Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE) Archives - Page 4 of 5 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

Christ as Non-Human (but fully God) in the Early Second Century

On this slow path we are taking to see where the doctrine of the Trinity came from (it may seem slow, but of course a full analysis would take volumes!) I have been trying to show how different understandings of Christ emerged in early Christianity – starting from the original belief of his disciples in his resurrection and exaltation, to later exaltation views (he was a man who became divine at his resurrection; NO! at his baptism; NO! at his birth) and then incarnation views (he was never a man who was not God. He was God who became a man). Paul has both views: Christ was a divine being who became human but then got exalted to a higher level of divinity; the final view is found in the Gospel of John: Christ was completely divine from the beginning, and in fact was the Creator of the universe. Wow. In the last post I showed that this incredibly “high” Christology in John was taken yet higher in the later Johannine community, as some members [...]

BDEhrman2021-03-08T15:09:19-05:00March 17th, 2021|Early Christian Doctrine, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE)|

An Apocryphal Story of Mary’s Conception of Jesus

In my previous post I introduced the seventh-century Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, one of the most popular Christian writings of the Middle Ages. It tells an expanded version of the events leading up to Jesus’ birth, and then yet more legendary tales of what happened afterward. I continue here with another intriguing portion of the account: the events surrounding Mary conceiving Jesus, even though she was a virgin, and the reactions of Joseph when he realizes she is pregnant, and then – something completely missing from the New Testament – the religious “test” inflicted on her by others to see if she was telling the truth. Again, this is taken from the translation in my book The Other Gospels, produced with my colleague Zlatko Pleše. The Annunciation 9 1 On the next day while Mary was standing beside the fountain to fill her small pitcher, an angel appeared to her and said, “You are blessed, Mary, for you have prepared a dwelling place for God in your spirit. Behold, a light will come from heaven [...]

BDEhrman2020-12-07T18:36:11-05:00December 15th, 2020|Canonical Gospels, Christian Apocrypha, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE)|

A Different Account of Joseph and Mary!

As we move to the Christmas season, I thought it would be interesting to post some extracts on one of the most popular Gospels in the Middle Ages, an account of Jesus’ birth – and before that, his mother Mary’s birth – and what happened in the aftermath. It is called the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, because modern scholars once thought that it had claimed to be written by Matthew (the author of the first canonical Gospel); but in fact, as you will see, it claims to be written by Jesus’ brother James. The Gospel comes to us in Latin and was probably produced in the early 7th century. Some of you may know, from the blog or elsewhere, a Greek Gospel of this description from the 2nd century, the Proto-Gospel of James. This later Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew is a kind of reworking and expansion of the Proto-Gospel, with some parts removed, lots more added, and others simply altered. It may be that its unknown author wanted to propagate the stories of the Proto-Gospel in the [...]

BDEhrman2020-12-07T18:12:31-05:00December 13th, 2020|Canonical Gospels, Christian Apocrypha, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE)|

Ancient Numerical Interpretations of the Bible

I have recently received this question about a very interesting and little known phenomenon in the New Testament. QUESTION: What is the use of the concept of Gematria? And was it used in the NT? RESPONSE: Ah, the question is a bit tricky but pretty fascinating. Gematria was an ancient Jewish way of interpreting texts that relied on the fact that in ancient writing systems (Greek, Hebrew, etc.) the letters of the alphabet also designated numbers. It doesn’t work that way for us, since we use the Latin alphabet (A B C D E….) but Arabic numerals (1 2 3 4 5….). But in ancient languages, the letters were also the numerals. So, in Greek, the language of the New Testament, the first letter alpha was 1; beta was 2; gamma was 3; etc. Once you hit iota it was 10, and after that it went by tens, so that the next letter kappa was 20, lambda was 30, and so on. Once you hit a hundred it went by hundreds. Greek in the [...]

