the South grew up in a conservative Southern Baptist environment. And like many had never heard anyone criticize Jesus. Ever. Why would they and what would there be to criticize? The short portion of the lecture Russell pens (and pins) directly on Jesus is extremely mild. He appears borderline apologetic about it. For me though, fitting with the [...]

2025-09-10T13:02:36-04:00June 2nd, 2023|Public Forum|

Did Morton Smith Forge the Secret Gospel of Mark?

Last month (April 2023) I published a thread of blog posts on the intriguing and controversial Secret Gospel of Mark, allegedly discovered by Columbia University scholar Morton Smith in the library of the Greek orthodox monastery Mar Saba twelve miles southeast of Jerusalem.  He did not actually discover the Gospel itself, but (allegedly) discovered a letter that described and quoted it, allegedly written by the church father Clement of Alexandria (200 CE or so), allegedly copied by a scribe of the eighteenth century in the back blank pages of a seventeenth-century book otherwise (actually) containing the letters of Ignatius of Antioch (110 CE or so), in which Clement allegedly discusses a potentially scandalous edition of Mark’s Gospel allegedly used by a nefarious Gnostic group called the Carpocratians.  Confused yet?  Read the posts, starting with this one from April 12: https://ehrmanblog.org/do-scholars-ever-forge-gospels In my posts I did not give any evidence to show that this “alleged” discovery might not have been a discovery but a forgery, possibly by Smith himself, even though from the outset some (many?) [...]

Blog Dinner in London on Monday June 12. Interested?

I'm heading over the pond this week, for most of the summer, and would like to do a blog dinner on  Monday,  June 12, 2023.   Possibly a pint in advance.  Somewhere in central London. You interested?  If we can get 3-4 folk, and no more than 7, people together, I'd be happy to do it.  If more then 7 reply, I'll take the first 7!  And then I'll schedule another one later, probably in Wimbledon (which I may do anyway). No obligations other than: Being a blog member Showing up Talking Paying for whatever you ingest.  Whatever you exgest is free. If you're interested, do NOT reply here as a comment.  Send me an email at [email protected]. Hope it happens!  

2025-09-10T12:59:48-04:00May 29th, 2023|Public Forum|

Was Jesus a Simplistic Person or an Extraordinary One? A Platinum Post by Omar Abur-Robb

  ****************************** Was Jesus a simplistic person or an extraordinary one? Omar Abur-Robb omr-mhmd.yolasite.com   Suppose you were in a hill overseeing a large lake, and suddenly you noticed a wave propagating quickly outward. You will instinctively realize that this wave has originated from its center, and you can probably pinpoint this center with ease by looking at the wave. However, your eyes will open wildly in astonishment and your scientific mind will turn upside down when you see the wave reaching the shore then jumping to the next lake and start propagating there. This is going to be a very weird phenomenon. But this exact phenomenon needs to be included in our explanatory models for the expansion of Christianity: The point of propagation for Christianity was the point of establishment at 30AD, and in less than 20 years, the teaching of Jesus managed to propagate outside its local domain to many foreign domains. This is an extraordinary phenomenon. Notice that the Greek Christians were very serious in their faith to the point that many [...]

2025-09-10T13:02:37-04:00May 29th, 2023|Public Forum|

Back in the Saddle Again…

I am now, alas, back from my two-weeks in Galapagos.   Whoa.... And I'm getting back to business on the blog.  Before leaving I placed a number of posts in queue and these have been published promptly.  I'm now starting to deal with the comments that came in during my absence.  This'll take a couple of days, but I will get caught up soon. For those of you who are Gold members, I've recorded the monthly hour-long Gold Q&A, soon to be released for your viewing/listening pleasure.  For those of you who are not Gold members: this is one of the perks at that level.  Take a look at your options and think about it!  Register - The Bart Ehrman Blog All other blog things should be flyin' along as usual.    If you have any problems, concerns, suggestions, or briefcases of small unmarked bills, let me/us know...      

2025-09-10T13:02:57-04:00May 27th, 2023|Public Forum|

Did Jesus Believe The End Would Come Within His Lifetime? Platinum Post by Rizwan Ahmed

A post for Platinum members only from Rizwan Ahmed ****************************** “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, Albert Schweitzer, through his famous book “The Quest of the Historical Jesus”, revolutionized and reshaped our understanding of the historical figure of Jesus. He convincingly argued that Jesus should be best understood as an apocalyptic Jewish prophet. That is, a prophet who heralded the coming end of the world, in which God would intervene in history and finally bring about absolute justice and righteousness to the world. A tremendous event in which all who ever lived would be raised from the dead and judged. The good would be rewarded with eternal life while the wicked would suffer eternal punishment. This was a popular concept within Jewish thought even prior to Jesus and continued to be so during his days. While the Synoptic Gospels make it clear that Jesus espoused such views, the question arises as to when this [...]

2025-09-10T13:02:36-04:00May 26th, 2023|Public Forum|

My New Online Course on Paul and Jesus!

