Page 133 – The Bart Ehrman Blog

How Were Books Published in the Ancient World?

In this week’s Readers’ Mailbag I deal with a question about how books – including the early Christian Gospels – were “published” in the ancient world. How were they “made public” and distributed in a world that didn’t have printing presses and publishers and book stores? Here’s the question and my response. QUESTION Bart, this is a related but separate question–how would Mark’s gospel first have been distributed? I understand that most who read it would be reading copies made by believers (with some adherent errors or in some cases deliberate changes), but at some point there was an original copy. What do we know about how such books got into circulation, so the process of copying and distributing them began? And how would it have differed from, let’s say, the histories of Josephus or Tacitus? RESPONSE This is an interesting and important question, an area of substantial scholarly research that is for the most part not known among the reading public, who for the most part have never thought about the question. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:40:36-04:00March 25th, 2018|New Testament Manuscripts, Reader’s Questions|

Ehrman & Licona: Are the Gospels Historically Reliable? Part 2

Here is Part 2 of my debate with Mike Licona on whether the Gospels are historically reliable. You won't necessarily have to have seen Part 1 to make sense of this one; a lot of it involves penetrating questions from the audience (trying to trip us up!) which one or the other of us addressed. Enjoy! Part 2: Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition: - Mike Licona is the author of The Resurrection of Jesus, Why Are There Differences in the Gospels and Evidence for God. REMEMBER: if you were a member of the blog, you would get interesting posts all related to the New Testament and the history of early Christianity, at least five times a week. So why not join??

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:40:20-04:00March 24th, 2018|Bart's Debates, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum, Video Media|

The Miracle of New Life

As most readers of the blog know, I do not believe in miracles. At least in literal miracles as normally understood. I suppose most people think of an actual or literal miracle as an event that cannot be explained through natural causes but requires some kind of supernatural intervention, an act of a divine being who is outside of this nexus of cause and effect, an act of God. I should stress that this does not necessarily mean that we *do* know the natural causes of everything that we do not consider miraculous – only that in principle they are discoverable. I stress that point because most of us have no clue how *most* of what happens happens. I couldn’t explain how my toaster works if my life depended upon it, let alone anything (just about *anything*) having to do with biology, chemistry, or physics, let alone the wonders of the human brain, or the expansion of the universe, or, well, as I said, most things. But that doesn’t mean that I need to appeal [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:40:36-04:00March 22nd, 2018|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

The Marvels of Media Attention

My first trade book – that is, book written for a general audience, instead of for fellow scholars (academic monographs) or college students (textbooks) -- was 19 years ago now, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. I think it’s safe to say that when I wrote the book, I knew virtually *nothing* about writing a trade book. My editor at Oxford University Press urged me to write it and I reluctantly agreed. I was reluctant because I did not want to write for a general audience. At that time I wanted to spend my life writing scholarship for scholars. But I thought, well, why not – I’ll give it a shot. But it was to be a one-off, not a career. I didn’t really know the difference between trade books and scholarly monographs, except when it came to audience. I realized that I would not be writing for experts like the guy in the office next to me, but for lay folk like the guy across the street. I suppose that was pretty much [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:40:35-04:00March 21st, 2018|Book Discussions, Public Forum|

Fresh Air Interview Tuesday March 20

I have just recorded an interview with Terry Gross for Fresh Air -- scheduled to air tomorrow, Tuesday March 20. It's (mainly) on my book The Triumph of Christianity. We recorded for an hour and a half, so hopefully they'll figure out how to edit out the most boring bits!

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:40:35-04:00March 19th, 2018|Public Forum|

Ehrman & Licona: Are the Gospels Historically Reliable? Part 1

A month ago, on February 21 I had a public debate with Mike Licona at the Bailey Performance Center at Kennesaw State University on the topic: Are the Gospels Historically Reliable? Ratio Christi and KSU History Club hosted the event. Moderator was Dr. Brian Swain, a historian of Mediterranean antiquity on the faculty there. You can probably guess the two sides we took in the debate. The crowd was largely on his side, which made for a very interesting evening. As I think you'll see, even though Mike and I disagree on most things, we have a good, friendly relationship. It was a long evening -- lots of back and forth, with a Q & A with the audience to follow. At times it got, well, animated. Here is part 1. I'll post the second part next week. Part 1: Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition. - Mike Licona is the author of The Resurrection of Jesus, Why Are There Differences in the Gospels and Evidence for God.

