Public Forum Archives - Page 77 of 88 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

Jesus as the Son of God in Mark

I am set now to return to my thread on the changes in our surviving manuscripts of the New Testament that were made in order to make the text more amenable to the theological agenda of orthodox scribes and to help prevent their use by Christians who had alternative understandings of who Christ was. I have been arguing, in that vein, that the voice at Jesus’ baptism in Luke’s Gospel originally said “You are my son, today I have begotten you” (as in some manuscripts) but that it was changed because scribes were afraid that the text could be too easily read to mean that it was at this point that God had adopted Jesus to be his son. These scribes believed that Christ had *always* been the son of God, and so God could not say that he “made” him the son on the day of his baptism. Their change was remarkably successful: the vast majority of manuscripts have their altered text, in which the voice says (as it says also in Mark’s version): [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:12-04:00October 30th, 2015|Canonical Gospels, Public Forum|

Reader’s Mailbag on Virgin Birth: 10/29/15

Many thanks to everyone who responded to my queries about how we could make the Blog better. I received some very good ideas, and one in particular that I want to implement, starting with this post. That involves a weekly Reader’s Mailbag. I get a lot of questions each week, and usually can only devote an occasional post to them. Otherwise, all I can do is give a one-sentence or so response in my Comments. But the idea that several people suggested was: why not have a feature where, in a short directed response, I address interesting questions people raise? I could do this every week. The comments would not be as long as a full post, let alone a thread, but much fuller than I can make in my Comments section. I think it’s a great idea. So I’m gonna try it. My idea is that the questions should be short and to the point. They can be on any topic involving the New Testament, the history of early Christainity, or any related [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:12-04:00October 29th, 2015|Acts of the Apostles, Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

An Irritating Criticism: My View of Paul’s View of Christ

QUESTION: Below is one Christian's comment about your position on Galatians 4:14. How would you respond to this criticism: "The question to ask of this is why make Galatians 4:14, with an interpretation not readily accepted by even non-Christian scholars, the lynchpin? What was it about this verse that made it the focal point, especially when Paul isn't really making a Christological argument there? Why not statements like Philippians 2 which is quoted? Note also that Philippians ends with every knee bowing and every tongue confessing that Jesus is Lord. That was reserved for YHWH alone. It also has Jesus being in the form of God, and that's a pretty clear statement about where Jesus ranks." RESPONSE: I have to say, this kind of criticism REALLY gets under my skin. You would think I’d have thicker skin by now. Just to unpack what is going on here a bit. The (unnamed) critic is objecting to my view that the apostle Paul understood Christ, before coming into the world, to have been the great angel [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:12-04:00October 28th, 2015|Bart's Critics, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum|

Taking the Pulse of the Blog

The blog has now been in existence three and a half years now, and as I like to do a couple of times a year, I would like to take its pulse, to see if it is still alive and well among us, and to find out what, if anything, we can do to make it better. I don’t think it is sick and in desperate need of hospitalization; in fact, from where I sit, it seems to be doing very well (see below). But I want to know what *you* think, since you’re the ones who matter here. I have some specific questions, set out in what follows. Since we started in April 2012, I have posted – every week, 52 weeks of the year – five or six times a week. That’s a lot, but I still feel that I’m going strong and have lots to say (on that, see the specific questions). I have to admit, over the past six months I have tended to move more toward five times a week [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:12-04:00October 25th, 2015|Public Forum|

My Big Day Appeal

I am taking executive privilege today with this posting. It is a big day, not for the blog, but for me personally. To my shock and amazement, today is my 60th birthday. 60 years. How did this happen??? I’m glad it did, but still, I’m just askin’. So I want to use the occasion to make a shameless appeal. I had a big birthday bash two nights ago, with friends and family flying in from such far-flung places as California and New Hampshire. It was a terrific time, a friend from high school, friends from graduate school, friends I know professionally, friends who once-upon-a-time were my students, friends from my department, my daughter and son and son-in-law, my granddaughters. It was an amazing time. I made one request of everyone (in addition to the request to come to a party to enjoy good food, very good drink, and fantastic company): No presents! A couple of people stretched the rule a bit, and gave me a present. They wrote a check for the Bart Ehrman Foundation [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:30:56-04:00October 5th, 2015|Public Forum|

Do I Have a Grudge Against Dr. Bruce Metzger?