In case you haven't heard, I will be doing a live, eight-lecture online course comparing the theology of Paul and Jesus on May 27-28.  The course is not connected with the blog -- it is part of my separate venture for a series I'm publishing called How Scholars Read the Bible.  But I mention here because some of you may be interested.  Even if you can't make the live sessions and Q&A, you can purchase the course to watch at your leisure.  You can learn about it here: BartEhrman.com The course will consist of  four lectures and one Q&A each day.  The lectures will be 30 - 40 minutes each. This course addresses one of the most controversial issues of early Christianity: Did Paul and Jesus have the same religion? Should they be considered the “co-founders” of Christianity? Or were the teachings of Paul at odds with the proclamations of Jesus, making Paul himself the founder of the new faith? Few questions can be more significant for understanding the origin of the Christian faith, and the [...]

2025-09-10T13:02:56-04:00May 23rd, 2023|Public Forum|

Didn’t the Disciples Memorize Jesus’ Teachings and Accounts of His Life?

I've been talking about how scholars began to realize in the early 20th century that the stories of Jesus in the Gospels were based on oral traditions that the Gospel writers inherited decades earlier.  But is that really a problem?  Here's how I discuss the issue in my book Jesus Before the Gospels (HarperOne, 2016). ****************************** Many people, when they first consider the reality that the traditions in our Gospels must have circulated orally for decades before being written down, come up with a commonsensical response.  Surely the sayings of Jesus, and the accounts of his life, were actually memorized by his followers, so that they would be preserved accurately.  Aren’t oral cultures known for being able to preserve their traditions spotlessly?  After all, since they didn’t have written records to keep their memories alive, people in such cultures must have worked with special diligence to remember what they learned and to pass their stories along seamlessly from one person and one generation to the next.  Right? Unfortunately, decades of intense research have shown that this [...]

Was Jesus Literate or Illiterate? A Platinum Post by Omar Abur-Robb

For Platinum members, from Platinum member Omar Abur-Robb: ****************************** Was Jesus literate or Illiterate omr-mhmd.yolasite.com   Scholars are in difference regarding whether Jesus was literate or not, and I would like to explore this subject. Most of the people who lives in Galilee at the time of Jesus were peasants, and most of the peasants were poor, and most of the poor peasants were illiterate. Therefore, we can conclude that Jesus was illiterate. But the above conclusion was based on a “null hypothesis”. “Null hypotheses” are statements of probability. So ... Let Sam be one of the people who lived in Galilee at that time. We know nothing about Sam except that he lived in Galilee. Therefore, the probability of Sam being a poor illiterate peasant is very high, and the probability otherwise is very low. Therefore, the “null hypothesis” (that is the “initial assumption”) about anyone living in Galilee is that they were poor illiterate peasants. However, there is no evidence that every single peasant in Galilee was poor illiterate. In the contrary, you [...]

2025-09-10T13:02:37-04:00May 22nd, 2023|Public Forum|

Was Levi of Alphaeus the “the Beloved Disciple”? Platinum Post by Gregory Hartzler-Miller, MATS

  ****************************** Was Levi of Alphaeus the "the Beloved Disciple"? A Redaction Critical Approach   Since the discovery of the Gospel of Peter, scholars have speculated about the missing words after the mention of "Levi of Alphaeus" in the final sentence, which breaks off. The sentence reads, "But I, Simon Peter, and my brother Andrew, having taken our nets, went off to the sea. And there was with us Levi of Alphaeus whom the Lord [blank]," (Tr. Raymond Brown). How should we fill in the blank? Could it be "whom the Lord [loved],"? Many scholars have wondered whether this mention of Levi of Alphaeus in the Gospel of Peter might solve the mystery of the identity of "the other disciple" in the Gospel of John, "the one whom Jesus loved".   I have discovered literary clues to support this suspicion. "Levi son of Alphaeus", a major character in Mark's gospel, becomes utterly obscure in Matthew's redaction of Mark's story. My hypothesis is that the identity of John's "other disciple" borrows from Matthew's peculiar literary penchant [...]

2025-09-10T13:02:37-04:00May 19th, 2023|Public Forum|

Did Early Christians “Invent” Memories of Jesus?

I've been talking about how we remember things -- or misremember things, or make up memories of things -- as a way of getting to the question of how, in our heads, we think about what Jesus said and did.  This is all part of my larger project that came incarnated (inletterated?) in my book Jesus Before the Gospels. As I point out early in the book, we remember most things  just fine, but we also often get things either partially or completely wrong.  Memories can be frail, faulty, and false.  And not just our individual memories, but also the “memories” we have as a society.  In previous posts I illustrated the point by talking about social memories of Abraham Lincoln and Christopher Columbus. But what about faulty memories of Jesus (see my last post if it doesn't make sense to talk about "remembering" someone we never knew!).  To get to this question, in my book, I talk about some of the modern representations of Jesus by current-day scholars and popular authors  – for example, Jesus [...]

