Blog Archives
Recent Posts
Predestination! What do you think?
What do you think of the idea of predestination? That only those who have been predestined by God (from eternity past) can be saved: but not anyone else. The doctrine can be found or at least intimated (possibly: depending on how you interpret them) in a few – though not many – passages of the Bible. The following are three that seem the clearest (key words highlighted; these translations are from the NRSV ue): Romans 8 28 We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he [...]
Doesn’t Goodness Point to the Existence of God? And Gospel Perplexities. Good Readers’ Questions
Here are some of the excellent questions I've been receiving recently, and attempts to respond to them! QUESTION: I understand why the problem of evil makes belief in God difficult. When you look honestly at suffering, it weighs heavily. I don’t think that should be dismissed. But I wonder… if the existence of evil counts as evidence against God, are we accounting for the existence of beauty/goodness? Why does self-giving love move us so deeply? Why does forgiveness feel noble? Why does injustice disturb us so profoundly? And what about beauty… music that stirs something almost sacred in [...]
Did the Glories of Martyrdom Lead to Christian Conversions?
Some think that, in contrast to miracles & martyrdom, the fear of perpetual torment in hell may be what drove the early growth of Christianity. After all, who WOULDN'T want to avoid eternal fiery torture? Here’s what I said about that in my book Triumph of Christianity (Simon & Schuster) ****************************** I’ve indicated that fire and brimstone preaching won many converts in early Christianity. What about the idea that the stalwart faith of Christian martyrs, the willingness to “die for the truth” had a big effect on ancient people as well? As it turns out, those two were closely related. [...]
June 2026 Gold Q&A Announcement
Gold and Platinum Members, a new month is quickly approaching, which means it's time to schedule our next Q&A. It will take place on Sunday June 21st at 2pm Eastern. For May’s Q&A, we tried a new format, and your feedback was overwhelmingly positive. So we’re bringing it back again this month. Bart will spend the first half of our Zoom session answering your pre-submitted questions. As always, you can email your questions to [email protected]. Be sure to get your questions in by end of day Thursday June 18th. For the second half of the hour, we’ll be opening things up [...]
The Fear of Hell as an Incentive to Convert
Miracles converted millions of people to the Christian faith in the ancient world. What about the fear of hell? Here’s how I talk about it in my book Triumph of Christianity (Simon & Schuster) ****************************** One of the reasons stories of miracles proved so effective in making converts is that Christians combined them with the claim that God’s manifestation of power in the present foreshadowed what he would do in the future. The present life may have been filled with pain and suffering: people were starving; they were afflicted with blindness, loss of hearing, paralysis, the ravages of disease, or [...]
Was Augustine Telling the Truth About Miracles He’d Seen?
Miracles seem to be everywhere in the early Christian literature, and it is striking how insistent all these ancient sources are it was precisely the wonder-working abilities of the Christians in the name of Christ and the Christian God that convinced potential converts to leave the religious traditions that nearly everyone around them had and had had for time immemorial to join this bizarre new faith in only one God who would provide salvation only to those who believed in the death and resurrection of Jesus. But that's the consistent testimony, and to cap it off I turn to Augustine, [...]
Biographical Accounts of Early Christian Miracles (Based on Eyewitnesses!)
Miracles convert! Whether they happen or not. That's been my thesis in this thread. And now I keep piling on the evidence. (See my book Triumph of Christianity. [Simon and Schuster]) In addition to such legendary tales of apostolic adventures, we have two narratives from the early centuries that describe missionary activities of later evangelists, one active in the third Christian century and one in the fourth. Even though these are presented as ostensibly historical accounts, they more easily align themselves with “tales of a holy person” known as “hagiography” – a highly pious and legendary kind of writing that celebrates [...]
And the Miracles Just Keep on Comin’
More on conversions coming from miracle stories -- as reported by Christians, in their later legendary tales. You might object (or probably will object) that if these tales are legendary, they don't show how people actually converted. My point is not that these relate real events, but they show how Christians (the story tellers and authors) understood how/why people converted, and it is striking that in virtually every case, it is precisely because of miracles, not other things. (In my next post I'll talk about tales connected with actual historical figures). Again, this is from my book Triumph of Christianity. ****************************** [...]
