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Weekly Readers’ Mailbag: January 30, 2016

In this installment of the Weekly Readers’ Mailbag, I’ll address two questions, one about the Jewishness of Jesus the other about my personal (bad) experience with editors. If you have a question, either send it via a comment here or zap me an email. QUESTION: What is it in the NT portrayal of Jesus that tends to obscure the centrality of his Jewishness? RESPONSE: The person who asked this question mentioned the fact that it is only in fairly recent times, since the second half of the twentieth century, that scholars have emphasized that Jesus was thoroughly Jewish. Prior to that, Jesus’ Jewishness was commonly downplayed. So the question is, what about the New Testament led scholars away from recognizing how thoroughly Jewish he was? I have three things to say in response to this very good question. First, my sense is that in no small measure, the earlier scholars who did not see Jesus’ Jewishness were living and doing research in an environment that was itself anti-Jewish. Christianity, as we long know, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:02-04:00January 31st, 2016|Book Discussions, Canonical Gospels, Early Judaism, Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Do I Have the Expertise Needed for My Book?

QUESTION: You have criticized other scholars for writing on subjects outside their fields of expertise – Reza Aslan, for instance, for his book on the historical Jesus when he is a sociologist, not a historian of religion. Have you considered editing a work with experts in the various fields that speak to the eyewitness to tradition to textual pipeline? Would such a collaboration likely be any more informative to a general audience? RESPONSE: Ah, great question! I’m going to answer what I take to be the underlying issue: why am I not following my own advice, but am publishing a book (next month!) that involves expertise other than my own? (In answer to the specific question: no, I haven’t really thought about editing a volume of other experts on memory! I have so many projects of my own that I have to do that… I haven’t even considered it, I’m afraid. There’s simply not enough time in life!) As to what I take to be the underlying issue: My criticism of Aslan was [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:02-04:00January 28th, 2016|Book Discussions, Memory Studies, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Buying David Lambert’s Book at Discount

Dear Ehrman Blogging Crowd, I just received the following from David Lambert, hopefully of some interest to you! Here is what he says: A couple of comments on the Facebook page complained about the price of the book. I received a code from Oxford that would allow people to purchase the book for a bit less if they were interested. I checked, and it looks like they’re still honoring it. Do you think it might be possible to post that in some fashion in connection to my posts? The link for the book is: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/how-repentance-became-biblical-9780190212247?q=david%20lambert&lang=en&cc=us . The code that needs to be entered to receive the 30% discount is: AAFLYG6.

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:02-04:00January 28th, 2016|Public Forum|

Weekly Readers’ Mailbag: January 24, 2016

A day late, here is this (past) week’s Readers Mailbag. I will be dealing with two questions this time, one on why Mark includes Aramaic words in his accounts of Jesus’ sayings and the other on where someone might find English versions of the surviving Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. If you too have a question, simply ask it here as a comment, or send me an email, and I will add it to the list! QUESTION: Why is Mark sometimes quoting Jesus in Aramaic? I know, that Jesus cry on cross is possibly reference to the psalms, but why is Mark spicing his gospel with Aramaic much more than other gospel authors? Is it sign of a oral/written source used by Mark? RESPONSE: Ah, good question. It’s true that Mark on occasion does record some of the words of Jesus in Aramaic. For example, in chapter 5 Jesus is told that a young girl (daughter of Jairus) has died; he goes to her in her room, and taking her by the hand [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:02-04:00January 24th, 2016|Canonical Gospels, New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Am I Converting to Islam?

READER COMMENT: I received a message on Facebook a couple of weeks ago from a person who has been proselytizing to me about the Muslim faith. This has happened a few times with others on your FB page. I guess that's what they do. Anyway, the other day I asked him if he was on your blog. He responded with a yes. Then he said that we (the members) were going to get a surprise from you soon. I asked him how so, and he said that you would be reverting to the Muslim faith. Apparently, reverting is something like converting according to him. I asked him how he knew this information, and he said a friend of his (a friend that he only knows through FB) that is a neighbor of yours said you were very impressed with the Quran and that you haven't made it public about reverting, but you would be soon. It took me a couple of days to find out the name of this person who is supposedly your friend, [...]