BDEhrman2020-10-30T21:32:42-04:00November 4th, 2020|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Reader’s Questions|

Our Most Important Gospel from Outside the NT: The Gospel of Thomas

This week in my graduate seminar we will be discussing the Coptic Gospel of Thomas, not to be confused with the Infancy Gospel of Thomas that I mentioned in a post last week, with which this one has no relation, apart from the fact that both claim to be written by Thomas, a.k.a. Didymus Judas Thomas, i.e., Jesus’ brother Jude. By far this Gospel of Thomas is the best known, most read, and most significant Gospel from outside the New Testament. It was accidentally discovered in 1945 near Nag Hammadi Egypt as one of the 52 documents contained in a set of twelve books, with part of a thirteenth, now widely known as the Nag Hammadi Library. Most of these documents are Gnostic. Like all the others, this one is written in Coptic and is a Coptic translation of a Greek original. The book that contains it was produce in the mid-fourth century CE. But the Gospel itself was originally composed in the early second century CE. It is hard to say when after this [...]

BDEhrman2020-10-29T16:48:35-04:00September 14th, 2020|Christian Apocrypha, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE)|

My Early Christian Apocrypha Seminar

I am teaching a PhD seminar this semester on the early Christian apocrypha; it's a little hard to define what those are, though hundreds of people have tried!. The way I define them are as non-canonical books that are similar in genre and contents to those that did make it into the canon. Or something like that. They comprise Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses, they can be "orthodox" or "non-orthodox" (= " heretical"); most of them claim to be written by apostles (but not all); the ones I'm most interested in date from the second to the fifth centuries. It's a fairly but not crazily heavy-hitting class. It meets once a week for three hours. Here, for your amusement and reading pleasure (especially if you do the assignments!) is the syllabus: To see what follows, you will need to belong to the blog. Not a member yet? Now's the best time ever to join. Why? Because you can't join in the past. Reli 801: Early Christian Apocrypha Instructor: Bart D. Ehrman Fall 2020 [...]

BDEhrman2021-01-10T00:43:42-05:00August 24th, 2020|Christian Apocrypha, Christianity in the Classroom, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Teaching Christianity|

The Opening Section of the Gospel of Judas

Here is the first bit of the Gospel of Judas from the translation of my colleague Zlatko Pleše in our book The Other Gospels. After this bit here, the Gospel gets very strange, at least to most modern readers. But as you can see, it is really interesting. The first paragraph is the explanation of where we got the text from; then the translation of the opening scends, and after that I give the bibliography for further reading that we cite in our book. ************************************** Our translation is based on the Coptic text of Rodolphe Kasser, and Gregor Wurst, eds. The Gospel of Judas: Critical Edition. Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2007. New portions of the Gospel appeared in 2006, when the one-time owner of the manuscript declared bankruptcy and his remaining antiquities collection was turned over to a bank in Ohio; included in this collection were numerous small fragments of the Gopsel of Judas. These have been photographed and they have begun to be studied; for our translation of the account here we have [...]

BDEhrman2020-12-26T00:45:31-05:00August 7th, 2020|Christian Apocrypha, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Heresy and Orthodoxy|

Sethian Gnostics and the Gospel of Judas

Soon after scholars had a chance to examine the Gospel of Judas it became clear that it embodied a form of early Christian Gnosticism known as "Sethian." Most descriptions that you find of Gnosticism are simplistic and do not actually reflect the mind-boggling complexities of the texts that embody it, to the extent that even if you master the basic descriptions you find, it is very hard to make sense of any of the texts. That is certainly true of the Sethian writings! To say they are gloriously confusing is a serious understatement. They involve myths filled with wierd names and intricacies of relationships and events that are hard to explain in the abstract. But hey, you gotta try! And if you don't have much space to do so, well, you do the best you can. Here is how I explain Sethian Gnosticism in my book After the New Testament , 2nd edition. (The book is actually an anthology of early Christian texts writings all kinds, and I include selections from three key Sethian texts.) [...]

