Page 156 – The Bart Ehrman Blog

Preface to Constantine: The Rule of the Four

In this post I want to explain how Constantine came to power. It is an unusually complicated story, with all kinds of names and dates that only inveterate historians could love. I’ll give a simple version of it here, more suitable for those of us who are mere mortals. The reason it matters is that Constantine’s predecessor’s Diocletian vision of a Tetrarchy (= Rule of Four), in which the empire would be ruled by two senior emperor (each called an Augustus) and two junior emperors (each called a Caesar), with one pair (senior – junior) in the East and one in the West, didn’t last past a year after Diocletian’s abdication. There were usurpations, infightings, civil wars, and a whole mess of things for years until Constantine emerged as the sole ruler of the Empire. He was in power (first as a ruling partner, then as the one guy at the top) for over thirty years, longer than any ruler of the empire apart from the one who started it all, Caesar Augustus, three centuries [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:33:56-04:00July 13th, 2016|Constantine, Fourth-Century Christianity, Public Forum|

The Emperor Constantine: Some Background

Time for something new, about as different from the Pentateuch as you can get while still staying in the ancient world. I’ve been reading and thinking a lot about the Emperor Constantine over the past ten months and have decided to devote a thread to him on the blog. His conversion to Christianity is usually considered a major turning point in the history of the Christian religion. Before he became Christian all the Roman emperors were, of course, pagan, and some of them, including his immediate predecessors on the throne, were virulently opposed to the Christian movement. He himself converted near the end of what is called the “Great Persecution,” a ten-year period in which, at least in parts of the empire, the imperial forces were trying to wipe out the religion. After he converted, Christianity went from being persecuted, to being tolerated, to being religion-most-favored . It is a mistake to say – as so many people do say! – that Constantine made Christianity the official state religion of the Roman empire. He absolutely [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:33:56-04:00July 12th, 2016|Constantine, Fourth-Century Christianity, Public Forum|

Are the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Manuscripts Reliable? A Blast From the Past

A reader has perspicaciously pointed out to me that a particularly relevant post from three years ago (June 7, 2013) makes an important contribution to the topic I've been discussing about the Pentateuch. This post is not about whether the events described in the Hebrew Bible are accurate, but whether we have accurate manuscripts of these accounts. I talk a lot on the blog about manuscripts of the New Testament. What about manuscripts of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible? My post back then was in response to a question. Here it is in full: **************************************************************************************************** QUESTION: Bart, these issues you've found in the New Testament, have you studied and found similar issues in the Old Testament?" RESPONSE: Yes indeed! Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament) was my secondary field in my PhD program, and I taught Introduction to Hebrew Bible at both Rutgers and UNC. A few years ago when I decided to write my Introduction to the Bible I decided that to do it right I had to re-tool in Hebrew Bible. I’m by no [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:33:56-04:00July 11th, 2016|Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Suggestions for Further Reading on the Pentateuch

A couple of readers have asked if I have any bibliography to suggest in connection with the thread I am just finishing now on the sources behind the Pentateuch. Below are the suggestions I make in my textbook on the Bible, the first three chapters. As you’ll see, they are briefly annotated to give you a sense of where first to turn, based on you particular interests. The first chapter is an Introduction to the Bible, and so the bibliography comprises general reference works that I highly recommend. These may be ones you would want to buy if you are hard core into your interests. The other two chapters are on Genesis and then the rest of the Pentateuch. ********************************************************* Suggestions for Further Reading Chapter One: What is the Bible? And Why Is It So Hard to Understand? Coogan, Michael and Bruce Metzger, eds. Oxford Companion to the Bible. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. A superb dictionary of all things biblical, ideal for both beginning and advanced students. Freedman, David [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:33:55-04:00July 10th, 2016|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Reader’s Questions|

Did Matthew Write in Hebrew? Did Jesus Institute the Lord’s Supper? Did Josephus Mention Jesus? Weekly Readers’ Mailbag July 9, 2016

