Reader’s Questions Archives - Page 20 of 29 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

Modern Appearances of Jesus

QUESTION: Why do you suppose no one has had visions of Jesus since the Gospels? And why have there been visions of Mary instead? RESPONSE: Another good question. The answer is: people *do* have visions of Jesus (all the time)! I could have approached the topic in a number of ways in my book, but this is what I say there: ******************************************************* Jesus’ Appearances in the Modern World And consider the modern appearances of Jesus. Some of these are documented by Phillip H. Wiebe, in his book Visions of Jesus: Direct Encounters from the New Testament to Today (My footnote says this: I should stress that Wiebe is not a religious fanatic on a mission. He is chair of the Philosophy Department at Trinity Western University and is a serious scholar. Still, at the end of the day, he thinks that something “transcendent” has led to some of the modern visions of Jesus he recounts. In other words, they – or some of them – are veridical.) Wiebe narrates twenty-eight case studies, which he [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:59-04:00April 16th, 2014|Book Discussions, Reader’s Questions|

Did Disciples Have Visions of Jesus?

I am ready and willing to begin answering questions readers have about my book How Jesus Became God. So feel free to ask away. Here is a good one I received today. QUESTION: I have enjoyed reading your interesting and thought provoking books, Jesus Interrupted and Forged. At the moment I am reading How Jesus Became God and would like to comment on some of the content of Chapter 5. To that point in the book, it seems to me you have been very careful to avoid speculation, but it seems to me that the application of your usual standards may have lapsed somewhat in regard to the visions of Jesus after the crucifixion. Specifically, what evidence do we have, apart from the Gospels, that any of Jesus' disciples actually had visions of Jesus after his death? Certainly, at some point in early Christianity, the story of the visions became part of the lore, but as you have pointed out in previous parts of the book, the oral recounting of the stories was subject [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:59-04:00April 15th, 2014|Book Discussions, Canonical Gospels, Reader’s Questions|

Why It Matters

In my recent Huffington Post article I try to explain why it *matters* that the early followers of Jesus began calling him God, and I try to make the case that it matters not only for Christians (most of whom think Jesus *is* God, so that the development of that doctrine is obviously important) but for all of us, Christian or non-Christian, who are interested in the history of our civilization. My statement to that end has been misunderstood by several, maybe lots (?), of readers, and I need to explain what I mean and do not mean. Here is what I say in the article: FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in as a Member. Click here for membership options. If you don't belong yet, NOW'S YOUR CHANCE!!! How did that happen? How did we get from a Jewish apocalyptic preacher -- who ended up on the wrong side of the law and was crucified for his efforts -- to the Creator of all things and All-powerful Lord? How did Jesus become [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:46-04:00April 2nd, 2014|Book Discussions, Reader’s Questions|

The Literary-Historical Method and History

COMMENT BY A READER: I like the “literary-historical” approach, but only up to a point, just so long as the claims of primitive history, the interpretations of bible scholars, and the anti-Semitic pronouncements of its religious authors, don’t outweigh or override the literature. After all, Jesus did NOT have personal biographers who took notes and reported what was going on throughout his lifetime. We only know of him as the protagonist within an ill-defined genre, someone carefully crafted after-the-fact in order to appear more god-like than human. Thus, it seems a mistake to treat the Gospel of Mark, or any similar ancient narrative (whether canonized or not), either as the legitimate retelling of history, or merely as one particular form of Greco-Roman storytelling. RESPONSE: Yes, it anyone thinks the literary-historical approach involves making historical claims about the narrative they have misunderstood what it is trying to do. Let me explain. There are numerous ways, of course, that one can approach the Gospels of the NT, just as there are numerous ways that one can [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:30-04:00February 25th, 2014|Canonical Gospels, Reader’s Questions|

Was Jesus Inserted Into Paul’s Letters?

QUESTION: I find the historical evidence for existence of Jesus pretty compelling as far as ancient history of antiquity goes. Just to play devil’s advocate, how confident can we be that Paul’s letters have not been significantly doctored over a period of decades, inserting references to a historical Jesus when no such references exist in the originals? What are the oldest fragments and whole letters of the Pauline epistles? RESPONSE: Interesting question. I think I need to answer it more fully than just by giving a comment because some of my work (Misquoting Jesus) has been used by some people to claim that I don’t think we can know *anything* about an early form of the texts of the New Testament. And that ain’t true. My view is that we cannot know for *certain* about the original texts at any point, since we lack manuscript witnesses from near the time. That is a very BIG problem for fundamentalists and hard-core evangelical Christians – a number of whom see me as the devil incarnate, even [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:14-04:00February 10th, 2014|New Testament Manuscripts, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Abraham and Jesus?