BDEhrman2020-08-04T14:44:38-04:00August 4th, 2020|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Heresy and Orthodoxy|

When I Learned the Gospel of Judas Had Been Discovered

As I said in my last post, after receiving an out-of-the-blue query about the Gospel of Judas I looked it up to refresh my memory: it was allegedly a book used by a group of Gnostics named the Cainites, a book that told the story of Jesus from the perspective of Judas Iscariot, his betrayer – not in order to malign Judas but, evidently, to celebrate his deed, since it was (somehow) to Jesus’ advantage. Soon after reading up on the Gospel (there was very little to read about it, since we didn’t have it; all we had were some comments in the writings of church fathers who opposed it, principally Irenaeus), I received a second phone call, this one from a person at National Geographic, asking what I knew about the Gospel of Judas. I obviously realized that something was up. So I told her what little we knew about the Gospel as probably a Gnostic text. In my mind, I wasn’t sure – before this – that the text actually *ever* existed. Some [...]

BDEhrman2020-07-22T14:54:50-04:00July 22nd, 2020|Christian Apocrypha, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE)|

How I First Learned About the Gospel of Judas Iscariot

Over the past few weeks I’ve had a thread dealing with Judas Iscariot and another thread dealing with claims from the second century that Christians were highly immoral (sexual reprobates, murderers, and cannibals). Or at least that some Christian heretics were. As it turns out, these two threads are closely related in a way one would not expect – at least in a way I never expected until I got involved with the “Gospel of Judas” that was discovered in recent times. I posted on this many years ago but it would be interesting to do so again. This will take several posts. I begin with how I first found out about the Gospel of Judas, back when experts in early Christianity knew virtually nothing at all about a Gospel of Judas. In the Fall of 2004 I was in my study minding my own business (well, talking with a graduate student) when the phone rang. It was a woman named Sheila, whom I had known for years. Sheila had sponsored a number of archaeological [...]

BDEhrman2020-07-20T14:51:55-04:00July 20th, 2020|Christian Apocrypha, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Heresy and Orthodoxy, Proto-Orthodox Writers|

Did Early Christian Heretics Promote Outrageous Sex Rituals?

In my post a few days ago I mentioned the widespread rumor in the ancient Roman world of the first couple of centuries CE that Christians were flagrantly immoral, engaging in wild sex and infanticide and homicide in their weekly meetings. A couple of readers have asked if that might have been true for *some* of the Christian groups of “heretics,” and that Roman outsiders who knew of their activities assumed all Christians engaged in them. Great question! I’ve thought about this one for over thirty years. What I concluded about twenty-nine years ago is what I still think now: these kinds of charges were commonly leveled in the Roman world against whomever you didn’t like and suspected and there is very little any evidence that they were ever true. Almost always they are just slanders. It is worth noting that very similar charges were leveled by pagans against Christians, pagans against Jews, pagans against each other, Christians against pagans, Christians against … Christians! I’ve talked about this in some of my publications, most fully [...]

BDEhrman2020-07-14T16:15:44-04:00July 14th, 2020|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

The Outrageous Immorality of Early Christians (!) (?)

The question I addressed yesterday: could the obvious benefits of the Christian community – a community of love, fellowship, and mutual support – have drawn converts into it, who very much wanted that kind of thing? The surprising answer, I think, is no, at least in the early centuries when Christianity was trying to establish a foothold in the world. There’s another reason for thinking what I do, and it’s not one you would expect. There were reports about the early Christian communities among outsiders. But it was not that they were a loving and caring group of unusually upright and morally committed people. On the contrary, the Christians were known to be flagrantly immoral, engaged in heinous, licentious, and murderous behavior. Hard to believe, but that is the charge we repeatedly find. Here is what I say about it in my book The Triumph of Christianity. Brace yourself. ************************************************************* In the early centuries Christians were accused of almost unfathomable outrageous behavior. Both Justin around 150 CE in Rome and Tertullian some fifty years [...]

