Page 129 – The Bart Ehrman Blog

Are the Gospels Principally Concerned to Show What Actually Happened?

I will not be going through the entirety of the four Gospels to point out how contradictions between one account and another make these texts difficult to use for historical purposes. My previous post briefly summarized the situation with respect to the birth narratives, and similar statements could be made for numerous events of Jesus’ life as narrated in the Gospels. In this post I’ll instead make an overall point about the kinds of problems one finds throughout these books. Recall: the reason I’m dealing with this matter is that some readers have thought that the only reason biblical scholars identify contradictions in the New Testament is in order to show that these books aren’t inspired. That’s not true at all. My points so far are that New Testament *could* be inspired by God even if it has contradictions (I personally don’t think so, but that’s mainly because I’m an agnostic and so don’t think *anything* is inspired by God; but if I were a believer still I probably would think it is in some [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:41:40-04:00July 9th, 2018|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

Why Contradictions Matter for Understanding the Life of Jesus

Realizing that there are contradictions in our surviving New Testament texts matters a good deal when it comes to trying to reconstruct the history behind them. I’ll devote several posts to this question, a couple of dealing with the life of Jesus and at least one other involving the life of Paul. The basic issue, of course, is that if you have two contradictory witnesses to an event, then they both can’t be right: they contradict one another! At the point of the contradiction, either one of them is wrong, or they are both wrong, but they both can’t be right – unless the contradiction can be reconciled in some way (in which case it is not really a contradiction). And so the first step is to look carefully at the sources and see if they line up with one another or if there are places where they are at odds. If they appear to be at odds, then the next step is to be see if it is only an *apparent* contradiction or an [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:41:40-04:00July 8th, 2018|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

Student Excuses: A Blast From the Past

After I posted the story of the mother who called me about her daughter's failing my class (and then not), a reader of the blog asked me to repeat a post from years ago, of the best excuse I've ever received from a student for missing an exam. I dug around and found it. It begins with my apologies for not getting to my Mailbag as much as I should, as it grows longer and longer. The apologies still apply! And the excuse remains the best I've ever gotten. Here's the post: **************************************************************************** My sincere apologies to any- and every-one who has asked me a direct question that I have said I would devote a post or more to. The list of questions that I need to address is as long as my arm, and in many cases I suppose people forgot that they even asked! But if you asked and are waiting – apologies. I still have the questions and I will get to them, slowly. But I find that once I start answering [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:41:39-04:00July 6th, 2018|Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

The Historical Significance of Contradictions

I have been talking about the contradictions in the Bible and why they matter – not simply to problematize assumptions about the inerrancy of the Bible (“See: there are contradictions!”) but also for other things. My overarching point is that they matter both for understanding the historical value of the biblical narratives and for appreciating their literary quality. In terms of historical value, many people read the Bible to know what actually happened in biblical times. But if the accounts are contradictory, how can we know what happened? I’ll later be pointing out how that is a difficult question for the New Testament, but I thought it might be useful to show how it is a fundamental problem with the Old Testament as well – right from the beginning, with the stories in Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch. It was the contradictions that made scholars originally come to think that the Pentateuch (i.e., the first “five books” of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) were not written by one person (Moses) [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:41:39-04:00July 5th, 2018|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

Balancing the Scholarly and the Popular

I just flew into London on the red eye this morning. As many of you know, my wife Sarah is a Brit, and we have lots of family here. About fifteen years ago we bought a flat in Wimbledon, which is our base of operation when we’re here. It’s a hoppin’ part of the universe just now, with the tournament starting. I won’t be going this year, but our sister-in-law Gill (on the blog!), managed to get a couple of tickets for today, so she and Sarah, now, as we speak, are watching Djokovic. Not that I’m envious. Tomorrow early I fly to Amsterdam, and then take a train over to Leiden for a meeting of the editorial board of Vigiliae Christianae, one of the premier journals of Patristics (i.e. studies focusing on the “church fathers” and “mothers”). There are seven editors-in-chief, most of whom are European. I’m the American. I’ve been doing this for about eleven years. It’s an honor and a privilege to serve in this capacity. Vigiliae Christianae, by any estimate, is [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:41:39-04:00July 3rd, 2018|Reflections and Ruminations|

