Page 176 – The Bart Ehrman Blog

In Favor of Demythologizing the Ethics of Jesus

In previous posts, in answer to the question of whether I think that Jesus was a great moral teacher, I have said that I think the answer is Yes, but that there is a very serious caveat. Jesus’ ethical teaching is based on a view of the world that most of us today no longer hold. Jesus’ ethical teaching – just as all of his teaching – is deeply rooted in a form of Jewish apocalyptic thought that can be dated and localized to his time and place. Jesus thought that the culmination of the history of God’s people, Israel, was soon to come, that the climax of all human history was at hand, that God was soon to intervene in the course of history to overthrow the powers of evil that were in control of this world to bring in his good kingdom, here on earth. People were to live ethically in order to inherit that kingdom; and in fact, they were to begin to model the ethics of that kingdom in the here [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:02:18-04:00January 18th, 2013|Reflections and Ruminations|

Liar Lunatic or Lord…..Is Jesus a Moral Teacher?

Liar Lunatic or Lord... QUESTION: Do you think Jesus was a great moral teacher? If you think this is the case would you mind blogging about it? Fundamentalists are using C.S Lewis's approach in this matter. Apparently, they are happier if people call Jesus a lunatic vs. a great moral teacher. C.S. Lewis was the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, Mere Christianity, and The Problem of Pain. Is Jesus a Lord, Liar or Lunatic? My Response In my last post I indicated what I think about Jesus as a great moral teacher: yes he was one, but completely and irretrievably in an apocalyptic context that we no longer share with him. In a future post, I may deal with the question of whether it is possible to transplant ethical teachings of one context into a completely different one, without remainder. In this post, I want to take up the question about C.S. Lewis. Lewis was a great scholar of 17th century English and obviously a popular author of children’s books and Christian apologetics. He [...]

BDEhrman2022-12-31T16:17:21-05:00January 17th, 2013|Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

Was Jesus a Great Moral Teacher?

QUESTION: Do you think Jesus was a great moral teacher? If you think this is the case would you mind blogging about it. Fundamentalist are using C.S Lewis approach in this matter. Apparently they are happier if people call Jesus a lunatic vs. a great moral teacher. C.S. Lewis was the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, Mere Christianity, and The Problem of Pain. RESPONSE: I think this question is going to require at least a couple of posts: one on Jesus as a moral teacher and one on the claim by C. S. Lewis and others that if it’s true that he was a great moral teacher then we cannot very well think he would flat-out lie about the most important aspect of his teaching: his personal identity as God. (That latter is what lay behind the end of the question.) So first, Jesus as moral teacher. As it turns out, this is a complicated question. The short answer, of course, is that Yes, Jesus was a great moral teacher. The complicating factor [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-06T13:32:00-04:00January 16th, 2013|Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

My Problem with Fundamentalism

QUESTION: You note that fundamentalism is dangerous and harmful. How do you define fundamentalism and why do you think it’s dangerous? RESPONSE: There are of course actual definitions of “fundamentalism” that you can find in scholarship on religion, but I sense that you’re asking more for a rough-and-ready description. Years ago I started defining fundamentalism as “No fun, too much damn, and not enough mental. When I was a fundamentalist myself (yet to be described) I understood it in a positive way. Originally, in Christian circles, it referred to believers who held on to the “fundamentals” of the faith, which for us included such things as the inspiration of Scripture, the full deity of Christ, the Trinity, the virgin birth, the physical resurrection, and, well, probably a collection of other doctrines. Fundamentalism, for us, was to be differentiated from liberalism, which had sacrificed these basic fundamental doctrines to the gods of modernity. And we would have nothing of it. FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in as a Member. Click here for [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:02:43-04:00January 15th, 2013|Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Textual Problems with the King James: The Trinity

I’ve mentioned several problems with the King James Version in previous posts. Arguably the most significant set of problems has to do with the text that the translators were translating. Here I’ll stick with what I know the most about, the text of the New Testament. The brief reality is that in the early 17th century, Greek editions of the New Testament were based on very few and highly inferior manuscripts. Only after the King James was translated did scholars begin to become aware of the existence of older, and far better, manuscripts. For those of you who have read Misquoting Jesus, much of what follows will be a brief review. Before the invention of printing, the NT (and all other books) circulated in manuscript form (the word manu-script literally means “written by hand”), as scribes copied the text by hand, one page, one sentence, one word at a time. All scribes copying long texts made mistakes; and anyone who copied a manuscript that had mistakes replicated the mistakes and made some of his own, [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:02:51-04:00January 14th, 2013|New Testament Manuscripts|

Heaven and Hell: When was Heaven and Hell Invented?
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Heaven and Hell: When was Heaven and Hell Invented?

Afterlife, Historical Jesus, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions

Heaven and Hell: When was Heaven and Hell Invented?

