I have made an executive decision involving rules for comments on the blog.  I have received complaints from blog users about some of the comments.  I think we all (the thousands of us!) are doing well when it comes to being polite and reasonably generous with one another, unlike a lot of other sites.   But some of the comments are distracting, either because there are so many of them from one person or because they are excessively long. The comment section of the blog was never intended to be a forum for people to develop at great length their personal views about something – that is, it was never to be a blog for other people who have always wanted their own blog.  It was meant to be a place where people could interact with fair concision both with me directly and with one another, where people could be open to new ideas and thought, where people could express themselves succinctly and to the point and give and gain new ideas. I don’t want [...]

Many apologies to all for the hiatus on the blog.  I wish I had a sob-story to tell to justify it (well, not really), but as I indicated yesterday, it was rather a bit of good fortune with a downside.  Every year for nineteen years now my wife Sarah and I have come to the beach with our friend Dale Martin, the New Testament scholar who introduced us just six years before that (he taught at the time at Duke; he moved on to Yale; he just retired this past year). We are very boring at the beach.  We rent the same house (right on the beach; we often see dolphins from the deck).  We all bring our books and work all day (I get up at 6:30 and have at it!), then take a five mile walk on the beach; come home to do drinks and dinner; go to bed, and repeat every day for two weeks. For us it's fantastic.  We all get tons done.  No distractions.  No departmental or student obligations or [...]

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, let me know your situation (why you would like to take advantage of this offer) and provide me with the following information: 1)      Your first and last name. 2)      Your preferred personal email. 3)      Your preferred user name (no spaces). 4)      Your preferred password (should be 8 or more characters, no spaces).   The donors will remain anonymous, but here let me publicly extend my heartfelt [...]

I will be in Houston next week to give a couple of lectures at Rice University, and have discovered that I'll be free for lunch on Thursday April 19.   Is anyone interested in joining me?  The invitation is open to all blog members.  All you would need to do is show up, hang out with us, and pay for your meal.  I can accommodate anywhere from two to six blogging souls.  If you're interested, please zap me an email at [email protected]

Today marks the sixth-year anniversary of the blog.  It’s hard to believe, but, well, it’s been six years today.  Time to look back and see how we’re doing and look forward to figure out what we can do better. So, first, to start in terms of raw numbers.   In terms of posts, I’ve added them up and it turns out I have made 275 over the past year.   That’s about 5.3 per week – so basically five with some extras thrown in now and then.  That’s the pace that feels about right to me.  It gives people a lot of bang for their buck, but it gives me a couple of days a week when I can luxuriate in knowing I don’t need to work on the blog.  Good all around. Total numbers since starting six years ago: 1739 blog posts.  That’s 5.6+ per week, so I’ve slowed down a bit, but I don’t plan on slowing down any more.   Some of those 1739 are repeats: over the past couple of years I’ve started reposting [...]

I will be giving a lecture at Rice University in Houston on Thursday April 19.  I had originally thought that it was only for scholars connected with an antiquity seminar there, but I see now that it is open to the public.   Here is the description I gave them (aimed obviously at the academics), if anyone is in the area and wants to come: 4/19/18             Bart Ehrman         James A. Gray Distinguished Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Literary Deceit in Its Various (Dis)Guises 4:00 pm, Humanities 119 Open to the Public, Registration Required Many scholars of early Christianity express qualms about calling a forgery a forgery – an understandable reluctance when dealing with a book in canonical scripture. An alternative such as “pseudepigraphon” may seem better – more neutral and wissenschaftlich – but it has the drawback of mystification. Who would know it refers to a book written by someone intentionally but falsely claiming to be a famous person? Or that, even in the ancient world, this was considered [...]