The Broader Significance(s) of Contradictions

I have been discussing the matter of contradictions in the Bible and the question of why they matter. My overarching point is that they matter NOT simply so we can say “Aha! There are contradictions!” They matter for other things. The one point I’ve made so far is that they matter for anyone who is committed to the authority of Scripture. I need to say that I think the point I was trying to make in that post has possibly been misunderstood. When I asked how the Bible could be authoritative if there are contradictions, I did not mean it to be a rhetorical question, with the obvious answer being: It can’t be authoritative! Some readers clearly took the question that way, but in fact I had a different intention. My intention was ... To read the rest of this post you will need to belong to the blog. Joining is very fast and relatively cheap. And every nickel goes to charity. So why not join? My intention was to ask “How CAN it be [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:41:39-04:00July 2nd, 2018|Reflections and Ruminations|

The Strangest Moment of My Teaching Career

Here is an interesting question that I sometimes get asked, which brought to mind one of the strangest things that has ever happened to me in my now 34 years of teaching at the university level. QUESTION: As you teach your students the material, how do you handle those students with an evangelical or fundamentalist background that refuse to accept your findings? RESPONSE: This is a great question, and I was all set to answer it directly, when it suddenly brought to mind a *related* question that I’ll address first. (I’ll save this specific question to answer in a later post.) This other question is whether I’ve ever had parents of students from evangelical or fundamentalist background call me to complain about what I was teaching their children. That must happen a lot, right? As it turns out, the answer is no. It never happens. Ssince I started teaching in 1984, I have never ever had a parent call to complain about what I teach -- or about misleading their child, or promoting [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:41:39-04:00July 1st, 2018|Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

If the Bible is Contradictory, How Can it Be Authoritative?

In my previous post I explained why the contradictions found in the Bible affect a certain understanding of the inspiration of Scripture. The contradictions are not a point in and of themselves (OK, OK, so there are contradictions. So what?). There actually is a payoff. In factd, several. One of the payoffs is that the fundamentalist Christian claim that the Bible has no mistakes of any kind is almost certainly wrong. But as I have said this is not the only point or even the most important one. I think we can all agree that most people read the Bible for religious reasons, pure and simple. They think that in *some* sense it is the word of God, and that it provides the guidance they need for what to believe and how to live. But what if there are *different* and even *irreconcilable* differences from one biblical author to another on precisely these issues? Which part do you follow? For then it is not a simple matter of reading any part of the Bible and [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:41:39-04:00June 29th, 2018|Reflections and Ruminations|

Are Contradictions the Real Point?

In my last couple of posts I’ve talked about internal contradictions in Luke-Acts and John. I’ve had several readers tell me that they already “got the point” and so they don’t see any reason for me to keep harping on it: there are contradictions so you don’t think the Bible is inerrant. OK OK OK, got the point! As it turns out, that’s not really the point. To be sure, it is *one* of the points. But it’s not actually the main one. If I had to explain fully why it matters that there are internal contradictions in an ancient document created by the use of disparate sources (the case with both Luke-Acts and John) I would do so under three distinct rubrics, each rather complex. Religious implications. Yes, if there are contradictions in a book found in the Bible that means that the common fundamentalist understanding that the text is inerrant is almost certainly wrong. I have tried to word that statement carefully. I’ve noticed that often in these kinds of discussions, people don’t [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:41:39-04:00June 27th, 2018|Acts of the Apostles, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Internal Discrepancies in the Gospel of John

Yesterday I answered a question about whether some of the discrepancies in Luke-Acts are due to the author having used a variety of sources that had different views. The blog member who asked the question also wanted to know if this happened in other books from antiquity. Just sticking with the Bible, the answer is: Yes indeed! Here is what I say about the same issue with respect to the Gospel of John, in my textbook on the New Testament. ********************************************************* Authors who compose their books by splicing several sources together don’t always neatly cover up their handiwork but sometimes leave literary seams. The Fourth Evangelist was not a sloppy literary seamster, but he did leave a few traces of his work, which become evident as you study his final product with care. Here are several illustrations. To see what I have to say about this, you will need to belong to the blog. It doesn't cost much, and you'll learn more than your friends and neighbors will be able to *stand*. So [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:41:39-04:00June 26th, 2018|Canonical Gospels, Reader’s Questions|

Why Does Luke Appear to Contradict Himself?

