Public Forum Archives - Page 84 of 88 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

2009 Debate With Mike Licona: Can Historians Prove the Resurrection of Jesus?

I've decided to take a day or so off from my discussions of Reza Aslan's Zealot, both for my sanity and yours. Here, for a bit of variety, is a video of a debate that I had a few years ago with Mike Licona on the topic or whether historians can *prove* that Jesus was raised from the dead. Mike thinks the answer is "yes"; I think the answer is "no way." It's important to note: the debate was *not* about whether Jesus was raised from the dead. The debate was about whether historians can *prove* that he did (if he did). Mike Licona has burst onto the scene as a conservative Christian apologist. He did a master's degree at Liberty University (that's Jerry Falwell's place) and then a PhD in New Testament at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. Someone may be able to correct me on this, but I *think* that is the kind of degree where instead of taking PhD seminars and so on, as at an American university, it [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:28-04:00December 26th, 2013|Bart's Debates, Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Video Media|

Free Memberships for those Who Need Them

Thanks to the incredible generosity of other members of the blog, I am happy to announce that there are 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, please: 1) Let me know your situation and 2) Provide me with the following information: a) Your first and last name. b) Your preferred personal email. c) Your preferred user name (no spaces). d) Your preferred password (should be 8 or more characters, no spaces). The donors will remain anonymous, but here let me publicly extend my heartfelt thanks for such kind and generous donations [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:43-04:00December 24th, 2013|Public Forum|

Aslan Zealot: A Deeper Evaluation of the Thesis Itself

I have not completed my evaluation of Reza Aslan’s popular, interesting, and well-written account of Jesus, Zealot. To this point I have merely tried to show that despite his claims (e.g. in the Fox News interview) of being an expert who is qualified to write such a book, he is not an expert – in the ancient world, in the New Testament, in the Gospels, or in the historical Jesus. When I began this discussion I understand that a lot of readers thought that I was just being snooty and dismissive by pointing this out; but in my subsequent posts I’ve tried to show why being an expert really does matter. Someone who is not an expert makes mistakes – lots of mistakes, and often serious mistakes. And the problem is that the person doesn’t even know it. I don’t think Aslan knowingly wrote anything he didn’t think. The problem is that he doesn’t know the field well enough to know where there are gaps in his knowledge, or where he has accepted incorrect [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:42-04:00December 21st, 2013|Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

A Holiday Blog Idea

As many of you know, thanks to a couple of generous donors, I was able to give out some free memberships to people who very much wanted to be on the blog but because of personal circumstances, could not afford the membership fees. I put out the offer on my facebook page, and within twenty minutes I had thirty requests –all from people who were eager to join but simply did not have the means to do so otherwise. I had to shut down the offer nearly as soon as I made it. This has made me suspect that there are a lot more people out there like that. And so an idea has hit me. Why not do more of the same? Would any of you be willing to donate one or more memberships during this holiday season? Each new (year-long) membership would cost $24.95 – so let’s just say $25. You could donate to the blog any increment of $25 that you want – so if you want to give one [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:42-04:00December 20th, 2013|Public Forum|

Free Memberships Already Taken

I very much regret to report that all the free memberships that have been available by a generous donor have already been given out. So please do not send in a request if you have not received one. Hopefully we will be able to make more available in the future. Thanks again to the anonymous donor: and to the recipients, I hope you enjoy the blog!!

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:42-04:00December 18th, 2013|Public Forum|

A Limited Number of Free Memberships Available

Thanks to the incredible generosity of a member of the blog, I am happy to announce that there are 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 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 donor wishes to remain anonymous, but here let me publicly extend my heartfelt thanks for such a kind and generous donation to help [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:42-04:00December 18th, 2013|Public Forum|

