Page 109 – The Bart Ehrman Blog

More on the Case Against Miracles: Michael Shermer Guest Post

This is the second guest post by Michael Shermer, from his Foreword to the new book edited by John Loftus, The Case Against Miracles. (For the first, see yesterday's post) Michael is on the blog and is happy to respond to comments you have. - Michael Shermer is the author of The Science of Good & Evil and Why People Believe Weird Things, among other works. ********************************************************************* When we are thinking about miracles, as with anything else that happens in the world, what we are after is a causal explanation, and here John Loftus cuts to the chase when he cites my friend and colleague David Kyle Johnson’s definition of a miracle—winnowed-down from Hume—as “A miracle is simply an event caused by God.” As Johnson explains, “For any given event, if we knew that God took special care to cause it, we would (and should) call that event a miracle—regardless of whether it involved the violation of natural law.” However, it is important to distinguish this from something that appears divinely-caused but was, in fact, simply [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:27-04:00December 23rd, 2019|Book Discussions, Reflections and Ruminations|

The Case Against Miracles

I recently learned of a new book that has come out arguing *against* the idea that miracles happen. It is a collection of essays edited by John Loftus, an interesting who in some has had a similar faith trajectory as I: started as a very conservative evangelical, studied at evangelical schools, and ended up leaving the faith and becoming an atheist. Among other things, for one of his master's degree he studied with the evangelical philosopher and apologist William Lane Craig, whom some of you have heard of. The book is called The Case Against Miracles, and I thought it would be interesting to see some bits of it here on the blog. As you know, I like to have a variety of points of view represented here, most recently Mike Licona, who is the author of the popular book Evidence of God, and whose views of miracles, I think it is safe to say, is almost precisely the *opposite* of John's. The next two posts will be the Foreword of the book written by Michael [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:27-04:00December 22nd, 2019|Book Discussions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Guided Tours of Heaven and Hell in a Christian Mode

I've started a short thread describing the academic monograph I've started writing, Guided Tours of Heaven and Hell: Otherworldly Journeys in the Early Christian Tradition.. In my last post I describe two o the most important forerunners of the tradition, the Greek Homer (Odyssey 11) and Roman Virgil (Aeneid 6) -- flat out fascinating texts that I've become obsessed with. The Christian versions are similar in ways but also profoundly different. Here is what I say about them in these reflections on my book-in-progress, written to help me clarify to myself where it's heading, how it will be structures, and why I think it matters. I start here by repeating the very end of the previous post to stir up your memory! ************************************************************** The account of the underworld in Virgil does more philosophical work than its predecessor, Homer's Odyssey, showing not merely that life should be prolonged, but that it must be lived properly (ethically and/or philosophically). Virgil’s account is often read as potentially hopeful – there is the chance of eternal reward for upright [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:27-04:00December 21st, 2019|Afterlife, Book Discussions|

Guided Tours of Heaven and Hell: My Scholarly Book

I mentioned that I have started writing my academic book on the early Christian versions of the guided tours of heaven and hell. This will be very different from the trade book coming out in March -- an full eight-chapter scholarly analysis of material that I cover in a very brief overview fashion in one chapter of the trade book. As I've mentioned on the blog before, when I get to certain points of my work on a book, I like to produce for myself an account of what it is, where it's going, how it will be organized, and so on. Now that I'm getting down to actually writing this thing after doing the research for it, I've started drafting up my summary of it, to emphasize its interest and importance, and to explain to myself how I'm imagining it working itself out, as a whole and then chapter by chapter. My current understanding of the book is closely related to what I started imagining it to be, nearly three years ago; but it [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:27-04:00December 19th, 2019|Afterlife, Book Discussions|

UpcomingTours, Lectures, and Book Readings

A number of my upcoming "events" have been more or less finalized (barring natural or national catastrophe, collapse, or cataclysm or, well, catabasis). At the bottom are the currently scheduled book readings/lectures based on my forthcoming Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife. Any questions about any of this, let me know. But first: my two international venues. APRIL 14-24, 2020 Tour to Rome!! I've mentioned this a couple of times on the blog, most recently here: https://ehrmanblog.org/my-trip-to-rome-interested-in-joining/ This is going to be an amazing trip! But they are ALMOST completely full. So if you think you want to go, better contact them now. Here is the brochure with contact information for the organizers, Thalassa Tours. https://www.thalassajourneys.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Pagans_Christians.pdf April 24-30 Lecture tour in Sweden. This has just been added to my schedule. I will be giving talks at universities in Umeå, Stockholm, and possibly Upsala. Are you in Sweden? Maybe we could meet! THEN, in OCTOBER 2020 October 16-29 Tour to Egypt, sponsored by the University of North Carolina General Alumni Association [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:24-04:00December 18th, 2019|Public Forum|

