Early Christian Doctrine Archives - The Bart Ehrman Blog

How Did Early Christians Make Unorthodox Texts Seem Orthodox?

I’ve been arguing that Luke’s Gospel originally may not have had the story of Jesus’ virgin birth but portrayed Jesus as being adopted by God to be his son at the baptism. In the previous post I explained one strategy that could be used to “tame” an otherwise important and beloved text when it held a view that could be seen as problematic. You could edit it. But there are other ways as I explain here (taken from a paper I delivered orally to a group of scholars) ****************************** A second strategy that could be used and was used by proto-orthodox Christians to constrain the reading of the text was by putting it in a canon of writings, a collection of texts with varying perspectives which, once placed together, affected how each one would be read. I’ll not spend much time discussing this strategy, as it is familiar enough to all of us here. It was familiar enough to early Christians as well, as early as Irenaeus, who points out in a famous passage in [...]

BDEhrman2023-12-11T21:41:58-05:00December 16th, 2023|Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine, Heresy and Orthodoxy|

Why Would an Editor ADD the Virgin Birth to Luke?

Is it possible that Luke's Gospel originally lacked the story of the Virgin Birth, but that it was added later in order to make the book more "orthodox"? That's the question I'm pursing in this thread, based on a paper I delivered to a group of NT scholars 20 years ago. ****************************** It appears that in the earliest form of Luke’s Gospel, what we have is an account that locates Jesus’ adoption/appointment to sonship, and its accompanying empowerment, at the baptism, when God declared “Today I have begotten you.” It is true that throughout the work of Luke - Acts there are other kinds of christological traditions preserved as well – especially in the speeches of Acts. But many of these are also adoptionistic, even though they appear to embody an even earlier adoptionistic notion that it was at the resurrection, not the baptism, that God conferred a special status upon Jesus and invested him with a special power. At this point I should stress that I am not trying to give an [...]

BDEhrman2023-12-11T21:41:27-05:00December 14th, 2023|Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine, Heresy and Orthodoxy|

No Virgin Birth? Was Jesus ADOPTED by God to be His Son?

Did Luke originally have the story of Jesus’ virgin birth? In my previous post I gave reasons for suspecting that Luke did not originally have chs. 1-2 (the birth narratives), but that it started (after what is now the preface in 1:1-4) with what is now 3:1. One of the reasons it is hard to know for certain is because we simply don’t have much hard evidence. Our two earliest two manuscripts of Luke, P75 and P45, are lacking portions of Luke, including the first two chapters. We can’t say whether they originally had them or not. Our first manuscript with portions of the opening chapters is the third century P4. But our earliest patristic witness is over a century earlier. As it turns out, the witness is the heresiarch Marcion, and as is well known he didn’t have the first two chapters! As early as Irenaeus’s Adversus Haereses (1. 27. 2) Marcion was accused of excising the first two chapters of his Gospel because they did not coincide with his view that Jesus appeared [...]

BDEhrman2023-12-11T21:40:47-05:00December 13th, 2023|Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine, New Testament Manuscripts|

Did Luke’s Gospel Originally Contain a Virgin Birth?

A couple of weeks I gave a two-lecture online course called “Jesus, The Actual Son of Joseph: The New Testament Evidence” (not connected with the blog; you can learn more about it on my website www.bartehrman.com/courses). It was an interesting experience for me, in part because it made me think of things and look into things I hadn’t thought or looked into before, and in part because it made me look back at some of the work I had done before but not thought about in a long time. That included a paper that I gave twenty years ago now at the British New Testament Conference organized by Mark Goodacre, back when he was still teaching a the University of Birmingham in England. For this more recent course I re-read the paper (not remembering it!) and (having read it again) thought that it would be interesting to excerpt here on the blog. It was delivered for scholars of the New Testament, but I wrote it so that it would not be overly technical or jargony, [...]

BDEhrman2023-12-11T21:40:09-05:00December 12th, 2023|Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine, Heresy and Orthodoxy|

How Paul’s Own Writings Show the Earliest Church Was Split Over “Orthodoxy” and “Heresy”

Are Christian "heresy" (that is, "false belief") and "orthodoxy" ("right belief") products of developments within Christianity after the New Testament? Or can they be detected in the New Testament itself? I'm not asking if the New Testament literally has false teachings. As per my definitions, I'm asking whether it contains views that disagree with one another, only some of which later came to be seen as acceptable. In getting to that answer I have been discussing the views of Walter Bauer, in his classic work, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, who maintained that from the earliest of times, so far as we can tell from our surviving records, Christianity was not a single unitary thing with one set of doctrines that everyone believed (orthodoxy), except for occasional groups that sprang up as followers of false teachers who corrupted the truth that they had inherited (heresies). Instead, as far back as we can trace the history of theology, Christianity was always a widely disparate collection of various beliefs (and practices). In the struggle for [...]

