History of Christianity (100-300CE) Archives - Page 2 of 14 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

Is Christianity a Cult of the Dead? Guest Post by Kyle Smith, PhD

Now here's an intriguing topic I bet you've never thought about. Can you (should we?) consider early Christianity -- and in fact Christianity as a whole, as a "cult of the dead"? Kyle Smith is an associate professor and director of the History of Religions program in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Toronto (See: Kyle Smith | Department of Historical Studies (utoronto.ca). I have known Kyle for many years, since he was a PhD student in early Chrsitianity at Duke. Since then he has become a well-known scholar of Christianity in late antiquity, who already now at a relatively young age (compared to us geezers) has published six books. (Not sure if you know this, but many, many senior scholars publish only two or three for their entire careers.) Five of them are hard-hitting scholarship. His most recent one is for a general audience, Cult of the Dead: A Brief History of Christianity (University of California Press, 2022). I think it's unusually interesting. I thought it would be extremely interesting to [...]

BDEhrman2023-02-06T19:32:26-05:00February 16th, 2023|Book Discussions, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

An Intriguing Anti-Jewish Variant: Did Jesus Pray “Father forgive them”?
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An Intriguing Anti-Jewish Variant: Did Jesus Pray “Father forgive them”?

History of Christianity (100-300CE), Jews and Christians in Antiquity, New Testament Manuscripts

An Intriguing Anti-Jewish Variant: Did Jesus Pray “Father forgive them”?

In my previous post I pointed out that scribes appear to have changed their texts of the New Testament in ways that reflected the rising anti-Jewish sentiment of the early Christian centuries. For me, by a wide margin, the most intriguing example of this is the prayer Jesus makes from the cross in Luke's Gospel (and nowhere else in the New Testament) "Father forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing." I wrote about this passage in an article many years ago that I called “The Text of the Gospels at the End of the Second Century,” which was reprinted in a collection of my more scholarly essays on textual criticism called Studies in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (Brill, 2006; the paper was originally written for a conference in 1993) (not that I'm dating myself...) The paper was written for fellow scholars, but I’ve decided to go ahead and include it here verbatim. BUT, I have added several explanatory comments in [brackets] for technical terms and ideas that are not the [...]

BDEhrman2023-02-06T19:05:00-05:00February 9th, 2023|History of Christianity (100-300CE), Jews and Christians in Antiquity, New Testament Manuscripts|

Anti-Jewish Alterations of the New Testament Writings?

In my previous post I pointed out that scribes sometimes changed the manuscripts of the New Testament in order to make them more theologically "orthodox," that is, more in line with theological views of (most of) the scribes who were copying the texts in the second and third centuries. Five points I would like to emphasize about that phenomenon (if you want a fuller analysis, this is the topic of my study, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effects of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament). It would be a very big mistake to think that this was the main reason scribes changed their texts (as I've said my entire life, even if many people haven't noticed!) These changes were never done consistently or throughly, at least in any of our surviving manuscripts, and that suggests it was an ad hoc affair, happening now and then as a scribe decided to modify a passage. So far as we can tell it was never done on orders from on high. That is, [...]

BDEhrman2023-01-31T15:34:37-05:00February 8th, 2023|History of Christianity (100-300CE), New Testament Manuscripts|

Evidence of Forgery. More Reasons the Martyrdom of Polycarp Was Not Written by Someone There

In my previous post I began to lay out my case that the Martyrdom of Polycarp, our (allegedly) first full narrative account of a Christian martyr, who died 155 CE, written (allegedly) by an eyewitness, in fact was written decades later, by someone who wanted his readers to think he was an eyewitness and to that end (falsely) claimed to be one. Here I move from the intriguing fact (from the last post) that the author asserts his eyewitness authority precisely at the points that are, well, rather difficult to believe to other historical problems in the text that suggest the author was not living at the time or privy to what actually happened. Again, this is from my book Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (Oxford University Press, 2013). ***************************** Apart from the miraculous elements of the text – which include the martyr’s blood gushing forth in such profusion as to douse the flames of his pyre, and a dove emerging from his side and flying [...]

