Reflections and Ruminations Archives - Page 7 of 31 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

Quotations of Non-Canonical Writings in the New Testament: Platinum Post by Douglas Wadeson

Platinum member Douglas Wadeson has provided us with another thoughtful, provocative, and informed post, this one about how authors of the New Testament sometimes quote writings *other* than those of the Old Testament. Feel free to make comments! ************************* If you read the New Testament you will find many references to the Old Testament, i.e., the Hebrew Bible, the Scriptures that Jesus and His disciples knew. The early Christians thought of Jesus as being the sequel to and fulfillment of those Scriptures. If Hollywood had developed the New Testament perhaps they would have called it, “God the Father II: This Time Its Personal!” Dr. Ehrman has written and posted on the reasons the early church retained its connection to the Jewish Scriptures even as the church became predominantly Gentile. However, there are also allusions to writings outside of the Old Testament.[1] I suspect many people miss such references because they assume they are referring to some OT story, or they are subtle enough that one doesn’t catch that an allusion is being made. I [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:53:19-04:00March 24th, 2021|Early Judaism, Reflections and Ruminations|

Christian Attitudes toward War, Through the Ages: Platinum Post by Dan Kohanski

I am very pleased to have this interesting post on an unusually important topic for Platinum Members, produced by one of your own, Dan Kohanski. He tells me that the post has been adapted from part of a chapter, "When God Goes to War," in a book he is working on about the impact of Western religion on the world. I venture to say the information he presents here includes many things many of us do not know! Feel free to comment! (ALSO: I'm running short of future Platinum posts: if you can work one up, on any topic of relevance to anything we do -- a broad category -- please send it along) ********************* Shifts in the Christian Approach to War The earliest Christians had the mixed fortune to live under the Pax Romana, the peace of the Roman empire. On the one hand, they suffered from its harsh response to any insult to the state gods. On the other hand, the pax kept the peace. Early Christians could thus afford to argue that [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:53:03-04:00March 3rd, 2021|Platinums, Reflections and Ruminations|

An Intriguing but Most Peculiar Book! Guest Post by Kristin Swenson

A new book has just come out that many of you will be very interested in. It is called A Most Peculiar Book: The Inherent Strangeness of the Bible (Oxford University Press), by Kristin Swenson. I did not know Kristin until I learned of the book, some months before it was published. The publisher asked if I would write an endorsement for the cover. I usually have to say no to this kind of request, but I read the book and thought it was terrific. Here is what I said in my blurb: Do you think you know the Bible? Wait till you read Kristin Swenson’s new book. What if you don’t know the Bible at all? Even better. A Most Peculiar Book is a deeply informed, completely accessible, and endlessly fascinating explanation of what scholars know about the Bible and lay people, as a rule, do not. Read this book and prepare to learn! I received my copy a couple of weeks ago and contacted Kristin to ask if she’d be interested in writing a [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:52:48-04:00February 24th, 2021|Book Discussions, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

A Christian Is Not Necessarily a Disciple (Monthly Platinum Post: Douglas Wadeson)

As many of you know, one of the perqs of being a Platinum member of the blog is that at this level everyone is given the opportunity to make a post of their own, distributed only to Platinum members. For these posts, members can talk about nearly anything they want, so long as it is related to the blog and not grievously snarky. So far, we haven't had a snark at all. I post one of these a week, and then once a month, I choose one to post on the blog itself for all readers. Or rather, I have the Platinum members themselves vote on which one they think should go public This is our first one. It comes to us from Douglas Wadeson, a long time member of the blog and recently retired (lucky fellow) physician. The post came in two parts: here I will be giving only the first (I won't be posting the second: the Platinums will be voting on a different set of posts next time.) Feel free to comment [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:52:34-04:00February 20th, 2021|Reflections and Ruminations|

The Essence of Religious Literacy: A Christian Perspective. Platinum Guest Post by Fredrick Ackun

I am pleased to present now a very thoughtful guest post by Platinum member Fredrick Ackun! To respond, simply make a comment, and he will be able to reply. I am looking for more contributions! Feel free to send one along, on any topic! *************************** In this post, I wish to share and elaborate a bit on some personal realizations I have made in my faith journey. They are some of the main reasons why I am of the view that studying and acquiring knowledge about what we believe in is imperative. A faith system solely premised on theological presuppositions with no recourse to historical information can rub away context that would have otherwise provided a deeper appreciation of its narratives. The two keywords here are History and Theology; hence, it may be important to spell out a fundamental difference between these two terms in relation to the faith journey. History is an attempt to reconstruct events in the past based on evidence and plausibilities. Theology, on the other hand, is interpreting history through [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:52:48-04:00February 11th, 2021|Reflections and Ruminations|