Diane2025-09-10T13:07:14-04:00January 20th, 2016|Bart’s Biography, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Is Repentance a Biblical Idea? Interview with David Lambert

My colleague David Lambert, who teaches Hebrew Bible in my department, has recently published and interesting and important book with Oxford University Press, on the question of when the idea of “repentance” entered into the biblical tradition. His answer is quite novel and surprising. I have asked David to post some of his views on the blog. The following is an initial foray into that, by way of an interview that he has done. If you have questions or comments about the interview, please make them! David is on the blog now and will respond, either in replies or by following up with new posts. Here is the interview. - David Lambert is the author of How Repentance Became Biblical. *************************************************************************** Many people assume that repentance is and always has been a substantial part of the Bible, but that has not always been the case. In the following interview between Luke Drake, a doctoral student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and David Lambert, an assistant professor of Religious Studies at [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:02-04:00January 19th, 2016|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

The Rise of Apocalypticism

Now, with all the background out of the way, I am able to explain where the apocalyptic worldview came from. I am maintaining that it emerged out of the classical view of the Hebrew prophets, as historical circumstances forced thinkers in Israel to re-evaluate what the prophets had said. Here is the simple version of the story, as I lay it out in my textbook on the Bible ********************************************************************** The Prophetic Perspective We have seen that the classical prophets of the Hebrew Bible differed from one another in a number of ways, in the historical contexts that they addressed, in their manner of addressing them, and in the specifics of their messages. But there are certain common features that tie all the prophets together, especially with respect to their understanding of God, his reaction to Israel’s failure to do his will, and the coming disasters that will occur as a result. If you were to ask a prophet like Amos, Isaiah, or Jeremiah why it is the people of God suffer, they would have a [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:01-04:00January 18th, 2016|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

Weekly Readers’ Mailbag: January 16, 2016

It is time for the weekly mailbag. This week there are only two questions, but the first has two parts: why (many) Christians are so pro-Israel and how can they be pro-Jewish and still worship Jesus. The second question involves how we know which letters of Paul were actually written by him. If you would like me to address any question you have, just add a comment here or at any other time on the blog, or send me an email ********************************************************************** QUESTION: Why are Christians so Pro Israel? Seems like to me if they agree with Judaism they couldn't be a Christian. Because of the first commandment. RESPONSE: I’ll answer the second part of the question first. What the reader is saying (I think) is that since the first commandment is “You shall have no other gods before me,” then Christians cannot be pro-Jewish because they also worship Jesus – therefore two gods. I have two responses to that. The first is that the commandment is *not* that: “You must believe that I [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:01-04:00January 16th, 2016|Forgery in Antiquity, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Are the Prophecies Being Fulfilled?

The Christians knew growing up had a very different understanding of “prophecy” in the Bible from the view adopted by professional biblical scholars. (I have been thinking about this because of my posts on Amos.) My sense is that most evangelical and fundamentalist Christians (certainly the latter) continue to have this non-academic view. It is that the prophets of the Bible – Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Amos, Zechariah, and so on (there are seventeen prophets in the English Bible) – were principally interested in what was going to be happening in our day. At the time when I became familiar with this view, that meant that prophets were interested in what would happen in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, of course, it would mean that they were principally interested in what would happen in the 2010s. That in itself should give us pause. Do you mean they were *not* mainly interested in the 1970s and 80s? The same can be said, obviously – far more so! – for Christian understandings of the book of Revelation, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:01-04:00January 13th, 2016|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Amos as a Representative Prophet

I have been discussing the book of Amos, possibly the oldest of the “classical” prophets of the Hebrew Bible, parts of which were probably written in the 8th century, making it, arguably, the oldest book of the Bible. I have wanted to discuss Amos a bit because his views became the more or less standard perspective of the prophets, and many centuries later it was out of such views that Jewish apocalypticism emerged, the view held by many Jews in the days of Jesus, including, I have argued, Jesus himself. And so, in one sense, to understand apocalypticism, you have to know where it came from. Here is the final section on Amos in my textbook The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction. Especially important for what I want to say about apocalypticism is the overview I provide at the end. ****************************************************************** The Judean Redaction of Amos It is impossible, at the end of the day, to know whether Amos himself wrote down these prophecies that bear his name, or if they were penned [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:01-04:00January 12th, 2016|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