BDEhrman2023-01-23T11:25:22-05:00February 1st, 2023|Book Discussions, Forgery in Antiquity, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

Writing Forgeries to Show the Truth

In my previous post I pointed out a major problem that confronted the earliest Christians, as I discuss in the Preface to my book Forged (HarperOne, 2011). From the beginning the followers of Jesus insisted that they had the “truth” and that it was only by accepting the “truth” about God as revealed by Jesus that anyone could have salvation. But they disagreed on what the truth was. There were numerous widespread views already in the earliest years of Christianity about who Jesus was, what his death meant, how one was to have salvation, whether one had to keep, or begin to keep, the Jewish law, and about lots of other things. How was one to get around these problems? The obvious answer presented itself early on in the Christian movement. One could know what the apostles taught because they left writings behind. These authoritative authors produced authoritative teachings. And so, the authoritative truth could be found in the apostolic writings. Even though this might sound like a perfect solution to the problem, the solution [...]

BDEhrman2022-11-27T17:09:37-05:00December 10th, 2022|Forgery in Antiquity, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

Do Church Fathers Show What the Authors of the NT Actually Wrote?

What other resources do we have to figure out what the authors of the New Testament originally wrote, if we don't have their actual writings themselves? In this post I move into a very brief discussion of one other area of evidence for the text of the New Testament, the Patristic sources. The term “patristic” stands for “fathers” (Latin: patres) of the church – that is, the early church authors who quoted the books of the New Testament in the course of their writings. This too is an exceedingly thorny area of scholarly investigation, and one that I have long been deeply interested in. It is the area that I did my PhD research and dissertation in. So here’s the deal. As I have pointed out before, we don’t have complete manuscripts of the New Testament until the middle of the fourth century – some 300 years after the books were written. We do have earlier fragmentary papyri manuscripts of this, that, or the other part of the NT, and for that we are all [...]

BDEhrman2022-10-26T18:34:06-04:00November 8th, 2022|History of Christianity (100-300CE), New Testament Manuscripts, Proto-Orthodox Writers|

Can’t We Just Get Rid of Some of the Books of the Bible?

Here's an interesting question I received from a blog reader long ago! QUESTION: Given the criteria used to determine what would go on to constitute the New Testament canon, how is it that Hebrews and the book of Revelation remain part of the canon? I understand that Christians came to believe that they were authored by the apostles which is why they made it into the canon, but we now know that they weren't authored by Paul or John..so why are they still in the NT? RESPONSE: Interesting idea! I sometimes get asked what I would exclude from the canon if given the choice, and I almost always say 1 Timothy, because of what it says about women in 2:11-15, and how the passage has been used for such horrible purposes over the years. But, well, it ain’t gonna happen. I don’t get a vote. And that’s the problem with Hebrews and Revelation – and all the other books that were admitted when Church Fathers (wrongly) thought they were written by apostles of Jesus [...]

BDEhrman2022-10-28T14:39:53-04:00October 25th, 2022|Catholic Epistles, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Reader’s Questions|

Why I Want to Write a Book on Christian Love

Over the past couple of weeks I have been explaining how I have reimagined my next trade book, written not for scholars but for general readers. As I've pointed out, my initial idea that I floated before readers of the blog was to have a book devoted to how Christianity revolutionized how people in the Roman world understood wealth and what to do with it. My argument was that as a Jew Jesus insisted that those with resources help those who were in need – a virtually unheard-of ethical principle in Greek and Roman antiquity. His followers were Jews as well, for whom this was a familiar message, but as they converted non-Jews to become Jesus’ followers, they convinced them as well. So this became the standard Christian view, leading to the invention of the public hospital, the orphanage, the use of governmental assistance for those in need, private charities, and so on. My previous posts have explained how I have now expanded the vision of the book, to show that these new views of [...]

BDEhrman2022-09-23T10:19:57-04:00September 18th, 2022|Book Discussions, Historical Jesus, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

Is It Even Possible to Follow Jesus’ Teaching to “Love Your Neighbor as Yourself”

In my previous posts I've been talking about Jesus' "love commandment," arguing that it revolutionized ancient thinking about how people are to behave toward one another. ("Love thy neighbor as thyself"). Now I ask whether that revolution actually involved changing people's behavior in radical ways. Or not. Obviously, on the practical level, Jesus’ insistence on complete self-sacrifice did not come to dominate the world of late antiquity. People continued to live much as they had before. Conquerors still conquered. The first Christian emperor, Constantine, was one of the most bloodthirsty of them all; many of his ardent Christian successors (including his sons) were at least as bad. Slavery continued and was never questioned. The rich dominated the poor. Men dominated women. The rich kept getting richer. Most notably, Christian churches themselves began getting very much richer. Eventually the church was by far the wealthiest institution in the west, and stayed that way for well over a millennium. Christian Ethics in the Roman Empire Even so, the ethical discourse of society did change with the Christianization [...]

