I don’t think I’ve made any kind of official announcement that we are doing a massive rehaul of the blog, a complete rebuild.   But I am now. Official announcement:  WE ARE DOING A MASSIVE REHAUL OF THE BLOG, A COMPLETE REBUILD. Well, technically “we” are not.  Steven Ray, my assistant from the beginning and mastermind of all-things-blog-related is.  He’s been working on it for many months.  It’s a major undertaking.  For some years now he’s been keeping the current version running on duct tape and bailing wire, having started it over eight years ago when technology and life as we know it was different.  Things have changed.  Now we’ll change better with them. We are using the new blog structure to implement lots of other changes that we think will make the blog much better for blog users and to attain the goals of the blog itself better.  There have always been two goals:  To disseminate scholarly knowledge about the New Testament and the Beginnings of Christianity as broadly as we can, in simple terms [...]

I have written emails to everyone who has participated in the auction and put in a bid to have a look at my new book before it appears.   I *believe* I have managed to contact everyone.  If you did put in a bid but did *not* received (today) an email about it, and about what happens in the auction now, please send me an email at [email protected]    Many thanks! I will announce the amount raised at the end of the week.

As you may know, my next book Heaven and hell: A History of the Afterlife will be published on March 31.  That’s nearly three months off.  Would you like to read it *now*?     I have three copies of the galley proofs that I am willing to auction off -- as a fund-raiser for the blog -- to be sent directly to the highest bidders. A “galley proof” is the book as it is sent out to reviewers and journals and editors and book stores well in advance – some months ago now – so they can decide whether to advertise and / or stock the book and at what quantities.  They are never for sale.  They are in paperback with the same kind of cover that will be on the book itself, but at a cheaper production level since they are not for display in bookstores.   The book itself – the content -- is as it will be published, *except* for minor stylistic things (typos here and there etc.) that had not yet been cleared [...]

A number of my upcoming "events" have been more or less finalized (barring natural or national catastrophe, collapse, or cataclysm or, well, catabasis).   At the bottom are the currently scheduled book readings/lectures based on my forthcoming Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife. Any questions about any of this, let me know.   But first: my two international venues.   APRIL 14-24, 2020 Tour to Rome!! I've mentioned this a couple of times on the blog, most recently here: https://ehrmanblog.org/my-trip-to-rome-interested-in-joining/ This is going to be an amazing trip!   But they are ALMOST completely full.  So if you think you want to go, better contact them now.   Here is the brochure with contact information for the organizers, Thalassa Tours. https://www.thalassajourneys.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Pagans_Christians.pdf   April 24-30 Lecture tour in Sweden. This has just been added to my schedule.   I will be giving talks at universities in Umeå, Stockholm, and possibly Upsala.  Are you in Sweden?  Maybe we could meet!   THEN, in OCTOBER 2020 October 16-29 Tour to Egypt, sponsored by the University of North Carolina General Alumni Association [...]

Thanks to the incredible ongoing generosity of members of the blog, I am happy to announce that there are a limited number of free one-year memberships available.   These have been donated for a single purpose: to allow those who cannot afford the annual membership fee to participate on the blog for a year.   I will assign these memberships strictly on the honor system: if you truly cannot afford the membership fee, but very much want to have full access to the blog, then please contact me. Do NOT reply here, on the blog, as a comment.   Send me a separate email, privately, at [email protected].   In your email, please provide me with the following information: Your first and last name. Why you would like to take advantage of this offer.  I don't need or want a full account of your history or financial affairs, only an idea of why you are not able just now to purchase a membership. Country of citizenship (we're required, as a non-profit, to ask) Your preferred personal email. Your preferred user [...]

As you know, the overarching purposes of the blog are (1) to communicate broadly, to a reading public, scholarship on the New Testament and Early Christianity (as opposed to most of the material you find on the Internet, which is almost entirely devotional and not based on historical scholarship) and (2) in doing so, to raise money for charity.   The latter is what keeps me going.  I absolutely love communicating with non-scholars what the scholars are finding about these fundamentally important topics.  But my ultimate passion for the blog is to help people in need.  Hence the charity aspect. As you know, every penny that comes into the blog from membership fees and from direct donations goes to the charities we support.  There are no overhead costs because I pay for the blog myself, as my own contribution. Blog members sometimes indicate they would like to have more information about what those charities are and what they actually do.   There are five that receive our support.  Three of them are local to me:  Urban Ministries [...]

Blogging friends!   I have learned that two of the participants for the fund-raising blog dinner on December 3 will not be able to come after all.   So there are two seats available.  Here is the original announcement.  If you're interested, please let me know!  Tempus is fugiting. ******************************************************************************** On December 3, at 7:00 pm., I will be holding a new kind of blog event in Durham NC: a fund-raising dinner.  It will be at a nice restaurant to be named later.  We will have a maximum of seven places at the table (along with me, making eight). For the fund-raising:  the event is $100 per plate, the money to be donated directly to the blog.    Each person will also pay for his or her own meal. There will be no set agenda for the dinner.  It will be a chance to get to meet each other and talk about matters of mutual interest and importance, especially as they relate to the blog –anything connected, even remotely, with the New Testament and early Christianity.  The basic [...]

