Page 179 – The Bart Ehrman Blog

Papias and the Gospels: Some Background

In my previous post I argued that sometime in the second half of the second century, an edition of the four Gospels was compiled by an unknown editor/scribe, and place in circulation in Rome, in which the texts were identified, definitively and possibly for the first time, as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Now the question is: why did these names come to be chosen? This is a complicated question, and the answer is neither straightforward nor easy. But I can state its broad contours simply: for two of the authors, Matthew and Mark, there were much older traditions indicating that they had written Gospels, and the editor of the Roman edition of the four Gospels latched onto these traditions and assigned two of his Gospels to them; and for the other two Gospels, the unknown Roman editor used internal hints within Luke and John themselves to derive the names of their authors. First I’ll deal with Matthew and Mark, beginning with this post. The old traditions that Matthew the tax collector and Mark the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:27:29-04:00November 22nd, 2014|Canonical Gospels, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

The Four Gospels in the Muratorian Fragment

I argued in my previous post that sometime between Justin, in Rome around 150-60, and Irenaeus in 185 the Gospels had begun to be known as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. In my opinion this did not happen earlier (if some of you are wondering about the witness of Papias, I’ll say something about him in a few later posts). In terms of his personal and ecclesiastical life, Irenaeus is best known as the bishop of Lyons in Gaul (i.e., the ancient forerunner of Lyon, France). But he spent significant time in Rome itself before his appointment in Gaul, and he considered the Roman church to be the center of Christendom at his time. There is another witness to the fourfold Gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John from Irenaeus’s time, and also from Rome. This comes to us in a fragmentary Latin text discovered in the 18th century and called the Muratorian Fragment. This document was discovered by an Italian scholar named Lodovico Antonio Muratori in the Ambrosiana Library (and so it is named [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:27:13-04:00November 20th, 2014|Canonical Gospels, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

The Gospels are Finally Named! Irenaeus of Lyons.

In the previous post we saw that the Gospels almost certainly circulated anonymously at first, just as they were composed anonymously. It is an interesting question why the authors all chose to remain anonymous instead of indicating who they were. I have a theory about that, and I may post on it eventually when I get through a bit more of this thread on why the Gospels ended up with the names they did. At this stage, what we can say with certainty is that the Gospels are quoted in the early and mid-second centuries by proto-orthodox Christian authors, who never identify them as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. That is especially significant when we come to Justin around 150-60 CE, who explicitly quotes these books as “Memoirs of the Apostles,” but does not tell us which apostles they are to be associated with. This is in Rome, the capital of the Empire, and the seat of what was probably the largest, and certainly the most influential, church at the time. Some thirty years after [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:27:13-04:00November 18th, 2014|Canonical Gospels, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

When Did the Gospels Get Their Names?
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When Did the Gospels Get Their Names?

Canonical Gospels, History of Christianity (100-300CE)

When Did the Gospels Get Their Names?

When Did the Gospels Get Their Names? In this series of posts on the authors’ names associated with the New Testament Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – we have so far seen that the texts themselves are completely anonymous. The authors of two of these works (Luke and John) do speak in the first person in a couple of instances, but they do not say who they are. By the end of the second century, roughly a century after the books were written, they were being called by the names that are familiar to us today. So naturally one might wonder, when were they given these ascriptions? When Did the Gospels Get Their Names: Evidence Contrary to what you may sometimes have heard, there is no concrete evidence that the Gospels received their familiar names early on. It is absolutely true to say that in the manuscripts of the Gospels, they have the titles we are accustomed to (The Gospel according to Matthew, etc.). But these manuscripts with titles do not start appearing until [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:27:13-04:00November 17th, 2014|Canonical Gospels, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

The Year’s Society of Biblical Literature Meeting

This coming week, on Thursday, I head off to the annual Society of Biblical Literature, which this year is being held in San Diego. I’m not sure if I’ve discussed the meeting on the blog before. It is the main professional meeting that I go to every year; it’s always held the weekend before Thanksgiving (well, Saturday through Tuesday). I go on Thursday evenings because I always have a commitment there first thing Friday morning. The SBL is a learned society for all professors of biblical studies – and graduate students and others academically committed to the field. It’s not a really a conference that layfolk would or should be interested in. It is a group of serious scholars talking serious scholarship using serious scholarly jargon based on scholarly assumptions. Not fit for normal human consumption. When I say a “group,” that makes it sound rather small, like a couple of dozen people. And it’s not actually that kind of group. It’s a group of many thousands. The Society meets at the same time, in [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:27:13-04:00November 15th, 2014|History of Biblical Scholarship, Public Forum|

Did the Beloved Disciple Write the Gospel of John?