Heaven and Hell: When was Heaven and Hell Invented? (QUESTION): If I were to ask the average mainstream Sunday morning Christian why they are a Christian I would probably get an answer (other than to meet friends in church) such as this, “To be saved and go to heaven when I die.” When I look at the obituaries in the newspaper, I so often see a statement assuring me that “Mable is with Jesus now,” and was advised by a bumper sticker yesterday, “Heaven or Hell: It’s Your Choice.” If Jesus’ message was as you and others state, “repent now for the Kingdom of God is just around the corner,” affirmed by Paul and the early church...how did we get this fast-track-ticket-to-heaven in contemporary popular Christianity? I cannot find that explicitly in the New Testament (except for some hints in the Gospel of John). How did we get from the Apocalyptic Jesus to the Pearly Gates? RESPONSE: Ah, this is a great question, and as with all great questions, it does not have an easy answer! [...]

BDEhrman2022-12-31T16:14:28-05:00January 13th, 2013|Afterlife, Historical Jesus, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

More King James Curiosities

A terrific and detailed discussion of some of the problems of the King James as a modern translation can be found in Jack Lewis’s helpful ,The English Bible: from KJV to NIV. Among some of the more interesting points he makes are the following. Words used in the KJV that we have no clue about today (well, most of us): almug, algum, chode gat, habergeon, hosen, kab, lugure, neesed, ring-straked, wimples, ouches, cracknels…. He lists dozens more. Phrases: ouches of gold (Exoc. 28:11); collops of fat (Job 15:25); naughty figs (Jer 24:2); lien with (Jer. 3:2); rentest thy face (Jer. 4:30); murrain of the cattle (Exod. 9:2). He gives lots more. Sentences that may, at least, puzzle: And Jacob sod pottage (Gen 25:29) And Mt. Sinai was altogether on a smoke (Exoc. 19:18) Thou shalt destroy them that speak leasing (Ps. 5:6) Solomon loved many strange women (2 Kings 11:1) (!) I trow not (Luke 17:9) We do you to wit of the grace of God (2 Cor. 8:1) Ye are not straitened in us, [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:03:07-04:00January 12th, 2013|New Testament Manuscripts|

Misleading Translations in the King James

In a couple of weeks I’m going off to Los Angeles to give a lecture at Loyola Marymount University as a keynote address for their putting on of the (traveling) exhibition on the King James Bible, started in commemoration of its 400th year (in 2011). The exhibition is called Manifold Greatness: The Creation and Afterlife of the King James Bible, and my lecture is entitled: “What Kind of a Text Is the King James Bible? Manuscripts, Translation, and the Legacy of the KJV.” In addition to celebrating the greatness of the translation – it’s obviously one of the greatest classics of the English language – I will be talking about various aspects of the KJV that make it less usable as a study or research Bible. I haven’t written the talk yet, but I’m thinking, at this point, about talking about three topics: The fact that in the New Testament the KJV was based on Greek manuscripts (the only ones available at the time, of course – so it was no one’s fault) that are [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:05:22-04:00January 9th, 2013|Bart’s Biography, New Testament Manuscripts|

An Agnostic Teaching the Bible

Question about an Agnostic teaching the Bible: I have recently wondered how you can truly enjoy (and endure) your line of work with your loss of faith. It would seem to me that the mental dissonance would lead to great frustration and personal anguish in studying and teaching about something which you know is not historically true and has led you away from your faith. Not to mention all of the flack you must have to dodge from the average person on a daily basis, including your beginning students, knowing that you will never change the minds of your most rigid fundamentalist critics. How do you deal with it…with any enthusiasm? I left church work because of that….what’s your secret? Response: It’s a good question, but there’s an easy answer, I think. It would probably be a real problem for me if I were teaching in a seminary or divinity school, or even a Christian college; in that scenario, I think I would be completely torn and agonizing the whole time, training ministers or teaching [...]

BDEhrman2022-06-27T23:27:36-04:00January 9th, 2013|Bart’s Biography, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations, Teaching Christianity|

When Will The End Come?

COMMENT: All the Christians I hear from around here say, “But we don’t know the hour and the day!” I don’t know if he is supposed to appear to everybody at once or if they will hear about it in the news. Those who believe in the rapture would be disappointed if they heard about it in the news. When I was a Fundy, I don’t remember being clear on this even though I tried. RESPONSE: Actually, this comment brings to mind something that I was planning on posting on anyway (this relates to “no one knows the day or the hour” when the end will come as Jesus says in the apocalyptic discourse in the Gospels). I mentioned earlier that in the 1970s, I and my fundamentalist friends were all fairly well convinced that Jesus would be returning from heaven soon – and in particular, before the end of the 1980s. That was in no small measure because we were devotees of the views set forth by Hal Lindsey in his blockbuster hit [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-08T10:48:04-04:00January 7th, 2013|Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

