Reader’s Questions Archives - Page 12 of 30 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

More on 666: The Number of the Beast: A Blast from the Past

My post yesterday about manuscripts that give the number of the beast in Rev. 13 as 616 instead of 666 prompted a number of queries. I'll answer a couple of them directly in my next post; but some people emailed me asking me what the number is all about in the first place. I discussed the issue a few years ago on the blog. Here is what I said. ************************************************************* This post will be the culmination of my thread that deals with ancient numerology, especially as it is based on the fact that ancient languages used letters of the alphabets for their numbers, making it possible to add up the numerical equivalent of any word. In this post I will explain how that relates to one of the great mysteries of the Bible, the identification of the Antichrist in the book of Revelation, whose number was 666. Yesterday’s post was meant as background to this brief discussion, and I’d suggest reading it first to make sense of what I’ll say here. I also need to [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:39:14-04:00November 6th, 2017|Public Forum, Reader’s Questions, Revelation of John|

Were All Textual Changes Made by Scribes by 300 CE? Readers’ Mailbag November 5, 2017

For today’s Readers’ Mailbag I deal with an interesting and important question about the changes that scribes made in their manuscripts. QUESTION In several of your books you mention that most modifications in the NT manuscripts happened in first 3 centuries. If I’m correct we have no manuscript from 1st century and only few from the 2nd. That means we can say almost nothing about changes during this time. This is however more than half of the “greatest modifications” historical period. RESPONSE This comment is more of a statement than a question, but the question is clearly implied: how do we know (or why do we think) that almost all of the changes in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament as found in later manuscripts were made early in the history of the tradition, in the first three centuries, if we don’t have many manuscripts from that period to prove it? Great question. But with an answer that I think just about every textual scholar agrees with. To begin with: when textual [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:39:14-04:00November 5th, 2017|Fourth-Century Christianity, New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Was My Weird Background a Help or a Hindrance: Mailbag October 22, 2017

In this week’s readers’ mailbag I deal with a personal question about my background and whether it gave me and advantages or disadvantages in my rather unusual line of work as a secular scholar of the Bible. QUESTION: Just as a matter of empirical fact, do you think that your religious background gave you any (intellectual) advantages, or disadvantages, in your work over someone who lacked that background? RESPONSE: Every now and then I look back on my life and think: Wow, now that was weird. Even though I’m a pretty normal American guy in lots of ways – at least normal as an American guy who is a professional scholar (OK, that’s already weird, but it’s weird in a socially normal way) (my normalcies: I have passions for football, basketball, working out, reading novels and nonfiction, traveling, the outdoors, hiking, family, kids, grandkids; I love martinis and cigars [both of which I enjoy much more rarely than I would like, since I’d like to enjoy them for many more years….]; I’m politically [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:57-04:00October 22nd, 2017|Bart’s Biography, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Are Jews and Christians Monotheists? Mailbag October 15, 2017

I will be dealing with an unusually important question in this week’s mailbag: is it right to consider Judaism and Christianity monotheistic? QUESTION: Aren't Judaism and Christianity really henotheistic rather than monotheistic? For example, even in the 10 Commandments it merely says YHWH is the only god to be worshiped, not that He is the only god. And in Christianity there is the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, Satan, angels and demons, and in some sects, Mary the queen of heaven. And I would think all the pagans coming into the church would bring along their polytheistic thinking - perhaps that is part of the reason Jesus was elevated to the status of God. RESPONSE: This is a very good question, and as you might imagine, a lot of it comes down to how one defines one’s terms. One set of definitions involves the actual terms themselves. Normally “Monotheism” is understood to be the belief that there is only one God, no other; “Henotheism” is the belief that there are other gods, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:56-04:00October 15th, 2017|Early Christian Doctrine, Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Were the Disciples Martyred for Believing the Resurrection? A Blast From the Past

Here is an interesting question that I addressed on the blog exactly five years ago today, one that continues to be relevant and significant; ************************************************************ QUESTION: Another very very popular evidence put forward for the resurrection is “the disciples would not have died for what they knew was a lie, therefore it must have happened.” I hear this all the time. You note that they really believed they saw Jesus after he died so they were not lying. However, is there evidence (historical or literary) that they were killed because of their belief in Jesus’ resurrection? RESPONSE: Ah yes, if I had a fiver for every time I’ve heard this comment over the years, I could retire to a country-home in Maine…. Several other people have responded to this question on the blog by saying that we have lots of records of lots of people who have died for a something that they knew, literally, not to be true. I am not in a position to argue that particular point. But I can say something [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:56-04:00October 13th, 2017|Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

Did Luke Have a Doctrine of the Atonement? Mailbag September 24, 2017

For this week’s readers’ mailbag I have chosen a question about my claim that the author of Luke-Acts, unlike other writers of the New Testament, does not have a doctrine of the atonement – that Jesus’ death brought about a restored relationship with God (for Luke, it was the *resurrection* that mattered, not the crucifixion). The questioner sets up the question with an important observation. I suspect my answer will not be what he expected. QUESTION: I have spent a lot of time looking in the gospels for teachings on the atonement. I could only find 5 passages (really more like 2, because they are parallel). Mt 20:28/Mk 10:45 Jesus life as a ransom for many Luke leaves this part out of the story Mt 26:28--this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Mk 14:24--This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Lk 22:20 This cup that is poured out for you is the new [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:40-04:00September 24th, 2017|Acts of the Apostles, Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine, New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

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|

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|

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|

Do Later Manuscript Discoveries Ever Support Proposed Interpolations?

