Reflections and Ruminations Archives - Page 8 of 31 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

How Hard It is To Become an Agnostic….

When the new blog site launched a week ago I decided to start off with five of my favorite posts from each of the first five years of the blog. And then someone asked me: why just the first five? Why not the more recent four? And I replied: I don’t know – I didn’t think about it! But now I have and have decided: why not? So here is number six of five favorite posts, this one from 2017. It’s more of a personal topic, but it’s one that I know a lot of you can resonate with: the struggle involved in moving from being a person of faith to becoming an agnostic. ****************************** I started feeling the tug toward agnosticism sometime during my Ph.D. program. I remember clearly a particular moment, and it was, somewhat ironically, while I was serving as the pastor of the Princeton Baptist Church. Even though I was incredibly busy at the time (I was taking a full load of graduate seminars, preparing to take my PhD exams, serving [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:51:04-04:00October 29th, 2020|Bart’s Biography, Reflections and Ruminations|

What Happens When Your Beliefs Contradict What You Have To Teach? Readers’ Mailbag

I’ve received an intriguing question about professors of religious studies and the relationship between what we teach and personal religious beliefs. QUESTION: Dr. Ehrman, do your colleagues who have strong religious beliefs sometimes get conflicted when teaching some aspects of early Christianity? RESPONSE: Now that’s a very interesting question, and to unpack it, and give a response, I need to provide a bit of background of what (I assume) lies behind it. I’ll start with my personal situation then broaden out from there. Neither of my two teaching positions has been in a religious or denominational school; Rutgers and now UNC Chapel Hill are, of course, research universities. Both institutions are not only secular but also state-supported. Because of the constitutional separation of church and state, people in my position are not allowed to proselytize or promote one particular religion or religious view over another. And yet we are teaching religion. How is that supposed to work? In the very simplest terms, the way it works is that professors in my position teach [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:51:03-04:00October 11th, 2020|Public Forum, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Why Believe in God?

This post will not be about the history and/or literature of earliest Christianity per se, but on a more explicitly religious issue. In fact, the religious issue. Let me preface it by stating two rather obvious things about myself, specifically what I am not. At least the first is obvious to me, and the second is, I’m sure, obvious to everyone who will be reading this. The first is, I am not a missionary for my particular religious views. I have no particular difficulty with people who *do* want to convert others to their perspectives, but it’s not something I’m much interested in doing myself. I’m an atheist, and if you yourself choose not to be, more power to you! About the only thing I’m seriously missionary about are ideas, views, policies, social agendas, and political figures intent on helping people rather than hurting them (and not just a certain slice of my fellow American citizens). I see all kinds of religious fundamentalism as hurtful rather than helpful, so I oppose them. I also see [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:51:02-04:00October 2nd, 2020|Reflections and Ruminations|

Inclusive Language in Bible Translation?

One more issue connected with Bible translations: what does one do with shifts in usage in the English language toward inclusive language. It's a hot topic, and somehow I suspect one that a lot of people on the blog have strong views of. I certainly have them. I talked about it once on the blog, in connection with my work with the NRSV Translation Committee. ******************************************** 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. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:50:46-04:00September 20th, 2020|History of Biblical Scholarship, Reflections and Ruminations|

Translating the Bible (and other ancient texts)

For a very long time I've been interested in the question of how to translate ancient texts, such as the Greek New Testament, into modern languages. Early in my scholarly career my interest was piqued by the work I did as a graduate student working as a research grunt for 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 [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:50:46-04:00September 18th, 2020|Reflections and Ruminations|

Does Basic Information about the NT Matter? My Pop Quiz

Last week I posted the pop quiz that I gave my first-year seminar, “Jesus in Scholarship and Film,” on the opening day of the term. There are several reasons I give a quiz, even before the students have read, heard lectures, or discussed anything about the New Testament. For one thing, it’s a fun activity and we can have some laughs – it’s not graded and we go over the answers after they take it. For another thing, it’s important for me to know how much they know about the New Testament and early Christianity before we start the course. It’s also important for them to know how much they know – especially the students who were raised in church and assume they already know a lot. Some of them do; but not most. And sometimes they are chagrined when they find out. (If I had a nickel for every time a student has said to me, “Why haven’t I heard this before?" I could buy a condo on the Champs-Élysées.) Even more important, in [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:50:26-04:00August 30th, 2020|Canonical Gospels, Reflections and Ruminations, Teaching Christianity|