Interview about My Writing with the North Carolina Writers’ Network

I recently did an interview for spring issue of the North Carolina Writers' Network’s newsletter The Writers' Network News (Spring, 2021). If you are interested in learning more about their organization, this is their website: www.ncwriters.org. Some of the questions in the interview were about my most recent book Heaven and Hell, others were on my approach to writing. Eight questions overall, with brief answers. The issue was published just yesterday, so I have permission now to post it here as well on the blog. Many thanks to Charles Fiore from the NCWN, who set up and conducted the interview. Q&A for NCWN Writers Literary portrayals of the afterlife are full of spectacle. For example, who can forget the circles in Dante's "Inferno"? ("Purgatorio" was unnerving enough...) Are we somehow drawn to terrible spectacle, even though we also fear it? The first chapter of my book Heaven and Hell deals with early Christian tours of the afterlife. These are the earliest forerunners of Dante, and he was familiar with one of them. Unlike the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:52:17-04:00February 11th, 2021|Book Discussions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Even Giants Have a Cross to Bear: Platinum Post by Marie Wiley

I am pleased to be able to provide a new post by Marie Wiley, the second she has submitted! Are you interested in submitting one? It can be on any topic related to the blog. And it's Platinums-only. So go for it. And many thanks Marie! ******************************** The vision I have of Jesus from The Gospel of Peter is one of my favorites. A gigantic Jesus with an equally gigantic cross illustrates so well my own personal idea of who this holy man is. He is bigger than the human beings I know or know of. When I hear the saying, “Never meet your heroes because you will be sorely disappointed,” I imagine our Jesus to be the exception. When his giant holy cross asks me if I have heard its message, I think, “Heaven, yes.” I know (in a gnostic sense) that its message to me is not one of salvation through Jesus’s death in atonement for my sins. I don’t believe in that. It’s nothing personal, but in all the arguments for this [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:52:33-04:00February 2nd, 2021|Reflections and Ruminations|

Platinum Guest Post by Douglas Wadeson: A Christian Is Not Necessarily a Disciple, and Vice Versa. Part 2

This now is the second of Douglas Wadeson's two-part post, presenting the flip side of his earlier one. These Platinum guest posts have been terrific so far. I hope you too have enjoyed them. Soon we'll vote on which of the four we've seen goes on the main blog site! But for now, here is Doug again. In my previous post I argued that it may be possible to be a “Christian” but not necessarily a “disciple.” Now I will discuss the flip side: is it possible to be a disciple of Jesus but not a Christian? As a reminder from the previous post, I defined a Christian as one who believes in the Christ (Messiah), that died for the sins of the world and then was raised back to life by God; this is Jesus, of course. Salvation comes by believing in Him, not through your actions. In fact, trying to be saved by your “works” is futile and even heresy. A “disciple” is by definition a student or pupil or follower. Such a [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:52:32-04:00January 28th, 2021|Reflections and Ruminations|

My Materialist View of the World

This is a brief hiatus in my thread on the Trinity, for a personal reflection. As most members of the blog know, I have definite religious views, but I do not try to impose them on other people – unlike in my conservative evangelical days, when I knew I was right and everyone who disagreed was wrong and therefore better change their mind or they would go to hell forever. Sigh… As a side note, I have to say I really wish more people had my current attitude, to live and let live. My view is that whatever your view is, so long as you’re not actually hurting yourself or others, you’re welcome to it. Or, in basketball parlance, “no harm, no foul.” It’s when views get hurtful that we should try to do something about it…. Anyway, as probably fewer members know, I have been more-or-less a complete materialist for about twenty years. I do not believe there is such a thing as a non-material, supernatural realm. There’s the material realm, and that’s it, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:52:16-04:00January 26th, 2021|Reflections and Ruminations|

A Christian is Not Necessarily a Disciple: Platinum Post by Douglas Wadeson

The weeks' Platinum post comes to us from Douglas Wadeson, a long time member of the blog and recently retired (lucky fellow) physician. The post comes in two parts: the second part will appear next week. Remember: this post, your comments about it, and any ensuing back and forth come to Platinum members only. (And remember: you too can submit a post! I hope you do so. Just send it to my assistant Diane Pittman, at [email protected]) Here now is part 1 of Doug's post: ******************************* In Dr. Ehrman’s Christmas blog post he ponders: “So this is what I don’t understand: why so many of the alleged followers of the Prince of Peace not only refuse to accept his teaching but by and large preach *against* it, standing precisely for what he stood against. It’s as if they haven’t read their Bibles. It’s all there – in Jesus’ teachings, in the Old Testament prophets, he based his message on, in the gospel proclaimed by his earliest followers. God is not on the side of the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:52:17-04:00January 19th, 2021|Reflections and Ruminations|