QUESTION: A more personal question: did you have a grudge against Dr. Bruce Metzger? I have always seen conservative textual critics and scholars pit you against Dr. Metzger's views. RESPONSE: When I first read this question I was very surprised indeed. A grudge against Bruce Metzger??? Metzger, as many readers of this blog know, was my teacher and mentor, and I never had anything but the most profound and utmost respect for him, from the moment I first had the privilege of meeting him until the time of his death – and still today. Dr. Bruce Metzger - The Greatest New Testament Scholar in North America I don’t think there’s anyone in the known universe who would disagree that Bruce Metzger was the greatest NT textual scholar ever to come out of North America. I first heard about him when I was an undergraduate at Wheaton College. I was taking Greek there and began to be interested in pursuing the study of Greek manuscripts. I knew that Metzger had been one of the five editors [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:30:39-04:00September 20th, 2015|Bart’s Biography, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Debate in Dallas on Friday

For anyone in the Dallas area: On Friday (two days! Sept. 18) I will be having a public debate with Justin Bass, a Christian apologist and pastor with a PhD from Dallas Theological, on the question "Did the Historical Jesus Claim To Be Divine?" Dr. Bass thinks the answer is YES. I think the answer is NO. It should be an interesting back and forth. If you want to hear the arguments, come and see it. Free admission. And my arguments will be worth every dime you pay to hear them. (It will be at Collin College at 6:30 pm) Here's all the information you need: https://www.facebook.com/events/1666142046937367/

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:30:38-04:00September 17th, 2015|Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

How Jesus Became God on Humanist Hour

OK, here is something different to break up all the discussion of textual criticism. On May 14th, 2014, I was interviewed by Bo Bennett on the hour long program called The Humanist Hour. This is a one-hour talk show produced by the American Humanist Association (see : http://americanhumanist.org/ ). In the interview we discuss my personal background as a believer, some fundamentals of the Bible from a historical perspective, and some comments related to my book, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee. + + + + + + + + + + + + + Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition:

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:25:14-04:00September 6th, 2015|Book Discussions, Public Forum, Video Media|

Why New Testament Textual Criticism Had Grown Moribund

In my previous post I had begun to indicate that the field of New Testament textual criticism had grown notably and depressingly moribund in America by the late 1970s when I began my graduate studies. But I didn’t explain just *why* most New Testament scholars – let alone scholars in other fields of religious studies or the humanities more broadly – did not find the field interesting and / or important. The reason has to do with what I laid out as one of the almost-universally-held views among textual critics (and other scholars at all connected with the field): That the entire goal, purpose, and raison d’être of the discipline was to establish what an author originally wrote (a goal, purpose, and raison d’être that may seem both reasonable and self-evident. But keep reading my posts). Why would that view have created such apathy toward the field, such a lack of interest in pursuing its objectives? For the most part, it was because New Testament scholars assumed that the field had achieved its goal. We [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:30:21-04:00August 15th, 2015|History of Biblical Scholarship, New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum|

Fundamentalist Mistakes

When, three days ago, I posted my comments about the discovery of a two-page manuscript fragment of the Qur’an that, according to new reports, can be dated (technically, the parchment on which the text is written can be dated) to the lifetime of the prophet Mohammed or to a decade or so later, I had no idea that the post would be such a big deal. The Facebook version of the post has had nearly245,000 hits. and counting. Who would-a thought? There are, as you might imagine, many many comments being made. And it strikes me that many, many of these comments are simply wrong. I won’t be taking them on one at a time. I want simply to say something about a strain of comment that I’m getting (including in private email) from fundamentalists. There are various ways that one can define fundamentalism. (I often say, in jest, that the easiest definition is that a fundamentalist is: “no fun, too much damn, and not enough mental.”) I don’t need to go into a lot [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:30:03-04:00July 28th, 2015|New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations, Religion in the News|

Lunch Auction

Possibly of interest to someone in the Dallas area. It's some serious mula, but again it is not to line my pockets -- I will be giving all of the money to charity: https://www.secularbackstage.com/tools/au/Bo/SecularBackstage/euoLfNpv .