BDEhrman2020-07-12T12:56:35-04:00July 12th, 2020|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), History of Christianity (100-300CE), Spread of Christianity|

How Could Torture Not Hurt?? Guest Post by Stephanie Cobb

Here now is the second of three posts by Stephanie Cobb on her recent book about early Christian accounts of the martyrs. As you'll see, she makes some rather astonishing and counter-intuitive claims. But I think she's completely right. This is fascinating material.... - Stephanie Cobb's most popular books are Dying to Be Men and Divine Deliverance. ********************************************************* In the previous post, I detailed the reasons martyr texts ought to focus on the suffering and pain of early Christians experiencing torture and being executed for their faith. I also, though, noted that despite those reasons, the texts exhibit an interest in protecting the Christian body from the experience of pain. In this post, we’ll look at some of the ways Christian authors accomplish their goals of illustrating Christian insensitivity to pain. But first, a quick caveat: in my work, I focus on rhetoric and narrative—not history per se. That is, I am not arguing that torture does not hurt. In fact, I am certain that torture hurts and to deny that is a [...]

BDEhrman2020-05-27T16:11:00-04:00July 23rd, 2019|Book Discussions, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

What Kind of Book Was Papias Writing? Guest Post by Stephen Carlson

This is the second part of Stephen Carlson’s guest post on the important but now-lost work of the early-second century Christian author Papias. In the previous post he talked about the mind-boggling abundance of wine and wheat there would be in the kingdom, based on Papias’s reporting of a “word of the Lord.” Now he explains that saying, and in doing so develops a bold way of understanding what kind of book Papias actually was trying to write. Most of us have long assumed it was a kind of commentary on Jesus’ teachings. But was it? Stephen Carlson is the author of The Gospel Hoax and The Text of Galatians and Its History. **************************************************************** Scholars have long noticed that this fertility tradition has important links with the late first-century Jewish apocalypse 2 Baruch 29.5 (“Also the earth will give its fruits, one in ten thousand. And one vine, there will be on it a thousand twigs. And one twig will make a thousand clusters, and one cluster will make a thousand grapes, and one grape [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-25T16:38:42-04:00May 10th, 2019|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

Wine Flowing in the Kingdom: Guest Post on Papias by Stephen Carlson

Here is yet another guest post by Stephen Carlson on the intriguing but puzzling quotations from Papias, the elusive second century church father who wrote a five-volume book called “Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord.” What was this book, and does it give us any information from outside the Gospels – from an extremely early source – about the sayings of Jesus? In this post Stephen addresses one of the most, well, unusual passages known to be from Papias’s work. As you’ll see, in this account Jesus thought that in the millennial kingdom yet to come, the wine will be flowing…. I have broken the post into two because of its length. Part 2 will come next. Stephen Carlson is the author of The Gospel Hoax and The Text of Galatians and Its History. *************************************************************** The Fertility Tradition in Papias In our last post, we looked at the preface of Papias’s Exposition of Dominical Oracles, and noticed that it mentions two kinds of content in the work. One kind of content is characterized by [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-25T16:45:18-04:00May 8th, 2019|Christian Apocrypha, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE)|

Papias and the Writers of the New Testament: Guest Post by Stephen Carlson

Here is another post by Stephen Carlson on that mysterious figure named Papias, an early second century writer who claims to have had information from reliable witnesses about the authors of the New Testament, and who may indicate that the "John" who wrote the Gospel is different from the "John" who wrote Revelation. Or does he? If the *apostle* John did not Revelation, should it be in the New Testament? Puzzling and hard to figure out -- but here is what Stephen says about it. - Stephen Carlson is the author of The Gospel Hoax and The Text of Galatians and Its History. *********************************************************************************** What Papias Says About His Own Work In our last post, we looked at the title of Papias’s work, Exposition of Dominical Oracles, and surveyed the considerable scholarly controversy about the nature of Papias’s work. Many scholars take the position that it was a commentary on the sayings of Jesus, perhaps with some narrative elements, but others contend that it was a commentary on at least the Gospel of Matthew, or [...]