The Prophet Amos

In my previous post I started to give some of the background to the rise of Jewish apocalypticism by talking about the views of the classical Hebrew prophets, focusing, by way of illustration, on arguably the earliest, Amos. Here I continue that discussion: ************************************************************* The Message of Amos The book of Amos begins by addressing nations outside of Israel, indicating that because of their multiple sins, God would enter into judgment with them (chs. 1-2). This is an important beginning: it shows that God is not simply the God of Judah and Israel, he is the God of all nations, and holds all people accountable for their actions. And it shows that national suffering comes not only when one nation mistreats another, but also when God intervenes and rains his judgment down upon them. And so Amos starts by attacking the capital of Syria, Damascus: Thus says the LORD: For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment; because they have threshed Gilead with threshing sledges of iron. So [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:01-04:00January 12th, 2016|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

Weekly Readers’ Mailbag: January 8, 2016

It is the Weekly Readers’ Mailbag time. Today I take on three very interesting and unusually diverse questions: where we got chapters and verses from in the New Testament; how we know that earliest Christians (before Paul) understood Jesus’ death to be a sacrifice for sins; and whether I get upset that my work is used by Muslims in order to discount Christianity. These are hot topics! QUESTION: When did scribes start dividing NT manuscripts into chapters and verses? As I understand it, early manuscripts did not even have punctuation marks. A related question is: did early Christians always read these texts/books, either by themselves or to a congregation, from beginning to end in one sitting? I imagine it would be very difficult to find specific passages without chapters and verses. RESPONSE: Ah, this is an important question, and one many people have never raised; moreover, those who have raised it often have no way of knowing how to answer it. As to chapters and verses, here is what I have to say on [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:46-04:00January 8th, 2016|New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Heaven and Hell, Part Two

In my previous post I explained how Jewish thinkers began to develop the idea of an afterlife when they devised the idea of a future resurrection of the dead, an apocalyptic event that explained how God would ultimately make right all that was wrong, rewarding those who had sided with him but punishing those who sided with evil. But how did that idea of a future *bodily* resurrection morph into the Christian teachings of heaven and hell? I try to explain that here in this post, once again as taken from my book Jesus Interrupted. The first two paragraphs are repeated from yesterday’s post, to provide a better context for what I say here. **************************************************************************** Thus, eternal life, for Jesus, Paul, and the earliest Christians, was a life lived in the body, not above in heaven, but down here, where we are now. Paul emphasizes this point strenuously in the book of 1 Corinthians. The fact that Jesus’ body was raised from the dead shows what the future resurrection would involve. It would involve bodies [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:46-04:00January 6th, 2016|Afterlife, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Heaven and Hell, Part One

As I have been discussing the topic of resurrection in early Christianity, a number of readers have asked about a related issue, namely, where the Christian teaching of heaven and hell came from. For most Christians, the afterlife seems to be the ongoing existence of the soul. But for the earliest Christians, the afterlife involved the resurrection precisely of the *body*. How did that change, and why? I discussed this issue some years back in my book Jesus Interrupted, and what I say about it there seems to be directly on target for what these readers have asked. And so I include it here. This will take two posts, the first one (today) to explain why “resurrection” came to be believed by Jews and eventually by Christians and the next post to explain how that belief in resurrection came to be transformed into the later idea of heaven and hell that may people today continue to subscribe to. ********************************************************************* Heaven and Hell In some parts of Christendom today, especially the parts that I was [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:46-04:00January 5th, 2016|Afterlife, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

The Resurrection in Paul

I have been discussing an apocalyptic understanding of Jesus’ resurrection. For the earliest followers of Jesus, coming to think that Jesus was raised from the dead provided both a confirmation and an elaboration of their understanding of the end times. Prior to Jesus’ death they had come to think that they were living at the end of the age and that God was soon to bring history to a climactic end through a cataclysmic act of judgment; this final event in history would involve a resurrection of all those who had died to face judgment. When these disciples came to think that Jesus himself had been raised, they naturally concluded that the resurrection had begun. Jesus was the first to rise; he had been exalted to heaven; he himself was to return to earth as the powerful Son of Man to raise all people from the dead. All this would happen very soon. As it turns out there were other apocalyptic lessons that could be drawn from Jesus’ resurrection. One of the most interesting – [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:46-04:00January 3rd, 2016|Afterlife, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum|

