Public Forum Archives - Page 54 of 88 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

Does the Book of Acts Underplay the Significance of Jesus’ Death?

One of the things that I have found most interesting about doing the blog over these, lo, past five and a half years is that when I decide to write a post on something, I often realize that I need to provide some background that involves something else that, on the surface, may seem unrelated, but that is crucial for understanding the point I want to make. Which leads me to a different topic and then to another, and so on. I suppose that’s why I still haven’t run out of things to say (yet); I *thought* I’d have nothing to write about after six months. But it hasn’t happened yet. I’ve been talking about the sects within Judaism because I wanted to make a simple point about how widespread the views of “resurrection” were at the time of Jesus and Paul. This morning it occurred to me that it would be helpful to illustrate the conflict between Sadducees and Pharisees over the issue, as exemplified in a famous passage in Acts 22 where the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:40-04:00September 22nd, 2017|Acts of the Apostles, Early Christian Doctrine, Public Forum|

Two Other Ancient Jewish Sects

In my previous post I talked about two of the known Jewish sects from the days of Jesus in Palestine. The idea that there are specifically four sects comes to us from the late-first-century Jewish historian Josephus, whose many volumes of writings (e.g., on the Jewish War and on Jewish Antiquities – the latter a history of the Jewish people from biblical times up to his own day) are our principal source of information about Judaism at the time. In addition to the Pharisees and Sadducees, Josephus mentions the “Essenes” and a “Fourth Philosophy.” Here is a summary of what these groups stood for, again taken from my introductory textbook on the New Testament. (The reason I’m giving this information: it is the background to my discussion of the afterlife in Judaism at the time of Jesus.) ************************************************************** Essenes The Essenes are the one Jewish sect not mentioned in the New Testament. Ironically, they are also the group about which we are best informed. This is because the famous Dead Sea Scrolls were evidently [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:40-04:00September 20th, 2017|Early Judaism, Public Forum|

Ancient Jewish Sects: Pharisees and Sadducees

I was about to launch into a discussion of the different views of the afterlife among various Jewish sects (those that held to the idea of the resurrection and those that apparently did not), but then realized that first I need to give some information about what the groups themselves were all about. So I'll devote two posts to the question, lifting the discussion from my textbook The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. ****************************************************** THE FORMATION OF JEWISH SECTS It was during the rule of the Hasmoneans, and evidently in large measure in reaction to it, that various Jewish sects emerged. As we have seen, the Jewish historian Josephus mentions four of these groups; the New Testament refers to three. In one way or another, all of them play a significant role in our understanding of the life of the historical Jesus. I should emphasize at the outset that most Jews in Palestine did not belong to any of these groups. We know this much from Josephus, who indicates that [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:40-04:00September 19th, 2017|Early Judaism, Public Forum|

Reviewing the Afterlife

I want to return now to the main thread that I left off a couple of months ago about developing views of the afterlife in ancient Judaism and then in early Christianity. I didn’t actually leave that thread – I simply moved deeper into a specific aspect of it. If you’ll recall, the broader thread is simply about where the modern notions of heaven and hell came from; the specific aspect I’ve been covering involved the “otherworldly journeys” that you find in pagan, Jewish, and Christian traditions. These journeys are of particular interest to me, since I am planning to write a scholarly discussion about them. And while I was thinking through how I wanted to frame my study, I decided to devote a number of posts to the issue. But enough of that! I’m ready to return to the main thread. For that thread, here’s the deal. In our own world ... To read the rest of this post you need to belong to the blog. It won't cost much to join, but it [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:40-04:00September 18th, 2017|Afterlife, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

How Changing My Views Affected My Relationships
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How Changing My Views Affected My Relationships

Bart’s Biography, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations

How Changing My Views Affected My Relationships

I’ve decided to answer a personal question in this week’s Readers’ Mailbag, about how my relationships with others changed as I went from being a very conservative evangelical Christian to becoming an agnostic/atheist. QUESTION Would you be willing to elaborate on how your changing views affected your relationships with friends and family and how people reacted to your changing perspective? Thanks so much! RESPONSE As it turns out, in my case, the biggest “problem” for my relationships with family and friends was not so much when I became an agnostic, over twenty years ago now, but when I left the evangelical beliefs I had held as a young adult to become a “liberal” Christian with critical views of the Bible, the historical Jesus, and the development of early Christian theology. For some years, from the time I had become a “born-again” Christian when I was fifteen up through the years I was at Moody Bible Institute and then Wheaton College, and even my first year in a Masters of Divinity program, I had been a [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:40-04:00September 17th, 2017|Bart’s Biography, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

My Favorite Anecdote about Jesus and the Afterlife: Teeth Will Be Provided!

