Loading...This Sunday (5/2/21) 3:00-4:15 pm I will be holding a live ABA (“Ask Bart Anything”). It will be over Zoom and will be open to anyone on the planet who wants to come.
The format: I will take live questions both orally and through chats. The questions can be on ANY topic that anyone is interested in. If it is something I don’t know anything about (i.e., most things) or that I would rather not talk about (that little incident when I was 16….) I’ll just say so. I will get through as many questions as I can, answering easy ones briefly and taking as long as I need to deal with more complicated ones. My only request will be that questions are direct questions, not lectures, sermons, admonitions, condemnations, expositions of one’s favorite views, or statements of one’s opinions so the rest of the world can hear and convert.
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Prof. Ehrman, Are there any Christian sects from antiquity still surviving today that do not accept Paul’s teachings as theologically authoritative?
I haven’t heard of any. But I know a lot of New Testament PhD students who are not fond of Paul!
Well , I’m not a NT PhD student but all about Paul it sounds to me very suspicious, . What it means that “we should go unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision” Gal(2.9) ?? Pauls started as the second of Barnabas from Antioch (see Acts) a city with a christian comunity that obviously was not founded by him, and so with the churches in Rome that were struggling with non christian jews (as Seutionious wrote) probably before Paul arrived at Philippi .
In particular the way Peter(Cephas, I think that Paul never wrote Peter, somebody change it very early from the time Paul’s letter were collected) is depicted in the so called “Antioch incident” …does anybody could believe a Peter who “withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were
of the circumcision” (Gal 2.12 ) fearing????? Fering who?
Fearing “certain came from James” , who they were? Really they didn’t know who was Peter???
Peter !! If you don’t think taht Jesus said “upon this rock I will build my church” well Peter by the time was the second column of the Jerusalem church as Paul himself wrote lines before in this same letter … and he was afraid of these unknwon men James send …
it was not enough with Peter in Antioch??? They were controling Peter?????
😊 What if the question was phrased something like “what do the canonical gospels portray Jesus as saying/teaching/believing about” ________ (this topic or that etc)? Would you answer it from that perspective ? If so this could be the chance of a lifetime 😊👍
Of course!
Why do many of them lack fondness?
Sorry, I’m not sure what you’re asking.
I mean why are NT students not fond of Paul? What are their most common complaints?
Oh, it’s just they don’t like his theology and his insistence that he is absolutely right no matter what. they tend to prefer the teachings of Jesus.
Dr. Ehrman,
I have long been interested in what exactly Paul meant in Gal. 1:16 “to reveal his Son in me”
A Prof. who recently published a commentary on Gal. wrote the following, do you think this is correct?
“… the en is used to emphasize that Christ did not merely appear bodily to Paul, but “into” Paul. That is, he saw Christ and the Spirit penetrated his very being and he experienced salvation…en is chosen to tell readers that it was more than just a physical appearance.”
It’s a weird bit of Greek, but the professor may be pushing it a *bit* hard. My view is that he’s saying that it was a revelation that occurred in his head — he came to realize something when he had the vision that he mentions elsewhere. Who, btw, is the author of the commentary?
Dr. Ehrman,
So is it correct to say that in Gal. 1:16 Paul is speaking to the aftermath/affect of seeing Jesus rather than the mode of the encounter itself?
I think he saw them as happening simultaneously.
Dr. Ehrman,
Still, Paul must have himself believed he saw the bodily risen Jesus, since that’s what resurrection meant for him; something bodily and physical. Thus, while the realization that “Jesus was the Messiah” may have been a “revelation that occurred in his head,” Paul must have also believed that he saw Jesus in a physical manner, is this all correct?
Yes, as I’ve said a hundred times. 🙂
Dr. Ehrman,
I did not mean to be bothersome, just wanted to get to the bottom of this because there are a couple scholars out there, such as Bruce Chilton and Thomas Sheehan who make hay over the “in me” wording and take it as the main argument in their theory. And I just wanted to know if such professors make a mountain out of a molehill when they do so?
I don’t know what they say about it, so it’s hard for me to know. I would say, though, that if htis s the only passage where Paul talked about what he had come to see/know, that it could be taken as a purely internal revelatory moment; elsehwere he explicitly statest that he has “seen” JEsus and that Jesus “appeared” to him, and so if these are all describing the same event I would say that they need to be considered in relation to one another. My guess is that Paul had a vision of Jesus, believed he had seen him in the body, years after his death, became confcinved that God had raised him from the dead, and then realized what this meant for salvation of both Jews and Gentiles, and attribued this thought to a “revelation” given by God. All one event, with several aspects to it.
Dr. Ehrman,
Excellent, I can understand that….But then Paul would’ve believed it to be a real, external seeing of a bodily risen Jesus, So why use the words “in me” to describe the experience? I apologize for dwelling on this, but I just feel like there must be something I’m missing.
I wish he were around to ask. But this kind of confusing use of prepositions happens a *lot* in ancient Greek, including in the Greek of the NT. My sense here is that he had a “realization” and that’s what he means by “in” me — it came by a revelation in his head.
Dr. Ehrman,
Thanks. So you would not put much weight on the “in me” issue for doctrine, is that correct?
I don’t have any Christian doctrines.
