Reflections and Ruminations Archives - Page 19 of 31 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

Moving to My Next Book

As I mentioned some time ago, I’ve decided to slow down a bit and enjoy life a bit more. Since 1992 – that is, over the past 25 years – I have written or edited thirty books. I’m not going to stop. But I’m thinkin’ it’s time to ease off a bit. Is there a reason I publish a book a year? Not that I can think of. I’ve done it because it’s my passion. Well, one of my passions. I am a bit obsessed with the history of early Christianity and all that it entails. My books have covered a wide range of fields within that broader area. And I have tried to keep up publishing three different kinds of books: scholarly books for the academics; textbooks for the colleges students; and trade books for the general reading public. It’s been hard to balance all that, especially since I’ve tried to publish a new trade book every two years. I’ve had to do the other books in my spare time, such as it is, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:36:16-04:00February 28th, 2017|Bart’s Biography, Book Discussions, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

My Work Habits the Letter allegedly by Jesus’ Own Brother: Mailbag 2/12/2017

I will be addressing two quite disparate questions in this week’s Readers’ Mailbag: one about my work habits and one about the New Testament epistle of James: how do we know that the author expected his readers to think (or know) that he was actually the brother of Jesus himself? If you have questions you’d like me to address in a future Mailbag, send them along! QUESTION: I notice you seem to get quite a bit done in a day (more than most people I know,) and that you have been doing that from a fairly young age (at one point you even experimented with decreasing your sleeping hours, If memory serves). The biggest hindrance to productivity for me is procrastination (like right now for example). How do you deal with it? You must feel it too sometimes. Did you always have an easier time concentrating than other folks? Did you learn it early in life (maybe by watching your parents)? If so, what techniques do you employ to deal with it? RESPONSE: [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:36:15-04:00February 12th, 2017|Bart’s Biography, Catholic Epistles, Forgery in Antiquity, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

How Do We Know What “Most Scholars” Think?

I have received a particularly interesting question that has led to a bit of back and forth between me and a person on the blog. This person pointed out that in my writings I often indicate that a view that I have (e.g., that the Gospel of John was not written by John the son of Zebedee; that the book of Ephesians was not really written by Paul even though the author claims to be Paul; or that the Gospels are all 40-65 years after the death of Jesus, etc.) is held by the majority of scholars. But fundamentalist and conservative evangelical scholars say just the opposite, that their views (e.g., that John the son of Zebedee did write the Gospel of John, or that the Gospels date to before the destruction of the Jerusalem in the year 70) are the views of the majority of scholars. So who is right? And how can a person know? In my initial response to this person, I told him that what I always try to say (maybe [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:35:58-04:00January 20th, 2017|Bart's Critics, History of Biblical Scholarship, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

My Problem(s) With Fundamentalism: A Blast from the Past

What are fundamentalists, and why don't I like them? Here is a post I published almost exactly four years ago now. My views have not changed! ********************************************************************** QUESTION: You note that fundamentalism is dangerous and harmful. How do you define fundamentalism and why do you think it’s dangerous? RESPONSE: There are of course actual definitions of “fundamentalism” that you can find in scholarship on religion, but I sense that you’re asking more for a rough-and-ready description. Years ago I started defining fundamentalism as “No fun, too much damn, and not enough mental. When I was a fundamentalist myself (yet to be described) I understood it in a positive way. Originally, in Christian circles, it referred to believers who held on to the “fundamentals” of the faith, which for us included such things as the inspiration of Scripture, the full deity of Christ, the Trinity, the virgin birth, the physical resurrection, and, well, probably a collection of other doctrines. Fundamentalism, for us, was to be differentiated from liberalism, which had sacrificed these basic fundamental doctrines to [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:35:58-04:00January 14th, 2017|Public Forum, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Biblical Scholars Don’t Typically Call Themselves Biblical Historians
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Biblical Scholars Don’t Typically Call Themselves Biblical Historians

Historical Jesus, Mythicism, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations

Biblical Scholars Don’t Typically Call Themselves Biblical Historians

Biblical Scholars--are they Biblical Historians....and will I create a book from my blog posts? Two interesting questions on this week's Readers Mailbag. If you have a question, just ask away! Biblical Scholars - How are They Seen? QUESTION: I just had a debate with a Mythicist who had no idea that any biblical scholar could be a historian. I have to admit, I was just as ignorant of this fact until a little less than two years ago. How mainstream is it that biblical scholars are also known as historians? Maybe people think of biblical scholar–historian as two entirely separate entities. RESPONSE It’s a good question! I would say that most biblical scholars in fact are not historians. But some are. It depends on what their interests and expertise are. In most PhD programs in biblical studies – for example, those provided in seminaries and divinity schools – the training is focused principally on the texts of the Bible and their meaning. The emphasis, in those circles, is on “exegesis,” that is, the interpretation [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:35:58-04:00January 13th, 2017|Historical Jesus, Mythicism, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

What Do Translators Translate?

What do translators of the Bible actually translate? This has been the question in the back of my mind for the thread that has been going on over the past couple of weeks. The question has two components. (1) Which books do they translate and call “the Bible”? And (2) when they decide on those books, where do they find what they need in order to translate it? Do they translate certain manuscripts? Which ones? How do they decide? And when the manuscripts have differences among themselves, which ones do they follow? And on what grounds? These are among the enormous number of fundamental questions that translators have to deal with even before they translate the first word of the Bible. But let me be clear and emphatic: they are all questions with which every decent modern translator is intimately familiar, and these scholars always know all the ins and outs of all the issues. I want to stress this point because about once every other week I get a question on email in which [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:35:58-04:00January 10th, 2017|New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Looking Back on the Blog 2016

The end is near! Or at least the end of 2016. For some of us this has been a nightmare year that we are glad to see behind us. For others it has been a year of unusual success, prosperity, and happiness, a utopian cornucopia. Whichever camp you are in (most of us are somewhere in between), I hope you can look forward with some hope to what lies ahead. This will be an end-of-the-year post, summarizing what we have accomplished on the blog over the past twelve months and thinking a bit about what lies ahead. It has been a very good year for the blog. I can start by giving some of the important numbers. My objective, all along, has been to provide 5-6 posts a week, each and every week. To my knowledge, I haven’t missed yet. This past year I made 281 posts, an average of just over 5.4 per week. So I have kept the pace up. Since starting the blog in April 2012, I have made 1394 posts. Each [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:35:40-04:00December 31st, 2016|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

The Copying of the Hebrew Bible

Here I continue on with my comments on the manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, and the question of whether they were changed over the years. Again, this is taken from my discussion in The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction. *********************************************************************** The Masoretic Text The text of the Hebrew Bible that is read today and that is at the basis of all modern translations is called the Masoretic Text. It is called this because the Jewish scholars who devised the rules for copying scripture are known as the Masoretes. The term “masorete” comes from the Hebrew word masorah, which means “tradition.” The Masoretes were the scholars who worked out ways to preserve the traditions of the Hebrew Bible. They were active between 500-1000 CE. To understand what the Masoretes accomplished, you need to remember that ancient written Hebrew was a language that used only consonants, not vowels. Any language that is written only in consonants is open, obviously, to serious problems of interpretation. Imagine if you were to write English that way. Apart from context, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:35:40-04:00December 29th, 2016|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible

Just now I started to write a post dealing with what it is exactly that translators (such as those of the New Revised Standard Version) translated when they translated their texts. I realized that to explain that I have to say something about the surviving Hebrew manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible – something I have not talked a *great* deal about on the blog in the past, and about the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament – about which I have said a good deal more. My comments on the Hebrew Bible will require a couple of posts. As you’ll see, I start at the most basic level and go from there, never getting at all complicated or technical. This has been taken from my textbook The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction ********************************************************** The Text of the Hebrew Bible We have seen that the earliest writings of the Hebrew Bible were probably produced during the eighth century BCE. This is the date of the oldest prophets such as Amos and Isaiah of Jerusalem. When [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:35:40-04:00December 28th, 2016|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Some Arduous Tasks for the New Revised Standard Version