QUESTION: THIS QUESTION FROM A MEMBER OF THE BLOG QUOTES SOMETHING I SAID IN MY PREVIOUS POST AND THEN ASKS A QUESTION ABOUT IT: “As I’ve intimated, my own view is that these patriarchal narratives are not historical accounts of people who actually lived and did the things ascribed to them. I see them as highly legendary, narratives told by the people of Israel – after they became the people of Israel (say in the 11th or 10th centuries) — about their “early days.” Stories circulated for years and years in different parts of the land, among different tribes of people who were later said to have all been part of Israel. These stories were then combined and put into the sources, which later were composed into one big narrative (say in the 6th c BCE). I do not see them as historical records, but more as something like “founding legends” that help explain to the people who they are in light of their (imagined) past.” If that’s the case then why can’t the same [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:14-04:00February 9th, 2014|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

Jesus Kissing Mary Magdalene

QUESTION: I know that the “Gospel of Philip does not have much if any real historical veracity to it about Jesus’ life, but does the references about Jesus and Mary Magdalene being lovers and the holes in the papyrus ‘kissing’ verse (verses 32 and 55 in your “Lost Scriptures” book), help support the view that this most likely Gnostic Christian sect truly believed and taught that Jesus and Mary M were married? RESPONSE: Yes, this is one of those questions I get asked about on occasion. I have a reasonably full discussion of the relevant issues in my book Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene. In the book I put the discussion in the context of – yes, you guessed it -- Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, the one source many people turn to for the Gospel of Philip. (!) Here’s what I say there: ************************************************************** Some of the historical claims about the non-canonical Gospels in the Da Vinci Code have struck scholars as outrageous, or at least outrageously funny. The book claims, for example, that [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:13-04:00February 5th, 2014|Book Discussions, Christian Apocrypha, Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions, Sex and Sexuality in the Bible, Women in Early Christianity|

Mary Magdalene as a Prostitute?

In my previous post I was answering the following question: “where did the origin of Mary Magdalene as an escort/ sex worker come from?” I began my answer by citing a passage from my book on Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene, where I explained that a number of passages in the New Testament in which women are said to appear are often said / assumed to be about Mary Magdalene, even though she is not mentioned in them. That is where I will pick up the conversation here, to show that these stories are almost certainly *not* about her; I will then show how they all got mushed together in the popular imagination, largely because of a famous sermon preached by a famous pope in the sixth century. Here is where I resume: *************************************************************************** None of these New Testament stories, however, deals with Mary Magdalene -- except in popular imagination, which has kept blissfully removed from a careful reading of the texts themselves. But the New Testament texts actually tell a different tale. Mary Magdalene [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:13-04:00February 3rd, 2014|Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions, Women in Early Christianity|

Mary Magdalene in Various Guises

QUESTION: Forgive me if this has already been asked several times, but where did the origin of Mary Magdalene as an escort/ sex worker come from? RESPONSE: Ah, great question. It’s kind of a complicated story, so I’ve decided simply to reprint what I have to say about it in my discussion of Mary Magdalene in my book Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene. In that book I devote six chapters to each of these important Christian figures, in each case explaining what we can know about them historically and then what we can know about the later legends that sprang up about them. In my introductory comments to my discussion of Mary Magdalene, I explain why she is widely thought of as a prostitute (in the popular imagination, not by scholars), even though she is not called that in the New Testament. This discussion is too long for a single post, so I will divide it in two, with the second coming tomorrow or the next day. ***************************************************************************** One feature of our sources makes Mary’s [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:24:13-04:00February 1st, 2014|Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions, Women in Early Christianity|

Historical Certainty and Jesus

QUESTION(S): Evidently the “Q” source is quite authentic, but why? And, other sources of Jesus’ sayings may be related to oral traditions and even to early church teachings that were fed back into the Gospels and are less authentic…. I find it hard to accept that what we have in the New Testament is the authentic material was actually said and done by Jesus (in the strict historic sense). You said that the statement about Jesus relating to God’s Kingdom on earth and who was to rule and that Jesus thought he was the King of the Jews and that Judas reported that to the religious authorities. How do we know that this is historically accurate? How can we know that one item is authentic and others aren’t? I did read your book dealing with the criteria, but I am not convinced…. ***Question*** How do we know, absolutely and historically, that even those sayings of Jesus that meet the criteria you use are authentic and not simply the teachings of the early church fed back [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:56-04:00January 24th, 2014|Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