Readers’ Weekly Mailbag: January 2, 2016

It is weekly Readers’ Mailbag time again. If you have a question you would like me to address in a future post, just comment here, or send me a private email. Today there are three questions, on three very different topics: the goddess Sophia, the rise of non-apocalyptic Christianity, and the evidence for John the Baptist. ****************************************************************** QUESTION: In your debate with Justin Bass, you mention the divinity of Sophia. I googled “Sophia” and can’t quite figure this out. Could you educate us about Sophia? RESPONSE: Ah, this will be tough to do in a short answer! Sophia” is the Greek word for “wisdom” (we get a number of English words from it, for example “sophisticated” and “sophistry”). In ancient religious circles, both pagan and Jewish, “Sophia” came to be thought of as not simply a divine attribute (God is “wise”) but as a kind of divine emanation (“wisdom” actually “comes from” or “derives from” God) and then as an actual divine hypostasis. The term “hypostasis” does not have an easy English equivalent. It refers [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:46-04:00January 2nd, 2016|Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Blog Year in Review 2015

The year is now fading away (or blasting out, depending on your perspective), and I want to take a few minutes to reflect on how the Blog has been doing since last year at this time. We started this venture in April 2012, so by one way of calculating, 2015 was our fourth year of operation. By most standards and criteria it was our most successful year yet, possibly by a large margin. When I started the blog one of my main concerns was that I would run out of things to talk about in a year or so. It hasn’t happened yet. I do find on occasion that I write up a post and it occurs to me, “Hey, haven’t I written on this already?” When that happens, I’ll check (it’s easy to search the blog for past posts, btw: just click on the magnifying glass in the upper right hand of your screen for the search function, and go from there) and sometimes I’m right! If the two posts are sufficiently different, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:46-04:00December 31st, 2015|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Jesus’ Resurrection as an Apocalyptic Event

In my previous post I started to discuss the eschatological implications drawn by Jesus’ followers once they became convinced that he had been raised from the dead. I pointed out that the very fact that they interpreted their visions of him as evidence of “resurrection” shows that they must have been apocalyptic Jews prior to his death (as I have argued on other grounds ad nauseum on the blog!). And I also suggested two of the key conclusions they drew with respect to eschatology (their understanding of what would happen at the end): they came to conclude that Jesus himself was the Son of Man that he had been proclaiming as the future judge of the earth, and they came to believe that they were living at the very end of time. In this post I am not going to talk about Jesus as the Son of Man – that will require several posts that I will take up soon. But I do want to talk about this business of Christians thinking that they were [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:46-04:00December 30th, 2015|Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Jesus’ Return to Life as a Resurrection

So far I have talked about the significance of the belief in Jesus’ resurrection for both Christology (the understanding of who Jesus was) and soteriology (the understanding of how salvation works). It also was significant for eschatology (the understanding of what would happen at the end of time). Christologically, the resurrection proved that Jesus really was the favored one of God, appearances notwithstanding. It may have *seemed* like the crucifixion would show that Jesus was not God’s son, and certainly not the messiah; but the resurrection (for those who came to believe in it) showed that in fact he was. He was the son of God in an even more exalted sense than anyone had thought – he actually had been made into a divine being. So too he was the messiah in a more exalted sense than had been expected – he was not a mere human king but the divine King of all. Soteriologically, the resurrection showed that the death of Jesus had not been a mere miscarriage of justice or the unfortunate [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:46-04:00December 29th, 2015|Afterlife, Early Judaism, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

The Death of the Messiah for Salvation

In a previous post I argued that Christians invented the idea of a suffering messiah. Because Jesus was (for them) the messiah, and because he suffered, therefore the messiah *had* to suffer. That was clear and straightforward for the Christians. They backed up their newly devised theology by appealing to Scripture, finding passages of the Bible where a righteous person suffered but was then vindicated by God, passages such as Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, Psalm 69 and so on. They reinterpreted these passages (where the messiah is never mentioned) in a messianic way, and they were massively successful in their reinterpretations. Many Christians today cannot read these passages without thinking (knowing!) that they refer to Jesus, the suffering messiah. But why would the messiah have to suffer? Yes, for Christians, it was because it was “predicted.” But why would God predict it? That is, why would he want his messiah to suffer? This is where Christians came up with yet another innovation, the idea that the death of the messiah brought about the salvation of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:45-04:00December 28th, 2015|Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

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