Was the Gospel of Matthew written in Hebrew? Did Jesus have a Last Supper? And does Josephus mention Jesus’ brother James? These are the three questions I will be addressing in this week’s Reader’s Weekly Mailbag. If you have any question for me to address, let me know! ************************************************ QUESTION: Just a short question: is there any possibility that Matthew gospel’s was written in Hebrew or Aramaic ? RESPONSE There was a long tradition throughout early and medieval Christianity that maintained that Matthew – commonly called the “most Jewish” of the Gospels – was written in Hebrew (or Aramaic). Given its heightened Jewish concerns (see, for example, 5:17-20, verses found in no other Gospel), wasn’t it probably written to Jews in their native language? There are two preliminary points to be made. First, a number of scholars doubt if Matthew, or his community, was Jewish. It is widely thought, instead, that Matthew portrays a Jesus who insists that his followers keep the Jewish law precisely because they were not accustomed to doing so, that [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:33:55-04:00July 9th, 2016|Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Another Creation Story

In my previous post I cited some parallels to the story of Noah and the Flood, immortalized by none other than Russell Crowe (OK, I have to admit, I never saw the film) (but I did see Gladiator – on opening day! I had a student who was writing a dissertation that had a chapter on gladiators…) – stories of the flood in the myths of the Ancient Near East. There were also numerous parallels in different areas around the Mediterranean to the Genesis account of creation. Here I cite the most famous one. I should say there is a rather large point to be made about these parallels, and it applies not only to the myths and legends of Genesis but also to the stories about Jesus in the New Testament (to forestall a question I’m sure to be asked, I use the term “myth” in reference to stories that focus on God’s actions in the pre- or non-historical past, such as the creation and the flood, and “legend” in reference to human stories [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:33:55-04:00July 8th, 2016|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

Other Myths of the Flood from the Ancient Near East

In response to my posts on the Pentateuch, several readers have asked about how other myths from other cultures of the Ancient Near East may have influenced the biblical writers (and the story tellers who passed along the traditions before them). Among other things, other religions of the region had stories of creation and the flood that were very similar to what you can find in the book of Genesis. What do we know about these? Here is what I say about two of the regional myths of the flood, again, in my bextbook The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction. ****************************************************************** The Gilgamesh Epic In 1853 several fragments of a different ancient text were discovered in the ruined palace of ancient Nineveh. The texts, also written in cuneiform script, were deciphered by George Smith. Since then they have been recognized as containing one of the great epics of ancient literature, named after its lead character, a king of the city of Uruk in southern Mesopotamia named Gilgamesh. Numerous other fragments of the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:33:55-04:00July 6th, 2016|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

When Was the World Created? A Blast From the Past

Now that I’ve been talking about the Pentateuch, including its first book, Genesis, I thought it might be appropriate to offer up a Blast From the Past. Four years ago, on July 5, 2012, I posted this account of when Christians started thinking that the world was created (Genesis 1-2) in 4004 BCE, as you’ll find in your annotated editions of the King James Bible. This is what I said: Creation in 4004 BCE? In my textbook, the Introduction to the the Bible, I am including a number of “boxes” that deal with issues that are somewhat tangental to the main discussion, but of related interest or importance. Here’s one of the ones in my chapter on Genesis, in connection with interpretations that want to take the book as science or history. For a lot of you, this will be old news. But then again, so is Genesis. ************************************************************************************* In 1650 CE, an Irish archbishop and scholar, James Ussher, engaged in a detailed study of when the world began. Ussher based his calculations [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:33:55-04:00July 5th, 2016|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum|

Modern Views of the Authorship of the Pentateuch

I am now nearly finished talking about the “Documentary Hypothesis” devised by scholars of the Hebrew Bible to account for the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. I have already discussed the traditional view developed in the nineteenth century, especially as it was laid out by Julius Wellhausen. All of this was in response to a question I received about what scholars today have to say about it. Here is what I say, briefly, about that in my textbook on the Bible. It’s about as much as most beginning students (and most people in general) need to know. *************************************************************** The Scholarly View Today It is impossible to speak about a single scholarly opinion about the Documentary Hypothesis today. Some scholars reject the idea that J and E were separate sources; some think that there were far more sources than the four; some propose radically different dates for the various sources (for example, one increasingly popular proposal is that the earliest sources were written in the 7th century; other scholars maintain [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:33:43-04:00July 3rd, 2016|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, History of Biblical Scholarship, Public Forum|

Did Moses Write the Pentateuch? The JEDP Hypothesis.

