Reader’s Questions Archives - Page 18 of 30 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

Intentional Changes of the Text

I’m getting back now, with this post, to the thread that I started a full month ago in response to a question a member of the blog had related to the field about one of my books that deals with the textual criticism of the New Testament. Just to bring us all back up to speed, I will here repeat the question and briefly summarize what I have covered so far. READER’S QUESTION: Dr. Ehrman, I do not know if others would find this interesting, but I would love to know how you developed the idea for The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. How did you go about researching it? How long did it take? Is it a once in a lifetime work? RESPONSE: To start with, I have devoted a number of posts to unpacking what the title of my actually means. First, in several posts, I’ve explained what the term “orthodoxy” means to scholars of early Christianity, and what it doesn’t mean. To sum up as succinctly as I can (for fuller [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:30:03-04:00July 30th, 2015|Book Discussions, New Testament Manuscripts, Reader’s Questions|

More Hard Issues on the Qur’an Fragments

My plan is to make this the final post for now on the issue of the Qur’an fragments discovered at the University of Birmingham. Obviously the discussion could go on forever (it’s been going on for 1500 years and is not likely to stop any time soon). But I’m not a scholar of the Qur’an or of Islam, and I would prefer sticking to topics that are within my realm of expertise. I know that comment itself will prompt emails from two groups of people, (a) from Muslims urging me to study the Qur’an so I will see that it is true and convert to Islam and (b) from Christians urging me to subject the Qur’an to the same kind of scrutiny to which critical scholars have subjected the NT, in order to show that Islam too has abundant problems. The reason I know this will happen is because I get both kinds of emails, *all* the time! But I’m sorry to say, I’m not going to convert to Islam and I’m not going to [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:30:03-04:00July 29th, 2015|Reader’s Questions, Religion in the News|

More on the Discovery of Ancient Qur’an Fragments

My post on Saturday about the discovery of two pages of the Qur’an in the library of the University of Birmingham that appear to date from the time of Mohammed himself. or a decade or so later, evoked more than the usual response. My facebook post has received nearly 260,000 hits. I think before that my previous highest hit total was 25,000 or so. Amazing amount of interest in this. And so I’m going to do something I’ve never done before on the 3+ years of the blog: I’m going to post several comments that I have received (on the assumption that many people reading the blog do not read all the comments and my responses to them) (if I’m completely wrong about that, I’d like to know) (though I’m not sure how I could ever get enough responses to see that I’m *completely* wrong. :-) ) will say something about each one – the first two are typical of several that I’ve gotten. The last two are hard-hitting and particularly informative. (I will not [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:30:03-04:00July 27th, 2015|Reader’s Questions, Religion in the News|

What is An Orthodox Corruption of Scripture?

READER’S QUESTION: Dr. Ehrman, I do not know if others would find this interesting, but I would love to know how you developed the idea for _The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture_. How did you go about researching it? How long did it take? Is it a once in a lifetime work? MY RESPONSE: Ah, this is a great question and it will take a number of posts to lay it all out, as it is a very complicated affair. But it could make for an interesting thread. We’ll see! To begin with, I need to say something about what the book was about. I will have a lot more to say about that in subsequent posts. At this point I’ll simply try to give the whole thing in a nutshell. First let me clarify the key terms of the title, which in full was : The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament. By “Scripture” I was referring only to the specifically Christian Scriptures, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:29:46-04:00June 30th, 2015|Book Discussions, Early Christian Doctrine, Heresy and Orthodoxy, History of Christianity (100-300CE), New Testament Manuscripts, Reader’s Questions|

Questions on the Discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library

I have received a number of questions from readers about the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, arising out of my earlier discussion of it and the beginning of the back and forth I’m having with Mark Goodacre (as we await his reply to my initial response; he is overseas attending an academic conference and has his hands tied up just now). Here I will deal with two questions, one that’s a zinger and the other that has been asked by several readers. First the zinger. The reader noted that I indicated that the books of the library were manufactured in the fourth century; we know this because the leather bindings on the books had their spines strengthened with scrap papyrus (and is therefore called the cartonnage) and some of these papyri were dated receipts. And so the reader’s question: QUESTION: Just out of curiosity – what form of dating did the compilers of the books use, that would correspond to our “341 CE” and so on? I’m assuming they weren’t using Roman dates. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:29:45-04:00June 25th, 2015|History of Biblical Scholarship, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Reader’s Questions|