A question has come from a reader, based on my recent post dealing with the apparent contradiction between Luke and Acts on the timing of Jesus’ ascension. Do contradictions often result from authors editing several documents together and inserting them side by side in their work? If different source documents have different views, that would create contradictions in the final product which embodies their amalgamation, no? Here’s the question. QUESTION: I continue to be struck by how often Bible authors, since there were no copyright laws, seem to edit two or more different versions of an event together as seen in the Documentary Hypothesis. Is it likely that Luke and Acts had such an editor editing two or more manuscripts together thus producing contradictions? I would also like to know if this kind of editing together of two or more manuscripts was a common way of writing ancient books. RESPONSE: The answer is Yes and Yes. This apparently did happen with the book of Acts and it is indeed a phenomenon we can [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:41:25-04:00June 25th, 2018|Acts of the Apostles, Reader’s Questions|

Sources for the Hebrew Bible: A Blast from the Past

I was fishing around for something different to post today, and came across this Q & A from exactly six years ago. I get asked the question a lot, and I would answer it the same way even now, despised my advancing age... ************************************************************************************* QUESTION: Do you have a suggestion for a book concerning the OT's construction? I believe in the History of God (by K. Armstrong) she mentioned that there were about five distinct writers for the OT. Is this the scholarly view and do you have a book suggestion to delve deeper into it? RESPONSE: Right! The Old Testament (for Christians; otherwise: the Jewish Scriptures, the Hebrew Bible; the Tanakh – these are all more or less synonyms.) It’s been on my mind a lot lately. Right now, my current writing project is a college-level textbook on the entire Bible, Genesis to Revelation. This seems to me to be way too much to cram into a semester, but as it turns out, something like half the colleges in the country teach [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:41:24-04:00June 24th, 2018|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Reader’s Questions|

Does Luke Flat Out Contradict Himself?

Sometimes readers ask questions that have answers they probably would not suspect in a million years. My guess is that this is true of the following interesting query about a contradiction between the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts (written by the same author) about the ascension of Jesus. QUESTION: Talking of authors who contradict themselves any idea why Luke has Jesus ascending on the day of his resurrection but Acts places it 40 days later!? This seems like quite an obvious mistake for the same writer to make. RESPONSE: I explain the problem and try to come up with a solution in my book The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. Here is what I say there (edited to get rid of some of the technical discussion that is not directly germane to the question): ****************************************************************************** How did the proto-orthodox doctrines of Jesus’ bodily ascension and return in judgment affect the text of Scripture? I begin by considering a problem that proves particularly difficult to adjudicate. The final verses of Luke’s Gospel [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:41:24-04:00June 22nd, 2018|Canonical Gospels, New Testament Manuscripts, Reader’s Questions|

New Rules for Comments on the Blog

I have made an executive decision involving rules for comments on the blog. I have received complaints from blog users about some of the comments. I think we all (the thousands of us!) are doing well when it comes to being polite and reasonably generous with one another, unlike a lot of other sites. But some of the comments are distracting, either because there are so many of them from one person or because they are excessively long. The comment section of the blog was never intended to be a forum for people to develop at great length their personal views about something – that is, it was never to be a blog for other people who have always wanted their own blog. It was meant to be a place where people could interact with fair concision both with me directly and with one another, where people could be open to new ideas and thought, where people could express themselves succinctly and to the point and give and gain new ideas. I don’t want [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:41:24-04:00June 21st, 2018|Public Forum|

How I Write: The Crucial Phase

I have a very distinctive way of writing books, even though every time I write one, I think it’s the only sensible way to do it. For years I’ve encouraged my students to do it this way when they write their dissertations, and I’ve talked to friends and colleagues about it, subtly (well, sometimes not so subtly) suggesting they do it. And so far, after writing books for over thirty years, I’ve not convinced a single person to do it this way! I’m sure that’s because everyone has to do it their own way. You really have to be in your own comfort zone when writing a book, you have to feel it’s the best way for you. And that’s because no matter how you do it, it’s really hard. My wife is now working fervently on her next book, a study of Shakespeare’s late tragedies in light of a philosophical tradition (which comes out of a certain reading of Wittgenstein) called Ordinary Language Philosophy, and just about every day she exclaims, “It’s HARD to [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:41:24-04:00June 19th, 2018|Book Discussions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Does the Book of Acts Portray the Teachings of Paul Accurately?