I have started a series of posts dealing with the authorship of the Gospels – specifically, why they were eventually named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. My first point, in my previous post and in this one, is that the books are completely anonymous. Their authors never divulge their names. Eventually I may want to address the question of why that is. But for now, my point is that despite what people might commonly think, the books are anonymous. I pointed out yesterday that even though the author of Luke does not tell us his name, he does write in the first person (“I”/ “we”) in the opening of his Gospel. That never happens in either Matthew or Mark, but it does happen again in the Gospel of John. In fact, it is widely claimed – sometimes even by scholars who should know better – that the author identifies himself as the “beloved disciple” who appears several times in the Gospel of John, and only in this Gospel. On a number of occasions the author [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:27:12-04:00November 14th, 2014|Canonical Gospels|

Our Anonymous Gospels, Starting with Luke

Over the past few weeks I’ve had several people ask me about why the Gospels of the New Testament are attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It’s a great question, and one that I want to do some more intense thinking and reading about myself. So I thought I would lay out some of the basics here in a series of posts, and think aloud a bit about why I think the Gospels got the names they did. To begin with, it’s important to recognize that the Gospels themselves are completely anonymous. None of the authors identifies himself by name. The Gospels are all written in the third person about what “they” – other people – were doing (including, of course, and principally, Jesus). There are only a couple of exceptions to the third-person narratives of the Gospels, and even in these cases the authors do not given their own names. The first is in the Prologue to Luke’s Gospel, Luke 1:1-4, where the author says: Just as many have attempted to write a [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:27:12-04:00November 14th, 2014|Canonical Gospels|

A Newly Discovered Gospel? Was Jesus Married with Children???

I have been repeatedly asked about the brand new news story, that a new Gospel has been discovered that shows that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and that they had children. If this sounds like (bad) fiction to you (think Da Vinci Code) (or for movies: think “Last Temptation of Christ”), it is. The claim is completely bogus. This “new” Gospel is not a Gospel, but a text that scholars have known for roughly forever. It’s not a Christian text (ostensibly). It’s about Joseph (as in the Old Testament) and his wife Asenath. Rather than explaining why the new claims about this text are not worth taking seriously (no scholar will), instead of explaining the whole situation myself, I give you a post made by Bob Cargill, assistant professor of classics and religious studies at the University of Iowa. I reproduce his post here with Bob’s permission. It’s a bit long for this blog, but I thought you should get the whole shooting match before you. *************************************************************** Review of “The Lost Gospel” by [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:27:12-04:00November 13th, 2014|Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Some Other Gnostics

As I was indicating last week, I have rewritten the section in my New Testament textbook that discusses early Christian Gnostics. I have already devoted two posts on the matter, and here will be my third and final one. This one deals with another famous group of Gnostics, the Valentinians; it also gives two of the “boxes” that I will be including in the chapter, taken over from the earlier edition, on interesting side issues (my view in general is that the “boxes” in my chapters are the most interesting parts!) ****************************** Valentinian Gnostics A second group that was very important in the history of early Christianity is known as the Valentinian Gnostics. Unlike the Sethians, the Valentinians were named after an actual person, Valentinus, the founder and original leader of the group. We know about the Valentinians from the writings of their proto-orthodox opponents beginning with Irenaeus and by some of the writings discovered among the Nag Hammadi Library that almost certainly derive from Valentinian authors, including one book that may actually have been [...]

BDEhrman2026-05-29T07:44:23-04:00November 12th, 2014|Book Discussions, Heresy and Orthodoxy, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

A Better Kind of Fundamentalist

In today’s post I’d like to go back to that intriguing little article by Louis Markos in the journal First Things, which he entitled “Errant Ehrman.” If you’ll recall from my post last week, Markos starts the article by indicating that he felt “great pity” for me because I was the wrong kind of fundamentalist back when I was a conservative Christian. My problem, he indicates, is that I applied modern standards to decide whether the Bible was inerrant. Here are his words: He [Ehrman] was taught, rightly, that there are no contradictions in the Bible, but he was trained, quite falsely, to interpret the non-contradictory nature of the Bible in modern, scientific, post-Enlightenment terms. That is to say, he was encouraged to test the truth of the Bible against a verification system that has only existed for some 250 years….. And so, as I pointed out last time, the right kind of true believer is obviously one who does not “test the truth of the Bible” by modern standards using modern criteria, but only [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:27:12-04:00November 10th, 2014|Bart's Critics, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