How Could Christian Miracles Convert the Empire if Miracles Don’t Happen?
I've been arguing that Christians eventually converted the Roman empire because of their great miracles. But, well, I'm an atheist and I don't believe in miracles. So how exactly does that square up? How can miracles convert anyone if miracles don't happen? Well, as it turns out, it absolutely can happen (and it doesn't take a miracle!) Before continuing on to demonstrate the centrality of miracles to the Christian take-over of the Roman world, I pause here for some reflection on how it works.... Again this is from my book Triumph of Christianity (Simon & Schuster, 2018), slightly edited. ****************************** How are [...]
Why Christian Miracles Converted the Empire
Miracles. Who woulda thought.... In previous posts I've given some of the common explanations people given to explain how Christianity ended up taking over the Roman world, all of which seem plausible (Christians attracted people because of their community life, better health care, etc) but, in my view, not sufficiently supported by the existing evidence. I've also I've indicated that I have a decided view of the matter: that it was because of Christian "miracles." That seems a bit odd for an atheist to argue, but, well, hear me out. Here I begin to explain it (this will take a [...]
Superior Health Care as an Explanation for the Spread of Christianity?
One modern explanation for why Christianity overcame all the pagan religions of the Roman world is that it provided better health care than anyone else, leading to its greater survival rate. I have to admit, when I first read about this, I thought "Whoa! Never heard THAT one before!" It's an intriguing thesis and, I think, almost certainly wrong. But intriguing nonetheless! Here's what I say about it in Triumph of Christianity (Simon & Schuster, 2018), briefly edited for our purposes here. ****************************** One benefit of joining the church recently touted as particularly important for Christian growth was the availability of [...]
A Modern “Common Sense” About What Made Christianity Attractive to Converts
I have pretty clear ideas about what it was about Christianity that made pagans want to convert to the faith, so that over the course of 300 years Christianity went from something like 20 people who believed Christ's death is the only thing that could bring salvation (right after his immediate disciples came to think he had been raised from the dead) to some 5,000,000 around the time Constantine joined the church. But most people find my views (I'll restate/explain them in a later post) a bit hard to believe (OK: reminder/foreshadowing: Miracles!) (really??) (yup! I'll explain). There are other [...]
What an Ancient Enemy of Christianity Said About Why It Was Successful
On very rare occasions, pagan opponents of Christianity during the first three centuries commented on the movement, and in one case at least, explain why it was having some success in converting people. Here is what I say about it in Triumph of Christianity (Simon & Schuster, 2018), lightly edited here. ****************************** The first extensive discussion of the Christian movement from a non-Christian source (not disinterested, of course!) comes from the end of the 170s. We do not have this source as a stand-alone document. It is a book quoted, instead, by a Christian author, the great theologian Origen of Alexandria, who [...]
How Did Christianity Succeed? An Older View That Many People Still Have
In my earlier posts I tried to show that the two key factors in the success of Christianity in taking over the Roman world were that Christians (well some/lots of them), unlike everyone else in their world, were eagerly trying to make converts and insisted that anyone who accepted their religious beliefs and following their religious practices had to abandon the views/practices they had always had. That's not the view that scholars long held; and it's striking to me that -- unlike some other areas of historical study -- the older view still seems to be widely accepted for those [...]
Do You Know The Golden Ass? (Is a Mystery Religion like Christianity?)
In this post I have the pleasure of discussing one of my all time favorite ancient works of fiction, very funny and quite bawdy, but also showing us an important facet of ancient pagan religion in one of the Mystery Religions. It was written by an important second-century CE author named Apuleius and is sometimes called Metamorphoses but is more commonly known as The Golden Ass. Here is how I talk about it in The Triumph of Christianity (Simon & Schuster). ****************************** The Golden Ass is a hilarious tale, filled with joyous and rather raucous sex, nocturnal magical rites, [...]
