As I have done before, I would like to offer blog members an opportunity to read a draft of my forthcoming book in exchange for a major blog donation. Many of you know that I’ve been spent the last four years working on a scholarly monograph that will be related to, but completely different from, my recently published trade book, Heaven and Hell.  I have just finished the draft and am sending it out to experts to read for comments, before preparing the final copy for the press.  (It is to be published by Yale University Press.)   I’m not sure of the title yet, but just now I’m calling it “Journeys to Heaven and Hell in the Early Christian Tradition.” It’s a scholarly book, not directed mainly to a popular audience.  It focuses on several texts not well known to the general populace and, frankly, not even to most scholars (even NT scholars, the vast majority of whom have never read these texts, let alone studied them): The Apocalypse of Peter, the Apocalypse of Paul, [...]

Yesterday I gave Part 1 of my Newsweek article on Christmas, published in 2012.  Here is Part 2! *************************************************************** Most modern readers who are not already familiar with these stories [in the apocryphal Gospels such as the Proto-Gospel of James] tend to find them far-fetched.   That’s almost always the case with miraculous accounts that we have never heard before – they sound implausible and “obviously” made up, as legends and fabrications.   Rarely do we have the same reaction to familiar stories known from childhood that are also spectacularly miraculous, and that probably sound just as bizarre to outsiders who hear them for the first time.  Are the stories about Jesus’ birth that are in the New Testament any less far-fetched? It depends whom you ask.   This past November, Pope Benedict XVI published his third book on the life of Jesus, this one focusing on the New Testament accounts of his birth, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives.  Before his ascent to the head of the Catholic Church, Joseph Ratzinger was best known as a leading [...]

As we are all keenly aware:  ‘Tis the Season to be giving!  For many of us, in terms of giving at least, mid December is the best of times and the worst of times.   It is best because we can show our love and gratitude to those close to us by choosing things to give them during the holidays; it is the worst because the commercialism that overwhelms our world often makes it such an obligatory drudgery.  It would be so nice if we could just freely give to those we love without worrying about what and how much, and just be joyfully generous.  But, of course, we are humans and even giving a gift can be fraught with complications.  And this time of year often is. There is also a less humane and uplifting reason for giving just now, a rather cold and hard one that any of us who pays taxes knows full well.   We’re near the end of the year.  Ugh.  On the other hand, I think most of us would agree, [...]

As you know, you have several choices for your membership on the blog – from the most popular Bronze level, where you can read all my posts with archives going back to 2012; to Silver, where you can do all that plus make and read members’ comments and questions, and my responses; to Gold, where you can do all that plus get audio versions of the posts; and up to Platinum.  The Platinum has some unusual benefits; I thought it might be helpful for me to spell them out, just in case you might be interested. Here is how I described it recently in an email to those who have already taken the plunge.  . ****************************** Hello Platinum Blog Members! Now that the dust has settled a bit on the launch of the new blog site, we are able to start moving ahead with some of our new initiatives – including the Platinum Premiums. Here is the summary provided on the JOIN pages, with which you are no doubt familiar.  In this note I will [...]

I have decided to hold a small and intimate webinar in order to raise money for the Bart Ehrman Blog.  Every penny that the webinar brings in will go directly to two of the blog’s charities, The Food Bank of Central/Eastern North Carolina and Doctors without Borders, split equally between them.  It will be held on Tuesday December 15 at 7:00 pm EST.  It will last for an hour and fifteen minutes. The topic of the seminar will be “What Can We Really Know about the Birth of Jesus?”  Among the topics to be covered will be: What do the Gospels say about Jesus' birth?  Can they be right?  Why do two of the Gospels not say anything about it?  Why is Jesus' birth not mentioned anywhere else in the New Testament?  Are the accounts we have consistent with one another?  Are they consistent with what we know from ancient Jewish and Roman history?  Can we decide when Jesus was actually born -- year and day?  Or where?  How do we explain the idea of [...]

This is a good time for some feedback from you, the members of the blog! We are very pleased with the roll-out of the new blog site, and hope you are as well.   The user experience appears to be much improved (or so it seems to us, and that is what we are hearing from you as well).  And yet it is still the same approach and format, with posts on a wide range of topics dealing with the New Testament and Early Christianity appearing five times a week, and readers (at the silver level and above) able to make comments and receive replies.  On Jan. 1 we will move from our crisis-inspired-trial offer of giving all bronze memberships privileges of silver.  At whatever level you are now, when your current subscription ends, you can choose to move to whichever level most suits you and your needs. We received excellent feedback at the outset of the launch and have been able to tweak lots of things as a result.  There are still things we are [...]

As the blog has developed and grown, administrative needs have increased, and we are all very fortunate indeed that there is a devoted group of Volunteers pitching in to make this a success.  We simply could not be doing this without them. Now with the launch of the new site, more opportunities and needs are presenting themselves, and I will be soliciting more volunteers for more tasks.  Just now there are two areas that are most pressing. SOCIAL MEDIA COORDINATOR:  I need an assistant who can use their skills on social media to promote the blog.  This would be someone who is deeply conversant with, comfortable with, skilled with, and connected with that universe, or rather that multiverse.  If that is you, and you would you be interested in hearing more, please simply send me an email indicating your interest, and we can talk about what it all might entail:  [email protected] TECHNOLOGY ADVISORY BOARD: As we expand we continue to find numerous challenges and opportunities that involve technology.  Steven has brilliantly set up the blog [...]

