Loading...QUESTION:
I’m curious to know of future projects you have in mind after you complete your commentary on 2nd century gospels.
RESPONSE:
As I’ve indicated on this blog before, I try to alternate the kinds of books I write. Most scholars don’t do it that way. I have friends – my closest friends in the field, in fact – who want only to do scholarship and nothing else, and so they write scholarly monograph after scholarly monograph. This is an enormous service to the academic community, as it is only through work like that that we are able to advance knowledge.
I know of other people who want only to write for popular audiences. And it is easy to see how someone can get “bit by the bug” and want to do nothing else. Some popular authors make a lot of money from their books, they get asked to give lectures in front of large audiences, they get their names in the media, and it’s all very seductive.
FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in as a Member. Click here for membership options. If you don’t belong yet, JOIN!!!
Pretty amazing schedule. The trade book on the oral tradition looks very interesting.
I agree with Ronald…that book would be # one on my list of books to read
Prof Ehrman do you recommend any good trade books on the resurrection?
Depends what you’re looking for. If you want a very conservative evangelical defense of the historicity of the resurrection, try Mike Licona’s recent book. If you want a book that tears apart the tradition and insists the resurrection never happened, try Gerd Luedemann’s book. If you want a collection of essays on a variety of related issues (including a great one by NT scholar Michael Goulder, who also doesn’t believe it) try the one by Gavin D’Costa. Hope this helps!
Don’t forget Dale Allison’s Resurrecting Jesus!
Wooops — that’the most important one!
thanks it helps alot
im looking for info that best follows the rules of the historical method to produce the most likely conclusions. ill try that one by D’Costa.
Maybe the best is Dale Allison, Resurrection Jesus.
Thank you for answering this question. We appreciate the intense effort you put into your work and writing. It must take tremendous effort to make early Christianity, the NT, etc. as interesting as you make it to a general audience (and to do this while doing serious scholarship is impressive). Many try but few succeed. In your writings your honest thirst for understanding is contagious and your own story which you tell along the way is relatable to many.
The popular books and The History of Early Christianity textbook (I have longed for something like this) all sound very exciting to me!
Since there are numerous collections of extracanonical Gospel translations in English (especially the voluminous compendium of Schneemelcher & Wilson), I am wondering: is the idea of publishing new anthologies simply to add newer translations, or do they contribute new material?
Schneemelcher is really for scholars, and not the sort of thing the average Jane and Joe will look at. There are others that are for popular audiences, but none of them tries to be at all comprehensive, the way ours does. Where else would you go, for example, for the Gospel of Nicodemus or the History of Joseph the Carpenter? (I can’t *think* of where else you would go! Maybe someone else knows….)
Allow me to put in a plug for a book on the origin & development of the “Holy Spirit” You could call it “Holy Ghost — WTF?”
“packaging and repackaging the same things they’ve been saying for years”
That’s what church preachers devote their lives doing…
How about a book on what happened to the Jewish early Christians in Palestine ? Apparently solid information is very limited , but informed speculation would be welcome . Why should Dan Brown be the only filthy rich New Testament ” writer ” ?
Interesting idea!
I am really looking forward to How Jesus Became God, can’t wait!
So when might we expect The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction? I’d pre-order it today if I could. I see some comparable texts in print, but I want to read yours.
It will be out in the early Fall, if all goes to plan.
> A book on why Christianity succeeded
Richard Carrier wrote a book a few years back on this topic called “Not the Impossible Faith: Why Christianity Didn’t Need a Miracle to Succeed.” He took a different approach (a chapter by chapter refutation of J.P. Holding’s “The Impossible Faith”) than I imagine you would, but it tackles the same idea.
Of those on your list, I’m most looking forward to “Jesus and the Battle for Scripture”.
Cheers!
Professor Ehrman,
Will you be addressing the trinitarian formula found at the end of the Gospel of Matthew in your upcoming “How Jesus Became God” book? Or can you say a few words about it now?
Thanks. I’m really looking forward to that book!
I don’t address it in the book. My sense is that even thyough the Father, Son, and Spirit are mentioned in Matt. 28:19-20, that is not necessarily a statement of the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity is that all three of these are fully God and are equal with one another as God, but that there is nonetheless only one God. I’m afraid the passage in Matthew doesn’t tell us what the author thought of the deity of the Son or the Spirit, or whether they were fully God, or if there was nonetheless only one God, etc. The passage is tantalizing! But in part because it says so little. In any event, I don’t think we can read later trinitarian thinking into it….