Heaven and Hell in a Nutshell: Getting into the Kernel

Here is the second and last part of my summary of the heart of my forthcoming book Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife. It's not an outline of the chapters, but a summing up of the key issues, flow, and the ultimate "point" of the book. As a tip, I've called this little essay (in my own mind): "There Is Nothing To Fear." ************************************************************************************************ The idea of rewards and punishments eventually found its way into Judaism as well, but not until the very end of the Old Testament period. The book of Daniel was the final writing of the Hebrew Bible. This fictitious account of a pious Hebrew young man, Daniel, presents an alternative Jewish understanding of the world, the nature of reality, and of life beyond, quite unlike the rest of the Hebrew Bible. Scholars have called Daniel’s view “apocalypticism,” from the Greek word “apocalypsis” – which means a “revealing.” Jewish apocalyptic thinkers began to believe that God had “revealed” to them the truth of ultimate reality hidden from all their predecessor, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:24-04:00December 16th, 2019|Book Discussions, Early Judaism, Historical Jesus|

Heaven and Hell in a Nutshell

Heaven and Hell. I’m excited about my next book, being published on March 31, Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife. It’s already getting good reviews in the trade journals, the publications that announce which books are soon to come out and have experts review them in advance, so those booksellers, book stores, libraries, and so on know whether they want to buy them, and for booksellers and stores, in what quantities. So that’s all good. A while back I decided to try to encapsulate the essence of the book in a short essay, a kind of 2000-word summary of what it’s all about and why it matters. I will give it here, over the course of two posts. Here’s the first half. Ehrman Hell & Heaven The fear of death has been among us for as long as we have had human records, from history’s oldest surviving tale, the Epic of Gilgamesh, to the now final season of the Good Place, soon to enter its own eternal rest. The views of these two [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:24-04:00December 15th, 2019|Book Discussions, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

Why Would an Agnostic-Atheist Be A Bible Scholar??

Five years ago I received this question. I still hear it! And I would still answer it the same way. A question that makes a lot of sense in one way actually doesn't make a lot of sense looked at in another way. I suppose a lot of our questions are like that.... Here is the question and response. QUESTION: The one thing that I do not understand about you is that you have stated you have lost your faith. That being said, how do you continue to work in your field? Have you ever wanted to redirect your academic career to study other subjects? RESPONSE: I get this question a lot. On one level I understand it: if I don’t believe in the Bible, why would I dedicate my life to studying it, researching about it, writing about it, and teaching about it? From the perspective of someone who has strong feelings about the Bible – for example, as a believer who holds that the Bible is the word of God or as [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:24-04:00December 13th, 2019|Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Update on My Next Book: The Joys of Academic Writing

Last weekend I escaped from all the distractions of daily life in Durham to our mountain retreat in order to write. I’m here in solitude, Sarah is in London for the holidays. I’ll be joining her next week. I have all the amenities of modern life here: but no TV, no neighbors, no noise, no traffic. Writing is very hard under the best of circumstances. But oh boy is it easier in the best of circumstances. Most scholars find it literally impossible to write during the semester. Just can’t do it. You have classes. Class preparation. Students to meet. Departmental meetings. Committee meetings. University commitments. If you have a graduate program there is a constant flow of work: advising, scheduling, working with students on exams, directing master’s theses and PhD dissertations, helping students with pedagogy, counselling them about professionalization, reading their prospective conference papers and articles for publication, oral defenses, reading groups. It’s a lot. Then if you have an active speaking schedule or do other local service commitments… well not much writing gets done. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:24-04:00December 12th, 2019|Reflections and Ruminations|

Why Are Their Differences in the Gospels? Does it Affect Their Inspiration? Guest Post by Mike Licona

This is Mike's third and final guest post. In the earlier post he explained his views about whether the Bible is inspired by God and is inerrant. He thinks the answers to both are "yes," though his actual views are not what most people would probably expect. Here now is the third, and critical post, based on the research he did for his 2017 Oxford University Press book, with the same title: Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? I agree with a lot of what Mike writes here. In reading it, I'd suggest you bear in mind his earlier two posts, that he sees the Gospels as inspired and inerrant. Mike has graciously agreed to answer questions you have for him, but only for the next four days! Otherwise this would go on forever. And please, in your questions, do your best to keep them concise and direct, without asking multiple questions at once. Pick the most pressing. And I scarcely need to remind you of that verse in the Ehrman Revised Standard Version: "The [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:24-04:00December 10th, 2019|Canonical Gospels, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture|