New Reference Tool

I’m pleased to be able to announce (and only a month after the fact) that after years of labor, the thirteen-volume Encyclopedia of Ancient History, ed. by Roger Bagnall, Kai Bodersen, Craige Champion, Andrew Erskine, and Sabine Hueber has now appeared, published by Wiley-Blackwell. It’s not exactly an affordable reference tool for everyone’s library. The list price is $1995.00! But you can save $354 on Amazon, if you’re loaded and looking for the most authoritative and up-to-date reference on all things ancient (Western world, roughly the ancient Mediterranean, including Egypt and the ancient Near East), from the Bronze Age up to the seventh century CE. There were twenty-two of us who were “area editors.” The areas include such things as “Classical Greece,” ”Jewish History,” “Late Antiquity,” “Religion,” “Roman Military History,” and “Science.” I was responsible for the area of “Christianity.” In that capacity, I chose 195 topics that needed articles to be written, ranging from 500 to 2500 words; I solicited scholars to contribute articles; I edited all the articles once they were written; and [...]

BDEhrman2018-01-01T00:32:48-05:00January 6th, 2013|Public Forum, Teaching Christianity|

Paul’s “Gospel” and Marcion

Question: (Here is a question that has been raised about one of my posts. The question begins with a quotation from what I said, in contrast to something else I said, which seems to contradict it. Far be it from me every to eschew contradictions! :) But in this case, I have been misunderstood, probably because of the poor way I phrased it. A couple of people have asked me about the same thing, so here’s the gist of their questions, in the form of one iteration). “The apostle Paul – well-connected and well-traveled and familiar with lots of churches – shows no knowledge that such a thing as Gospels exist.” I should have asked you about this earlier. I was surprised when, back in a post on Marcion, you said the other “gospel” Paul talked about was “a version of our Gospel of Luke.” Would you explain? RESPONSE: OK, so how can I have it both ways? How can I say that Paul did not know about any Gospels AND say that Marcion used [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:05:48-04:00January 6th, 2013|Heresy and Orthodoxy, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

The Mayan Calendar, Y2K, and the Letter of Barnabas

You may have noticed that the world didn’t end two weeks ago, despite widespread anticipation. Sometimes things just don’t go as planned. It’s a strange phenomenon this expectation that the world is soon going to end; and if Christian fundamentalists and Mayan enthusiasts can’t get it right, who can? When I was a fundamentalist back in the mid 70s, I – and all my friends – were sure that the end was going to come, with the reappearance of Jesus, before the end of the 1980s. We had sure-fire biblical proof of it. I’ll give you the logic in some other post, down the line. For now all I want to say is that we were not alone in our views. Every generation of Christians from the beginning of the Christian religion until now has known fervent believers who maintained that there’s was the final generation on earth, that the end would come in their own day. As I have frequently noted, all of these die-hard prognosticators have had two things in common: every one [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:05:57-04:00January 3rd, 2013|Christian Apocrypha, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Proto-Orthodox Writers, Reflections and Ruminations, Religion in the News|

How to Date Documents, including Barnabas

QUESTION: In a comment on my recent post on the letter of Barnabas, where I indicated that “it is almost certainly to be dated to the 130s CE (for reasons I could explain if anyone really wants to know….)” – one reader asked: I, for one, would be quite interested in the how these various works are dated. Seems like it would be of utmost importance seeing as the date of composition all but decides the question of authorship. Even if it only provides a general sense of why a particular date is hung on a manuscript or composition, I think it would be helpful. RESPONSE: Yes, as it turns out, it is very difficult to date ancient writings; but scholars who have worked on such matters (for nearly 300 years now, in some instances) have marshaled pretty good evidence in case after case, although in many instances there continue to be substantial debates. There are several ways to establish parameters, which are fairly commonsensical. If a writing is quoted by an author whose [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:06:04-04:00January 2nd, 2013|Canonical Gospels, Christian Apocrypha, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Proto-Orthodox Writers, Reader’s Questions|

Why Was Barnabas Attributed to Barnabas: Part 2

In my last post but one, in starting to talk about why the anonymous Letter to Barnabas was attributed by early Christians to Barnabas, best known as a one of the closest companions of Paul, I talked mainly about the mid-second century philosopher/theologian-eventually-branded-arch-heretic Marcion. You may have wondered why. In this post I’ll tell you why. VERY brief review. Recall, the letter of Barnabas is stridently anti-Jewish, claiming that the Jews never were the people of God because they had broken the covenant as soon as God had given it to them on Mount Sinai (by worshipping the Golden Calf); they misunderstood the law, taking it literally, when it was meant figuratively. Even though Jews never realized it, the OT was not a Jewish book but a Christian book, that not only anticipated Christ but proclaimed the Christian message. END of review…. The first explicit reference to this anonymous letter is in the writings of Clement of Alexandria, writing around 200 who quotes it and claims it was written by Barnabas, who, he indicates, was [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-18T14:20:20-04:00January 1st, 2013|Christian Apocrypha, Forgery in Antiquity, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Proto-Orthodox Writers, Reader’s Questions|