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:40:20-04:00March 18th, 2018|Bart's Debates, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum, Video Media|

Scribes Who Injected the Idea of Atonement into Luke’s Gospel
Gallery
Scribes Who Injected the Idea of Atonement into Luke’s Gospel

Canonical Gospels, New Testament Manuscripts

Scribes Who Injected the Idea of Atonement into Luke’s Gospel

One of the most striking theological features of the Gospel of Luke and its accompanying volume the book of Acts is that they do not portray Jesus’ death as a sacrifice for sins. That seems very strange indeed to people who get their theology from other parts of the New Testament (e.g., Paul, and the other Gospels). But when read on their own, Luke-Acts have a different understanding of the significance of Jesus death. And that may be why scribes altered the words Jesus spoke at his last supper in Luke 22 – the textual variant I began discussing yesterday. I have a very long discussion of the issue in my book The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture and a much shortened and simplified version in Misquoting Jesus. Here is what I say in the latter. ******************************************************************************* For proto-orthodox Christians, it was important to emphasize that Christ was a real man of flesh and blood because it was precisely the sacrifice of his flesh and the shedding of his blood that brought salvation – not in [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:40:35-04:00March 16th, 2018|Canonical Gospels, New Testament Manuscripts|

What Happened at the Last Supper? A Textual Problem in Luke

A couple of days ago a reader asked me a question in connection with something I had said about the early second-century Christian text, the Didache, and its instructions about how the Lord’s supper was supposed to be celebrated. Here is what I said: “When they celebrate the Eucharist they are first to bless the cup with a prayer that the author provides and then to bless the broken bread, with another set prayer (9:1–4). This way of celebrating the Lord’s Supper by starting with the cup and ending with the bread has long puzzled scholars, since the typical practice of the early Christians appears to be reflected in the New Testament accounts of the Last Supper, where Jesus distributes first the bread and then the cup” This led a reader to ask: QUESTION: Does this relate to Luke 22:17-20 where the author has Jesus take the cup, then take the bread, then take the cup again? RESPONSE: Ah, it is a good question. Many readers will not know that there is a [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:40:35-04:00March 15th, 2018|Canonical Gospels, New Testament Manuscripts|

The Golden Rule

After all the background I gave yesterday, I can now give a succinct answer to the question that was raised by a reader. Here it is again. QUESTION: I was surprised to see that, in the Didache, the form of the Golden Rule is in the negative. I’ve read that the positive formulation in the Sermon on the Mount may be original to Jesus. If the Didache used Matthew as a source, how does one account for that reversion? RESPONSE: I think this question has a simple answer. It is that the Golden Rule, which is known to everyone today mainly by the way Jesus said it, was a common teaching but was almost expressed negatively rather than positively (as I’ll explain below). When the author of the Didache states the rule he does so in the form that he was most familiar with rather than in the form known to Matthew. It is important to recognize that when one speaks of Matthew as a “source” for the Didache it is not the same thing [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:40:35-04:00March 13th, 2018|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

Once More: The Interesting Text Called the Didache

QUESTION: I was surprised to see that in the Didache the form of the Golden Rule is in the negative. I’ve read that the positive formulation in the Sermon on the Mount may be original to Jesus. If the Didache used Matthew as a source, how does one account for that reversion? RESPONSE I started writing up a simple answer to this question but then I realized that the answer doesn’t make much sense without some more extended background. Just a few months ago on the blog – this past December -- I talked about the intriguing early Christian writing known as the Didache. But everything I said then may not be fresh in everyone’s mind (I know it’s not fresh in *my* mind: I had forgotten I even posted about it!!). So let me explain again what the book is – not in the same terms as I did as before but by way of a general overview, as I lay it out in my undergraduate textbook on the New Testament. In my [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:40:35-04:00March 12th, 2018|Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Reader’s Questions|