Contradictory Stories and Historical Method

I was surprised and intrigued to see the reactions I received to my post in which I responded to Mark Goodacre’s five points calling into question the traditional story of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library. In it I pointed out that just because a story changes over time does not mean that the gist of the story is false. If some tellings indicate that the jar was two feet tall and others that it was six, or that there were two people involved or seven, this does not indicate that the story is, at its heart, false, only that it has been changed in the retelling. A number of readers to the blog reacted by saying that the arguments Mark was making about the discovery of the library are precisely the kind of arguments that I (and critical scholars generally, including, probably Mark!) would make, and have made, against the stories of the Gospels about Jesus. If I want to use those kinds of argument against the historicity of the Gospel accounts, what [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:29:45-04:00June 24th, 2015|Historical Jesus, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Reader’s Questions|

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|

The Discovery of Lost Documents

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! **************************************************** I’ve been discussing lost books from early Christianity that I very much wish would be discovered. Like everyone else interested in this field, I would of course love to have *all* the now-lost books to be turned up. Unfortunately, we probably don’t even know what the majority of the lost books even were, and have no concrete reason for thinking that they ever existed. Here is a related question that a member of the blog asked a couple of weeks ago: QUESTION: What do you think are the odds that a really startling discovery like [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:29:30-04:00June 10th, 2015|New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Year Three on the Blog

QUESTION: If I remember right, you just passed the three year mark of the blog. How much have you raised total? RESPONSE: Right! This will be just a short post to provide an update on the blog. Yes indeed, we passed the three-year mark a month ago, on April 4. I was going to make a post summarizing the year, but other things got in the way and I ended up doing other threads and never got back to it. So I’ll do it now, a month late. The blog is still doing great and getting ever better, in my opinion. First, in direct answer to the question about the money that has been raised. That is the matter particularly near and dear to my heart. It’s my ultimate interest, as I’ve said numerous times, since the entire point of the blog, in one sense, is to raise money for charity. I am very happy indeed to say that we raised $78,000 in our third year of operation. That is significant money, obviously, and [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:29:13-04:00May 9th, 2015|Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

What Can We Know about the Life of Jesus?

QUESTION: You have stated in your various works that there are some things that we can accept as likely historically true concerning Jesus’ life; his origin in Galilee, his association with John the Baptizer, his crucifixion, etc. For the rest of the episodes in Jesus’ life do we have to content ourselves with contemplation of what this or that gospel tells us about its author and community? Should we just “get over” this desire to know what really happened two thousand years ago? RESPONSE: Yes, this is a very important question. Of paramount importance! Here is a sample of how I deal with it in my just-finished-and-ready-to-send-to-my-readers book. This is from Chapter 5, “False Memories and the Life of Jesus.” This is the chapter where I discuss what anthropologists have told us about oral cultures and the way they preserve their traditions; it’s a crucial chapter since so many people seem to think that in oral cultures people have better memories that we do, and that they make sure not to change traditions that [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:29:13-04:00May 9th, 2015|Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

Truth and History

In my recent post in which I made a paean to memory – which will be the way I end my current book dealing with memory and the historical Jesus -- I said the following. MY REMARK: “The comment that I sometimes get from readers that I find puzzling or disheartening is when they tell me that if there is something in the Gospels that is not historical, then it cannot be true, and if it is not true, then it is not worth reading. My sense is that many readers will find it puzzling or even disheartening that I find this view puzzling and disheartening. But I do. Please call me a prophet if you must, but I would like to point out that a number of readers on the blog did indeed find my view puzzling and disheartening. Mainly puzzling. The following was a very well reasoned response from a reader, to which I would like to reply: READER’S COMMENT: Indeed, stories that aren’t true are no less worthwhile to read. The Bible [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:29:13-04:00May 8th, 2015|Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

What Is A Memory?