The Flukes of Life and My Teaching Career

I've been concerned for the past months (among many other things, of course) about PhD's trying to get teaching positions in colleges and universities. Even when there is not an economy-busting pandemic, it's hard. Very hard. Many years ago when I was on the market, I had an awful time trying to find a job . Oddly enough, I see now, I posted on this very topic, on this very date during the first year of the blog (2012). Here's what I said then. *********************************************************************** My students are alternatively comforted and chagrined to learn how hard it was for me to get a teaching position. It makes them feel good that they are not alone, but bad that they too might have a hard time – even harder. I was on the job market while I was writing my dissertation.. And even though there were job openings, I couldn’t get an interview to save my soul. Part of the problem was that my PhD was from a theological seminary, and a lot of the jobs [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:50:25-04:00August 20th, 2020|Bart’s Biography, Reflections and Ruminations|

Why Is This Happening To Us?

It is very difficult to be a sentient human being just now and not wonder occasionally or, well, obsessively: “Why is this happening to us?” I’m not speaking of the scientific questions of how Covid began and spread, how it is like and unlike other viruses, how it works, how it spreads, how… well, there are a million scientific questions and we read about them every day. I don’t mean those, but the more existential question. How do we make sense of it all? It is is less of a problem for naturalists, who do not believe that there is anything beyond the physical universe (in any sense), any non-material superior being, for example, or any non-material thing at all, that has any dealings with it. For hardcore naturalists, the universe and everything in it, living or not, is all particles; sometimes the particles line up in ways that are not conducive for us to survive, let alone thrive. And so the existential “why” something happens, for many naturalists, is a pointless question. It’s only [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:49:48-04:00July 8th, 2020|Reflections and Ruminations|

A Plea for Humility in the Face of the Universe

In this week’s Readers’ Mailbag we move away from the academic study of the New Testament to much broader and more important questions of relevance to us all, involving how we relate to others and live in the world. The question is about attitudes and responses to suffering. The question came in a comment about an earlier post I had done. QUESTION: You said ‘My ultimate view is that even if suffering may lead us away from a belief in God, as it did for me, it should at the same time lead us toward humility in the face of the universe and toward a more caring, loving attitude toward those who suffer.’ I guess I didn’t see in your article a clear explanation for why suffering should lead towards the things you mention. I do not think you are wrong, but it would be good to have it rationed out, as I think this is the only place you make a claim without any evidence. RESPONSE: Ah, I can see how my [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:49:47-04:00June 19th, 2020|Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Two Ancient Jesuses and the Current Crises

One of the most important discoveries of critical Biblical scholarship over the past two hundred years – arguably the single most important discovery – is that the Bible does not have a single message about virtually anything. The Bible is an extremely diverse, multi-faceted book, written over many centuries by many different authors with many different views. The fact that these sixty-six books were all gathered together and called “Scripture” does not change the fact that the author of one of the books may well have a very different view of a particular matter, even an extremely important matter than another. Let’s take the question of how we are to treat those who are not like us. People who aren’t from our same nation; who don’t look like us; who are of different ancestry; who are not from our own cultural background; who do not share our political views or religious beliefs; who are of a different gender or sexual orientation or race. How do we treat such people? Depends whom you ask within the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:49:26-04:00June 7th, 2020|Reflections and Ruminations|