My New Summary of Gnosticism

Yesterday I mentioned on the blog that I had rewritten my description of early Christian Gnosticism for the new edition of my textbook. Here is what the major part of that discussion now looks like. The first part tries to give a general overview of what different groups of Gnostics had in common; the second part describes the views of one of the most prominent Gnostic Groups: ****************************** Major Views of Various Gnostic Groups Despite the many differences among the various Gnostic groups, most of them appear to have subscribed to the following views. (1) The divine realm is inhabited not only by one ultimate God but also by a range of other divine beings, widely known as aeons. These aeons are, in a sense, personifications of the ultimate God’s mental capacities and/or powers (some of them were called such things as Reason, Will, Grace, and Wisdom). (2) The physical world that we inhabit was not the creation of the ultimate God but of a lower, ignorant divine being, who is often identified with [...]

BDEhrman2026-05-29T07:38:41-04:00November 7th, 2014|Book Discussions, Heresy and Orthodoxy, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

My New Discussion of Gnosticism: Introduction

One other major change that I have made in my textbook on the New Testament is that I have completely rewritten my description of early Christian Gnosticism. I’ll be presenting in a few posts what the section now looks like, and will explain why I made the changes. To make sense of the new portion, I first need to give the introductory discussion (dealing with our sources of information, including the Nag Hammadi Library), which I did not change drastically from the earlier version. Here it is: ********************************************************** The Problems of Definitions, Sources, and Dating Over the past fifty years scholars have engaged in heated debates over how to define Gnosticism. These debates are intimately related to the problems that we have with the ancient sources that describe Gnostics or were written by Gnostics. Until about a hundred years ago, our only sources for understanding Gnosticism were the writings of its most vocal opponents, the proto-orthodox church fathers of the second, third, and fourth centuries. In our discussion of the Johannine epistles, we have already [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:27:12-04:00November 6th, 2014|Book Discussions, Heresy and Orthodoxy, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

Discussion Forum (Please read to the end)

I am happy to say that the membership forum – where people can interact with each others’ ideas, thoughts, claims, arguments, and perspectives directly, without any interference from me – is going very well. We started off slowing, with just a couple of people posting questions, comments, and responses. It slowly has been building. And it is getting to be more and more every day. I want to encourage you to consider contributing – and to tell others about it as a way to increase membership on the blog. (As you know, blog membership is, for me, what this entire enterprise is about, because I do the blog as a way of raising money for charity. As far as I’m concerned, the more money raised, the better we’re doing. Please encourage friends, colleagues, family members, neighbors, and others to join!) It is very easy to participate in the Forum. Simply click the tab from the homepage that says, yes, “Membership Forum.” And go from there. To this point the posts and responses have followed [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:27:12-04:00November 5th, 2014|Public Forum|

Why Would Christian Authors Write Forgeries?

In my previous post I cited the box in the new edition of my textbook that explained how Christian authors may have justified themselves in writing “literary deceits,” that is, books that claimed to be written by someone else, for example, a famous apostle such as Peter and Paul (as is almost certainly true of Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, and 1 and 2 Peter, e.g.). Several readers have asked me, though, why a Christian author would *do* such a thing as commit forgery. It’s one thing to indicate how an author would justify such a deceit (the point of my last post); but why would he engage in the deceit in the first place? In my books on forgery(both the trade book Forged and the scholarly monography Forgery and Counterforgery) I indicate a number of motives that ancient authors (for example, Jews and pagans) had for producing their forgeries: some did it to make money, some did it to attack a personal enemy, some did it to authorize a philosophical [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:27:12-04:00November 4th, 2014|Book Discussions, Forgery in Antiquity, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Reader’s Questions|

A New Box on Why A (Christian) Author Would Lie About Who He Was

This will be the last of my posts giving new “boxes” from the recently finished (and now sent to the publisher) edition of my textbook, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. This box tries to explain how there could be “forgeries” in the NT, that is, books whose authors claimed to be a famous person, knowing full well they were someone else. In the ancient world, these books were called “lies” (pseudoi) or “books inscribed with a lie” (pseudepigrapha). But why would a Christian author lie about who he was? How could he live with himself? To set up the box, I will first quote a paragraph from my book Forged, about the author of Ephesians, who claimed to be Paul (lying about it), even though he placed such a premium on the “truth.” It is striking that in his instructions about the Christian “armor” the author of Ephesians also tells his readers to “fasten the belt of truth around your waist” (6:14). Truth was important for this writer. Early [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:27:12-04:00November 3rd, 2014|Book Discussions, Forgery in Antiquity, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

