Reflections and Ruminations Archives - Page 3 of 30 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

Is It Better to Follow Christ or to Live a Contented Life? Paul vs. Epicurus

What would other deep thinkers in the ancient world have thought of Paul’s teachings? Short answer: not much. Earlier this year I posted on one of my favorite Greek philosophers, Epicurus (341 – 270 BCE). Epicurus acquired a bad reputation already in antiquity, and still has one among many people today, mainly because his views are widely misunderstood and often simply misrepresented. As it turns out, he advocated views that have widely become dominant in our world, and for good reasons. For that reason I’ve always read him as remarkably prescient, entertaining ideas that would not become popular for two thousand years. And they stand precisely at odds with the views of the apostle Paul. I’ve recently begun to think about this more deeply -- especially since they talk about the same *topics* but take completely different stands on them.. Unfortunately, we do not have very many of Epicurus’s writings. In fact, the most important sources we have are simply three long letters, quoted in toto by a significant but little-read author named Diogenes Laertius, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:04:44-04:00September 20th, 2023|Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, Paul and His Letters, Reflections and Ruminations|

Bogus Arguments for Disbelief

I can completely understand why some people choose not to believe in the Christian tradition, since I too am not a Christian. But I find it a bit dismaying when people reject aspects of the Christian tradition for (literally) illogical reasons. Or even worse, attack it for illogical reasons. This often involves drawing unfounded religious conclusions from historical findings. I’m sensitive to the issue because these findings are often ones that I myself talk about (findings of others that I subscribe to after looking into them). My view is that there are good reasons for some people to hold on to their faith, and there are good reasons for other people to decide to leave the faith or never to come to faith in the first place. But why do we need Bogus Arguments for Disbelief? (Acronym: BAD) I’ll give here three examples, knowing full well that many people will object to them, especially the first one (since people regularly do, here on the blog!). I don’t mean to be slamming anyone or their beliefs; [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:04:26-04:00August 31st, 2023|Reflections and Ruminations|

Preparing for that “Final Trip” (outta here). What Do You Think?

On the questions of mortality and moving on.... A couple of weeks ago, as I was preparing for my recent course "Why I Am Not a Christian," I was reminded of one of my favorite modern novels, The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes, which won the Booker Prize in 2011. What a terrific book. Short but completely compelling. Beautifully written. Moving. Thought provoking. I can’t recommend it highly enough. I won’t give up the plot, but, well, it’s about life, death, getting older, memory, and remorse. Two lines really struck me. The first is spoken by one of the characters in a history class in school in his upper sixth (that’s the year English students prepare for university; it’s a lot more rigorous than our senior years in high school) (mine anyway; and I went to an unusually good high school!). When asked, at the end of the term, what history is (looking back at all they had studied), he responds: “History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:03:54-04:00August 2nd, 2023|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

“Death is nothing to us.” What Do YOU Think?

I quote: “You need to realize that death is nothing to us. Everything that is good and bad in our lives comes from the experiences of our senses. But death brings an end to our senses/experiences. And so having the right understanding – that death is nothing to us – makes our mortality enjoyable, not because we will live forever but because we don’t pointlessly long to live forever. For there are no terrors in life for the one who fully understands that there are no terrors in not living. It is absurd for people who fear death -- not because it is afflicting them now but because they expect it will be horrible when it comes. For this allegedly most awful thing – death -- is actually nothing to us: when we exist, we are not dead, but when we are dead, we no longer exist. And so death is completely irrelevant – both to those who are living and to those who are dead. Those who are living are not experiencing it and [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:22-04:00April 27th, 2023|Afterlife, Reflections and Ruminations|

Gold Q&A LIVE! (And Recorded) Tuesday April 11

Dear Gold Members, I will be recording my Gold Q&A tomorrow afternoon, April 11, 2:00 pm. If you're free and want to watch it, come along! I've got a full set of questions to deal with and am looking forward to it. No charge for admission, just show up. We'll meet and greet, I'll do my thing, and then we can chat for a few minutes after. Here's the link: https://unc.zoom.us/j/92207490998?pwd=MXRhQW9GTlRaMmE1WXdvRHVEVlNRQT09 Meeting ID: 922 0749 0998 Passcode: 339508 One tap mobile +16469313860,,92207490998# US +19294362866,,92207490998# US (New York) Dial by your location +1 646 931 3860 US +1 929 436 2866 US (New York) +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC) +1 305 224 1968 US +1 309 205 3325 US +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago) +1 386 347 5053 US +1 507 473 4847 US +1 564 217 2000 US +1 669 444 9171 US +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose) +1 689 278 1000 US +1 719 359 4580 US +1 253 205 0468 US +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma) +1 [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:22-04:00April 10th, 2023|Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

How Does An Author Write a Bestseller?