A Privileged View of Suffering

I haven't posted on this topic for a while, and looking through old posts from five years ago, I came across this one. I've edited it a bit from the first time, but my sentiments are pretty much the same now that I'm older and not much wiser..... ************************************************************************** Sometimes people get upset because I deal with the problem of suffering even though I don’t seem to be experiencing any severe pain and misery myself. Here is an example of the kind of comment I occasionally receive, this from someone commenting to me on Facebook a couple of days ago: "Dude, in a world of suffering, you claim doubts in deity because you live the privileged life of a UNC professor. If you lived in a 40-year-old trailer in Tarboro, I'd take you more seriously. And you even charge people to read your self-indulgent crap. Just for the record, I'm a non-theist. But I'm not a hypocrite." I take comments like this very seriously. Even though I recognize that it is, well, a bit [...]

admin2025-07-16T17:28:32-04:00March 12th, 2018|Bart's Critics, Reflections and Ruminations|

My Scholarly Project on the Afterlife

Here is the research proposal that I sent in to various funding agencies hoping to get a leave for next year – including the National Humanities Center, which has given me a fellowship . As you’ll see, it is closely tied to the trade book I am working on about the origins of the Christian ideas of heaven and hell, but it deals with a specific issue at considerable depth. For the fellowship application I called the prospective book “The Invention of Heaven and Hell” – which sounds too much like my trade book (“The Invention of the Afterlife”) but it was all I could come up with at the time. I wanted to give it a scholarly title, something like “Anabasis Traditions in Early Christianity,” but was strongly advised not to make the title technical. There’s no telling what it will be called when it eventually gets written, but here is what I say about it when describing in my applications for fellowships. ************************************************************ In the winter season of 1886-87 a French archaeological team [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:40:20-04:00March 9th, 2018|Afterlife, Book Discussions|

My Upcoming Writing Plans: The Afterlife and the Afterlife

As some of you know, I sometimes try to work on two books at once. I’ve actually tried *writing* two books at once, but doesn’t work too well. (Writing part of one one day and part of the other another. Yuk!) But I can be doing research and planning two books at once, if they are on a related topic – one a popular book for a general audience and the other a scholarly book for academics. That’s what I did about ten years ago now for my books Forged (trade book for general readers) and Forgery and Counterforgery (hard-hitting scholarship decidedly not for general readers). Last summer I mentioned on the blog that I was thinking about doing that again, and now it’s for real – I’m doing it. I wasn’t sure if I would because I needed to get a sabbatical from teaching to pull it off. But I have now learned that I’ve been given a fellowship for all of next year at the National Humanities Center and so I will be [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:40:20-04:00March 8th, 2018|Book Discussions, Public Forum|

Why Women Came to be Silenced

Given what I’ve said before about women in the ancient world, in early Christianity, and in the churches of Paul, I can now explain why women who had originally played a significant role in the early Christian movement came to be silenced, especially in the churches of Paul (as seen, for example, in the Pastoral epistles). Here is how I discuss the matter in my college-level textbook on the New Testament. ***************************************************** Our theoretical discussion of the ideology of gender in the Roman world, that is, of the way that people mentally and socially constructed sexual difference, gives us a backdrop for reconsidering the progressive oppression of women in the Pauline churches. Women may have been disproportionately represented in the earliest Christian communities. This at least was a constant claim made by the opponents of Christianity in the second century, who saw the inordinate number of women believers as a fault; remarkably, the defenders of the faith never denied it. The large number of women followers is not surprising given the circumstance that the earliest [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:40:20-04:00March 6th, 2018|History of Christianity (100-300CE), Paul and His Letters, Women in Early Christianity|

The Surprising Understanding of Gender in the Ancient World

Back in January I made three posts on the role of women in the churches of Paul (see the posts of January 16, 17, and 18). These raised various questions from readers about how and why women went from having a fairly *prominent* role in Paul’s own churches to having thoroughly *diminished* roles in the churches that arose after his day, as embodied for example in the Pastoral epistles of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus (books that claim to be written by Paul but that he did not himself write; they were produced by a later author who, among other things, opposed the role of women in the church). I’d like to answer these questions by discussing a matter that most modern readers of the Bible (or of other ancient texts) simply are unaware of: how ancient people understood the relationship of the genders. We ourselves have a “common sense” of what the differences between male and female are, and we naturally assume that our common sense has been the common sense of everyone [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:40:20-04:00March 5th, 2018|Greco-Roman Religions and Culture, Paul and His Letters, Sex and Sexuality in the Bible, Women in Early Christianity|

Reading The Triumph of Christianity at Quail Ridge Books

On Tuesday February 13, 2018 at 7:00pm, I had a book reading based on my new book "The Triumph of Christianity: How A Forbidden Religion Swept the World" at Quail Ridge Books located in Raleigh, North Carolina. I read excerpts for about 30 minutes, then took questions. Here it is, for your viewing pleasure or amusement! Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition: To see all my posts, 5-6 times a week, join the blog! It doesn't cost much, gives a lot, and raises money for charity. So why not?