I was thinking (I'm always thinking) about Jesus and the afterlife, and suddenly my favorite rather humorous anecdote occurred, which involves a real moment in (relatively) modern scholarship. I tried to find where I had written about it in one of my books: I was sure I *had* done so, but I couldn't find anyplace where I had. If I haven't, I may include it in the next one. But I did find that I made a post of it on the blog four years ago. Here it is! **************************************************************** I think it’s time for a break from the hard-hitting discussions for something a bit different and humorous. And so I have an anecdote to tell about a passage that I quoted in one of my earlier posts from Matthew, where Jesus says: “Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the heirs of the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:39-04:00September 15th, 2017|Christian Apocrypha, Historical Jesus, New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum|

My Major Anxiety for my Book. Are People Interested in the Afterlife?

As an author (such as me, for example) thinks ahead to the next book, he has a number of worries, concerns, and anxieties that crop up. This is all part of the process – deep and cutting anxiety is what ends up inspiring quality. Otherwise, we would just dash off books without a care in the world, and they would be completely mediocre, not-well thought out, uninteresting, not grappling with the really complex issues in ways that are clear and easy to understand. Wait a second. That’s how most books are! Seriously, one has to grapple with innumerable problems, issues, and concerns from virtually the beginning of a book project. Some of these concerns are small, but at the outset they tend to be large, big-scale. Then, the more one works on a book, the smaller (and more specific) the issues get. These small ones are of huge importance, because it is getting the small things right that makes an OK book good, a good book really good, and a really good book fantastic. I’m [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:39-04:00September 12th, 2017|Afterlife, Book Discussions, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Too Much Money and the Afterlife

In a previous post I talked about the very funny satirical dialogue of the second-century pagan Lucian of Samosata, “Voyage to the Underworld” in which an unbelievably wealthy tyrant became incredibly miserable after death, because he realized that all his power, influence, and massive wealth had been stripped from him, and would be, for all eternity, whereas a poor cobbler who had lived a miserably impoverished existence was rather pleased that he no longer would starve and freeze nearly to death ever again. The point of the dialogue is pretty obvious. If you are deeply attached to the material things of this life, you are courting your own disaster. That’s not what you should be living for. At about the same time as Lucian was writing an anonymous Christian author produced a book known as the Acts of Thomas. This is the first legendary account we have of the apostle Thomas, famous for (allegedly) being the first missionary to take the gospel to India. Unlike the work of Lucian, the account is not meant to [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:39-04:00September 11th, 2017|Christian Apocrypha, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, Public Forum|

What Did the Angels Tell the Shepherds? It Depends. Mailbag Sept. 10, 2017

I will be dealing with an interesting question in this week’ Readers’ Mailbag, having to do with the translation of the New Testament from Greek into English. It involves a problem with a familiar verse (recited every Christmas!) that has a textual problem: different manuscripts have different readings – involving a single letter! – that affect the translation. QUESTION: A lot of different hymns and liturgies and suchlike make reference to or paraphrase the Gloria, which in turn is based on Luke 2:14. I’d always heard (various permutations of) two different versions: “Glory to God in the highest and on Earth peace to men of good will” and “Glory to God in the highest and on Earth peace, goodwill to men”. That is, of course, quite a significant difference in meaning. The Latin is “Gloria in excelsis Deo et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis”, which I understand is is unambiguously “…men of good will”. Unfortunately, I don’t read a word of Greek; the text of the Gloria I found online was Δόξα ἐν [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:23-04:00September 10th, 2017|Canonical Gospels, New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

A Satirical Lesson about the Afterlife

One of the things I’m planning to emphasize in my scholarly book on voyages to the afterlife, is that the overarching point of most of these narratives is not only (or even primarily) to reveal what will actually happen to people after they die, but to encourage them to live in certain ways now, while they can. This is true not only for the Christian accounts but for pagan ones as well. One of the most hilarious authors from Greco-Roman antiquity is Lucian of Samosata, a second-century CE author who wrote numerous satires that we still have, poking fun at philosophers, religious leaders, tyrants, and most anyone who he thought led a ridiculous life or had ridiculous views. A number of his works portray fictitious journeys to the realms of the dead. One of them is often simply titled “Voyage to the Underworld.” It is about the stark contrast between a fabulously wealthy tyrant named Megapenthes and a dirt-poor cobbler named Mycillus. The contrast is not so much between their ultimate fates – they both, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:23-04:00September 7th, 2017|Afterlife, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, Public Forum|

