Public Forum Archives - Page 83 of 89 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

A Milestone for the Blog

I am very pleased to be able to announce a milestone that we have all reached for the Bart Ehrman Blog. As of this week, we have surpassed the $100,000 mark in funds raised. This is a great moment for us. It has taken us only two years and a few days. As probably all of you know, the blog was originally conceived, designed, and begun as a way to raise money for charities dealing with hunger and homelessness. Every penny raised from the membership fees and donations go directly to the four charities that the Bart Ehrman Foundation supports (I’ll say something about the four in a moment). I myself pay all the administrative costs of the blog as part of my contribution. My technology and media assistant, Steven Ray of Innovative Design, who designed and setup my website, blog and YouTube channel, keeps the show running -- it would be literally and completely impossible without him -- and he often provides me with a serious discount for his services as part of his contribution. Together, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:59-04:00April 21st, 2014|Public Forum|

Critique of the Very Reverend Robert Barron

The responses to How Jesus Became God are starting to appear, and I must say, I find the harshest ones bordering on the incredible. Do people think that it is acceptable to attack a book that they haven’t read – or at least haven’t had the courtesy to try to understand? Some of the reviewers are known entities, such as the Very Rev. Robert Barron, a Roman Catholic evangelist and commentator who has a wide following. His full response is available at http://wordonfire.org/Written-Word/articles-commentaries/April-2014/Why-Jesus-is-God--A-Response-to-Bart-Ehrman.aspx I find it very disappointing. Here is his opening gambit: **************************************** "In this most recent tome, Ehrman lays out what is actually a very old thesis, going back at least to the 18th century and repeated ad nauseam in skeptical circles ever since, namely, that Jesus was a simple itinerant preacher who never claimed to be divine and whose “resurrection” was in fact an invention of his disciples who experienced hallucinations of their master after his death. Of course Ehrman, like so many of his skeptical colleagues across the centuries, breathlessly presents this thesis [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:59-04:00April 18th, 2014|Bart's Critics, Book Discussions, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Interview on Trinities.org on How Jesus Became God Part 2

This is the second part of my interview with Dale Tuggy, the host and co-executive producer of Trinities.org podcast. The podcasts hosts debates, interviews, and historical and contemporary perspectives on issues related to Christian theology. The interview was focused on How Jesus Became God, although in spots we go afield. Some listeners have thought that this was one of the more interesting of the interviews I've done. The interview took place on April 14th, 2014 via telephone. Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition:

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:59-04:00April 17th, 2014|Book Discussions, Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Video Media|

Interview with Trinities.org on How Jesus Became God

I won't be posting every single interview I do for How Jesus Became God (you will be glad to know); but different interviewers are asking different kinds of questions, and so a range of them doesn't seem to be out of line. The one here is for a podcast called Trinities, hosted and produced by a fellow named Dale Tuggy. Dale is not completely sympathetic with all my views in the book, which makes the interview a bit more interesting from ones that simply lob me softballs. The interview took place on April 7, and happened over the phone. Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition:

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:47-04:00April 12th, 2014|Book Discussions, Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Video Media|

Media: How Jesus became God – Ehrman vs Gathercole Pt 2

Here is the second part of my radio "debate" (rather, exchange of views) with Simon Gathercole. To refresh your memory (or in case you didn't see the earlier post with the first part), Simon is a Senior Lecturer in New Testament at Cambridge University. He is a serious and well-known scholar, and also happens to be an evangelical Christian. We disagree on a lot of things, but we are civil about our disagreements, and I respect his opinions even though I disagree heartily with many of them -- especially on the topic at hand! This part of the program focuses more on Paul than on the Gospels. Again, this was recorded for, played on, the program called "Unbelievable" for Christian Premier Radio in the UK (headquarters in London), hosted and moderated by Justin Brierley. Brought to you in association with www.reasons.org. Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition:

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:47-04:00April 8th, 2014|Bart's Debates, Canonical Gospels, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum, Video Media|