BDEhrman2023-11-23T11:22:34-05:00November 24th, 2023|Early Christian Doctrine, Heresy and Orthodoxy, Paul and His Letters|

Is Christ Merely the “Adopted” Son of God?

If Jesus wasn't God from eternity past, but was "adopted" to be the Son of God at some point of his existence, wouldn't that be a pretty watered-down understanding of his divinity? A lot of people find this kind of "adoptionist" Christology (Christ wasn't "inherently" God but "made" divine by adoption) completely unsatisfying and, well, pretty wimpy as far as Christologies go. I mentioned in the previous post that one could well read Luke as adoptionistic, and as I reflected on it some more, I recalled that the first time I wrestled seriously with the issue was ten years ago, when I was doing my research for my book How Jesus Became God. Here's what I ended up thinking about it, and saying about it in the book. And in case you wonder -- mirabile dictu! -- I still think the same today! ****************************** Part of what has convinced me that an [adoptionistic] understanding of Christ should not be shunted aside as rather inferior involves new research on what it meant to be “adopted” [...]

BDEhrman2023-10-03T09:55:59-04:00October 8th, 2023|Early Christian Doctrine, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture|

Is The Rapture in the New Testament?

This post is immediately relevant for me in two ways. My book on Revelation has now appeared (I kept *saying* it was "coming soon"!) AND I will be doing a lecture soon, April 15, on the idea of the "rapture," the belief that Jesus is soon to return to take his followers out of the world before the Antichrist arises and all hell breaks out on earth. You don't wanna be here for that. You don't want to be "Left Behind"! The lecture is not connected with the blog per se; you can find out more about it on my website, http://www.bartehrman.com/courses Here, to titillate your interest on both fronts, is a bit of what I say about the rapture in ch. 1 of my book (I say much more about it in a later section): ******************************** Almost everyone today thinks that Revelation provides a blueprint of what is to happen in the near future—at least those who think about it at all. There are, of course, some holdouts, even among conservative Christians, who maintain the [...]

BDEhrman2023-03-14T13:45:15-04:00March 23rd, 2023|Early Christian Doctrine, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Revelation of John|

Did Jesus Believe in Hell? My Interview With Kevin Grant

I am pleased to post here an interview that I had with Platinum blog member Kevin Grant, who has recently published a book Did Jesus Believe in Hell? You can get the book here: Did Jesus Believe in Hell?: New Words on Old Beliefs: Grant, Kevin: 9781737082026: Amazon.com: Books. As you will see, it has received very high rankings on Amazon. Kevin and I see eye-to-eye on most of the critical points, and we flesh them out here in the interview. His book strives to reach a different audience from mine, people who would not be inclined to read one of my books but would be open to hearing the views of someone they take to be sympathetic with their religious convictions but who wants to provide them with assurance from the Bible itself that they do not need to stand in fear of eternal torment. We cover all that and much more in this interview. I hope you enjoy it! And feel free to comment.

Diane2022-12-31T16:09:14-05:00December 30th, 2022|Early Christian Doctrine, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Did Christ Save Everyone When He Descended to Hades?

In my previous post I started to discuss the famous doctrine of the “Harrowing of Hell,” where Christ is said to have descended to Hades after his death (since he was a human, after all, and when humans die, they go to Hades. Part of the reason for the doctrine, then, is that if he didn’t go, he wouldn’t have had all the human experiences); but he did not go there forever obviously (in this way he was *unlike* everyone else!) but as the son of God he went to bring his salvation to those who had died previously (who could not be saved by his death because it hadn’t happened yet.) I pointed out in the previous post that some theologians said that Christ went to Hades to preach to those who were there to give them the chance to repent (who wouldn’t want to get outta there?? Apparently some or lots?) but others claimed that he went to assert his raw power over his enemies to show who was Lord and King. These [...]

BDEhrman2022-12-23T14:17:13-05:00December 18th, 2022|Afterlife, Christian Apocrypha, Early Christian Doctrine|

Did Jesus Descend to Hell After He Died?

Someone on the blog recently asked me about the idea that after Jesus’ death, and before his resurrection, he “descended into hell.” This is an affirmation found in the Apostle’s Creed, and so continues to be recited by millions of Christians still today. But what does it mean? Throughout the history of the church it has usually been thought – by those who thought and/or affirmed such things -- that Jesus descended to the realm of the dead to provide salvation to some (all?) of the people there, to liberate them from their condemnation (which was impossible *before* then because salvation can only come when Christ died – in this view – and so not before. So when he died he went down to save some (or all) of those who were there, taking them from Hades to heaven. This notion has traditionally been called “The Harrowing of Hell.” But how did it work, exactly? And were did the idea come from? As it turns out, I devoted a chapter to the question in my [...]