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:40:20-04:00March 4th, 2018|Book Discussions, Public Forum, Spread of Christianity, Video Media|

Early Christology: How I Changed My Mind

It seems like every time I write a book, based on the research I do I change my mind about one thing or another that I've thought for a long time. Some people (including some fellow scholars) think that's a weakness or a problem. I think of it as one of my charming personality traits. :-) OK, seriously, I think more scholars ought to be willing to change their minds -- instead of being intransigent and thinking they are always right. If intense research gives you new and different insights, that's a *good* thing, not a problem. I think about this a lot every time I'm in the midst of doing research for a book (such as now) (well, OK, such as almost always), and just now I was looking through old blog posts , and I ran across one (almost exactly five years ago today!) where I talk about a big change of mind involving the early understandings of Jesus as a divine being, in connection with the book I eventually published, How Jesus [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:40:19-04:00March 2nd, 2018|Book Discussions, Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine|

Futuristic Interpretations of the Book of Revelation

Now that my book The Triumph of Christianity has come out, I'm thinking about my future books. The one I'm working on now is The Invention of the Afterlife, where I explore the origins of the idea that when you die, your soul goes to heaven or hell (it's not in the Old Testament and it's not what Jesus taught -- so where did it come from??). But I always like to think two or three books in the future, and so I'm contemplating what I might do after this. One idea is to deal with the belief that the world is soon to come to an end, a book that would, among other things, take on the book of Revelation. I've dealt with the issue before, of course, but not broadly. One of the things I'm interested in is how people interpret Revelation as referring to things about to happen in our own future. Here's something I say about the topic in my textbook on the Bible. *************************************************************** One of the most popular ways [...]

admin2025-07-16T17:28:31-04:00March 1st, 2018|Book Discussions, Revelation of John|

What Did Jesus Look Like?

I recently read an intriguing short article by my friend and colleague at King’s College London, Joan Taylor, on what Jesus probably looked like. Good question. I’ve always thought: how would we know? But in fact, there are some things to be said. I zapped her a note and she agreed to write up something for the blog. The original piece was published in The Irish Times, here: <https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/what-did-jesus-really-look-like-as-a-jew-in-1st-century-judaea-1.3385334>. She has slightly edited it for us. Here is what she says. **************************************************************** What Did Jesus Look Like Joan Taylor Everyone knows how to recognize Jesus. He is portrayed in art, film and literature in much the same way. His image is found repeatedly in countless churches and Christian buildings. He is usually somewhat European: a man with nut-brown hair (sometimes blond) and light brown or blue eyes. He has a long face and nose, and long hair and a beard. His clothes are also long: a tunic down to the ground, with wide baggy sleeves, and a large mantle. He is fairly well-tended [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:40:19-04:00February 27th, 2018|Historical Jesus|

Do We Know How Paul Died?

In response to a question about what we know about the deaths of the apostles yesterday (short answer: almost nothing!) I talked about the hints about Peter’s death in the NT, and the later legend about it in the apocryphal Acts of Peter. Today I can talk about what we know about the legends about the martyrdom of Paul, from the equally apocryphal Acts of Paul. Here is what I say about it in my book Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene. ************************************************************ The Martyrdom of Paul We do not have any contemporary accounts of Paul’s death, although traditions from several decades afterwards indicate that he was martyred. The earliest reference comes in the letter from the church of Rome to the church of Corinth known as 1 Clement, written around 95 CE, some thirty years after Paul’s death. This anonymous author refers to the “pillars” of the Christian faith who were persecuted for their faith, “even to death.” He refers especially to the apostles Peter and Paul. About Paul, he states: Because of jealousy [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:40:19-04:00February 26th, 2018|Christian Apocrypha, Reader’s Questions|

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