Almost everyone has the wrong idea about how a book becomes a bestseller. In the crowd I run around with, the term “bestseller” tends to have a technical meaning: a book on the New York Times Bestseller List. Every week the NY Times receives data from all the major book-selling outlets – from Amazon to Indies – and crunches the numbers for their various lists (Fiction Hardbacks, Non-Fiction Hardbacks, paperback fiction, etc.). There are 25 books in each category that make the list, but they *print* only the top 15. To put that list in a bit of perspective, there are about 700 – 800 new books published in the U.S. every day (not counting self-published books). To make the top 25 in a given week is … well, not easy. As many of you know, a non-fiction “trade book” is one written for a broad, general audience rather than for scholars in a field of study (an “academic” book or a “monograph”) or for classroom use for students (a textbook). Normally, the point of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:07-04:00April 10th, 2023|Book Discussions, Reflections and Ruminations|

What Does God Think of Surrogacy? Platinum Guestpost by Imran M. Usmani

There are two things I can say about this guest post by Imran Usman. It is extraordinarily interesting AND I've never talked about the topic on the blog! Check it out -- a Platinum guest post for you other Platinums! And remember, you too can submit a post. Just send one along to me, on anyting you're interested in connected with the blog. ***************************** Imagine a married couple called Jack and Jill. Jack and Jill love each other very much, and they are happily married, but there is one thing missing in their lives. They don’t have children. They have tried for a baby for many years. They also visited the doctor, but he simply told them that Jill has ‘unexplained infertility’. Jill starts to become depressed because all her friends have children, and she is desperate to have a child herself. What are her options? Jack and Jill could adopt a child, or they could opt for surrogacy. There is a woman called Jane, who is willing to bear a child for Jack and [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:02:06-04:00March 31st, 2023|Reflections and Ruminations, Sex and Sexuality in the Bible|

Is Suffering a “Problem” for Believers?

This past week I had a long talk with one of my bright undergraduates, a first-year student who had been raised in a Christian context but had come to have serious doubts driven in large part by the difficulty she had understanding how there could be suffering in a world controlled by an all-knowing and all-powerful God. I naturally resonated with the question, since this is why I myself left the Christian faith. I get asked about that transition a lot, and it’s been five or six years since I’ve discussed it at any length on the blog. So I thought I might return to it. The one and only time I”ve talked about it at length is in my book God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer our Most Important Question – Why We Suffer (Oxford University Press, 2008). Here is how I discuss it there, slightly edited. (This will take several posts) ******************************* I think I know when suffering started to become a “problem” for me. It was while I was still [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:01:35-04:00February 22nd, 2023|Bart’s Biography, Reflections and Ruminations|

What New Testament Do New Testament Translators Translate?

I've been talking about some of the intriguing issues and problems with the King James translation. The Biggest Problem is one that takes a bit of time to explain, and so will consume a couple of posts even before I explain the issue with the KJV. The broader context involves Bible translation in general, and revolves around a rather basic and highly important question that very few people know the answer to: What is it that Bible translators translate when they are translating? Here I will focus on the New Testament, my main area of expertise. When a translator wants to make an English version of, say, Mark (what I say about Mark will be true of all the books of the NT), what does she actually translate into English? Obviously she cannot take Mark’s original manuscript and translate it, since we don’t have it. Or the first copy of the original, or a copy of the copy of the original. We have hundreds of copies of Mark. Does she just choose one that seems good [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:49-04:00January 7th, 2023|New Testament Manuscripts, Reflections and Ruminations|

Infamous Typos in the King James Bible
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Infamous Typos in the King James Bible

Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations

Infamous Typos in the King James Bible

In some rather minor ways, the King James Version is not simply one thing but is many things. By that I mean that over the years there have been minor revisions made to it – most of them very minor indeed, picayune alterations of such things as spelling and punctuation – but revisions nonetheless. Two years after it was originally published, a new edition came out in 1613 that embodied 413 such changes. In 1769 the translation was modernized a bit; that happened again in 1873. The “New King James Version” that is popular today (the third best-selling Bible on the market behind the NIV and the KJV itself) (these are all popular among conservative evangelicals who, to no one’s surprise, buy the most Bibles) is a somewhat different kettle of fish. It was commissioned in 1975 and was produced by 130 people that its publisher (Thomas Nelson) indicates included scholars, church leaders, and laypeople. Whether these church leaders and laypeople actually knew any Hebrew or Greek they don’t say. My guess is.... Well, never [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:49-04:00January 5th, 2023|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