Looking at Hell

I have been talking about different views of what the afterlife entails. In the broadest terms, some ancient people believed that everyone at death had the same fate: they lived on, not in their body but in their soul, in some kind of netherworld where nothing much ever happened. It was a dreadfully banal and boring existence, that went on forever, the same for everyone. Some ancient authors who had that view described visits to the underworld by the living, where they encounter the souls of the dead, who tell them how awful it is – not just for sinners but for everyone. The point of these otherworldly journeys is crystal clear: you should avoid death for as long as you can, since once it happens, you have a hopelessly insipid future ahead of you, which will stretch for all eternity. Stay alive as long as you can! This is one of the main points of the otherworldly of Odysseus, in Homer’s Odyssey. And it stands very much at odds with the view set forth [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:23-04:00September 5th, 2017|Afterlife, Christian Apocrypha, Public Forum|

Problems with Some Bible Translations, including the King James: A Blast from the Past

In my Introduction to the New Testament undergraduate class this semester, I have told the students that they can use most any Bible translation they want, but I prefer the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), and I do *not* want them using either a paraphrase or the King James. Some of them want to know why, and so I explain to them. Here is a post on the topic from almost exactly five years ago. (Note: I'm talking about undergraduates; my graduate students read the NT in Greek) (and also note: despite what I say about the NIV I certainly allow students to use it in class, since it is the most popular translation on college campuses today) ****************************** I have indicated that my preferred translation is the NRSV. Everyone, of course, has their favorite. My judgment is that among main-line, serious biblical scholars, the NRSV is far and away the preferred translation. But it is not so among general readers. I believe the King James Bible (the KJV) (or its slight revision: [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:22-04:00September 4th, 2017|History of Biblical Scholarship, New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum|

Speaking in Tongues and Virgin Births: Readers’ Mailbag September 3, 2017

I will deal with two questions in this week’s Readers’ Mailbag. The first has to do with why some conservative Christian theologians insist that the “gifts of the Spirit” (such as speaking in tongues and doing miracles) are no longer available to believers today (doesn’t the Bible indicate that they are?), and the second about whether the Gospel of Matthew mistranslates or misunderstands the passage of Scripture that allegedly indicated that the messiah would be born of a woman who was still a virgin. I need to unpack the first question before giving it, since it may not make sense on first reading. The questioner is asking about the scene in the book of Acts, chapter 2, where, on the day of Pentecost, the Spirit comes upon the apostles allowing them to speak in foreign tongues. Peter explains to the crowds that this is a fulfillment of what had been prophesied in Scripture. Today conservative theologians are split on the question of whether the Spirit still empowers believers to speak in tongues and do other [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:23-04:00September 3rd, 2017|Bart’s Biography, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Life in Hades

In my previous post I discussed Odysseus’s encounter with his mother in Hades, where we learn that the “spirits,” “shades,” “ghosts,” “souls” (they are called a number of things) there do not have any physical characteristics – no flesh or bones, even though they can be seen and can drink blood and are afraid of swords. I think, at the end of the day, this is not a coherent picture. If they can drink blood but don’t have bodies, where does the blood go? And if they can’t be touched, how can they hold something (a container from which the blood to be drunk, e.g.), and why would they be afraid of a sword (if you can’t be hugged, why can you be cut or hacked). And if they don’t actually have eyes, how can they see? Or if they don’t have tongues and vocal chords, how can they talk? The point is probably not, however, to paint a completely coherent picture – or if it is the point, Homer has failed terribly. Still, the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:22-04:00September 1st, 2017|Afterlife, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

The Body and Soul in Hades

When Odysseus goes to the underworld, he meets with a number of people, but most interesting are his encounter with his own mother (who died after he had set sail, years before, with the Greek armies heading to Troy) and the great Greek hero Achilles, the greatest of the mighty warriors in the war. The encounters are interesting because they show us how the realm of the dead was being imagined. There is real pathos in both episodes. In this post I’ll talk about the first. After Odysseus has arrived in Hades and has made the prescribed sacrifices (see the former post), the “shade” of his mother comes to him beside the pit filled with the blood of the sacrificial animals. Several immediate points to make. For one thing, it may seem weird that of all the people who are dead (today, of course, we think of many billions of people!), his mother just happens to come up. How did she know he was there? We aren’t told. We are told, though, that he recognizes [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:22-04:00August 30th, 2017|Afterlife, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, Public Forum|

