Yesterday I posted an old final exam for my course Introduction to the New Testament.  And for your amusement, here is an exam for my course that I taught this semester, called the Birth of Christianity, which covered the developments within Christianity after the New Testament up through the conversion of Constantine. See how you do!  And again, I wish I could grade your answers, but, alas....     The Birth of Christianity, Reli 208 Final Exam   This is exam is in three sections; you have three hours to complete it.  We suggest you spend no more than an hour on each section. Section One:  Short Identification.  Write short answers up to 50 words on ten (and no more than ten) of the following.  Make your answers as detailed and informative as you can. Ebionites The Gospel of Peter Arius Apologists Theodosius I Tertullian The Great Persecution Thecla Donatism Asceticism Incarnation Christology Infancy Gospel of Thomas     Section Two:   First Essay.  Write an essay on the following topic.  Make it as detailed [...]

As many of you know, I started a podcast awhile back, called Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman.  It's not connected with the blog, but it deals with stuff most blog members would be interested in.  (And hey, it's free!  Available both as a podcast on all the main podcast servers and on Youtube.) A new episode comes out every Tuesday, and it occurred to me that you might be interested in knowing what's happening on it.  So, I've decided to make weekly announcements here, in case you're interested in going there! This past Tuesday, the topic I discussed with my host Megan Lewis, was "Was Jesus a False Prophet."  Here's the description, in case you'd like to check it out.  Historical scholars for over a century have maintained that Jesus predicted that the end of history as we know it was to come in his own generation. Conservative Christians -- laypeople and scholars alike -- have insisted that this is a complete misportrayal of Jesus. And many people -- possibly most? -- believe that [...]

I was browsing through some old posts from years ago and came across this one, a copy of my final exam for my undergraduate course, Introduction to the New Testament.   Check it out.  How would you do? The students have some idea of what the exam will entail in advance.  For the identifications, anything they've read or heard during the semester is fair game.  I don't give them a list of terms ahead of time to study.  They have to know every term covered in the reading and that I've given in class.  For the essays:  two weeks ahead of time I gave them fourteen possible essay questions for the exam, and told them I would choose two of the fourteen for the final.  I decided to give them some choice, as you'll see, so they could have some leeway about which essay to write. I won't be able to correct your wrong answers or even to tell you the right ones, since each identification could take up to 50 words, and the essays took [...]

On Easter Sunday CNN published an OpEd that I wrote to discuss how so many Christians (most I've ever known) are not overly compelled by Good Friday but are passionate about Easter.  Just, well, check out the church attendance on both days.  In the OpEd I argued that it's because as a rule most Christians prefer the glory to the pain, and in some ways that preference is written into the canon of the New Testament, where the teachings of Jesus of the need to serve others even if it means suffering comes first and then Revelation where the saints are given domination of the earth and a city of gold from which they rule the earth with a rod of iron comes last.  The reality is that most Christians prefer the conquering Christ of Revelation to the suffering Jesus of the Gospels -- at least when it comes to what they want to see in their own lives. CNN has a policy that does not allow me to reproduce the entire OpEd, just the [...]

The 1993 Waco Disaster—How Not to Negotiate with Apocalyptic Believers James D. Tabor, retired professor of Religious Studies, UNC Charlotte   In this three-part series James Tabor surveys what happened 30 years ago outside Waco, TX as Federal authorities violently confronted a group of apocalyptic believers who believed that David Koresh, their prophetic leader was a final messianic messenger of the book of Revelation.   Part III: A Peaceful Surrender Plan Rejected! Dr. Phillip Arnold and I offered our services to the FBI on March 7. As biblical scholars we had specialized in the history of biblical apocalyptic interpretation and were generally familiar with Adventist groups although neither of us had ever heard of David Koresh and the Branch Davidians before February 28. We studied carefully the fifty-eight-minute tape that Koresh had released on March 2 and began many hours of theological conversation over the telephone with Livingstone Fagan. Fagan had been sent out of Mount Carmel by Koresh on March 23 to act as a theological spokesperson for the Davidians; he was now being [...]