I have been discussing the sources of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), sometimes also called the Torah or the Law of Moses. So far I have explained the kinds of literary problems that led scholars to realize that these books were not the writing of a single author, but represented a combination of earlier written accounts. The traditional “documentary hypothesis,” as it is called, was most famously formulated by the nineteenth-century German scholar, Julius Wellhausen, who, along with some of his predecessors, called the sources J E D and P. This was the standard view of the matter back when I was doing my PhD in biblical studies way back when. Here is how the hypothesis worked, in nuce. (Again, this is taken from my textbook on the Bible). ************************************************************* The J source was the first source to be written. From it comes a number of the stories in Genesis and Exodus, including, for example the second creation account and the story of Adam [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:33:42-04:00July 2nd, 2016|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, History of Biblical Scholarship, Public Forum|

Other Literary Tensions in the Pentateuch

I have started a brief thread on the Pentateuch and why scholars think that it was not written by a single author – Moses or anyone else – but is composed of several sources later patched together. In my previous post I started giving the reasons for thinking so, the literary tensions found in the opening chapters of Genesis. I continue here with this theme. Again, this is taken from my book The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction ******************************************************************* The literary inconsistencies of Genesis are not unique to these two chapters. On the contrary, there are such problems scattered throughout the book. You can see this for yourself simply by reading the text very carefully. Read, for example, the story of the flood in Genesis 6-9, and you will find comparable differences. One of the most glaring is this: according to Gen. 6:19 God told Noah to take two animals “of every kind” with him into the ark; but according to Gen. 7:2 God told him to take seven pairs of all “clean animals” [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:33:42-04:00July 1st, 2016|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

Biblical Anachronisms: The Philistines and Beersheba

In my post a couple of days ago I stated the fact, that I took to be a fact, that the historical Moses (if there was one) (which I doubt) could not have written parts of the Pentateuch (I don’t think he wrote any of the parts) (OK, since, among other things, I don’t think he existed) because of the mention of the people the “Philistines” and the city of Beersheba, neither of which existed in the thirteenth century BCE, when he must have lived, if he lived. A reader asked me what the evidence for that is. I include the question below. It’s a great question. I used to know the answer! Off the top of my head, I couldn’t remember what that was, apart from a vague recollection of archaeological reports. Moreover, at the time I was on the road away from my books (visiting my 89-year-old mother in Kansas!). So not being able to look it up, I did the next best thing, which turns out not to have been the second [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:33:42-04:00June 30th, 2016|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Reader’s Questions|

Literary Tensions in the Creation Account of Genesis

In yesterday’s post I began to explain why scholars have thought that the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), were not written by Moses, but later, and that they represent not a single work by a single author, but a compilation of sources, each of them written at different times. The evidence for this view is quite overwhelming, and in the context of my textbook on the Bible, as in the context here, I didn’t really think it appropriate or useful to dig deeply into all the nuances and ins and outs. Instead, I gave some of the prominent data. Here is how I started to do that. ************************************************************* The internal tensions in the Pentateuch came to be seen as particularly significant. Nowhere were these tensions more evident than in the opening accounts of the very first book, in the creation stories of Genesis chapters 1 and 2. Scholars came to recognize that what is said in Genesis 1 cannot be easily (or at all) reconciled with [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:33:42-04:00June 28th, 2016|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

Who Wrote the Pentateuch? Early Questions of Authorship.

On to something different! I want to move to a new blog topic for a while. I’ve been talking about my new book – still being written! – about the Christianization of the empire – for a while, and it’s obviously the topic near and dear to me just now. But variety is the spice of life. Several readers have responded to me about my response to the question of the sources behind the Pentateuch – the first five books of the Hebrew Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, also called, collectively, the “Torah” or the “Law” of Moses). I thought it might be refreshing to say a few more things about these books and the question of who actually wrote them. I had discussed some of this on the blog three years ago, when I was writing my textbook The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction. Here I will lift a few sections from the book dealing with this fascinating and important topic. The question: Who wrote the Pentateuch? Historically, it was always [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:33:42-04:00June 27th, 2016|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, History of Biblical Scholarship|

The Name of Saul/Paul and the Sources of the Pentateuch: Weekly Mailbag June 26, 2016