Fresh Air with Terry Gross and the Dish Book Club with Andrew Sullivan

I mentioned in an earlier post that the only way a trade book begins to sell well is if it gets media attention. It is really, really hard to get media attention, and there’s very little that an author can personally do about it. Authors have publicists (at the publisher) who try to get attention in print, radio, and TV; that’s what they do for a living, they do it all the time, they have the necessary contacts, and the know-how, and the experience, and so on. But at the end of the day, it is always a matter of whether a journal, newspaper, radio program, TV show etc. is interested, and wants to do a piece on the book. Every author wants a part of the action, and there’s only so much action to go around. And sometimes, from the author’s point of view, it seems like a very frustrating crapshoot indeed. With that said, I’m happy to announce that I have recorded an interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, which will be [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:47-04:00April 7th, 2014|Book Discussions, Public Forum|

Women at the Tomb

Here I’ll continue my thread on topics that I changed my mind about or came to see in doing my research for How Jesus Became God. One of the most important things I changed my mind about was the idea that Jesus’ tomb was discovered empty three days after his death. When I was a Christian, of course I thought that was the case. But even when I had become an agnostic I thought it was probably a historical tradition: it’s found in all four Gospels, for example, and the fact that the stories indicate precisely it was *women* who found the tomb did not seem like something Christians would want to make up. (And so, as an agnostic, I had to come up with alternative explanations for why the tomb was empty. But…) I changed my mind. Most of my change came from my investigation of Roman practices of crucifixion. As it turns out, standard policy appears to have been to have left the bodies of corpses on the crosses to decompose, as part [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:46-04:00April 5th, 2014|Book Discussions, Canonical Gospels, Public Forum, Women in Early Christianity|

Radio Debate on How Jesus became God: Part 1

As is my wont, I was in England for Spring Break, and while there I was invited to participate in a radio program devoted to my book How Jesus Became God (as I've indicated before on the blog). The program was set up to be a radio "debate," or, well, "friendly exchange of ideas" (it was the latter more than the former) between me and Simon J. Gathercole, who is a Senior Lecturer in New Testament at Cambridge University. Simon is one of the five contributors to the response book How God Became Jesus. He is a bona fide and serious New Testament scholar, whom I respect and with whom I heartily disagree on many many issues! :-) The program was "Unbelievable," a weekly program on UK Premier Christian Radio hosted by moderator Justin Brierley, a bright and interesting fellow, not a scholar but well acquainted with scholarship. He, like Simon, is a reasonably, but reasonable, conservative Christian. The "debate" involved two segments, both taped on March 29th, 2014. The following is the first of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:46-04:00April 1st, 2014|Bart's Debates, Canonical Gospels, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum, Video Media|

My First Radio Interview on How Jesus Became God

I am lined up to do a number of interviews for the new book, and here is the first, with a program called Interfaith Voices, hosted by Mareen Fiedler. Interfaith Voices is the nation's leading public radio show about faith, ethics and spirituality, and plays on WAMU 88.5 FM in Washington, DC. The following is an interview taped on March 20th, 2014. She titles the radio program, "The Debate over the Divinity of Jesus" while referencing my latest book "How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee." She asks good, perceptive questions that allow me to talk about key aspects of my thesis in the book. The interview will provide a good overview of what you'll find in it, once you get your grubby paws on it (now that my grubby paws are off it). Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition:

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:46-04:00March 26th, 2014|Book Discussions, Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Video Media|

How Jesus Became God!!

It is time – well past time, some of you may think – for a new thread. And one is oh-so-ready-to-hand. My new book, How Jesus Became God, will be released on Tuesday (March 25). I am unusually eager for that to happen. I’ve never had a trade book (i.e., written for a popular audience) that I’ve been as invested in. Many of my other ones have done well, and I’ve been proud of each and every one of them (they’re like your children – you love each of them dearly and deeply ….). But this is that one that I think is the really important one – in its way, more important than Misquoting Jesus, and all the rest. That’s because the question it’s dealing with is really BIG, in my opinion. It may sound a bit outlandish, crazy, or over the top, but I think a case can be made that the question of how Jesus became God is one of the most important questions for the history of Western Civilization. OK, that [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:45-04:00March 23rd, 2014|Book Discussions, Memory Studies, Public Forum|

John from a Socio-Historical Perspective

Now that I have explained what the socio-historical method is in general terms (in my previous post) I can go on to show how it can be applied to a particular Gospel, in this case, the Gospel of John. Again, none of this is new and fresh scholarship that I myself came up with; two of the real pioneers of this method were two of the greats of New Testament interpretation in the latter part of the twentieth century, both of whom, remarkably, taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York (taught, in fact, some of my good friends!), the Protestant scholar J. Louis Martyn, and the Roman Catholic scholar, Raymond Brown. Their views ended up being a more or less consensus position for many years, and continues to be prominent among teachers of the NT still today. **************************************************************** The Gospel of John from a Socio-Historical Perspective The place to begin is by examining the different thematic emphases evident in different stories, which ultimately may derive from different sources, and to consider the kinds of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:45-04:00March 22nd, 2014|Canonical Gospels, Public Forum|