The First Recorded Visit to the Realm of the Dead (in Western literature)

The first account we have of a living human making a trip to the realm of the dead in Western literature is in the Odyssey of Homer. The Odyssey is about the ten-year attempt of the hero, Odysseus, to return home to Ithaca after the (also ten-year) Trojan war. Many adventures and mishaps meet him en route. At about the half-way point of the narrative, in book ten, he is on the island of Aeaea where he has encountered the witch-sorceress Circe. At the end of his stay there he pleads with her that he desperately wants to get home. She instructs him that he must first travel down to the “House of the Dead” and to the “awesome one Persephone” (i.e., the goddess who rules the underworld, with her husband Hades). There he needs to consult with the ghost of Tiresias, a famous blind prophet, who has retained all his wits and prophetic powers in Hades. This is an important point: the other dead (in other words, everyone else who has ever lived) do [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:22-04:00August 29th, 2017|Afterlife, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, Public Forum|

My Graduate Level New Testament Course

Classes have started again and we are bursting into the term with vim and vigor! For my graduate course this term I am teaching my "Problems and Methods in New Testament Studies" seminar (I offer this ever two or three years). This is a kind of "Introduction" to the field of New Testament studies geared not for undergraduates but for graduates, all of whom have undergraduate degrees already and who (at least this semester) have already done some work in New Testament.. Well, the course is self-explanatory from the syllabus, which I attach here for your amusement. It can give you an idea of how one might *start* on this kind of thing at the graduate level. *************************************************************************** Religion 707: Problems and Methods in the Study of the New Testament University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Fall 2017 Instructor: Bart D. Ehrman This course will explore some of the classical problems addressed by the discipline of "New Testament Introduction." Some of these problems are as old as the discipline, many are hold-overs [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:22-04:00August 28th, 2017|Public Forum, Teaching Christianity|

Journeys to Heaven and Hell: A Sketch of My Project

As I indicated in my previous post, I’ve decided to write a scholarly book on tours of heaven and hell in ancient Christian texts. I am tentatively calling the book “Observing the Dead: Otherworldly Journeys in the Early Christian Tradition.” I decided last week to come up with a 1000 word sketch of what I am thinking so far, about what the book would be and why it is needed. This is just a draft for my own thinking, written for scholars more than for layfolk. But it’s pretty clear and understandable I think, and can indicate how/what I’m thinking in the broadest terms at this point. Tell me what you think! ******************************************************* My project entails an exploration of early Christian texts that narrate voyages to the realms of heaven and hell, depicting, often in graphic detail, the ecstasies of the blessed and the torments of the damned. My overarching goal will be to elucidate not only various conceptions of the mysteries of the beyond, but even more to explore how such afterlife journeys embody [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:22-04:00August 27th, 2017|Afterlife, Book Discussions, Public Forum|

Could Moses Write Hebrew & What Language Could Moses Speak

Let's find out a bit more about Moses. As you may have noticed, on a number of occasions I get asked questions that I simply can’t answer. I received one such question this week, about the history of the Hebrew language. Here is how the questioner phrased it: What is our earliest evidence for Hebrew as a written language? I’ve been to apologetic seminars where they say it’s long been said by atheists that the Hebrew Bible can’t be trusted because the Hebrews didn’t have a written language until well after the stories in the OT would’ve taken place. The evidence that the Hebrews had a written language in close proximity to the Biblical stories is based on pottery evidence and things of that nature. I’m sure these are topics you are very familiar with and I’d appreciate your take. It’s actually amazing how many topics I’m not familiar with at all! So, not knowing the answer, I asked a colleague of mine who is an expert in Hebrew philology, Joseph Lam (he teaches courses [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:22-04:00August 25th, 2017|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

My New Scholarly Project

I have a lot more to say about the development of the views of the afterlife in ancient Jewish and Christian thinking – specifically, about how we got from an understanding that there would be a resurrection of the body (the view I’ve been discussing) to the idea that when a person dies, their soul (not their body) goes to heaven or hell -- the view most (not the *vast* majority, of course) people have today. It’s a good thing I have a lot more to say about it, since, well, that’s what my next book is about! But I want to introduce at this point a thread-within-the-thread, about a related topic (involving the afterlife and my larger understanding of it) that I am more fervently passionate about at just this time. And to explain just why I’m passionate about it, I need to take a brief detour into my personal life. I think that a good while back (last year at this time? I don’t remember) I talked a bit on the blog about [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:22-04:00August 24th, 2017|Afterlife, Book Discussions, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

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