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:30:03-04:00July 27th, 2015|Public Forum|

Google Cambridge Lecture on Forged

On April 7, 2011, I visited the Google Cambridge l in Cambridge, MA to discuss my book Forged. In my talk I explain how ancient writers sometimes falsely claimed to be a famous person in order to encourage people to read their books. This practice of "literary forgery" was relatively common in the ancient world, but it was also widely condemned. In my book I focus on instances of this practice in early Christianity -- some of them appearing within the New Testament. Please adjust gear icon for high-definition.

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:30:02-04:00July 19th, 2015|Book Discussions, Forgery in Antiquity, Public Forum, Video Media|

A Milestone on the Blog

I am happy to announce a milestone in the life of the blog. As everyone who has been on the blog for any length of time has heard me say ad nauseum, the principal reason I started the blog, and continue to do it, is not – is decidedly not – because I feel constantly driven to post my views about the intellectual matters that are important to me: the historical Jesus, the writings of Paul, the formation of the New Testament, the early Christian apocrypha, the Apostolic Fathers, the history of early Christianity, the manuscript tradition of the early Christian writings, etc. etc. I started the blog, instead, as a way of raising money. And I continue to do it in order to raise money. I don’t mean to sound crass about it, but if it wasn’t for the money, I wouldn’t do it. There’s no way on God’s Green Earth I would do it. I continue to post 5-6 times a week, almost always around 1000 words per post. That takes about an [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:29:46-04:00July 11th, 2015|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

NC Bookwatch: Lost Christianities

While I'm on the issue of early Christian diversity, I thought it might be useful to post a video that I did over ten years ago now on my first book written to address that theme, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew" . On August 29, 2004, I was invited to appear on North Carolina Bookwatch, hosted by D.G. Martin. [Episode: 239]. In the discussion I talked about early (alternative) forms of Christianity and about how they came to be suppressed, reformed, or forgotten. All of these groups insisted, of course, that they upheld the teachings of Jesus and his apostles, and they all possessed writings that bore out their claims, books reputedly produced by Jesus's own followers. D. G. Martin is the host of UNC-TV’s “North Carolina Bookwatch.” He is a really good guy, interesting and interested. He is a retired lawyer, politician, and university administrator. Please adjust gear icon for high-definition.

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:29:30-04:00July 9th, 2015|Book Discussions, Public Forum, Video Media|

Guest Post – Brent Nongbri on Manuscript Discoveries

Today we have a guest post – another one from Brent Nongbri, who, if you remember, did his PhD in New Testament at Yale and is currently an Australian Research Council (ARC) Research Fellow in the Department of Ancient History at MacQuarie University in Sydney Australia. He is one of the leading researchers on ancient manuscripts in the world, and among his other many fine virtues, is a member of the blog. He's also the author of Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept and God's Library: The Archaeology of the Earliest Christian Manuscripts. You may recall that I raised the question a week or ten days ago about why archaeologists don’t set out to find manuscripts any more, the way Grenfell and Hunt did in the late 1890s, leading to the spectacular discovery of the Oxyrhynchus papyri, in a trash heap outside of the city of Oxyrhynchus, a discovery that was so massive that scholars are still publishing the uncovered papyri today. Brent has the answer. Here’s what he has to say. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:29:46-04:00June 28th, 2015|Public Forum|