Views of Suffering Among Those Who Suffer

There is always a lot of suffering going on around us, if not in our neighborhood then certainly in our country, not to mention our world. Now more then ever. And more obviously than ever. But the "ever" itself is really very bad, when you think of the millions being slaughtered in civil war and unrest, driven from their homes, starving, dying of curable disease for want of medicine or from lack of clean water, etc. etc. etc. But it's on our minds right now more than ever, between a worldwide pandemic and a national recognition of deeply rooted and massive racial violence and injustice. Suffering is always there, but now it is all we are talking about. I was browsing through old posts on the blog and came across this one I wrote eight years ago. As some of you know, one of my books, God's Problem, deals with the problem of why there is suffering. In it I examine what different biblical authors have to say about it to show that they represent many [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:49:26-04:00June 3rd, 2020|Bart's Debates, Reflections and Ruminations|

Getting a PhD in New Testament Studies

I was breezing through ancient blog posts this morning and came across this one from exactly eight years ago. It involves a question I get a lot (got it last week!), from people interested in doing graduate work in the field of New Testament or early Christianity. What is it like and what does it take? Here is what I said back then, which is pretty much what I would still say today! **************************************** I sometimes get asked what it takes to become a professional scholar in the field of New Testament/early Christian studies. The answer, in short, is the same as for any academic discipline. It takes years of intense training. My own training in the field of New Testament studies was nothing at all unusual, but rather was fairly typical for someone in the field. What is unusual is that I knew that I wanted to pursue this kind of study already when I was in college. I started taking courses in New Testament as a 17-year old. For my foreign language requirement [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:49:09-04:00May 13th, 2020|Bart’s Biography, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Blog-Related Suggestions for Isolation

There is a lot of good advice out there about how not just to handle isolation but how to take advantage of it, to make some parts of your life better rather than worse. But it has occurred to me: people on this blog have some things in common, interests that we share. And I wonder if we can give some suggestions to each other about how blog-related interests can contribute to our mutual and individual well-being while we still plow through this crisis. So after giving a couple of suggestions, I’ll be asking you if you have one or two ideas to share with others. Let me begin by saying that just about everything the sages among us are saying is absolutely right, when it comes to *general* or even *universal* advice. At least it’s all working well for me. I am exercising *more* not less, and have developed a very nice exercise regime that I follow every day. That not only helps me get my mind off my woes and, especially, my woes [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:48:52-04:00April 24th, 2020|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Do We NEED to Suffer? The Argument from Tectonic Plates

I decided to take a stroll down memory lane and look at posts I made at the beginning of the blog, and came upon this one, made almost exactly eight years ago today. Since I've been talking about Ecclesiastes and the meaning of life, and, consequently, the meaning of suffering, it is particularly relevant, now more than ever in recent history. It's ultimately about whether humans *have* to suffer if God created the world and life in it. And weirdly, it involves a connection between Dinesh D'Souza and tectonic plates. ******************************************************************* I have always found it interesting that when I talk about how there can be suffering in the world if there is a good God who is in charge of it, someone will tell me that it is all because of “free will.” I think most of us – not Sam Harris, of course, or some others, but most of us – think that there is such a thing as free will, that our actions are not completely determined for us but to some [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:48:51-04:00April 21st, 2020|Bart's Debates, Reflections and Ruminations|

A Good Time for Wisdom!

We are living in a time of virtually unparalleled crisis, and it is forcing us not only to cope with tragedy -- either our own or that of so many millions of others -- but also to make sense of it and figure it out. It is easy to come up with simple Pollyanna views that don't take seriously the trauma, and to cite religious mantras that try to make it sound like it is all right, when in fact it is not. And the reality is, most people very much *don't* want to go down the rabbit hole of deep reflection. I certainly, absolutely, do not think this is a time for despair and complete despondency. But I do think it is a time for thoughtful reflection, on the state of the world, on our values and priorities as a human race, a nation, a locality, and individuals. Being in isolation for a couple of months can certainly provide us some opportunity to think about our world, our lives, our own goals and objectives, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:48:51-04:00April 15th, 2020|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Reflections and Ruminations|