I had several duties as the research assistant to the translation committee of the New Revised Standard Version in 1987-88,. Probably the most difficult involved trying to make sure that there was a consistency in the translation, from one biblical book, passage, and verse to another. How does one determine if a translation is internally consistent? It’s not easy. I had to work through the entire translation, and whenever I came across a key term in the Hebrew or Greek that had been rendered into English in one way in one passage, I had to check whether it was rendered similarly in other passages where the same word occurred. The translators were absolutely not bound and determined to translate the same Hebrew (or Greek) word the same way every time it appeared in the Bible. In some contexts a word will be better translated one way, in others another. But they at least had to be aware of the fact that the term appears in various passages and they had to be cognizant of how [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:35:39-04:00December 27th, 2016|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Finishing the Work of a Translation

I have mentioned that as a graduate student I was asked to be one of the “secretaries” for the New Revised Standard Version translation committee when they were meeting twice a year to make decisions for the new translation, recording the decisions they made for changing the older Revised Standard Version translation. I did that for several years until they had finished their translation. I graduated from my PhD program in 1985, and I was already, at that point, teaching at Rutgers University. My position at Rutgers was a rather precarious one, professionally. In the language almost universally used today, I was an “adjunct” instructor, that is, a temporary faculty member without full (or much of any) benefits and paid as part time, even though I was teaching the full load of courses (with larger classes than most of my colleagues). Rutgers had a special title for me. I was called a “Coadjutant Casual.” I never did know what that meant. At the time, my wife had decided to go back to school to finish [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:35:39-04:00December 26th, 2016|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

A Reflection on Christmas: Blast from the Past

Four years ago I made a very personal post about my feelings about Christmas, the day after. It was one of my personal favorite posts of all time. I repeat it again here, this time the day before. ************************************************************ In the opening chapter of my book God’s Problem, I talked about going to church on Christmas Eve in 2006 with my wife Sarah and brother-in-law Simon, in Saffron-Walden, a market town in England where Simon lives, not far from Cambridge. It was a somber but moving Christmas Eve service, and yet one that had the opposite of the intended effect on me. It made me realize just how estranged I was from the Christian faith, from the notion that with Christ God entered into the world and took its sufferings upon himself. I just didn’t see it, and it made me terrifically sad, resentful, and even angry. There is so much pain and misery all around us, and yet the heavens – in my judgment – seem to be silent. This is not what led me [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:35:39-04:00December 24th, 2016|Bart’s Biography, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Problems with Inclusive Language Bible Translation

From the marvels of the universe (yesterday’s post) to the use of inclusive language in Bible translations (today’s post) – easy! All in one step. The Psalm I quoted yesterday presents a problem to Bible translators who want to render the text to include both men and women. Here is what Psalm 8 says in the (non-inclusive-language) King James, as quoted yesterday: 3 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; 4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? 5 For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. 6 Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: When the New Revised Standard Version came out in 1989, it altered the translation by making it more inclusive, as follows: 3When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:35:39-04:00December 23rd, 2016|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Reflections and Ruminations|

The Marvels of our Universe

Even though I am no longer a believer, I still sometimes read and think about the book of Psalms in the Old Testament. Just yesterday I had occasion to quote Psalm 8 to my wife. In the beautiful and most familiar (though completely non-inclusive!) wording of the King James Version, this is the psalm. 1 O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens. 2 Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. 3 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; 4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? 5 For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. 6 Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:35:39-04:00December 22nd, 2016|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Problems with Inclusive Language Translations

The policy of the NRSV translation committee on inclusive language was sensible, in my view. It involved a three-pronged approach. Any passage that was referring to both men and women was to be rendered inclusively, even if the original language (Hebrew or Greek) used masculine terms (“men,” “man,” “brothers,” “he” etc.). Any passage that was explicitly referring only to men, or only to women, was to be left as referring only to men or to women. All references to the Deity that in the original used masculine terms were to be left masculine. Here I will say a few things about each of these policies, in reverse order. First, the deity. No one on the committee thought that the deity actually has male genitalia or other sexual distinctions. But ... THE REST OF THIS POST IS FOR MEMBERS ONLY. If you don't belong yet, JOIN! It costs less than a coffee at Starbucks a month, and every penny goes to help the needy. You get a good deal, they get a good deal, the world [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:35:39-04:00December 20th, 2016|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Inclusive Language in Bible Translations