About the Blog and Two Clarifications about Reza Aslan’s Zealot

Yesterday I resumed my posts on Reza Aslan’s best-selling hit Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, and plan to have several more posts on it, as I explain what I like about the book and about what problems I see in it. But I need to take care of a couple of other concerns first, before launching into a direct discussion. The first has to do with this blog. A number of people on my facebook page have expressed frustration that the only way to get my comments is to join the blog, which costs money. I completely understand the complaint, but need to explain why I am doing things this way (apologies for old-timers for whom this is old-news). I do this blog for a lot of reasons, but by far and away the most important and pressing is to raise money for charity. That is the raison-d’être of the entire enterprise. If this endeavor was not making significant money to help the hungry and the homelessness, I simply wouldn’t [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:27-04:00December 13th, 2013|Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Video: Ehrman & Evans 2012 Debate – Part 2

A couple of weeks ago I posted a debate that I had with Craig Evans, an evangelical Christian New Testament scholar. That debate was held at Saint Mary's University in Nova Scotia. The next night we had a second debate -- on the same topic (!) but in a different location, at Acadia University, where Craig currently teaches in the Acadia Divinity College. The topic, again, was "Does the New Testament Present a Historically Reliable Portrait of Jesus." I was hesitant to post this debate on the blog, since it's on the same topic as the other one. But I watched it and saw that I actually make my case differently this time, as does he. So, what the heck -- you can start watching it and if it sounds like old hat, you can stop! But in a way it's interesting how we changed our presentations, in no small measure because we had heard the night before what they other guy was going to argue.... Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition: See first video [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:14-04:00December 5th, 2013|Bart's Debates, Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Video Media|

The Giving Season

The season of giving has come upon us! I have to admit, even though I am not a Christian, I absolutely love the Christmas season. I know there are a lot of things wrong with Christianity, just as there are with every religion. The harm, the evil, done in the name of Christ is enough to make my skin crawl. But at the same time, there is a lot of good, and I see no reason to deny it. At its very best, Christianity is all about giving: God giving his son, his son giving himself, his followers giving themselves to one another, and even to strangers in need -- giving of themselves and their worldly goods for the sake of others. This is the part of Christianity – which I consider to be true Christianity at its heart – that I completely resonate with and cherish, even though I no longer consider myself to be among the faithful….. The Christmas season is a giving season. I completely detest the crass materialism. But the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:27-04:00December 4th, 2013|Public Forum|

The Gospel of Peter in a Papyrus Fragment?
Gallery
The Gospel of Peter in a Papyrus Fragment?

Christian Apocrypha, Public Forum

The Gospel of Peter in a Papyrus Fragment?

Yesterday I gave a lecture at the Biblical Archeology Society FEST here in Baltimore. Even though I'm (obviously) not an archaeologist, a lot of my work is connected with archaeology, especially the discovery of ancient manuscripts. In 1886 archaeologists digging in Akhmim Egypt were working through a cemetery and uncovered a tomb, from about the 8th century, they thought, that had, along with a skeleton, a 66 page parchment book. The book was written in Greek, and had four texts in it (all incomplete), including, on the first ten pages, a copy of what was identified as the Gospel of Peter. If you’ve ever read the surviving Gospel of Peter, this is the text (or the translation of it!) that you have read. I can blog more about it at some point later. For now: this is an alternative account of the trial, death, and resurrection of Jesus, which is most famous for the resurrection scene, in which the narrator describes what actually happened when Jesus came out of the grave. It’s spectacular. Jesus is [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:26-04:00November 23rd, 2013|Christian Apocrypha, Public Forum|

My SBL Conference

There are two happy events affecting my life today. The first is that I just now have received an author’s copy of my new book, co-edited with my colleague, Zlatko Plese, The Other Gospels: Accounts of Jesus from Outside the New Testament (Oxford University Press). As I’ve earlier indicated, this book is an English-only edition of our Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations, which included the original Greek, Latin, and Coptic along with the English translations. For this new lay-reader edition, we have simplified the introductions, making them more accessible to the non-scholar, and gotten rid of the ancient languages. The other happy event is that I am off, now, to my annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature meeting. This is the professional meeting for all scholars and professors of Biblical literature. It is a highlight of my year. Papers are read by scholars on topics of everything you can imagine by scholars who are presenting the results of their research to other scholars. Papers are short – usually 20-25 minutes in length – [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:26-04:00November 22nd, 2013|Christian Apocrypha, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Amusing Fund Raising and the Blog