Jesus’ Resurrection: A Challenging Hypothetical. Guest Post by Ryan Fleming

And now *here* is an interesting way to think about whether someone was raised from the dead!  This is a Platinum Guest Post by Ryan Fleming.  It is begging for responses.  What do you think? ****************************** A short story: Suppose you are a French-resistance fighter in Nazi-occupied Paris during World War II. One of your countrymen, Jacques, is unbeknownst to you, a Nazi spy. He openly supports passivism towards Nazi authority, keeps the peace, and even promotes paying taxes to the Nazis. Periodically you see Jacques in the company of a Nazi officer. You and your fellow countrymen become suspicious, even fearful. Is he subverting the mental drive to undermine resistance, or at worst, is he giving away secrets, risking the lives of resistance fighters? You and your countrymen conspire to present a charge to Nazi authority that Jacques has raped a woman to see what they will do. You demand Jacques is guilty, present the woman as a witness who emphatically exclaims Jacques raped her, and demands Jacques must be executed. Eventually, Nazi authority, [...]

2025-07-16T17:42:12-04:00May 16th, 2023|Public Forum|

The Father and the Son. A Platinum Post by Omar Abur-Robb

A Platinum post for fellow Platinum members from Omar Abur-Robb:   ****************************** The Father and the Son omr-mhmd.yolasite.com   When and how the people of the Christian faith started to refer to God as “The Father”? Jews today refer to God as Adonai, Hashem, or Elohim. Karaite Jews do refer to God as Yahweh, but the Rabbinic Jews don’t use this name as they regard it sacred. But (to my understanding) there are no Jews (Karaite or Rabbinic) who refer to God as “The Father”. Also (to my understanding) there are no Jews in history who have referred to God as “The Father”. Therefore, I can establish the following null-hypothesis that Jews at the time of Jesus didn’t refer to God as “The Father”. Now ... if someone managed to extract a paragraph from an ancient Jewish manuscript (for example: one of the books of Philo, Josephus, or the dead sea scrolls, etc.) that demonstrate that Jews at the time of Jesus did refer to God as “The Father” then the previous hypothesis will fall [...]

2025-09-10T13:02:37-04:00May 15th, 2023|Public Forum|

Dr. Bart D. Ehrman, Apostle to the Atheists. A Platinum Post by Robert Droney

Here is a Platinum guest post by Robert Droney where he objects (rather vigorously) to my self-identification as a "Christian atheist."   As always, he has a reasoned set of arguments!  I won't be replying here, but, well, what to *you* think? And remember, you too can write a Platinum guest post for other Platinum members, with the possibility of it being posted to the entire blog.   If you have one, or just an idea of one, let us know; zap an email to [email protected] *********************************   I think that most people and are familiar with Saul’s conversion story. Saul was a “Jew’s, Jew.”[1] A well-educated and zealous Pharisee who persecuted early Christians for their heretical belief that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah.[2] However, on the road to Damascus, Jesus appears to Saul to reprimand him for his persecution of Christians.[3] Because of this experience, resulting blindness, and receipt of the Holy Spirit, Saul mends his ways, ceases persecuting Christians and becomes a fervent advocate for the belief in Jesus as the Jewish Messiah.[4] Personally, I find [...]

2025-09-10T13:02:36-04:00May 12th, 2023|Public Forum|

Blog Announcement: Comments!

Just so you know!  Tomorrow I'm heading to the Galapagos and will not have reliable wifi for about a week.  That WON'T affect the blog posts -- I've got them all lined up and ready to roll.  BUT, I won't be able to respond to comments. But feel free to make them at will.  I will get to them when I return from the land of Darwin to the land of AI.  And maybe I should start using AI to respond to comments, for the sake of all involved!  (But never fear: it ain't gonna happen.)

2025-09-10T13:02:56-04:00May 12th, 2023|Public Forum|

May Gold Q&A: Submit your questions!

Dear Goldies, Our monthly Gold Q&A is coming upon us.  DEADLINE for your question(s):  this coming Friday, May 19, midnight your time.    Interested in anything I can deal with?   Now's your chance: Ask away! I'm more likely to answer questions that are relatively short and to the point than those that go on for a long paragraph.  So be concise. I'll answer as the spirit leads. To enter your question on to the list: send it to Diane at [email protected] My plan is to record the session sometime over the few days after that.  I will probably send out a note indicating when that'll be a day or so ahead of time in case any of you want to listen in live. So, let me hear what you're curious about and I'll do my best to respond! BDE  

2025-09-10T13:02:38-04:00May 10th, 2023|Public Forum|

Was Matthew Attacking Paul?

On my podcast this past week (Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman) someone asked me if I thought any of the Gospels of the NT were influenced by Paul.  It's an interesting question that I should post on (my view: Mark, maybe; Luke, unexpectedly and oddly not; John, I doubt it; Matthew?) Ah, Matthew.  As it turns out, I think Matthew shows a rather obvious and ironic connection with Paul.  Did he know Paul's writings?  I have no idea.  Did he know about Paul?  Same, no idea.  Did he oppose a major feature of Paul's gospel message?  Sure looks like it!!  (I'm trying to say that he could be opposed to Paul's views without necessarily knowing Paul's writings; the views may have been more widely spread than just by Paul.  In fact, they almost certainly were. Here's how I've discussed the matter once when I was reflecting at greater length in the issue: Paul certainly had opponents in his lifetime:  "Judaizers," as scholars call them -- that is, Christian teachers who maintained that followers of Jesus [...]

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