Kickstarting a Debate

I periodically get asked to have a public debate with a mythicist on the question of their real concern: Did Jesus Exist? I have regularly declined these offers, for a variety of reasons: The question is not really a matter of dispute among experts, even though mythicists as a rule would like it to be and sometimes even insist it is. But the reality is this: if you were to look at the program of the annual meeting of (the many thousands of English-speaking) professors of Biblical Studies, the Society of Biblical Literature meeting (this year in Atlanta), you will not find a session (out of thousands) devoted to arguing both sides of this issue. That’s because there is no debate. There is debate generated by the mythicists themselves, of course, and in recent years there have been two bona fide scholars in relevant fields (out of the tens of thousands of scholars in relevant fields) who have become outspoken in support of a mythicist view. But like it or not (most mythicists don’t) (quite [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:29:45-04:00June 26th, 2015|Bart's Debates, Mythicism, Public Forum|

The Dead Sea Scrolls

In my previous several posts I discussed the discovery and contents of the Nag Hammadi Library. A lot of people on the blog know about all that, since it is a major topic of discussion among scholars of early Christianity. But the reality is that among the general populace, no one really knows about it. People may have heard about the “Gnostic Gospels,” but they don’t realize that there is such a *thing* as the Nag Hammadi Library (or, obviously, why it is called that). On the other hand, everyone has heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls, even if they have no clue what the scrolls are, what they contain, and how they were found. The Dead Sea Scrolls are by virtual consensus the most significant manuscript discovery of the twentieth century. And they are decidedly *not* to be confused with the Nag Hammadi Library! Here is what I say about the scrolls in my New Testament textbook. (These paragraphs actually say more about the Essenes that produced the scrolls than the scrolls themselves.) [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:29:45-04:00June 23rd, 2015|Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

Mark Goodacre: Questioning the Discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library

A few days ago I posted about the Discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, giving the remarkable story that scholars -- for as long as I myself have been a scholar -- have been telling about how it happened. I also mentioned that my New Testament colleague at Duke, Mark Goodacre – who is on this blog and who has an important blog of his own, as well as the most important website on the New Testament on the entire Internet – has written an article calling this story into question. I asked Mark if he would be willing to summarize his objections to the story as it is typically recited, and he has done so in the following post. In my next post I will respond to his objections, and then Mark will respond to my response. Isn’t scholarship great? Here’s Mark’s post on the matter: - Mark Goodacre is the author of several books, including The Case Against Q, and Thomas and the Gospels. ************************************************************************** Five Reasons to Question the Story [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:29:45-04:00June 20th, 2015|History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum|

What I Saw at St. Catherine’s Monastery

In my last post I began to relate an anecdote about a traveling adventure I had several years ago, when giving lectures for a UNC trip to Egypt and Jordan with a stop at the famed St. Catherine’s monastery in the southern part of the Sinai peninsula, the place where Tischendorf had discovered the biblical manuscript codex Sinaiticus in the mid 19th century, and where a fire at the monastery in the 1970s had uncovered a hidden room found to contain manuscripts, including the pages from the Old Testament of the codex Sinaiticus that Tischendorf had not come away with from the monastery when he took the bulk of the manuscript with him back to Russian. (That is the longest sentence I’ve ever produced on the blog; it’s because I’m reading Proust right now….) For me, one of the highlights of this trip was to be a visit to the monastery, a place that I had wanted to see for years. It is located in a completely barren location in the wilderness and is the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:29:45-04:00June 15th, 2015|Bart’s Biography, New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

How Are Manuscripts Discovered

PLEASE NOTE: I am incommunicado for a few days on a gulet in the Aegean Sea on the west coast of Turkey. I have asked Steven, our blog support, to add some posts for me in my absence; I prepared these in advance knowing I would be out of reach. Here is one of them. I’m afraid I will not be able to respond to comments on the next few posts until I return to some form of civilization that supports Internet and all things electronic. So sorry! **************************************************** In this thread I have been discussing documents from early Christianity that I would very much like to have discovered. In my last post I mentioned the fact that documents that *do* tend to be discovered are either texts that we already have copies of (the Gospel of John, the book of Revelation, etc.) or of books that we did not previously know existed (the Letter of Diognetus, or most of the writings in the Nag Hammadi library). Here is a related question from a reader [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:29:30-04:00June 11th, 2015|Heresy and Orthodoxy, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

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