BDEhrman2021-02-23T01:47:28-05:00April 25th, 2019|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Proto-Orthodox Writers, Revelation of John|

A Papias Mystery: What Was the Book He Wrote? Guest Post by Stephen Carlson

Stephen Carlson has graciously agreed to do a few more posts on his work on Papias. Remember, Papias is that (very?) early second century church father who is later said to have written a five-volume work called the Exposition of the Sayings (or Oracles) of the Lord. We don’t have the book any longer, and don’t really even know what was in it. But several church fathers mention it and give a few quotations from it, some of them very intriguing indeed (including an alternative account about how Judas Iscariot died!). In this post Stephen continues his explanation – based on a new book he is just now finishing up for publication. For my money, this is the most interesting one yet, dealing with an intriguing question: just what kind of book was this that Papias produced? (The other fascinating question that has no definitive answer – don’t know if Stephen will be dealing with this – why didn’t anyone preserve the book for posterity???) Stephen Carlson is the author of The Gospel Hoax and [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-25T17:17:41-04:00April 12th, 2019|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Proto-Orthodox Writers|

Papias. How Do We Know His Context? Guest post by Stephen Carlson

Now that Stephen Carlson has said a few things about Papias, in this post he is going to explain why it is so hard to know what Papias is actually saying in the fragmentary quotations of his writings that we have. (Even though people / scholars quote them all the time as if we can tell exactly what he means.) It all has to do with putting them in context. But what if you don’t know the context? This is the second of his two posts. And he leaves us with a cliff hanger. If you want to hear more, let us know! Stephen Carlson is the author of The Gospel Hoax and The Text of Galatians and Its History, among others ***************************************************************** Context, Context, Context Continuing the discussion, scholars of fragmentary texts wrestle with the difficult problem of context. As we all know, context is the key to interpretation. Like any other text, the quotations that constitute our fragments of Papias are not self-interpreting just by reading them as stand-alone statements. Readers need context [...]

BDEhrman2020-05-08T15:04:54-04:00April 5th, 2019|Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE)|

The Writings of Papias: Guest Post by Stephen Carlson

I occasionally get questions about one of the most interesting but least known Christian authors of the early 2nd century, a man named Papias (writing in 120 CE? 140 CE). Many readers consider him particularly important because he claims to have known and interviewed the companions of disciples of Jesus’ own apostles (it’s a bit confusing: but Jesus had his apostles; after his death they themselves had disciples; Papias knew people who knew these disciples of the apostles); moreover, Papias is the first author to mention a Gospel of Matthew and a Gospel of Mark. Pretty important. Unfortunately, we don’t have his writings – only a few quotations of them, here and there, among the writings of later church fathers. But these quotations are highly fascinating. There has never been a definitive, full-length study of Papias until now. (Well, until the near future.) My friend and former student and Stephen Carlson has been working for years on the Papias fragments. Stephen did his PhD in New Testament at Duke and is now a Senior Research [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-25T16:40:52-04:00April 4th, 2019|Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), History of Biblical Scholarship|

Now, The Gospel of Peter

I am devoting this thread to understanding why the Apocalypse of Peter did not make it into the New Testament, when other Petrine books, especially 2 Peter, did make it in. I’ve summarized what happens in both these books, but to contextualize my remarks further, I have to provide information on yet another Petrine book that did not make it in, the “Gospel of Peter.” I’ve talked about this Gospel several times on the blog before, but since it is important to the train of thought here, I need to devote a couple of posts to it again. Here is what I say about the discovery of the manuscript (the manuscript that also contained the Apocalypse of Peter) and its contents. This discussion is taken from my book The Other Gospels, co-authored and edited with my colleague Zlatko Plese. ************************************************************ What we now call the Gospel of Peter was found in one of the most remarkable archaeological discoveries of Christian texts in the nineteenth century. In the winter season of 1886-87 a French archaeological team [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T00:50:06-04:00November 16th, 2018|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE)|

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