I’ve been getting very good feedback from users of the new blog site, and am naturally very pleased.  There are also a lot of new users now, reading, listening, and making comments.  Fantastic!  If you have any problems with the blog, please be sure to contact us.  Click the HELP button and you will see a list of FAQs and responses, and information about how to get Support. Since we have so many new folk participating, I want to say a separate word about Blog etiquette.  It’s a bit different from typical Internet etiquette, for which most of us, well I, at least, am thankful. When I started the blog, from the outset I decided that I wanted it to be completely welcoming to all people, no matter what their religious convictions (or non-religious convictions), national background, race, gender, sexual identity, background knowledge, native intelligence, good looks, or … anything at all.  And to be welcoming requires all of us to be polite, courteous, and respectful. It’s hard to do.  At least sometimes it is [...]

I'm doing a four-lecture series related to my book Heaven and Hell, this Thursday and Friday evenings for the UNC Public Humanities Program;  I'll be doing them remotely from a studio in a local bookstore.   Both days it's a lecture at 5:00 and another at 7:00; the lecture will be 50-60 minutes then Q&A.   Interested in joining in?  Here's the address for further information: https://www.unc.edu/event/heaven-and-hell-ancient-ideas-about-the-afterlife-featuring-bart-ehrman/2020-11-05/ Hope you can join in!

This is the fifth of my FIVE FAVORITES -- reposts of blog posts from years ago, in part to celebrate the new launch of the blog and in part to encapsulate some of the kinds of posts that can be found in the archives.  The archives go back to April 2012 and are easily searched.  As you can see, you can simply do a word search for any issue; you can get a list of posts for any category; you can actually go back to any month and year and see a list of posts.  Ain't life grand? Here is a post from 2016 on what is, for me, a topic of long-standing interest. ********************************* In my previous post I explained why the author of the book of Revelation, someone named John, was not claiming to be John the son of Zebedee and in fact probably was *not* John the son of Zebedee.   I also showed why this author was not the same one who produced the fourth Gospel, the Gospel of John (see https://ehrmanblog.org/the-author-of-revelation/) [...]

I am so pleased that we have now launched the new Bart Ehrman Blog site. It was many, many months in the making, and many thanks to my assistant Steven Ray who conceived, designed, and implemented it. I hope you agree that it has a great new look.There are several features that you may find very useful.As you will see, many of the old features are the same. You will still receive five posts a week and you will still be able to access archives going back to April 2012. There is a lot of information buried away in there! You can also still search for posts you are interested in, either by doing a simple word search (e.g., “Authorship of the Gospels,” “Judas Iscariot,” or “Persecution” etc.); or by clicking on any category (under Recent Posts) and getting a full chronological listing; or even by going to the archives and browsing through the titles, day by day, arranged chronologically, month by month, for all these years (go to the bottom of the left column [...]

I am exceedingly happy to make a major blog announcement.  Very soon – probably next week – we will be launching the new blog site.  It will be vastly improved, with all the best features of what we have now but with a new look, higher quality, and more member options.  If you like it the way it is, very little will change except the appearance of the blog.  If you want more, you’re in luck. My assistant Steven Ray has designed and constructed the new site to replace the one that he originally built over eight years ago.   Volunteers have been working to get some of the parts in place.  And we are all very excited about it. PLEASE NOTE: THE BLOG WILL BE DOWN FOR A FEW DAYS NEXT WEEK while we transfer the data from the old blog to the new one.  It is a massive and complicated affair (lots of data here after more than 8 years!).   I will let you know in advance when we are certain it is going [...]

I love serendipity, but I have to admit, this one strikes me as very weird. As some of you know, today is my 65th birthday.  It’s an oddly important one for me.  When I was a young teenager, for some reason (that now I have trouble understanding), I had the notion that anyone who could make it to 65 had done pretty well for him/herself and that it was a reasonable time to pass off this mortal coil (not that I had read Hamlet yet).  At least it would mean not dying  young.  So I thought that it would be reasonable goal. Ai yai yai.  Kids.  Well, I no longer think of 65 as the goal in life.  I mean, I don’t particularly want to double it, but I’m happy to plod along for a good long time still.  The other reason that it is significant for me is that my dad died at 65.  That was 1989, a good long time ago; and I remember at the time thinking that he was too young, [...]

Most of you will remember a couple of months ago I asked my old friend Robin Jones, from my conservative evangelical days (classmate at Moody Bible Institute!), to write some guest posts for the blog.  Robin is active in and knowledgeable about the kinds of social work some evangelical organizations and the evangelical Christians connected with them engage in.  Most of us are blithely ignorant of such things, knowing evangelicals only by reputation and bad press (understandably).  But in fact some are doing a world of good in a world of suffering, reaching out in ways others of us simply don't or can't, helping those we ourselves may desperately wish we too could help. Robin's first post was very moving, and can be found here:  https://ehrmanblog.org/evangelicals-who-make-the-world-a-better-place-guest-post-by-robin-jones/ .  Here now is a second. ******************************************************* This Little Light of Mine A Christian and an atheist walk into a bar… Actually, as we all know, a Christian wouldn’t be caught dead in a bar (unless, of course, no one from church was around, and they were really, really [...]