The King James Bible: Some Intriguing Word Choices

On the first day of my undergraduate classes on the Bible each semester, I tell my students which Bible translations are acceptable for the class. The basic answer: most any modern translation is fine (though I myself prefer the New Revised Standard Version), but I do not allow paraphrases (such as the ol' favorite, The Living Bible, or the more recent The Message -- which are not actually translations from the original Hebrew and Greek, but are simplifications of previously existing English translations and as a result can be highly interpretive and misleading) or the King James Version. When I tell them I do not allow the King James, I let them know that I think the King James is one of the great classics of English literature. As a piece of writing, it is arguably the most significant work ever produced in English. But it is decidedly not a good study Bible. That is for several reasons. As I've suggested and will say more about in a future post, one is that the manuscripts [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:49-04:00January 4th, 2023|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Whoa. End of Year Review of the Blog, 2022.

I’m happy indeed to be writing this end of the year assessment of the Bart Ehrman blog. And so, how we doin’? Yowsers! To start with the climax: We blew the top out of our charity-giving this year, by bringing in and distributing $503,000. Not to put too fine a point on it, but that, well, is half a million dollars. Whoa. Many thanks to ALL of you for paying your membership fees and for MANY of you for making separate donations to the work of the blog. This is a magnificent outcome, well beyond what anyone could have imagined just a few years ago. For some perspective, in our first full (calendar) year of operation (2013) we raised $51,500. More interesting, just three years ago (2019) we raised $144,000. We have more than tripled that this year. None of this would be possible without significant help from generous supporters of the blog, including, I say again!, you, the members. In addition, there are several specific groups of blog participants I’d like to mention: First: [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:49-04:00December 31st, 2022|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

If the King James Was Good Enough for Paul, It’s Good Enough for Me

On my podcast ("Misquoting Jesus Podcast," with Bart Ehrman) I recently interviewed my friend and colleague Jennifer Knust about the problems involved with producing a modern translation of the Bible. It made me recall some lectures I gave in 2012 about the King James Bible, in celebration of it's 400th year anniversary. I made some posts about the great strengths and interesting problems posed (now) by the KJV. I looked, and lo and behold I posted about it too. Here's what I said (this will take several posts): ****************************** In a couple of weeks I’m going off to Los Angeles to give a lecture at Loyola Marymount University as a keynote address for their putting on of the (traveling) exhibition on the King James Bible, started in commemoration of its 400th year (in 2011). The exhibition is called Manifold Greatness: The Creation and Afterlife of the King James Bible, and my lecture is entitled: “What Kind of a Text Is the King James Bible? Manuscripts, Translation, and the Legacy of the KJV.” In addition to [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:36-04:00December 29th, 2022|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Just Follow That Star!
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Just Follow That Star!

Canonical Gospels, Reflections and Ruminations

Just Follow That Star!

In the previous post I commented that this idea of trying to follow a star to get anywhere (say, Bethlehem) would lead to problems. Some years ago I had pointed out that trying to do that would send them around in circles: since the earth is not "fixed" -- it rotates and is in orbit around the sun -- stars are never in the same place in the sky, so "following" one would take you all over the place. After posting on that, I found a hilarious illustration of what would happen if the wisemen followed a celestial body to find Jesus. I have borrowed this (no permission required, only acknowledgment) from here: http://what-if.xkcd.com/25/ Acknowledgement is here: http://xkcd.com/license.html ****************************** Three Wise Men The story of the three wise men got me wondering: What if you did walk towards a star at a fixed speed? What path would you trace on the Earth? Does it converge to a fixed cycle? —N. Murdoch If the wise men leave Jerusalem and walk toward the star Sirius, day and [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:35-04:00December 27th, 2022|Canonical Gospels, Reflections and Ruminations|

Christmas Reflections 2022 (from ten years on)

Ten years ago I posted a Christmas reflection that I just now reread and think encapsulates some of my deepest feelings about the season still. This is what I said and say: ****************************** So, we have managed to make our way to another Christmas. I hope all of you – whether fundamentalist, liberal Christian, seeker, Jew, Muslim, agnostic, atheist, or none of the above – are having a very nice, relaxing, rejuvenating, and fulfilling holiday. 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 [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:35-04:00December 25th, 2022|Reflections and Ruminations|

