I'm catching up on posting some of the very interesting questions I've received from blog readers.  This will take a couple of posts.  Here are three excellent ones, all going to the heart of what it means to engage in a historical/critical assessment of the New Testament.   QUESTION: Hey Bart, I have a question about the acceptance of the Deutero-Pauline epistles. If they were written while Paul was still alive, it seems like he would have said those weren’t his, and to knock it off. If they were written after Paul had died, it seems like his closest companions would have said that Paul had already died, the epistles were fake, and to knock it off – especially if the epistles were written years after Paul had died. So my question is, why were the Deutero-Pauline epistles accepted? RESPONSE: It was nearly impossible for authors in the ancient world to know which books were forged in their name and circulated, except by accident.  If someone in, say, Smyrna, forged a book [...]

Here some more of the excellent questions I have received from readers, and my responses.   QUESTION: Dale Allison has said that the word for buried in 1 Corinthians 15 means to be buried in a mass grave, tomb or stone cave but it does not mean in a shallow grave where bird eat the corpse.  Is this true? RESPONSE: The verb Paul uses in 1 Cor. 15:4, THAPTO, means to be placed in a TAPHOS, which is the place, of whatever kind, a corpse was buried or simply ended up in.  1 Clement uses it to refer to that dark place (i.e., nowhere, I guess) from which God brings people when they are born in the world (1 Clem 38:3); Ignatius of Antioch uses it to refer to the bellies of the wild beasts that he is going to when they rip him apart and devour him (Ignatius to the Romans 3:13). In short, it can mean any place that a dead (or nonliving) person "is." So, no, I don’t think [...]

Here are some of the more interesting questions from readers over the past few weeks, and my responses:   READER’S QUESTION Have you considered the angle that Jesus may have been a revolutionary Essene? This would explain his outward orientation instead of inward. I mean he fits right in with being a disciple of John the Baptist and has a very Essene worldview. A good amount of his followers were also followers of John the Baptist. Most of the points he makes, eating with tax collectors and sinners, doing things on the Sabbath, not obsessing over ritual purity. All of these seems strangely specifically targeted towards the essenes, which means he is very familiar and actively critiquing them. I am wondering if he could basically be what Luther was to Catholicism. As in Luther was a catholic and started a revolution inside Catholicism. Like on the surface it doesn’t fit but if he’s a counterculture within Essenism, it fits pretty well   MY RESPONSE: Yes, I’ve thought a lot about it and written about it. [...]

I continue to get excellent questions from readers of the blog.  I can't devote a post to all of them (I do answer all the ones I get in the comments section), but I do like to address a few of them publicly for everyone to see, every week or so.  Here's a current outstanding batch. QUESTION: Re 2nd Thessalonians: If it was written a few years after First Thessalonians couldn’t Paul have changed his mind on how imminent the end times were? Also, if he asked Timothy to write to the Thessalonians and use 1st Thess as a template so they know its from Paul, and Paul would sign it at the end – wouldn’t that explain things just as well as a later forger? RESPONSE: Yup!  Most anything's possible. Some people, for example, continue to think Paul also wrote 3 Corinthians and the Letter to the Laodiceans.  But that’s almost certainly not the case.  It's always a judgment call. But in the case of 2 Thessalonians, it appears even to those [...]

Here are some of the intriguing questions I have recently received from blog members.  The first one includes a reply to my response and my response to that reply.  Enjoy!   QUESTION: Have you considered the angle that Jesus may have been a revolutionary Essene?  This would explain his outward orientation instead of inward.  I mean he fits right in with being a disciple of John the Baptist and has a very Essene worldview.  A good amount of his followers were also followers of John the Baptist.  Most of the points he makes, eating with tax collectors and sinners, doing things on the Sabbath, not obsessing over ritual purity ==  all of these seems strangely specifically targeted towards the Essenes, which means he is very familiar and actively critiquing them. I am wondering if Jesus’ relation to the Essenes could be comparable what to Luther’s relation to Catholicism. As in Luther was a Catholic and started a revolution inside Catholicism. On the surface it doesn’t fit but if he’s a counterculture within [...]