Guest Post Part 2 by New Testament Scholar Jeff Siker: Why I Am Still a Christian

This is re-post of part 2 of an interesting set of comments from exactly eight years ago by my friend and colleague Jeff Siker, a New Testament scholar who agrees with most of the critical views I have of the New Testament but who is still a believing and practicing Christian. To make fullest sense of this post, you should read it in conjunction with the one from yesterday. Jeff Siker is the author of Jesus, Sin, and Perfection in Early Christianity, Liquid Scripture: The Bible in the Digital World and Homosexuality and Religion: An Encyclopedia. ****************************** Like Bart, I became interested in pursuing an academic career, but with some grounding in the life of the church. And so after my BA and MA (Religious Studies) at Indiana University, I went off to Yale Divinity School. And so my trajectory from Young Life in high school to Indiana to Yale was rather different from Bart’s trajectory from Moody to Wheaton to Princeton. Whereas much of Bart’s education involved the study and practice of Christian [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:52:16-04:00January 18th, 2021|Reflections and Ruminations|

Guest Post by New Testament Scholar Jeff Siker: Why I am Still a Christian

Bart speaking: I often get asked how someone can be a scholar of the NT, understand all its critical problems, and yet still remain a Christian. That's a mystery to many people. But it's not a mystery to biblical scholars. I was looking back through old posts and saw that in the first year of the blog, eight years ago now, I asked my friend Jeff Siker, a well-published NT scholar and long time professor of NT at Loyola Marymount, if he would explain why despite all he knows, he remains a believer and an active member of the church. He has agreed to allow me to republish the two posts he made and is happy to answer questions about them. Jeff is the author of a number of books, including Jesus, Sin, and Perfection in Early Christianity, Homosexuality in the Church, and Liquid Scripture: The Bible in the Digital Age. Here is the first of his posts. ***************************** When I first went to Princeton Theological Seminary to begin the Ph.D. program there in New Testament [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:52:16-04:00January 17th, 2021|Reflections and Ruminations|

Christmas 2020

As we are all saying, this is by far the strangest holiday season we have had in living memory. Well, at least in my living memory, which goes back six decades. Some people are throwing themselves into it, trying to find a place for joy in the midst of either relative or severe hardship. The effort to restore normal joy is evidenced in strange ways. Just now, where I am, in a county in Western North Carolina, Christmas trees are literally sold out. Not a tree to be found anywhere. I tried on December 18. Nope. I’ve never heard of such a thing. A local told me they think that it’s because of Covid. So many people are fed up with being isolated they’ve decided to go big on the Christmas celebration. Good on em! Others (well, lots of the big celebrators too, I supposed) are just depressed. Others are suffering serious financial hardship. No one I know is really much enjoying it they way they would like. Many of you, too, I suppose. I’ll [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:51:58-04:00December 25th, 2020|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Is Suffering a Problem for Those Who Suffer?

I started this thread on the problem of suffering because I wanted to respond to a specific question from a member. My original idea was simply to give the question and then write the response – and do it all in one post. When I started writing it, I realized it wouldn’t be possible, that it would require several posts, and that in fact, it would make the best sense not to give the question in the first post but in the last. Here now is the question I received, and my response. QUESTION: Faith-wise, why is the problem of suffering a breaking point for you, Bart, but not for Nick Vujicic? RESPONSE: When I first received this question I had an immediate reaction, and started to write a simple email in response, saying only that I had never heard of Nick Vujicic and didn’t know what is views were, and so couldn’t explain why he didn’t think so much suffering in the world should be an obstacle to faith. I do know what lots and [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:51:40-04:00December 12th, 2020|Reflections and Ruminations|

How Then Can We Believe?