As many of you know, the charity that this blog supports more than any other is the Urban Ministries of Durham, which deals with issues of hunger and homelessness in my city of Durham – or rather, deals with people who are experiencing problems of hunger and homelessness. Urban Ministries (which, despite its name, is not a religious organization) does amazing work. And one of the most amazing things about it is that it does not simply put a band-aid on the problem, e.g., with its soup kitchen and overnight housing. They do have both, of course! But more than that, it works hard at ending homelessness for people, by getting them into permanent housing and employment to pay for it. It is a model organization that I am very proud to be associated with. They have just started an incredibly innovative fund-raising effort that is rather amusing and potentially ground-breaking. Here is the website: https://www.namesforchange.org/Intro Check it out, and tell me what you think. And feel free to name the toilet paper after [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:15-04:00November 21st, 2013|Public Forum|

Jesus and Brian!!!
Gallery
Jesus and Brian!!!

Jesus and Film, Public Forum

Jesus and Brian!!!

I am pleased to be able to announce that a conference will be held this summer that looks to be outrageously fun and interesting. It will be at King’s College, London. And it will be on the Life of Brian and the Historical Jesus. I have been asked to give one of the papers, and how could I refuse! I’m going to have to cut short a family vacation in France, but there’s no way I’m missing this. Here’s the publicity for it. Jesus and Brian Or: What have the Pythons done for Us? A Biblical Studies Conference King’s College London, The Strand, London WC1 Safra Lecture Theatre Friday June 20th to Sunday June 22nd, 2014 Monty Python’s Life of Brian provoked a furious response in some quarters when it first appeared in 1979, even leading to cries of ‘blasphemy’. However, many students and teachers of biblical literature were quietly, and often loudly, both amused and intrigued. Life of Brian in fact contains numerous references to what was then the cutting edge of biblical scholarship [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:15-04:00November 20th, 2013|Jesus and Film, Public Forum|

Is The NT Portrayal of Jesus Accurate? Debate With Craig Evans

This video is of a debate that I participated in nearly two years ago in Nova Scotia with Dr. Craig Evans, a very well-known and widely published scholar of the New Testament who is also a conservative evangelical Christian (not “ultra-conservative,” and nowhere near a fundamentalist – but still conservative). He is the author of Jesus and His World: The Archaeological Evidence and Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels. This was the first of two debates that took place, in two different locations,on subsequent evenings. The topic of the debate was: “Does the New Testament Present a Reliable Portrait of the Historical Jesus.” As you might imagine, Craig Evans argues that Yes, it does. I argue that No, it does not. Both of us, naturally enough, focus our attention on the four Gospels of the New Testament. We each gave an opening speech of 30 minutes; and then we had a chance for a rebuttal, followed by some Q & A. I have to say, this was one of the favorite debates that I [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:13-04:00November 17th, 2013|Bart's Debates, Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Video Media|

Problem on the Site

My assistant and computer guru Steve Ray noticed yesterday (Saturday, November 16) that comments were not getting posted on the site. There was a technical malfunction, unrelated to him, me, or the CIA (the real one or the secondary one in D.C., so far as I know....). This is the note he posted on my facebook page. Please ... take note! Greetings Blog Members. Technical Notice. There was a database corruption on the blog server today due to JetPack, one that did not allow comments to record. If you left a comment between 6am to 6pm EST, please consider submitting it again. If any member notes that their account is not working properly (cannot access membership content), please email your password to [email protected] and it will be manually reset. Sorry for any inconvenience. S. E. Ray, Bart's Assistant. Additionally, the inbound links still result in membership access issues, even after logging in. Developers are looking into this and will not get back to us until Monday, 11/18/2013. However, if you login directly at https://ehrmanblog.org/login/ member posts are [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:15-04:00November 17th, 2013|Public Forum|