The 1993 Waco Disaster—How Not to Negotiate with Apocalyptic Believers James D. Tabor, retired professor of Religious Studies, UNC Charlotte   In this three-part series James Tabor surveys what happened 30 years ago outside Waco, TX as Federal authorities violently confronted a group of apocalyptic believers who believed that David Koresh, their prophetic leader was a final messianic messenger of the book of Revelation.   Part II: Opening the Seven Seals of the Book of Revelation It should be noted that at this point Koresh and his followers had been labeled a “cult” and thoroughly “demonized” in a series of articles called “The Sinful Messiah” printed in the Waco Tribune-Herald beginning on February 27, just one day before the BATF raid. This series, based largely on charges by disaffected former Branch Davidians, painted a grim and bizarre picture of Koresh and his followers, echoing all the stereotypes the public had come to associate with unfamiliar groups or new religious movements that are pejoratively labeled “cults.” Hungry for any “information” about this heretofore unknown religious group, [...]

The 1993 Waco Disaster—How Not to Negotiate with Apocalyptic Believers James D. Tabor, retired professor of Religious Studies, UNC Charlotte   In this three-part series James Tabor surveys what happened 30 years ago outside Waco, TX as Federal authorities violently confronted a group of apocalyptic believers who believed that David Koresh, their prophetic leader was a final messianic messenger of the book of Revelation.   Part I: Setting the Scene for a Fifty-One Day Standoff The FBI agents called to Mount Carmel center outside Waco, Texas, on February 28, 1993, can hardly be expected to have packed their Bibles. In retrospect, it would not have been such a bad idea. The news of the bloody shoot-out between agents of the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) and an obscure religious group known as the Branch Davidians, on the peaceful Sunday morning had been flashed around the world. For months the BATF had planned a “search and arrest” assault on the group based on allegations that they possessed illegal firearms materials and were possibly [...]

As you may know, a number of Volunteers devote their time and talents to the blog, making  it work, succeed, thrive, and grow.  And an important position has now opened up. We have a special need for someone who is skilled in social media of all kinds.   For some time now we have been highly fortunate to have a skilled volunteer taking on this task,, more or less behind the scenes.  She needs now to move on to other things.  Life calls! And now the blog is calling in response.  We need to expand our blog horizons and develop our potential, with the  goal of significantly increasing our membership so as to achieve our dual objectives of spreading expert knowledge about the New Testament and Early Christianity to a wider world and, concomitantly, raising more funds for charity. Our ideal volunteer would be someone experienced, skilled, and creative in posting to social media:  Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and more!  Among other things, the ability to create short clips from existing videos and post to Reels would [...]

As I said in my last post, the definitive doctrine of Purgatory did not exist before the 12th century, even though the basic *idea* had been around for a long time – the idea that even though Christ’s death brought salvation to the world, most people, except for the most holy saints, such as those who had been martyred for their faith, had still to pay for their sins.   By the 13th century Purgatory had become an actual place of torment.  Before then it was not so much a place as a condition of suffering to purge away sins. The question is how early this idea existed.  How long had Christians maintained that suffering was necessary for the sinner – even the believing Christian sinner – before they would be allowed into their eternal bliss in heaven?   The idea is not part of the New Testament, although as we will see in a later post, there are some passages that could be used in support of the view. The first place we find any reference [...]

As I indicated in my previous two posts on the Martyrdom of Perpetua, I'm interested in the question of where the idea of purgatory came from.  Ths idea of purgatory is *widely* misunderstood today; in fact, just about everyone who mentions it to me (including two days ago), doesn't know what it actually is -- including friends who have been Catholic for the entire 70 years of their lives!  (Not to mention the Protestants...) This is how I discussed the issue some years ago when I was working on my book Heaven and Hell: ****************************** Roughly speaking purgatory is a kind of third place, between heaven and hell.  The abject sinners (or those who reject Christ, or whoever you think is destined for punishment) go to hell; the righteous saints go to heaven.  But what about those who will ultimately be saved but who have not lived a good (enough) life?  They go to purgatory.   This has been the standard teaching of the Catholic church since the 12th or 13th century. The classic study of the [...]

In my new book Armageddon, which saw the light of published day just a few days ago, I talk about where the "rapture" came from, the evangelical belief that Jesus was soon to return to snatch his followers out of this world before a horrible time of Tribulation hits the earth. That too will be the subject of a lecture, with Q&A, that I will be giving (unrelated to the blog) on April 15.  For information about THAT, go to my website http://bartehrman.com/courses I left off yesterday with a bit of a tease, indicating that the following passage, one of the main prooftexts for a rapture, is in fact not about the rapture at all.  Here's the passage, and then my explanation: For we tell you this by a word of the Lord: we who are living, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not go before those who sleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God—and the [...]