BDEhrman2022-12-15T10:13:16-05:00December 17th, 2022|Afterlife, Early Christian Doctrine, Historical Jesus|

What Would the Apostle Paul Think of The Trinity? Platinum Guest Post by Joel Scheller

Now here's an intriguing question about early Christianity, posed and answered by Platinum Blog member Joel Scheller in a guest post for all you other Platinums. One way to put the question is this: Would the apostle-Paul have been considered an arch-heretic in the fourth century? A good case can be made! Read on. And think about contributing a post yourself, on any topic connected to the blog. Have an idea/thought? Get it out there! For now -- here's Joel's most recent contribution. He'll be happy to address your comments. ****************************** I find it interesting that so much Christian teaching is based on the Apostle Paul’s influence and yet the doctrine on the very nature of God for most Christians seems out of step with what Paul has to say on the subject. To start off with, The Nicene Creed was originally provoked by the question of how Jesus was God in relation to God the Father, with the inclusion of The Holy Spirit in the creed as almost an afterthought, and whose relationship in [...]

BDEhrman2022-11-29T10:59:06-05:00December 16th, 2022|Early Christian Doctrine, Paul and His Letters|

Do We Know How Mark Began His Gospel? Another Scribal Change

I have been talking about different kinds of changes made in our surviving New Testament manuscripts, some of them accidental slips of the pen (that’s probably the vast majority of our textual variants) and others of them intentional alterations. One of the points that I’ve been trying to stress is that at the end of the day it is, technically speaking, impossible to know what a scribe’s “intentions” were (or if he had any, other than the intention of copying a text). None of the scribes is around to be interviewed, and so – as with a lot of history – there is a good bit of scholarly guess-work that has to be done. This guess work is not simply shooting in the dark, however. And it is dead easy for a highly trained expert to tell the difference between informed guesswork and just plain guesswork. But at the end of the day we are always talking about historical probabilities, not historical certainties, when it comes to figuring out why a scribed decided to change [...]

BDEhrman2022-11-09T23:02:39-05:00November 17th, 2022|Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine, New Testament Manuscripts|

The Birth of the Trinity – Platinum Webinar September 2022

Dear Platinum Members, Apologies for getting to this in something less than tout de suite! But here it is, our webinar on the Birth of the Trinity, for those of you weren't able to come and ... for those of you who were! Below is the video:

FreedomBen2022-10-09T15:09:58-04:00October 9th, 2022|Early Christian Doctrine, Public Forum|

An Equally Strange View of the Crucifixion

Yesterday I posted about the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, which clearly differentiated between the man Jesus and the spiritual being, the Christ, who inhabited him temporarily – leaving him at his suffering and death since the divine cannot suffer and die. That understanding of Jesus Christ is sometimes called "docetic," but strictly speaking that's not quite right. The term docetic comes from the Greek word DOKEO which means “to seem” or “to appear.” It refers to Christologies in which Jesus was not a real flesh-and-blood human but only “seemed” to be. In reality, what they saw, heard, and touched was a phantasm. That is not what is going on in the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter. Here there really is a man Jesus – flesh and blood like the rest of us. But he is indwelt by a divine being who leaves him at his death, abandoneding him to die alone on the cross. That is similar to a docetic view, but also strikingly different. I call it a “separationist” Christology because it separates Jesus from [...]

BDEhrman2022-08-01T09:48:28-04:00August 11th, 2022|Christian Apocrypha, Early Christian Doctrine, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE)|

How Could Jesus Be BOTH Divine and Human at Once? An Intriguing Ancient View

This now is my tenth and final April 18 anniversary post. The blog started on April 18, 2012, and with this post I will finish all the previous posts from April 18. This one, from 2021, is especially interesting for anyone intrigued by early Christian attempts to figure out who Christ was. God? Human? Half of each? Both at once? How's *that* work??? ****************************** In this long thread on the Trinity I have been trying to explain how Christians came to the view that Jesus was God but that he was separate from God the Father – that both were God, but they were two different persons, and yet there was only one God. I will have far less to say about the Spirit, since he/she/it got added to the mix more or less because Christ was already in it, as we will see. So far I have taken us up to the early third century, where one view had come to be widely rejected even though earlier it had been prominent: that Jesus actually [...]