The Jesus Seminar and John the Baptist

QUESTION: Does the Jesus Seminar also reject the claim that the Baptist was an apocalypticist? Bart Ehrman Jesus Seminar and John the Baptist RESPONSE: This is a great question, and I’m afraid I don’t know the definitive answer – in part because the Jesus Seminar did not have one and only one view on many topics. The Seminar was made up of a group of scholars who got together twice a year to discuss which aspects of the traditions found in the Gospels (mainly the canonical Gospels along with the Gospel of Thomas) were more likely to be authentic, and which, as a corollary, were likely to have been later creations of the early church as they told their stories about Jesus. The members of the seminar would then vote on each tradition – after extensive, learned discussion, and publish the results of their votes. I should say that on many of the very broad and most important issues about the historical Jesus I was/am in complete agreement with the seminar. We all agree that: [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:56-04:00January 22nd, 2014|Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

Jesus Writes A Letter!

QUESTION: I only recently bought Eusebius’ “Ecclesiastical History” and have flipped through it. I was shocked to see in Book 1, Chapter 13, a supposed letter from Jesus to King Agbarus! I knew I had to everything Eusebius wrote with a grain of salt, but after this, it made me realise that a grain won’t be enough. No one actually takes this letter seriously, do they? And if not, how much confidence can we place in his other testimonies of letters and documents that we no longer have access to beyond his book? RESPONSE: Yes indeed, this is the famous correspondence between Jesus and King Abgar of Edessa in Syria (well, famous among scholars of early Christianity at least). I have translated it anew for my book The Other Gospels. Here is what I say there about the letters (the one from Abgar to Jesus, then his response); at the end of the post I give my new translations of the two letters. ****************************************************************************************************** Jesus’ Correspondence with Abgar The apocryphal correspondence between Jesus and Abgar [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:56-04:00January 18th, 2014|Christian Apocrypha, Reader’s Questions|

A Third View of Jesus’ Body at the Resurrection

This will be my final post on the early Christian understandings of the nature of Jesus’ resurrected body. I have tried to show that Paul believed that Jesus’ actual body came out of the tomb, but as a spiritual, immortal body – completely transformed; other Christians, including groups of Gnostics, maintained that Jesus’ spirit lived on even though his body decomposed and ceased to exist (like all other bodies) In this final post I deal with another extreme in the opposite direction, one found already in the New Testament, possibly in order to oppose the idea that Jesus was raised only in spirit but not in body. Again, this is an extract from my forthcoming book How Jesus Became God. ************************************************************************************ The Raising of the Mortal Body We don’t know how early such full-blown Gnostic views came to expression in the Christian movement; they were certainly in place by the middle of the second century, and possibly earlier. But there were tendencies toward such views already in the New Testament period. If my reconstruction of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:27-04:00December 1st, 2013|Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine, Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

A Gnostic View of Jesus’ Resurrection

The Gnostic view of Jesus' resurrection. Yesterday, in response to a question, I discussed Paul’s view of the resurrection of Jesus. In response to several questions I was asked, let me say emphatically that YES, in my view Paul believed that Jesus' corpse itself was transformed into a spiritual body. If asked, he would have said that the grave was empty. That’s how I read 1 Corinthians 15. The body that comes out of the tomb is the same body that went into the tomb, but it is a transformed (not a different) body, made immortal. (And let me stress – again in response to a couple of questions I’ve asked: this is not *my* view of what happened to Jesus’ body. I’m just explaining what *Paul’s* view was). Paul’s view was not the only one found among the early Christians. I explain that view further in this excerpt from my forthcoming book How Jesus Became God: The Raising of the Spirit - the Gnostic View of Jesus' Resurrection Some ancient Christians – taking a [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:27-04:00November 30th, 2013|Early Christian Doctrine, Heresy and Orthodoxy, Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

Paul and the Resurrection of a Spiritual Body

QUESTION: You may have gone over this before, but do you think the earliest Christians, Peter, Paul, and Mary etc. believed in the physical bodily resurrection of Jesus, or do you think they believed his “spirit” was raised from the dead? From Paul’s writing it’s hard for me to judge. I ask this because it seems easier for me to attribute the resurrection belief to “hallucinations” if they were only experiencing visions of Jesus’ spirit. Even group “hallucinations” of Jesus’ spirit seems plausible, maybe during a group’s ecstatic experience or something. On the other hand I think there’s difficulty with the idea that several people hallucinated an experiences with a seemingly physical Jesus. RESPONSE: This is a great question. My view is that different early Christians had different views. Paul’s view for me is the most interesting. In a forthcoming book I’ve mapped out my understanding of that. Here’s what I say there: ****************************************************************************** It is striking, and frequently overlooked by casual observers of the early Christian tradition, that even though it was a universal [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:27-04:00November 29th, 2013|Early Christian Doctrine, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Errant Texts and Historians