How To Leave the Faith and Not Destroy the Family: Thanksgiving Reflection 2022

My beloved mom died last week. She lived a long and good life; she brought a lot of good into the world and made many people very happy; and she died a good death – peaceful, in comfort, in the presence of family. How good can it get? There are many things I have long been thankful for about my mom. I would like to reflect on one of them here. Many years ago, when I left the Christian faith that my mom held so dear – a faith that meant almost everything to her – it caused her a great deal of pain. But she did not allow our stark differences to destroy our relationship. We continued to love and honor each other even though we were deeply at odds on issues that both of us considered among the most important in our lives. My mom was not raised in a religious household. She grew up in the small town of Burlington Kansas and her parents were not church people. When she was in [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:18-04:00November 23rd, 2022|Bart’s Biography, Reflections and Ruminations|

Was Paul Thinking about Committing Suicide?

A blog reader recently asked me about an intriguing passage in Paul's letter to the Philippians where he says that “To live is Christ, to die is gain” (1:21) and then goes on to say that he is not sure "what to choose" -- to "depart to be with Christ" or "to remain in the flesh" (1:22). Choose? Most people have never looked at the passage carefully, but as often happens, have simply skirted over it without paying it much attention. But think about it. What is Paul saying exactly? In what sense does he have a "choice"? Is he thinking about taking matters in his own hands? Isn't that the ultimate sin? I talk about the matter briefly in my textbook on the New Testament. Here is what I say there: ****************************** In an intriguing book that discusses suicide and martyrdom in the ancient world (A Noble Death: Suicide and Martyrdom among Christians and Jews in Antiquity. HarperSanFrancisco, 1992) Arthur Droge and James Tabor argue that the modern notion that suicide is a “sin” [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:04-04:00November 6th, 2022|Paul and His Letters, Reflections and Ruminations|

Trying to Make Scholarship Interesting

I've long been interested in thinking about how to make boring subjects interesting. I've become especially attuned to the issue recently as I've begun to read a lot more scholarship in fields completely unrelated to mine. Some scholars have a gift in being able to reach low level mortals like me. My own field is not nearly as complicated as the hard sciences (always hard for me, at least!) but every field has its technicalities and jargon and wide range of not-widely-shared assumptions, perspectives, and history of investigation. And so I was struck when I ran across this post from some years ago, and realized that it's still the sort of thing I think about roughly every day. ****************************** The difficulty in presenting serious scholarship to a lay audience is how to make something that can be very dry and technical and detailed and, well, boring to most human beings actually interesting and lively and thought provoking. It is obviously quite easy to make something interesting dull. University professors are unusually skilled at doing that. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:04-04:00November 2nd, 2022|Bart’s Biography, Reflections and Ruminations, Teaching Christianity|

What Does It Mean to Be an Active Research Scholar? Editing Scholarly Journals (And Why Is Peer-Review Important?)

Being a research scholar means a lot more than sticking your head in books and articles and churning out publications. Here I explain an area of pure volunteer work with little glory but lots of grind. ****************************** A Research Scholar's Editorial Work One aspect of the life of a professional scholar that may not be well known to the general public involves editorial work. For some scholars, this kind of work takes an enormous expenditure of time and effort, although much of the work, and many of the hours, are not transparent or evident to outsiders. I have done a lot of editorial work over the years, but I do not think that my case is at all exceptional. A lot of my colleagues have done less, but some have done a good deal more. Many scholars see editorial work as a major component of “service” to the discipline. Which means that, for the most part, it is really important but normally thankless! As is my wont I will use my own experience as a [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:59:48-04:00October 20th, 2022|Reflections and Ruminations|

Suffering, Evil, and the Range Effect Platinum Guest Post by Dennis J. Folds, Ph.D.

In this Platinum Guest Post for all you Platinums, Dennis Folds addresses one of the most consequential and intractable problems of human existence, with his own views of the matter. This is certainly to be controversial? Do you want to controverse? Feel free to make comments! *********************** The problem of suffering has plagued theologians for centuries, and continues to haunt thinkers today, including the prodigious progenitor of this blog. Its cousin, the problem of evil, similarly challenges religious scholars to explain how a just and loving God (JLG) could create a world in which people experience extreme suffering, especially when caused by the intentional (evil) actions of other people. Many conclude that JLG doesn’t exist, and if there is a God, it doesn’t have the attributes we wish it had. In this post I’ll argue that the experience of suffering and the perception of evil are inevitable consequences of biological consciousness, because of a psychological phenomenon called the range effect. As such, suffering and evil are insufficient reasons to reject all notions of a God. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:59:48-04:00October 17th, 2022|Reflections and Ruminations|

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