Video: Misquoting Jesus

I have decided to add a new feature to my blog. There have been a number of video's recorded of my lectures and interviews, and I thought it might be interesting to post these on occasion here on the blog combined with my added comments. My most successful popular book so far has been Misquoting Jesus. After it was out for a while and finally "took off," I got asked to give a bunch of lectures on the topic. In fact, I still *do* give lectures on the topic. Well, usually, it's the same lecture! So I won't be posting every one of them -- one is enough. This is one of the earlier ones I did, at Stanford University on April 25, 2007. This was part of Stanford's Heyns Lecture Series. The lecture was given at Cubberley Auditorium, Stanford University Campus. The lecture was called "Misquoting Jesus: Scribes Who Altered Scripture and Readers Who May Never Know." The original flyer announcing the event is here in PDF format. One of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:13-04:00November 3rd, 2013|New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum, Video Media|

A Rather Serious Mistake

In my previous post I started answering the question of why there may be contradictions/discrepancies/differences within the works of a single author. Weren’t they careful? Didn’t they see the problem? I mentioned that sometimes it may be that with someone like Paul, since his letters spanned over a decade, maybe he changed his mind about some things. I certainly don’t think all the same things I did ten years ago; and if you contrast what I thought when I was 19 and when I was 29, it was an *extreme* shift. The example I used was Paul’s sense in his early letters that he would be alive when Jesus returned; but in his later letters he seems to have thought that he might well die first. In that context I mentioned the famous passage in Paul, a favorite in funeral and memorial services, 2 Cor. 5:1: “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:13-04:00October 29th, 2013|Paul and His Letters, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Podcast on My New Course

Here is a link to a podcast that just came out from The Great Courses that deals with my (relatively) new course “The Greatest Controversies of Early Christianity.” http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/Courses/PodcastEpisode.aspx?eid=4&id=-50645312&ai=87987&sa=MH57&cm_mmc=email-_-Podcast104ActCT20130927-_-body-_-listen&cmp=email It has the virtue as well of including conversations (after mine) with two other professors and their courses as well. In any event, if anyone has wondered a bit what my course is actually about, this is a fairly painless way to find out.

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:22:59-04:00October 15th, 2013|Public Forum, Teaching Christianity|

Some Blog Self-Scrutiny

I’ve spent the past day or so thinking about the Blog. By many standards I think it is going very well. As I’ve pointed out on numerous occasions, we managed to raise $37,000 last year for the charities that the blog supports, all of them dealing with hunger and homelessness. If we do that for a number of years – we’re talking some serious money! Most of that amount came from membership fees; a good chunk came from extra donations, some of them extraordinarily generous. I anticipate that we will have an even higher total this year, although it is yet to be seen. In any event, we are slightly ahead of where we were last year at this point. But I never seem satisfied! Maybe it’s my driven personality. But I wonder how we can do better. Much better. Some things we simply can’t do *more* of. I already post about six times a week, and I try to mix up what I do: some posts are “public interest” items (like O’Reilly or that [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:22:59-04:00October 13th, 2013|Public Forum|

Colbert on his Hero O’Reilly

OK, this really is my last post on O’Reilly’s Killing Jesus. It’s not much of one! But today is the day I normally take “off” from the blog. Monday’s are my day from hell: a three-hour undergraduate seminar (“Jesus in Scholarship and Film”) in the morning (today: students compared all the accounts of Jesus’ Passion in the four Gospels, seeing if there were any differences they thought were irreconcilable; we discussed it all; and then we watched four movie clips – Passion scenes from the 1925 silent Ben Hur; the 1959 Ben Hur; the Greatest Story Ever Told; and the 1977 Zephirelli Jesus of Nazareth – in order to see how directors chose what to include, what to exclude, what to do when different Gospels relate different stories, that sometimes really can’t be easily reconciled, etc. Great stuff) and then a three hour seminar (“Early Christian Apocrypha”) in the afternoon (today: The Coptic Gospel of Thomas - -when was it written? Where? In what language? Is it dependent on the NT Gospels? Is it Gnostic? [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:22:58-04:00October 7th, 2013|Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Religion in the News, Video Media|

Previous 1···838485···88 Next