Christianity: A Weirdly Exclusivist Religion
In my previous post dealing with how Christianity managed to take over the Roman empire, I stressed its two highly unusual (and therefore -- to outsiders -- weird) aspects that in tandem ended up more or less destroying all the other religions: their stress on evangelism and their insistence on exclusivity. It's not that every Christian evangelized or that all Christians completely gave up all their other religious traditions, but enough did that it led to the Christianization of the West. Here I want to explain a bit more about how the virtually unparalleled exclusivity worked, again drawing on my [...]
Some Important Readers’ Questions on Some Gospel Head-Scratchers
QUESTION: If the strongest explanation for Luke’s alteration/omission of the centurion’s declaration that Jesus was the Son of God at the crucifixion is that he wants to anchor Jesus’s divine sonship at least as early as his birth, then why does he later associate that same divine sonship AND innocence with Jesus’s death and resurrection in Acts 13? Luke is combining a variety of early traditions that are at odds at WHEN it happened in order to stress that he really WAS the Son of God. (Similar problem in Luke-Acts with other titles for Jesus as well: Christ and Lord. [...]
How Early Christians Made Converts. (Tent revivals?)
Did Christians hold massive evangelistic rallies? Is that how they converted the Roman world? Did they send out hundreds of missionaries to go door-to-door with their good news? Maybe use TikTok? Here I pick up on the question of how Christianity spread in the early centuries, from my previous post, with an excerpt again from Triumph of Christianity (Simon & Schuster, 2018). ****************************** Christians then, starting at least with Paul, came to be missionary, convinced they had to convert the world. Goodman maintains it was Paul himself who came up with the idea. He was the innovator, “the [...]
Converting the World: Why Has Christianity Always Been “Missionary”?
I just now got off the phone with a reporter for the London newspaper the Independent who is writing an article on new developments in our understanding of why Christianity spread so widely in the Roman world. (The Independent is one of the few newspapers anymore that has some articles of substance in addition to the exciting and/or depressing news of the day, given with a decided slant.) He wanted to know what new information, archaeological finds, and or analyses have appeared over the past seven or eight years and I had to tell him that, well, I didn’t know [...]
Blog Dinner in Waynesville NC, May 19. Wanna Come?
I'll be in Waynesville NC next week and would love to have a blog dinner with anyone who can make it, on the evening of Tuesday May 19. Interested? I'll probably start around 6:30 or so for drinks with whoever is interested in quenching thirst before satisfying hunger, with dinner at 7:15 or so. Location TBD. You interested? My plan is to limit the table to 8, me and the perfect number 7. For those who come there are no obligations other than: Being a blog member Showing up Talking Paying for whatever you ingest. (Whatever you [...]
Jesus and Capitalism: My Next Book (A Big Change)
For over a year now I've been thinking and saying my next book would be on the formation of the New Testament canon -- how we got these 27 books and not others. I definitely am going to write that book, but something else has come up that is going to occupy my time, brain, and research first. My publisher, now that Love They Stranger is out, has asked me to consider writing a book about Jesus and capitalism (and socialism and marxism etc.). At first I was hesitant. I'm obviously not an economist. And there are plenty of books like [...]
Want To Be Involved in More In-Depth Discussion of Key Issues? A Blog Opportunity
Are you interested in going beyond reading blog posts on topics connected with the New Testament/early Christianity and in having a chance to interact with other blog members (and a New Testament scholar) on important and interesting topics or biblical passages? It is an option on the blog. It involves joining a special group called the “Blog Stewards.” We meet once a quarter for a focused seminar. In advance I pick a topic or important passage of the NT; I write up directions for how one might go about studying it; and I explain some of the lesser known background. [...]
A Common But Lousy Argument That We KNOW What the NT Originally Said: Anniversary Post #14
Scholars sometimes make an argument that they themselves surely (surely!) know isn't very good, but that certainly sounds convincing to audiences that don't know the full picture and so have little way of evaluating it. I seem to run across that a lot. Here in my 14th and final Anniversary Post celebrating the blog's fourteen years of mortal existence, I give one from the very first month of the blog, the final post of April 2012, which dealt with a particularly common instance of just such an argument. ****************************** I have had three debates with Dan Wallace (professor of New [...]