End of the Year Reflections on the Blog

So, it’s the last day of the year, and I thought I would take a moment to reflect on life, meaning, and the state of the blog. Mainly, for now, the state of the blog. Some statistics would be useful, both of what I wanted to accomplish before the year was out (which will be in five and a half hours, my time) and what we did accomplish. So, to start with, my plan at the outset. I really didn’t know how the blog would go, whether it would have any success at all or be a complete dud. My computer guru for the site, Steven Ray, and I worked for months getting it set up. Well, actually, he worked for several months. I dilly-dallied and told him what to do. He had earlier designed my website, www.bartdehrman.com , which I liked very much (and still do like), and so I asked him to set up the blog. He did almost all the work, and I still think it looks fantastic and works great. Any [...]

BDEhrman2013-11-07T17:19:27-05:00December 31st, 2012|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Why Was The Letter of Barnabas Attributed to Barnabas?

QUESTION: So why was the Letter of Barnabas thought to have been written by Barnabas? BACKGROUND: This question was asked in reference to my discussion of “Gematria” in the Letter of Barnabas. For fuller background, if you’re interested, you should refer to this post: “Another Instance of Gematria (For Members)” (the search function on the blog is very good, btw; it is in the upper right hand corner of your screen). In that post I note that the “Letter of Barnabas” was not actually written by Barnabas. In fact, it could not have been, since it is almost certainly to be dated to the 130s CE (for reasons I could explain if anyone really wants to know….). Barnabas, the companion of Paul, must have died no later than the 70s CE, more likely the 60s – some seventy years before this letter was written. So Barnabas couldn’t have written it. FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in as a Member. Click here for membership options. If you don't belong yet, THE YEAR IS [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:06:21-04:00December 30th, 2012|Christian Apocrypha, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Proto-Orthodox Writers, Reader’s Questions|

Introductions to The Lost Gospels

As many of you know, this past year my colleague Zlatko Plese and I published a bilingual edition of the Apocryphal Gospels. Actually, it was quadrilineal. We included all the Gospels of the early centuries (up until the Middle Ages, and some important ones even from then) in Greek, Latin, and Coptic, with the original language on the left side of the page and a new English translation on the right. This past summer, after it came out, I decided that it would be really nice to have an English-only edition of these texts for people (this would be most people) who aren’t interested in seeing what the original languages say. There are about 40 Gospels altogether that we included, with short introductions. To produce the English version we are simply reproducing our translations, with Introductions geared for general readers rather than for scholars. So I’m touching up the introductions to try to get them at the proper reading level/expertise/level of interest. I’d like to get some feedback. FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log [...]

BDEhrman2020-11-24T18:58:36-05:00December 29th, 2012|Book Discussions, Christian Apocrypha|

Responses to Reactions (on “Christmas Longings”)

Thanks to all for your feedback on my “Christmas Longings” (yesterday’s post). It was/is interesting indeed to see the enormous range of reactions. I’ve not seen anything like that for any other post over the blog’s nine-months of existence. I will not respond at any great length to any of them here – or even make comments on all of them in the comment section – though I will respond there to a few of them that seem to me to require comment. But I appreciate all the feedback, one way or the other. After this short post, I will get back to the business at hand: Christianity in Antiquity (I’m working on an English edition of the Other Gospels just now, and have some things I want to post about it, starting tomorrow). But by way of shorthand, in brief response to the responses, I can say the following. For those who have wondered: No, I am not planning on going back to church regularly or to become a Christian. Don’t see how I [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T19:06:39-04:00December 28th, 2012|Bart’s Biography, Reflections and Ruminations|

Christmas Longings

So we have managed to make our way through another Christmas season. I had a number of posts leading up to the big day, and now I’d like to make a couple of others looking back upon it from this side. But first let me say that I hope all of you – whether fundamentalist (not too many of *you* on this blog!!), liberal Christian, Jew, Muslim, agnostic, atheist, or none of the above – had a very nice, relaxing, rejuvenating, and fulfilling holiday. I did. In the opening chapter of my book God’s Problem, I talked about going to church on Christmas Eve in 2006 with my wife Sarah and brother-in-law Simon, in Saffron-Walden, a market town in England where Simon lives, not far from Cambridge. It was a somber but moving Christmas Eve service, and yet one that had the opposite of the intended effect on me. It made me realize just how estranged I was from the Christian faith, from the notion that with Christ God entered into the world and took [...]

BDEhrman2018-01-01T01:17:08-05:00December 27th, 2012|Bart’s Biography, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

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