I continue now with the amazing and disturbing chapter “Rebellion” from the Brothers Karamazov, which significantly affected my view of suffering. If you did not read yesterday’s post, you will probably want to do so before launching into this one. ****************************** Ivan’s stories are not just about wartime atrocities. They involve the everyday. And what is frightening is that they ring true to real life experiences. He is obsessed with the torture of young children, even among well educated “civilized” people living in Europe: They have a great love of torturing children, they even love children in that sense. It is precisely the defenselessness of these creatures that tempts the torturers, the angelic trustfulness of the child, who has nowhere to turn and no one to turn to – that is what enflames the vile blood of the torturer. He tells then the story of a five-year-old girl who was tormented by her parents and severely punished for wetting her bed (this is a story that Dostoevsky based on an actual court case): "These educated [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:51:40-04:00December 10th, 2020|Book Discussions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Facing the Problem of Suffering Head-on

I have started a short thread on why suffering is such a problem for many people when trying to understand the Christian faith – or many of the other faiths. If God is one who is active in the world, helping people, answering prayer, doing what is best for them – how can we explain the heart-wrenching pain and agony so many people experience, even those who believe deeply in God? We are not talking about pain being experienced by, say, a hundred people in the world. We’re talking in terms of millions. Billions. How do we explain that? People do have explanations, and I do not want to discount any of them. All of us have to come to a resolution of the “Big Questions” in our own minds. And when it comes to matters of faith, it is very much a personal decision – and even inclination – of what seems right and natural to you. In my next couple of posts I try to address the issue head on in what is [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:51:40-04:00December 9th, 2020|Reflections and Ruminations|

Human Suffering and the Christian Faith

I've started a short thread on the issue of how the problem of human suffering affected my Christian faith. To explain the matter further, here I quote from a section of my book God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer our Most Important Question: Why We Suffer. The book is mainly about the variety of answers you can find in the Bible about why God allows or even causes suffering. But I begin the book by talking about why it has long been such an important issue to me personally Human Suffering and How It Impacted My Christian Faith Eventually, I felt compelled to leave Christianity. I did not go easily. On the contrary, I left kicking and screaming, wanting desperately to hold on to the faith I had known from childhood and had come to know intimately from my teenage years onward. But I came to a point where I could no longer believe. It’s a very long story, but the short version is this: I realized that I could no longer reconcile [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:51:40-04:00December 6th, 2020|Bart’s Biography, Reflections and Ruminations|

My Struggle With Why There Is Suffering

As many blog members know, I left the Christian faith because of the problem I had with understanding why there could be so much suffering in the world if there was an all-powerful and truly-loving God in control of it. I have sometimes received questions about that, and will deal with one of them soon in a separate post. But before doing so I want to provide a bit of personal background. In this post I want to make it clear that – as I’ve said a number of times on the blog before -- I did not leave the Christian faith because of my scholarship on the Bible or on the history of early Christianity. On the contrary, virtually everything I know and think based on my scholarship on the Bible is known and thought by many, many biblical scholars, who continue to be committed Christians. Including friends who serve as pastors of churches. BUT, they are obviously not fundamentalists or evangelicals. Far from it. They moved on from that long ago, and have [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:51:40-04:00December 5th, 2020|Reflections and Ruminations|

Thanksgiving 2020

As long-term members of the blog will know, I have always said that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I have to admit, as I get older (and older), many of the holidays that were once a significant part of my life – even as an adult – have more or less faded away for me: Fourth of July; Columbus Day; Halloween. I do continue to love Christmas. It’s a period of joy for me still: I love the season as a whole, there’s still an excitement about it, and I’m unusually fond of many things connected with it: Christmas trees, lights, and carols. I especially enjoy the stories and myths of the season, and find the weeks leading up to it very moving. Christmas is increasingly complicated though. The commercialism and greed and lust for useless things just drives me nuts. The absolute need to buy things that others don’t really want or need but expect. Still, despite all that, I try to focus on the good parts. Thanksgiving on the other hand, for me, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:51:23-04:00November 26th, 2020|Reflections and Ruminations|

Why Do Some People Make Such Bad Arguments for the Superiority of their Religion?

Here now is the final post in my series of Favorite Posts from the Past. We are now in year nine of the Blog, and this post came from earlier this year. Sometimes I am in a feisty mood when writing a post, especially when I am dealing with arguments that strike me as a bit mind-numbing, made by highly religious people of one religious tradition or another, in support of their views. I should probably tone it down a bit, no? In any case, here’s an example of that kind of thing. (I actually have edited this one a bit so it’s not quite so, uh, snarky. :-) ****************************** I’m always puzzled about why smart people make (and believe) such bad arguments. We see this all the time, of course, in political discourse and family disagreements, not to mention department meetings, but since my field is religious studies I hear it the most in connection with the great religions of the world. Actually, I guess I find it less puzzling than aggravating. A lot [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:51:22-04:00November 2nd, 2020|Reflections and Ruminations|

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