Sailing Cruise to Caribbean Islands in January. Want to Come with Me?
I was so very sorry to announce that we will not be able to do the Cruise on the Nile we had planned for the fall, but Thalassa Journeys has now come up with an alternative that is, well -- how many ways can you say "spectacular?" It is a cruise on a sailing vessel to some of the most gorgeous islands of the Caribbean, January 25-February 1, 2027. The ship, the Sea Cloud Spirit is amazing (just look it up): 136 passengers (our group will be a part of that), small enough to get into remote places the big cruisers [...]
The Morality of War
I announced on Friday that we have cancelled (or at least postponed) the Nile-cruise trip I was planning to make with Thalassa Journeys, because of the ongoing situation in the Middle East. Here I'll say a word indirectly about the conflict. As you may have noticed, I have a resolute policy not to discuss politics on the blog. I have always wanted the blog to be politically-neutral, so that people of all persuasions on governmental policy and action, social agenda, particular elected and appointed officials, and so on can benefit from the knowledge scholars (who are also of various persuasions) [...]
Categories on the Blog
Click on a category for the full archive, arranged by date.
- Anniversary Post #3: My Response to an Ill-Tempered Richard Carrier April 12, 2026
- Anniversary Post #1: Defending Misquoting Jesus April 9, 2026
- Can We Trust You When You Say “Most Scholars” Think Something? May 3, 2025
- A Really Scathing Review of My Book on Suffering March 31, 2024
- Making the Gospels Say What You WANT Them To Say March 30, 2024
- Dealing With Reviews of My Books By People Who (Apparently) Haven’t Read Them March 28, 2024
- But Your Own Teacher Bruce Metzger Didn’t Think That! November 21, 2023
- Why Do Some (Many?) Scholars Not Treat the Bible Like Other Ancient Sources? August 26, 2023
- Anniversary Post #5: Why I Was Reluctant to Write The Triumph of Christianity April 15, 2026
- My Next Book: Creating the Bible — How We Got the Canon of the New Testament September 7, 2025
- Jesus as God in the New Testament October 24, 2024
- Oral Traditions and the Dates of Our Gospels October 23, 2024
- Suffering. Is It Really Worth Talking About? Doesn’t the Bible Give the Right Answer? October 20, 2024
- The Problem of Suffering? So What’s the Problem? October 17, 2024
- How Can We Imagine That God is Active in Our World? (A genuine, not rhetorical, question) October 16, 2024
- Hurricanes, Suffering, And My Loss of Faith October 15, 2024
- What Are the Chances? The Logic of “Intelligent Design” February 28, 2026
- Pubs and Churches on Christmas Eve December 24, 2025
- Reflecting on the Christmas Tree and Faith December 23, 2025
- My Birdbrain View of Agnosticism December 11, 2025
- Am I? AI? What do you think? August 9, 2025
- Should We Keep “Slaves” in the New Testament? July 6, 2025
- How Athens Made Me Rethink…. May 20, 2025
- Two Fundamental Questions: How Do You Date a Manuscript and How Do you Know the Meaning of a Word? April 2, 2025
- Does the Book of Hebrews Indicate Jesus Ever Came To Earth? A Response to Richard Carrier. July 26, 2025
- Did Jesus Exist? Why I Don’t Enjoy Reading the Mythicists July 12, 2025
- More About My Book “Did Jesus Exist” September 25, 2024
- My Book “Did Jesus Exist” (an answer to the mythicists) September 24, 2024
- Nazareth in the Time of Jesus: the Archaeological Record December 27, 2023
- Did Nazareth Even Exist? December 21, 2023
- Would I Be Personally Upset if the Mythicists Were Right (That Jesus Never Existed)? October 8, 2022
- Richard Carrier: A Fuller Reply to His Criticisms, Beliefs, and Claims about Jesus April 25, 2022
- Predestination! What do you think? June 2, 2026