It is fine, I think, for a post on the blog every now and then to get technical and into the nitty-gritty of scholarship. And so I have no qualms about the following. Yesterday I posted a response to a question about “textual emendation” by Jan Krans, a New Testament textual expert who teaches in the Netherlands. The same blog reader had a second question that I have also directed to Jan, and here I give both the question and the answer. The question has to do with my claim that there are some words/passages in the New Testament that *look* like they were added after the original was published, but for which we have NO manuscripts that lack the words/passage (so that there is no hard evidence that they were added after the text was originally published). But has it ever happened that after a scholar suggested such a thing, a manuscript has turned up that provides actual evidence? Here’s the interesting question about that, and Jan’s intriguing response. QUESTION: Do you know of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:21-04:00August 22nd, 2017|New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Are There Passages Where Every NT Manuscript Gives the “Wrong” Reading?

In this post I deal with an interesting question that a reader has asked me, with reference to the post I made last week where I explained a complicated situation that appears sometimes to have occurred in our surviving manuscripts of the New Testament, when every single manuscript we have may have the “wrong” reading – that is, when every one of the manuscripts appears to an alteration from what the author original wrote. Here is what I said. Another reason interpolations and scribal corruptions overlap is because – here it gets even more tricky — there are places where scholars are convinced that there were scribal alterations made very early in the history of the transmission of the text that occurred *after* the book was originally put in circulation in the textual form that has come down to us but that affected *all* of our surviving manuscripts. In other words, in these places (no one can agree where it has happened!) all of our manuscripts have the wrong reading, but not because of an [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:21-04:00August 21st, 2017|New Testament Manuscripts, Reader’s Questions|

Was John the Son of Zebedee Capable of Writing a Gospel?

I deal with an interesting question in this week’s Readers’ Mailbag: is it plausible that the apostle John could compose a Gospel in Greek? If you have a question you would like me to address, ask away, and I will add it to my long list! QUESTION: You mention in your book Forgeries and Counter Forgeries that John most likely did not write the Gospel attributed to him as he almost certainly could not write in Greek. I seem to remember you writing that the Greek of that Gospel was good and fairly nuanced. However, I am being told by someone who is fairly conversant in these matters that John could easily have learned the Greek necessary to write the Gospel, since he lived for over 60 years on the mission field and that his Greek is the most basic of the NT. Is he right? And if so how would you respond? RESPONSE Yes, I get asked this question a lot, or rather, get told this a lot – that if an [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:21-04:00August 20th, 2017|Canonical Gospels, Reader’s Questions|

Interpolations and Textual Corruptions: The Blurry Lines

After the past two posts, I am now in a position to answer the question that led to this brief hiatus in my discussion of the afterlife, involving the first two chapters of the Gospel of Luke. To refresh your memory, here is the question: QUESTION: If, in your suspicion, the original Gospel of Luke began at 3:1 and the infancy narrative found in 1:5-2:52 is a later addition, do you think that should be indicated in NT reconstructions and translations in a way similar to how Mark 16:9-20 is often bracketed? RESPONSE: Different scholars will have different opinions on this question, in no small measure because the majority of scholars (I would imagine) are reluctant to say that Luke 1-2 were originally lacking from the Gospel. But suppose the majority were convinced? Would they say that brackets should be placed around the story, as happens, typically, with passages otherwise recognized as probably not belonging in the New Testament, such as the ending of Mark’s Gospel (Mark 16:9-20) or the story of the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:21-04:00August 15th, 2017|New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Did Luke’s Gospel Originally Have The Birth Story? Readers Mailbag and a Blast from the Past

QUESTION: If, in your suspicion, the original Gospel of Luke began at 3:1 and the infancy narrative found in 1:5-2:52 is a later addition, do you think that should be indicated in NT reconstructions and translations in a way similar to how Mark 16:9-20 is often bracketed? RESPONSE: This is a great question. I could answer it just yes or no, but I'm afraid that wouldn't make much sense to many readers. The question itself seems simple but is actually a bit complicated, and the answer needs to be even more so! The basic question is this. If I think, as I sometimes (often? most of the time?) do, that Luke did not originally have chapters 1 and 2 -- the story of Jesus' birth (the Annunciation; Joseph and Mary's trip to Bethlehem, there "is no room in the inn," the worship of the shepherds, and so on and on) -- but started with what is now 3:1, the account of Jesus' genealogy, then do I think that the chapters should be put in brackets in [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:06-04:00August 13th, 2017|Canonical Gospels, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