The following post is free for anyone who wants to look.  Most posts on the blog are only for members.  The good news is that it's easy and inexpensive to join.  You get five posts a week, for less than 50 cents.   And every cent goes to charity helping those in need.  So why not join???   In my previous post I indicated that I will be doing a short thread that introduces the New Testament very broadly, with the goal of then combining all the posts into one long (4000-5000 word) post that can then be accessed by anyone doing an Internet search for a basic overview.  If you don’t recall: see https://ehrmanblog.org/what-is-the-new-testament-a-broad-overview/ This is my second post of the series.  In it, I give a very, very brief description of each book of the New Testament, the kind of thing you can say without taking another breath.  It seems like this might be useful for anyone who just wants to know what each book is and, very roughy, what it is about. The [...]

On December 3, at 7:00 pm., I will be holding a new kind of blog event in Durham NC: a fund-raising dinner.  It will be at a nice restaurant to be named later.  We will have a maximum of seven places at the table (along with me, making eight). For the fund-raising:  the event is $100 per plate, the money to be donated directly to the blog.    Each person will also pay for his or her own meal. There will be no set agenda for the dinner.  It will be a chance to get to meet each other and talk about matters of mutual interest and importance, especially as they relate to the blog –anything connected, even remotely, with the New Testament and early Christianity.  The basic idea is that you will be able to pick my brain at will, and I may pick yours. For any of the table members who want an add-on, with additional brain-picking potential: for an additional donation of $100 you can start with drinks with me at 5:30.   I [...]

Are you having a difficult time, losing your faith?  Having doubts, but still trying to hold on?  Or not sure if you want to hold on any longer? A couple of days ago I mentioned the "Clergy Project" the organization for clergy ("religion professionals") who have lost their faith and no longer believe in the supernatural.   One of the founders of the project, Linda LaScola, has reminded me that she edits a blog that is completely public (for anyone interested) for just folk like you (not just clergy), called  Rational Doubt – With Voices from The Clergy Project. The posts on the blog are actually written by members of The Clergy Project. Moreover, if you're interested more in who these ex-clergy are and about the phenomenon of religious professionals losing their faaith, you may want to check out the book that Linda produced with the justly  famous philosopher Daniel C. Dennett of Tufts University, called Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving the Faith Behind.  You can find it at amazon.com.

Thanks to the incredible ongoing generosity of members of the blog, I am happy to announce that there are still a limited number of free one-year memberships available.   These have been donated for a single purpose: to allow those who cannot afford the annual membership fee to participate on the blog for a year.   I will assign these memberships strictly on the honor system: if you truly cannot afford the membership fee, but very much want to have full access to the blog, then please contact me.   Do NOT reply here, on the blog, as a comment.   Send me a separate email, privately, at [email protected].   In your email, please provide me with the following information: Why you would like to take advantage of this offer.  I don't need or want a full account of your history or financial affairs, only an idea of why you are not able just now to purchase a membership. Your first and last name. Country of citizenship (we're required, as a non-profit, to ask) Your preferred personal email. Your [...]

As I announced a few weeks ago, I will be going on a tour to Rome and other sites to the south, including Pompeii, Heraculum, Bay of Naples, Amalfi Coast on April 14-24, 2020 (six months from now!).   If you haven't been to these places before, this would be a great opportunity!  And even if you have been before this would still be a great opportunity!  It is a very impressive itinerary.  Every informed and interesting person on the planet really should see these sites before shuffling off their mortal coil. The tour is being sponsored by Thalassa journeys, which does a fantastic job in every way: thoughtful itineraries, great accommodations, unusually helpful tour guides. I will be giving lectures on the tour, focusing on the relations of pagans and Christians in the early centuries of the Christian movement, as Christianity moved from being a hated and persecuted little sect to becoming the dominant religion of the empire, eventually the most powerful social, cultural, and, of course, religious movement in the history of Western civilization.  [...]

This is the second guest post by Judy Siker, who last week explained about her upbringing as a Christian in the south and then her move into the academic study of the Bible from a critical perspective.  If you recall, Judy was my student in the (very secular!) graduate program in New Testament/Early Christianity here at UNC, where she did both a Masters and PhD in the field, focusing, in her dissertation, on the socio-historical background to the Gospel of Matthew, in particular as that involved the relations of Jews and Christians in the author's community.   She had a rich and varied teaching career in a range of schools -- private liberal arts, Catholic university, and Baptist seminary, among them! In this follow up post Judy lays out her understanding of what the Bible is (among other things, a book that asks compelling questions about matters of faith) and is not (a book that gives us all the incontrovertible answers), partly in response to comments and questions she received.  She is willing once more to [...]

I am pleased and regret (at the same time) to say that the table for the blog dinner in Chicago for October 18 is now full.  I have a waiting list that I have started, and have notified everyone who contacted me (both those at the table and those on the waiting list.) But I’ll be doing others this coming year in a few other places!  Hopefully others can come to these.

On Friday,  October, 2019, at 7:00 pm, I will be hosting a Blog Dinner for blog members (members only, I'm afraid) in Chicago.  Well, kind-a.  I'll be in Oak Brook to give a paper the next day, so it would need to be near there.  The table is limited to eight.  I'm one of them.  That means that seven spots are available.  First come first served:  please do NOT response here on the blog, but send me a private email, at [email protected]. The occasion is  a bit  unusual for me.  There is a conservative evangelical conference focused on "apologetics" (called The "Defenders Conference") dealing with differences among the Gospels.  The other three speakers are themselves evangelical, two of them are scholars I know and have had interactions with before (Mike Licona and Craig Keener), the other I don't know (Rob Bowman), but he's apparently on expert on what he calls Christian "cults" (for example, Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses).   In any event, I'll be discussing why I think there are differences in the Gospels that cannot [...]