BDEhrman2022-07-05T10:53:27-04:00July 17th, 2022|Early Christian Doctrine, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE)|

Christians Who Reversed Jesus’ Teachings: Wealth is GOOD!

In this thread I’ve been giving a short history of ancient Christian views of giving to charity – a matter of real interest for the blog itself, but of bigger interest for the world at large. Surprisingly, before Christianity started to take over the Roman world, no one apart from Jews appeared to think that the “poor” mattered enough to do much of anything to help them. Jesus, though, as a Jew, stressed the importance of taking care of those in need. That’s what God does and it’s what his people should do – give everything to help those without resources. After his death his followers moderated Jesus’ views and began to stress that wealth was not necessarily evil or opposed to God. Those who had it could keep it, as long as they were generous with it when it came to helping out those who were poor, hungry, homeless, ill, and so on. Eventually Christian leaders started actually to celebrate wealth, a rather serious change in the views promoted by Jesus. But how could [...]

BDEhrman2022-07-05T10:48:05-04:00July 16th, 2022|Early Christian Doctrine, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

“Redemptive Gifts”: Can Giving to Charity Save Your Soul?

In my previous post I began to show that after Jesus’ death, his followers started to soften his message that it was necessary for his followers to give up all their material goods. In fact, Christian leaders started seeing the virtue of wealth in their communities and began to claim that wealthy people who gave of their goods generously (without getting rid of them all) could help provide salvation for their souls. Such views become standard within the Christian tradition, creating two intriguing ironies for the religion, one related to the proclamation of Jesus during his life and other connected to the proclamation of the salvation he brought by his death. Jesus’ own views of wealth came to be reversed by his later followers, making it possible for them to increase their numbers in a world not at all likely to follow his example and message of voluntary poverty for the sake of the kingdom. On the other hand, precisely these missionary successes led subsequent generations of Christians to modify the original Christian understanding of [...]

BDEhrman2022-07-05T10:40:27-04:00July 14th, 2022|Early Christian Doctrine, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

Does Luke Have Contradictory Views of the Atonement?

I return now to the seemingly simple but inordinately complicated question I received that has led to this short thread over the past week or so on Luke's understanding of why Jesus died. In the thread so far (in case you haven't read it) I've argued that Luke (author of both the Gospel and Acts) did not have a doctrine of atonement. He certainly thought that Jesus had to die: but Jesus' death is not what brought a reconciliation with God (= salvation) per se. It made people realize their personal guilt before God, leading them to repent. Because they repented, God then forgave them. Jesus' death, in other words, was a motivation to return to God, it was not a bloody sacrifice that took away sins. With that as background: here again is the question. QUESTION: Although the gospel of Luke doesn’t have an atonement message, what are your thoughts about Acts 20:28 [were Paul is recorded as saying:] Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit [...]

BDEhrman2022-06-20T18:37:49-04:00July 7th, 2022|Acts of the Apostles, Early Christian Doctrine|

If Jesus’ Death Was Not an Atonement: Why Did He Die??

I have been dealing with the question of Jesus’ death in the Gospel of Luke and have been arguing that Luke does not appear to have understood Jesus’ death to be an atonement for sins. He has eliminated the several indications from his source, the Gospel of Mark, that Jesus’ death was an atonement, and he never indicates in either his Gospel or the book of Acts that Jesus died “for” you or “for” others or “for” anyone. Then why did Jesus die? It is clear that Luke thought that Jesus had to die. For Luke it was all part of God’s plan. But why? What is the theological meaning of Jesus’ death for Luke, if it was not a sacrifice that brought about a right standing before God (which is what the term “atonement” means)? You get the clearest view of Luke’s understanding of Jesus’ death from the speeches delivered by the apostles in the book of Acts. As you probably know, Acts is about the spread of the Christian church throughout the Roman Empire after [...]

BDEhrman2022-06-20T18:30:27-04:00July 6th, 2022|Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine|

Does Luke Get Rid of the Atonement?

In my previous post I tried to argue that the longer version of the account of Jesus’ Last Supper in Luke could have been created by a scribe who wanted to make the passage sound more like what is familiar from Matthew, Mark, and John, and to stress the point made in those other accounts as well, that Jesus’ broken body and shed blood are what bring redemption. The passage as you recall reads like this: 17 And he took a cup and gave thanks, and he said: “Take this and divide it among yourselves; 18 for I say to you that from now on I will not drink from the fruit of the vine until the Kingdom of God comes.” 19 And taking bread he gave thanks and broke it and gave it to them saying, “This is my body that is given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 20 Likewise after supper (he took) the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood that is shed for you. 21 [...]

BDEhrman2022-06-20T18:24:19-04:00July 5th, 2022|Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine, New Testament Manuscripts|

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