Why did Saul change his name to Paul? And what were the sources lying being the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible? Good questions! I’ll deal with them here in the Weekly Reader’s Mailbag QUESTION: What is the meaning of “Paul” that Saul of Tarsus was moved to change to that name upon his conversion? RESPONSE: Ah, right – my students ask me this a lot in my New Testament class. When we all grew up in Sunday School we learned that when Saul of Tarsus converted, he changed his name to Paul, so that Saul was his Jewish name and Paul his Christian name. As it turns out, that’s not quite right. Paul himself never gives any indication that he had another name, Saul. But he is called Saul in the book of Acts. Until he converts. After that he is usually called Paul. But not always! See, e.g., Acts 11:30 and 13:2 (there are other instances). There the Christian Paul is called Saul. What gives with that? Did [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:33:42-04:00June 26th, 2016|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

More on Numbers of Converts

In case you didn’t read the post of yesterday, I include the final two paragraphs here. Skip them if you remember what I said. The issue I’m dealing with is how much and how fast did the Christian church grow over the first four centuries. I would very much like your feedback, and if you’re a numbers person, I would love it if you would check my calculations to see if I’m making any egregious errors. All of this is lifted, again, from a rough draft of ch. 6 of my book on the Christianization of the Roman Empire ****************************************************** Thus it appears that the beginning of the Christian movement saw a veritable avalanche of conversions. Possibly many of these are the direct result of the missionary activities of Paul. But there may have been other missionaries like him who were also successful. And so let’s simply pick a sensible rate of growth, and say that for the first forty years, up to the time when Paul wrote his last surviving letter, the church grew [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:33:42-04:00June 24th, 2016|Book Discussions, Fourth-Century Christianity, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum, Spread of Christianity|

Back to the Question of How Many People Converted

I want to return to the question of how quickly the Christian church grew in the first four centuries. This will be part of chapter 6 of my book on the Triumph of Christianity. If you want a fuller background to what I say in this post and the one to follow, see my earlier musings on May 16 of this year, at https://ehrmanblog.org/how-many-christians-were-there/ In two posts I’m going to lay out what I think we can say both about how many people became Christian and at approximately what rate. For those of you who are math whizzes, I would love for you to check my calculations to see if I’m making mistakes. For everyone I would love to hear your comments on my claims and hypotheses. This is a draft of that part of my chapter, with part two to come tomorrow. As you will see, I begin in medias res. *************************************************************** As a result of these considerations, I want to suggest some minor tweaks in the way we understand the rate of Christian [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:33:42-04:00June 23rd, 2016|Book Discussions, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Spread of Christianity|

Follow up on Knocking Opportunity….

Two points I neglected to mention in my grand (so to say: one grand) opportunity: All donations are completely tax deductible; we are a non-profit organization, recognized as such by the IRS If you want to partake of the opportunity, send me an email at [email protected] May many thousands of you take me up on it!

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:33:42-04:00June 21st, 2016|Public Forum|

Opportunity Comes Knocking!!

Here’s a unique opportunity. Well, it’s not unique because it’s one you’ve had before. But you get it now again! As most of you probably know, the book I am working on, tentatively titled, The Triumph of Christianity, is about the Christianization of the Roman Empire. How did the Christian movement grow from about 20 people soon after Jesus’ death to some 30 million people in less than four hundred years? That’s a lot of converts! And it’s not an easy question to answer. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. (I actually taught a PhD seminar on the topic nearly 20 years ago!) I am especially excited about this book because I have moved to a new publisher. My past seven trade books have all been with HarperOne. That was a great experience and I will never, ever regret it. But I have decided to move on to something else, and last summer negotiated a contract with Simon & Schuster, one of the three largest trade publishers in the world. They have [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:33:42-04:00June 21st, 2016|Book Discussions, Public Forum|

Paul’s Converted Vision of Himself

To make sense of how Paul’s conversion affected his actual life, not just his theology, it is important to recall what I said about how it did affect his theology. I repeat the key paragraph from yesterday’s post before drawing the further even more far-reaching conclusion. To be members of God’s covenantal people, it is not necessary for gentiles to become Jews. They do not need to be circumcised, observe the Sabbath, keep kosher, or any of the rest. They need to believe in the death and resurrection of the messiah Jesus. This was an earth-shattering realization for Paul. Prior to this, the followers of Jesus – the first Christians – were of course Jews who understood that he was the messiah who had died and been raised from the dead. But they knew this as the act of the Jewish God given to the Jewish people. Certainly gentiles could find this salvation as well. But first they had to be Jewish. Not for Paul. Jew or gentile, it didn’t matter. What mattered was faith [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:33:41-04:00June 20th, 2016|Paul and His Letters, Public Forum|

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