A number of readers on the blog have objected to my understanding of memory, specifically to what a memory is, that is, to what constitutes a memory. As a rule, these readers have argued – some with considerable force and conviction! – that a “memory” is a mental recollection of something that one has personally experienced. Let me cite one of the more closely reasoned expressions of this alternative view by one of my respondents, before explaining my view and why I have it. COMMENT: Bart, I think people might be confused by your definition of false memories. In the medical, psychological and legal literature, false memories are defined as BELIEVED-IN MEMORIES OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCES that are false or are falsely remembered by specific persons. Beliefs ,stories, narratives, myths, folklore and conspiracies that are false but are circulating in a community or culture are not considered false memories by memory experts since these are not claimed to be first-hand memories of personal experiences. For example, a false memory can be created in the mind [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:28:56-04:00April 13th, 2015|Memory Studies, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Ramblings on Charity and Religion

QUESTION: Don't you think that being raised in Christianity makes it more likely that you will make decent contributions to others like you do with your charity contributions? I know that one does not have to be Christian to be decent, but it seems, for many of us, to help increase the odds of being decent at least some of the time. RESPONSE: This is a really interesting question. And maybe unanswerable! Why are those of us who are concerned deeply about others and their welfare so … concerned? Is it because we are religious? Or, as in my case, because we used to be religious? In one of my public debates with Dinesh D’Souza a few years ago, this came out as a point of disagreement. Dinesh believes that only Christianity drives people to be concerned about others who are in need. For him, it is not religion in general, but Christianity in particular, that makes people want to be charitable. In the debate, I found that view to be a bit outrageous. Really? [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:28:56-04:00April 11th, 2015|Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Did Matthew Copy Luke or Luke Matthew?

In this thread, which is supposed to be on the lost writings of early Christianity that I would most like to have discovered, I can’t seem to get away from Q, Several readers have asked a pointed question about Q. If you recall, Q is the hypothetical document that contained principally sayings of Jesus, that was evidently used by Matthew and Luke (but not by Mark) in constructing their Gospels. The logic is that if Matthew and Luke both used Mark (which the vast majority of scholars agree about), then one has to explain why they have so many other materials (mainly sayings) in common not *found* in Mark. I have pointed out that Matthew does not seem to have gotten those sayings from Luke or Luke from Matthew, and so they both most have gotten them from some other one-time-existing source. That is what we call Q (for the German word Quelle: Source). But some readers have asked WHY it is unlikely that Matthew got these sayings from Luke or Luke from Matthew. It’s [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:28:39-04:00March 19th, 2015|Canonical Gospels, Reader’s Questions|

The Lost Q Source

I can now return to my thread dealing with a question asked by a reader: if I could choose, which of the lost books from Christian antiquity would I want to be discovered? My first and immediate answer was: the lost letters of Paul. My second answer is what I will deal with here. I would love – we would all love – to have a discovery of Q. Many readers of the blog will know all about Q. Many will know something about Q. Many will have never heard of Q. So here’s the deal. Scholars since the 19th century have worked out the relationship of the Synoptic Gospels with one another. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called “synoptic” because they tell many of the same stories, often in the same sequence, and sometimes in exactly the same words. Synoptic means “seen together.” You can “see” these Gospels “together” by laying them side by side and noting their abundant similarities (and differences). But the only way they could have such extensive similarities (especially the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:28:39-04:00March 16th, 2015|Canonical Gospels, Reader’s Questions|

Why I Wish We Had More of Paul’s Letters

In the previous post I began to answer the question of which lost books of early Christianity I would most like to have discovered, and I started my answer with the earliest writings of which we are familiar, the letters of Paul, most of which (presumably) have been lost. I would love for us to find some of them. I doubt if we ever will, but who knows? Maybe someone will announce that one is to be published later this year! Seriously, we would all love to have more letters from Paul, and not merely for sentimental reasons (Oh, wouldn’t that be *nice*?). Paul is without a doubt the most important figure in the Christian tradition next to Jesus himself. His writings have served as a basis for Christian ethical and theological thought for centuries. And yet we know so little about what he thought and taught. When people read Paul’s letters, they frequently neglect to realize that these are all “occasional” writings. By that I do not mean that Paul occasionally wrote letters, but [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:28:39-04:00March 12th, 2015|Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Lost Christian Writings: The Letters of Paul