This is my second post on the portrayal of Paul in the book of Acts. In the one previous I tried to show, briefly, how the account of Paul’s activities in Luke’s narrative do not gel well with what he says in his own letters. Here I address the question that was originally raised: his teachings. Do the things Paul says in Acts coincide with what he himself indicates? I won’t give a detailed discuss, but just look at one key passage. Again, this is drawn from my book The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. ************************************************************** Paul’s Teaching. Almost all of Paul’s evangelistic sermons mentioned in Acts are addressed to Jewish audiences. This itself should strike us as odd given Paul’s repeated claim that his mission was to the Gentiles. In any event, the most famous exception is his speech to a group of philosophers on the Areopagus in Athens (chap. 17). In this speech, Paul explains that the Jewish God is in fact the God of all, pagan and [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:41:24-04:00June 18th, 2018|Acts of the Apostles, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Does the Book of Acts Accurately Portray the Life and Teachings of Paul?

A fundamental question has recently come to me, which involves one of the central issues in the study of the life and teachings of Paul. As most members of the blog may know, there are thirteen books in the NT that claim to be written by Paul, six of which are widely thought not actually to be by him. But that means, on the positive side, that we almost certainly have seven letters actually written by Paul, so that if we want to know about him, we can turn to his own writings (unlike, for example, Jesus, from whom we have no writings). We also, however, have the book of Acts, the fifth book of the NT, which gives a narrative of the spread of Christianity throughout the Roman world, as the faith moved from being a sect within Judaism to becoming a world-wide religion for both Jews and Gentiles. The key figure in that transition, and the main character in the book of Acts, is Paul. But can we trust that wuat the book [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:41:24-04:00June 17th, 2018|Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Why I Am Obsessed with Jesus: A Blast from the Past

Here's a new idea: feel free to suggest to me that I repost one of the posts that you most like from earlier days on the blog! That was done, unsolicited, by one of the long-time faithful followers of the blog, who wanted to see me repost a post from four years, ago, on why I continue to be obsessed with Jesus even though I am not a believer. Here it is! ************************************************************************* There is a relatively new online journal, “On Faith,” that is top-of-the line and very interesting. A couple of days ago they published a short article that I wrote, in connection with How Jesus Became God; I called the article “Why I Am Obsessed with Jesus.” It contains some views you will have seen from me before, and some others. Here is the article as I sent it to them. (The full link to the online version in the journal comes at the end). ********************************************************** I finally figured out why I’m so obsessed with Jesus. It makes sense that Jesus mattered to [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:41:24-04:00June 15th, 2018|Reflections and Ruminations|

How Does an Author Write a Trade Book? Phase 2.

On and off I have been talking about the process I take for writing a book, and will continue that conversation here in this post, to explain where I am just now – a very good place indeed – on my book on the origins of the Christian understandings of the afterlife. In my previous posts I talked about how I go about doing my reading for a book, and what I said there certainly applies here. I’ve read hundreds of books and articles on the afterlife, starting with works that I knew would be broad-based and foundational, such as Alan Bernstein, The Invention of Hell; Jan Bremmer, The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife; Alan F. Segal, Life After Death: A history of the Afterlife in the Religions of the West; and, well, lots of others. From these (and other places) I made lists of primary texts and scholarly works that I needed to master and read all of them, and from them made fuller lists of books and articles to read, and read [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:41:24-04:00June 14th, 2018|Book Discussions, Reflections and Ruminations|

The Name Judas Iscariot: What Does It Mean?

Several members of the blog have commented on my posts about the death of Judas by asking about his name itself. Most interesting, what does “Iscariot” mean? I deal briefly with the topic in my book on Judas, a book in which I deal at length with the newly discovered Gospel of Judas, but then go on to say what I think we can actually know historically about the man himself, and his one most famous nefarious act, the betrayal of Jesus. Here is what I say about the name. **************************************************** The Name Judas Iscariot Sometimes knowing the names of persons from antiquity can give further information about them. People of the lower classes did not have last names, and so to differentiate people with the same first name, descriptive designations were often added. For example, there are several different Marys in the New Testament. “Mary” was one of the most common names in first-century Palestine. And so each New Testament Mary is given some kind of identifying feature: Mary “the mother of Jesus”; Mary [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:41:24-04:00June 12th, 2018|Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

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