QUESTION: In your debates with James White and Dan Wallace, you argued that we cannot know what the original autographs of the NT said because we don't have the originals. In your debate with James White, you even commented that the 2nd or 3rd copier of the text of Mark could have radically altered the text so that the way it came down to us is radically different than the autographs. You've argued that this is the case even for classical writings or any textual document from antiquity. Now, if you believe we cannot know what the originals said because we don't have the autographs, then how could you know that Paul met with James and Cephas, and use that as an argument proving that we know Jesus existed? Is it not possible (according to your view) that Galatians has been radically altered? In other words, it seems that you either have to sacrifice your skepticism regarding textual criticism or sacrifice your certainty for the historicity of Jesus. RESPONSE: This is a great question! So, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:15-04:00November 20th, 2013|New Testament Manuscripts, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Why Historians Can Talk “About” the Resurrection

In this final post (for now) on the historian and miracles, I want to emphasize one point that I raise of my own volition, and answer one question that has been asked by a reader. First, a point to emphasize (I borrow this from my forthcoming book on How Jesus Became God), on whether my stand on miracles just means that I’m a crazy secularist…. The reason that historians cannot prove or disprove whether God has performed a miracle in the past – such as by raising Jesus from the dead – is not because historians are required to be secular humanists with an anti-supernaturalist bias. I want to stress this point because conservative Christian apologists, in order to score debating points, often claim that this is the case. In their view, if historians did not have anti-supernaturalist biases or assumptions, they would be able to affirm the historical “evidence” that Jesus was raised from the dead. I should point out that these Christian apologists almost never consider the “evidence” for other miracles from the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:15-04:00November 15th, 2013|Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

Historians and the Problem of Miracle

Yesterday I started to talk about why historians cannot demonstrate that a miracle such as the resurrection happened because doing so requires a set of presuppositions that are not generally shared by historians doing their work. Over the years I’ve thought a lot about this question, and have tried to explain on several occasions why a “miracle” can never be shown, on historical grounds, to have happened -- even if it did. Here is a slightly different way of approaching the matter, as I expressed it in an earlier publication on the historical Jesus: ******************************************************** People today typically think of miracles as supernatural violations of natural law, divine interventions into the natural course of events. I should emphasize that this popular understanding does not fit particularly well into modern scientific understandings of "nature," in that scientists today are less confident in the entire category of natural "law" than they were, say, in the nineteenth century. For this reason, it is probably better not to speak of supernatural violations of "laws," but to think of miracles [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:14-04:00November 15th, 2013|Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

History is Not the Past

Yesterday I started to answer a question from a reader who pointed out that just as the existence of Jesus is multiply attested, so too is Jesus’ resurrection. And so if *one* is established as historical, doesn’t the other one *also* have to be seen as historical? And if one is considered non-historical, doesn’t that show that the other is probably also non-historical? These are great questions, but I think the answer to both of them is “no.” Yesterday I showed why multiple attestation strongly supports the existence of Jesus. Some readers objected to that, but I should reiterate – this is simply a common sense principle that all of us use every day to decide if something happened (say, what happened at lunch yesterday). Today I want to show why multiple attestation can *not* be used to support the resurrection of Jesus. I begin by pointing out something that hasn’t occurred to a lot of people, but is nonetheless a fundamental point. History is not the past. This may come as a surprise, but [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:14-04:00November 13th, 2013|Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

Multiple Attestation for Jesus

I had an interesting email from a reader the other day, in which he pointed out that the “multiple attestation” for the existence of Jesus is virtually matched by the “multiple attestation” for the resurrection of Jesus. At first I thought his point was the Christian apologetic one, that therefore since the resurrection is just as well (not quite, but still pretty well) attested as the very existence of Jesus, doesn’t that show that Jesus was probably raised from the dead? When I responded to that question, it turned out that he was actually saying the opposite: since we (meaning he and I) don’t believe that Jesus was raised from the dead, but *that’s* well attested, doesn’t that call into question the very existence of Jesus, which has comparable attestation. Multiple attestation can’t “show” it, in this view. As I think about it now, my response to *both* points (the Christian apologetic and the non-christian mythicist) is probably the same, that when dealing with the two phenomena – 1. the existence of Jesus and 2. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:23:14-04:00November 12th, 2013|Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

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