BDEhrman2022-09-12T10:45:11-04:00September 17th, 2022|Historical Jesus, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

The Canon of the New Testament: Why It Matters

With this post I conclude my thread on how we got the canon of the New Testament. In the last post I began to talk about how having a canon affected the way people read the books of the New Testament. Even though there are important *differences* among the various books, when they are all put between the same two covers, people read them as if they were all saying the same thing. Here I pick up right before I left off…. ****************************** There are, for example, four Gospels, each presenting a different understanding of Jesus’ words and deeds. The thirteen letters assigned to Paul contain inconsistencies and incoherencies (especially between the ones he actually wrote and those produced in his name later by others). The alleged writings of James, Peter, John, and Jude also present distinctive messages, sometimes at odds with the others. But when all twenty-seven books were canonized into a single book, the statements of one writing came to be read in light of another, forcing readers (almost always unsuspectingly) to think [...]

BDEhrman2022-09-09T23:46:07-04:00August 27th, 2022|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

When Did We Get the Final Canon of the New Testament?

I am nearing the end of this thread on the formation of the canon of the New Testament. Rather than going into all the ins and outs of the process, I have been laying out the topics that I hope to address in a book on the matter down the road. I say down the road because it is not the very next book I plan to write, but the one *after* the one I now plan to write. I like to think ahead. Here I talk about when the decisions were finalized (were they?) and what the major significance of “closing” the canon was. A Final Consensus? Many (most?) people imagine that the canon, in the end, was decided by a vote at one of the major church councils, such as the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE (as propounded by that inestimable authority, Dan Brown, in The Da Vinci Code). But the question of the canon was not even Blog members get five posts like this every week. Memberships start at $2.99 [...]

BDEhrman2022-08-18T11:40:15-04:00August 24th, 2022|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

How Did They Decide Which Books to Include in the New Testament Canon?

If the early Christians decided they needed writings by apostles to provide them guidance in what it meant to follow Jesus – what to believe, how to act, what rituals to follow, how to understand them, etc. – how did they decide? Which writings were they going to include? And which exclude? I continue here my reflections on how we got the 27 books of the New Testament, some preliminary thoughts as I consider how to write a book on the topic down the road. How Decisions Were Made Early church communities, leaders, and individuals accepted and appealed to a range texts written by apostolic authorities. Some Christians revered the Gospel of Thomas, which maintained that it was the secret teachings of Jesus, not his death, that could bring salvation. Other Christians accepted the divine revelation found in one of the Apocalypses of Peter (not the one I described earlier) in which Peter narrates his own most peculiar vision of the crucifixion. It is a puzzling scene that is difficult to imagine. The man [...]

BDEhrman2022-08-15T08:35:03-04:00August 23rd, 2022|History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

Writings of the Apostles in the Canon of the New Testament

How did we get the twenty-seven books of the New Testament? And why? I’m in the middle of a thread that is meant to provide a *sketch* of how it happened; I’ll be writing a book on the question, and these are my preliminary thoughts about the topics that I’ll be covering, one at a time. In previous posts I’ve pointed out that the early Christians started out with a canon of Scripture: as Jews they had the Hebrew Bible as an authority for understanding their beliefs, ethics, and religious practices; but as Christianity began to develop its own distinctive views on things, church leaders came to think needed authoritative direction – especially since so many different Christian groups had so many different views on so many issues (not just what to believe but also how to live, how to behave, how to worship together, and so on). What could be decisive authorities? Here’s where I pick up in my thinking: The Need for Apostolic Authorities It was widely known that Jesus himself had [...]

BDEhrman2022-08-09T18:07:56-04:00August 20th, 2022|Canonical Gospels, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

Why Did Christians Even Need a Canon of Scripture?