Do You Want (and Need) a Free Membership to the Blog? Gift Memberships 2019

Thanks to the incredible ongoing generosity of members of the blog, I am happy to announce that there are a limited number of free one-year memberships available. These have been donated for a single purpose: to allow those who cannot afford the annual membership fee to participate on the blog for a year. I will assign these memberships strictly on the honor system: if you truly cannot afford the membership fee, but very much want to have full access to the blog, then please contact me. Do NOT reply here, on the blog, as a comment. Send me a separate email, privately, at [email protected]. In your email, please provide me with the following information: Your first and last name. Why you would like to take advantage of this offer. I don't need or want a full account of your history or financial affairs, only an idea of why you are not able just now to purchase a membership. Country of citizenship (we're required, as a non-profit, to ask) Your preferred personal email. Your preferred user [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:24-04:00December 9th, 2019|Public Forum|

Does the New Testament Condemn “Homosexuals”?

It is commonly argued that the Bible condemns sexual “perversion” such as gay or lesbian sex. In earlier posts I discussed the relevant passages of the Old Testament, to show that they simply cannot be used in these modern debates, since their very understandings of the phenomena are completely at odds with what people think today (including, most emphatically, the people who appeal to those passages in support of their views). See, for example: https://ehrmanblog.org/are-same-sex-relations-condemned-in-the-old-testament/?highlight=homosexual I should stress there are lots of other activities that are condemned in the Bible all over the map, and these are never a particular emphasis of modern ethical discussion, whether in Christian circles or in society at large. You may be able to deprive gays and lesbians of their civil rights or deny them the ability to serve in the church, based on a couple of passages (almost always misinterpreted) scattered here and there throughout the very large Bible; but what about doing the same for people who are greedy, who get angry, who disobey their parents, who eat [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:24-04:00December 8th, 2019|Paul and His Letters, Reflections and Ruminations, Sex and Sexuality in the Bible|

One of the Blog’s Main Charities: Urban Ministries of Durham

As you know, the overarching purposes of the blog are (1) to communicate broadly, to a reading public, scholarship on the New Testament and Early Christianity (as opposed to most of the material you find on the Internet, which is almost entirely devotional and not based on historical scholarship) and (2) in doing so, to raise money for charity. The latter is what keeps me going. I absolutely love communicating with non-scholars what the scholars are finding about these fundamentally important topics. But my ultimate passion for the blog is to help people in need. Hence the charity aspect. As you know, every penny that comes into the blog from membership fees and from direct donations goes to the charities we support. There are no overhead costs because I pay for the blog myself, as my own contribution. Blog members sometimes indicate they would like to have more information about what those charities are and what they actually do. There are five that receive our support. Three of them are local to me: Urban Ministries [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:24-04:00December 6th, 2019|Public Forum|

An Older Manuscript Controversy about the Dead Sea Scrolls

I've been thinking about controversies over ancient Christian and Jewish manuscripts lately, in connection with the (false) claim that a First Century copy of Mark had been discovered. Browsing around on the blog I saw that I dealt with a completely different manuscript controversy on the blog many years ago, involving the Dead Sea Scrolls. I had forgotten all about it. This one involved a court case and jail time! Here's what I said: ************************************************************** A few years ago I was asked to give a speech at a museum in Raleigh NC in connection with an exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls that had been long in the works and had finally become a reality. I will be the first to admit, I'm not the first person you should think of to give a lecture on the Dead Sea Scrolls. It’s not my field of scholarship. But the lecture was to be one of a series of lectures, and the other lecturers actually were experts, including my colleague Jodi Magness, a world-class archaeologist who [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:23-04:00December 4th, 2019|Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

Final Tribute To Larry Hurtado

I am sorry to report that my colleague Larry Hurtado, a well-known scholar of the New Testament, author of several influential books, and prominent blogger, has died. Back in July I indicated on the blog that he had become very ill. At the time we thought he had only a few weeks to live. But he soldiered on, and passed away last Monday, November 25. There is a very nice tribute to him by one of his former students at: https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2019/november/died-larry-hurtado-new-testament-early-christian-worship.html I decided to repost here what I said in July, both as a tribute to him and to suggest several of his books that you might be interested in reading. Larry was about ten years ahead of me in the field, and had very similar interests to mine, from textual criticism (studying ancient Greek manuscripts) to Christology (understanding how Jesus came to be worshiped as God). A couple of his books are highly technical (as I indicate below); others are completely accessible to the non-academic. You may want to check them out. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:23-04:00December 3rd, 2019|History of Biblical Scholarship, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Is the Bible Inerrant? Guest Post by Mike Licona