How Women Came to Be Silenced in Early Christianity: A Blast From the Past

Time for a blast from the blog's past. Here is a question I get asked about a lot by my students: Why did women come to silenced, their voices muted, in the early Christian tradition -- especially if, as the evidence suggests, women were even more attracted to this new faith than men in the early years? When I dealt with that issue exactly four years ago on the blog, this is what I said (it came at the end of a thread on women in the early Christian church): ********************************************************************** I come now to the climax of this thread: how is it that women came to be silenced in the early Christian tradition? Of all my posts in this thread on women in early Christianity, I think this is the most important. Again, I give my reflections on it from my Introduction to the NT: The first thing to observe is that women may have been disproportionately represented in the earliest Christian communities. This at least was a constant claim made by the opponents [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:05-04:00August 4th, 2017|History of Christianity (100-300CE), Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions, Women in Early Christianity|

Did Paul Think Jesus’ Body Remained in the Grave? Mailbag July 14, 2017

I will address two very different questions in this edition of the Readers’ Mailbag. If you have a question you would like me to address, ask away, and I’ll add it to the list. QUESTION: I just finished reading scholar Gregory Riley’s Resurrection Reconsidered. He presents the position that people in the Greco-Roman world had a very different perception about spirits (ghosts) than we do today. Riley states that people living in the first century Roman Empire believed that dead people frequently came back to visit the living, appearing in “bodies” that looked exactly like their former fleshly bodies, and having the same capabilities of their former fleshly bodies: capable of eating food, drinking wine, and even engaging in sex…even sex with the living! The ONLY difference between a spirit body and a fleshly body was that USUALLY a spirit body was impalpable (could not be touched). Riley believes that Paul would have been shocked to hear about an empty tomb as he would have believed that Jesus’ fleshly body would OF COURSE [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:04-04:00July 14th, 2017|Bart’s Biography, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Why Would I Call Myself Both an Agnostic or an Atheist? A Blast From the Past

My personal beliefs came up in my debate with Dinesh D’Souza that I posted last week, and I received several questions about how I classify myself: agnostic or atheist? I’ve talked about that on the blog a couple of times, but as I am constantly reminded, many of the people who are on the blog now were not on it a year or two ago, as there is turnover and our numbers continue to grow. And certainly no one (well, almost no one) goes back and reads everything from, say five years ago! So I thought it would be fine to repost my earlier comments. It was in response to a question I received back then, very similar to the questions I’ve received over the past week. ****************************************************** QUESTION: If you don't think God exists, why do you refer to yourself as an agnostic? If this is your perspective, why not refer to yourself as an atheist? Could it be that you don't believe the Christian God exists, but are open to the possibility [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:37:45-04:00July 4th, 2017|Public Forum, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Why Was Marcion Declared a Heretic?

The question I will be dealing with this week relates to the issue of heresy and orthodoxy in early Christianity. If you have a question you would like me to address, let me know! QUESTION: As I am reading about Marcion being declared a heretic I wonder, who had the authority to do this? RESPONSE: It’s a very good question, and more significant than, on the surface, one might think. First some background. Marcion was a second-century philosopher/theologian/teacher who eventually came to be branded as one of the arch-heretics of early Christianity. Our only sources of information about him are the writings of his enemies – proto-orthodox church fathers (church writers who embraced the theological views that later came to be endorsed as “orthodox” – that is, teaching the “right beliefs”) who saw him, and his views, as dastardly and demonic false teachings meant to led the faithful astray. It is much debated how much we can trust what his enemies said if we want to determine what it is that [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:37:45-04:00July 3rd, 2017|Heresy and Orthodoxy, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

My Role in Editing My Most Important Book that No One Has Heard Of.

Just one question in this week’s blog, about a book that I edited that most readers of the blog have never heard of, let alone read, but that is probably one of the most important books I’ve ever been involved with. QUESTION: Dr. Ehrman, in your first and second edition of The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis that you co-edited with Dr. Michael Holmes, what was your role in editing, especially since some articles were beyond your admitted expertise? - Dr. Michael Holmes is also the author of The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations and The Greek New Testament, among other works. RESPONSE: This is actually a terrific question, but before addressing it directly I need to provide a bit of background. The book this person is asking about is in the field of “textual criticism” in its technical sense, that is, the study of how to reconstruct the original text of the New Testament given the fact that we don’t have the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:37:45-04:00June 25th, 2017|Bart’s Biography, Book Discussions, New Testament Manuscripts, Reader’s Questions|

How Did Judas Iscariot Die? Readers’ Mailbag June 18, 2017

Two questions in this week’s Readers’ mailbag. The first concerns the very strange tradition about how Judas Iscariot actually died, as found in the writings of the early church father Papias; the second is about modern evangelical Christian biblical scholars: how do they deal with the fact that our manuscripts contain so many textual variants? If you have a question, feel free to ask, and I’ll add it to the ever growing mailbag. QUESTION: Papias didn’t think very highly of Judas. I can’t remember exactly what he said, is his version closer to Matthew or Acts? Or a different tradition altogether? RESPONSE: First some background. Papias is one of the fascinating and virtually unknown figures from the early church. He is normally thought to have been writing around 120 or 130 CE. His major work was a five-volume discussion of the teachings of Jesus, called Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord. We very much regret that we no longer have this book – it would have been the first known explanation of/commentary [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:37:28-04:00June 18th, 2017|History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

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