The Socio-Historical Method

More on the Gospel of John! In previous posts I explained how it can be studied following a variety of methods that I had introduced earlier in relation to Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In my textbook I go on to introduce a different method altogether, which is concerned with a *completely* different set of questions and issues. It will take me a couple of posts to explain the method, and a couple to apply it to the Gospel of John. Let me stress that I did not come up with these methods. I’m simply explaining methods that scholars tend to use when approaching these books. I should emphasize this point in part because I want to stress that interpreting an ancient text is not simply a matter of reading it and summarizing what it says. Hard-core interpretation requires self-reflective and rigorous methods, and a patient (verse-by-verse, word-by-word) application of these methods. When a bona fide scholar makes a pronouncement about the meaning of this or that passage of the NT, it is not simply a [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:32-04:00March 21st, 2014|Canonical Gospels, Public Forum|

Keep on Keepin’ On?

This post is a brief hiatus to say that if you’re getting tired of all this talk about methods and the Gospel of John, let me know and I’ll go on to something else. I haven’t heard any complaints, so I’ll keep going till I do! I realize these posts may not be the sexiest things to come across the blog, but sometimes it is good to deal with lots of substance as well as / in addition to the human interest stories. I suppose we need both! In any event, these posts have been a boon for me, because they have allowed me to continue to contribute to the blog with less of a time commitment during a period when I have been even more crazily swamped than normal. This past week, on Spring Break, I’ve been in London, which should in theory have been a vacation! And I have seen two plays (a *terrific* rendition of Ibsen’s Ghosts, and my all-time favorite actor Simon Russell Beale in King Lear). And it’s been [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:31-04:00March 14th, 2014|Public Forum|

Did Jesus Exist? Video Presentation

Did Jesus exist Bart Ehrman? I was invited to read my book, "Did Jesus Exist: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth" at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Bulls Head Bookshop on Wednesday, March 21st, 2012 at 3:30 p.m. Here is a video of the event. Bart Ehrman: Did Jesus Exist? Reading at the University of North Carolina Bulls Head Bookshop To give you an idea of the topic, the back cover of the book reads, "Large numbers of atheists, humanists, and conspiracy theorists are raising one of the most pressing questions in the history of religion: 'Did Jesus exist at all?' Was he invented out of whole cloth for nefarious purposes by those seeking to control the masses? Or was Jesus such a shadowy figure—far removed from any credible historical evidence—that he bears no meaningful resemblance to the person described in the Bible? In Did Jesus Exist? historian and Bible expert Bart Ehrman confronts these questions, vigorously defends the historicity of Jesus, and provides a compelling portrait of the man from [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:28-04:00March 6th, 2014|Historical Jesus, Mythicism, Public Forum, Video Media|

Video: Does It Matter If Jesus Was Married?
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Video: Does It Matter If Jesus Was Married?

Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Video Media

Video: Does It Matter If Jesus Was Married?

As I think I've indicated on the blog before, on January 23, 2014 there was an interesting discussion, on stage, between Karen L. King (Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School), Mark Jordan (Distinguished Professor at Washington University, Saint Louis; he is returning to Harvard next year), and me on the topic "Does It Matter if Jesus Was Married?" The discussion was hosted by the Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in the Beam Music Center, Doc Rando Hall, UNLV. The Black Mountain Institute is an International Center for Creative Writers and Scholars. The event was moderated by the former President of UNLV, Carol Harter, who did a very fine job indeed keeping us all on target and on topic. The basic underlying question was: what would a married Christ mean for the theology, practices, and politics of Christian traditions as they grapple with changing times? I did manage to say a few words about the prior question: *Was* Jesus married? The Black Mountain Institute was motivated to invite us [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:30-04:00February 26th, 2014|Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Video Media|