This now is the second of three posts by Mike Licona, Associate Professor of Theology at Houston Baptist University. Mike has a PhD in New Testament studies and is a committed evangelical apologist, who has written a recent book, Why Are There Differences in the Gospels (Oxford University Press, 2016). He does indeed admit there are differences in the Gospels, which some people would claim are actually contradictions; but he continues to believe the Bible is "inerrant." What does he mean then? In this clear and lucid post, he explains his views. NOTE: Mike's first post generated lots of comments, and it was a bit overwhelming. He will be willing to answer questions/comments over the next four days, but not afterward. That in itself is amazingly generous. Please don't ask tons of questions in one comment -- that (I can say from experience) is hard to deal with! Moreover, he and I both know that many people on the blog have a different perspective from his. But please be respectful and courteous, even in your [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:07-04:00December 2nd, 2019|Canonical Gospels, History of Biblical Scholarship|

Why Don’t You Just Believe?

The following post is for anyone interested. You interested? Join the blog. You get five posts a week, each and every week of the year, on all sorts of intriguing topics connected with the New Testament and Early Christianity. QUESTION: What do you have to lose by having faith and believing that Christ was born supernaturally as a result of a virgin birth to Mary, that Christ performed miracles, that Christ died by crucifixion and came back to life from the dead, and that Christ went back into heaven in a supernatural ascension into heaven? I don't see any downside. RESPONSE: I get this kind of question on occasion. Usually when someone asks it they tie it to “Pascal’s Wager.” In case you’re not familiar with it, Blaise Pascal (1623-1662 CE), mathematician that he was, thought in terms of percentages and odds. And he applied it in a famous way to the question of belief – in an age when lots of intellectuals in Europe, and people they influenced, were having doubts about [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:07-04:00December 1st, 2019|Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Who Was Jesus?

This is a continuation of a soon-to-be-compiled longer post for broader consumption on the New Testament. Now that I have described what the NT is, how it is structured and organized, and how it has come down to us, I get to one of the key issues: what does the New Testament tell us about the historical figure of Jesus himself? ********************************************** There can be no doubt that Jesus of Nazareth has been the most influential person in the history of the world. The church founded on his name shaped the history of Western Civilization, and over two billion people worship him today. And yet, because of the nature of our sources, it is surprisingly difficult to know what he actually said and did. Jesus is thought to have died around 30 CE. He is not referred to in any Greek or Roman sources of the first century, and only briefly in our major Jewish source of the period, the historian Josephus. The earliest Christian references are from the New Testament, but most of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:07-04:00November 29th, 2019|Historical Jesus|

Thanksgiving 2019

Some Thanksgiving ruminations, from where I am here and now. I love holidays. Not everyone does. When I was younger that was always a mystery to me – what’s not to like? But as I get older (and older and older), I get it. Or at least part of it. So many people hate the holidays and the suffering they bring. Bitter and wrenching loneliness when all those around them are enjoying good times with family and friends and they … are not. Or awful memories of holidays past – ugly family blow-ups or ill-timed tragedies. Some of us are among the lucky ones: these are not problems. But that itself is a problem. Why should we have such a self-congratulatory happy, restful, fulfilling time when others….? Also, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized just how fraught just about all our holidays actually are, how, often invisibly, they are so closely connected not with things to celebrate but with real human trauma and tragedy. The Fourth of July. The fireworks are supposed to remind us [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:07-04:00November 27th, 2019|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Setting Dates for the Gospels

One of the questions I often get asked on the blog is how we know when the Gospels were written. I've answer the question at some length before, and thought it might be useful to answer it again. Here's what I said years ago, and looking at it, I'd say the same thing again. In fact, I will. Here: **************************************************************************** QUESTION: How are the dates that the Gospels were composed determined? I've read that Mark is usually dated to 70 or later because of the reference to the destruction of the temple. Is this the only factor that leads scholars to conclude that it was composed in 70 CE or later or are there other factors? I've heard that Luke and Matthew are likewise dated aroun 80-85 CE to give time for Mark to have been in circulation enough to be a source for them. Is this accurate? How is John usually dated to around 95 CE (or whatever the correct period is) since it is usually described as independent of the other Gospels? [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:07-04:00November 26th, 2019|Canonical Gospels, Reader’s Questions|

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