QUESTION: What lost early Christian books would you most like to have discovered? RESPONSE: Ah, this is a tough one. There are lots of Christian writing that I would love to have discovered – all of the ones that have been lost, for example! But suppose I had to name some in particular. Well, this will take several posts. To begin with, I wish we had the other letters of Paul. Let me explain. In the New Testament there are thirteen letters that claim Paul as their author. But scholars since the nineteenth century have argued that some of these do not go back to Paul. There is no absolute consensus on the issue of course; fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals argue that all thirteen go back to Paul; some critical scholars agree (not many!); others think that ten go back to Paul. But the most widespread view is that six claim to be written by Paul even though he didn’t write them. The six are ... THE REST OF THIS POST IS FOR MEMBERS [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:28:39-04:00March 11th, 2015|Forgery in Antiquity, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Is “Jehovah” in the Bible?

QUESTION: How firmly grounded in reality is the claim of Jehovah’s Witnesses that the ‘divine name’ (Jehovah) belongs in the New Testament? RESPONSE So this is an interesting question, with several possible ramifications. At first I should explain that the divine name “Jehovah” doesn’t belong in *either* Testament, old or new, in the opinion of most critical scholars, outside the ranks of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. That’s because Jehovah was not the divine name. So here’s the deal. In the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament) God is given a number of different designations. Sometimes he is called God (the Hebrew word is El, or more commonly – by far – the plural form of that word, ELOHIM); or The Almighty (SHADDAI), or God Almighty (EL SHADDAI), or Lord (ADONAI), or – well, or lots of other things. But sometimes the God of Israel is actually given his personal name. Like everyone else, he has a name. And his name was יהוה (in English letters, that looks like YHWH). Written Hebrew, as you probably know... THE [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:28:39-04:00March 10th, 2015|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Reader’s Questions|

A Source for the Birth Narratives in Matthew and Luke?

QUESTION: What’s your take on the independence or interdependence of Mt 1-2 and Lk 1-2. Do you think Luke’s infancy narratives are based on Matthew’s? Or vice versa? Or on some other unknown earlier common source? Or neither and they’re both independent? It sounds like you’re advocating independence. But if they are separate and independent, then we have to account for common elements in the two. Some commonalities are easier to explain (e.g., location in Bethlehem [Micah 5.2]; mother’s name Mary [Mk 6.3]), but others less so (e.g., both have the same name Joseph for Mary’s husband even though that name is not in Mark or Q; both have the unexpected and unprecedented miracle story of a virgin birth). Thoughts? RESPONSE: This is a great and very perceptive question. It is rooted in my thread, just finished, on Bethlehem and Nazareth, in which I argued that both Matthew and Luke have given us stories to explain how Jesus could be the messiah – who (in their opinion) was to be born in Bethlehem – [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:28:39-04:00March 9th, 2015|Canonical Gospels, Reader’s Questions|

Was Jesus From Nazareth?

QUESTION: Do you think Jesus was born in Nazareth? A few weeks ago I went to both Bethlehem and Nazareth. I always thought Jesus was born in Nazareth but most there focused on Bethlehem as Jesus’s birth place. Is there strong evidence for either? RESPONSE Yes, when you visit Israel today, or when you ask any Bible-believing Christian, or when you ask most any Christian, or most any other human being, you will hear that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. The reason is not hard to find: the only references to Jesus’ birth in the New Testament squarely place his birth in Bethlehem. There are, as many of you know, only two passages of the New Testament that narrate the events surrounding Jesus’ birth: Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2. And they both agree in placing it in Bethlehem. And yet there are compelling reasons for questioning that view, so that a large number of critical scholars – even prominent Roman Catholic scholars – think that it is more likely that Jesus was born in [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:28:23-04:00March 4th, 2015|Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

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