Easter Reflection 2020

By all counts, this is the strangest Easter in memory – one of the two most important holy days in the year for over two and a half billion people in the world, the vast majority of whom cannot celebrate it together for the first time in their lives. Even so, for many of these Christians this particular Easter, with the message it brings, could not have come at a better time. And even for those of who are not Christian, the season brings a powerful message, worth reflecting on. Even as a committed Christian, I always had a surprisingly ambivalent relation to Easter. For the first thirty years of my life, I was very active in the Church; as a young adult I was not just a faithful attender of church who was engaged in worship and Sunday School, I became actively involved in church ministry as a youth pastor, head of Christian education, assistant pastor, and pastor (of the Princeton Baptist Church). But I was never as joyful at Easter as everyone else [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:48:51-04:00April 12th, 2020|Reflections and Ruminations|

You Lost Me On Hello. A Plea for Expertise

For the past several weeks we have seen more than ever why we need experts. It is absolutely fine to have uninformed opinions. We all have thousands of them. But we should no mistake our uninformed opinions for knowledge. And real knowledge takes expertise, and expertise takes years and years of training and hard work. It doesn’t come from watching the news or reading a few articles and then making up your mind. Since we ourselves cannot be expert in everything, we have to decide whether to trust those who are experts or to persist in our contrary views. And as we are seeing now, in some areas expertise is a matter of life and death. In other pressing areas (climate), it may mean the survival of the human race and the planet. Most areas of expertise are not that significant in terms of history or human life. But the same principles apply. My view is that pPeople really shouldn’t work desperately hard to convince others about something that they really don’t know anything about. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:48:35-04:00March 15th, 2020|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Intimate Relationships: Nonbelievers and Believers

Over the past couple of months I’ve received maybe seven or eight emails from readers – some on the blog and others not – about marriage (two in the past 24 hours). Not about what the New Testament says about marriage, but about what these emailers should do with *their* marriage. Each of these was married to someone who was a faithful, committed, religiously conservative Christian of one kind or another (evangelical, Catholic, Mormon), but the emailer had, a while back, moved away from their earlier faith commitments, and now considered themselves agnostic or atheist or both, and weren’t sure how to handle it the marriage situation. In some cases the question was: should I tell my spouse? In others it was: how can this work? In others it was: how can I convince them that their views are full of problems and help them see the truth? I am not a marriage counsellor, as some of you may have noticed. But I do have a lot of experience with questions like this, and have [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:48:20-04:00March 8th, 2020|Public Forum, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Authors and the Fiasco of Book Tours

With the advent of social media, author book tours have more or less gone the way of the stegosaurus. Some authors do them, but mainly only the celebrities, Hilary or David Sedaris. And you might be surprised to know that most authors think their demise is a very good thing. A book tour sounds exotic – at least it always did to me: “An Eleven-City National Book Tour!!!” How good can it get? Well, actually, it can get a lot better… Let me preface this by saying that right now is an absolutely awful time to be publishing a book, the worst time in recorded history (well, OK, in my recorded history). The only way to sell a book seriously is to get serious media attention. That means TV, radio, and front covers. But at this stage of human evolution, if your name is not Donald, Bernie, or Corona, it just ain’t gonna happen. The media can’t squeeze it all in, and books are at the bottom of the heap. Even if your book is [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:48:19-04:00March 1st, 2020|Book Discussions, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

How Do I Get To Know What Is In the Bible?

There are a lot of people, billions, actually, who are interested in the Bible -- either because of their personal beliefs or because they they realize its historical and cultural importance -- but don’t actually know what it’s about. The broader interest makes a good deal of sense, and not just for committed Jews and Christians. After all, a good deal of the history of the West is tied closely to the Christian tradition rooted in the Bible. And how can one understand Western culture without it? Think about the history of art, music, and literature, for example. Still, most people really don’t know the Bible. By that I don’t mean they don’t know what scholars have come to learn about the Bible (that virtually goes without saying!); I just mean they don’t know what’s actually in the Bible. One reason, of course, is that most people don’t read the Bible. But an even more important one is that those who do read the Bible do not do so in order to learn what it’s [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:48:02-04:00February 14th, 2020|Reflections and Ruminations, Teaching Christianity|

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