Who Changed the Bible and Why? Diane Rehm Show

When my book Misquoting Jesus came out, I had a number of radio and television interviews, including this -- one of my favorites, on the The Diane Rehm Show (December 5, 2005). The show is produced at WAMU 88.5 and distributed by National Public Radio, NPR Worldwide, and SIRIUS satellite radio. This episode was called "Who Changed the Bible and Why?" In the interview I talk about how scribes copying the NT made both mistakes and intentional changes, and how some of these changes involve widely held beliefs about the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity, and the divine origins of the Bible itself. Other issues were raised as well, including, for example, homosexuality as understood in Jesus' time and the Christmas holiday. Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition:

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:26:56-04:00November 3rd, 2014|Public Forum, Video Media|

Why I’m To Be Pitied for Having Been the Wrong Kind of Fundamentalist

Several readers of this blog have pointed me to an article in the conservative journal First Things; the article (a review of a book by the evangelical scholar Craig Blomberg) was written by Louis Markos, an English professor at Houston Baptist University. The title is called “Ehrman Errant.” I must say, that did not sound like a promising beginning. I had never heard of Louis Markos before – had certainly never met him, talked with him about myself or my life, shared with him my views of important topics, spent time to see how he ticked and to let him see how I do. I don’t know the man, and he doesn’t me. And so it was with some considerable surprise that I read the beginning of his article. “I feel great pity for Bart Ehrman.” So, from someone I don’t know, that’s a bit of a shocker. I can understand why a friend of mine might feel some (but not great?) pity for me at some points of my life – when I had [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:27:11-04:00November 1st, 2014|Bart's Critics, Bart’s Biography, Public Forum|

New Boxes Related to Literary Forgery and the NT

Here are two more new boxes in my new edition of The New Testatment: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. Both of these deal with issues that I cover in my book Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics and, to a lesser extent, in my trade book, Forged. **************************************************************** Box 25.2 Another Glimpse Into the Past The Secretary Hypothesis For a very long time there have been scholars who have argued that the reason books like 2 Thessalonians, Colossians, Ephesians, and the Pastoral epistles are so unlike Paul’s other writings – both in writing style and contents – is that in these instances Paul used a “secretary” and that this other person, his secretary, actually did the writing for him, after Paul gave some instructions about what to say. This is a view that I myself was taught in graduate school. It is still widely taught today. The problem is that there is almost no evidence for it. By that I do not mean that there is [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:27:11-04:00November 1st, 2014|Book Discussions, Forgery in Antiquity|

New Boxes on Problematic Social Values in the New Testament

I have been posting some of the new “boxes” that will appear in the sixth edition of my textbook. These boxes are meant either to raise interesting historical issues that are somewhat tangential to the main discussion or to broach complex issues without easy solution that are meant to force students to think for themselves. I include two such boxes here in this post – the first is a new one for the sixth edition, but I thought it would be interesting to pair it with a somewhat related topic drawn from a post already in the fifth edtiion. Both boxes have to do with the New Testament and social realities of its day – the early Christian approbation of the institution of slavery and Jesus’ teachings that run precisely contrary to what today we might think of as solid family values. **************************************************************** Box 22.12 What Do You Think? The New Testament and Slavery Many people who read the book of Philemon simply assume that Paul writes the letter in order to urge Philemon to [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:27:11-04:00October 30th, 2014|Book Discussions, Historical Jesus, Paul and His Letters|

New Boxes on Jesus as God in the NT

Here are two more “boxes” that will now appear in the sixth edition of my New Testament textbook. If you’ve read my recent book, How Jesus Became God, you’ll see that both of these boxes are based on views that I develop at length there. One of the tricks in writing a textbook is figuring out how to say something in a way that is succinct and interesting, when there is not much space to cover a topic fully (so, my first box here covers in 326 words what I take an entire chapter to develop in my book!) The problem is that sometimes the coverage is so succinct that it is no longer accurate and / or interesting. It’s always a balancing act. In any event, here are the two boxes. ******************************************************* Box 19.2 What Do You Think? Humans Exalted to Heaven at the End of Their Lives What do you imagine the early Christians would think had happened to Jesus once they came to believe that he had not only been raised from [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:27:11-04:00October 28th, 2014|Book Discussions, Paul and His Letters|

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