In my previous posts on how we got the canon of the New Testament I’ve discussed several books allegedly written by Peter – one that got into the New Testament (2 Peter); one that came close to getting in (the Apocalypse of Peter – the one that gives Peter’s first-hand description of heaven and hell; NOT the “Coptic” Gnostic one that I discussed last week in two posts); one that was thought by some proto-orthodox Christians (but maybe not many) as having a rightful place (the Gospel of Peter); and one that really never had much of a chance (Peter’s letter to James). I can now set forth an overview of what I plan to cover in my book on the canon – when I eventually write it -- and the conclusions I will draw under a series of interrelated rubrics. These can be imagined as chapter divisions, to come after an introduction that explains the importance of the question of how we got the canon, how it has become such a pressing question for [...]

BDEhrman2022-08-19T17:03:20-04:00August 17th, 2022|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum|

Did Christians Invent Hospitals?

This will be the last of my posts on this thread, connected with what I hope is my next book, that I’m calling tentatively, The Creation of Charity: How Christianity Transformed our World. Here I talk about one of the lesser-known aspects of early Christianity – a surprising one to most people. Arguably the most important development in the Christian history of charity came in the institutionalization of giving, not on the governmental level but through extra-mural ecclesiastical organizations. Of these, none proved more historically significant than the invention of the hospital. Most health care in the Greek and Roman worlds took place in the home, with families bearing the responsibility of nursing the sick. That, of course, is not the most effective mode of health care, but even simple nursing often produces salubrious results. Certainly, there were doctors trained in medical science who attended the sick, but these were private initiatives and as a rule benefited only with those of means. Doctors worked as individuals, out of their homes or through home-visitations to those who [...]

BDEhrman2022-07-11T14:33:45-04:00July 21st, 2022|History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum|

Were Early Christians Really Charitable? Or Was It All Talk?

In this thread on “charity” in early Christianity I’ve been discussing what the Christian writers said about the importance of giving money to those in need. But did all this preaching have any real-life effect on anything? In his classical discussion of wealth in antiquity, Paul Veyne pointed out that it is important to “distinguish carefully between the ethic that a society practices…and the ethic that this society professes. The two ethics usually have little in common.” (Bread and Circuses, p. 25) To this point I have been discussing early Christian rhetoric. But what about its practice? There is solid evidence that the rhetoric had at least some effect on the ground, and I will be arguing that over time the effect was highly significant. I have already mentioned Paul’s collection for the poor in Jerusalem. This was a real action in real time, and it set a pattern for times to come. Some fifty years after Paul the ... Blog membership gives you the chance to read this entire post -- and all [...]

BDEhrman2022-07-11T14:05:22-04:00July 20th, 2022|History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

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)|

Softening Jesus’ Message on Giving up (Literally) Everything

In my previous post I showed that Jesus himself appears to have taught that his disciples (not just one or two of them) had to give up *everything* in order to be his followers. Most likely this insistence on voluntary poverty was related to his message that the Kingdom of God was to arrive soon, so people needed to devote themselves entirely to it and to spread the message before it was too late. It is difficult to imagine that the Christian mission would have become massively successful if an entrance requirement was the complete divestment of property and a life of itinerate beggary. It is no surprise that after Jesus’ death (most of) his followers modified his discourse on wealth: what mattered was not voluntary abject poverty but generosity. That view came to be endorsed in later Gospel traditions – sayings placed on Jesus’ lips by story tellers and Gospel writers– and became the standard view among Christians down till today. Already in Luke’s Gospel we find Jesus’ encounter with the fabulously wealthy Zacchaeus [...]

BDEhrman2022-07-15T12:12:25-04:00July 13th, 2022|History of Christianity (100-300CE), Paul and His Letters|

The Invention of Charity: My Prospectus for the Book

I have started drafting a prospectus for my next book on Christian charity, as I have discussed recently on the blog. At this early stage, I am giving it (at least in my head) the tentative title: The Invention of Charity: How Christianity Transformed the Western World. In this post I’ll show how I’m *thinking* about starting the prospectus (which will have no bearing on how I, later, start the book). Before I do so, I should explain how the process works. My last three trade books have been with Simon & Schuster, and as a (standard) part of my contract with them, I’m obliged (and willing and eager) to to discuss with them what I’d like to do for the next book, to give them the opportunity to sign a contract with me for it, before, say, I propose the book to other publishers. The first part of process is that I draft a prospectus that explains what the book is, why it is needed, and how I will approach the task . For [...]

BDEhrman2022-06-24T09:44:09-04:00June 21st, 2022|Book Discussions, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

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