Dr. Ehrman,
This would be a better way to put it: Do you think that a scholar who points to the “in me” issue of Gal. 1:16 as significant evidence that Paul believed that his entire encounter with the risen Jesus was only an internal image is mistaken?
OK, I think you need to stop asking me the same question. I think Paul thought he saw a bodily Jesus.
I can’t make the Q&A Sunday, but I recently purchased your book *Lost Christianities* and I’m wondering if there have been any updates on the Morton Smith / Mar Saba controversy since the book came out in 2002…?
Yup, lots of debates since then. There was a special issue of the Journal of Early Christain Studies devoted to it, where most authors argued it is not a forgery and I and a couple of others maintained it probably was.
Dr. Ehrman,
I was listening to your Smith-Pettit Lecture.
The first pieces of evidence we have for an intermediate state in Christianity are specifically 2 Cor. 5:8 and Phil. 1:23. Prior to this time; from his early years through the Mid 50s CE, Paul too believed that life required a body. Is this all correct?
I believe so.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around the whole “Is Jesus Yahweh?” thing. I have no horse in this race, nor do I have a theory I’m trying to get across. I’m just curious about something. My question concerns Paul’s vocabulary when talking about Jesus and God’s father, respectively.
As you know, the Septuagint, which we assume is what Paul was familiar with primarily, refers to the Israelite God as either “Theos” or “Kyrios.” Most of the time it’s “Kyrios,” since that’s the translation for YHWH and Adonai, which occur much more often than El/Elohim/El Elyon (which gets translates as “Theos”). So then when Paul calls Jesus “Kyrios” wouldn’t a Septuagint-savvy reader around Paul’s time immediately make the connection to God’s name in the Septuagint? But then when Paul refers to Jesus’s father, he says “Theos.”
Doesn’t that imply that Paul believed that the Kyrios (Jesus) is the son of Theos (God the father)?
Oops, I made a huge mistake. I wrote “God’s father” when I meant to write “God the father.” That makes my question look insane. I’m totally ok if you, dear moderator, choose not to publish my question with this stupid error included.
Paul definitely considers Christ the kurios. But that can mean so many things in Greek — master, mister, sir, employer, king, ruler, God; it’s used that way in the OT and the NT as well. And it comes to translate YHWH as well. So I”d say it’s not just a choice of YHWH or Adonai. Choosing what “kurios” means in any context is a choice among lots of options, and in any one case it may well be a combination of a number of them.
Do you think Jesus actually expected and foretold his arrest and execution or were statements attributed to him in the gospels addressing those events written to accommodate that outcome after the fact?
I doubt if he did — certainly not well in advance. A day or so ahead of time? Possibly? Many people do know when they are about to get in trouble…
Given that the resurrection is foundationally critical to the Christian faith, what, if any, evidence is there for the resurrection (even if it is not conclusive)? What were the best arguments that could have been made for the occurrence of the resurrection?
Major question that requires a book. I’ve had a number of public debates on the topic, if you want to see both sides. My view is that the historian can only determine what happens on the earthly plane, and so cannot have any grounds for demonstrating what *supernatural* forces (e.g., God) have done. Long story though. Do a word search for “miracle” on the blog and you’ll see a number of posts.
I suppose I could have anticipated your answer given that the question assumed the possibility of Jesus having a supernatural knowledge of the future and knowing your position that Jesus isn’t supernatural. Assuming, then, that the gospels were, to some degree, written to accommodate the outcome, how can we reliably separate accurate “reporting” from inaccurate accommodation? How do we determine which parts of the gospels are reliably true? How accurate a picture can we paint of Jesus?
Ah, that’s another book. ANd I’ve devoted a book to it! See Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. It’s exactly what the book is about. Look up “criteria” and “historical Jesus” on the blog and you’ll see tons of posts on it.
Could you explain the AntiTrinitarian movements that emerged from the Reformation? Which groups in today’s world are AntiTrinitarian? And, if we are AntiTrinitarian are we doomed?
James H. Williams
Tacoma, WA
I”m afraid that’s outside of my very limited expertise. Maybe others on the blog can comment!
https://youtu.be/bSjSH_iK_5g
They dropped your name an awful lot in this podcast. Wanting to know your thoughts on it.
I’m afraid I don’t know what it is! Tell me?
It’s a video with expert Gary Habermas which proves the resurrection as as fact based. He uses quotes of yours as corroborating evidence.
Well, that’s very funny, if not a bit disingenuous, since he knows full well that I changed my mind on the question of an empty tomb and that I regularly argue with some vehemence that there can NOT be “evidence” of the resurrection, if by evidence we mean something like historical proof.
One last question. I don’t believe that Moses was a real person but the Bible does say that he was trained and educated in Africa. How much African influence is in Judaism. Before the supposed Jewish captivity the Hebrew people had no culture religion or history. They left Africa with all 3. Did they copy African mythology and civil laws of that particular area?
I suppose you mean Egyptian influence? There is very little evidence of any in the Hebrew Bible. (E.g., from Egyptian religion)
Dr. Ehrman,
I was looking through some commentaries, and found the following quote to be well-articulated. Please tell me if this is correct?
“By “in me” Paul is stressing the inward and intensely personal character of God’s revelation to him of the risen Jesus, an inward revelation that matched and coincided with his external vision.”
I don’t know if it’s correct, but it’s pretty much what I’ve been saying in response to your queries.