Here are three interesting questions I've recently received, and my attempts to answer....   QUESTION: I’ve been wondering about the passage in Romans where Paul expresses his fear about returning to Jerusalem on account of opposition because he wanted to take the money that he raised there before leaving for Spain. I used to couple this account with Paul’s final leg of his third mission out of Corinth back to Jerusalem, and there he indeed faces opposition Acts chapter 20 and then finds himself in Rome, in prison Acts 28? The passages seem to fit well together, but how? History, hearsay, looking at the letter itself expanding the details? What do you think? RESPONSE: I think the big problem is the whether we can accept the book of Acts as providing a reliable account of Paul's arrest and trials.  I don’t think we can.  So reconciling it or conflating it with Paul’s own account(s) just doesn’t work. In Acts, the arrest itself is meant to show that Paul has never done anything contrary [...]

I've started posting questions and responses from readers.  Here's another set of particularly good ones.   QUESTION: I recently read your book Jesus Interrupted and have become interested in your work. In it you discussed the potential forgeries contained in the Pauline letters and New Testament but it didn’t seem to mention much about the Old Testament. I noticed you did say that the New Testament was your specialty but was wondering if there was any evidence you were aware of that the Old Testament contains similar situations and which books. RESPONSE: Yes, my book was just about the NT, not the entire Bible.  Most of the books of the OT are either anonymous (Genesis through 2 Kings, e.g.) or written in the authors’ actual names (most of the prophets starting with Isaiah).  Others are attributed to a person who didn't write them.  Proverbs, for example, does not claim to be by Solomon.  In cases like this, since the author himself doesn't claim to be the person to whom the book is later [...]

The intriguing questions keep coming.  Here are some more that I've received.  And BTW, if you're not a Gold Member on the blog you might consider moving up to that level: one of the perks is that I do a live Q&A every month with Gold Members, which is recorded and then distributed to them.  It's a terrifically fun event and I get very good questions to address. But for now, here's some that I've addressed in writing: QUESTION This question is about the understanding of atonement across the gospels. Specifically why do Matthew and John think Jesus specifically HAD to die, in your view? Especially Matthew since he is the one I struggle with most. Luke famously doesn’t have atonement and thinks he had to die to bring people to repentance. I think Mark is a Pauline Gospel so it has his theology of Jesus death being a ransom for gentiles in mind. Matthew and John are the ones that I struggle with most, though. I think John says that it is meant to [...]

Here are some more particularly interesting and significant questions I've received from readers, with answers for all here to check out.   QUESTION: Dr. Ehrman: I find it interesting how the understanding of the Greek translation might affect such a crucial NT story. Also, it is in Luke’s narrative that we get the “no room in the inn” comment. I have read one commentary that the Greek original literal translation is more like “the travelers shelter was not for them”. Do you have any thoughts on the Greek original of Luke 2:7? RESPONSE: It's a tricky Greek word (KATALUMA) that could mean either "inn" or "guestroom."  It is found in only two other places in the NT, Mark 14:14/Luke 22:11 (Luke has copied Mark's verse verbatim) where Jesus is clearly referring to a room, not an inn.  In Luke 2:7, though, the context appears to suggest "a place where travelers stayed" rather than "a particular room in a house" since, having not found a “place” to stay in it (the KATALUMA) they [...]

I’ve recently answered some queries from readers and thought that the questions were too good not to post for all to see.   They are all on different topics, but interesting ones, and they required different lengths of answer.  Here they are, four of them, a blog Q&A.   Question One: I am writing a blog about how Christians defend biblical inerrancy and I came across an on-line article with this quote. “You have searched the Scriptures, which are true and given by the Holy Spirit. You know that nothing unrighteous or counterfeit is written in them.” —Clement of Rome, letter to the Corinthians, first century Two questions: Was there really a Pope in the first century? What kind of “scripture” could he possibly be referring to in the last decade of the first century?   My Response: This article is giving a passage found in 1 Clement 45.2.  1 Clement is a letter from around 95 CE or so, written by the Christians in Rome to the Christians in Corinth; presumably *someone* [...]