- Did the Glories of Martyrdom Lead to Christian Conversions? May 30, 2026
- June 2026 Gold Q&A Announcement May 29, 2026
- The Fear of Hell as an Incentive to Convert May 28, 2026
- Was Augustine Telling the Truth About Miracles He’d Seen? May 27, 2026
- Christianity: A Weirdly Exclusivist Religion May 13, 2026
- Blog Dinner in Waynesville NC, May 19. Wanna Come? May 8, 2026
- Jesus and Capitalism: My Next Book (A Big Change) May 7, 2026
- Some Important Readers’ Questions on Some Gospel Head-Scratchers May 12, 2026
- Anniversary Post #8: When Is a Contradiction Not a Contradiction? April 21, 2026
- Anniversary Post #6 Is Mark’s Seemingly Simple Gospel Unsophisticated? April 16, 2026
- Anniversary Post #4: Why Gospels Matter Even Where They Are Not Historical April 14, 2026
- Anniversary Post #2: Why Were the Gospels Written Anonymously? April 11, 2026
- Understanding the Gospels, Jesus, and the Spread of Christianity: Great Readers’ Questions April 5, 2026
- While We’re Talking About the Reliability of Eyewitnesses… March 15, 2026
- If It Wasn’t “For Your Sins” Why Did Jesus Die (according to Luke)? February 21, 2026
- Eyewitness Accounts of Miracles March 14, 2026
- A New Proof of the Resurrection. What Do YOU Think? March 10, 2026
- Fundamentalist Apologists, Christian and Mythicist July 13, 2025
- More on the Initial Debacle on First-Century Mark (in relation to the Dead Sea Scrolls) July 20, 2024
- The Debacle Over the First-Century Copy of Mark July 18, 2024
- Toe-to-Toe with Evangelical New Testament Scholar Peter Williams: Can We Trust the Gospels? June 19, 2024
- A High-level Intellectual with an Infuriating “Solution” to Why There is Suffering May 7, 2024
- A Self-Evaluation of My Self-Debate: Is the Book of Acts Historically Reliable? March 24, 2024
- A Common But Lousy Argument That We KNOW What the NT Originally Said: Anniversary Post #14 May 5, 2026
- Anniversary Post #9: Misquoting Misquoting Jesus April 25, 2026
- Anniversary Post #1: Defending Misquoting Jesus April 9, 2026
- Has Luke Gotten Rid of the Idea That Jesus Died for Your Sins? February 19, 2026
- The Controversy Over Jesus’ Last Supper in Luke (Did He Speak of Dying “For you”?) February 18, 2026
- The Weird Textual Variant of 1 John 4:3: False Teachers Who “Loose” Jesus? September 16, 2025
- Interpolations and Textual Variants in the New Testament April 17, 2025
- Two Fundamental Questions: How Do You Date a Manuscript and How Do you Know the Meaning of a Word? April 2, 2025
- Doesn’t Goodness Point to the Existence of God? And Gospel Perplexities. Good Readers’ Questions May 31, 2026
- Different Words, VERY Different Theologies, and Understanding Which Words They Were. Readers’ Questions April 23, 2026
- Understanding the Gospels, Jesus, and the Spread of Christianity: Great Readers’ Questions April 5, 2026
- Readers’ Questions on the Accuracy of the Gospels March 25, 2026
- Paul’s Lost Letters March 17, 2026
- Interesting Questions from Readers (Including on the Consistency of Mark and the Reality of Suffering) February 26, 2026
- From Eternal Torment to Styles of Greek to the Dating of Ignatius: Interesting Readers’ Questions February 5, 2026
- Some Key Passages from the Gospels: Questions from Readers December 9, 2025
- Unpacking 1 Enoch, the Apocryphal Writing Quoted by Jude October 1, 2025
- 1 Enoch: The Scripture Quoted by Jude September 30, 2025
- Why Wasn’t Peter’s Apocalypse Included in the New Testament? September 9, 2025
- The Transformation of Paul’s Teaching: The Apocalypse of Paul July 15, 2025
- Paul’s Vision of Heaven and Hell July 10, 2025
- What About People Who Come Back From the Dead in the Hebrew Bible? April 17, 2024
- More on Sheol: Was it an Actual Place? April 16, 2024
- What Is Sheol in the Hebrew Bible? April 14, 2024