Snake-Handling and the Gospel of Mark

Here is something to break up a bit my thread on the Gospel of Mark, studied from a literary-historical perspective (to be resumed in my next post). This current post is related to Mark but it’s well, different. There was a recent CNN report that some of you may have seen. I include it here, below, with the link to the site at the bottom. This practice in some southern circles (especially in the Appalachians) of handling deadly snakes as part of a worship service is based on the saying of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel, after his resurrection, where he tells his disciples that those who come to believe in him will be able to speak in foreign tongues (as happens in Pentecostal churches, e.g.), that they will be able to handle deadly snakes, and if they drink any poison, it will not harm them. Offhand, I don’t know what in additional to snake-handling churches, we don’t have poison-drinking churches. Maybe we do? I’m sure someone on the blog can tell me. In any [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:15-04:00February 20th, 2014|Canonical Gospels, New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum, Religion in the News|

Similarities and Differences: The Synoptic Problem

In yesterday’s post I mentioned my New Testament class, and that one of the main lessons I’m trying to convey in it is that each of the Gospels has to be read for what *it* has to say. This requires the reader to bracket information that is conveyed in some other Gospel (or that they’ve heard before elsewhere), to see what the meaning of this particular text is. That shouldn’t be such a hard idea to grasp. If I write a book about Jesus, I don’t expect or want my readers to read my book in light of what some other author said (say, Reza Aslan or Bill O’Reilly), interpreting my views in light of the other person’s views, as if my views, as I state them, are not enough or sufficient. And yet people regularly read the Gospels as if Mark must mean the same thing that John does, or that this passage in Matthew makes best sense in light of that other passage in Luke, and so on. We don’t do that [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:14-04:00February 12th, 2014|Canonical Gospels, Public Forum, Teaching Christianity|

Video: Illuminated Manuscripts and Legends about Jesus

I was asked to speak at the Getty Museum, in the Harold M. Williams Auditorium in Los Angeles, California on Thursday, September 22, 2011 during the exhibition "In the Beginning Was the Word: Medieval Gospel Illumination." Illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages are significant for the literary texts they preserve. But they are also important, historically and culturally, for their illustrations of the life of Jesus and other figures associated with him. These artistic representations tell tales of their own, and the visual stories are not always found in the corresponding texts. A careful examination of these images shows clearly and convincingly that medieval artists were familiar not only with the stories of the canonical Gospels but also with many noncanonical apocryphal tales of Jesus. The apocryphal stories, in some instances, were understood to be "Gospel truth" on par with accounts found in Scripture. In any event, here is the lecture that I gave: Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition: Details on the "In the Beginning Was the Word: Medieval Gospel Illumination" 2011 [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:13-04:00February 4th, 2014|Christian Apocrypha, Public Forum, Video Media|

Ramtha Again: The Question-Answer Session

Here is the second part of my talk at the Ramtha School of Enlightenment. It is a question-answer session that I had with the attendees, and for my money, it was the best, most interesting part of the evening. Since we had abundant time -- well over an hour -- I was able to give the questions full, drawn out answers, virtually mini-lectures in themselves, on an enormous range of issues that came up. The questions dealt with intriguing topics on the whole. Many of my answers are not what the questioner wanted to hear. And it is interesting to see what the crowd reaction to my answers was (usually very positive -- effusive at times; but it is clear that I am the odd-person-out in this group as, well, you would surely expect!). At some points I get very personal and talk not just about my scholarship but about my beliefs and understandings of the world. In any event, I hope you enjoy listening to this as much as I enjoyed participating in [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:43-04:00January 22nd, 2014|Christian Apocrypha, Public Forum, Video Media|

Video: The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot Part 1

This past November I flew to Yelm, Washington, outside of Seattle, to deliver a lecture on the Gospel of Judas Iscariot at the Ramtha School of Enlightenment. When I had been invited to give the talk the year before, I frankly had never heard of the Ramtha School of Enlightenment. In fact, when I was invited, I was told that the school was called The Gnostic School of America -- and so I naturally thought that it was some kind of college made up of west-coast-modern-day-Gnostics who saw themselves standing in line with the ancient Gnostics. Such people do exist! But that is not what this school is. The School of Enlightenment was founded by a woman named JZ Knight, and it is named, obviously, after Ramtha. In case you don't remember who that was, let me tell you. Ramtha was a philosopher-warrior who lived 35,000 years ago, who, with his 2.5 million soldier army, conquered most of the known world at the time, including the island of Atlantis. JZ channels him. (In one of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:43-04:00January 16th, 2014|Christian Apocrypha, Public Forum, Video Media|

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