One of the most difficult issues that the New Revised Standard Version translation committee had to address involved the use of inclusive language. Part of the problem was that this issue was not a generally recognized issue (by the wider reading public) when the translators began their work, but was very much an issue when they were already finished with a large chunk of it. The translators were mainly senior scholars who had acquired their linguistic skills before virtually anyone in the academy knew (or at least said) that there even was a problem with inclusivity, and so they themselves were learning how to communicate in the new idiom. And it took a while before they figured out how exactly to handle it. I myself was first introduced to the problem when I entered graduate school, and like a lot of people from my generation (especially, but not only, us males) at first I thought it was a fairly ridiculous much ado about nothing and that writing inclusively simply threatened to destroy the beauty of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:35:38-04:00December 19th, 2016|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Lost in Translation

In my last post I began to talk about my involvement with the translation committee for the New Revised Standard Version. My Doktorvater, Bruce Metzger, was the chair of the committee and he asked me, during my graduate studies, to be one of the scribes for the Old Testament subcommittee. In that capacity I recorded all the votes that were taken by the translators for revisions of the text of the Revised Standard Version, in whichever subsection of the committee I was assigned to. Normally the subsection would have, maybe, five scholars on it. They would debate how to modify the text of the RSV, verse by verse, word by word; they would then take a vote by show of hands; and I would record their decision. This was an eye-opening experience for me. Bible translation (or the translation of any foreign-language work, for that matter) is an inordinately complicated procedure. It is impossible to replicate the exact meaning of one language in another, since the nuances of words vary from one language to another. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:35:38-04:00December 18th, 2016|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

A Personal Transition

A week ago today I finally sent off the very last and final version of The Triumph of Christianity to my editor. It is done, as good as I can make it. Now it will go to a copy-editor who will go over it line by line, word by word to make sure the grammar, punctuation, and even spelling is all correct, and to make suggestions for writing style as needed. Depending on the copy-editor, sometimes there are tons of these stylistic suggestions, sometimes hardly any. As an author, I much prefer the “hardly any” approach – it’s much easier on me and more, well, affirming of my writing style. When I do get a lot of suggestions I have to take a deep breath and remind myself that the copy-editor is just doing his/her job and trying to make the prose better. But I do hate that part. I will then go through the copy-edited manuscript, approve or reject all the suggested changes, and return the book to the editor, for it to go [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:35:23-04:00December 7th, 2016|Bart’s Biography, Book Discussions, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Finding Meaning in the Bible: More Responses to my Christmas Article

In the previous post I indicated some of the initial reactions, four years ago, to my Newsweek article on the Gospel stories about Christmas. I received yet more reaction after that old post, and so posted again, dealing this time with people who thought I was too kindly disposed to anyone who found the stories meaningful. Here is what I said at the time. (I still stick by it, for what it's worth!) ********************************************************************** When the editor at Newsweek ask me if I would be willing to write an article on the birth of Jesus, I was hesitant and wrote him back asking if he was sure he really wanted me to do it. I told him that I seem to be incapable of writing anything that doesn’t stir up controversy. It must be in my blood. Still, he said that they knew about my work and were not afraid of controversy, and they did indeed want an article from me. What’s interesting to me is that I’ve been getting it from all sides. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:35:23-04:00December 5th, 2016|Bart's Critics, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Response to my Newsweek Article on Christmas

Earlier this week I posted my Newsweek article on Christmas from four years ago, and several people have asked me what kind of reaction I received. I made two posts about that at the time. Here’s the first. I find this post rather humorous now, years later, since I was obviously being wildly defensive (halfway through the response) before denying I was defensive at all (at the end)! What funny people we can be…. ******************************************************** My Newsweek article this week has generated a lot of response. I have no idea what kind of comments they typically get for their stories, but so far, as of now, there have been 559 on mine; and most of them are negative – to no one’s surprise – written by people (conservative evangelicals and fundamenalists for the most part, from what I can tell) who think that the Gospels are perfectly accurate in what they have to say about Jesus – not just at his birth but for his entire life. A lot of these respondents think that anyone [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:35:22-04:00December 2nd, 2016|Bart's Critics, Canonical Gospels, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

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